US Releasing 9/11 Flight 77 Pentagon Crash Tape

Robotron23 writes "The BBC is reporting that the US government has decided to release the videotape depicting the crash of Flight 77 into the Pentagon building, nearly five years after the 9/11 attacks. The government had previously withheld the tape due to 'ongoing investigations' into al-Qaeda's Zacarias Moussaoui. A government representative commented that they 'hope that this video will put to rest the conspiracy theories.'"

Comments

You can't stop the paranoia.

[Kelson]

You can't put the conspiracy theories to rest. They already believe you're covering something up, so if you release a report that shows...

• No reliable evidence of alien spacecraft has been found, ever.
• The Cydonia region on Mars (the "face") appears to be a natural formation, and not ruins of an ancient Martian civilization.
• We really did land astronauts on the moon.
• An airplane hit the Pentagon on 9/11, not a missile.

...the conspiracy theorists will just claim you've fabricated or altered the "new" evidence.

Re:Absurd

[christopherfinke]

If the Government wants to disprove these theories

Regarding conspiracy theories, I believe the burden is on the conspiracy theorists to prove their theories, not for the targeted group to disprove all conspiracies directed towards them. If I say "George Bush is an alien," should he undergo a medical examination specifically to prove that he is human, or should I offer undeniable proof of his extra-terrestriality?

On the other hand,

[Peter Trepan]

it's dangerous to discount all conspiracy theories. The Tuskeegee Experiment was a real conspiracy. The Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish doctrine is a real conspiracy. When landlords get together and change a neighborhood's zoning laws, that's a conspiracy too.

These are the kinds of conspiracies that occur without the protection of the federal government. What kinds of schemes might people think up if they're free from any oversight whatsoever?

I'm just saying that a little paranoia is a healthy thing. I'm not saying that our government hides aliens with guitar pick-shaped heads, or that they orchestrated the 9-11 attack, or that they conspired to fool everyone into thinking Iraq had nuclear...

...oh, wait.

Black Ops

[Doc Ruby]

Why don't they release the black box recordings of the inflight data?

Re:The official story is a conspiracy theory.

[NutscrapeSucks]

Well, there's also a big difference between "The government used hologram missiles and controlled demolition to blow up WTC" and "The government used certain bureaucratic mechanisms in order to increase the likelihood of that a known terrorist plot would be successful for ultra-cynical political gain."

Of course, most people in the Conspiracy Theory world don't really understand the difference and there's very much a "ends justify the means" attitude where any crazy idea is good if it will raise doubt on the official theory, and that approach tends to cast the whole lot in tinfoil.

And it still doesn't change the fact that an official conspiracy theory was put forward, and acted on, without a whole lot of evidence. (Not just "religious extremists", but the whole "Al Qaeda==Worldwide Terrorist Network", when the reality is that the conspiracy theory created Al Qaeda rather than visa-versa.)