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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.'"
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...
...the conspiracy theorists will just claim you've fabricated or altered the "new" evidence.
A government representative commented that they 'hope that this video will put to rest the conspiracy theories.'
The problem is that there is not a clear view of a 747 running into the pentagon. Just a streak and a fireball. Kinda like those UFO pictures and videos.
What is that saying? "I want to believe", right?
They did release it immediately. The Moussaoui trial just ended. It's common that the government and companies do not discuss details relating to a trial while it's in progress.
The fact is, the integrity of the tape will be questioned more because of what it is and who it's from than how long it took to release it. There would still be skeptics if it was released immediately
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
It is a complete waste. It's like a George Lucas remake of the original camera that we have already seen over the last 4 1/2 years. And by "George Lucas" remake I mean it is 99% original material, but from new angles!
No plane can be seen and all you really see is a flash of light then an explosion.
I'm not one of those whack-job conspiracy theorists but for Judicial Watch to make claims of, "this will end all conspiracy theories" and then go on to release this load of steaming dog poo is poor judgement and will only continue to be fodder for the tin foil hatters the world over.
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
We should have had this on day 1. How did keeping this under wraps help the Moussaoui trial?
This kind of secretive attitude creates an environment where conspiracy theories flourish. If the Government wants to disprove these theories, they should release as much information as they safely can, instead of fighting tooth and nail to keep everything secret.
What's the ugliest part of your body? Some say your nose, some say your toes, but I think it's your mind. -Zappa
Most of the traffic I've seen about the conspiracy theories centers around the most recent Loose Change video. The claims in the video are well-argued but absolutely silly. While trying to explain this to several people who had sent it to me (as well as check to see if maybe some of their stuff was true) I stumbled on an excellent viewer's guide in which the video is taken apart line-by-line and fact/logic-checked. I found it on some cached upload site thing whose reliability I can't vouch for, so I've mirrored it here:
http://xkcd.com/911_loose_change_viewer_guide.pdf
Remember: if you can't identify the fake conspiracy theories, you'll never learn who's really out to get you.
xkcd.com - a webcomic of mathematics, love, and language.
What the hell, did they use a cluster of 386s to render the thing?
For those of you unaware of the conspiracy theories floating around, 911: Loose Change is a documentary that claims that the U.S. government planned and executed the attacks on 911. It's obviously all B.S., but it does make you think. The documentary fails to address the fact that no one tried to expose these plans beforehand. If the U.S. gov't tried to do something like this, thousands of people would of have to known about it. Anyone with a conscience would have exposed this plan and tried to put a stop to it. And there has a to be at least A FEW government employees that have a conscience. Either way it's such a stretch, it almost reminds of the whole "We never landed on the moon" theory. People are willing to say anything to get some attention.
Abaddon: An Xbox 360 Indie game
As much as I don't trust Bushco, I just can't see all those people not being dead. You can't cover up something that big.
I mean, we clearly saw the planes hit the towers, so it's logical to assume that if planes were used in place A, why bother to not use planes in place B.
I think the thurst of the paranoia would be better suited looking at how the towers fell as if internal explosions took them down, and the planes were just for drama. That's the only part that I think I can begin to question, though that's not to say our government is more behind it than any other government in the world. If anything's wrong, it's the towers falling so quickly like they did.
Not that I really believe Bush planned it, (is he smart enough?) but if someone other than bin Laden and his crazies was in on it, I want their heads too.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
A government representative commented that they 'hope that this video will put to rest the conspiracy theories.'
Now, that's really stupid and pointless task. Every conspiracy theory is not falsifiable, so there's no point in disproving it.
In short, there's no proof that you can give to conspiracy theorist, that will convince him he is wrong. Just ask any of them, if there is anything in the world that would make him change his mind.
Robert
Bastard Operator From 193.219.28.162
What happened to the Flight 93 that left the airport with all the passengers and crew on board ?
Wow, I just noticed this (don't know why I never noticed before) but this plane has the same freakin' flight number as an airplane in The Twilight Zone that never returned- got lost in time.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I hope you realize that the story about 20 or so Arab men conspiring to hijack planes and fly them into various landmarks is a conspiracy theory, as well.
