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I am deleting the final introductory sentance "The scientific community does not support the controlled demolition hypothesis and U.S. officials, mainstream journalists, and researchers have concluded that only al-Qaeda was involved in the attacks." for two reasons. First, there is a documented controversy over how the buildings could have fell within the scientific community as noted further in the article. To say there is a consensus is clearly false.
Second, as with most conspiracy theories, the 9/11 theories disagree with the mainstream consensus. This is due to the very nature of conspiracy theories. They are all controversial. -Rich
I propose that this article needs to be cut down in size; it is currently 120 kB in size. At least the following two sections could be put into subarticles:
==I already made a Controlled-Demolition Theory branch at Controlled-Demolition Theory (9/11 Conspiracy Theory), but was challenged and it currently is undergoing a VfD. I think it needs to stay, as it is large enough to be an article in its own right, and think a second page needs to come off. Can people please state whether they agree or disagree with me? Titanium Dragon 22:50, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
Most of the other subsections are small or too unrelated to put on their own page; the only one which is nearly as large as those two is the Israel/Jewish related subset of conspiracy theories, which clock in at 12 kB. Titanium Dragon 22:53, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
I think the point of contention needs to be not "synthesis" but "serving to advance a position". This article, as it stands, only occasionally lapses into argumentative arrangements of material. (Let's talk about them one at time in stead of making these sweeping statements about an article everyone agrees needs work.) For the most part it uses facts in the same way its sources does, connecting them (via those sources) to conspiriatorial conclusions. For anyone who becomes interested in the theories it describes after reading, say, Time Magazine or the Washington Post, or watching CNN's or BBC's recent coverage, it offers a place to start to make sense of the them and make up one's mind. It could be much, much better, and we're working on that. Separating out the synthesis (not serving to advance...) of the WTC material is a good start. The next step, to my mind, is to distinguish allegations made by only one or two sources from allegations made by more or less all of them.-- Thomas Basboll 07:49, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
Why is Operation Northwood a link on this page? Seriously, Northwood has nothing to do with 9/11, hell I've seen all three versions of Loose Change and Jones still has not made the link.
If its to remain here, it needs a reason to be here. Like a citation of "A similar conspiracy plan to the proposed 9/11 conspiracy theories" right next to it.
A lot of people say the American government would not kill 3,000 of their own people. The Northwoods documents prove thats exactly the sort of thing the people who run America would do, if they saw strategic long term advantage in it. It evidences the warped, power crazed, mentality of America's ruling elite. Timharwoodx 22:34, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
This section seems totally extraneous to me; this is just people's opinions on it, and it seems unimportant. This is about the conspiracy theories, not about what people say about them, and it seems like the article would be stronger without them. Titanium Dragon 22:32, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
This is, to my knowledge, totally false. Beyond being a terrible addition without sourcing, if I recall correctly the news agencies did not have footage of the first plane crashing into the WTC until after the second plane crashed into the WTC. If no one can source this within 24 hours I'm junking it, it looks like someone just added something to defend Bush. Titanium Dragon 08:28, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
RE:Film - I am surprised at the lack of films of 911. I would have thought that cameramen of all varieties would have captured every angle of the event. I keep seeing the same film over and over, but darn few new or different ones - curious that every New Yorker with a camera - or at least a few of them - didn't take a shot.
I'm optimistic about the split off WTC article. If we get to keep it, we should cut the corresponding material out of this article and improve the relevant summaries. This would constitute a compromise with those who want to delete all the "junk science" from the CT article. They can then be presented as "issues" within the CT community in the WTC article.-- Thomas Basboll 08:30, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
Whilst I can see why the viewpoints may be seen as contentious, this article needs to be retained in order to present both sides of what is a complex story Ianguy 02:50, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Tom Harrison has repeatedly suggested that this article, and especially the WTC section, is based on poor or missing sources. This may be true, I haven't checked them all. But surely we can agree that there is by now a solid set of sources to confirm the existence of the widespread belief that 9/11 was carried out by shadowy persons working inside the U.S. government and that the World Trade Center was brought down by controlled demolition. Many of these sources also allow us to go into considerable detail about these beliefs. We can, of course, not confirm their truth; but we can easily document their existence. I've opened this thread to discuss this issue and hopefully get Tom to make his critique of the sourcing of this article explicit. If there are problems with the sources, I'm confident that in 90% of the cases they can be fixed by appeal to any of three or four books, a couple of websites, a few papers, and the growing mainstream media coverage.-- Thomas Basboll 14:42, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
The section tries to prove that all this theory was made up by hezboallah and this link [ | TRying to prove that...] cleary states contrdict the npov by clearly writing at top of it to Stop the defamation of the Jewish people.It also tries to use wikipedia as a media outlet for Israeli pov.Pl check into it. Yousaf465
GTFO ZOG AGENT Therman^^HAND 00:39, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
"While the demolitions of WTC 1 and 2 were by no means ordinary demolitions." [4]
I really don't understand what that sentence is supposed to mean and how it is supported by the source. -- Sloane 23:40, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Hi, I see this is a high-activity page... sorry if this has already been discussed some long time ago. I think the title of the page should rather be "9/11 alternative theories" or some other phrasing instead of "Conspiracy theory", because:
The argument against using the words "conspiracy theorist" generally apply in cases where the theorist is not proposing a conspiracy but rather criticizing an institution. A famous example is Noam Chomsky's "propaganda model" of the media which is sometimes denigrated as a "conspiracy theory". Here its defenders are right to object, as Chomsky does, that the label is really just intended to discourage institutional criticism. I.e., it misinterprets claims about banal social interests as claims about a sinister plot. (Tom Wolfe makes this "cabal theory" allegation against Chomsky.) But in the case of 9/11 conspiracy theories there is really nothing controversial about it. The theorists really are defending the proposition that there has been a conspiracy, and it is a very standard "shadow government" type proposition. Neither David Griffin nor Mike Ruppert object to the word "conspiracy". If anything, they take offense at the word "theory". Ruppert says he "don't deal in conspiracy theory. I deal in conspiracy fact." Webster Tarpley talks about the "neocon fascist madmen" who are pulling even Dick Cheney's stings. Finally, the phrase "9/11 conspiracy theories" is a stable reference in the mainstream media, it is the best way to bring this (hopefully soon to be more) fact-based article to the attention of potential readers.-- Thomas Basboll 08:13, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
I think that it is essential that there is an addition to the lead paragraph to indicate that the 'conspiracy theories' do not represent mainstream views to make this clear to the casual reader. I have added a sentence but am happy to consider a different wording providing it includes suitable caveats. TerriersFan 02:09, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
Anyone who takes an objective look at the article in its present form can see that the material on the WTC needs to be removed for the sake of length, surveyability and general tidyness. No consensus can be won for simply deleting it. So the split is the best way forward. Does anyone know what is going on? (I'll post this also on the VfD page).-- Thomas Basboll 09:46, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
The article in its current form ignores the conspiracy theories that were promulgated by government officials in the aftermath of the attacks. They include the supposed credible threat made to Air Force One, the belief that the country of Iraq was responsible for the attacks, and the supposed meeting between the lead highjacker and an Iraqi intelligence agent. I would even say that these are the most famous conspiracy theories and probably the most widespread if recent polls are any indication.
These three cases clearly fit the definition of a conspiracy theory: "A conspiracy theory attempts to explain the ultimate cause of an event (usually a political, social, or historical event) as a secret, and often deceptive, plot by a covert alliance of powerful people or organizations rather than as an overt activity or as natural occurrence." yet, there is a reluctance to include them.
:Please read the "origins and development" section, which touches on this point, and clarifies the scope of this article.
The origins and development section says the article is limited to only conspiracy theories that claim the attacks were due to "a larger network of powerful figures were involved with close ties to the United States government". This is an arbitrary choice that leaves out the most widely held theories. "Nearly seven in 10 Americans believe it is likely that ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, says a poll out almost two years after the terrorists' strike against this country." ( source)
To insist on the broad definition of conspiracy is a rhetorical move that is sometimes made in the discussions.
This is not some "rhetorical move". The defnition I cited is directly from the conspiracy theories page linked to in the article itself. Isn't an article on 9/11 conspiracy theories obligated to include one that over 70% of Americans believed to be the case and that clearly meets the definition linked to? Isn't leaving this out a serious ommision?
The official theory [relating to Iraq] is not a "conspiracy theory" in the conventional/popular sense...(Note also that the official-sanctioned conspiracy is not really an alliance of "powerful" people.)
It is exactly a conspiracy theory in the popular/conventional sense. The only distinction is that senior individuals in the government are repeating it. Ironically this Iraq-theory was actually concocted by a 'a rogue network working within the official government agencies', the Offfice of Special Plans, and The Office of the Vice President. In other words, there was a conspiracy to generate and spread this particular conspiracy theory. I maintain that the origin of the theory is not relevant to whether or not it should be included.
The decisive difference is the idea of a rogue network working within the official government agencies.
Why does a 'Jews did 9/11' section qualify but a "Saddam did 9/11" section doesn't? In fact the section on Claims related to Jews and Israel doesn't include the idea of a "rogue network working within the official government agencies." and so doesnt't even meet your criterion. I also see nothing in this section about a "larger network of powerful figures were involved with close ties to the United States government" which is mentioned in the origins and development section. Both of these are important distinctions that you claim are criteria for inclusion which this section does not contain.
I think the idea of an "inside job" (i.e., the idea that people working inside the US government were involved) is essential to the focus of this article.
OK then. That's your opinion. You haven't justified it. That is not a basis to sculpt the entire article to conform to your thesis that 9/11 conspiracies must be about an inside job. And there is no reason to remove the section Claims related to Jews and Israel. There is also no sound reason to exclude conspiracy theories originated by government officials.
Okay. I've now carried out a proper split. Naturally, if the original split VfD results in deletion then all this may have to be undone. However, for now I suggest doing all detailed work on the WTC (including building 7) in the new article Controlled demolition hypothesis for the collapse of the World Trade Center.-- Thomas Basboll 12:46, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for all the new and good work on here. I think the intro is problematic in that it never openly refers to the actual pages which are directly connected to this page as far as content and relevance - the 9/11 researchers and 9/11 truth movement pages - while openly referring to 'conspiracy theories' and other reference pages. The 9/11 researchers and 9/11 truth movement pages are the 2 basic pages that should be openly linked in the intro paragraph to this page which details the WHAT that those pages are referring to. Currently they are linked stealthily under the same repeating phrase of 'conspiracy theory' - no one is going to check behind each 'ct' link to see if it's going to a different page, so that defeats the purpose of having them in there at all. Why do we need to disguise them? Are they getting too much traffic and need to be hidden? bov 15:29, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
As the article stands, the story about 4000 Jews not showing up for work is not presented as an element in the conspiracy theories but as an urban legend associated with them. Unless someone can find a major proponent of that idea among conspiracy theorists, I think we should split it off, and mention it somewhere in passing (under other points of interest for example or perhaps, as now, with an explanation about the uneasy relationship between 9/11 CTs and anti-semitism). It would then become an article like The Submarine (shark).-- Thomas Basboll 16:37, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
I know its a touchy issue, but to say that Bazant and Verdure are just a couple of a guys with a compelling theory is misleading. The paper is not really about that. It was cited for their assessment of the consensus among engineers. Since that statement would not have passed peer review if there was notable dissent among engineers, we can assume it represents the consensus. I am willing to discuss it, of course.-- Thomas Basboll 20:09, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
69.153.204.44 08:33, 22 October 2006 (UTC)== What Really Happened: Not reliable == What exactly about WRH is not reliable? Did you know that the WP:RS is just a guideline and not a hard and fast rule. If you can't be specific about what is unreliable about this site, I will have to put my information back in. Demosfoni 21:38, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
I think we need to figure out what we're trying to accomplish with that one or two paragraph section. Basically, we have to get the idea across that the collapses were initially quite a surprise, but that engineers have since found a way to explain it without demolition. The OBL reference is interesting here (I think even if it isn't authentic). CTers are not satisfied, and point to all the things that the consensus can't explain. (Cherepanov may be a good source for the list of unexplaineds, especially since he is NPOV vis-a-vis the demolition hypothesis: he's got his own "new principles" to promote, not a demolition theory.) Anyway, let's get the text over here, into the talk pages, and work it out.-- Thomas Basboll 21:59, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
Just wanted to warned I changed somethings, added reference to PM guys having seen secret photos of plane goingo to Pentagon, which can't be shown to anyone else. Also added Mineta witnessing to Cheney giving no response to incoming "object" against Pentagon. Also changed the extremely POV captions of the pictures of the pentagon, one of them identified one white blur with the tip of the plane (?!), the other misidentified as representing the state of the pentagon after the hit, when it represented after the wall collapsed due to earlier hit.Please see changes, thanks. Forgive me for my horrible english.... <:-\ 85.138.225.87 22:01, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
"Security camera image showing controversial white blur (far right) just before impact. Is this flight 77?" Do you have a reliable source that says it is controversial, or that says it is anything other than flight 77? Tom Harrison Talk 22:13, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
There was a claim about active debate in the engineering community. I took issue with the unsourced claim and removed it. Debate in the engineering community occurs in peer reviewed professional engineering journals. There are no references at all to peer reviewed scientific or engineering journals let alone enough articles to qualify it as active. In reality, NIST report with hundreds of engineers has essentially ruled out anything but the official account and the active debate is what codes and standards to change, if any, to better allow for survivability (human and structural) in future attacks. The quote from the MIT prof sums up the scientific method being used by the "theorists."-- Tbeatty 01:51, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
The recent editing conflict resulted in adding material the properly belongs elsewhere in the article. The interest in the demolition on the part CTers was already in there. The last sentence notes (uncontroversially) that engineers are not "on board" (to put it mildly) and that officials are sticking to their story. Maybe try thinking of improvements to lead in terms of changing individual words, not adding whole new claims. It's a nice tidy lead right now.-- Thomas Basboll 02:07, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
This article for all the changes still does not give a coherent explanation to the reader what the “official story” is. Somewhere in the lead should be something along these lines “In the immediate aftermath of the attacks The Bush administration explained that the attacks were carried out by members of Al Qaeda headed by Osama Bin Laden who hijacked four commercial airplanes by using box cutters. The organizations fundamentalist religious beliefs led them to hate Western values and culture. The administration had no advanced knowledge of the attacks. Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers hearing of the other attacks in cell phone conversations rebelled and brought the plane down becoming “the first solders in the War on Terror”. The towers were brought down (briefly explain NIST and pancake theory). Families of the victims not satisfied with this explanation demanded further investigation and after initial reluctance the administration agreed to further investigation. The bipartisan 9/11 commission was formed tasked with “not placing individual blame” but to explain what happened and making recommendations to prevent a recurrence of the attacks. In 2004 the commission released its report. It said that their were many prior warnings of varying detail the United States would be attacked by Al Qaeda. They were ignored due to lack of communication between various law enforcement personnel. The main reasons for this burocratic inertia and laws passed in the 1970’s designed to prevent abuses that resulted major scandals during that era. The report also faulted both the Clinton and Bush administrations with “failure of imagination”. The report found that although the passengers did revolt on Flight 93 the hijackers brought the plane down and that the hijackers used other weapons such as Mace besides box cutters to hijack the planes. The explanation laid out in the report have been accepted by most members of both major political parties, network, cable and print news media."
