The Believing Brain - Michael Shermer [119]
Okay for me, but not for conspiracy theorists hell-bent on conforming the facts to fit the theory.
All of the 9/11 conspiracy claims are easily refuted. On the Pentagon “missile strike,” for example, I queried my documentary antagonist about what happened to Flight 77, which disappeared at the same time as the Pentagon was struck. “The plane was destroyed and the passengers were murdered by Bush operatives,” he solemnly revealed. “Do you mean to tell me that not one of the thousands of conspirators needed to pull all this off,” I retorted, “is a whistle-blower who would go on TV or write a tell-all book?”
Think about all the examples of disgruntled government bureaucrats and ex-politicians who can’t wait to go public with their insider information that we taxpayers will presumably want to know about. Not one of these 9/11 insiders, witness to what is arguably the greatest conspiracy and cover-up in the history of Western civilization, wants to go on Larry King Live or 60 Minutes or Dateline to reveal his or her secret? Not one of them wants to cash in on what could very well be one of the best-selling books of the year, if not the decade? Not one of them, after a couple of drinks and a twinge or two of guilt, has leaked to a friend (or a friend of a friend) his or her deep secret? Not one? My rejoinder was met with the same grim response I get from UFOlogists when I ask them for concrete evidence: men in black silence witnesses and dead men tell no tales.
Was 9/11 a Conspiracy?
Was 9/11 a conspiracy? Yes, it was. By definition, a conspiracy is a secret plan by two or more people to commit an illegal, immoral, or subversive action against another without their knowledge or agreement. So, nineteen members of al-Qaeda plotting to fly planes into buildings without telling us constitutes a conspiracy. The ultimate failure of the 9/11 conspiracy theorists is their inability to explain away the overwhelming evidence of the real conspiracy by Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda. For example, how do they explain these facts?
• The 1983 attack on the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon by a radical Hezbollah faction.
• The 1993 truck bomb attack on the World Trade Center.
• The 1995 attempt to blow up twelve planes heading from the Philippines to the United States.
• The 1995 bombings of U.S. embassy buildings in Kenya and Tanzania that killed twelve Americans and two hundred Kenyans and Tanzanians.
• The 1996 attack on Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia that killed nineteen U.S. military personnel.
• The 1999 attempt to attack Los Angeles International airport by Ahmed Ressam.
• The 2000 suicide boat attack on the USS Cole that killed seventeen sailors and injured thirty-nine others.
• The well-documented evidence that Osama bin Laden is a major financier for and the leader of al-Qaeda.
• The 1996 fatwa by bin Laden that officially declared a jihad against the United States.
• Bin Laden’s 1998 fatwa that said “to kill the Americans and their allies—civilian and military—is an individual duty for any Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it.”
Given this background, since Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda have officially claimed responsibility for the attacks of 9/11, we should take them at their word that they did it.
Conspiracy Mongering
One rebuttal I often hear from conspiracy theorists is that I am spreading negative information as a means of distracting the public from “the truth.” This is neither the first nor the last time that I’ve been accused of being a governmental agent of disinformation. UFOlogists suspected as much when I pooh-poohed their contention that the government is hiding alien spacecraft and bodies in Area 51. Holocaust deniers think that