Many people who rant on and on about 'conspiracy theorists' follow beliefs that are just as questionable. Their position may be supported by certain governments or the mass media in various nations. But on the basis of evidence alone, their stance is often far weaker than that of even the so-called 'conspiracy theorists'.
Talk negatively about conspiracy theories all you want. Just realize that the story you hold dear is just that: a conspiracy theory.
Love that place, and love the Freedom of Information Act that allows it to exist -- one of the true strengths of our Democracy.
If you haven't read it, and if you are at all prone to dismissing "conspiracy theories" on the basis that our government wouldn't do that kind of thing, you have to read it. If you've ever wondered: Did the CIA really know and approve of the Contras funding their war by selling drugs in the States? Did the U.S. really know that Iraq was using chemical weapons against Iran and the Kurds at the same time Donald Rumsfeld was shaking Saddam's hand and providing cover stories for him? Read it.
Nothing that I know of that is relevent to the current situation, but it is still a fantastic archive and a great resource for putting to pasture any remaining naivete you may have about the nature of governments.
The enemies of Democracy are
There's no debris, no fuselage, no tail assembly, no cloud of dust, no nothin'
h t%2077&oe=UTF-8&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla:e n-US:official&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi shows dozens of images from the crashsite, all of them with debris clearly visible. Some are dupes of each other, but scroll through, there was a lot of debris scattered about.
Bzzt, wrong. http://images.google.com/images?q=pentagon%20flig
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
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.
...oh, wait.
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...
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
Why don't they release the black box recordings of the inflight data?
--
make install -not war
I work in DC, and lived -- at the time -- in Old Town Alexandria. On Sept 11, given the general state of confusion, I opted not to take the metro home that day, and instead walked home along the GW parkway ( it was such a beautiful day, actually -- and the ten mile walk allowed me to really think about the situation, and how this was pretty much the end of freedom in the US for a while at least, but that's another story ).
Anyway -- here's the thing. I was upwind of the pentagon, maybe a mile away, and I smelled ( what smelled to me like ) burning kerosene. LOTS of burning kerosene. As in, I personally stank of kerosene smoke after walking past.
Frankly, that's enough for me. I understand that jet fuel is more or less like kerosene, and I would expect a crashed airplane to burn up whatever's in its tanks. Hence, the stench of lots of burning kerosene.
Now, regarding the "another story"... as I was approaching National airport ( I will never call it "Reagan National" ), I came across a bunch of toddlers and little kids, surrounded by military personnel. There was another civilian ( like me ) walking past, she had a camera, and took a photo of the pentagon smoke, and another of the military types and the children. The officials immediately stormed her, confiscated her camera and tore out the film. Very rudely, I might add. I saw all this, and after the lady left, I walked up and said to one of the friendlier looking guards "What was that all about?". She said the kids were pentagon employee children from the daycare facilities and they wanted to respect their privacy -- which is commendable, so in principle I understand. But the way they went about it was unnacceptable.
I saw one of the opening acts of our descent into a police state, right there.
lorem ipsum, dolor sit amet
In this case I'm inclined to apply Occam's razor and pick the simplest explanation given the available facts, which are :
- a plane took off
- bits of fuselage were photographed on the lawn of the Pentagon
- three other hijacked planes were seen crashing into other places
- several eyewitnesses reported seeing a plane
Come up with an alternative explanation if you wish - but you have to make it fit with the above facts. The existing conspiracy theories don't.
The release of this video is not about "disproving conspiracy theories". It's to remind the american people of what happened 5 years ago. Approval ratings are plummeting across the board, when were the president's approval ratings at their highest? right after 9/11. It's pretty clever, we havent had any other attacks to scare us into submission, why not bring the terrorist attacks of 9/11 back in the citizen's minds? Thats just my two cents
The wings on most aircraft today are made to shear off (eg; snap off of the fuselage) upon impact, in order to reduce the risk of ruptured fuel tanks discharging their burning payload directly into the cabin.
The only reason that the outlines of the planes' wings remained on both of the impacted WTC towers was due to the building materials. Short of the box girders, those sites were covered with a thin stainless steel facade. The underlying girders themselves were in fact a ruddy brown color, which would be invisible to the naked eye under fire conditions, adding to the illusion that those planes somehow punched a huge hole through, when at best it was approximately the size of the fuselage as well. Evidence of this is consistent with the debris left at the Pentagon.