Also the basic explanation and motives section seem redundant. 69.114.117.103 05:56, 18 September 2006 (UTC) (Ed Kollin)
I'm going to rework the "less common theories" into a section that identifies the fringe variants of the 9/11 conspiracy theories, i.e., those that subscribe to deeply entrenched beliefs about Jews, Freemasons, or (as the recent addition notes) even reptiles. This section will proceed from Time Magazine's assessment that the movement is now so big as to be part of "mainstream political reality"; like other mainstream movements (neoconservatism and environmentalism, for example) it turns out to have the support of people with some very marginal views. I think this is also a way of dealing with the 4000 Jews story.-- Thomas Basboll 12:26, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
WTC 7 belongs in Controlled-Demolition Theory article (or section if it gets deleted) and Bush's alledged "slip of tongue" wasn't even about the 9/11 attacks.-- Sloane 14:52, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
I am not comfortable with the Building 7 information being removed from the 9/11 conspiracy theory main page. The statements of Larry Silverstein and the spontaneous collapse of the building is one of the pillars of the argument that the destruction of the World Trade Center was accomplished by individuals from outside of the Al Qaeda hijackers. I can only assume that people that want to move this section into the "controlled demolition" sub-page are trying to hide this information. We could perhaps divide up the section between the "9/11 conspiracy" and "controlled demolition" sections but I feel quite strongly about giving the Collapse of Building 7 its own subsection on this page.
I mean we have left in a discussion about Jewish conspiracy?? But we have removed the owner of the WTC complex's own remarks about "pulling the building". This does not make sense. I believe it is a form of censure. -- Demosfoni 14:59, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
-- Chrisp7 00:58, 26 September 2006 (GMT)
Whoever reorganized this article has sapped the essential points and left only the dross. I believe it would be better to include the main points of why people believe that 9/11 was cause by actors outside of Al Qaeda and to put more detailed discussion into the sub-pages. This is the current structure:
I believe it can be reorganized into:
I would like to take a poll of fellow editors. Who would like to make changes to the structure of this Wiki page so that has the format that I proposed (with minor modifications of course)? Please include your ~~~~ signature under one of the following headings:
SalvNaut
20:16, 19 September 2006 (UTC) : Instead of voting I propose less controversial reorganization. The one Demosfoni brought would need everything to be rewritten and I didn't like the section "Reasons to doubt the Official story" as it is POV and the whole article deals with those reasons somehow.
Sections 4 - 8 would be in a chronological order, and TOC would look much better, imho. What do you think?
No, this article is already pushing the 9/11 deniers agenda. Your structure would be even more POV.-- Sloane 16:09, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
I think everyone can agree that the article is too long and many would agree that it is rambling in some places. This is not the place for an essay. The first three sections especially need trimming. -- 71.134.157.73 18:13, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
I more or less agree with Sloane, though I admit that I have a very solid opinion about the whole thing. We had a very popular CT about Yitzhak Rabin's murder in Israel which now almost everybody thinks is a total BS. As a physicist, I also think many "scientific" claims of the CT are very unscientific. Therefore when you say some aspects of the CT are "central" while other are "marginal", I admit I just can't tell the difference, they all look the same to me. Basically that's why I don't see why a reorganization is needed. Dan Gluck 19:47, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
>>"Therefore when you say some aspects of the CT are "central" while other are "marginal", I admit I just can't tell the difference, they all look the same to me."
I think Demosfino's point above is very correct. Removing all that material about the WTC looks odd, while leaving these two sections in. First, they are not part of conspiracy theories in the sense that this article deals with them. The Saudi connection, for example, is a suggestion that there's a link back to the "official terrorist". Michael Moore is not a 9/11 conspiracy theorist. The 4000 jews rumor is a rumor and has been put to rest. It has no currency, and none of the sources grant it any as far as I can tell. The section tells the story of a dead rumor. So I'm removing these. In their place, to give Tom a place to source his claims about the "intrinsically" anti-semitic aspects of 9/11 CTs, I will put a section about how 9/11 CT are sometimes accused of anti-semitic motives.-- Thomas Basboll 20:59, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
Also removed the stuff about Sharon and Mossad. None of this suggests a conspiracy (especially the last claim since they according to the story they tried to warn the US: that's not even LIHOP.) This is all mainstream incompetence theory. That somebody knew the attacks were coming is now much more broadly accepted than the CTs.-- Thomas Basboll 21:07, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
I would suggest briefly mentioning the "4000 jews" claim and how it is a result of a misunderstanding. The claim is mentioned in all kinds of conspiracy sites, it would be informative to explain it's bunk. A sentence or two in "less common theories" perhaps: A rumor circulated that 4000 Jewish employees were absent from the WTC on 9/11. The rumor was likely a mistranslation of a newspaper story which stated 4000 Israelis were in New York on that day. The percentage of Jewish victims in the WTC attacks correlates with the percentage of Jewish residents in New York. Weregerbil 13:46, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
The next thing I want to do is trim the claims that the hijackers are still alive. This has also been largely debunked. The section basically walks us through the mistaken identities involved and leaves us no wiser than the CTists themselves. It could probably be done in a couple of sentences. But what could be added is the central idea that they were "patsies" (a central CT notion, familiar from JFK). Here the claims that Atta was not a devout Muslim and Hanjour was a terrible pilot might usefully be added. In short, a section about the range of CT views on the hijackers would be interesting.-- Thomas Basboll 21:32, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
Basically I think the revisions presented the material much ia a more readable manner. I did notice the differences between the early official account and the 9/11 report findings were deemphasized. If I am not mistaken the theories that other items besides box cutters were used in the attacks and that Flight 93 was brought down by the hijackers reacting to the passenger revolt instead of the passengers themselves were results of the 9/11 commission report. The article implies that early government theory was the same in that regard.
I am going to change “immediate aftermath” to the "years immediately following the attacks" because according to this article the NIST findings were presented three years after the attacks 69.114.117.103 15:10, 20 September 2006 (UTC) (Ed Kollin)
I'm adding a section for clarity on the Pentagon. There is a reason the Pentagon is hugely divisive and the current form says nothing about it.
Locewtus 19:25, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
The very end of the "Pentagon" section uses to this conspiracy page as a reference: [7]. On that conspiracy page the first eyewitness account refers to this Washington Post article. Somehow the conspiracy theorists have managed to pick random quotes that talk about explosions — while the Washington Post article has other eyewitnesses talking how they clearly saw a plane:
Etc etc. And that's only the first article quoting eyewitnesses. In each case the author of the conspiracy page manages to ignore eyewitness accounts that say they saw a plane, they saw a commuter jet, they saw the American Airlines logos on the plane, they saw passengers through the windows of the plane.
Since the conspiracy page appears to be purposefully, systematically, obviously dishonest I'll remove it as a reference.
Weregerbil
10:20, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
I've noticed that the last couple of sentences of the lead are continuously in dispute, especially in regards to what to say about the "engineering community". Demosfoni and I discussed this above, and I thought the results were pretty clear. (I'm still waiting to hear his take.) I have been citing Bazant and Verdure's published view that the official (NIST) account is "generally accepted by the community of specialists in structural mechanics and structural engineering (though not by a few outsiders claiming a conspiracy with planted explosives)". This does two things. First, it establishes the engineering consensus (since it passed peer-review, I have been arguing, a claim about what is "generally accepted" can be taken as representing consensus); second, it acknowledges the dissent, identifies it as part of a conspiracy theory, and characterises it in controlled demolition terms (planted explosives). Demosfoni then countered by citing an engineer named Cherepanov (Cherepanov, G.P. (2006). September 11 and Fracture Mechanics. International Journal of Fracture, Vol 132(2) [8].) Cherepanov certainly disagrees with NIST, and Bazant has even dignified his ideas by responding to them at a conference. Demosfoni, however, misunderstands the issue as a matter of finding articles in favor of natural complete collapse and articles against. (I.e., he counts Bazant and Verdure as pro-NIST and Cherepanov as anti-NIST and concludes that there is no consensus.) To this my response was to quote from Cherepanov (the NIST-dissenter). His abstract begins: "The generally-accepted explanation of the collapse of the World Trade Center towers on September 11, 2001 is based on the speculative 'theory' of progressive buckling of bearing columns at the speed..." In his introduction he says that "the engineering community has, without any hesitation, recognized the [official] 'theory' as correct and comprehensive." That is, even the dissenting view begins by identifying the consensus on the subject. On this basis, I don't think there can be any doubt about what the received view is in the engineering community, nor what structural engineers in general think about collapses.-- Thomas Basboll 23:02, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
Can anyone name one structural engineering expert or one paper published in a reputable structural engineering journal that supports the controlled demolition hypothesis?-- Sloane 00:27, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
I've restated the engineering consensus (based on the discussion here) in the WTC section and moved the sources there to keep the lead tidy. Locewtus, I've never heard of anyone using polling data to determine what the scientific consensus is. In this case, two papers, which disagree about the NIST report's findings, and both of which mention (but do not support) the CD hypothesis, both note an overwhelming agreement among engineers about the collapses. (Cherepanov even complains that it has led to the rejection of his papers under peer-review.) With the exception of Cherepanov, there is only mild criticism about some of the report's details, none of which even entertains controlled demolition. It is completely safe to say that the engineering community rejects controlled demolition as an explanation for the collapse of the World Trade Center -- this is one of the things CTists compain about.-- Thomas Basboll 08:51, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
>>"Nothing was "carted away", the people responsible for the investigation have testified that they had access to all the evidence they wanted."
The WTC section needs to sketch the hypothesis that the WTC was brought down by controlled demolition. It needs to link primarily to the separate article on that hypothesis, and secondarily to the article on the collapses themselves. It should not provide any detail in re NIST's collapse mechanism, but needs to efficiently note that it, and the engineering community, acknowledges that CD hypothesis exists and rejects it. The reader of this section is not trying to understand how to the WTC collapsed but how conspiracy theorists think collapsed. IMHO, we are wasting the readers' time in an attempt to protect them from thinking that the buildings may have been demolished.-- Thomas Basboll 15:05, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
I have restored the section with a prefatory sentence that puts these stories into what I belive are a relevant context. If you believe that the section is mis-titled, it would be more appropriate to re-title it than to delete it wholesale. Ribonucleic 20:35, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm not comfortable with the changes you've made to this section. Starting with the title, I don't believe that conspiracy theorists are of the mind that this was a "bad investigation" in the implied sense of mere incompetence. [Not that the administration has shown any lack of that.] I believe they think it was an active attempt at cover-up. You may disagree with them - but this article is about their opinions, not yours. Similarly, the substitution of article titles for the admittedly more provocative statements made in those articles - in addition to being something I've never seen in the body of any other Wikipedia article - blunts the meaning in what seems to me a totally unproductive way. Rather than reverting on an empty stomach, I'll go to lunch now and look for your reply when I get back. :-) Ribonucleic 21:03, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
The article specifically questions whether the Pentagon was hit by an airplane. [And FWIW, I can't make out a jet in that picture.] So I think the caption must be changed to reflect NPOV. Ribonucleic 22:18, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
comment: of course you cannot make out wether there is an airplane based on this footage, these frames and other footage of the attacks are deliberately hold back for public inquiry, so that the media and public discussion will foces on these - all in all, giving the whole body of facts, showing and proving complicity of the US government - unimportant details. Wether the object that hit the pentagon was an airplane or missile or anything else, is of no importance for the established facts of complicity of the US govt. -- see my remarks below in PROPOSAL... That discussion (about wether/not a plane or something else hit the Pentagon) is going astray and thus will prevent the media and public to become aware of more important details and very well established facts which proof complicity of the US govt. -- the footage of other security cams and other cams which have filmed the plane or missile hitting the Pentagon, can be brought out to the public at any moment, when necessary to "proof" that the US govt. was not involved in these attacks... Since - to my opinion and knowledge of factual evidence concerning the Pentagon attack - there is little evidence for the "no-plane hit the Pentagon" theory, and substantial and well-estblished evidence (eye-witness reports, lightpoles being torn out the ground, matching the wingspan of a Boeing 757, parts of the Boeing 757 found inside/outside the impact zone, etc) that a Boeing 757/Boeing 757 sized airplane hit the Pentagon. 82.93.140.232 03:16, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
Just for the record: I take no position on what damaged the Pentagon. But this photograph does not clearly show an airplane - let alone a specific flight. In the context of this article, to say otherwise is grossly POV. Ribonucleic 05:35, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
According to my research and investigations, the subject of "9/11 conspiracy"-theories, should be covering all factual conspiracy theories, including the "official" theory, and they can be generally be divided into THREE categories, as outlined below.
Both for the "let it happen on purpose" AND the "make it happen on purpose" theory, it is also woth mentioning the following claims:
CONCLUSION:
As a concludion, my proposal is to mention all theories, which are part of these 3 categories of "complot" theories, and treat them on the same level. The current treatment is that of "official story" <-> "complot theory", which is a prejudiced treatment. ANY theory that explain how and why 11 sept. attacks were carried out - wether or not they follow the official story - is a complot theory. A better treatment is to treat the distinction between theories as "non complicity" <-> "complicity" theories, which is far less biased and prejudiced. "complicity" theories can be further categorized in orders of complicty, as proposed here and supported by many.
