Two weeks ago, my good friend Mr. Chap presented on these pages his belief that the September 11th attacks were the result of some great, government-inspired conspiracy. For the purposes of this discussion, the question of why the government should conspire to murder 3,000 of its own citizens and cause such devastating damage is irrelevant; I'm not interested in what has become a mostly political discussion in the War between Right and Left, or the nexus between Big Government and Big Business, or even why one political system should be more amenable to conflict and dishonesty than any other.
Mostly because this is because I have learned that, in many instances, people will tend to believe that which they want to believe and no exposition of truth will shift those cherished beliefs. I also don't pretend to have all the answers to all of the nagging questions of 9/11, and to say otherwise would be arrogant and dishonest.
I don't think any less of Chap for holding these beliefs, or for giving them a good, public airing. It's simply one of those areas where we will have to agree to disagree. I can't, and won't, answer many of the questions his posts have raised, if only because we don't have forever to argue over this or that obscure point. My intention here is to state some opinions and maybe dispel a few myths from the standpoint of an actual eyewitness to the tragedy that was 9//11, and to maybe to give some reasons as to why many commonly-held beliefs just might be wrong.
The best way to begin this process is probably with an examination of just what a Conspiracy Theory is, why they exist, how they evolve, and then finally become part of the National Folklore and historical record. Let's face it: a decade after the events, we still haven't, physically and psychically healed after 9/11 and probably will not for the foreseeable future. This discussion will continue for a very long time to come and we're compelled to continue having it. Personally, I would have gotten to this sooner, only it appears that my own wounds are still, ten years on, extremely raw. Much to my surprise.
What is a Conspiracy Theory?
Strictly speaking, a Conspiracy Theory is just what it says it is; a theory, and one often postulated for the purposes of providing some alternate point of view, usually with just a hint of malice, intrigue, menace, or libel added to spice it all up. Typically, the theory begins as a means of explanation for some great occurrence that does not, at first blush, appear to have a discernible motivation or cause. Human beings, for all of our other failings, are still insanely logical creatures; we need information, we like to have the surety of knowledge, but events sometimes unfold in such a way as to leave us bereft of facts and logic. We simply cannot abide a convention wherein a provable, linear progression from Premise A to Conclusion B, a straight line from This Fact to That Fact, simply doesn't exist.
In the absence of concrete proof, of ready explanations, and in the presence of a vacuum in knowledge, it is rather common for people to speculate as a means of filling in the gaps in our database. This is not always a bad thing; speculation is the bastard child of truth, after all, and if it weren't for the process of speculation and experimentation we'd probably still be living in trees, eating low-hanging fruit, and dodging sabre-toothed cats. Speculation and experimentation are the nursemaids of facts and ideas.
In the case of great events the actions and activities we witness often leave the mind reeling, and never moreso then when they are connected to tragedy and disaster. Some of the more enduring myths of American History often rotate about an axis of tragedy, disaster, mass killing or military defeat and national embarrassment. September 11th contains all of these elements -- in spades.
Throughout history we have seen people view great, cataclysmic events through the lens of conspiracy. The true reasons behind tragedy and defeat cannot always be recognized in some cold, clinical light, or chalked up to simple human error and stupidity, mainly because the enormity of those events and the real explanations of what caused them are simply too difficult or painful to fully comprehend. In some cases, the constructed alternate explanation becomes a substitute for unattractive truth about the Nature of Man and his limitations and failings. An external force must be responsible, one that is always invisible and beyond the ability of John Sixpack to see, understand, or defend against.
Whatever the proximate cause of the theory, the event itself is typically such as to leave us extremely puzzled, saddened, disappointed, disillusioned, and angry. Someone...anyone...must be blamed and held responsible immediately, regardless of actual guilt. It is human nature to demand a head in the direct aftermath of a great disaster, to identify the person or forces at work even before we get to the business of figuring out just what has transpired and how it happened. The first question people usually ask is "Who?", and often this is not immediately apparent. To assuage that anger, to apply guilt and responsibility to someone, it is not unusual for people to concoct a theory that is, on the whole, pure speculation, with a dash of recrimination, a pinch of excuses, and a spoonful of ulterior motive. We construct something which protects us, psychologically, from the unpleasant realization that we're not perfect and that we may not be in complete control of our own destinies.
September 11th lends itself quite readily to this process. Within minutes, millions were experiencing a thing, either as eyewitness, victim or distant bystander, to something so enormous, so mind-numbingly impossible, that it literally defies belief. And they were all experiencing it simultaneously through being there or vicariously through the media as wasn't possible with many events previously. 9/11 had it's own play-by-play commentary and analysis, as the thing was happening, as if it were some deadly and disgusting sporting event. Few events in history can boast of the media coverage, the real-time pictures, the small armies of correspondents and experts scraped up with great haste and broadcast all over the world to an information-hungry public riveted to their TV screens, radios, and web pages.