Similarly, you have building materials VS. aircraft design in the Pentagon attack. The Pentagon was initially designed to withstand aerial bombardment during WWII, and retrofitted for nuclear attack in the decades to follow. That translates to LOTS of reinforced concrete and stone which, if anyone else here watched impact testing and missile tests against solid concrete bunkers, et al, showed very similar, if not exactly, the same results when compared to the Pentagon attack. The impacts would not only have sheared off the wings, but the general refusal of reinforced concrete to either snap or bend out of the way would have resulted in a misleadingly small impact site.
As for nonexistant skid marks at the Pentagon, it may just be possible that the plane was either in level flight, or on the rebound (as evidenced by light posts that were snapped off at the base, exactly as they're designed to) before impacting.
Additionally, to all the nutters who claimed the WTC was hit by a missile, those so called pods are in fact the rear landing gear bays, the flash they claim to be a launch is more than likely a high voltage discharge from the radome in the aircraft's nose (visible just as the fiberglas dome comes into contact with the outside of the towers). Just bright enough to arc and trigger theories everywhere from people who have no idea how planes are made, sadly enough.
But nowhere enough to give people the real story about 9/11, just more noise to keep people with real credentials from being heard.
Anyway, the long and short: There's a lot more involved in aerospace than most would imagine, and even fewer bother to verify or study, like much junk science or conspiracy theories. If the idea of aircraft "disappearing" in the process of crashing sounds like a conspiracy, then the Valujet crash in the Everglades a decade or so ago must have come from little green men indeed.
Just because you can mod me down, doesn't mean you're right. Shoes for industry!
That's why he didn't say it. You introduced the word "never", and yes, your straw man is nonsense.
He was referring to the claims that Iraq had WMD circa 2001-2003, which were used as justification for the illegal 2003 invasion of Iraq. Those claims were lies.
Yes, we know Iraq had WMD in the past. Of course we know that, we sold them the WMD. But Iraq had used or destroyed all its WMD prior to the illegal invasion.
Oh, do pay attention. He was saying that the claim that oil prices would be controlled was false. The current high prices are demonstration that he's right.
And as for bringing up Bill Clinton: Did anybody claim that the problems started in 2000? No, I don't think so, so once again you're erecting a straw man.
In fact, if you look at the people who complain about the lies used to justify the invasion of Iraq, you'll find that almost all of them were also deeply critical of the Clinton era sanctions that resulted in the lingering death of tens, possibly hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and their children.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
Ok, so first of all we all know that nobody walks home 10 miles. That is just common sense. And just why is it that *all of the sudden* after 9/11 you no longer live in Old Town?? Something smells fishy. Second, kerosene burns in lamps, and the pentagon is a very secretive place, so they probably don't have lights. Therefore they could not possibly have any kerosene there. Third, smoke rises so you couldn't possibly have smelled it from a *mile* away. Like what, the laws of physics just didn't apply that day? Well I asked a physics professor and he said the laws of physics *always* apply! So, just how is it that *you* would smell like kerosene unless, obviously, you had rubbed kerosene on your clothing to make people *think* there was a something like kerosene burning. As for the photograph, its obviously *you* that took the film because you didn't want any documented evidence that you were in fact at the National Airport the whole time! Obviously you were in the mysterious "unmarked white plane" and had just landed.
Nice try, Mr. Three-Letter-Agency, but we can see right through your web of lies.
1 Bush is not a patsy. He is a member of the cabal who is perfectly happy to be seen as "too dumb to sin". Makes any future trial a LOT easier. But he is in it up to his neck for the same reason Cheney, Rice, and Rumsfeld are: he's an oil man. Nothing more and nothing less. Oil and oil shares are the only things he cares about and he's as happy as the rest of them to kill a few hundred or thousands (especially if they are foreigners) to get them. Iran is just sabre-rattling to boost the price of oil and their collective pension funds.