Noteworthy also is that any of the more outrageous and speculative theories - WHICH OCCUR IN ALL 3 COMPLOT THEORIES! - such as the "Tora Bora military bunkers", the "Iraqi weapons of mass destruction", and also the "WTC brought down with explosives" and "No plane/boeing 757 hit the Pentagon" theories, can then be treated at the same level. Some people believe these outrageous stories (like many govt. have been tricked into believing the "Iraqi WMD" fairy tales!!) - which some call plain lies! - while others base their opinion on established evidence and proof.
Important to state is that even when we cut down the theories by sorting out all the speculative parts of the theories, we still keep the original three complot theories, although it is almost clear and certain, that the base for the official complot theory is so thin, that it is almost completely gone and evaporated into thin air, as most of the accompaning "evidences" have been proven wrong.
For the other complot theories, even when there are many speculative theories surrounding them (either deliberate disinformation to dismantle the theory and make it possible to ridicule them) it is noteworthy that the crucial claims are still standing when eliminating ALL speculations or non-proven claims (even the "controlled demolition" of WTC 7 is part of that, no matter how suspicious this event is, and how poor the official explenation, there is no real and/or direct evidence - f.i. demolition experts who claim after seeing WTC 7 collapse that is IS a controlled demoltion, is not direct PROOF of controlled demolition - beyond reasonable doubt that WTC 7 was brought down with explosives... Which doesn't say that it could be that it was the case, but that such is unproven, and probably unprovable given the fact that the remains of WTC 7 were never researched for finding out why it felt down in such a remarkable fashion - although it of course SHOULD have been researched for finding out how it collapsed, not just for structural engineering knowledge and make buildings safer, but because BY LAW it should have been researched as it was part of a crime scene).
META THEORY ABOUT 9/11 SPECULATIONS ('conspiracy theories'):
Please also note that for the occurence of all these speculative theories, on the side of either complot theory 2 and 3 ("let it/make it happen on purpose"), is that these extensive rumours were merely signs of very broad discomfort and signs of distrust amongst the public audience, which emerged significant time AFTER 9/11, and occured after: a. The US govt. - which initially claimed they would do an extensive and full research on 9/11 - did not keep these promises, but contrarily acted in a way to frustrate a full investigation b. The acts of the US govt. after and on the basis of these attacks, the "proof of guilt" of al-Qeada / O. Bin Laden and of the "WMD of Iraq" were based on such thin intelligence reports, that most people treat them as government lies, since in reality there were no Tora Bora military bases and no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And even the proof of guilt for al-Qeada and Osama Bin Laden is good as absent. The only "proof" are some video and audio tapes. c. The government laws such as Patriot act 1 & 2 and Homeland security, which pose a danger to freedom and leads the US state into a form of police state, if not right out a fascists/corporate state, and this line of stateform is seen in other western countries too.
All these events and the proofs that were later established that the people and world opinion had been lied to, have raised serious doubts about ALL the claims origanally made by the US govt. as how, why and who performed these attacks and has to be accounted responsible for these attacks.
Since all these statements made around 9/11 events, are part of war-propaganda (for the sole reason that the US govt. treated the 9/11 attacks of acts of warfare, and not just a criminal - large scale - terrorist attack), it is not surprising that both groups use lies. The speculative and unproven theories, such as "WTC brought down with controlled demolition" and "No plane/Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon" merely reflect to and counter the lies, prior to them, about "Tora Bora military bunkers/facilities" and "Iraqi weapons of mass-destruction".
That also means: it is particulary non-sensical to treat those speculative theories in an isolated manner, without mentioning the framework and context in which they occur and for what reason they occur and reflect to, that these speculations just and simply directly oppose the speculations (lies) that the US. govt. brought forward as part of warfare propaganda.
Media and governments which debate about these issues, which treat those speculative claims apart from that context, and forget that they refer to and counter the lies of the other side, the US govt., are in this respect suspicious, as for most part, they try to dismantle the theories or at least try to ridicule the well-established facts and well-proven facts that indicate / proof government complicity. That is: in so far these media and governments do no also - in a balanced way - have discovered and exposed the US. govt. lies.
FINAL REMARK
In so far I have to comment on that - my personal opinion and in sofar I know all the facts about how and why 9/11 attacks occured - I have reason to assume that at least complot theory 1 (the official story) is not to be trusted and is based on very thin (only audio/video tapes, which are highly disputed and distrusted and claimed to be non-authentic by many researchers and scientists) "evidence", and the huge mountain of evidence leading to other conclusions, are far more likely, and which concludes that at least complot theory (let-it-happen-on-purpose) must be assumed, if not more. Good evidence and indications direct to complot theory 3 (make it happen on purpose), but parts of the evidence is missing there, for the sole reason that the evidence that leads in that direction (the money-transfer made by general Mahmoud Ahmad to Mohammed Atta / the visit of Mahmoud Ahmad with govt. officials) is not further explored (on purpose), and by now, it can be assumed, such evidence has already been destroyed. We can assume however on many factual evidence, that US govt. is in fact more directly involved (based also on patterns of behaviour in many other cases), but that that truth is deliberately withdrawn from public inquiry. The suspicious behaviour of the US. govt shows indirect proof of such high complicity and high treason against the american people and other nations/people.
82.93.140.232
03:16, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
82.93.140.232 raises several important questions which relate to the purpose of the article and how it should be organized which need to be addressed.
1. What is this article about?
2. How do you decide what is a conspiracy theory and what isn't?
3. Which theories should be included and excluded?
4. Can a conspiracy theory be true?
I would suggest that the article cannot be an exhaustive summary of the entire set of views and all of the evidence related to the 9/11 attacks. It just isn’t feasible. It’s better to link to separate explanatory articles and leave this one as a broad outline rather than overload this page. This also solves the problem of how much supporting and contradictory evidence to include.
Hyperlinks are your friend. The longer and more complex an individual article is, the more difficult it is to achieve consensus. KISS. -- 71.129.41.101 10:44, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
If you want to mention that it was proposed during the Kennedy administration by way of adding Cold War context, I have no objection. But to say "However" crosses the line into POV, in my opinion. And your statement that "the plan was rejected" does not even say by whom, let alone provide a source. I respectfully ask that you not add it back without addressing both those concerns. Ribonucleic 03:27, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
Sloane, in the spirit of compromise, I am willing to agree to even an undocumented report that Kennedy rejected Northwoods - provided that you are able to furnish a source. [As you may already know, the Wikidpedia article on Northwoods can not be used as a source for another Wikipedia article.] For example: "In Arthur Schlesinger Jr's account of the Kennedy administration A Thousand Days, the author claims that Kennedy rejected the Northwoods plan." - followed by the proper bibliographic citation of the Schelsinger book, of course. If you are unable to provide such a source, your "was rejected" claim would be the OR that you were concerned about earlier. Ribonucleic 15:41, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
The AfD on the split has been completed and has been upheld.
That is, the article that was originally split has been deleted, but the second attempt at the split has been upheld. This means that we can move more of the details of the CD hypothesis over in the CD article if we want.-- Thomas Basboll 11:14, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm removing the Jimmy Walters hypothesis again. He is quoted for saying that explosives were planted "on every floor". Walters, however, is not a notable theorist in the CT community but a (quite notable) supporter of the movement. His opinion here is both ill informed and reported by a plainly hostile source (who calls Walters ideas "bullshit" and belives that "f-- you" when yelled very loudly - as a voice over it would appear - constitutes critique). It can certainly not be used to represent the controlled demolition hypothesis. If you want it in, Sloane, you are going to have to find some sources, either among CTers or in objective reporting, that situate Walter as an opinion leader on the WTC demolition in the 9/11 community.-- Thomas Basboll 19:12, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
Hey. Did anyone ever bother to consider that when one says the "engineering community" one is referring to a group of engineers. You could say "a pod of engineers", "a gaggle of engineers", etc. This community however does not have bylaws. They do not live in one geographical location. They do not all know eachother. They do not have time to read each other's technical publications. The idea of an "engineering community" agreeing about anything is ridiculous. All we have is peer-review which as I showed above is not perfect and can let erroneous charlatans proposing things like "cold fusion", "prayer aiding medical recovery", etc. Anyway, I have found ONE ENGINEER who disagrees with the engineering community. Now, if you are all reasonable people (one can assume anything). This should be reason enough to remove the outlandish claim that "the engineering community does not support demolition" of the buildings. Here is the evidence: [ Charles Pegelow]. So since there is not unanimous agreement among the engineers, to be technically accurate you need to change "the structural engineering community" to "most of the structural engineering community". I assume that we are all reasonable people and this correction will not meet with unreasonable resistance by a certain few. -- 71.232.14.77 01:07, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
I've removed a non-sequitur note quoting FEMA report, which noted that "...the development of the fires was not significantly impeded by the firefighters because manual firefighting efforts were stopped fairly early in the day." This has no relation to the rest of the section, except as an insinuation that there must not have been any firefighters in or near the building at all if they didn't fight the fires. The reasoning seems to go:
But when did Silverstein suggest that they "pull it"? I haven't seen anything indicating just when it was, but I'd bet it was around the time that "the firefighters made the decision fairly early on not to fight the fires". They observed early on that the fires were practically insurmountable, so they decided, like Silverstein said, that it wasn't worth losing more lives trying to stop an unstoppable fire in a 40-story building. Especially when there's more important things for the firefighters to do, like rescuing people trapped in the rubble from the two tallest buildings in the world.
In addition, the FEMA report cannot be used to imply that there were never any firefighters inside WTC 7, as it notes that there were. (Page 20: "According to the account of a firefighter who walked the 9th floor...") It appears that they went inside the building, assessed the damage, realized that they wouldn't be able to stop the fires, and decided to pull out. Later that day they watched it collapse. -- Mr. Billion 07:27, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
Everyone's been doing such a good job of verifying the facts, that the theories are sometimes not represented. I think we need to cite sources that emphasize the facts in this article to the end substantiating a conspiracy theory. (I am talking about the source's aims not this article's, of course.) On my reading of the field, the strongest accounts are Griffin, Tarpley, Ruppert and Ahmed. While Thompson is a great source for facts (actually: he's so good at sourcing we don't even need to quote him) he doesn't really offer a conspiracy theory (some might argue he offers a conspiracy allusion or something on that order.) An example of a source I think works really well in the article right now is Ruppert's critical assessment of the WTC demolition hypothesis. It really gives us a sense of the importance of this element but also the problems with it. But I'm going to add Tarpley as well because he calls Building Seven the "reductio ad absurdum" of the whole operation, which is what many CTists believe as far as I tell.-- Thomas Basboll 20:44, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
A Pentagon report released Friday said the able danger unit had no actionable intelligence related to 9/11 or knowledge of Atta. I put the story and reactions by Weldon and Kean below the original Able Danger entry 69.114.117.103 07:06, 24 September 2006 (UTC) (Ed Kollin)
I shudder to even try and edit this page for I am sure there is fierce loyalty on both sides. But I read it today, and noticed it said that Ben Chertoff and Michael Chertoff are related. I read recently that Ben Chertoff denies the relationship. I edited the entry to say the relationship is alleged, and included Ben Chertoff's denials. I cited the U.S. News World Report article for the denial. I left intact the footnote alleging the connection, which goes to a 'Conspiracy Theorist' webpage, which I personally find dubious, but I suspended judgement and included it for the sake of neutrality, and to verify that there are people out there that allege the connection. 25 SEP 2006, mitchsensei (whoops forgot to sign the first time I edited)
It might be necessary to include the deducted motives for people creating the conspiracies in the first place. The first thing a lot of people who disagree with the conspiracies think is "why on earth would they think this?", and often endeavour to look deeper than the proposed motives for a 9/11 government conspiracy and at the psychology of conspiracy theorists themselves, before they consider evidence for and against it.
