Who’s Afraid of 9/11 Conspiracy Theories?

The lady doth protest too much, methinks.

— Queen Gertrude, Hamlet

Whenever someone insists too strongly about something not being true, we tend to suspect that maybe it is. In their denials of involvement in 9/11, do Israel’s apologists “protest too much”?

While it would take a small book to adequately document the Israeli connection to 9/11—as Antiwar.com editor Justin Raimondo has attempted in The Terror Enigma—let us briefly recall some of the more intriguing facts as reported in the mainstream media, involving dancing Israelis, Odigo warnings, and Zim’s timely move.

The story of the five Israelis who were seen celebrating and filming as the Twin Towers burned and collapsed was investigated by Neil Mackay in Scotland’s Sunday Herald. The so-called “dancing Israelis” worked for Urban Moving Systems, later deemed to be a Mossad front by the FBI. Despite failing numerous polygraph tests, the young men were deported to Israel two months later. Back home, several of the men appeared on a TV chat show, in which one of them amazingly said, “Our purpose was to document the event.”

Two employees of Odigo, an Israeli instant messaging service, received messages two hours before the World Trade Center attack on September 11 predicting the attack would happen, Ha’aretz reported.

Zim-American Israeli Shipping Co., part-owned by the Israeli government, moved their North American headquarters from the 16th floor of the WTC to Norfolk, Virginia one week before the 9/11 attacks, incurring a $50,000 fine for breaking its lease, according to the Jerusalem Post.

Despite being in the public domain, none of these relevant facts are mentioned in the 9/11 Commission’s 567-page report.

Moreover, Philip Zelikow, the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, is concerned about the spread of such inconvenient facts to the wider public. “Our worry,” he says, “is when things become infectious…. [then] this stuff can be deeply corrosive to public understanding. You can get where the bacteria can sicken the larger body.”

But was Zelikow speaking here as an American government official or as a pro-Israeli insider?

In the same month that he authored the so-called “Bush Doctrine” of preemptive war, which provided the justification for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, Zelikow made this candid admission: “Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I’ll tell you what I think the real threat (is) and actually has been since 1990—it’s the threat against Israel.”

Yet, instead of investigating the Israeli connection, Zelikow used the 9/11 Commission to sell the Israeli-inspired Iraq war to the American people.

Zelikow’s “bacteria” quote is cited in a 2008 paper entitled “Conspiracy Theories.” Co-authored by Cass Sunstein, who currently heads President Obama’s White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, the main focus of the paper “involves conspiracy theories relating to terrorism, especially theories that arise from and post-date the 9/11 attacks.”

Rather than attempting to debunk such theories, Sunstein and Vermeule claim that those who suspect Israeli involvement in 9/11 suffer from a “crippled epistemology.” This, the authors argue, is due to “a sharply limited number of (relevant) informational sources.” In other words, “they know very few things, and what they know is wrong.”

To counter these suspicions, Sunstein recommends “cognitive infiltration of extremist groups, whereby government agents, or their allies (acting either virtually or in real space, and either openly or anonymously) will undermine the crippled epistemology of those who subscribe to such theories. They do so by planting doubts about the theories and stylized facts that circulate within such groups, thereby introducing beneficial cognitive diversity.”

It could, of course, be argued that Sunstein’s work also suffers from a crippled epistemology—his research relies heavily on pro-Israeli sources, most notably the notorious Islamophobe Daniel Pipes.

Pipes is a bit of an expert on conspiracy theories, having written two books on the subject. “Conspiracism provides a key to understanding the political culture of the Middle East,” Pipes opines in The Hidden Hand: Middle East Fears of Conspiracy. “It helps explain much of what would otherwise seem illogical or implausible, including the region’s record of political extremism and volatility, its culture of violence, and its poor record of modernization.”

Like Sunstein, Pipes is concerned that many in the region suspect Israeli involvement in 9/11. “The implications in the Middle East are quite profound,” Pipes told the LA-based Jewish Journal. “It’s one more brick in the edifice of fear and loathing of Israel and the Jews.”

In the absence of a proper 9/11 investigation, there remains a broad range of opinion about the precise nature of Israeli complicity. In The Terror Enigma, Justin Raimondo tentatively concludes that the Israeli connection to 9/11 amounts to “foreknowledge and passive collaboration with Bin Laden’s jihad.” Other experts, such as Alan Sabrosky, are less circumspect. Dr. Sabrosky, former director of studies of the Strategic Studies Institute at the US Army War College, has recently stated that “it is 100 percent certain that 9/11 was a Mossad operation. Period.”

Either way, it’s hardly surprising that some of the most obsessive critics of 9/11 “conspiracy theories” have ties to Israel. If Americans ever find out that their “staunchest ally” had anything to do with the mass murder of their fellow citizens on September 11, 2001, the would-be conspiracy debunkers have good reason to be afraid.