2. I think Bush simply ignored the warnings because he and his friends thought it was going to be a small attack like the van bomb. That would have been enough of a "Pearl Harbour" for the PNAC. He was genuinely shocked when the scale of it became clear. He must have been thinking about what would happen if the story of all the warnings he'd had came out before his friends in the media clamped the lid on it. He had a close shave but Fox et al came to the rescue and people like John O'Neil were literally buried in the bad news and shock.
Now the reality bit: all empires have been founded on economics. They have to be. It is only in the post-WWII era that governments have decided to pretend otherwise (around the time the War Department became the Defence Department). The reality is that America needs Iraq's oil and now it has it. And if they did not, the American economy would be in deep shit very soon. In the old days this would have been explained openly - proudly - and then the troops sent in. Britain did it all the time. Japan did it. Germany and Italy did it. The Romans did it (grain mostly rather than oil). It's a fact of life. What has changed is that an extra layer of hypocrisy has been added. But there's nothing unusual about invading a country with or without a pretext to seize its resources, even if it means letting someone attack you first when you could have stopped them. The alternative is to drastically change your way of life, a way of life that these guys at the top simply worship and can not even imagine changing just because a bunch of dirty foreign rag-heads object! The idea actually makes them feel ill; you can see it on their faces when they talk about countries that have oil and aren't being properly servile. They hate that. They are by their own definition the pinacle of human achievement and despise anyone who does not vocally agree with that assessment. Look at Bush's crack about the London anti-war protests. The rabble are not entitled to an opinion.
A hundred years ago Wolfowitz would have got a medal, now he gets a cushy job in the World Bank. He successfully defended the American Way of Life(tm). And if you read his speeches and letters about why a pretext for invading Iraq had to be found, I think you'll see that's what he thought all along.
Imperialists are all the same in every place and every time.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Yes, and two wing-shaped slots as well! Because as everyone knows from watching Bugs Bunny, when an object goes through a wall, it cuts out a perfect outline of itself in the wall.
In other words, everyone posting this crap learned their physics from Bugs Bunny.
Don't piss off The Angry Economist
To say that Iraq never had WMD is pure non-sense. Ask the thousands of living Iranian widows or the Kurdish what gas they or their loved ones were exposed to and when.
Arguing with bellicose right-wingnuts is starting to feel a lot like arguing with Soviet appoligists back in the day. They reply to perfectly ordinary claims of fact--that Bush & co. lied about Iraq's WMDs and much else as a pretext for war--with a completely irrelevant non sequitur.
For those lacking basic English comprehension skills, no one claimed that Iraq never had WMDs, and trying to twist the argument to answer that premise is nothing more than an obvious admission of that fact.
This non sequitur was quickly followed by another: invoking the Ghost of Presidents Past in the form of Bill Clinton. Bellicose right-wingnuts have reached the bottom of the polemical barrel--they are now reduced to waving a stuffed scarecrow of a man from the better part of a decade ago in a desperate attempt to divert attention from the uncontroversial fact that they and theirs have lied American into a pointless and stupid war that has killed thousands of Americans for no discernible purpose.
Give it up guys--every time one of you clowns mentions Clinton it's just more proof that you have lost. Your time is done.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
The word "pull" is used in the demolitions industry to indicate manual demolition through things like wrecking balls and, literally, pulling the structure over or down. When you talk about explosive demolition, you use the word "shoot".
There is no evidence "melted steel", especially at WTC7. Of course, steel doesn't have to melt in order to fail. I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that at half its melting point, steel has only 25% of its strength.
lol. Wow, awesome. You fell for that claptrap hook, line, and sinker. Did you know that the Windor building is a predominately concrete structure? Did you realize that the steel parts of the building exposed to the fire did fail?
Don't waste my time if you can't be bothered to do basic research.
My God... Why do you people keep insisting that fire was the only cause of these collapses? You only demonstrate severe ignorance and blindness when doing so. Have you forgotten about the two planes that impacted WTC1 and WTC2? How about the severe structural damage (evidence for which I linked to earlier) of WTC7? How many other steel building in history have been subjected to these conditions? You're conveniently ignoring all of this.
People will pass up steak once a week, for crap every day.
That is completely untrue.