The section should be split into two. The first under "Other Points of interest" should have the Carlyle meeting on 9/11.Marvin Bush as CEO of company that ran security. The second section should be "Public Officials suggesting conspiracy theories" and that would list remarks by the Iranian and Venezuelan presidents,Jesse Ventura,Cynthia McKinney 69.114.117.103 06:20, 28 September 2006 (UTC) (Ed Kollin)
I have made several correction due to, frankly, fraudulent misrepresentations of underlying sources.-- Cberlet 01:44, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
As I understand it, the CT argument assumes that Building 7 "collpsed as a result of fire" and is the only building (of its kind) in history to do so. Mongo recently deleted this idea. There are two issues to deal with in this regard. The first is factual: the claim that the structure, however damaged it may have been from the collapses of the two towers, did eventually itself collapse "from fire". Since the damaged structure stood for about seven hours, its sudden collapse must have been initiated by something happening inside the building, like fires weakening the steel. Importantly, this seems to be the official opinion as well. Gene Corley of the ASCE said to the House Science Committe (in May, 2002) that, "Building 7, which was across the street from the main towers, also collapsed and provided us with the first example that we recognized of a building collapsing as a result of fire." [11] But the second issue is is that the article isn't about the facts but about specific claims and theories. CTs certainly claim that Building 7, because it was not hit by an airplane, and did not collapse along with the two towers, provides a clear case of a building collapsing from fire (unlike anything seen in history). I got the Corley quote from Chapter 6 of Tarpley's book. And NIST's preliminary results don't suggest that the official story is changing here. We are dealing with a damaged but stable structure that suddenly collapses "from fire".-- Thomas Basboll 20:51, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
You and the debunking site may be convinced that, given the exceptional nature of the "overall event" of 9/11, the collapse of the buildings was unsuprising. Bazant and Verdure, who are recognized authorities on the matter, disagree with you. They say 'The destruction of the World Trade Center (WTC) on 9/11/01 was not only the biggest mass murder in the U.S. history but also a big surprise for the structural engineering profession, perhaps the biggest since the collapse of Tacoma Bridge in 1940. No experienced structural engineer watching the attack expected the WTC towers to collapse. No skyscraper has ever before collapsed due to firre. The fact that the WTC towers did, beckons deep examination.' CTs are not just published on websites--they are described in books published by a variety of independent publishing houses. In this case the better sources say that the buildings collapsed due to fire and that this was not to be expected from an engineering point of view. It is reasonable to assume that what they mean is that, since airplanes and debris were not enough, the remaining structures were doing just fine--no intervening earthquakes or hurricanes to speak of--until the enormous heat of the fires undermined them. That fire was able initiate collapse in a structure that had successfully redistributed the loads after local structural damage, was a surprise to engineers. Today they understand it much better.-- Thomas Basboll 11:48, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
Let's get back on topic. The core of the disagreement is whether CTers are right to point out that the WTC collapses are unique events in engineering history. That is, whether they are surprising. The question is whether it was a surprise attack merely -- we did not expect the buildings to collapse but only because we did not expect them to be attacked with airplanes -- or whether, even given the attacks, the collapses were in need of explanation. CTers and NIST and mainstream engineering agree that an explanation was needed -- that is, they did not say, "Oh, obviously, planes and fires!". They said, "Planes and fires were able to do THAT?" And, seeing the damage to the south side of 7WTC they did not say, "Oh yeah, it's a gonner." Corley said it was peculiar because it constituted a case of building being brought down by fire. Engineers have now come to understand what originally surprised them. CTers and NIST do not agree about the explanation that has been given.-- Thomas Basboll 14:06, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
Can we now include the words "Building 7 collapsed due to fire" in this article?-- Thomas Basboll 15:56, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
Until NIST released their working hypothesis, which is to say, during the time when most of the CTs were being developed, "fire-induced collapse" was the official line. NIST seems to be rethinking this, but if that's the case then it actually confirms what CTists have been saying since the FEMA report (which also says it), namely, that fire (the only official hypothesis) "has a low probability of occurence". NIST has now released this new hypothesis, emphasising that it is far from the last word, and using the odd formula "fire and/or debris". Not only can this be read as "debris alone may have done it" (which can't be what they mean), it suggests that the collapses were "initiated" by something that happened 7 hours earlier. I have no idea what they want to say by that. Obviously, the really interesting new angle being pursued by NIST is the investigation of "hypothetical blast events". At least in an article about conspiracy theories suggesting demolition.-- Thomas Basboll 06:45, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
Actually, it collapsed from gravity. NIST simply hasn't put any resources in this sideshow and that doesn't suggest anything except that they haven't put any resources into it. As I understand it, they are doing so now but, as NIST says, there is simply no evidence that it collapsed from anything other than as a result of terrorists flying airplanes into buildings. -- Tbeatty 06:52, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
And to get to the surprise of structural engineers, the surprise was the amount of damage caused by the planes. The presence of fireproofing materials on the main structural elemtent says that fire was a concern for steel structures. Skyscrapers were obviously not designed to withstand both the structural damage and the post-crash fire. The debate in the engineering community is whether there needs to be changes to code to withstand this kind of damage and fire and whether more robust fire suppression methods need to be employed. But the "surprise" that the building collapsed is over the amount of damage, not the collapse itself. Protecting structural elements with fire retardent materials is testimony to the danger of collapse from fire. -- Tbeatty 07:01, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
Just to be clear: I don't think this is about advancing either position. It is about informing the reader about what the substance of the disagreement is. On my view, CTists don't believe that the fires could have done what the official and/or mainstream investigators say they did, namely, "induce" the collapse. I.e., bring the buildings from their impact/debris weakened states to the point of collapse and onward to total progressive collapse. I am not denying that the buildings were damaged by the airplane impacts and debris. I am saying (and suggesting that officialdom is on my side) that they survived being damaged in this way and were then, as the only three buildings in history to experience it, were finished off by fire.-- Thomas Basboll 07:37, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs_8_2006.htm Now, do you understand Basboll and Salvnaut? -- Sloane 04:31, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
I dispute the truth of the lead sentence "No structural engineers have come forward to support the controlled demolition hypothesis". The Organisation "Scholoar For Truth 911" has four members who are structural engineers: Joseph M. Phelps, Doyle Winterton, Michael Lovingier, Ted Muga. Phelps is a Chartered member of the "Structural Engineering Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers" and "Structural Dynamicist Charter". Even that paragon of bias "Screw Loose Change" accepts this [26], although they oddly try to use his age and experience to discredit him. Mongo disagrees, declaring it to be 'baloney'. I've been around Wikipedia long enough to understand that Mongo's word is law, so I won't argue further. However, I do humbly lodge my powerless misgivings here. Self-Described Seabhcán 13:35, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
Are any of those engineers experts in their field? Have they written a published/peer reviewed paper that contests the collapse? Do they hold any academic position?-- Sloane 16:19, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
A closer look at the names mentioned:
-- Sloane 17:03, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
I've put in what I hope becomes the standard "structural engineers generally reject" formula.-- Thomas Basboll 18:19, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
A big stretch...to say that a handful of "engineers" (none of which have published a paper in a scientific journal regarding CD of the WTC)....are "experts" on the matter based on their opinions is a big stretch. Yes, for all purposes, no engineers support the CD version of events...becuase not one treatise has been published by a relaibale third party. It's that simple.-- MONGO 21:03, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
I think we are back again to the discussion whether Jones paper has been peer reviewed or not (it has been for sure, some question the quality of peer review, saying no engineer has reviewed but it is a physical paper). I don't want to discuss it now, but Tbeatty, what exactly you don't like so much in ""No structural engineers who are experts in building collapse have published reviewed papers that contest the NIST collapse theory" ? It describes precisely a situation, wile putting "No one has..." is just not true... SalvNaut 19:13, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
A just released poll has these results "Do you think that George W. Bush personally knew before September 11th 2001 about intellegence reports that warned of possible terrorist attacks against the United States using airplanes, or not?" Personally knew 57% Did not know 33% DK/NA 11% this compares to a May 2002 CBS poll which showed knew 41% Did not know 43$ DK/NA 16% [34] The question is on page 30 of the linked PDF 69.114.117.103 08:26, 11 October 2006 (UTC) (Ed Kollin)
Just did an episode on 9/11 conspiracy theories. This is very relevant. How do we work it in?-- Tbeatty 05:14, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
The government is behing the 9/11 Conspiracy Websites so that it looks like they are all powerful.
Later, in Chicago, the boys find another group, who, with the Hardly boys, reveal that all the conspiracy websites are fake, and run by the government---and then Bush comes, and it becomes evident that the government wasn't behind 9/11---they actually run the websites, so that the 1/4 of the country who are dumb enough to believe conspiracies will believe the government is all-powerful---which the government wants them to believe---while the smart ones know the truth, which is that "a bunch of pissed off Muslims" actually did do it. And an even bigger secret then comes out---Stan was the one who pooped in the urinal ("the stalls were all full and I didn't want to be late for recess! I didn't think it'd turn into such a big deal!") Thus at the end, the terrorists were behind 9/11, though the government wanted some people to believe otherwise for their own power; and Stan had to clean the urinal he pooped in.
-- Tbeatty 05:34, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
This article is not a graduate course in logic. The fact that half of the space in that section is taken up trying to explain affirming the consequent means that it really does not belong there. Just say this is how the president and secret service acted. Cite people who claim that this shows foreknowledge leave in the cites for the rebuttals (he was trying to prevent panic) and leave it at that.
The section mentions how Farenheit 9/11 made the reading “My Pet Goat” that seem famous. While true enough in the film a British General is quoted as saying that he has seen that look many times meaning Moore was explaining the behavior as shell shock or combat stress not foreknowledge. 69.114.117.103 17:58, 12 October 2006 (UTC) (Ed Kollin)
These topics were mainly mentioned in the 2001-2004 period. To my dismay dispite the fact that these topics cause me more sleepless nights then any other topics mentioned in the article these topics are rarely mentioned in websites and discussion of 9/11 conspiracy theories these days. We have to decide if theories that are not mentioned much currently belong in the article. If we decide that LIHOP in general really does not belong. If we do decide that this is article worthy then this should have a section of it’s own. 69.114.117.103 17:58, 12 October 2006 (UTC) (Ed Kollin)
Rep Welden as most of you know has accused the agency of having a secret unit Able-Danger that named Mohammed Atta and three other hijackers a year before the attacks a charge that was recently denied in a Pentagon Inspector Generals report is facing an investigation by the agency into charges that he used his influence to secure lobbying and consulting contracts for his daughter [35]. 69.114.117.103 10:45, 16 October 2006 (UTC) (Ed Kollin)
Who added the mainstream account to this article? If there is an issue about the length of this, why is MORE mainstream description added when there is a huge article devoted to this already as the September 11, 2001 attacks? I think it should be removed and replaced by a link. bov 19:18, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
I have restored the United Airlines Flight 93 section at 9/11 conspiracy theories#United Airlines Flight 93. It was deleted when this page was supposedly being split into subpages. I have given it a bit of a clean up, but many of the references need names and it needs the general scrutiny the rest of this article has gotten. — Reinyday, 19:03, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
as israel conspiracy has become very popular, why don't we create a new main page related to it (rather than a page section)? Nielswik (talk) 23:04, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
Someone should add, under the Israel section, a section about the Mossad agents who were caught filming the towers before the planes hit, and celebrating when the planes hit and the towers collapsed. http://ww1.sundayherald.com/37707
I know, I know. I should do it myself. Maybe I will.
CelestialDog 06:16, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
Do we really need to mention the GNAA?-- Sloane 19:58, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
in the criticism section, the comments of michael shermer are repeated, as i dont have too much experience with the history of the article, i just figured i would mention it and someone can take a closer look at it KarlJohannes 14:04, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
It seems bizarre to have to read the text of September 11, 2001 attacks all over again laboriously at the start of this page, even though the whole point of this article is supposedly to refute many of the claims in those paragraphs. For example in the second paragraph it says, "they piloted these planes themselves," but many 9/11 researchers believe that the planes may have operated on autopilot or some other means. Why repeat the entire official version at the start of this article? For example, the article Holocaust denial does not need to restate the whole holocaust in parapgraph 2 of that article -- it's common knowledge, the same as what happened on 9/11, so why the overbearing repeat of the official version here, yet barely 2 sentences of the questioning of the official version on the September 11, 2001 attacks page? bov 05:50, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
When I first saw this video clip on YouTube, it just creeped me out. Watch the last 30 sec, you'll see what I mean. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1V7yqCbfxEg aido2002 09:03, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
If the article is correctly comprehensive without degenerating into too much fluff, then don't worry about reducing the length to arbitrary limits. Byzantine Empire is 120 kb and a recent Indian FA was passed at 100 kb despite several standing objections to its length. Let the topic define the length. I'm not endorsing winding passages, but I've seen too many forced reductions and splits going on. -- Zeality 17:03, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0v0_HDwg84&mode=related&search
this may or may not deserve a mention in the article. He's probably just going crazy :P 216.52.163.1 19:32, 1 November 2006 (UTC)LUID
This claim has small tidbits of fact but is essentially false. <-- Is this vandalism? It looks like the next sentence is in reference to the one that this interrupts. A number of conspiracy claims in this article are shown by evidence in the article to lack validity. However, this particular sub-section introduces little countering evidence, other than the suggestion that, if we take the accused at their word, the group of men were not celebrating as the WTC burned. Instead, this "misreporting" was exaggerated due to personal differences with a certain eyewitness. "This claim has small tidbits of fact but is essentially false" sounds like a comment, possibly in response to reading the section. Is this vandalism? -- Sin cloro 23:37, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
There is a number of scholars and professors who question 9/11. For this article to put out that the scientific community in a whole agrees is wrong, please revise that. -- 63.224.245.74 03:51, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
This article is one of thousands on Wikipedia that have a link to YouTube in it. Based on the External links policy, most of these should probably be removed. I'm putting this message here, on this talk page, to request the regular editors take a look at the link and make sure it doesn't violate policy. In short: 1. 99% of the time YouTube should not be used as a source. 2. We must not link to material that violates someones copyright. If you are not sure if the link on this article should be removed, feel free to ask me on my talk page and I'll review it personally. Thanks. --- J.S ( t| c) 07:06, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
On Topic: First off Rep. Curt Weldon was defeated so does his claim about able danger carry less import? If the able danger section is kept should his defeat be mentioned in the article? And after Jan 20th the article has to be changed to former Rep Curt Weldon.
Indirectly on topic: Now I am going to break Wikipedia protocol and briefly discuss the elections effect on the “9/11 truth investigation”. As of late on the morning the day after the election this was not being discussed in the mainstream media or 911truth.org or prisonplanet. The short answer is there will be no reopening of the 9/11 investigation. The Democrats won on Iraq not 9/11 conspiracy so any investigations should they occur will be Iraq related. The 9/11 commission is held in high esteem. There will be a move to pass their recommendations. In most of the post election interviews with Democrats about Iraq the Hamilton/Baker commission was mentioned. I do not have to tell you Lee Hamilton was the cochairmen of the 9/11 commission and Jim Baker’s prominent role in the Carlyle group. The core democratic base is not 9/11 conspiracy friendly. To oversimplify their views Bush is a moron who can not get anything straight therefore could not pull off a 9/11 conspiracy. It should be noted that many of the independent libertarian types who were part of the democratic coalition are 9/11 conspiracy friendly but in the short term will continue to go along with the Democrats. In the long term as Bush time in office grows smaller and then disappears the issue becomes less prominent. Of the 2008 contenders on only Hillary Clinton and Giuliani would have even a very arguable relationship to a possible 9/11 conspiracy. As for the mainstream media I think the recent spate of 9/11 conspiracy talk was a one time thing spurned by the release of the poll results and the 5th anniversary of the attacks. 69.114.117.103 17:11, 8 November 2006 (UTC) (Ed Kollin)
This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page. |
I am deleting the final introductory sentance "The scientific community does not support the controlled demolition hypothesis and U.S. officials, mainstream journalists, and researchers have concluded that only al-Qaeda was involved in the attacks." for two reasons. First, there is a documented controversy over how the buildings could have fell within the scientific community as noted further in the article. To say there is a consensus is clearly false.
