The 9/11 Truth Deniers' Question that will not Go Away: Part 1

     Theories of how the September 11, 2001, attacks were carried out present us with a dilemma. Seemingly, two groups of mutually contradictory theories are impossible to believe.

In the official theory, nineteen poorly trained young men carrying out impossible feats of skill amid a dizzying array of coincidences and disproven excuses for the failure of every relevant part of the U.S. government to follow standard operating procedure. In alternative theories, hundreds or even thousands of people were involved in a massive conspiracy. How, we are asked, could that many people have kept something that big a secret from the American people?

     Propagandists for the first theory have been so successful that it has become the default theory. Rather than following simple logic by rejecting this impossible scenario, almost everyone falls into the belief that it can’t be rejected until an alternative theory has been proven. No, logic demands that the impossible first scenario must be rejected outright and that the puzzling second scenario be examined further and explained.

     Logic also demands that we question everything. In the first part of this series, I’ll cover well-trod ground by trying to answer the first question: How could that many conspirators keep that big a secret from the American people? In the second part of this series, I’ll question the basic assumption of that question and disprove it.

     If 9/11 was an inside job, it would have to have involved President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, WTC owner Larry Silverstein, the Israeli Mossad, other Israeli officials, several private security firms, North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD), the corporate-owned media, and many others. The number of people involved must have run into the thousands.

     In answering the question as asked, whole systems thinking requires us to ask two counter questions: Are there other known instances of government successfully keeping that big a secret? If so, how did they manage it?

     The Manhattan Project, to build the world’s first atomic bomb, was just such a secret. The above top secret Manhattan Project involved 130,000 people, and it was kept a secret until the time the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima.

     Everyone who has ever watched a spy thriller has heard a line similar to, “All information is on a need-to-know basis, and you don’t need to know.” That’s how the Manhattan Project was conducted. 

     Let’s look at only 1,196 people involved in keeping the big secret, and how little they actually knew. You can imagine how more than 100,000 other keepers of the secret were similarly given the mushroom treatment.

     In mid-July 1945, a Portland-class cruiser named the USS Indianapolis (CA-35) delivered two atomic bombs within striking distance of Japan. Not one of the 1,196 officers and enlisted men aboard the Indianapolis knew what they were delivering. No one at the delivery point yet knew what the two crates contained. Even the location of the Indianapolis was top secret. When the Indianapolis was sunk by a Japanese submarine, its distress signal was assumed to be a Japanese trick, since no American ship was known to be in the area. When the Indianapolis failed to return to port, no one missed them because no one knew anything about them. The survivors spent the next few days going mad from hunger, thirst, and shark attacks. They were rescued only because a pilot on anti-submarine patrol accidentally noticed them in the water. Of approximately 900 men who had survived the sinking, only 317 survived the shark attacks. In the worst naval disaster in American history, 879 men took the secret of the Manhattan Project to their deaths, and not one of them even knew what the secret was.

     That’s just one vignette from the big secret known as the Manhattan Project. I’ve just described hundreds of people involved in a top secret. Not one spilled the beans, because not one of them knew enough to spill anything. Not even President Truman knew about the Manhattan Project until he “needed to know.”

     Look up from your computer for a moment. Suppose you had wanted to keep the building and furnishing of a home like yours a secret, and suppose it were hidden in a remote location.  Do you think that the furniture manufacturers knew that they were making the furniture for your home? Did the appliance manufacturers know? What about the lumber jacks and hardware suppliers? Thousands of people supplied your home, but only a few knew the location of your home.

     That’s how it was with the Manhattan Project and a number of other projects of the federal government. Use your favorite search engine to search the following: “Manhattan Project” secret “need to know.” You’ll find references to the stealth bomber, the CIA’s black budget, health issues, Area 51, and others.

     For agencies of the federal government, keeping big secrets from the American people is the norm. Whole books, praise by highly respected sources, have been written on the subject. The book Secrets: The CIA’s War at Home, is given favorable treatment by the American Journalism Review.  A Culture of Secrecy: The Government Versus the People’s Right to Know is praised by Seymour Hersh the Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who uncovered such secrets as the My Lai Massacre and America’s Abu Ghraib torture chambers. 

     The federal government’s best-kept secrets, however, are the secrets that wishful thinkers keep from themselves. Though there are many, I will delve into only one: the 9/11 false flag attacks, which I’ll present in the second part of this series.
    For more information on the September 11, 2001, false flag terror attacks, click here.

Thinking the Unthinkable and Speaking the Unspeakable to Prevent another 9/11

     I had not intended to write another 9/11-related article this soon after a four-part series on the 9/11 hijackers. Current events, however, have made 9/11 of current importance. This article can scarcely wait.

     I've always heard that there’s no such thing as a stupid question. One of my students taught me otherwise. The best example of a stupid question is one that was answered immediately before the question was asked. A monumentally stupid question is one that has been answered so many times that the answer should be obvious to even the densest of questioners. So it is with the following question: “How can we believe that officials of our own government would kill thousands of their countrymen for the sake of starting a war for money and power?”

