David McGowan
September 12, 2001

"We are going to see a great number of articles in the future from so-called experts and public officials.
They will warn about more violence, more kidnappings, and more terrorists. Mass media, the armed forces,
and intelligence agencies will saturate our lives with fascist scare tactics and 'predictions' that have already
been planned to come true."
'Conspiracy theorist' Mae Brussell, 1974

I have a friend with whom I frequently disagree on matters of politics. He thinks that I am a crazed conspiracy
theorist and I think that he is a reactionary fascist. There was one thing that we agreed on though. A few weeks
ago, I told him that our fearless leaders seemed to be veering dangerously close to unleashing 'tactical' nuclear
weapons upon the world.
Although he seriously doubted that that was in fact the case, he readily agreed that such an action would be
reckless and unconscionable. He stated that he couldn't envision any scenario under which such a strike would be
justified and that we should avoid at all costs crossing that threshold. Opening that door, he believed, could only serve
to escalate tensions and make this a much more dangerous world in which to live.
He was one of several people who called me yesterday to discuss the alleged terrorist attacks on America.
During the course of that call, he stated flatly that when the perpetrators were identified, they and their backers
should be nuked. When I reminded him of our conversation of just a few weeks before, he said that things have
changed now. I asked him if he had considered whether that wasn't perhaps precisely the point of the attacks.
Unfazed, he reiterated his belief that I am a crazed conspiracy theorist.
Excuse my cynicism, but have we Americans completely lost our ability to think? Are we now so thoroughly
brain-dead that we are completely reliant on our media resources, with their endless supply of 'experts,' to make
sense of events in the world? Are we really that stupid or do our leaders just think that we are?
The actions taken on the morning of September 11 were crimes - horrendous crimes against humanity, to be
sure, but in the final analysis not so very different from any other crimes. The first step in solving any crime is to look
at who had a motive and who had the means and opportunity to commit the crime.
As for motive, we are to believe that a band of Islamic terrorists are the most likely suspects. But is that the
case? Was it a state-sponsored terrorist group that had the most to gain by launching such an assault, or was it our
own political, corporate and military leaders?
While the people of the Palestinian territories may well be dancing in the streets today in celebration of the
blow struck against the United States, they certainly won't emerge as the winners in this national tragedy. When the
bombs begin to rain down upon them, as they certainly will, the loss of life, property and hope will be far more
profound for them than it will be for the people of New York. Their short-term 'victory' will be a hollow one indeed.
This is certainly not to suggest that there are no governments, groups, or organizations around the world, or
within these borders, that have legitimate grudges against the United States government. The numbers of such
entities are legion. Two hundred years of imperialistic covert and overt military ventures have created a lot of
enemies of the American ship of state and a tremendous amount of residual bitterness. Yet none of these groups
stood to gain by launching such an attack.
The United States, on the other hand, has much to gain in the aftermath of this chapter of American history. I
am not talking here, of course, about the people of this country, who will pay a steep price for the carnage of
September 11. Big Brother has assured us that we will be protected from future acts of this sort, and we will
welcome with open arms the repressive, overtly fascistic 'reforms' that will be enacted.
The people, of this country and of the world, are always the ones to pick up the tab for acts of gross
governmental malfeasance. The people of some hapless country (or countries) that is identified as the culprit will pay
with their lives and the lives of their children. The people of America and much of the Western world will pay with
the wholesale stripping away of their remaining human, civil and privacy rights.
Such a scenario only serves to benefit those who sit at the top of the food chain. Our elected leaders - who are
elected only in the sense that every couple of years we are given a choice between two interchangeable candidates -
will revel in the free reign they will be given to ram through legislation so appallingly reactionary that it would have
been unthinkable just days ago.
Military spending and the militarization of the country will escalate to a fever pitch. Welcome to the new and
improved police state - the largest, most powerful, and most technologically advanced the world has ever seen. With
the much-lauded U.S. economy tanking and unemployment figures hitting their highest levels in years, this will come
in very handy for the 'powers that be.'
The ugly truth is that all 'anti-terrorist' measures are designed not to protect the American people from attack
or to protect our 'freedoms,' but to protect wealth and power - specifically the unprecedented levels of wealth
currently held by corporate America - and to restrict those very freedoms that threaten their hold on that wealth.
This American tragedy, in other words, plays directly into the hands of the corporate and military elite of this
nation, who have for years been propagandizing for a more belligerent and imperialistic foreign policy and for more
repressive legislation here on the home front. Having been presented with a pretext to enact such measures, it is our
leaders - elected or otherwise - who stand to gain the most from yesterday's bloodshed.