Second, as with most conspiracy theories, the 9/11 theories disagree with the mainstream consensus. This is due to the very nature of conspiracy theories. They are all controversial. -Rich
I propose that this article needs to be cut down in size; it is currently 120 kB in size. At least the following two sections could be put into subarticles:
==I already made a Controlled-Demolition Theory branch at Controlled-Demolition Theory (9/11 Conspiracy Theory), but was challenged and it currently is undergoing a VfD. I think it needs to stay, as it is large enough to be an article in its own right, and think a second page needs to come off. Can people please state whether they agree or disagree with me? Titanium Dragon 22:50, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
Most of the other subsections are small or too unrelated to put on their own page; the only one which is nearly as large as those two is the Israel/Jewish related subset of conspiracy theories, which clock in at 12 kB. Titanium Dragon 22:53, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
I think the point of contention needs to be not "synthesis" but "serving to advance a position". This article, as it stands, only occasionally lapses into argumentative arrangements of material. (Let's talk about them one at time in stead of making these sweeping statements about an article everyone agrees needs work.) For the most part it uses facts in the same way its sources does, connecting them (via those sources) to conspiriatorial conclusions. For anyone who becomes interested in the theories it describes after reading, say, Time Magazine or the Washington Post, or watching CNN's or BBC's recent coverage, it offers a place to start to make sense of the them and make up one's mind. It could be much, much better, and we're working on that. Separating out the synthesis (not serving to advance...) of the WTC material is a good start. The next step, to my mind, is to distinguish allegations made by only one or two sources from allegations made by more or less all of them.-- Thomas Basboll 07:49, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
Why is Operation Northwood a link on this page? Seriously, Northwood has nothing to do with 9/11, hell I've seen all three versions of Loose Change and Jones still has not made the link.
If its to remain here, it needs a reason to be here. Like a citation of "A similar conspiracy plan to the proposed 9/11 conspiracy theories" right next to it.
A lot of people say the American government would not kill 3,000 of their own people. The Northwoods documents prove thats exactly the sort of thing the people who run America would do, if they saw strategic long term advantage in it. It evidences the warped, power crazed, mentality of America's ruling elite. Timharwoodx 22:34, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
This section seems totally extraneous to me; this is just people's opinions on it, and it seems unimportant. This is about the conspiracy theories, not about what people say about them, and it seems like the article would be stronger without them. Titanium Dragon 22:32, 11 September 2006 (UTC)
This is, to my knowledge, totally false. Beyond being a terrible addition without sourcing, if I recall correctly the news agencies did not have footage of the first plane crashing into the WTC until after the second plane crashed into the WTC. If no one can source this within 24 hours I'm junking it, it looks like someone just added something to defend Bush. Titanium Dragon 08:28, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
RE:Film - I am surprised at the lack of films of 911. I would have thought that cameramen of all varieties would have captured every angle of the event. I keep seeing the same film over and over, but darn few new or different ones - curious that every New Yorker with a camera - or at least a few of them - didn't take a shot.
I'm optimistic about the split off WTC article. If we get to keep it, we should cut the corresponding material out of this article and improve the relevant summaries. This would constitute a compromise with those who want to delete all the "junk science" from the CT article. They can then be presented as "issues" within the CT community in the WTC article.-- Thomas Basboll 08:30, 12 September 2006 (UTC)
Whilst I can see why the viewpoints may be seen as contentious, this article needs to be retained in order to present both sides of what is a complex story Ianguy 02:50, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Tom Harrison has repeatedly suggested that this article, and especially the WTC section, is based on poor or missing sources. This may be true, I haven't checked them all. But surely we can agree that there is by now a solid set of sources to confirm the existence of the widespread belief that 9/11 was carried out by shadowy persons working inside the U.S. government and that the World Trade Center was brought down by controlled demolition. Many of these sources also allow us to go into considerable detail about these beliefs. We can, of course, not confirm their truth; but we can easily document their existence. I've opened this thread to discuss this issue and hopefully get Tom to make his critique of the sourcing of this article explicit. If there are problems with the sources, I'm confident that in 90% of the cases they can be fixed by appeal to any of three or four books, a couple of websites, a few papers, and the growing mainstream media coverage.-- Thomas Basboll 14:42, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
The section tries to prove that all this theory was made up by hezboallah and this link [ | TRying to prove that...] cleary states contrdict the npov by clearly writing at top of it to Stop the defamation of the Jewish people.It also tries to use wikipedia as a media outlet for Israeli pov.Pl check into it. Yousaf465
GTFO ZOG AGENT Therman^^HAND 00:39, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
"While the demolitions of WTC 1 and 2 were by no means ordinary demolitions." [4]
I really don't understand what that sentence is supposed to mean and how it is supported by the source. -- Sloane 23:40, 13 September 2006 (UTC)
Hi, I see this is a high-activity page... sorry if this has already been discussed some long time ago. I think the title of the page should rather be "9/11 alternative theories" or some other phrasing instead of "Conspiracy theory", because:
The argument against using the words "conspiracy theorist" generally apply in cases where the theorist is not proposing a conspiracy but rather criticizing an institution. A famous example is Noam Chomsky's "propaganda model" of the media which is sometimes denigrated as a "conspiracy theory". Here its defenders are right to object, as Chomsky does, that the label is really just intended to discourage institutional criticism. I.e., it misinterprets claims about banal social interests as claims about a sinister plot. (Tom Wolfe makes this "cabal theory" allegation against Chomsky.) But in the case of 9/11 conspiracy theories there is really nothing controversial about it. The theorists really are defending the proposition that there has been a conspiracy, and it is a very standard "shadow government" type proposition. Neither David Griffin nor Mike Ruppert object to the word "conspiracy". If anything, they take offense at the word "theory". Ruppert says he "don't deal in conspiracy theory. I deal in conspiracy fact." Webster Tarpley talks about the "neocon fascist madmen" who are pulling even Dick Cheney's stings. Finally, the phrase "9/11 conspiracy theories" is a stable reference in the mainstream media, it is the best way to bring this (hopefully soon to be more) fact-based article to the attention of potential readers.-- Thomas Basboll 08:13, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
I think that it is essential that there is an addition to the lead paragraph to indicate that the 'conspiracy theories' do not represent mainstream views to make this clear to the casual reader. I have added a sentence but am happy to consider a different wording providing it includes suitable caveats. TerriersFan 02:09, 15 September 2006 (UTC)
Anyone who takes an objective look at the article in its present form can see that the material on the WTC needs to be removed for the sake of length, surveyability and general tidyness. No consensus can be won for simply deleting it. So the split is the best way forward. Does anyone know what is going on? (I'll post this also on the VfD page).-- Thomas Basboll 09:46, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
The article in its current form ignores the conspiracy theories that were promulgated by government officials in the aftermath of the attacks. They include the supposed credible threat made to Air Force One, the belief that the country of Iraq was responsible for the attacks, and the supposed meeting between the lead highjacker and an Iraqi intelligence agent. I would even say that these are the most famous conspiracy theories and probably the most widespread if recent polls are any indication.
These three cases clearly fit the definition of a conspiracy theory: "A conspiracy theory attempts to explain the ultimate cause of an event (usually a political, social, or historical event) as a secret, and often deceptive, plot by a covert alliance of powerful people or organizations rather than as an overt activity or as natural occurrence." yet, there is a reluctance to include them.
:Please read the "origins and development" section, which touches on this point, and clarifies the scope of this article.
The origins and development section says the article is limited to only conspiracy theories that claim the attacks were due to "a larger network of powerful figures were involved with close ties to the United States government". This is an arbitrary choice that leaves out the most widely held theories. "Nearly seven in 10 Americans believe it is likely that ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, says a poll out almost two years after the terrorists' strike against this country." ( source)
To insist on the broad definition of conspiracy is a rhetorical move that is sometimes made in the discussions.
This is not some "rhetorical move". The defnition I cited is directly from the conspiracy theories page linked to in the article itself. Isn't an article on 9/11 conspiracy theories obligated to include one that over 70% of Americans believed to be the case and that clearly meets the definition linked to? Isn't leaving this out a serious ommision?
The official theory [relating to Iraq] is not a "conspiracy theory" in the conventional/popular sense...(Note also that the official-sanctioned conspiracy is not really an alliance of "powerful" people.)
It is exactly a conspiracy theory in the popular/conventional sense. The only distinction is that senior individuals in the government are repeating it. Ironically this Iraq-theory was actually concocted by a 'a rogue network working within the official government agencies', the Offfice of Special Plans, and The Office of the Vice President. In other words, there was a conspiracy to generate and spread this particular conspiracy theory. I maintain that the origin of the theory is not relevant to whether or not it should be included.
The decisive difference is the idea of a rogue network working within the official government agencies.
Why does a 'Jews did 9/11' section qualify but a "Saddam did 9/11" section doesn't? In fact the section on Claims related to Jews and Israel doesn't include the idea of a "rogue network working within the official government agencies." and so doesnt't even meet your criterion. I also see nothing in this section about a "larger network of powerful figures were involved with close ties to the United States government" which is mentioned in the origins and development section. Both of these are important distinctions that you claim are criteria for inclusion which this section does not contain.
I think the idea of an "inside job" (i.e., the idea that people working inside the US government were involved) is essential to the focus of this article.
OK then. That's your opinion. You haven't justified it. That is not a basis to sculpt the entire article to conform to your thesis that 9/11 conspiracies must be about an inside job. And there is no reason to remove the section Claims related to Jews and Israel. There is also no sound reason to exclude conspiracy theories originated by government officials.
Okay. I've now carried out a proper split. Naturally, if the original split VfD results in deletion then all this may have to be undone. However, for now I suggest doing all detailed work on the WTC (including building 7) in the new article Controlled demolition hypothesis for the collapse of the World Trade Center.-- Thomas Basboll 12:46, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
Thanks for all the new and good work on here. I think the intro is problematic in that it never openly refers to the actual pages which are directly connected to this page as far as content and relevance - the 9/11 researchers and 9/11 truth movement pages - while openly referring to 'conspiracy theories' and other reference pages. The 9/11 researchers and 9/11 truth movement pages are the 2 basic pages that should be openly linked in the intro paragraph to this page which details the WHAT that those pages are referring to. Currently they are linked stealthily under the same repeating phrase of 'conspiracy theory' - no one is going to check behind each 'ct' link to see if it's going to a different page, so that defeats the purpose of having them in there at all. Why do we need to disguise them? Are they getting too much traffic and need to be hidden? bov 15:29, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
As the article stands, the story about 4000 Jews not showing up for work is not presented as an element in the conspiracy theories but as an urban legend associated with them. Unless someone can find a major proponent of that idea among conspiracy theorists, I think we should split it off, and mention it somewhere in passing (under other points of interest for example or perhaps, as now, with an explanation about the uneasy relationship between 9/11 CTs and anti-semitism). It would then become an article like The Submarine (shark).-- Thomas Basboll 16:37, 16 September 2006 (UTC)
I know its a touchy issue, but to say that Bazant and Verdure are just a couple of a guys with a compelling theory is misleading. The paper is not really about that. It was cited for their assessment of the consensus among engineers. Since that statement would not have passed peer review if there was notable dissent among engineers, we can assume it represents the consensus. I am willing to discuss it, of course.-- Thomas Basboll 20:09, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
69.153.204.44 08:33, 22 October 2006 (UTC)== What Really Happened: Not reliable == What exactly about WRH is not reliable? Did you know that the WP:RS is just a guideline and not a hard and fast rule. If you can't be specific about what is unreliable about this site, I will have to put my information back in. Demosfoni 21:38, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
I think we need to figure out what we're trying to accomplish with that one or two paragraph section. Basically, we have to get the idea across that the collapses were initially quite a surprise, but that engineers have since found a way to explain it without demolition. The OBL reference is interesting here (I think even if it isn't authentic). CTers are not satisfied, and point to all the things that the consensus can't explain. (Cherepanov may be a good source for the list of unexplaineds, especially since he is NPOV vis-a-vis the demolition hypothesis: he's got his own "new principles" to promote, not a demolition theory.) Anyway, let's get the text over here, into the talk pages, and work it out.-- Thomas Basboll 21:59, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
Just wanted to warned I changed somethings, added reference to PM guys having seen secret photos of plane goingo to Pentagon, which can't be shown to anyone else. Also added Mineta witnessing to Cheney giving no response to incoming "object" against Pentagon. Also changed the extremely POV captions of the pictures of the pentagon, one of them identified one white blur with the tip of the plane (?!), the other misidentified as representing the state of the pentagon after the hit, when it represented after the wall collapsed due to earlier hit.Please see changes, thanks. Forgive me for my horrible english.... <:-\ 85.138.225.87 22:01, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
"Security camera image showing controversial white blur (far right) just before impact. Is this flight 77?" Do you have a reliable source that says it is controversial, or that says it is anything other than flight 77? Tom Harrison Talk 22:13, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
There was a claim about active debate in the engineering community. I took issue with the unsourced claim and removed it. Debate in the engineering community occurs in peer reviewed professional engineering journals. There are no references at all to peer reviewed scientific or engineering journals let alone enough articles to qualify it as active. In reality, NIST report with hundreds of engineers has essentially ruled out anything but the official account and the active debate is what codes and standards to change, if any, to better allow for survivability (human and structural) in future attacks. The quote from the MIT prof sums up the scientific method being used by the "theorists."-- Tbeatty 01:51, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
The recent editing conflict resulted in adding material the properly belongs elsewhere in the article. The interest in the demolition on the part CTers was already in there. The last sentence notes (uncontroversially) that engineers are not "on board" (to put it mildly) and that officials are sticking to their story. Maybe try thinking of improvements to lead in terms of changing individual words, not adding whole new claims. It's a nice tidy lead right now.-- Thomas Basboll 02:07, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
This article for all the changes still does not give a coherent explanation to the reader what the “official story” is. Somewhere in the lead should be something along these lines “In the immediate aftermath of the attacks The Bush administration explained that the attacks were carried out by members of Al Qaeda headed by Osama Bin Laden who hijacked four commercial airplanes by using box cutters. The organizations fundamentalist religious beliefs led them to hate Western values and culture. The administration had no advanced knowledge of the attacks. Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers hearing of the other attacks in cell phone conversations rebelled and brought the plane down becoming “the first solders in the War on Terror”. The towers were brought down (briefly explain NIST and pancake theory). Families of the victims not satisfied with this explanation demanded further investigation and after initial reluctance the administration agreed to further investigation. The bipartisan 9/11 commission was formed tasked with “not placing individual blame” but to explain what happened and making recommendations to prevent a recurrence of the attacks. In 2004 the commission released its report. It said that their were many prior warnings of varying detail the United States would be attacked by Al Qaeda. They were ignored due to lack of communication between various law enforcement personnel. The main reasons for this burocratic inertia and laws passed in the 1970’s designed to prevent abuses that resulted major scandals during that era. The report also faulted both the Clinton and Bush administrations with “failure of imagination”. The report found that although the passengers did revolt on Flight 93 the hijackers brought the plane down and that the hijackers used other weapons such as Mace besides box cutters to hijack the planes. The explanation laid out in the report have been accepted by most members of both major political parties, network, cable and print news media."