     In this article, I’ll cover well-trod ground by showing that officials have done so throughout American history. Then I’ll issue a warning that, if unchecked, officials of our government will be party to doing the same thing in the Strait of Hormuz in the near future.

     First of all, some rethinking is necessary. Contrary to popular belief, there’s no moral difference between illegal wars and other illegal killings of our fellow human beings.  Putting the imprimatur of government on murder doesn't make it something less than murder.

     Put yourself in the position of someone who is criminal enough to publicly lie more than ninety times to provide a pretext for sending his countrymen into war for the sake of power and profit. You would know in advance that thousands of your countrymen would die as the result of your decision. Hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians would die as a result of your decision.

     Using the word war to describe the situation places the government stamp of approval on your actions and somehow seems to make it okay. Instead of being called murder, it’s called unwise policy. Once the war is started and the fraud is discovered, the proffered solution is not to stop murdering people but to “stay the course” because we’ve “committed” ourselves, and "national honor" is at stake.  It's considered more honorable to continue the carnage than to stop  it. Failing to remove our fellow Americans from mortal danger is hypocritically cast as failing to “support our troops.”  What the troops desire, which is to go home, doesn't enter the equation.
     Let's get real.  Whoever desires the cause desires the results.  Whoever desires the course of action that causes thousands of American deaths and hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths is desiring the very thing that he's causing.  There is no moral difference between causing deaths after starting an unjust and illegal war than there is in causing deaths in order to start an unjust and illegal war.  Any person who would do one would do the other.

     Since the War of 1812, the greatness of American Presidents has been judged by the magnitude of the wars they’ve started, the power gathered to the presidency, and the human rights the Presidents have been violated. The greater the evils committed, the more the President is admired for his presumed greatness.

     Since 1861, every major war the United States has fought has been as a result of the other side being maneuvered into firing the first shot, or as the result of a false flag. Since 1861, more than a million Americans have died in wars that America has entered on false pretences. This is murder on a vast scale.

     At this point, some readers are aghast that I should suggest that America's most admired President had started a war on false pretenses—one that claimed the lives of 600,000 American servicemen and countless thousands of innocent civilians who were starved into submission.  From the time South Carolina seceded from the Union on December 20, 1860—a right that Lincoln, when he was a young congressman, had supported—South Carolina sought a peaceful means of occupying Fort Sumter, which was on South Carolina soil.  For months, local civilians provided food and other necessities to the Union garrison there, though instruments of war were not allowed to get through. Almost as soon as Lincoln was sworn in as President, he announced the Big Lie that the Union garrison was starving.  In April 1861, the South was maneuvered into firing the first shot when Union forces attempted to move additional instruments of war to Fort Sumter, under the false pretenses that they were delivering food to a "starving garrison." 

     Once the war was started, Lincoln allowed the terrorist leader William T. Sherman to use deliberate starvation as a weapon by destroying the ability of innocent civilians to grow food.  The photo above shows the remains of Columbia, South Carolina, after Sherman ordered it burned to the ground.  Giving lie to the pretext that they were "liberating" the slaves, Grant and Sherman kidnapped able-bodied male slaves and even freedmen, forcing them to do labor for the Union army.  Though they were forced to wear Union uniforms, neither Grant nor Sherman trusted them to bear arms.  Many able-bodied blacks hid in the woods until the yankees had left; then they went back to their families and back to work.

     Coming to the present date, it is now well-known except to the willfully ignorant that America and a criminal elite started or entered the present wars in Afghanistan, North Africa, and the Middle East on false pretenses. Of course, the sociopaths who started these wars knew beyond doubt that tens of thousands of American servicemen and hundreds of thousands of civilians would die as a result of their actions. This, too, is murder on a vast scale.

     Some 2,700 more deaths in Manhattan, Washington, and Pennsylvania would make little difference to such criminals as they. With trillions of dollars in profits to be made, and emergency powers to be declared, citing trumped-up enemies, a few thousand more deaths would cost them little sleep.

     Retired Major General Smedley Butler hit the nail on the head when he said, “War is a racket!” For a re-enactment of a portion of his speech, see the video below, or read his book War is a Racket.

     For a PDF free download of the book War is a Racket, click here.

     A few days ago, I read in the paper that the USS Enterprise (CVN-65, seen above) would be given another year of active service due to the seriousness of events in the Strait of Hormuz. The events in question were created almost entirely by the American government, the Israeli regime, and faded allies such as England. NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) is threatening a blockade against Iran, which is nowhere near any North Atlantic nations. This action, if carried out, would be an act of war against a nation with whom we’re technically at peace.  Iran hasn't attacked another nation in over 360 years; America has attacked over a half dozen nations in the past ten years, so who's the aggressor?

