Was 9/11 an inside job?

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The September 11, 2001 attacks in New York City and Washington D.C. forever changed the landscape of American culture and geopolitics around the globe. Is the official explanation of who conducted the attacks accurate and reliable? Or is it possible that some government agents had inside information or even planned the attack itself?

9/11 was an inside job

Pro

• Pro There is evidence of insider trading shortly prior to the attacks, which suggests that many people anticipated the attack. It's hard to imagine that such information would reach the ears of traders yet remain unknown to US intelligence and defense. From a cursory search, the 500+ page 9/11 commission report only seems to mention possible insider trading in a one-paragraph endnote to chapter five, which asserts that this is coincidence and states that the (unnamed) traders had no connection with the attacks. A significant portion of these trades were made through Alex Brown inc. whose former president A. B. Krongard was appointed executive director of the CIA on March 16, 2001. This was not mentioned in the 9/11 commission report. Larry Silverstein bought the WTC in January 2001 and insured it, and spent a lot of time at the buildings in the subsequent months. Summarizing the relevant parts of that Wiki page: "Silverstein has said in interviews that he usually spent his mornings in breakfast meetings at Windows on the World on top of the World Trade Center North Tower, and with new tenants in the building. However, the morning of September 11, 2001, his wife insisted that he attend a medical appointment. Due to the appointment, he escaped almost certain death". Apparently not satisfied with the payout he was offered, "Following the September 11, 2001, attacks, Silverstein sought to collect double the face amount (~$7.1 billion) on the basis that the two separate airplane strikes into two separate buildings constituted two occurrences within the meaning of the policies". He sued the insurance companies and eventually won over four billion dollars. The primary motive was probably to establish casus belli for wars in the middle east.
• Pro Besides the twin towers, one more building in the World Trade Center complex collapsed, namely the 7 World Trade Center. This building was not hit by any plane, nor did it receive much more debris damage than any of the other buildings surrounding the twin towers. It did catch on fire and burn for some hours, but not nearly enough to make the building collapse as completely and as fast as it did, at nearly free-fall speed for the first few seconds of its collapse. Prior to 9/11 no steel-framed high rise building had ever collapsed because of fire. But if the fire didn't cause the collapse, then the only remaining explanation is a controlled demolition, which would implicate high-level government officials. As extra support, some suspicious "drills" were reported that day on the building.
  • Objection The fires did not knock out all of the supports at once. They weakened the supports around column 79, causing floors 8 to 14 to collapse in the inside of the building. This then led to column 79 failing, causing the east penthouse to collapse, damaging surrounding columns. This set off a chain reaction of columns failing from the east side to the west side. This meant that the full weight of the building was loaded onto the perimeter support, which buckled between floors 7 and 17 eight seconds after the east penthouse collapsed, causing the remaining exterior of the building to collapse as a single unit. So the collapse was not instant and can be explained by fires. You then say that this is unheard of and no example of a similar collapse can be provided. That's absolutely correct. It was completely unheard of for a high rise to have its lower floors on fire for so many hours without firefighters stopping the fire. But it happened on 9/11.
  • Objection There was no evidence of the explosives required for a controlled demolition.
    • Objection The microscopic iron spheres found at ground zero were a direct byproduct of thermitic material, such as thermite, being used to weaken the structure before its collapse. This coupled with the red hot steel pouring from windows, "as if it had melted in a foundry", quoted from well documented news footage of a NYPD firefighter, is definitive proof enough there was some sort of control going on behind the chaos.
      • Objection A random quotation from a random firefighter is not definitive proof of anything, except that in the midst of chaotic panic the firefighter said something that is vague enough to support any conclusion one wants to support.
        • Objection Slothful Induction/Personal Incredulity fallacy.
          • Objection Fallacy fallacy.
• Pro Husley, L. 2019. A Structural Reevaluation of the Collapse of World Trade Center 7. Institute of Northern Engineering: "...The principal conclusion of our study is that fire did not cause the collapse of WTC 7 on 9/11, contrary to the conclusions of NIST and private engineering firms that studied the collapse. The secondary conclusion of our study is that the collapse of WTC 7 was a global failure involving the near-simultaneous failure of every column in the building...."
  • Objection No tests were conducted for the presence of explosives residue and operational protocol (not to mention basic common sense) stipulates that these tests should have occurred. Without either being inside the building or having video footage of the interior of the building at the time, there is no reliable way for you to reach the conclusions you have reached, making the specificity of your claims outright preposterous. You are certainly correct that there was a chain reaction; however, this chain reaction could have been caused by the building's resistance to gravity being compromised by explosives.
• Pro The September 11 attacks were a thinly-veiled excuse to invade Iraq in order to establish American dominance, get oil, and vindicate the first Bush Presidency's defense of Kuwait in the 1990s during the first Persian Gulf War.
  • Objection Although the United States may have used this terrorist attack as a pretense for empire-building, that doesn't mean they caused it or allowed it to happen with prior knowledge. It's possible and even plausible that once the attack occurred they simply saw an opportunity and took it. It's also reasonable that different actors in the federal government had some complex motivations including retribution for the attacks as well as expansionism.
  • Objection The USA imports little oil from the Middle East, with around 50% coming from North America and less than 15% from the Persian Gulf. It's not cheap oil if it requires shipping across the 12,000 miles between the two locations, and so oil is not a good motivation for the attack.
    • Objection However, you don't actually need to ship the oil to American soil. You could just sell it as the Iraqis used to. Once you control the oil, you could run the regional market and make millions and maybe billions of dollars in sales. You could have a even bigger influence over the global oil market. There are many good reasons where shipping isn't required.
• Pro Osama Bin Laden had been an ally of the CIA before, during the Afghan-Soviet war, so it would be plausible that he had a connection with the US government in order to mount the attack via his terrorist cell and give the government an excuse for invasion in the middle east. The invasion produced many exclusive oil contracts afterwards, including those of Halliburton, an enterprise related to Dick Cheney and the Bush administration. Besides, it took quite a while for the US to find and kill Osama, not until the Obama administration.