Al-Qaeda is Arabic for "the Base" or "the Foundation" - but it's actually a shortened form of the Arabic term "qaedat bayanat" - or database. Al-Qaeda started in the mid 1990s based on Osama bin Laden's personal database of Arab mujihadeen who had fought with him in Afghanistan against the Soviets. His number 2 man, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri was recruited in order to merge al-Qaeda with the Egyptian Islamic Jihad.
As a side note, the CIA did not fund bin Laden, although they knew of him and knew that some fighters they did fund were also working with him. The CIA's main group in Afghanistan throughout the 1990s was led by a man named Ahmad Shah Masood. Masood was assassinated by bin Laden on September 9, 2001 as a symbol of al-Qaeda's commitment to protecting the Taliban. The group that Masood founded was the Northern Alliance - the same fighters who fought with the CIA in 2001 against the Taliban.
Al-Qaeda has existed as a terrorist organization since at least 1998, and probably earlier. It was 1998 when al-Qaeda launched the attacks against the US embassies in Tanzania and Kenya, and bin Laden declared his fatwa against the presence of American troops on the Arabian peninsula.
So, no, you are not correct. Al-Qaeda has root well before 9/11, and to insinuate that it was invented afterwards is simply not correct.
The short answer is we didn't.
Bin Laden wasn't funded by the CIA. He wouldn't have taken American money anyway, and didn't need it besides. We did fund some groups that were associated with his Arab mujihadeen, but not his group directly.
The person you're thinking of was Ahmad Shah Masood, who was one of the more successful Afghan fighters during the war. Masood was an enemy of the Taliban, and was assassinated by al-Qaeda shortly before 9/11 to help reassure the Taliban that al-Qaeda would protect them from American reprisals. (Bloody lot of good that did!)
Ahmad Shah Masood was the founder of the anti-Taliban resistance called The Northern Alliance - and that's one of the reasons that the CIA had such good luck in Afghanistan - we were working with the same fighters we had a decade before in fighting the Russians.
Seen these?
1 51.stm
6 69.stm
. stm
BBC NEWS | World | Middle East | Hijack 'suspects' alive and well
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1559
BBC News | MIDDLE EAST | Hijack 'suspect' alive in Morocco
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/1558
BBC News | AMERICAS | FBI probes hijackers' identities
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/1553754
So much for "facts" about your 19 hijackers.
And by the way, you speak of facts, but we have never been shown proof. You know, that thing that establishes facts as such. We were told it was Bin Laden within hours of the attack, and we were told proof was forthcoming. But it never, um, forthcame.
"Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity." - Marshall McLuhan
Clever signature text goes here.
First of all, WT7 DID NOT have a plane crash into it, and yet still fell (symetrically and into its own footprint), next:
the empire state building had a plane crash into it: At 9:49 a.m. on Saturday July 28, 1945, a B-25 Mitchell bomber accidentally crashed into the north side between the 79th and 80th floors, where the offices of the National Catholic Welfare Council were located. The fire was extinguished in 40 minutes. 14 people were killed in the accident[3].(wikipedia)
Regardless of this, the building was designed to withstand impacts by aircraft of this size, so it shouldn't (and indeed thats not the official explanation) have been the impact that caused the problem. if you think it was the fire, then compare this picture of the WTC fire towers where you can see a small area on one tower and a larger but still relatively small section on the other smoking (black indicating low oxygen therefore cooler fires) with a few visible flames, with this and thisimage of the windsor building in madrid, that was totally engulfed in flames from about halfway up the building to the top, and burned for 10 hours, yet didn't collapse, with only parts not including the inner support section collapsing after burning for hours, as you might expect. Note that the tower, while smaller, had a similar construction to the wtc, being a central support column and perimeter supports, and that the tower was "built using normal strength concrete and before modern fire proofing standards, without any sprinkler system. It was undergoing a complete refurbishment, including the installation of various active fire prevention and resistance measures, when the fire began at around 11pm on 14 February 2005." (see here and here for more pictures and (you may say biased) info and here for a case study of the construction and result of the huge fire. Many other buildings have burned for similar or longer, and not collapsed. If you still think it's reasonable to accept three world first events on the same day at face value, in your words "then you are, frankly, a fucking moron.""(in a less offensive way, if it was conspiracy theorists saying that al queda did it with planes, and the government saying that they demolished it to make room for new towers or something, then would you still think it was rediculous?)