     Just as it was with the Lusitania (a luxury liner that also carried troops and armaments for the British) before America’s entry into World War I and with the embargo against Japan immediately prior to America’s entry into World War II, the U.S. is provoking Iran into a conflict. Informed sources believe that either the Israeli regime or the U.S. will deliberately sink the Enterprise to provide a pretext for a U.S. led invasion of Iran.

     Israel (the modern irreligious regime, not the Chosen People mentioned in the Bible) has a lengthy history of false flag events against allies in order to get those allies to fight Israel’s enemies for them. The King David Hotel Massacre, the Lavon Affair, the (very un-Jewish) Israeli attempt to sink the USS Liberty, the Berlin disco bombing (a joint CIA and Mossad black bag job), and probably the attack on the  USS Cole are only a few of the  many examples of Israeli perfidy.  

     If the USS Enterprise is sunk, we will know it was not done by Iranians but by America's so-called "best friend in the Middle East," with the cooperation of the Wall Street-dominated Obama Administration. If enough Americans are forewarned, however, the false flag attack on the Enterprise may be called off, and war with Iran may be averted. The next few months will tell.

     It's worth taking another look at the Corbett Report video When False Flags Don't Fly (above).  I've probably watched that video more times than Corbett has.

Boundary Conditions for the 9/11 Hijackers, Part 4: Aftermath

     In the first three parts of this series, I described the boundary conditions for the tasks laid out for the September 11, 2001, hijackers.  This, brief as it is, is the aftermath.
     Within hours of the terror attacks of that day, Florida Governor Jeb Bush had Huffman Aviation's records confiscated and sent to Washington, D. C.  (link) In case you're wondering whether Jeb Bush was related to someone whose name you've seen in the papers, the answer is, "Yes."  

     Jeb Bush is the brother of George W. Bush, who was President of the United States at the time of the 9/11 terror attacks.  He was also the man responsible for the way the votes for the 2000 presidential election were counted in Florida.  That particular vote count, and how it was carried out, decided who would be elected President in 2000.  George W. Bush was also responsible for stonewalling the creation of a congressional investigation of 9/11 for fourteen months.  (link) (link)
     Jeb Bush is also the brother of Marvin Bush, who was in charge of security at the World Trade Center from the day after George W. Bush was inaugurated President until the day before the planes crashed into the twin towers.  (Source: Yahoo Answers)
     Jeb Bush is also the son of former President George H. W. Bush, a business partner of the bin Laden family. (transcript of BBC expose)
     In investigating the events of September 11, 2001, you may not find a terrorist behind every bush, but isn't it odd that you seem to find a Bush behind every terrorist?

     *          *          *

     You've probably seen the cartoons in which someone has deliberately left a clear trail for rescuers to follow.  The September 11 terror attacks were possibly the only criminal case in history in which the criminals were extremely generous in leaving evidence for investigators to follow.  By my count, there were at least fourteen stories featuring different treasure troves of evidence incriminating the 9/11 hijackers, most of which was left in plain sight on the day of the hijackings.  (Source: History Commons)

     To give one example, one hijacker's luggage was left at the airport when he went aboard the plane.  The luggage included the hijacker's identification, a copy of the Koran, and a videotape on how to fly a Boeing 757.  

     Why did he need luggage?  Why did he need the videotape on the way to the airport?  There was no way to watch it on the way to the airport.  Or was he hoping that whoever found it would return it to Blockbuster for him to avoid a late fee?  I hope he was thoughtful enough to rewind it first.

     You're probably already aware of some of the September 11 miracles.  In one, the plane completely evaporated from the heat of jet fuel, yet the hijacker's passport somehow survived in legible condition.  Just hours after the attack, a passerby happened to spot it among several thousand tons of rubble and several hundred thousand scraps of paper.  The passerby immediately recognized it as the passport of one of the hijackers and reported it to the proper authorities.

    *          *          *

     Much has been written about the seven alleged hijackers who turned up alive after the attacks, and of the fact that CNN failed to mention Arabs in its lists of people aboard the four hijacked planes.  Both errors have the same origins.

     Within hours of the attacks, the four passenger lists were broken down into two lists: four lists of hijackers and four victims' lists. CNN published what they called a victims' list, which bloggers immediately assumed were flight manifests.  That there were no Arabic names on the supposed manifests led people to believe that there had been no Arabs on the planes.  

     As for the list of hijackers, the FBI was highly scientific in its methods.  If the passenger had an Arabic-sounding name, he was initially assumed to be a hijacker; otherwise, he was a victim.

     If former basketball player Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Oklahoma City bomber Terry Nichols, and mass murderer Charles Manson had been on those planes, Kareem would have been listed as a hijacker, while Terry and Chuck would have been listed as victims.