Maidhc Ó Cathail writes extensively on U.S. foreign policy and the Middle East. Read other articles by Maidhc, or visit Maidhc's website.

15 comments on this article so far ...

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  1. Rehmat said on April 3rd, 2010 at 10:01am #

    Daniel Pipes is not only among America’s top “Dirty Dozen Islamophobes”, he is also listed as an “Author” in the “Israeli Hasbara (propaganda) Committee”. Therefore, he is the last credible person to be taken seriously in cases of various Mossad’s False-Flag operations.

    As Dr. Alan Sabrosky, former director of studies at the US Army War College, told Gordon Duff, senior editor ‘Veterans Today’ in interview (watch video below) that Israeli Mossad was behind the 9/11. What makes Sabrosky unique is that we have a Jew who can hardly be called “self-hating” or “anti-Semitic” or against Israel. He is consistent in everything he says. His point is that you are an American or you are an Israeli but you can’t be both, especially now with Zionism turning Israeli foreign policy into a “runaway train.” 9/11, as Sabrosky sees it was the watershed in a relationship between America and Israel that has gone from bad to unsurviveable, especially for America. He contents that AIPAC exercises near total control over the electoral process in America through the ability to outspend any other group and destroy anyone who stands against them.

    http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2010/04/02/us-doesnt-need-enemies-when-it-has-israel-as-friend/

  2. emmett23 said on April 3rd, 2010 at 11:59am #

    The claim that the Mossad masterminded 9/11 is not made by bona fide 9/11 truthers. It is made by those who try to whitewash the US authorities and “blame the Jews”. This was the method used by Adolf Hitler and his henchmen who feared a socialist revolution against the German upper class: He succeeded to deflect this revolutionary energy upon the Jewish minority.

    Whereas there are good reasons to suspect the Mossad or other Israeli agencies to have either knowingly or unknowingly assisted in 9/11, all evidence points to the duo Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld as the prime movers of 9/11.

    Not even the most fanatic Jews would dare undertake a mass murder of American citizens within the United States behind the back of the US authorities, even if they could. They would thereby endanger the very existence of the State of Israel and the physical security of Jews. There is no reason to believe that the Mossad would act with the risk of alienating the entire American nation against Israel.

    It is much more likely that the US oligarchy framed some Israelis and/or American Jews or involved them somehow into the 9/11 scheme, in order to blame them if the need would arise, of having “manipulated” US politicians and generals to commit 9/11.

    While Israeli politicians may have been happy with the fall-back of 9/11, namely that the US would lead a “war on terror”, and even expressed this fact, as Bibi Netanyahu has done, this cannot be construed as evidence for Israeli involvement in the crime.

    Finally, anyone who wishes to be taken seriously in blaming the Mossad for 9/11, will have to demonstrate that this theory can accomodate ALL known facts surrounding 9/11, including the war games that were scheduled for 9/11, the “stand down” of the airforce ordered by Dick Cheney (as per the testimony of Norman Mineta before the 9/11 Commission), and the fact that the first country to be attacked was not an “enemy of Israel”, but Afghanistan, a strategic location in central Asia for the US, as disclosed by Brzezinsky.

  3. dan e said on April 3rd, 2010 at 4:19pm #

    Thanks to Mr. O’C. for saying out loud what so many are thinking privately. Thanks also to Rehmat for cogent comment. Hopefully this signals the start of open discussion of this possibility.
    It’s about time that those devoted to learning the exact details of how the 911 false flag op was pulled off should stop excluding the recorded facts indicating Zionist involvement, and start demanding full investigation of these aspects of the case, which are probably much more significant than the exact chemistry of the explosives used.
    Mr Emmet23 typically demands that before anything can be taken seriously enough to warrant serious investigation, the whole case must be proven. But proven to whose satisfaction?
    Here’s a fact to take into account: both Cheney and Rumsfeldt were/are disciples of the late Leo Strauss, whose great accomplishment was to package the worldview and morality of Ze’ev Jabotinsky into a “philosophic” form he could peddle in the US academic environment. So what evidence is there that Cheney and Rumsfeldt were other than a cpl of Zionist Power Config stooges?

  4. Rehmat said on April 3rd, 2010 at 8:12pm #

    emmett23 – It’s part of “Israeli Hasbara Committee” members’ strategy to live in their world of “self-denial”. However, even if the 9/11 truth comes dancing naked in front of world – it would not do any good – because the event have 101% served the prophies of “The Protoicols” and the “Pan-American Century” project written by a bunch of Zionist Jews on the behest of Bibi.