Con

• Con Any possible motive for the government to do this would not need to be executed in this way.
  • Objection Citizens experiencing fear or anger are easier to manipulate, and this was used as a tool to herd the populace into further wars.
• Con The events of 9/11 can be explained far more simply as terrorist attacks than a complex conspiracy with unclear motivation.
  • Objection How bout when the CIA was going to plot a war against Cuba by shooting down a plane and killing innocent Americans? It's not the first time something like this could have happened
  • Objection Many things can be explained in simpler terms, doesn’t mean it’s correct
    • Objection Occam's Razor
  • Objection Simple explanations is what simple people crave. The motivation was simple and clear. Use this "terrorist" attack to expand the Patriot act and make citizens ok with being spied on for the greater good of the country. Assert dominance in a region that doesn't like you or your banking system.
• Con There is no evidence of members of the conspiracy, even though this would require the perfect silence of a large amount of individuals at different levels of government, when the government has a difficult time keeping far less scandalous secrets hidden. Such theories strain credulity and there is simply no reason to accept them other than the desire to believe them.
  • Objection "Absence of evidence" is no evidence at all.
  • Objection They also have less reason to keep "far less scandalous" secrets hidden. Why would they resort to strong-arm tactics and censorship to cover up minor scandals? That makes no sense.
  • Objection You haven't provided an argument here so much as an abuse of language. What the US government claimed happened was a complex conspiracy involving an international terrorist organisation. The US government has so far been unable to prove this is what happened, making it a theory. Somehow, many people in America (and worldwide) seem to have been convinced that critically questioning the US government's theory about an al-Qaeda conspiracy makes one a conspiracy theorist. The very logic of language itself reveals the lunacy in slandering those who dispute the US government's 9/11 narrative with egregious smear attacks like, "conspiracy theorist" or "twofer". These are just simple lawyer's tricks, purpose-built to attack the credibility of the opposition.
• Con Soon after the event, al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attack.
  • Objection Al-Qaeda are probably not above claiming responsibility for something they didn't actually do if it furthers their organisation's goals. If 9/11 were an inside job, al-Qaeda would probably claim responsibility anyway either unprompted or at the suggestion of whatever secretive cabal really did it.
  • Objection This is simply false. Whoever perpetrated the attack tried to fabricate evidence implicating the leader of al-Qaeda in the form of a video tape. This video tape has been declared fraudulent by numerous scholars, including Professor Bruce Lawrence who, according to the Daily Mirror (UK), is the world's "foremost authority on (Osama) bin Laden". The actual Osama bin Laden gave two public interviews after 9/11 in which his identity was confirmed. He categorically denied all involvement in both. The solitary link the US government has between al-Qaeda and the 9/11 attacks is the written confession of a man claiming to be Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who provided his confession after being waterboarded a reported 183 times at Guantanamo Bay. Moreover, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was reported by the Asian Press to have died during an ISI raid in Karachi in 2002. There is literally no proof the man being held in US custody is even Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in the first place.
    • Objection Professor Bruce Lawrence, the gentleman who you claimed to have made a comment about the allegedly "fraudulent" video from al-Qaeda, is a Humanities Professor of Religion at Duke University and publishes books about the Islamic faith. The only public comment he has ever made even slightly related to the 9/11 attacks is that he believes that Islam has no connection with terrorism. Besides, The Daily Mirror is a British tabloid that has published stories that were later revealed to be a hoax.
• Con It would be impossible to keep a conspiracy this large secret. Someone would have leaked reliable and verifiable information at some point and every journalist in the world would be keen to break the biggest story in the 21st century.
  • Objection What about the fact that these people who destroyed the buildings in NYC and DC, were trained in Canada? The reason I bring this argument into vision is there is a thing such as "Domestic Terrorism" . I believe and have investigated much of this theory. The attacks came from greed and the way the greed could be covered-up, is by making people look in a different direction. How do we even know if what was told to us by Al-Queda to be true, many of us don't know their language and we would be counting on the Translates for the truth,right?
  • Objection "Absence of evidence" is no evidence at all.
  • Objection When there is a leak of even the most minor sort, the groundwork has already been laid to discredit their mental well being. Short of Dick Cheney himself, there isn't any credibility in low level or anonymous leaks.
  • Objection The conspiracy that official story says committed the 9/11 attacks was a single al-Qaeda cell, why should the conspiracy that really did it necessarily be much bigger to the point that discovery is inevitable?
  • Objection They sign NDAs and it's probably difficult to "leak" information anonymously due to the advanced SIGINT capabilities of various governmental agencies e.g. the NSA. Even if you could, there's no guarantee that any given journalist isn't actually an informant. Snowden probably lives in constant fear of extradition and cannot return to his home country on pain of lifelong imprisonment. Russia could turn him over on a whim if he gets on their bad side too. It's hardly a way to live. His situation gives us information about the mindset, culture, and motivations of the people involved in such organizations. They can do no such thing as "leak information", or rather, they cannot be relied upon to do so.
• Con Fact 1. No plane wreckage on the lawn of pentagon. 2. The second plane was not a jet liner. 3. No building anywhere in the world has fell due to plane going into it & there has been many around the world. This was a setup by the US government to go into Iraq and Afghanistan to control the oil. Saddam was giving oil for food program through the UN. The US could not put fuel prices up while Saddam was giving away oil. This was a oil war.

See also

• Are all conspiracy theories nonsense?
• Is capitalism sustainable?
• Did the United States need to use atomic weapons to end World War II?