     Mohamed, which has multiple spellings in the Roman alphabet, is the most common given name in the world, and there are a lot of Arabic family names that sound as similar as Smith and Schmidt.  The FBI, with the same adroitness that they had previously used when dealing with pre-9/11 warnings, compared their lists of Arabs on the planes with lists of suspected terrorists that they'd been keeping for no apparent reason.  When they found a near match, they assumed it was a match.  That method is about as useful as the spell checker when you key in the name Nancy Pelosi; it suggests that maybe the name should be Plosive, Peloponnese, Pelvic, or Pelagic.   

     Anyone who tells you we shouldn't question the official story should be made informed of the unscientific methods by which the official story came about. 

*          *          *

      In 2002 and 2003, the owners of both flight schools in Florida attended by 9/11 hijackers were involved in suspicious airplane crashes.  Here's a quote from History Commons:

     "Within the space of seven months, the owners of two Venice, Florida flight schools attended by several of the alleged 9/11 suicide pilots are separately in serious air accidents. On June 26, 2002, Arne Kruithof, whose Florida Flight Training Center was attended by Ziad Jarrah, survives a crash at the Venice Municipal Airport. He is a passenger in a twin-engine plane, which suddenly pulls to the left when about 50 feet off the runway and the pilot is unable to regain control. All the passengers are uninjured, but the plane is damaged extensively. [VENICE GONDOLIER SUN, 6/29/2002] On January 24, 2003, Rudi Dekkers, whose Huffman Aviation was attended by Marwan Alshehhi and Mohamed Atta, crashes his helicopter. He is flying to work early in the morning for a meeting with a competitor, to sell his flight school to them. Ten minutes after takeoff, his engine cuts out and he crashes into a river. He is rescued from the ice-cold water by a friend and fellow helicopter pilot who pulls him to shore. He arrives in Venice later in the day, and is able to proceed with the sale of Huffman Aviation. Two days earlier, the Associated Press had announced that Dekkers was to be arrested on felony fraud charges (see August 23, 2001-April 2004). [ASSOCIATED PRESS, 1/22/2003; ASSOCIATED PRESS, 1/24/2003; VENICE GONDOLIER SUN, 1/25/2003; NAPLES DAILY NEWS, 1/25/2003; SARASOTA HERALD-TRIBUNE, 1/28/2003] In 2011, Dekkers will say that he is convinced someone tried to kill him, although he doesn’t know who. 'The fuel lines were cut.'"

*          *           *

     As I pointed out in a previous article in this series, the plan described in the official version of 9/11 events did not meet the boundary conditions for Osama bin Laden.  In fact, many of the boundary conditions were completely outside bin Laden's control.  We must therefore conclude that events must have been conducted according to a different plan.  

     Identify the people who had control over 9/11's boundary conditions, and you have identified the perpetrators.     
Boundary Conditions, Part 1: Overview
Boundary Conditions, Part 2: The Pilot Hijackers
Boundary Conditions, Part 3: The Muscle Hijackers
Other September 11, 2001, articles in this blog

Boundary Conditions for the 9/11 Hijackers, Part 3: the Muscle Hijackers

     As far as I know, no one has attempted to ask what qualifications the 9/11 muscle hijackers had for doing the grunt work on the hijacked planes.  Let's look into it.
       In the first part of this series, we discussed the concept of boundary conditions.  A strategic planner doesn't just "make do with what he has" and hope for the best.  He determines what conditions must exist for his project to succeed.  If even one condition fails to exist, or is outside his control, he either alters his plan or abandons it altogether.
     In the second part of this series, we examined the boundary conditions needed for the pilot hijackers to succeed in their respective missions.  The boundary conditions simply did not exist, but we're expected to believe that the 9/11 planner(s) went ahead anyway and the plan succeeded by dint of a series of highly unlikely accidents.
     Now let's turn our attention to the muscle hijackers.  A muscle hijacker was someone who, as the term suggests, provided the muscle for the hijacking.  A muscle hijacker's job was to scare the bejeebers out of the passengers and flight attendants and keep them in line. 
     What qualifications would be most reasonable for muscle hijackers?  Let us return to the image of Osama bin Laden pecking away at his laptop, making decisions that would bring about the most sophisticated terrorist act in history.

     Hmm, he thinks, I've already picked terrorists who'd make good pilots for a Boeing 757: four guys, none of whom has ever sat at the controls of an airplane—not even a Cessna. Now who would make good muscle hijackers?
      Consistent with his earlier decision to recruit pilot hijackers who weren't pilots, Osama bin Laden decided to recruit muscle hijackers who weren't muscular.   Far from filling the role of muscle hijackers, those fifteen young men would have been better qualified to play Munchkins in a remake of The Wizard of Oz.  Even Newsweek reporter Fareed Zakaria, actors Art Malik and James Belushi; and CNN reporter Christiane Amanpour would have been more intimidating than those guys.
     Would you have picked puny runts with boyish faces, of whom the 9/11 Commission Report would say, “Despite the phrase widely used to describe them, the so-called muscle hijackers were not at all physically imposing; most were between 5' 5" and 5' 7" in height”? Would you have picked men so lacking in English skills that they needed to be taught “a few basic words and phrases”?  (link to 9/11 Commission Report, Chapter 7)