Also the basic explanation and motives section seem redundant. 69.114.117.103 05:56, 18 September 2006 (UTC) (Ed Kollin)
I'm going to rework the "less common theories" into a section that identifies the fringe variants of the 9/11 conspiracy theories, i.e., those that subscribe to deeply entrenched beliefs about Jews, Freemasons, or (as the recent addition notes) even reptiles. This section will proceed from Time Magazine's assessment that the movement is now so big as to be part of "mainstream political reality"; like other mainstream movements (neoconservatism and environmentalism, for example) it turns out to have the support of people with some very marginal views. I think this is also a way of dealing with the 4000 Jews story.-- Thomas Basboll 12:26, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
WTC 7 belongs in Controlled-Demolition Theory article (or section if it gets deleted) and Bush's alledged "slip of tongue" wasn't even about the 9/11 attacks.-- Sloane 14:52, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
I am not comfortable with the Building 7 information being removed from the 9/11 conspiracy theory main page. The statements of Larry Silverstein and the spontaneous collapse of the building is one of the pillars of the argument that the destruction of the World Trade Center was accomplished by individuals from outside of the Al Qaeda hijackers. I can only assume that people that want to move this section into the "controlled demolition" sub-page are trying to hide this information. We could perhaps divide up the section between the "9/11 conspiracy" and "controlled demolition" sections but I feel quite strongly about giving the Collapse of Building 7 its own subsection on this page.
I mean we have left in a discussion about Jewish conspiracy?? But we have removed the owner of the WTC complex's own remarks about "pulling the building". This does not make sense. I believe it is a form of censure. -- Demosfoni 14:59, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
-- Chrisp7 00:58, 26 September 2006 (GMT)
Whoever reorganized this article has sapped the essential points and left only the dross. I believe it would be better to include the main points of why people believe that 9/11 was cause by actors outside of Al Qaeda and to put more detailed discussion into the sub-pages. This is the current structure:
I believe it can be reorganized into:
I would like to take a poll of fellow editors. Who would like to make changes to the structure of this Wiki page so that has the format that I proposed (with minor modifications of course)? Please include your ~~~~ signature under one of the following headings:
SalvNaut
20:16, 19 September 2006 (UTC) : Instead of voting I propose less controversial reorganization. The one Demosfoni brought would need everything to be rewritten and I didn't like the section "Reasons to doubt the Official story" as it is POV and the whole article deals with those reasons somehow.
Sections 4 - 8 would be in a chronological order, and TOC would look much better, imho. What do you think?
No, this article is already pushing the 9/11 deniers agenda. Your structure would be even more POV.-- Sloane 16:09, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
I think everyone can agree that the article is too long and many would agree that it is rambling in some places. This is not the place for an essay. The first three sections especially need trimming. -- 71.134.157.73 18:13, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
I more or less agree with Sloane, though I admit that I have a very solid opinion about the whole thing. We had a very popular CT about Yitzhak Rabin's murder in Israel which now almost everybody thinks is a total BS. As a physicist, I also think many "scientific" claims of the CT are very unscientific. Therefore when you say some aspects of the CT are "central" while other are "marginal", I admit I just can't tell the difference, they all look the same to me. Basically that's why I don't see why a reorganization is needed. Dan Gluck 19:47, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
>>"Therefore when you say some aspects of the CT are "central" while other are "marginal", I admit I just can't tell the difference, they all look the same to me."
I think Demosfino's point above is very correct. Removing all that material about the WTC looks odd, while leaving these two sections in. First, they are not part of conspiracy theories in the sense that this article deals with them. The Saudi connection, for example, is a suggestion that there's a link back to the "official terrorist". Michael Moore is not a 9/11 conspiracy theorist. The 4000 jews rumor is a rumor and has been put to rest. It has no currency, and none of the sources grant it any as far as I can tell. The section tells the story of a dead rumor. So I'm removing these. In their place, to give Tom a place to source his claims about the "intrinsically" anti-semitic aspects of 9/11 CTs, I will put a section about how 9/11 CT are sometimes accused of anti-semitic motives.-- Thomas Basboll 20:59, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
Also removed the stuff about Sharon and Mossad. None of this suggests a conspiracy (especially the last claim since they according to the story they tried to warn the US: that's not even LIHOP.) This is all mainstream incompetence theory. That somebody knew the attacks were coming is now much more broadly accepted than the CTs.-- Thomas Basboll 21:07, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
I would suggest briefly mentioning the "4000 jews" claim and how it is a result of a misunderstanding. The claim is mentioned in all kinds of conspiracy sites, it would be informative to explain it's bunk. A sentence or two in "less common theories" perhaps: A rumor circulated that 4000 Jewish employees were absent from the WTC on 9/11. The rumor was likely a mistranslation of a newspaper story which stated 4000 Israelis were in New York on that day. The percentage of Jewish victims in the WTC attacks correlates with the percentage of Jewish residents in New York. Weregerbil 13:46, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
The next thing I want to do is trim the claims that the hijackers are still alive. This has also been largely debunked. The section basically walks us through the mistaken identities involved and leaves us no wiser than the CTists themselves. It could probably be done in a couple of sentences. But what could be added is the central idea that they were "patsies" (a central CT notion, familiar from JFK). Here the claims that Atta was not a devout Muslim and Hanjour was a terrible pilot might usefully be added. In short, a section about the range of CT views on the hijackers would be interesting.-- Thomas Basboll 21:32, 19 September 2006 (UTC)
Basically I think the revisions presented the material much ia a more readable manner. I did notice the differences between the early official account and the 9/11 report findings were deemphasized. If I am not mistaken the theories that other items besides box cutters were used in the attacks and that Flight 93 was brought down by the hijackers reacting to the passenger revolt instead of the passengers themselves were results of the 9/11 commission report. The article implies that early government theory was the same in that regard.
I am going to change “immediate aftermath” to the "years immediately following the attacks" because according to this article the NIST findings were presented three years after the attacks 69.114.117.103 15:10, 20 September 2006 (UTC) (Ed Kollin)
I'm adding a section for clarity on the Pentagon. There is a reason the Pentagon is hugely divisive and the current form says nothing about it.
Locewtus 19:25, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
The very end of the "Pentagon" section uses to this conspiracy page as a reference: [7]. On that conspiracy page the first eyewitness account refers to this Washington Post article. Somehow the conspiracy theorists have managed to pick random quotes that talk about explosions — while the Washington Post article has other eyewitnesses talking how they clearly saw a plane:
Etc etc. And that's only the first article quoting eyewitnesses. In each case the author of the conspiracy page manages to ignore eyewitness accounts that say they saw a plane, they saw a commuter jet, they saw the American Airlines logos on the plane, they saw passengers through the windows of the plane.
Since the conspiracy page appears to be purposefully, systematically, obviously dishonest I'll remove it as a reference.
Weregerbil
10:20, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
I've noticed that the last couple of sentences of the lead are continuously in dispute, especially in regards to what to say about the "engineering community". Demosfoni and I discussed this above, and I thought the results were pretty clear. (I'm still waiting to hear his take.) I have been citing Bazant and Verdure's published view that the official (NIST) account is "generally accepted by the community of specialists in structural mechanics and structural engineering (though not by a few outsiders claiming a conspiracy with planted explosives)". This does two things. First, it establishes the engineering consensus (since it passed peer-review, I have been arguing, a claim about what is "generally accepted" can be taken as representing consensus); second, it acknowledges the dissent, identifies it as part of a conspiracy theory, and characterises it in controlled demolition terms (planted explosives). Demosfoni then countered by citing an engineer named Cherepanov (Cherepanov, G.P. (2006). September 11 and Fracture Mechanics. International Journal of Fracture, Vol 132(2) [8].) Cherepanov certainly disagrees with NIST, and Bazant has even dignified his ideas by responding to them at a conference. Demosfoni, however, misunderstands the issue as a matter of finding articles in favor of natural complete collapse and articles against. (I.e., he counts Bazant and Verdure as pro-NIST and Cherepanov as anti-NIST and concludes that there is no consensus.) To this my response was to quote from Cherepanov (the NIST-dissenter). His abstract begins: "The generally-accepted explanation of the collapse of the World Trade Center towers on September 11, 2001 is based on the speculative 'theory' of progressive buckling of bearing columns at the speed..." In his introduction he says that "the engineering community has, without any hesitation, recognized the [official] 'theory' as correct and comprehensive." That is, even the dissenting view begins by identifying the consensus on the subject. On this basis, I don't think there can be any doubt about what the received view is in the engineering community, nor what structural engineers in general think about collapses.-- Thomas Basboll 23:02, 20 September 2006 (UTC)
Can anyone name one structural engineering expert or one paper published in a reputable structural engineering journal that supports the controlled demolition hypothesis?-- Sloane 00:27, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
I've restated the engineering consensus (based on the discussion here) in the WTC section and moved the sources there to keep the lead tidy. Locewtus, I've never heard of anyone using polling data to determine what the scientific consensus is. In this case, two papers, which disagree about the NIST report's findings, and both of which mention (but do not support) the CD hypothesis, both note an overwhelming agreement among engineers about the collapses. (Cherepanov even complains that it has led to the rejection of his papers under peer-review.) With the exception of Cherepanov, there is only mild criticism about some of the report's details, none of which even entertains controlled demolition. It is completely safe to say that the engineering community rejects controlled demolition as an explanation for the collapse of the World Trade Center -- this is one of the things CTists compain about.-- Thomas Basboll 08:51, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
>>"Nothing was "carted away", the people responsible for the investigation have testified that they had access to all the evidence they wanted."
The WTC section needs to sketch the hypothesis that the WTC was brought down by controlled demolition. It needs to link primarily to the separate article on that hypothesis, and secondarily to the article on the collapses themselves. It should not provide any detail in re NIST's collapse mechanism, but needs to efficiently note that it, and the engineering community, acknowledges that CD hypothesis exists and rejects it. The reader of this section is not trying to understand how to the WTC collapsed but how conspiracy theorists think collapsed. IMHO, we are wasting the readers' time in an attempt to protect them from thinking that the buildings may have been demolished.-- Thomas Basboll 15:05, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
I have restored the section with a prefatory sentence that puts these stories into what I belive are a relevant context. If you believe that the section is mis-titled, it would be more appropriate to re-title it than to delete it wholesale. Ribonucleic 20:35, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm not comfortable with the changes you've made to this section. Starting with the title, I don't believe that conspiracy theorists are of the mind that this was a "bad investigation" in the implied sense of mere incompetence. [Not that the administration has shown any lack of that.] I believe they think it was an active attempt at cover-up. You may disagree with them - but this article is about their opinions, not yours. Similarly, the substitution of article titles for the admittedly more provocative statements made in those articles - in addition to being something I've never seen in the body of any other Wikipedia article - blunts the meaning in what seems to me a totally unproductive way. Rather than reverting on an empty stomach, I'll go to lunch now and look for your reply when I get back. :-) Ribonucleic 21:03, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
The article specifically questions whether the Pentagon was hit by an airplane. [And FWIW, I can't make out a jet in that picture.] So I think the caption must be changed to reflect NPOV. Ribonucleic 22:18, 21 September 2006 (UTC)
comment: of course you cannot make out wether there is an airplane based on this footage, these frames and other footage of the attacks are deliberately hold back for public inquiry, so that the media and public discussion will foces on these - all in all, giving the whole body of facts, showing and proving complicity of the US government - unimportant details. Wether the object that hit the pentagon was an airplane or missile or anything else, is of no importance for the established facts of complicity of the US govt. -- see my remarks below in PROPOSAL... That discussion (about wether/not a plane or something else hit the Pentagon) is going astray and thus will prevent the media and public to become aware of more important details and very well established facts which proof complicity of the US govt. -- the footage of other security cams and other cams which have filmed the plane or missile hitting the Pentagon, can be brought out to the public at any moment, when necessary to "proof" that the US govt. was not involved in these attacks... Since - to my opinion and knowledge of factual evidence concerning the Pentagon attack - there is little evidence for the "no-plane hit the Pentagon" theory, and substantial and well-estblished evidence (eye-witness reports, lightpoles being torn out the ground, matching the wingspan of a Boeing 757, parts of the Boeing 757 found inside/outside the impact zone, etc) that a Boeing 757/Boeing 757 sized airplane hit the Pentagon. 82.93.140.232 03:16, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
Just for the record: I take no position on what damaged the Pentagon. But this photograph does not clearly show an airplane - let alone a specific flight. In the context of this article, to say otherwise is grossly POV. Ribonucleic 05:35, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
According to my research and investigations, the subject of "9/11 conspiracy"-theories, should be covering all factual conspiracy theories, including the "official" theory, and they can be generally be divided into THREE categories, as outlined below.
Both for the "let it happen on purpose" AND the "make it happen on purpose" theory, it is also woth mentioning the following claims:
CONCLUSION:
As a concludion, my proposal is to mention all theories, which are part of these 3 categories of "complot" theories, and treat them on the same level. The current treatment is that of "official story" <-> "complot theory", which is a prejudiced treatment. ANY theory that explain how and why 11 sept. attacks were carried out - wether or not they follow the official story - is a complot theory. A better treatment is to treat the distinction between theories as "non complicity" <-> "complicity" theories, which is far less biased and prejudiced. "complicity" theories can be further categorized in orders of complicty, as proposed here and supported by many.