also if you think it was "not an ordinary fire" and that the addition of the jet fuel caused the extra heat that differentiated them from every other fire in history, then, from the debunking 911 myths on popular mechanics:
"The jet fuel was the ignition source," Williams tells PM. "It burned for maybe 10 minutes, and [the towers] were still standing in 10 minutes. It was the rest of the stuff burning afterward that was responsiblefor the heat transfer that eventually brought them down."
therefore apart from a hot start and some mild damage to the outer structure (which was not intended for holding up the bulk of the weight of the building but rather to resist torsional forces from wind etc, and therfore if that had failed would be much more likely to have caused an assymetrical toppling, rather than a symetrical fall), it was no different to any other fire in the history of steel/concrete buildings. So I ask again, why did three buildings fall on the same day from fire, and never before or since in history?
straw man. The steel didn't melt. It was hot enough to significantly weaken it (ask a blacksmith), but not to melt it.
"Peter Tully, presid
watch "the money masters" on google video
Every aspect of every conspiracy theory about 9/11 has been systematically debunked somewhere or another. Since the WTC was structurally unique, comparisons to other buildings really don't have much bearing in the matter, and while they anticipated the impact of a 707, they did not take into account the combined effect of impact and a full load of fuel; all of this, of course, assumes that the designers were correct when saying that the building could withstand a 707. Timelines show that jets were scrambled in a timely manner when the situation was understood (within minutes of realizing the planes were hijacked and pinpointing their locations.) The dissenting expert opinions are not unusual in science; all scientific fields have their share of wing nuts, but these are fringe opinions usually based upon a single, simplistic, and inconclusive study. There were also people who speculated openly in the early days, and have since come to regret it. In the course of normal science these come out in the wash, but conspiracy theorists cherry pick these and run with them--in some cases, long after the original proponent has disowned and attempted to kill the theory attributed to him. There are pseudo-scientific theories that persist decades after they have been debunked.
The most frustrating thing about conspiracy theories is not the individual factoids that comprise them, but the profound ignorance of human nature, and the obessively magical thinking, that underlie them. As Ben Franklin said, three may keep a secret if two of them are dead. 9/11 conspiracy theories require thousands of conspirators--think of just what would be required to run drone planes into buildings, dispose of all the passengers, rig the buildings, fake everything so that the airlines wouldn't notice, and on, and on, and on. Even the mafia can't keep a secret when the boss tells one guy to whack another, and that's a conspiracy of two, protected by the Omerta!
Only a true fanatic can keep secrets like these, and then, only for a short time, provided he is kept relatively isolated. The Al Queda plan was remarkeably low tech with few moving parts and carried out by a small group of fanatics, most of whom did not arrive in America until a couple days beforehand. Even so, it almost got discovered beforehand. In the aftermath, there is almost no detail of how it was done that we don't know. Compare this with conspiracy theories, which remain isolated pinpoints of data organized by a unifying myth. The Al Queda plan left a big footprint. A government conspiracy would have left an even bigger one.
Conspiracy theories are the new secular religion, supported by the same cognitive errors which support religion, and serving the same purpose. To the conspiracy theorist, the dark cabals which run the world are both stupid and supernaturally brilliant, fools who are somehow capable of godlike prescience, omiscience, and control. The conspiracy theorist himself is a figure on the same mythical scale: he has pierced the veil of the illuminati, seen what few have seen--he is the great challenger to this omnipotent cabal. By following his warnings, we shall overcome the evil presence which has corrupted our world from within, and restore all to goodness and innocence. It's all good, because the solution is so simple.
You'll never convince him otherwise, because his entire conception of self is wound up in the idea that he is the rare visionary, the one who cannot be fooled. To admit that he is wrong would require him to admit that he is profoundly wrong, not just gulled, but gullible. This would be a fall of luciferian proportion, from grand visier to court fool. Conspiracy theorists tend to be marginal and disenfranchised. The fall from mythic heights to the harsh reality of their lives is very hard indeed.
The reality, of course, is that there may actually be no one in control, that both the leaders and the conspiracy theorists can't tell their assholes from a gopher hole, and that this has been the situation for nearly all of hum