As for the question of who had the means and opportunity to commit these crimes, the official story holds that
they were the work of a well-organized foreign terrorist organization. Officials have acknowledged that the operation
was an exceptionally well-planned and well-coordinated series of attacks that required months of planning and a
large network of co-conspirators to pull off.
So well-organized was the operation that government spokesmen and television talking heads (which are really
the same thing) have been at a loss to explain some of the day's events. Many questions have been left unanswered
and some haven't been asked at all. Some of the answers that have been offered have strained credibility far past
the breaking point.
One question that has gone unanswered is how a plane was able to penetrate so deeply into the Pentagon's
airspace - after two other planes had already plowed into the World Trade Center towers, no less. Despite the
ridiculous current claims, the airspace surrounding the Pentagon is perhaps the most tightly controlled, militarily
secure airspace in the world. This would be all the more true in the immediate aftermath of a large-scale 'terrorist'
attack on New York City.
Claims have been made that even if the approach of the aircraft had sounded an alarm, it would not have been
targeted due to the fact that it was a commercial aircraft with many innocent lives on-board. Nonsense. Anyone
who thinks that U.S. military/intelligence personnel would hesitate to target a commercial airliner is living in a
media-induced fantasy world, particularly in light of the fact that two such aircraft had already been used in suicide
attacks.
The question then of how this plane was able to 'elude' the Pentagon's formidable defenses is one that should
receive close scrutiny from America's 'free' and 'independent' press. There is virtually no chance that that will
happen. Another question that begs for an answer is how teams of presumably armed hijackers were able to breach
the security measures of no less than three major airports and successfully hijack four separate flights.
Contrary to the claims now being made, security precautions currently in place in U.S. airports are anything but
"lax." That fact was being implicitly acknowledged by this morning as reports began to come in claiming that the
hijackers had improvised weapons from razor blades and other items carried in their shaving kits. These reports
were actually carried by the network news broadcasters with a straight face.
This scenario would be laughable were this story not such a tragic one. According to the latest official stories,
three to five terrorists boarded each of the hijacked aircraft. All of these terrorists, of course, were such religious
fanatics that they had agreed to give their lives for the cause they believed in, and none of them presumably had
second thoughts about that decision once the operation was underway.
Does anyone really believe that a few guys wielding toothbrush handles embedded with razor blades could
quickly and efficiently gain control of a commercial airliner? I would think that such a group would have their hands
full trying to hold-up a liquor store. How could, as has been reported, such a 'terrorist cell' possibly simultaneously
overpower the flight crews and corral all of the flights' passengers into the rear of the planes?
I don't consider myself to be a particularly brave or heroic sort of guy, but I would not hesitate for a second to
take on a couple of guys wielding toothbrushes, particularly if my life, or the life of my family, was on the line and if I
knew that I had some sixty people (the average number of passengers on the flights) behind me who would back me
up. Maybe that's just me, but somehow I think most Americans would rise to the occasion.
Nevertheless, these terrorist teams reportedly succeeded where so many other better armed terrorists have
failed. The majority of hijacking attempts, as officials have acknowledged, end in failure. There hasn't been one to
succeed in this country for a decade. And yet these teams succeeded, and on a spectacular scale, in four-out-of-four
attempts and with only the most primitive of 'weapons.' To what are we to attribute that fact? Don't look to the
media for answers.
Perhaps the most obvious question raised by the attacks, and one that officials have feebly attempted to
answer, is how the planning for such an operation could have escaped the attention of the country's intelligence
services. Whenever such an event occurs, the intelligence agencies rather predictably hang their heads, slump their
shoulders and sheepishly grin as they explain their powerlessness to predict such things.
We did the best we could, they explain, but our resources are limited, our adversaries formidable, and our
sources not infallible. Give me a break. The CIA - along with the FBI, ONI, DIA, NSC, NSA, DEA, and virtually
every other three-letter acronym you could think of - constitutes the largest and most insidious intelligence network
the world has ever seen.
Its agents have fully infiltrated every foreign government on the planet, as well as every 'terrorist' group and
every domestic resistance movement that has ever posed even a remote threat to the goals of the architects of the
American ship of state. It is simply inconceivable that such an ambitious attack could have been planned, coordinated
and launched without the knowledge of numerous elements of the national security state.
That is the inescapable reality that no amount of media and government spin can erase, though politicians and
their media puppets will work overtime to do exactly that. One need only to turn their television off and their brain on
though to see how preposterous are the claims that these attacks took the intelligence community by surprise.
