9/11 Was a Conspiracy: Get over it!

by James H. Fetzer

To listen to Matthew Rothschild ("Enough of the 9/11 Conspiracies, Already", The Progressive, 14 September 2006), anyone who thinks that 9/11 was a conspiracy is profoundly irrational and unscientific. According to the government's official account, 19 Islamic fundamentalists hijacked four commercial airliners, outfoxed the world's most sophisticated air defense system and committed these atrocities under the control of a man in a cave in Afghanistan. Since conspiracies only require two or more persons collaborating in illegal acts, the official account is a conspiracy theory. Which means that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and their colleagues, who advocate this theory, are profoundly irrational and unscientific.

While I might agree with that conclusion, it is not because they are advocating a conspiracy theory but because the theory they advocate is inconsistent with and refuted by the available relevant evidence. Rothschild claims, "some of the best engineers in the country have studied these events and come up with (what he takes to be) perfectly logical, scientific explanations for what happened". But experts in physics, mechanical engineering, civil engineering, and aeronautical engineering have arrived at different conclusions. The question is not whether 9/11 involved a conspiracy but what kind of conspiracy brought about 9/11.

Scholars for 9/11 Truth, a non-partisan society of experts, students, and faculty, which is dedicated to exposing falsehoods and revealing truths about 9/11, has discovered that the Twin Towers were designed to withstand the impact of large airliners; that most of the jet fuel was consumed in those massive fireballs; that UL had certified the steel used in their construction up to 2,000 degrees F for at least three to four hours; that the fires, oxygen starved, averaged only 500 degrees F; that they only endured for one and one-and-a-half hours; that the buildings were blown-up from the top down; that there is no source of energy that can explain it on the official account; and that they "collapsed" at a rate faster than free fall.

Rothschild cites the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) as his source, but he apparently has not visited our web site, st911.org, lately, or he would know that we have published several critiques of the latest from NIST at the top of our home page. Not only do these commentaries demonstrate that NIST has been "'faking it" and has no scientific foundation for its position but that the government is so insecure about the official account that, when invited to send a team of experts to debate a team from Scholars, NIST declined and conveyed the message that there were no circumstances under which it would participate in such an exchange. Rothschild didn't tell you, but then he probably doesn't even know.

Something he should know but doesn't mention is that President Bush recently acknowledged, during a press conference that was broadcast nationwide, that Saddam Hussein had "nothing to do" with 9/11. A recent Senate Intelligence Committee Report, widely reported in the media, has found that there were no links between Saddam and Osama. Indeed, two months ago, the FBI admitted it had "no hard evidence" relating Osama to the events of 9/11, a development Ed Haas first reported in THE MUCKRAKER REPORT and that Carol Brown of INN WORLD REPORTS confirmed. If neither Saddam nor Osama was responsible for 9/11, who carried out the attacks? The American people are entitled to know.

It is of more than passing interest that, the day before 9/11, Donald Rumsfeld reported to Congress that the Pentagon had lost track of $2.3 trillion and that Larry Silverstein, who had leased the World Trade Center, had insured it for $3.5 billion against terrorist attacks just six weeks earlier. And The Project for a New American Century wanted a "new Pearl Harbor" to motivate us into supporting an aggressive foreign policy, including wars in violation of international law, the UN Charter, and the US Constitution, that the public was otherwise unlikely to support.

We believe that discovering how and why the victims of 9/11 lost their lives is the highest form of respect that they could possibly be paid. To ignore what we have found and continue to embrace the official account would be rationally indefensible and morally irresponsible. The government has been lying to us about 9/11 from scratch. We know that Saddam was not responsible. There is no "hard evidence" Osama was involved. What we have found, I regret to say, leads in the direction of implicating some of the highest officials of our own government in treason and mass murder. No alternative explanation appears to be remotely reasonable.

James H. Fetzer, Ph.D.

Founder and Co-Chair
Scholars for 9/11 Truth