21 Reasons to Question the Official 9/11 Story

By David Ray Griffin, courtesy of Global Research:

Note: Although the points are stated briefly, I give in each case the pages in my most recent book---"The New Pearl Harbor Revisited"---where the issue is documented and discussed more extensively.

(1) Although the official account of 9/11 claims that Osama bin Laden ordered the attacks, the FBI does not list 9/11 as one of the terrorist acts for which he is wanted and has admitted that it "has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11" (NPHR 206-11).

(2) Although the official story holds that the four airliners were hijacked by devout Muslims ready to die as martyrs to earn a heavenly reward, Mohamed Atta and the other alleged hijackers regularly drank heavily, went to strip clubs, and paid for sex (NPHR 153-55).

(3) Many people reported having received cell phone calls from loved ones or flight attendants on the airliners, during which they were told that Middle Eastern hijackers had taken over the planes. One recipient, Deena Burnett, was certain that her husband had called her several times on his cell phone because she had recognized his number on her Caller ID. But the calls to Burnett and most of the other reported calls were made when the planes were above 30,000 feet, and evidence presented by the 9/11 truth movement showed that, given the technology of the time, cell phone calls from high-altitude airliners had been impossible. By the time the FBI presented a report on phone calls from the planes at the trial of Zacarias Moussaoui in 2006, it had changed its story, saying that there were only two cell phone calls from the flights, both from United 93 after it had descended to 5,000 feet (NPHR 111-17).

(4) US Solicitor General Ted Olson's claim that his wife, Barbara Olson, phoned him twice from AA 77, reporting that hijackers had taken it over, was also contradicted by this FBI report, which says that the only call attempted by her was "unconnected" and hence lasted "0 seconds" (NPRH 60-62).

(5) Although decisive evidence that al-Qaeda was responsible for the attacks was reportedly found in Mohamed Atta's luggage---which allegedly failed to get loaded onto Flight 11 from a commuter flight that Atta took to Boston from Portland, Maine, that morning---this story was made up after the FBI's previous story had collapsed. According to that story, the evidence had been found in a Mitsubishi that Atta had left in the Logan Airport parking lot and the trip to Portland was taken by Adnan and Ameer Bukhari. After the FBI learned that neither of the Bukharis had died on September 11, it simply declared that the trip to Portland was made by Atta and another al-Qaeda operative (NPHR 155-62).

(6) The other types of reputed evidence for Muslim hijackers---such as videos of al-Qaeda operatives at airports, passports discovered at the crash sites, and a headband discovered at the crash site of United 93---also show clear signs of having been fabricated (NPHR 170-73).

(7) In addition to the absence of evidence for hijackers on the planes, there is also evidence of their absence: If hijackers had broken into the cockpits, the pilots would have "squawked" the universal hijack code, an act that takes only a couple of seconds. But not one of the eight pilots on the four airliners did this (NPHR 175-79).

(8) Given standard operating procedures between the FAA and the military, according to which planes showing signs of an in-flight emergency are normally intercepted within about 10 minutes, the military's failure to intercept any of the flights implies that something, such as a stand-down order, prevented standard procedures from being carried out (NPHR 1-10, 81-84).

(9) Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta reported an episode in which Vice President Cheney, while in the bunker under the White House, apparently confirmed a stand-down order at about 9:25 AM, which was prior to the strike on the Pentagon. Another man has reported hearing members of LAX Security learn that a stand-down order had come from the "highest level of the White House" (NPHR 94-96).

(10) The 9/11 Commission did not mention Mineta's report, removed it from the Commission's video record of its hearings, and claimed that Cheney did not enter the shelter conference room until almost 10:00, which was at least 40 minutes later than he was really there, according to Mineta and several other witnesses, including Cheney's photographer (NPHR 91-94).

(11) The 9/11 Commission's timeline for Cheney that morning even contradicted what Cheney himself had told Tim Russert on "Meet the Press" September 16, just five days after 9/11 (NPHR 93).