Perhaps the most disturbing question raised by the attacks is what exactly caused the twin towers of the WTC
to collapse? The impact of the planes affected only the upper floors of the towers; their foundations were
unaffected. The UK's Guardian acknowledged that the initial impact of the aircraft would result in less stress on
the building than is normally caused by high winds. The buildings were specifically designed to handle such horizontal
movement.
The Guardian and its expert consultants conclude that the collapse of the buildings was the result of
secondary explosions, attributed to the delayed release of the large supply of jet fuel carried by the aircraft. How
though could the ignition of the jet fuel have occurred as a delayed, secondary explosion? As the endlessly played
videotapes of the attack graphically illustrate, the initial impact resulted in enormous fireballs and the immediate
engulfing of a portion of the buildings in flames.
It is inconceivable that the aircraft's fuel tanks would not have burst upon impact and their contents
immediately have been ignited. Indeed, if that wasn't in fact the case, then how are we to explain the initial
explosions and fireballs that were witnessed by the world? What exactly was it that created the spectacular initial
blasts if it wasn't the jet fuel?
But if that was the case, what was it then that created the secondary explosions that appear to have occurred?
These secondary blasts were acknowledged early in the day by an NBC newsman. The correspondent stated on the
air that he had just talked with the fire department's public safety commissioner who verified that large secondary
explosions precipitated the collapse of the towers.
A radio broadcaster on WLS in Chicago (according to a correspondent), whose wife is a CBS journalist who
was on the scene at the towers, said on the air that his wife had witnessed an enormous fireball emanating from
beneath one of the towers immediately before it came crashing down. What are we to make of these types of
scattered reports, none of which received any follow-up coverage amidst the non-stop blizzard of media attention?
To be sure, the collapse of the towers, captured on tape for all the world to see, had the decided appearance of
controlled implosions, facilitated by the precise placement of technologically advanced explosives. The world has
never before witnessed such complete and utter destruction of a targeted building by an act of war or a 'terrorist'
assault.
We have seen the United States target many a building for destruction. In the most recent military venture, we
saw an embassy building and a television studio, among many others, take direct and multiple hits from
state-of-the-art bombs and guided missiles. The buildings were devastated, to be sure, but the damage didn't come
close to matching the pile of rubble that the twin towers were reduced to.
We saw a highrise Israeli apartment building take a direct hit from an Iraqi Scud missile during the Gulf war.
Actually, most of us probably didn't see that, unless you happened to be tuned in to CNN for the brief few moments
when the footage was aired. As it turns out, that Scud missile was actually safely intercepted by a trusty Patriot
missile, or so it was claimed - just as if the footage had never aired.
The point though is that the building was hit and did suffer extensive damage, and undoubtedly at the cost of
many lives. But again, the building - though sheared nearly in half - was in considerably better shape than the World
Trade Center. It occurs to me then that perhaps America has invested entirely too much time and money in pursuit
of creating ever more powerful and efficient weapons systems.
Who would have ever thought that the best weapon with which to reduce an entire tower to rubble was the
plane itself. It doesn't even have to be a military plane - any old commercial aircraft will do. Someone obviously
should have followed up on the early work done in this area by the Japanese during World War II.
In the final analysis, we must ask ourselves the following questions: Who had the means to get highly trained
commando teams onto four aircraft flying out of three separate airports? Who had the ability to violate the
Pentagon's airspace unmolested? What weapons were really used to commandeer those aircraft and who had the
means to get them on the planes? Who had the ability to plan and execute such an ambitious, multi-pronged attack
without the interference of the U.S. intelligence services? Who had the means to staff each of the four teams with
at least one well-trained, and suicidal, pilot? Who had the means and opportunity to plant secondary explosive
charges, if in fact these were used?
Finally, perhaps the most important question to be asked is: who stands to gain the most in the bleak aftermath?
It is certainly not the American people, or any resistance movement within these borders. It's definitely not the
still-to-be identified target(s) of the nation's wrath (which will likely include Iraq). That would seem to sort of limit
the choices.
It is quite possible, indeed quite likely, that members of some 'extremist' group served as the foot soldiers of
these attacks. But it is just as likely that they were used as pawns in the global chess game that serves as our
collective reality. It is also likely that these 'terrorists' were motivated by legitimately perceived grievances with the
U.S. government.
Those motivations weren't likely shared with their puppeteers, however, who cynically manipulated those belief
systems to serve their own ends. Most of the participants probably did not know that they were embarking on suicide
missions. Quite likely only the pilots knew that, and they may very well have received a little more 'training' than your
average pilot.
All of this is, by necessity, just speculation at this point. The true facts of the case will emerge over time in bits
and pieces, mixed in with a healthy dose of disinformation. It matters little though in which direction those facts point.
The official story has already been written.


<ul> ~ Quelle</ul>
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