The CIA and 9/11

THE DIFFERENT CATEGORIES OF 9/11 THEORIES

It is essential to distinguish between several levels of 9/11 theories, because conflating them leads to confusion. They can be classified into four main categories:

1. LIHOP (Let It Happen On Purpose): The most moderate theory suggests that government officials were aware of the imminent threat and deliberately ignored it so that the attacks could occur, thereby providing the necessary pretext for pre-planned wars in the Middle East. This theory relies on documented intelligence failures and unheeded warnings.

2. MIHOP (Made It Happen On Purpose): The more extreme theory alleges direct involvement of government elements in the planning and execution of the attacks, potentially including the controlled demolition of the World Trade Center towers.

3. The Saudi Connection: This track, the most solidly documented, focuses on the links between the hijackers and Saudi agents in the United States, and alleges that Saudi Arabia financed and facilitated the attacks, with at least passive complicity of the American government which protected the Saudis after the events.

4. Delusional Theories: These include theories claiming that no planes hit the towers (holograms), that the towers were destroyed by mini-nuclear bombs, or that the passengers on the planes are still alive. These theories are baseless and discredit legitimate questioning.

DOCUMENTED INTELLIGENCE FAILURES

Several verifiable intelligence failures fuel complicity theories:

• The President's Daily Brief of August 6, 2001: The 'Bin Ladin Determined to Strike in US' President's Daily Brief warned that members of Al-Qaeda resided in the United States and the FBI had identified patterns of suspicious activity 'consistent with preparations for hijacking aircraft.' The Bush administration did not act on this warning.

• The CIA-FBI 'Wall': The CIA had identified two future hijackers (Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar) attending an Al-Qaeda meeting in Malaysia in January 2000, but did not transmit this information to the FBI for 18 months. These two individuals lived openly in the United States during this period, in contact with an FBI informant in San Diego.

• The Phoenix Memo: In July 2001, FBI agent Kenneth Williams sent a memorandum alerting about an abnormally high number of Ben Laden supporters enrolled in aviation schools in the United States. The memo was ignored.

• The Moussaoui Affair: Zacarias Moussaoui, the ‘20th hijacker,’ was arrested on August 16, 2001, after raising suspicions in an aviation school in Minnesota. Local FBI agents requested a warrant to search his computer, but the FBI Headquarters repeatedly refused. Agent Coleen Rowley would later describe a systematic obstruction.

SUSPECTED PUT OPTIONS

In the days preceding 9/11, an abnormally high volume of put options (downward bets) was recorded on the stocks of American Airlines and United Airlines (the two airlines whose planes were hijacked), as well as on companies with offices in the World Trade Center (Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch).

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) conducted an investigation and concluded that the transactions had 'no connection with terrorism.' However, the detailed report has never been made public, and independent analysts challenge this conclusion. Professor Allen Poteshman of the University of Illinois published a study in the Journal of Business in 2006 concluding that the put/call ratio on American Airlines stock was statistically anomalous and 'consistent with the hypothesis that investors had prior knowledge of the attacks.'

THE VIGILANT GUARDIAN EXERCISE

On the morning of September 11, 2001, several military exercises were underway simultaneously, including Vigilant Guardian and Northern Vigilance, which simulated scenarios of aircraft hijacking and attacks on buildings. This extraordinary coincidence caused confusion in the air defense response (NORAD), controllers not knowing whether radar signals were real or simulated exercises.

NORAD commander General Ralph Eberhart confirmed that the exercises caused 'some confusion.' Conspiracy theorists note that the exercises effectively delayed the military response, with fighters being sent over the Atlantic (for Northern Vigilance, which simulated a Russian attack) instead of being available to intercept the diverted planes.

The coincidence of exercises simulating exactly the scenario that occurred in reality is considered by theorists to be too improbable to be coincidental, and suggests deliberate planning to paralyze air defense.

THE SAUDI CONNECTION AND THE ‘28 PAGES’

The final report of the Joint Congressional Committee on Intelligence (2002) contained a classified chapter of 28 pages concerning the foreign financing of the attacks. These '28 pages' remained secret until their partial declassification in July 2016.

The declassified pages reveal contacts between the hijackers and Saudi agents in the United States, including Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Bassnan, who provided logistical and financial support to at least two of the hijackers (al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar) in San Diego. Al-Bayoumi was in contact with Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi ambassador to the United States, and his wife, Princess Haifa, had sent checks to Bassnan’s wife.

THE PAKISTANI ISI AND FINANCING

The director of the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistani military intelligence), General Mahmoud Ahmad, was on an official visit to Washington from September 4 to 13, 2001, meeting with senior officials from the CIA, Pentagon, and State Department. Indian press reports (Times of India) alleged that the ISI had transferred $100,000 to hijacker Mohamed Atta via Omar Saeed Sheikh before the attacks. General Ahmad was discreetly 'retired' in October 2001. The 9/11 Commission minimized these Pakistani connections in its final report.

THE COLLAPSE OF WTC 7 (BUILDING 7)

The World Trade Center Building 7, a 47-story skyscraper that was not hit by an airplane, collapsed at 5:20 PM on September 11, 2001. It is the first and only steel-framed skyscraper to have collapsed solely due to a fire in the history of construction.

The NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) concluded in 2008 that the collapse was caused by uncontrolled fires that caused the thermal expansion of a critical steel beam, leading to a progressive collapse. This conclusion is contested by several elements:

• The collapse occurred in 6.5 seconds, including 2.25 seconds of freefall, a rate that would be consistent with an object falling without any structural resistance (which is consistent with controlled demolition but not with a progressive collapse according to critics).

• The owner of the WTC, Larry Silverstein, stated in a PBS documentary in 2002: 'I remember getting a call from the fire department commander... I said, maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it. And they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse.' The term 'pull it' is used in the demolition field, although Silverstein subsequently claimed he was referring to having firefighters removed from the building.

• In 2019, researchers from the University of Alaska Fairbanks (a study funded by Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth) published a report concluding that the collapse of WTC 7 was not due to fires and that only a simultaneous demolition of all columns could explain how the building collapsed.

DISTINCTION BETWEEN CONTROLLED AND DELUSIONAL THEORIES

It is crucial to distinguish between legitimately troubling questions (intelligence failures, put options, military exercises, Saudi connection, WTC 7) and baseless theories. Delusional theories (no planes, missiles on the Pentagon, living passengers) paradoxically serve to discredit serious questioning by conflating it with absurdities. Some analysts even suggest that the most delusional theories may be deliberately propagated to discredit the entire ‘9/11 Truth’ movement (a disinformation technique known as ‘poisoning the well’).