    Here is a link to some of the recent Israel’s False-Flag operations – but then Israel-Firsters will no doubt call them conspiracy theories – the same way Dr. Ahmadinejad has called the so-called “Six Million Died” story.

    http://www.gnosticliberationfront.com/zionist%20crimes%20history.htm

  5. Tony Wicher said on April 3rd, 2010 at 9:24pm #

    I understand science. Therefore, I know that the World Trade Center buildings did not collapse because two of them were hit by airplanes, but because all three of them were blown up with explosives. Of this there is no doubt. However, to say that 9/11 was a “Mossad operation” shows a lack of grasp of reality. This operation had to be directed from the highest levels of the U.S. national security apparatus. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Myers were in command. Are they Mossad agents? No, Israel is an arm of Anglo-American imperialism, has been since the beginning. No doubt they knew about the plan, but they are not the principal perpetrators.

  6. MichaelKenny said on April 4th, 2010 at 5:31am #

    The interesting thing about 9/11 is that it has destroyed the American Empire. It caused the US to precipitate itself into unwinnable wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, an unwinnable diplomatic confrontation with Iran and an unwinnable cultural confrontation with the entire Muslim world, thereby undermining its military, economic and political power. Thus, if the attack was the work of some Islamic group, they have pulled off one of the biggest political coups in human history. If, on the other hand, if was Mossad, or even some American group, they committed one of the biggest blunders in human history!

  7. onecansay said on April 4th, 2010 at 8:17am #

    Conspiracy: An agreement to perform together an illegal, wrongful, or subversive act. A secret plan or agreement to carry out an illegal or harmful act, esp with political motivation; plot.

    Theory: A system of rules, procedures, and assumptions used to produce a result.

    Fact: Knowledge or information based on real occurrences. Something demonstrated to exist or known to have existed. A real occurrence; an event. Something believed to be true or real. A thing that has been done, especially a crime.

    Opinion: A belief or conclusion held with confidence but not substantiated by positive knowledge or proof. Judgment or belief not founded on certainty or proof. The prevailing or popular feeling or view.

    Shame: A painful emotion caused by a strong sense of guilt, embarrassment, unworthiness, or disgrace. One that brings dishonor, disgrace, or condemnation.

    Remorse: Moral anguish arising from repentance for past misdeeds; bitter regret.

    Glee: Jubilant delight; joy. Great merriment or delight, often caused by someone else’s misfortune.

    Well what I have witnessed from both sides of this fence is nothing more than a lot of finger pointing and denial. All of the above definitions can be splashed over any and all events before (for millennia) and after (forevermore) 911 . The level at which the players of these events exist is far beyond the comprehension of most human beings. This is why such things CAN and DO happen. This is just another case of the tail wagging the dog. The political posturing on all sides is lathering the entire world population into a boiling froth which will be skimmed and then let to boil over. This has been done time and time again.

    How do we turn off the heat? Personally I do not know. I have my own opinions. I have my own theories. I know certain facts.

    I do know that I would not jump up and down, full of glee having conspired to ruin an entire world civilization with no remorse or shame.

    The governments of this globe have been subjugated by EVIL, whatever the stripe they wear. This EVIL is everywhere. This EVIL tries to snake its’ way in where it is not already. China is but the next example. That is the enemy to true understanding and peace. These creatures, of no known human origins, deftly and slyly make us ‘believe’ there are two or more sides: when in fact there is only one, THEIRS.

    What we are witnessing is a family feud of “monstrous” proportions.

    Fact is Fact. Theory is Theory.

    May be best if you pack up and get out of the way if you can. This dust-up is going to get ugly, very ugly.

  8. bozh said on April 4th, 2010 at 8:44am #

    Obviously, US warlords who own ab 98% of america don’t think that latest US wars are detrimental to their interests.
    What is that the 2% who own 98% of america know that we don’t? It cld be noted also that there is no longer imperialism; instead, we have now planetarianism.
    So, the wealth is not solely in america but in the planet. One cld conclude, then, that the vast number of americans matter less than ever. The action now appears to be in free trade, globalism, defence of [?world] plutocratic ‘interests’; includes, the fight against socialism or for maintainance of iniquitous societies.
    That’s why india [an epitome of an iniquitous society] iraq, palestine, arab lands, ‘stans, much of europe and c.and s. americas are now uniting with world plutos.
    So, if vast majority of people don’t wake up, the iniquitous societies, now in their ?10 th millennium, are here to stay for a long, long time; possibly forever? tnx

  9. Rehmat said on April 4th, 2010 at 11:07am #

    Well – I never believed ignorance or self-denial being a virtue – but many people do.

    It is estimated that there are 450 billionaires and 3,000,000 millionaires in United States (more than 60% are Jewish) as per 2008. The net worth of all households in US (population aound 300 million) as per June 30, 2008 – was US$56 trillion. The 450 billionaires are worth US$1 trillion, while 3,000,000 millionairs are worth US$11 trillion – which comes to one percent of US population owning more than 21 per cent of countries resorces.