Answering even fundamental questions, especially as the events attendant to them are still unfolding, is difficult, to say the least, perhaps impossible if the goal is to simply report everything as quickly as possible. It is in this initial confusion, with contradictory 'facts' and unconfirmed reports and 'enlightened' speculation flying furiously, that the seeds of conspiracy theory may be planted. Our need for facts outweighs our ability to sift them properly. Reports that later turn out to be false or misleading stick in the brain. I'll give you an actual example from 9/11 itself:
I was there when the first plane hit 1 WTC. In fact, I was directly under that aircraft, and I'm only alive today -- and emerged unscathed -- because of pure, dumb luck. I had not seen or heard the 757 that hit 1 WTC coming, I only noticed the passing shadow a split second before the scream of the engines at full power could be heard. I heard and felt the crash rather than saw it, but there was no mistaking this fact; an airliner had just rammed the North Tower, and the streets below were immediately showered in twisted metal, broken glass, and flaming debris falling from some 90 stories.
After about 30 seconds of extreme shock, I ran the four blocks to my office on Greenwich Street, and upon arrival, heard one of my coworkers telling everyone who would listen that a small plane had just hit the World Trade Center. "They" said so on television. When I told him that it wasn't a Cessna, but a great, big, bloody Boeing Widebody, and that I was actually there and saw and was almost killed by it, he didn't believe me.
Within 5 minutes of the event a local television station was reporting that a small plane had hit the North Tower, and it had become accepted truth, unshakable even in the face of eyewitness testimony. Within 5 minutes the legend that a small aircraft hit 1 WTC before the arrival of the first airliner, was already being believed by thousands, perhaps tens of thousands -- or at least One Guy -- and some of them, even ten years later, will tell you this is Bible Truth whether they witnessed it or not. Mostly because it was on television, and they figure no one would have bothered to report that if it wasn't true.
In the rush of adrenaline, in the fog of confusion and shock, objective truth is usually the first casualty; unconfirmed information is taken as Gospel, rumor substitutes for fact, and although the unconfirmed report may later be corrected, or the rumor later dispelled, they remain in the minds of the people who initially believed them and become part of their official history of the event, often without our realizing it.
All the other events of that day are for another post. Suffice to say that after my brush with instant, crushing, flaming death that morning I then had myself a ringside seat to everything else that unfolded, including being covered in that thick, grey, gritty, greasy dust that was a mixture of pulverized concrete, atomized glass, toxic residues and the ash of everything your worst nightmares might imagine. I was there when both towers collapsed; I saw it happen. I bore the evidence of it all the way home and spent hours scrubbing it off my body, and then spent more hours repeating the process every day for a year afterwards. That dust never went away, and somehow always found it's way inside your clothing and into the folds of your skin beneath.
That, too, is for another post. We must return to our original topic of why 9/11 probably wasn't a government conspiracy. But, the preceding passage was an illustration of just how it is that a conspiracy theory can be formed so quickly and persist for so long.
Primarily, the conspiracy theory, then, can be said to be born of a lack of information. Many other theories, like the Cessna crashing first theory, were probably already germinating in the fear and horror of the first few hours and minutes of 9/11 because of the lack of solid information and confusion. In some deep, psychological sense that I'm not qualified to explain, this is probably unavoidable. Our initial views, formed in such a crucible, are likely to be skewed, disjointed by shock, ignorance and consternation.
By itself this is the perfect soil for the planting of conspiracy theory seeds. What followed is mostly the fertilizer, if you will, that enabled some of those seeds to grow so rapidly into hardy specimens. The official investigation into the events of 9/11,too, leaves much to be desired, primarily because some of the people involved leave much to be desired, and have had ulterior motives of their own ascribed to them, fairly or not. I won't trouble you with a roll call of the rouges gallery that begins with Jamie Gorelick and Sandy Berger and their supposed responsibility or (alleged) criminal activity with regards to the proximate causes of 9/11. Suffice to say that their involvement in the post-disaster examination struck some as leaving the foxes to guard the hen house, and much has been made of their supposed motives and ability to skew the official report. Those accusations, true or not, have also been fodder for conspiracy theorists, and we'll not cover them here.