Noteworthy also is that any of the more outrageous and speculative theories - WHICH OCCUR IN ALL 3 COMPLOT THEORIES! - such as the "Tora Bora military bunkers", the "Iraqi weapons of mass destruction", and also the "WTC brought down with explosives" and "No plane/boeing 757 hit the Pentagon" theories, can then be treated at the same level. Some people believe these outrageous stories (like many govt. have been tricked into believing the "Iraqi WMD" fairy tales!!) - which some call plain lies! - while others base their opinion on established evidence and proof.
Important to state is that even when we cut down the theories by sorting out all the speculative parts of the theories, we still keep the original three complot theories, although it is almost clear and certain, that the base for the official complot theory is so thin, that it is almost completely gone and evaporated into thin air, as most of the accompaning "evidences" have been proven wrong.
For the other complot theories, even when there are many speculative theories surrounding them (either deliberate disinformation to dismantle the theory and make it possible to ridicule them) it is noteworthy that the crucial claims are still standing when eliminating ALL speculations or non-proven claims (even the "controlled demolition" of WTC 7 is part of that, no matter how suspicious this event is, and how poor the official explenation, there is no real and/or direct evidence - f.i. demolition experts who claim after seeing WTC 7 collapse that is IS a controlled demoltion, is not direct PROOF of controlled demolition - beyond reasonable doubt that WTC 7 was brought down with explosives... Which doesn't say that it could be that it was the case, but that such is unproven, and probably unprovable given the fact that the remains of WTC 7 were never researched for finding out why it felt down in such a remarkable fashion - although it of course SHOULD have been researched for finding out how it collapsed, not just for structural engineering knowledge and make buildings safer, but because BY LAW it should have been researched as it was part of a crime scene).
META THEORY ABOUT 9/11 SPECULATIONS ('conspiracy theories'):
Please also note that for the occurence of all these speculative theories, on the side of either complot theory 2 and 3 ("let it/make it happen on purpose"), is that these extensive rumours were merely signs of very broad discomfort and signs of distrust amongst the public audience, which emerged significant time AFTER 9/11, and occured after: a. The US govt. - which initially claimed they would do an extensive and full research on 9/11 - did not keep these promises, but contrarily acted in a way to frustrate a full investigation b. The acts of the US govt. after and on the basis of these attacks, the "proof of guilt" of al-Qeada / O. Bin Laden and of the "WMD of Iraq" were based on such thin intelligence reports, that most people treat them as government lies, since in reality there were no Tora Bora military bases and no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And even the proof of guilt for al-Qeada and Osama Bin Laden is good as absent. The only "proof" are some video and audio tapes. c. The government laws such as Patriot act 1 & 2 and Homeland security, which pose a danger to freedom and leads the US state into a form of police state, if not right out a fascists/corporate state, and this line of stateform is seen in other western countries too.
All these events and the proofs that were later established that the people and world opinion had been lied to, have raised serious doubts about ALL the claims origanally made by the US govt. as how, why and who performed these attacks and has to be accounted responsible for these attacks.
Since all these statements made around 9/11 events, are part of war-propaganda (for the sole reason that the US govt. treated the 9/11 attacks of acts of warfare, and not just a criminal - large scale - terrorist attack), it is not surprising that both groups use lies. The speculative and unproven theories, such as "WTC brought down with controlled demolition" and "No plane/Boeing 757 hit the Pentagon" merely reflect to and counter the lies, prior to them, about "Tora Bora military bunkers/facilities" and "Iraqi weapons of mass-destruction".
That also means: it is particulary non-sensical to treat those speculative theories in an isolated manner, without mentioning the framework and context in which they occur and for what reason they occur and reflect to, that these speculations just and simply directly oppose the speculations (lies) that the US. govt. brought forward as part of warfare propaganda.
Media and governments which debate about these issues, which treat those speculative claims apart from that context, and forget that they refer to and counter the lies of the other side, the US govt., are in this respect suspicious, as for most part, they try to dismantle the theories or at least try to ridicule the well-established facts and well-proven facts that indicate / proof government complicity. That is: in so far these media and governments do no also - in a balanced way - have discovered and exposed the US. govt. lies.
FINAL REMARK
In so far I have to comment on that - my personal opinion and in sofar I know all the facts about how and why 9/11 attacks occured - I have reason to assume that at least complot theory 1 (the official story) is not to be trusted and is based on very thin (only audio/video tapes, which are highly disputed and distrusted and claimed to be non-authentic by many researchers and scientists) "evidence", and the huge mountain of evidence leading to other conclusions, are far more likely, and which concludes that at least complot theory (let-it-happen-on-purpose) must be assumed, if not more. Good evidence and indications direct to complot theory 3 (make it happen on purpose), but parts of the evidence is missing there, for the sole reason that the evidence that leads in that direction (the money-transfer made by general Mahmoud Ahmad to Mohammed Atta / the visit of Mahmoud Ahmad with govt. officials) is not further explored (on purpose), and by now, it can be assumed, such evidence has already been destroyed. We can assume however on many factual evidence, that US govt. is in fact more directly involved (based also on patterns of behaviour in many other cases), but that that truth is deliberately withdrawn from public inquiry. The suspicious behaviour of the US. govt shows indirect proof of such high complicity and high treason against the american people and other nations/people.
82.93.140.232
03:16, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
82.93.140.232 raises several important questions which relate to the purpose of the article and how it should be organized which need to be addressed.
1. What is this article about?
2. How do you decide what is a conspiracy theory and what isn't?
3. Which theories should be included and excluded?
4. Can a conspiracy theory be true?
I would suggest that the article cannot be an exhaustive summary of the entire set of views and all of the evidence related to the 9/11 attacks. It just isn’t feasible. It’s better to link to separate explanatory articles and leave this one as a broad outline rather than overload this page. This also solves the problem of how much supporting and contradictory evidence to include.
Hyperlinks are your friend. The longer and more complex an individual article is, the more difficult it is to achieve consensus. KISS. -- 71.129.41.101 10:44, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
If you want to mention that it was proposed during the Kennedy administration by way of adding Cold War context, I have no objection. But to say "However" crosses the line into POV, in my opinion. And your statement that "the plan was rejected" does not even say by whom, let alone provide a source. I respectfully ask that you not add it back without addressing both those concerns. Ribonucleic 03:27, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
Sloane, in the spirit of compromise, I am willing to agree to even an undocumented report that Kennedy rejected Northwoods - provided that you are able to furnish a source. [As you may already know, the Wikidpedia article on Northwoods can not be used as a source for another Wikipedia article.] For example: "In Arthur Schlesinger Jr's account of the Kennedy administration A Thousand Days, the author claims that Kennedy rejected the Northwoods plan." - followed by the proper bibliographic citation of the Schelsinger book, of course. If you are unable to provide such a source, your "was rejected" claim would be the OR that you were concerned about earlier. Ribonucleic 15:41, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
The AfD on the split has been completed and has been upheld.
That is, the article that was originally split has been deleted, but the second attempt at the split has been upheld. This means that we can move more of the details of the CD hypothesis over in the CD article if we want.-- Thomas Basboll 11:14, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
I'm removing the Jimmy Walters hypothesis again. He is quoted for saying that explosives were planted "on every floor". Walters, however, is not a notable theorist in the CT community but a (quite notable) supporter of the movement. His opinion here is both ill informed and reported by a plainly hostile source (who calls Walters ideas "bullshit" and belives that "f-- you" when yelled very loudly - as a voice over it would appear - constitutes critique). It can certainly not be used to represent the controlled demolition hypothesis. If you want it in, Sloane, you are going to have to find some sources, either among CTers or in objective reporting, that situate Walter as an opinion leader on the WTC demolition in the 9/11 community.-- Thomas Basboll 19:12, 22 September 2006 (UTC)
Hey. Did anyone ever bother to consider that when one says the "engineering community" one is referring to a group of engineers. You could say "a pod of engineers", "a gaggle of engineers", etc. This community however does not have bylaws. They do not live in one geographical location. They do not all know eachother. They do not have time to read each other's technical publications. The idea of an "engineering community" agreeing about anything is ridiculous. All we have is peer-review which as I showed above is not perfect and can let erroneous charlatans proposing things like "cold fusion", "prayer aiding medical recovery", etc. Anyway, I have found ONE ENGINEER who disagrees with the engineering community. Now, if you are all reasonable people (one can assume anything). This should be reason enough to remove the outlandish claim that "the engineering community does not support demolition" of the buildings. Here is the evidence: [ Charles Pegelow]. So since there is not unanimous agreement among the engineers, to be technically accurate you need to change "the structural engineering community" to "most of the structural engineering community". I assume that we are all reasonable people and this correction will not meet with unreasonable resistance by a certain few. -- 71.232.14.77 01:07, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
I've removed a non-sequitur note quoting FEMA report, which noted that "...the development of the fires was not significantly impeded by the firefighters because manual firefighting efforts were stopped fairly early in the day." This has no relation to the rest of the section, except as an insinuation that there must not have been any firefighters in or near the building at all if they didn't fight the fires. The reasoning seems to go:
But when did Silverstein suggest that they "pull it"? I haven't seen anything indicating just when it was, but I'd bet it was around the time that "the firefighters made the decision fairly early on not to fight the fires". They observed early on that the fires were practically insurmountable, so they decided, like Silverstein said, that it wasn't worth losing more lives trying to stop an unstoppable fire in a 40-story building. Especially when there's more important things for the firefighters to do, like rescuing people trapped in the rubble from the two tallest buildings in the world.
In addition, the FEMA report cannot be used to imply that there were never any firefighters inside WTC 7, as it notes that there were. (Page 20: "According to the account of a firefighter who walked the 9th floor...") It appears that they went inside the building, assessed the damage, realized that they wouldn't be able to stop the fires, and decided to pull out. Later that day they watched it collapse. -- Mr. Billion 07:27, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
Everyone's been doing such a good job of verifying the facts, that the theories are sometimes not represented. I think we need to cite sources that emphasize the facts in this article to the end substantiating a conspiracy theory. (I am talking about the source's aims not this article's, of course.) On my reading of the field, the strongest accounts are Griffin, Tarpley, Ruppert and Ahmed. While Thompson is a great source for facts (actually: he's so good at sourcing we don't even need to quote him) he doesn't really offer a conspiracy theory (some might argue he offers a conspiracy allusion or something on that order.) An example of a source I think works really well in the article right now is Ruppert's critical assessment of the WTC demolition hypothesis. It really gives us a sense of the importance of this element but also the problems with it. But I'm going to add Tarpley as well because he calls Building Seven the "reductio ad absurdum" of the whole operation, which is what many CTists believe as far as I tell.-- Thomas Basboll 20:44, 23 September 2006 (UTC)
A Pentagon report released Friday said the able danger unit had no actionable intelligence related to 9/11 or knowledge of Atta. I put the story and reactions by Weldon and Kean below the original Able Danger entry 69.114.117.103 07:06, 24 September 2006 (UTC) (Ed Kollin)
I shudder to even try and edit this page for I am sure there is fierce loyalty on both sides. But I read it today, and noticed it said that Ben Chertoff and Michael Chertoff are related. I read recently that Ben Chertoff denies the relationship. I edited the entry to say the relationship is alleged, and included Ben Chertoff's denials. I cited the U.S. News World Report article for the denial. I left intact the footnote alleging the connection, which goes to a 'Conspiracy Theorist' webpage, which I personally find dubious, but I suspended judgement and included it for the sake of neutrality, and to verify that there are people out there that allege the connection. 25 SEP 2006, mitchsensei (whoops forgot to sign the first time I edited)
It might be necessary to include the deducted motives for people creating the conspiracies in the first place. The first thing a lot of people who disagree with the conspiracies think is "why on earth would they think this?", and often endeavour to look deeper than the proposed motives for a 9/11 government conspiracy and at the psychology of conspiracy theorists themselves, before they consider evidence for and against it.