    Most of these billionaires and millionaires have accumated their wealth by managing fellow Americans’ money or looting the resources of under-develope nations – mostly Muslims.

    Capitalism at the best
    http://rehmat1.wordpress.com/2008/09/27/capitalism-at-the-best/

  10. jon s said on April 5th, 2010 at 10:04pm #

    Does anyone realize how crazy it would be for Israel to be involved in a terrorist attack on the US, in which thousands of civilians (including fellow Israeli and Jews) were killed? And then to be caught celebrating (“dancing”) ?
    I’d like to see some facts:
    Who were the 5 “dancing Israelis”?
    On which tv program did they appear and what exactly did they say?
    Where did the FBI assert that Urban Moving was a Mossad front?
    Who are the employees of Odigo who had prior warning? What did they do about it? What exactly did Haaretz report and where?
    Where is the Jerusalem Post report about moving the Zim offices?

    Despite the crackpot conspiracy theories the real “9/11 truth” is that 19 Arab hijackers , most of them Saudis, led by Mohhamad Atta and recruited and trained by Bin Laden, hijacked those planes and crashed them into the WTC, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania. There are tons of evidence that that’s what happened, not a shred of evidence that anything else did.

  11. azbadger said on April 8th, 2010 at 12:49pm #

    It is quite refreshing to see an intellectual debate about who may be behind the false flag event of 911, outside of the typical 911 Truth websites, until I saw Joe S comment “not one shred of evidence that anything else did”. Really? Take a look at this website, where 1165 architects and engineers (including me) signed a petition for a new 911 investigation.
    http://www.ae911truth.org/

    I also suggest that you review this peer reviewed scientific paper that describes in detail the physical proof of the explosives used in NY on 911. Go ahead and search the internet for a scientific rebuttal to this paper, there isn’t one. So you can pretend that there is no evidence, but don’t make ridiculous statements that there is no shred of evidence.

    http://www.bentham-open.org/pages/content.php?TOCPJ/2009/00000002/00000001/7TOCPJ.SGM

  12. magenta said on April 10th, 2010 at 1:05am #

    Emphatic thanks to Maidhc for his incredibly comprehensive but concise article. It will be extremely helpful for me for countering the often heard “Conspiracy! Conspiracy” charge. My humble hat is certainly off to all of you for your commitment to discovering the truth. I also listened to Dr. Sabrosky’s _utterly_ powerful interview. (Dare I have hope?) I am trying to educate myself and all of you are more informed than I and my teachers (thank you!), but one issue that I often encounter in discussing 9/11 which worries me is what feels like an oversimplification (or maybe it’s an overcomplication) of the broader problem. Even Sabrosky – while keeping his voice calm – talks about “creaming” Israel. Of course I hope that Americans will wake up to what’s going on, but I do not think that creaming Israel would solve the basic problem which seems to me to be the misuse of power. It worries me when we use terms like “evil” and categorize people as wearing white hats or black hats like the cowboy movies. Power will always be misused and seized upon by people who are mentally and/ or emotionally damaged. And so, ultimately (IMHO), the issue is one of continual education about the truth and about responsibility in countering the misuse of power. Clearly many average Americans are either uninformed, too afraid, or shirking responsibility. I can only hope and work toward the goal that your efforts and people like Dr. Sabrosky’s interview (jeez, that lifted my heart!) will bring about that change. Again: THANK YOU!!

  13. bozh said on April 10th, 2010 at 7:00am #

    Magenta,
    since u are new reader on this page, i’l repeat what i say often: all ills that befall us on int’l and interpersonal levels arose from priestly-shamanic division of people into more important and less important.
    Once that iniquity had been also legalized or instituted, no amount of talk or education to date had even nicked the evil system.
    It had been broken in 19th and 20th century by armed force. However, soviet building of an idyllic society came to an end mostly because of US nuclear missiles were emplaced on borders os USSR.

    Gorbachev knew his fascists and in fear of annihilation of his people he allowed soviet fascists to retake russia and other soviet states.
    China is now on the road of building a better life for of her people. Natch, once again fascists are alarmed and frightened out of their wits ab this exemplar.

    Will china also cave in? Surrounded by people who think like hitler, franco, suharto, BHO, clinton, sharon? Time wld tell! tnx

  14. jon s said on April 10th, 2010 at 7:22am #

    Azbadger, I’m jon, not joe.
    See here:
    http://www.debunking911.com/index.html

  15. Terry said on April 18th, 2010 at 1:13pm #

    jon s, your link is unsatisfactory. It points us to the paper by Bazant (to my knowledge the only paper that actually attempts to explain the entire collapse), which assumes that the upper section of the towers remained intact throughout the so-called crush down phase. The videos clearly show that the upper sections of the towers did not remain intact. Far from it, the upper sections went over the sides early on in the collapses.