History My Kind of 9/11 Conspiracy Theory
A reader pointed me to this fascinating Washington Post article about tension between the 9/11 Commission and some of its Defense Department witnesses.
Some staff members and commissioners of the Sept. 11 panel concluded that the Pentagon’s initial story of how it reacted to the 2001 terrorist attacks may have been part of a deliberate effort to mislead the commission and the public rather than a reflection of the fog of events on that day, according to sources involved in the debate.
Suspicion of wrongdoing ran so deep that the 10-member commission, in a secret meeting at the end of its tenure in summer 2004, debated referring the matter to the Justice Department for criminal investigation, according to several commission sources. Staff members and some commissioners thought that e-mails and other evidence provided enough probable cause to believe that military and aviation officials violated the law by making false statements to Congress and to the commission, hoping to hide the bungled response to the hijackings, these sources said.
This is awesome because it shows how aggressive the 9/11 Commission was in trying to cut through fradulent propaganda; and, most deliciously from my perspective, that most 9/11 conspiracy theorists have it ass-backwards.
As I have previously speculated, it seems much more plausible to me that any lying the government did about its actions in response to the terror attacks was probably an attempt to cover their asses and make it seem like they had some degree of control over the situation, despite all evidence to the contrary.
Here’s the money quote:
For more than two years after the attacks, officials with NORAD and the FAA provided inaccurate information about the response to the hijackings in testimony and media appearances. Authorities suggested that U.S. air defenses had reacted quickly, that jets had been scrambled in response to the last two hijackings and that fighters were prepared to shoot down United Airlines Flight 93 if it threatened Washington.
In fact, the commission reported a year later, audiotapes from NORAD’s Northeast headquarters and other evidence showed clearly that the military never had any of the hijacked airliners in its sights and at one point chased a phantom aircraft — American Airlines Flight 11 — long after it had crashed into the World Trade Center.
Now, mes petits conspiracy theorists, do you think that the government lied about trying to mitigate the situation because they wanted to hide the fact that they were secretly in charge of the situation? This is getting more and more convoluted. I say, Occam’s Razor, darlings. If it looks like the government fucked up, they probably did.
Just to be devil's advocate: One prominent conspiracy theory (and I think one of the more plausible ones) is that elements somewhere in the chain of command caught wind of the hijacker's plot and simply allowed it to happen. In such a scenario it would not be necessary to cover up all the string-pulling that would be involved in a government-orchestrated attack, only to cover up the failure to adequately address a known threat.
In other words, the bungled handling of the situation could have been a mixture of a little bit of deliberate negligence and a lot of just plain old negligence.
Not saying that's what happened, but it's certainly more plausible than any "the Trilateral commission orchestrated the whole thing using guided missiles" explanation.
Although I recognize this could also be a case that calls for the application of Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity."