Let's assume I'm wrong and the CIA knew about the plan or was even part of it - then what ? immediate withrawal from Afganistan/Iraq ? offer to sell Iran the bomb ?

the fact remains - no one was able to show that it was not Al Q.

The problem is that 5 years after, such attacks are still possible and likely.

In real murder cases, there are always weaknesses. the better your lawyer, the weaker the case.

If your loved one was murdered, but the murderer would walk free because eye witnesses disagree - even though his finger prints were on the gun that fired and he confessed to using it, Will you be satisfied that justice was done ?

Which similar event "had no weaknesses" ?

No one has been able to show that it was. They claimed responsibility for the London bombings, even though they had nothing to do with it. I'm not saying that they didn't have anything to do with 9/11, but to say that nobody has been able to show that it wasn't them, and therefore the conclusion is that it was?

Right now a lot of the evidence needed to put this issue to rest is being withheld by the government, making it impossible to find a smoking gun. I believe that one day someone will find it.

Prior to last Wednesday you may have said "Nobody has been able to prove the existance of secret CIA prisons in Europe". Prior to the Abu Ghraib prison scandal you might have said that there was no evidence that US engaged in torture or inhumane treatment. Just because the evidence doesn't exist today doesn't mean that something won't turn up in the future.

I've just spent most of the afternoon reading a timeline of the events on 9/11. The link is here:

http://cooperativeresearch.org/timel..._9/11=dayOf911

Be warned - this is not for the faint-hearted. It's a minute by minute breakdown of the events of the day, containing links to sources where the information comes from, details of conflicting stories and much more. It appears to be some sort of massive community effort, similiar to a wiki.

Why is this useful? For those who want to dig, there is plenty of material to dig into. It's also a useful tool because you can quickly jump to lists of events listing a certain person, or find the original source where the information comes from. It includes a lot of conclusions from the official 911 commission where appropriate.

There are currently 438 events in the timeline, and I've got through the first 300. I'm up to 9:55 on the day.

I must say that the overall impression of the way things were unfolding is one of multiple incompetancies - people not being informed when they should, muddling of orders, etc. This is to be expected in a situation like this. But the thing that strikes me as odd is the way that the main players like Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz seem to not share the same sense of urgency as everybody else. In Michael Moore's film he touches on Bush's failure to react and makes a good point, but in Loose Change it doesn't really go into it. As you read the entries in the timeline it becomes even more strange. Even if Bush was a bit thick and didn't know what to do it's very strange to think that the secret service, knowing that there were mutliple terrorist attacks didn't immediately remove him from the school - his schedule and location were public knowledge.

Anyway, for those of you who have the time and the will - enjoy checking it out - I'd be interested to hear comments from those who do use this timeline for further research.

Funny how fast Romania became part of europe once the CIA is using it's "facilities" , but if the Romanias are asking to work visas they become "east Europeans". ]

your latest post proves a very important point: conspiracy assumes everybody (on the plot side, at least) are working efficiently together. but this never happens (except in our local chapter of the free masons )

Today it is the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, so I'm sure this issue is very much on everybody's mind, including those of us in the tinfoil hat brigade . I thought I'd open my post with a quote:

Are those of us that buy the official story blind to the unanswered questions? Are those of us who don't buy the official story blind to the fact that there might be logical explanations for all of it? Do we allow our own bias towards our beliefs to affect how we look at this issue?

Anyway as I said earlier I spent a lot of time yesterday reading that timeline and digging around. I finished reading the entire thing this morning and just wanted to share some of my observations with those on this thread who have been following.

I didn't find anything on the timeline to support the theory that flights 93 (crashed in field in Pennsylvania) and 77 (Pentagon plane) landed at Cleveland (outlined in the last part of Loose Change). However it did seem that communication between the various air traffic control districts, the FAA and other parties was poor to say the least.

I did dig up some material that wasn't covered in the film. Some of this may be due to the fact that it came to light afterwards. Anyway these are the points that I found interesting:

(all links come from cooperativeresearch.org, though I have been experiencing major timeouts on this site today - it could possibly be overloaded)

The only really good visual confirmation that the plane which hit the pentagon was a 757 came from a pilot of a military C-130. Despite the FAA ban on all flights at the time this also happens to be the same C-130 that also verifies the crash of flight 93. Click here to see details of how the C-130 fits into the story. Apart from this there seem to be no other good confirmations that people saw a 757 slam into the pentagon. As we already know the FBI visited those who has survelliance cameras within two minutes of the crash and confiscated them.

We know that the last part of the tape from the black box recorder on flight 93 seems to have nothing but hissing for the last minute. It recorded all details faithfully right from the start, including what seemed to be the passengers regaining control of the plane. Immediately after that the tape hisses for a minute, then stops. What happened in that final minute? It seems that a lot of people saw a small white jet near the plane before it crashed (scroll to 3rd entry, 10:06). Many also hear a missle (2nd entry on the same page). A chunk of engine is found more than a mile from the crashsite, as well as debris from inside the plane, suggesting that the plane may have broken up prior to impact. A heat-seaking missile would have targetted the engine if it had been fired. Remember also that in some of those phone conversations a whooshing sound was heard prior to impact. In one conversation a passenger reported white smoke in the cabin prior to impact. These references on his recording are now denied and the person who took the call is not allowed to speak to the media.

Amazingly, even though there was almost nothing in the way of plane debris or body parts found at the scene large quantities of what appears to be mail survives. Despite initial eyewitnesses finding almost nothing, the FBI later manages to recover 95% of the plane.

There's an awful lot more that doesn't add up, but I could go on quoting references all day. So what happened? Was it shot down? throughout the whole day there was great confusion as to whether the orders made it to the pilots in the air to shoot down planes. Perhaps the passengers got control of the plane, but given that only a minute elapsed the pilot of an f-16 shot it down anyway as he didn't know? Erasing the last minute of the tape might be the best way to save some embarassment.

Around 30 minutes of Rumsfeld's time cannot be accounted for during the morning. In one account he just steps outside to help the crash victims before returning to his office. His office is some 700m away on the other side of the pentagon. There seem to be many contradicting claims as to what Rumsfeld was doing and why he couldn't be contacted. He was considered by many to be "missing".

There seems to also have been a major effort to get bush to stay away from Washington, despite the fact that he wanted to return. In fact Bush didn't make it back until much later that evening. Cheney tries many times to get Bush to stay away, including giving Bush completely bogus information that air force one was threatened. Throughout the day there seem to be numerous threats to air force one as they attempt to travel back, and the figher escort it is supposed to receive is severly delayed. Bush is also heard arguing with Cheney about returning to Washington several times. Finally at 3:30pm Bush's opening statement to a video confrence call is "I’m coming back to the White House as soon as the plane is fueled. No discussion."

Another thing that struck me as odd during reading this is that the secret service seemed to pop up in strange places possessing knowledge that others didn't seem to have. For example, in a few cases air force pilots or their commanders received orders directly from the secret service over the telephone - completely separate to the chain of command. Did the secret service also give testimony to the 9/11 commission? Often these accounts seem to be cross-referenced and corroborated, but there doesn't seem to be much in the way of direct evidence or statements given by anyone in the secret service at all.

Anyway, as I said before I urge anyone who is interested to try and read the full timeline, but if you have specific questions about some of the aspects of that day I can try and locate the relevant entries for you.

simple facts such as the petrol station CCTV being siezed so soon after the impact at the Pentagon for me arouses suspicion. Believe what you will but these "small" facts make me think that some of the evebts of that day were "ambushed". Maybe there was a sub-plot to magnify a basic attack? Post 1993 attack on WTC....were "sleeper" devices installed to take the buildings down in a controlled manner should something bad happen? In theory perhaps missing surrounding buildings?

Too many loose ends in my opinion.

Yes definitely too many unanswered questions. Actually after looking at various footage I am willing to buy that the two towers fell off it's own accord. I am even willing to buy that maybe building No.7 fell due to the hit it took from the falling tower. Yesterday I saw a footage on German channel that showed a major portion from the tower falling on No.7 building. I would still think that it would take huge chunks off rather than take out No.7 so cleanely.
Anyway what I am just not able to buy is that the adminstration can't release footage of the camera/s that recorded Pentagon crash

Is it possible that the WTCs and No.7 building were rigged by terrorists themselves? I am talking about say lot of truck/car/van bombs placed in the car parks? Maybe administration knows about it but doesn't want to cause panic by admitting to an even bigger security failure.

Based on the events we witnessed on the day I don't consider shooting of the 4th plane by F-16 pilot unreasonable. On the other hand could the plane not have been exploded by the terrorists themselves using plastic explosives?

"If" the administration was genuinely innocent then I am willing to give them slack for being confused and behaving like headless chickens on that day as it was something unprecedented. So Rumy's missing 30 minutes is no big deal. Plus as outsiders we don't have access to the information about what truely goes on behind closed doors (good or bad).

Regarding the point about CIA camps and US prisons one has to be naive if they truely believed before last week that they did not exist.

AQ claims responsibility for every attack that takes place but the bottom line is that some of these attacks if not all are coming from the same Islamist ideology whether home grown or foreign. So lumping it all under AQ is not too much of a stretch...specially for the benefit of some of the simpleton folks in US

What makes the case for US admin weak is that they attacked Iraq and openly lied about Saddam. You know what they say "once a liar...".
Lot of things just don't bloody add up! It's difficult to judge how much was real terrorist attack and how much was maybe the administration capitalizing on the attack. Could it have been a smaller single seater plane that attacked Pentagon and the administration made it out to be a bigger plane to increase the shock factor?

One thing that I truely know is that the Neocons and the Islamists are both bad for this world and I don't like either

I did a bit more digging today. I recalled that the whole premise of the "no plane" theory in Loose change for the Pentagon and Pennsylvania hinged on the planes landing safely at Cleveland. Except that in the film they only proposed that flight 93 landed in Cleveland, they offer no explanation as to where flight 77 went. So for the moment let's just focus on whether flight 93 did land at Cleveland or not.

In the film this theory was based on three things:

1. A newspaper report that a flight landed at Cleveland at 10:45 and was suspected of having a bomb on board, and that passengers were taken off the plane. The original story [wcpo.com] has since been removed, citing inaccurate information. A mirror [911readingroom.org] is available to read what it said.
2. A story [thepost.baker.ohiu.edu] about United 1989 landing at Cleveland at the same time - 09:45. In fact the flight landed at 10:10.
3. That these two stories somehow had transposed facts and that the second plane must have been flight 93. 09:45 was confused for 10:45 - an assumed error.

On closer examination point 1 completely falls to pieces. It was based on a statement from the mayor, who didn't really have accurate information. He may have been confused the report of United 1989 being forced to land. The fact that the mayor's story was actually a confused duplicate of the one in point two obviously caused the paper to withdraw it. The story in point 2 was correct (except for the time), and stories from the people who were taken out of the plane and questioned confirmed it. It is also consistant with other reports.

So if point 1 never really happened, then point 3 falls apart pretty quickly. In fact if you go back and watch that section it quickly becomes apparent that the whole passengers being whisked off flight 93 is quite a leap of faith.

Therefore - flight 77 did go into the Pentagon and flight 93 did crash into the field. How can we be sure? Because there isn't a shred of evidence or a single eyewitness report that these planes went anywhere else - it's hard to sneak off with something that big. The Cleveland landing thing was the closest we came to an explanation, but since it doesn't stand up we have to assume that the plane crashes were as they were officially explained.

I don't think anybody expected all the facts of Loose Change to stand up - it was obvious when watching it that some things were just a bit too much (like the impossible to use cell phones story). However, just because some parts don't stand up, I'm not prepared to dismiss the rest of it.

There is very solid evidence that many of the alleged hijackers are alive and well - something which seems to have been glossed over. If many of the hijackers are alive then who flew the planes? This question alone should cause us to question the official explanation.

In a case like this there are many false leads that are thrown up - hopefully in all the confusion we realise that SOME of them lead somewhere, rather than just assuming that none of them lead anywhere.

More digging to do...

It's possible, but if this were the case then why did the 9/11 commission see fit to change the timeline of the crash time? Crash times are normally calculated out to the 1/1000th of a second. See this link (2nd entry) for details [cooperativeresearch.org]. The changing of the time of the crash as well as the missing minute on the end of the tape seems to indicate a cover-up. If the terrorists had blown up the plane themselves then why hide it? How would that explain a chunk of engine falling so far from the crash site?

Well yes and no. All the key players had their exact movements on the day scrutinised. Everyone had to go before the commissions and testify. Many of them changed their stories and the commission had a hell of a time reconciling the accounts. Not everyone is missing, and Rumsfeld's mysterious disappearances is noted several times by several people on the timeline. It stands out considerably.

Of course nobody believed them when they denied such things. My point was that there's been so many lies coming from that administration that one would be a fool to simply take what they say at face value - that was my point.

Exactly. It's certainly easy to do. Doesn't mean it is always true though. The bombs in the UK had nothing to do with AQ, despite early predictions that it was them, and the fact that they claimed responsibility for it. But since everyone is so keen to swallow it - let them swallow it.

Nope. There would be small matter of a missing 757 to explain. Smaller plane not likely.

What bugs me is that OBL has not been caught (dead or alive). If US truely wanted to get him then they would have twisted Dictator Musharraf's hands and got OBL. For all we know OBL might have died long time ago or he might be special guest of GWB, Saudis or the Pakistani military. Maybe this is all just a puppet show. Will we ever find out the whole truth? I somehow doubt it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/5320116.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/5336596.stm

this would really blow the official story to pieces - can you post the reference ?

the "live" hijackers have been highlighted in the Loose Change movie and also are mentioned in their own Wiki page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organiz...C_2001_attacks

The references to the press reports appear under the name of each hijacker as they are covered in Loose Change. You can simply pause and go and look up the reference. Alternatively you can find sources listed at the bottom of this page [wt7.net].

The missing hijacker stuff isn't rocket science. I don't think anybody could believe that passports came flying out of the burning wreckage to the streets of manhatten below, undamaged. Interestingly enough the 9/11 commission seems to have glossed over the living hijacker stuff...

So in short - yes it does blow the official version apart, but it isn't the only thing that does. I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle. I can't accept the wildest of the conspiracy theories, and I can't accept the wildest parts of the official version.

The truth lies somewhere in the middle, and somewhere in the middle there is still hell to pay...

Will post more tonight, have found some more interesting stuff...

ah yes, I forgot the passport issue ("issue") - although they do survive a good machine-wash, it does seem too good to believe that such a convenient thing happens thus correctly identifying the hijacker

Ok, well my research has been continuing, as I started to pull more at more of the threads of Loose Change more started to unravel. Eventually I was lead to an excellent couple of sites which seem to be far more level headed than a few of them out there. Unfortunately on both sides (those who defend the official story and those that attack it) there is a lot of "selectivity". For example - I couldn't accept the Popular Mechanics rebuttal of the Pentagon crash because it was just totally light on details and the conclusions drawn (because people saw it, and here's a single piece of wreckage - so there).

Anyway, specifically to for a pentagon I found a page listing the rebuttals (and good rebuttals!) for each of the following arguments:

(these links come from here [911review.com] )

That was enough to satisfy me - the "no plane" theory was toast in my mind. A real shame that Loose Change had been so selective in their interpretation of the facts.

Next I found a real gem. A step by step guide [911research.wtc7.net] to the claims in loose change. This site goes point by point through every claim they made and states what they agree with and what they don't. They even give you the choice to hide their answers so you can test yourself as to whether you fell for something or not

This site seems to be closely related to 911review.com and introduces a new angle that I hadn't considered.

They claim that the reason that the video tapes from the pentagon (and other key evidence) is being withheld is to continue to give mileage to the people chasing ghosts like the "no plane" theory. By helping to add fuel to their fire they will keep chasing the ghost and discredit themselves in the eye of the general public, as well as giving everyone else plenty of amunition to shoot them down. It also helps to avoid the community of people who are challenging the official story - further dividing them and helping to marginalise the entire group - regardless of how serious or solid their research might be.

Why would whoever is behind this want to do this? To distract both the public and the tinfoil hat brigade from the real heart of the story - the demolition of the twin towers. After all when things are being discredited left and right, how are you sure what's fact and fiction?

It's an interesting idea. I've been spending a lot of time checking their explanations and they seem to be a heck of a lot better thought out than those in Loose Change.

Interesed to hear comments from those who have spent a bit of time at their site and checked some of their rebuttals and counter-theories. As always - happy to hear about rebuttals of the rebuttals and disagreements with the views of 911review, but if you'd like to make a serious point don't forget to quote your sources and the basis for your own research.

As always, these links/sites take some time to digest, but well worth it!

Had me worried for a second there - the FBI claimed person X did it, than found out it was not.

what are looking for in your investigation - goverment involvement ?

Sorry - I don't understand what you are saying here. If we have something wrong, please quote a source or give us some kind of argument.

I think we are just all looking for some answers to the unanswered questions. Who was behind it? At the moment that can only be speculation because there isn't any evidence, well nothing that would stand up in court anyway. Interestingly enough there isn't any evidence to say that AQ was behind it apart from a fakes confession tape and then much later references by OBL. Let's not forget the recent confession of John Karr [cnn.com]. Simply confessing to something doesn't mean there's any evidence that its true.

I think the most likely scenario is a small number of key insiders in positions of influence, rather than a giant conspiracy. As they, who had the means and who had the motive, who stood to gain? Did AQ gain from the act? Not at all, but they did gain from the response.

By the way - do you accept the official version of the JFK story? Not intending this to be a serious JFK discussion (off topic), but just illustrating a point.

I was going to ask the JFK question myself

The "step-by-step" guude two-up from here by Mark has some very good readings for those who've watched or are watching the movie - resotoring the balance of course Like has been said here, some things are misinformation and some things are actually posing very good questions

my point is that no kidnappers resurrected. so the official story is still intact.

I don't know enough the JFK story to comment on it.

Looking for "who stands to gain" usally leads to wrong conclusion (who gained from Pearl harbour ? Lebanese Pm Hariri's murder ? ).

when having to choose between a conspiracy and a bungle/foul up - bungle almost always wins.

I'm sure that the official story has holes in it - people will try to cover their mistakes/laxity.