     Remember that English skills were required for a wide variety of tasks needed to make the plan a success.  To give just one example, how did they make reservations on four planes that would be leaving three different airports, hundreds of miles apart, within 47 minutes of each other (two from Boston, and one each from Washington and Newark)?
     Oh, and let's not forget that the ironically termed "muscle" hijackers needed weapons to supplement their scrawny frames.  They were supplied with plastic serving knives and box cutters.
     I mentioned boyish faces.  I realize that Audie Murphy, of World War II fame, had a boyish face, but he also had a machine gun.  A boyish face and a machine gun will get you more respect than just a boyish face.  
     In bold type below, I've emphasized the ages of the muscle hijackers:

      Mohamed Mohamed el-Amir Awad el-Sayed Atta (alleged hijacker pilot AA11 WTC North Tower, age 33) Muscle hijackers: Waleed al-Shehri (22), Abdulaziz al-Omari (22), Satam al-Suqami (25) Wail al-Shehri (28)

     Marwan al-Shehhi (alleged hijacker pilot of UA175, WTC2, age 23) Muscle hijackers: Fayez Banihammad (24), Mohand al-Shehri (22), Hamza al-Ghamdi (20), Ahmed al-Ghamdi (22)

     Hani Hanjour (alleged hijacker pilot of AA77, Pentagon, age 29) Muscle hijackers: Khalid al-Mihdhar (26), Majed Moqed (24), Nawaf al-Hazmi (25), Salem al-Hazmi (20).

     Ziad Samir Jarrah (alleged hijacker pilot of UA93, Shanksville, age 26) Muscle hijackers: Ahmed al-Haznawi (20), Ahmed al-Nami (23), Saeed al-Ghamdi (21).    
     They ranged in age from 20 to 26.  The average age of a 9/11 muscle hijacker was between 22 and 23.  Nine out of the fifteen muscle hijackers were 22 years old or younger.  Four of them were 20.
     How do we explain the curious behavior of muscle hijacker Khalid al-Mindar (age 26)? Chapter 7 of the 9/11 Commission Report says, “The last muscle hijacker to arrive was Khalid al Mihdhar. As mentioned earlier, he had abandoned Hazmi in San Diego in June 2000 and returned to his family in Yemen. Mihdhar reportedly stayed in Yemen for about a month before Khallad persuaded him to return to Afghanistan. Mihdhar complained about life in the United States. He met with KSM, who remained annoyed at his decision to go AWOL. But KSM's desire to drop him from the operation yielded to Bin Ladin's insistence to keep him.” 

     How’s that again? He abandoned the project because he disliked “life in the United States.” (How long did he think he'd be living in the United States?)  Then he fled to the bosom of his family before being coaxed into going back to the United States and getting killed. In a nutshell, just because he got a case of culture shock, he ran home to his mama.  Then he was coaxed into going back and deliberately getting himself killed.  Ruminate on that one for a moment.

     Just as the pilot hijackers were allowed to wait until they'd arrived in the United States to take basic flying lessons, the muscle hijackers were allowed to start building muscles after they'd arrived in the U.S.  That is, they were sent even before they were qualified.
     The more closely a person looks at the terror attacks of 9/11, the more impressed he is with how meticulously planned almost everything was.  No matter how careful the planning was, though, the success or failure of the plan—assuming that it went according to the official story—depended on the hijackers.  
     Everything about the recruitment, training, and equipping of the hijackers, however, seemed astonishingly slipshod.  They seemed to be little more than props.  That's the weakest link in the chain.
     Further, the weakest link in the hijacker story was that these unimpressive-looking young naïfs  were provided with "weapons" that are commonly used as children's toys. The only source of information for the story that the hijackers used cardboard box cutters and plastic serving knives was the word of Theodore Olson, the lawyer involved in the Florida vote count that helped secure the presidency for George W. Bush.  His wife Barbara was a neo-conservative commentator and another Bush operative. (link)
     Olson claimed that his wife had made a cell phone call from Flight 77 and said that the hijackers had used plastic serving knives and box cutters.  Olson's word was discredited by phone company records, cell phone technologists, and the testimony of FBI agents in open court. (link)  If that one point in the 9/11 story is discredited, then we must question everything else in official story of 9/11.
     Everything I’ve read about the alleged 9/11 hijackers indicates that they were patsies who didn’t know they were going to get killed. Not one of them had any special qualifications. Everything about them suggests that they were naïve cannon fodder who were recruited only because they were expendable. 

     As Lewis Carroll wrote in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, "It just gets curiouser and curiouser."  Next, we'll look at the curious aftermath in the fourth and final article of this series.

