Ever since the moment of the first impact at the World Trade Center, a struggle has raged between two broad, competing ideas of what really happened on September 11th, 2001.

The US administration delivered an almost immediate verdict, which can be described as follows: Dispatched by Osama Bin Ladin’s network and motivated by hatred and religious fanaticism, 19 suicide bombers hijacked four planes, crashed three of them into their targets, and caused the collapse of the Twin Towers as a consequence of the resulting damage and fires. The 19 men did not necessarily require any accomplices within the United States; and no one in the US government could have possibly anticipated or prevented the attacks.

Even as the administration exploited this Official Story (or “Official Conspiracy Theory”) as the pretext to launch new wars long in the making, independent researchers began to accumulate a vast body of evidence suggesting a different narrative for 9/11: that of the False Flag Operation.

• the unprecedented failure of the US air defense system on the morning of the attacks;
• the AWOL military chain of command during the actual attacks, including the inexplicable behavior of the presidential entourage;
• the seeming impossibility of official claims with regard to Flight 77;
• the evidence that Flight 93 was shot down;
• contradictions and dubious evidence in the official claims about the alleged hijackers and masterminds, and doubts about their real identities;
• signs that the alleged hijackers enjoyed high-level protection against discovery by honest investigators;
• evidence that the alleged hijackers were financed by states allied with US intelligence;
• suspicious and massive international financial trades suggesting foreknowledge of the attacks;
• widespread signs of official foreknowledge and, in fact, advance preparation for the 9/11 attack scenario;
• the long-running links between Islamist fundamentalist terror cells and US covert operations, dating back to CIA support for the anti-Soviet mujahedeen and Osama Bin Ladin himself;
• the demolition-like collapse of the Twin Towers and of a third skyscraper, WTC 7;
• and questions concerning who could have logically expected toderive benefit in the aftermath of a massive attack on the United States.

The suspicions received further confirmation a few weeks after September 11th, with the arrival of anthrax letters targeted only at opposition politicians and media figures, and timed to coincide with the introduction of the USA PATRIOT Act.

Already within those first weeks, loose networks of researchers and investigators formed via the Internet to generally become known as the “9/11 skeptics.” They presented substantial bodies of evidence to show that elements within the US government must have been involved in facilitating or orchestrating the attacks – in other words, that 9/11 was possibly a classic case of “false-flag” or synthetic terrorism, such as corrupt states have often perpetrated on their own citizens.

What motive would people in the US government or establishment have to commit crimes of this magnitude? The outrage caused by September 11th allowed the Bush administration to instantly implement policies its members have long supported, but which were otherwise infeasible. 9/11 was exploited to launch an open-ended, perpetual “war on terror,” actually a war against any and all enemies the US government may designate. The case of Iraq shows that the target countries of this war need have nothing whatsoever to do with 9/11.

The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were both planned and prepared in advance of September 11th, with the apparent motive of gaining geostrategic advantage and seizing vital resources. The architects of the Iraqinvasion within the Bush administration had earlier been members of the Project for a New American Century.

In the PNAC manifesto of September 2000 (“Rebuilding America’s Defenses”), they admitted that the American people would be unwilling to pay the stiff price for US global hegemony, full-spectrum military dominance, and the imposition of a new order in the Middle East – unwilling, that is, in the absence of a catalyzing event, an epochal lesson such as a “new Pearl Harbor.”

9/11 put the nation on a permanent war footing, allowed the extension of secrecy doctrines, and temporarily deified the President. The unprecedented public fear was stoked and exploited to allow a roll-back ofdomestic rights and liberties, as had long been advocated by key members of the Bush administration (and their allies in both major parties).

9/11 allowed the designation of “enemy combatants” in violation of international law; preventive detention and the open use of torture; the activation of long-standing “shadow government” plans; the passage of measures officially undermining constitutional government; and a wholesale re-definition of US geopolitics and American society itself.

Perhaps most important of all to potential conspirators, trillions of dollars in spending priorities were predictably shifted from “butter” to “guns” in the years after September 11th, unleashing a new wave of growth and profiteering in the war and security industries. 9/11 became a pretext for economic crisis management and transformation under the cover of war and counterterror.

From the beginning, those who doubted the official story saw the potential for achieving a different kind of global transformation. By exposing the great fraud to the public, the 9/11 dissidents hoped to reverse the policies adopted after September 11th; to end the wars; to reveal a long and sordid history of covert operations, black budgets and hidden economics; to wake up the American people to the reality of the globalist drive to corporate feudalism, which is destroying the natural environment and the lives of the planetary majority; and to motivate the people to act against this sea of troubles.

The first two years after September 11th saw the rise of theFamilies’ Movement, which kept the issue of the “unanswered questions” alive, and which forced the creation of the official 9/11 Commission. The Bush administration acted to delay, stonewall and starve all official investigations – with the complicity of the mainstream media, who ignored the festering questions or at best ridiculed those who asked them.

Many signs confirmed that there was indeed a 9/11 Cover-up: outrageous conflicts of interest within official investigating bodies, such as the appointment of Henry Kissinger and then Philip Zelikowto the 9/11 Commission; destruction of evidence; the silencing ofwhistleblowers; and the promotion of the very officialswho were responsible for the supposed failures of September 11th.

For many, the 9/11 cover-up itself became the smoking gun pointing to wrongdoing: the untenable excuses of massive serial incompetence; the endless coincidences; the insulting fairy tale that “no one could have imagined planes as weapons”; the omission and suppression of any evidence contradicting the official story.

Footnotes