Some believe the Bush administration not only knew the attacks were going to occur, but that they took an active part in the attacks. There are many theories out there regarding this but I will discuss some of the more popular ones.
A. The administration coordinated the attacks with Al Qaeda and pre-positioned a material called "Thermite" in the towers to ensure the towers collapsed. People who believe this say that the forces present when the planes hit the tower and afterwards with the fires were not sufficient to weaken the towers' infrastructure so as to cause their collapse. The material Thermite, used in various commercial and military applications burns extraordinarily hot and would have achieved the necessary temperatures. Even if the plane collisions and resulting fires somehow did achieve the collapse of the towers, the theory goes; the collapse would not have resembled a controlled demolition as no building collapse as the result of an impact has ever done so. This theory also raises the issue of the blazing collapse of World Trade Center Building #7 (WTC #7) a building that was not hit by any planes. To this day, six years later, the collapse of WTC #7 is not well explained and very hard to understand.
The official account as written by the NIST scientists that is supposed to explain the towers' collapse does seem to contain some notable holes in regards to the temperatures/ability to cause collapse, the way the towers collapsed and WTC #7. I have tried my best to read the hundreds of pages in the NIST report and it does not seem like these issues were addressed directly enough. People who believe this part of the conspiracy theories have been calling for a reopening of the 9/11 investigation into what brought down the towers and they have requested an independent body conduct the new investigation. One problem with this theory is that both of the towers' collapses seem to have originated at the point of impact of the planes. To accept this theory, one has to believe that the Thermite was pre-positioned so well, and the pilots flying the planes had so much skill, that the planes impacted only a few feet over where the pre-positioned Thermite was to ignite and cause the collapse. This makes this theory difficult but perhaps not impossible. However, this problem leads nicely into the second theory in this category.
B. Another group of people believes that the administration was involved in the carrying out of the attacks, but due to the problems inherent in the Thermite theory, Directed Energy Weapons or DEW’s were used by the administration to bring down the towers after the plane impacts. DEWs are weapons like Particle Beams, Lasers, Microwave, Sonic and Plasma weapons. DEW's resolve the issues of placement of materials on the towers themselves as a weapons team could theoretically aim such a weapon at the appropriate point at any time. Some DEWs, like Microwaves and other types of energy, whose wavelengths are outside of the visual spectrum, would be invisible.
The problems with the DEW theories are several. First, a DEW that would have the power to bring down a large building would require a large platform and would be line of sight. In other words, into (and then out of) one of the largest and densest cities of the world, you would have to drag this large weapons platform and have it not raise any questions or suspicions. Second, these weapons consume a huge amount of power. Most conventional energy sources would be insufficient for a weapon that could bring down the World Trade Center. Thus, in addition to the large platform for the weapon itself, you would need to cart in a large energy source, or somehow convince Con Edison (The NYC area utility) to install one for you in advance for your outdoor, line of sight weapon. I'd like to see the requisition form for something like this. Finally, because of the massive energy usage, there would have been evidence. What I mean by that is, if you use a hairdryer in a house, the other members of the house can usually tell that a hairdryer or other large energy-consuming item is in use. There is interference. Imagine something that uses a thousand or five thousand or ten thousand times the energy of a hair dryer, and it uses it within line of sight of downtown Manhattan, i.e., either Manhattan, Queens, Brooklyn, or New Jersey along the Hudson. Close to or perhaps more than a million residents and businesses would have noticed a fluctuation in power.
A non-operational problem with the DEW theory is that just mentioning the idea of the government using "laser beams" or "particle beams" to destroy the towers sounds crazy, like something out of an Austin Powers movie. If the government really had such weapons and was able to solve the problems I outlined, every fighter, bomber, ship and tank in the US arsenal would be outfitted with one.
C. A suggestion that sometimes accompanies either theory A or B in this category is that a missile and not a plane hit the pentagon. A search on yahoo on the words missile hit pentagon will result in over two million pages worth of hits.
Additionally in this category
Some people question whether commercial planes hit the towers. Some say there were no clear markings on the planes. Some even question whether Al Qaeda and Bin Laden were involved in 9/11 at all, suggesting that the CIA or NSA or other US Intelligence or Military agencies were the culprits. There is even a theory that micro nukes, or nuclear weapons of less than 1kt (the Hiroshima atomic bomb was 13kt) were placed in the towers and were the principle agent in their collapse. The problems with this theory are obvious.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