(12) Hani Hanjour, known as a terrible pilot who could not safely fly even a single-engine airplane, could not possibly have executed the amazing trajectory reportedly taken by American Flight 77 in order to hit Wedge 1 of the Pentagon (NPHR 78-80).

(13) Wedge 1 would have been the least likely part of the Pentagon to be targeted by foreign terrorists, for several reasons: It was as far as possible from the offices of Rumsfeld and the top brass, whom Muslim terrorists presumably would have wanted to kill; it was the only part of the Pentagon that had been reinforced; the reconstruction was not finished, so there were relatively few people there; and it was the only part of the Pentagon that would have presented obstacles to a plane's flight path (NPHR 76-78).

(14) Contrary to the claim of Pentagon officials that they did not have the Pentagon evacuated because they had no way of knowing that an aircraft was approaching, a military E-4B---the Air Force's most advanced communications, command, and control airplane---was flying over the White House at the time. Also, although there can be no doubt about the identity of the plane, which was captured on video by CNN and others, the military has denied that it belonged to them (NPHR 96-98).

(15) The Secret Service, after learning that a second World Trade Center building had been attacked---which would have meant that terrorists were going after high-value targets---and that still other planes had apparently been hijacked, allowed President Bush to remain at the school in Sarasota, Florida, for another 30 minutes. It thereby revealed its foreknowledge that Bush would not be a target: If these had really been surprise attacks, the agents, fearing that a hijacked airliner was bearing down on the school, would have hustled Bush away. On the first anniversary of 9/11, the White House started telling a new story, according to which Bush, rather than remaining in the classroom several minutes after Andrew Card whispered in his ear that a second WTC building had been hit, immediately got up and left the room. This lie was told in major newspapers and on MSNBC and ABC television (NPHR 129-31).

(16) Given the fact that the Twin Towers and WTC 7 had steel columns running from their basements to their roofs, they simply could not have come down as they did---straight down at virtually free-fall speed---unless these columns had been sliced by means of explosives. Therefore, the official theory, according to which the buildings came down because of fire plus (in the case of the Twin Towers) the impact of the planes, is scientifically impossible (NPHR 12-25).

(17) The destruction of the Twin Towers had many other features---such as the horizontal ejections of steel beams, the melting of steel, and the sulfidation and thinning of steel---that can be explained only in terms of powerful explosives. For example, the fires could not have come within 1000 degrees Fahrenheit of the temperature needed to melt steel (30-36).

(18) Members of the FDNY (Fire Department of New York) provided oral histories shortly after 9/11 in which one fourth of them testified to having witnessed explosions in the Twin Towers. Explosions in the WTC 7 as well as the towers were also reported by city officials, WTC employees, and journalists (NPHR 27-30, 45-48, 51).

(19) Mayor Rudy Giuliani told Peter Jennings of ABC News that day: "we set up headquarters at 75 Barclay Street . . . , and we were operating out of there when we were told that the World Trade Center was gonna collapse. And it [the South Tower] did collapse before we could actually get out of the building." However, there was no objective basis for expecting the towers to collapse; even the 9/11 Commission admitted that none of the fire chiefs expected them to come down. The FDNY oral histories show that the information that they were going to collapse came from the Office of Emergency Management---Giuliani's own office. How could Giuliani's people have known that the towers were going to come down, unless they knew that the buildings had been laced with explosives? (NPH 40)

(20) NIST, which produced the official reports on the Twin Towers and (recently) WTC 7, has been "fully hijacked from the scientific to the political realm," so that its scientists are little more than "hired guns," a former employee has reported, and the 9/11 Commission was no more independent, being run by Philip Zelikow, who was essentially a member of the Bush White House (NPHR 11, 238-51).

(21) The official story about 9/11 is now rejected by constantly growing numbers of physicists, chemists, architects, engineers, pilots, former military officers, and former intelligence officials (NPHR xi).