But if you begin to think about some of the things which the 9/11 Commission uncovered, you begin to see just why it is that some conspiracy theories about government involvement are so damned persistent. We found out that Mohammed Atta (the alleged ringleader of the attack) was sent a letter by the Immigration and Naturalization Service stating that his request for an entry visa had been declined -- because he was on a Terrorist Watch List! -- six weeks after his kamikaze death on 9/11. It would later turn out that CIA, FBI and a host of other alphabet-soup agencies had reams of material on Al Qaeda, Usama Bin Laden, Atta and his confederates, flight schools, Zacharias Moussaoui, and potential plots, but had no effective way to make use of this information, or were prevented by acting by policy, judges, or the inactions of bureaucrats.
Much of the information that did reach the 9/11 Commission was in redacted form, a process in which information is deliberately blacked-out, cut out, or omitted so as to protect secrets, means, or individual witnesses and informants. That this data was presented in this form at a time when an angry public was demanding information and heads is also problematic, and lends itself to conspiracy theory intimating that 'someone' doesn't want us to know 'something', a convention which fairly screams 'Conspiracy!'.
Think about it: a confused accounting of events and causes, contradictory eyewitness testimony, high emotions, political axes to grind, an impatient public thirsty for information which is doled out in heavily-redacted thimbles, a government commission full of the very people who may have been directly responsible charged with exposing their own errors and incompetence, great gaps deliberately torn in the historical record, records lost, stolen or destroyed, and above it all, the retroactive defense of individuals and institutions. The wonder of 9/11 Conspiracy Theory isn't that there's a theory at all, it's that so few theories seem to have been spawned!
It has been said that Conspiracy Theory is simply history for stupid people. Technically, this is not strictly true; while some conspiracy theorists may not be after absolute truth, more concerned with assigning blame, approbation, or devious motives to an opponent, it doesn't necessarily follow that they're all stupid, nor does it follow that they all have sinister motivations. In some cases, it can be said that Conspiracy Theory does serve some useful purpose. Even Jesus had his Doubting Thomas, after all.
The problems arise, however, when the (unproven) Theory evolves into a matter of unquestioned Faith, despite the verdicts of Reason, and becomes a wedge with which to separate people or prevent honest debate. It may indeed turn out one day to be true that 9/11 was a conspiracy of the American government for any reason we like to attach to it, but for the time being, we can only say with some certainty that it was, at least, an Al Qaeda conspiracy, perhaps aided and abetted unintentionally by government ineptitude. In any case, to believe the U.S. government perpetrated the murder of it's own citizens and destruction of billions of dollars in property is to believe that the government which pays $400 for a hammer, $16 for a corn muffin and can't find illegal aliens when they show up for work or attend public schools, is to believe it suddenly capable of performing amazing feats of cloak-and-dagger without anyone spilling the beans, fucking up by the numbers, or taking credit. This is a stretch of the imagination that one can probably only make under the influence of some strong narcotics.
It's the same government whose own Immigration and Postal services knew where to find Mohammed Atta, but whose law enforcement and intelligence services didn't, presumably for lack of an address. When someone needs to be blamed or identified as the Mastermind, and individuals are not available for this duty, we naturally assume that it simply 'must' be the work of some evil cabal, hiding in the shadows of public life, operating above the law and beyond the standards of decent behavior. The same has been said of the Knights Templar, the Illuminati, Freemasons, Opus Dei, and who knows how many other organizations. In the absence of a guilty individual, it must be the fault of the secret collective.
The truth, that your government is run and operated by complete retards,most of whom only have a job because they could pass a multiple choice examination designed for 3rd grade reading level, and that those people make mistakes, is too terrible to contemplate. The truth that there are forces in this world who have dedicated themselves to causes which require the deaths of others on a massive scale is somehow also beyond comprehension. Hovering above it all, the Conspiracy Theory, something often woven out of whole cloth, or from incomplete facts, preserved by it's abilities to resist truth, often hiding behind the ridiculous belief that because this or that point cannot be proven or disproved, that this inability constitutes proof positive that the conspiracy exists! The Conspiracy Exists because it cannot be identified or explained; the Conspiracy is always wrapped in yet another Conspiracy.
I do not say that all Conspiracy Theory is bunk, and I do concede that some Conspiracy Theory does, indeed, serve a useful purpose in at the very least providing an alternate or temporary explanation that serves to continually breathe life into questions that remain unanswered, and may, with the passage of time, possibly never be asked or answered again. There may be many more secrets to 9/11 that will not be exposed to the light of day for some years to come, if ever, but it is still important that someone continue asking the questions and that someone continually re-examine the record if only because authority needs to be audited and held accountable if it isn't to grow into tyranny.
Next time, we'll look at some specific reasons why the 9/11 Conspiracy might not have been one formulated and perpetrated by the U.S. Government against it's own citizens.