Part 1: Boundary Conditions, Overview
Part 2: Boundary Conditions for the Pilot Hijackers
Part 4: Boundary Conditions, Aftermath
Other September 11, 2001, articles in this blog

Boundary Conditions for the 9/11 Hijackers, Part 2: The Pilot Hijackers

     In the first part of this four-part series, I mentioned the boundary conditions faced by the mastermind of the September 11, 2001, terror attacks.  The plan called for four pilots when not even one pilot was available.  Instead of altering the plan, which is what most strategists would do, this strategist recruited four young men who had never sat at the cockpit of even the smallest of airplanes.

     What follows is the training they received, supposedly in hopes that it would be enough to qualify them to fly complex and difficult maneuvers from the cockpits of Boeing 757 airliners.  Judge for yourself whether Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Hani Hanjour, and Ziad Samir Jarrah met the boundary conditions for a successful completion of their respective operations.  Bear in mind that, unless stated otherwise, all the information in this article came either from 9/11 Commission Report, Chapter 7, from Wikipedia articles, or from other established sources.

     Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi (the alleged pilot hijackers of AA11 and UA175, respectively) arrived in the United States in June 2000 and took flight training on small airplanes at Huffman Aviation from July 6 through August 7, 2000, as part of Huffman's "Accelerated Pilot Program."   The term is misleading, because their training was exclusively on a Cessna 172, for which they received instrument ratings in November.  On December 29, they went to Opa-Locka Airport, also in Florida, and practiced on a Boeing 727—not 757—simulator. That, apparently, was the extent of their flight training.

     Between the two of them, Atta was clearly the pilot. Huffman Aviation witnesses told the 9/11 Commission that they’d never seen Marwan al-Shehhi at the controls of an airplane. Huffman Aviation employee Anne Greaves said in an interview, “It was always Atta.”

     Here’s what Wikipedia, the Readers Digest of the dot-com generation, says about Hani Hanjour, the alleged hijacker pilot of UA77:

     “[I]n January 2001, Arizona JetTech flight school managers reported him to the FAA at least five times because his English was inadequate for the commercial pilot’s certificate he had already obtained. It took him five hours to complete an oral exam meant to last just two hours, said Peggy Chevrette. Hanjour failed UA English classes with a 0.26 GPA and a JetTech manager said “He could not fly at all.” His FAA certificate had become invalid late in 1999 when he failed to take a mandatory medical examination. In February, Hanjour began advanced simulator training (for a Boeing 737) in Mesa, Arizona.” 

     Here's what History Commons has to say of Hani Hanjour's training on the 737-200 simulator:

     "9/11 hijacker Hani Hanjour practices on a Boeing 737-200 simulator for a total of 21 hours at the JetTech International flight school in Phoenix, Arizona. Hanjour also attends ground school and pays just under $7,500 for the training. Despite only completing 21 of his originally scheduled 34 hours of simulator training, according to the FBI this is the best-trained of the four hijacker pilots (see Spring-Summer 2001). However, an instructor comments: 'Student made numerous errors during performance… including a lack of understanding of some basic concepts… Some of the concepts involved in large jet systems cannot be fully comprehended by someone with only small prop plane experience.' [US DISTRICT COURT FOR THE EASTERN DISTRICT OF VIRGINIA; ALEXANDRIA DIVISION, 7/31/2006 ] The school contacts the FAA to warn it of Hanjour’s poor English and flying skills (see January-February 2001)." (emphasis added) (link)

     In August 2001, only a few weeks before the 9/11 hijackings, Hanjour tried to rent a single engine Cessna 172 from Freeway Airport in Maryland. He was declined when they saw that he had difficulty controlling and landing the plane. (link to source)  Bear in mind that Hani Hanjour was alleged to have executed a perfect 380-degree turn during a steep dive and flown a Boeing 757-200 barely twenty feet above the ground for over a mile before crashing into the first floor of the Pentagon without messing up the neatly manicured lawn.

     Ziad Samir Jarrah didn’t require any flying skills to crash a plane into a few square miles of open field in Pennsylvania. I could have done that myself, and probably would have, though not intentionally. Still, let’s not leave out his pilot training.

     Jarrah took flying lessons at Florida Fight Training, not far from Huffman Aviation, from June 2000 until January 2001. Even today, Florida Flight Training’s fleet of airplanes range from the Cessna 152 to the Piper Turbo Seneca II.  

     Now I ask you the question I asked in the first part of this series, and ask you one more question:

1. If you were planning the most sophisticated terrorist act in history—one that required superb abilities in piloting a Boeing 757—would you have picked as your pilots people who didn’t know how to fly, and try to train them to fly a Boeing 757 in time for the operation to succeed?

2. Given what you now know about the alleged 9/11 hijacker pilots, do you think they had the skill to handle Boeing 757s as described in the official version of events?

     If your answer to either of those questions is, “No,” then the official version of events is a lie. The terror attacks on September 11, 2001, were an inside job.

     A person looking back on historical events tends to see them as though they were inevitable. One may therefore argue that Osama bin Laden had to "make do with what he had."  In reality, though, that's not the way successful projects are planned and carried out. Every successful project takes boundary conditions into account.

