9/11: Doubts, Legends and Speculation

Everyone knows that fanatical al-Qaida suicide bombers perpetrated an unprecedented attack on the twin towers of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. Everyone has seen the news footage of that ultimate catastrophe in which the hijacked airplanes deliberately and accurately crashed into New York’s tallest buildings with a thunderous explosion that later caused their ultimate collapse like a house of cards.

The apocalyptic pictures are connected inescapably with the kindly face and gentle eyes of a bearded man in a white turban, the face of the mastermind behind the heinous attack, the world-famous number one icon of hate: the face of the Saudi Arabian terrorist Osama bin Laden, who was reportedly hunted down and shot in a showdown with Sheriff Barack Obama.

Many Inconsistencies in the Official Version

That’s the Hollywood spectacular that millions around the world have in their memories. But what about those things that hardly anyone knows or that have already been forgotten? Like the fact that bin Laden was on the FBI’s most wanted list — not for 9/11, but for a whole series of other terrorist acts? That bin Laden himself denied responsibility for 9/11 right from the beginning? That a video with inferior picture and sound quality released in December 2001 in which bin Laden ostensibly admits responsibility for the attacks is presumably a counterfeit?

Who recalls today that a third, considerably smaller building in the World Trade Center complex also suddenly collapsed just a few hours after catching fire? In November 2001, The New York Times published expert opinion that such a thing was without precedent, reporting that “excepting the three 9/11 collapses, no fire, however severe, has ever caused a steel-framed high-rise building to collapse.”

In comparison, the collapse recorded on the 9/11 videos looks exactly like the controlled demolition of a building, and nothing appears different in the drama’s main attraction, the collapse of towers numbers one and two. The attack on the Pentagon is significantly less remembered than the WTC collapses. Even less memorable than that is the plane that crashed into a Pennsylvania field after courageous passengers tried to overpower the hijackers.

CCTV Footage Is Kept under Lock and Key

That last event was the subject of two movies that also have generally been forgotten, probably because compared to the main attack on the WTC, the movies “United 93” and “Flight 93” lack those convincing shock images that have bored themselves into our collective memories. There are supposedly 84 closed-circuit videos of the Pentagon that were recorded at the time of the crash. All are held under lock and key by the FBI.

Only one was released for public consumption in 2006. It shows an explosion somewhere at the building, but not much more than that. Photographs at the scene show a large hole in the walls of the Pentagon, but nowhere is there anything resembling aircraft debris, nor is there any visual evidence of victims’ bodies.

The Lack of Visual Material Is More than just Remarkable

The same holds true for the purported crash site in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. The only photograph of the tragedy shows nothing more than a column of smoke reminiscent of a bomb explosion. The lack of convincing visual material is really more than just remarkable, and it’s precisely these two cases within the framework of the 9/11 “big picture” that are the main drug of choice for those skeptics and “truth seekers” popularly referred to as “conspiracy theorists.”

But all this is really just the tip of the evidence iceberg that has been the source of so much speculation. The fact is, it’s not difficult to accept many of the theories of those who seriously doubt the validity of the official explanations offered up for this epochal attack. The circle of “conspiracy theorists” and 9/11 skeptics has meanwhile become a kind of alternative mainstream somewhat accepted by journalists, authors, activists, politicians and subject-matter experts of all sorts, from pilots to intelligence service experts and scientists.

The English and German language versions of Wikipedia contain articles dealing with these alternative theories that are as long and comprehensive as those articles dealing with the official accounts. The most notable German writers in this genre are the professional investigative reporter Gerhard Wisnewski and the former “die Tageszeitung” editor and “die Zeit” columnist Mathias Bröckers, both of whom have published voluminous books attempting to deconstruct what they call the “tissue of lies” known as Sept. 11, 2001.

Open Questions and Possible Answers

The book “9/11 — The Struggle for Truth,” by Marcus B. Klöckner, provides an overview of the most significant authors and theories dealing with this subject. Coincidentally with the 10th anniversary of the attacks, revised and expanded editions of existing works dealing with 9/11 are also being released. Beginners will be able to tackle the fraud with a cornucopia of facts, news articles, backgrounds, contradictions and doubts they had previously missed.

Were the assassins really adequately trained to carry out such an aerial suicide mission? Did they know the impact of one Boeing passenger jet would be sufficient to bring down the twin towers? Or were the towers, in fact, deliberately blown up? Could the Pentagon attack actually have been carried out by an unmanned drone? Why are there still no complete passenger manifests available for the hijacked aircraft? How was it possible that all the various security and defense powers of the United States failed so spectacularly on this one day? Did the committee convened by the U.S. government to get to the facts of the matter serve instead to cover them up?

An Age of Mistrust Began on 9/11

The biggest accomplishment achieved by Wisnewski, Bröckers and his co-author, Christian C. Walther, has probably been getting people to be critical of the mass media with the questions they raise, because in the final analysis, they are also only capable of speculating about what really took place. They are unified in their conclusion that the official version of events cannot have happened as depicted and that 9/11 could never have happened at all without the knowledge and perhaps even the complicity of the U.S. intelligence and military communities.

The authors can realistically respond to charges that they are “conspiracy theorists” by pointing out the theory that 19 Muslims armed only with box cutters were able to hijack four airplanes is even less believable.

An age of rapidly growing, almost paranoid mistrust of the “secondary” world of the media began with 9/11. Skepticism and criticism are always indications of a fear of and a pronounced public discomfort with the immense power of a mass media that author Jean Raspail has called “a wild animal.”