The section should be split into two. The first under "Other Points of interest" should have the Carlyle meeting on 9/11.Marvin Bush as CEO of company that ran security. The second section should be "Public Officials suggesting conspiracy theories" and that would list remarks by the Iranian and Venezuelan presidents,Jesse Ventura,Cynthia McKinney 69.114.117.103 06:20, 28 September 2006 (UTC) (Ed Kollin)
I have made several correction due to, frankly, fraudulent misrepresentations of underlying sources.-- Cberlet 01:44, 1 October 2006 (UTC)
As I understand it, the CT argument assumes that Building 7 "collpsed as a result of fire" and is the only building (of its kind) in history to do so. Mongo recently deleted this idea. There are two issues to deal with in this regard. The first is factual: the claim that the structure, however damaged it may have been from the collapses of the two towers, did eventually itself collapse "from fire". Since the damaged structure stood for about seven hours, its sudden collapse must have been initiated by something happening inside the building, like fires weakening the steel. Importantly, this seems to be the official opinion as well. Gene Corley of the ASCE said to the House Science Committe (in May, 2002) that, "Building 7, which was across the street from the main towers, also collapsed and provided us with the first example that we recognized of a building collapsing as a result of fire." [11] But the second issue is is that the article isn't about the facts but about specific claims and theories. CTs certainly claim that Building 7, because it was not hit by an airplane, and did not collapse along with the two towers, provides a clear case of a building collapsing from fire (unlike anything seen in history). I got the Corley quote from Chapter 6 of Tarpley's book. And NIST's preliminary results don't suggest that the official story is changing here. We are dealing with a damaged but stable structure that suddenly collapses "from fire".-- Thomas Basboll 20:51, 30 September 2006 (UTC)
You and the debunking site may be convinced that, given the exceptional nature of the "overall event" of 9/11, the collapse of the buildings was unsuprising. Bazant and Verdure, who are recognized authorities on the matter, disagree with you. They say 'The destruction of the World Trade Center (WTC) on 9/11/01 was not only the biggest mass murder in the U.S. history but also a big surprise for the structural engineering profession, perhaps the biggest since the collapse of Tacoma Bridge in 1940. No experienced structural engineer watching the attack expected the WTC towers to collapse. No skyscraper has ever before collapsed due to firre. The fact that the WTC towers did, beckons deep examination.' CTs are not just published on websites--they are described in books published by a variety of independent publishing houses. In this case the better sources say that the buildings collapsed due to fire and that this was not to be expected from an engineering point of view. It is reasonable to assume that what they mean is that, since airplanes and debris were not enough, the remaining structures were doing just fine--no intervening earthquakes or hurricanes to speak of--until the enormous heat of the fires undermined them. That fire was able initiate collapse in a structure that had successfully redistributed the loads after local structural damage, was a surprise to engineers. Today they understand it much better.-- Thomas Basboll 11:48, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
Let's get back on topic. The core of the disagreement is whether CTers are right to point out that the WTC collapses are unique events in engineering history. That is, whether they are surprising. The question is whether it was a surprise attack merely -- we did not expect the buildings to collapse but only because we did not expect them to be attacked with airplanes -- or whether, even given the attacks, the collapses were in need of explanation. CTers and NIST and mainstream engineering agree that an explanation was needed -- that is, they did not say, "Oh, obviously, planes and fires!". They said, "Planes and fires were able to do THAT?" And, seeing the damage to the south side of 7WTC they did not say, "Oh yeah, it's a gonner." Corley said it was peculiar because it constituted a case of building being brought down by fire. Engineers have now come to understand what originally surprised them. CTers and NIST do not agree about the explanation that has been given.-- Thomas Basboll 14:06, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
Can we now include the words "Building 7 collapsed due to fire" in this article?-- Thomas Basboll 15:56, 6 October 2006 (UTC)
Until NIST released their working hypothesis, which is to say, during the time when most of the CTs were being developed, "fire-induced collapse" was the official line. NIST seems to be rethinking this, but if that's the case then it actually confirms what CTists have been saying since the FEMA report (which also says it), namely, that fire (the only official hypothesis) "has a low probability of occurence". NIST has now released this new hypothesis, emphasising that it is far from the last word, and using the odd formula "fire and/or debris". Not only can this be read as "debris alone may have done it" (which can't be what they mean), it suggests that the collapses were "initiated" by something that happened 7 hours earlier. I have no idea what they want to say by that. Obviously, the really interesting new angle being pursued by NIST is the investigation of "hypothetical blast events". At least in an article about conspiracy theories suggesting demolition.-- Thomas Basboll 06:45, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
Actually, it collapsed from gravity. NIST simply hasn't put any resources in this sideshow and that doesn't suggest anything except that they haven't put any resources into it. As I understand it, they are doing so now but, as NIST says, there is simply no evidence that it collapsed from anything other than as a result of terrorists flying airplanes into buildings. -- Tbeatty 06:52, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
And to get to the surprise of structural engineers, the surprise was the amount of damage caused by the planes. The presence of fireproofing materials on the main structural elemtent says that fire was a concern for steel structures. Skyscrapers were obviously not designed to withstand both the structural damage and the post-crash fire. The debate in the engineering community is whether there needs to be changes to code to withstand this kind of damage and fire and whether more robust fire suppression methods need to be employed. But the "surprise" that the building collapsed is over the amount of damage, not the collapse itself. Protecting structural elements with fire retardent materials is testimony to the danger of collapse from fire. -- Tbeatty 07:01, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
Just to be clear: I don't think this is about advancing either position. It is about informing the reader about what the substance of the disagreement is. On my view, CTists don't believe that the fires could have done what the official and/or mainstream investigators say they did, namely, "induce" the collapse. I.e., bring the buildings from their impact/debris weakened states to the point of collapse and onward to total progressive collapse. I am not denying that the buildings were damaged by the airplane impacts and debris. I am saying (and suggesting that officialdom is on my side) that they survived being damaged in this way and were then, as the only three buildings in history to experience it, were finished off by fire.-- Thomas Basboll 07:37, 7 October 2006 (UTC)
http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs_8_2006.htm Now, do you understand Basboll and Salvnaut? -- Sloane 04:31, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
I dispute the truth of the lead sentence "No structural engineers have come forward to support the controlled demolition hypothesis". The Organisation "Scholoar For Truth 911" has four members who are structural engineers: Joseph M. Phelps, Doyle Winterton, Michael Lovingier, Ted Muga. Phelps is a Chartered member of the "Structural Engineering Institute of the American Society of Civil Engineers" and "Structural Dynamicist Charter". Even that paragon of bias "Screw Loose Change" accepts this [26], although they oddly try to use his age and experience to discredit him. Mongo disagrees, declaring it to be 'baloney'. I've been around Wikipedia long enough to understand that Mongo's word is law, so I won't argue further. However, I do humbly lodge my powerless misgivings here. Self-Described Seabhcán 13:35, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
Are any of those engineers experts in their field? Have they written a published/peer reviewed paper that contests the collapse? Do they hold any academic position?-- Sloane 16:19, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
A closer look at the names mentioned:
-- Sloane 17:03, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
I've put in what I hope becomes the standard "structural engineers generally reject" formula.-- Thomas Basboll 18:19, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
A big stretch...to say that a handful of "engineers" (none of which have published a paper in a scientific journal regarding CD of the WTC)....are "experts" on the matter based on their opinions is a big stretch. Yes, for all purposes, no engineers support the CD version of events...becuase not one treatise has been published by a relaibale third party. It's that simple.-- MONGO 21:03, 8 October 2006 (UTC)
I think we are back again to the discussion whether Jones paper has been peer reviewed or not (it has been for sure, some question the quality of peer review, saying no engineer has reviewed but it is a physical paper). I don't want to discuss it now, but Tbeatty, what exactly you don't like so much in ""No structural engineers who are experts in building collapse have published reviewed papers that contest the NIST collapse theory" ? It describes precisely a situation, wile putting "No one has..." is just not true... SalvNaut 19:13, 9 October 2006 (UTC)
A just released poll has these results "Do you think that George W. Bush personally knew before September 11th 2001 about intellegence reports that warned of possible terrorist attacks against the United States using airplanes, or not?" Personally knew 57% Did not know 33% DK/NA 11% this compares to a May 2002 CBS poll which showed knew 41% Did not know 43$ DK/NA 16% [34] The question is on page 30 of the linked PDF 69.114.117.103 08:26, 11 October 2006 (UTC) (Ed Kollin)
Just did an episode on 9/11 conspiracy theories. This is very relevant. How do we work it in?-- Tbeatty 05:14, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
The government is behing the 9/11 Conspiracy Websites so that it looks like they are all powerful.
Later, in Chicago, the boys find another group, who, with the Hardly boys, reveal that all the conspiracy websites are fake, and run by the government---and then Bush comes, and it becomes evident that the government wasn't behind 9/11---they actually run the websites, so that the 1/4 of the country who are dumb enough to believe conspiracies will believe the government is all-powerful---which the government wants them to believe---while the smart ones know the truth, which is that "a bunch of pissed off Muslims" actually did do it. And an even bigger secret then comes out---Stan was the one who pooped in the urinal ("the stalls were all full and I didn't want to be late for recess! I didn't think it'd turn into such a big deal!") Thus at the end, the terrorists were behind 9/11, though the government wanted some people to believe otherwise for their own power; and Stan had to clean the urinal he pooped in.
-- Tbeatty 05:34, 12 October 2006 (UTC)
This article is not a graduate course in logic. The fact that half of the space in that section is taken up trying to explain affirming the consequent means that it really does not belong there. Just say this is how the president and secret service acted. Cite people who claim that this shows foreknowledge leave in the cites for the rebuttals (he was trying to prevent panic) and leave it at that.
The section mentions how Farenheit 9/11 made the reading “My Pet Goat” that seem famous. While true enough in the film a British General is quoted as saying that he has seen that look many times meaning Moore was explaining the behavior as shell shock or combat stress not foreknowledge. 69.114.117.103 17:58, 12 October 2006 (UTC) (Ed Kollin)
These topics were mainly mentioned in the 2001-2004 period. To my dismay dispite the fact that these topics cause me more sleepless nights then any other topics mentioned in the article these topics are rarely mentioned in websites and discussion of 9/11 conspiracy theories these days. We have to decide if theories that are not mentioned much currently belong in the article. If we decide that LIHOP in general really does not belong. If we do decide that this is article worthy then this should have a section of it’s own. 69.114.117.103 17:58, 12 October 2006 (UTC) (Ed Kollin)
Rep Welden as most of you know has accused the agency of having a secret unit Able-Danger that named Mohammed Atta and three other hijackers a year before the attacks a charge that was recently denied in a Pentagon Inspector Generals report is facing an investigation by the agency into charges that he used his influence to secure lobbying and consulting contracts for his daughter [35]. 69.114.117.103 10:45, 16 October 2006 (UTC) (Ed Kollin)
Who added the mainstream account to this article? If there is an issue about the length of this, why is MORE mainstream description added when there is a huge article devoted to this already as the September 11, 2001 attacks? I think it should be removed and replaced by a link. bov 19:18, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
I have restored the United Airlines Flight 93 section at 9/11 conspiracy theories#United Airlines Flight 93. It was deleted when this page was supposedly being split into subpages. I have given it a bit of a clean up, but many of the references need names and it needs the general scrutiny the rest of this article has gotten. — Reinyday, 19:03, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
as israel conspiracy has become very popular, why don't we create a new main page related to it (rather than a page section)? Nielswik (talk) 23:04, 17 October 2006 (UTC)
Someone should add, under the Israel section, a section about the Mossad agents who were caught filming the towers before the planes hit, and celebrating when the planes hit and the towers collapsed. http://ww1.sundayherald.com/37707
I know, I know. I should do it myself. Maybe I will.
CelestialDog 06:16, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
Do we really need to mention the GNAA?-- Sloane 19:58, 20 October 2006 (UTC)
in the criticism section, the comments of michael shermer are repeated, as i dont have too much experience with the history of the article, i just figured i would mention it and someone can take a closer look at it KarlJohannes 14:04, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
It seems bizarre to have to read the text of September 11, 2001 attacks all over again laboriously at the start of this page, even though the whole point of this article is supposedly to refute many of the claims in those paragraphs. For example in the second paragraph it says, "they piloted these planes themselves," but many 9/11 researchers believe that the planes may have operated on autopilot or some other means. Why repeat the entire official version at the start of this article? For example, the article Holocaust denial does not need to restate the whole holocaust in parapgraph 2 of that article -- it's common knowledge, the same as what happened on 9/11, so why the overbearing repeat of the official version here, yet barely 2 sentences of the questioning of the official version on the September 11, 2001 attacks page? bov 05:50, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
When I first saw this video clip on YouTube, it just creeped me out. Watch the last 30 sec, you'll see what I mean. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1V7yqCbfxEg aido2002 09:03, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
If the article is correctly comprehensive without degenerating into too much fluff, then don't worry about reducing the length to arbitrary limits. Byzantine Empire is 120 kb and a recent Indian FA was passed at 100 kb despite several standing objections to its length. Let the topic define the length. I'm not endorsing winding passages, but I've seen too many forced reductions and splits going on. -- Zeality 17:03, 30 October 2006 (UTC)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0v0_HDwg84&mode=related&search
this may or may not deserve a mention in the article. He's probably just going crazy :P 216.52.163.1 19:32, 1 November 2006 (UTC)LUID
This claim has small tidbits of fact but is essentially false. <-- Is this vandalism? It looks like the next sentence is in reference to the one that this interrupts. A number of conspiracy claims in this article are shown by evidence in the article to lack validity. However, this particular sub-section introduces little countering evidence, other than the suggestion that, if we take the accused at their word, the group of men were not celebrating as the WTC burned. Instead, this "misreporting" was exaggerated due to personal differences with a certain eyewitness. "This claim has small tidbits of fact but is essentially false" sounds like a comment, possibly in response to reading the section. Is this vandalism? -- Sin cloro 23:37, 4 November 2006 (UTC)
There is a number of scholars and professors who question 9/11. For this article to put out that the scientific community in a whole agrees is wrong, please revise that. -- 63.224.245.74 03:51, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
This article is one of thousands on Wikipedia that have a link to YouTube in it. Based on the External links policy, most of these should probably be removed. I'm putting this message here, on this talk page, to request the regular editors take a look at the link and make sure it doesn't violate policy. In short: 1. 99% of the time YouTube should not be used as a source. 2. We must not link to material that violates someones copyright. If you are not sure if the link on this article should be removed, feel free to ask me on my talk page and I'll review it personally. Thanks. --- J.S ( t| c) 07:06, 7 November 2006 (UTC)
On Topic: First off Rep. Curt Weldon was defeated so does his claim about able danger carry less import? If the able danger section is kept should his defeat be mentioned in the article? And after Jan 20th the article has to be changed to former Rep Curt Weldon.
Indirectly on topic: Now I am going to break Wikipedia protocol and briefly discuss the elections effect on the “9/11 truth investigation”. As of late on the morning the day after the election this was not being discussed in the mainstream media or 911truth.org or prisonplanet. The short answer is there will be no reopening of the 9/11 investigation. The Democrats won on Iraq not 9/11 conspiracy so any investigations should they occur will be Iraq related. The 9/11 commission is held in high esteem. There will be a move to pass their recommendations. In most of the post election interviews with Democrats about Iraq the Hamilton/Baker commission was mentioned. I do not have to tell you Lee Hamilton was the cochairmen of the 9/11 commission and Jim Baker’s prominent role in the Carlyle group. The core democratic base is not 9/11 conspiracy friendly. To oversimplify their views Bush is a moron who can not get anything straight therefore could not pull off a 9/11 conspiracy. It should be noted that many of the independent libertarian types who were part of the democratic coalition are 9/11 conspiracy friendly but in the short term will continue to go along with the Democrats. In the long term as Bush time in office grows smaller and then disappears the issue becomes less prominent. Of the 2008 contenders on only Hillary Clinton and Giuliani would have even a very arguable relationship to a possible 9/11 conspiracy. As for the mainstream media I think the recent spate of 9/11 conspiracy talk was a one time thing spurned by the release of the poll results and the 5th anniversary of the attacks. 69.114.117.103 17:11, 8 November 2006 (UTC) (Ed Kollin)