  As I pointed out in the previous article in this series, boundary conditions are conditions that must exist for a project to succeed. Boundary conditions may also be seen as the conditions that influence whether a project can succeed.  If your resources fail to meet even one of the boundary conditions, you must either alter your plan or abandon it altogether.

     In the official version of 9/11, Osama bin Laden needed pilots for the project to succeed. He didn't have pilots. In fact, many of the boundary conditions for the official version of the 9/11 attacks simply did not exist. Most of the boundary conditions for events that we know of that day, such as NORAD standing down for over an hour, were completely outside bin Laden's control.

     In any area of research into the events of 9/11, ask yourself two questions:

1. What were the boundary conditions?

2. Who had control over the boundary conditions?

     Answer those two questions and you'll know who was responsible for the events of September 11, 2001.

Part 1: Boundary Conditions, Overview
Part 3: Boundary Conditions for the Muscle Hijackers
Part 4: Boundary Conditions, Aftermath
Other September 11, 2001, articles in this blog

Boundary Conditions for the 9/11 Hijackers, Part 1: An Overview

     Every article about the qualifications of the September 11 hijackers I’ve ever seen has been an attempt to answer the question, “Could they have done everything they were accused of doing?” In this article, I take the position of a strategist and ask, “How could anyone with their lack of qualifications have been trusted to do it?”

     In the process of developing a successful strategy, the strategist always considers the boundary conditions.  Boundary conditions are conditions that must be present in order for a strategy to become successful.
     If, for example, you wanted to make lemonade, you'd need water, lemon juice, a sweetener, a container, and a means of mixing the ingredients.  If you lacked even one of those conditions, you'd have to alter your plans or abandon them altogether.  When plans for the September 11, 2001, terror attacks were being formulated, this principle could not have been ignored.

     In this four-part series, we'll examine the boundary conditions for just one aspect of the 9/11 terror attacks: the hijackers themselves.  What were the boundary conditions for how the hijackers were recruited?  What qualifications did they have when they were recruited?  How were they trained to meet the boundary conditions necessary for carrying out their respective tasks?  Finally, did they in fact meet those boundary conditions?
     (Except where otherwise noted, most of the information for this articles came from 9/11 Commission Report, Chapter 7 or from Wikipedia articles on 9/11 or the biographies of the alleged hijackers.  I've chosen not to reference specifications for planes, tour buses, or Volkswagens.)
      Discussion of the pilot hijackers' qualifications, can be confusing because only a small minority of the people on Earth are pilots. Fewer still are commercial airline pilots. As such, we have little frame of reference for comprehending what the alleged 9/11 hijackers were said to have done. It’s like the saying, “One death is a tragedy; a million is a statistic.” For that reason, let me start with an analogy that should make this mind-boggling question more manageable. 

     Suppose you were starting a tour guide service to be officially launched in less than two years. The tour bus will need a driver. Whom would you hire? Would you hire someone who has never been behind the steering wheel of a car and hope that, within two years, he’d be skillful enough to operate a tour bus?  If the answer to that question is, “Yes,” how would you train him to operate a tour bus—by sending him to a driving school to practice with a Volkswagen?

     Now put yourself in the position of Osama bin Laden, the supposed mastermind of the 9/11 conspiracy. You’re sitting in a cave in Afghanistan, hunched over your laptop, planning the most sophisticated terrorist act in history.

     It’s not an easy feat, especially considering the distractions. The most skillful intelligence agency the world has ever known, the CIA, is looking everywhere for you. Luckily for you, CIA agents never consider that, since you regularly need dialysis treatment, they could be monitoring area hospitals that are properly equipped to perform dialysis treatment. Meanwhile, a CNN reporter just saunters into your cave, sees you concentrating on your work (with knitted eyebrows and tongue sticking out, no doubt) and says, “Whatcha doin’?” You give him a scoop, send him on his way without disemboweling him, and go back to your laptop.

     Hmm, you think, who would make good pilots for a Boeing 757? Would you pick four guys, none of whom has ever sat at the controls of an airplane—not even a Cessna? Would you have them trained exclusively on light aircraft and flight simulators for light aircraft?  Then would you just hope for the best?  Is that how you would plan the most complex terrorist operation in history?
     Who would be suitable as muscle hijackers?  Would you have chosen scrawny, boyish-looking men with an average age of 22, most of whose heights were in the range of 5' 5" to 5'7", and who spoke no English?  Would you have let them wait until they'd arrived in the United States to begin their language training and weight training?
      In the second article of this series, we’ll examine the pilot hijackers—that is, the hijackers who were given responsibility for flying the Boeing 757s. In the third article, we’ll examine the muscle hijackers—the ones whose job was to cow the passengers and flight crew into submission. In the fourth and final article in this series, we’ll look at some post-9/11 events regarding the hijackers.     
Part 2: Boundary Conditions for the Pilot Hijackers
Part 3: Boundary Conditions for the Muscle Hijackers
Part 4: Aftermath
Other September 11, 2001, articles in this blog

Explaining Conspiracy Theory to the Proverbial Man from Mars

     When we’re asked to explain something to a person who has no concept of the thing being explained, we’re sometimes told, “Suppose somebody dropped in from Mars. How would you explain it to him?”

     I recently found myself facing a more daunting challenge. What if the man from Mars came from a culture with a long history of never questioning authority figures? How would you explain conspiracy theory to him? After all, conspiracy theory is based on the idea that authority figures sometimes lie, and that we should question them.

     Just how I accomplished this task may be useful to many of y’all. This article is a brief description of how I handled these challenges.

     I began by saying that I would ask them a question about what they saw. I showed them the following video clip and asked them if the building had fallen by accident or if professionals had brought it down. All of them correctly said that the building had come down as the result of an accident. I then asked them the reasons for their answers.

      I showed them the next video clip and asked the same questions.  To keep them from seeing the words "controlled demolition," I had to advance the video to the 2:13 mark.  All the students correctly said that professionals had brought the building down, and they said why they believed this.

     I then explained to them what the term controlled demolition meant, but I didn’t tell them what they should expect to see when a controlled demolition takes place. Then I showed them the next video clip and asked them the same questions I had asked them before.

     All of them said that it was a case of controlled demolition and said why they believed it. I then told them that the building in question was World Trade Center Building 7, and that the U.S. government had said that it wasn’t a controlled demolition. We further discussed it.

    Then I showed them the following video clip and asked them two questions about it.

     The first question was, “In which direction did President Kennedy’s body fall, forward or backward?” I had to explain to some of them what the words forward and backward meant. They all said that his body had fallen backward. The second question was, “From which direction did the bullet come, a or b (indicating back or front)?” They all said that the bullet had come from the front. I then told them that the U.S. government had said otherwise, and we discussed it.

     Only then did I introduce the matter of conspiracy theory.

     First, I gave the legal definition of conspiracy: “Two or more people involved in a plan to do something that’s against the law.”

     Do government officials conspire? I showed them a slide depicting the covers of two books: Sun Tzu’s The Art of War (which was familiar to all of them), and Machiavelli’s The Prince. The latter, I said, is as important to politics as the former is to military science. According to Machiavelli, “Politics, by its very nature, is conspiratorial,” and, “There have been many conspiracies.”

     Then I hit them with a dilemma: Newspaper reporters are authority figures you’re conditioned to trust. Government officials are also authority figures you’re conditioned to trust. What happens when newspaper reporters and government officials say the opposite of one another? They can’t both be right.

 I showed them two pictures; one was a pair of newspaper reporters named Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein; the other was of Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman, who had played Woodward and Bernstein in the movie about these events. (Yes, I appealed to their trust in movies, which are another authority figure.) Step by step, I led them through the story. Woodward and Bernstein were, by definition, conspiracy theorists.

 I showed them the men who were arrested and mentioned that one of them had a White House telephone number on his person. They were arrested for burglary, attempted wiretapping, and—what was the other? Oh, yes—conspiracy. At a click of a mouse, the word guilty flew onto the screen and, one by one, stamped itself on the suspects’ faces.

     The next slide showed seven men who worked directly for President Nixon. Four were charged with conspiracy, some with obstruction of justice, some with both crimes. I had to explain the legal terms. Again, the word guilty stamped on the faces of six of the seven. The seventh, Charles Colson, received the Latin words nolo contendre, meaning “uncontested.” Colson, too, went to prison for conspiracy.

     Next, it was former Attorney General John Mitchell’s turn: “perjury, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy: GUILTY.”

     Then came the President of the United States Richard Nixon with eleven articles of impeachment, several of which involved conspiracy: “Resigned to avoid impeachment,” and “Pardoned by President Ford.”

     Considering that their own former president is languishing in a local prison, all this information struck a familiar chord.

     I then had them try a little experiment. I showed them a picture of Renaissance painting of a really ugly woman and said, “She’s a really ugly woman!”

     I instructed them to reply, “Oh, that’s just a conspiracy theory!” Then we’d see if calling my remark a conspiracy theory automatically made it untrue. At those words, I clicked the mouse, and the ugly woman faded into a picture of Cameron Diaz. We tried it again with another picture, and the ugly woman faded into a picture of one of their teachers, who is somewhat pretty.

     I said, “Hmm. Let’s try something different.” I showed them a picture of the beautiful actress Gabriella Anwar and said, “She’s a really beautiful woman!” When the students responded as instructed, the picture faded into a picture of one of the students present. “Is she really, really ugly?” I asked them. They didn’t comment, but I’m sure that they agreed that she was pretty.

     Having nailed this one down, we turned to a seemingly unrelated topic: causes and cures for cancer. You can imagine where that discussion led.