Debunking conspiracy theorists

Debunking conspiracy theorists' paranoid fantasies about Sept. 11 One of the
wilder stories circulating about Sept 11, and one that has attracted something
of a cult following amongst buffs is that it was carried out by 19 fanatical
Arab hijackers, masterminded by an evil genius named Osama bin Laden, with no
apparent motivation other than that they "hate our freedoms." Never a group of
people to be bothered by facts, the perpetrators of this cartoon fantasy have
constructed an elaborately woven web of delusions and unsubstantiated hearsay in
order to promote this garbage across the  internet and the media to the extent
that a number of otherwise rational people have actually fallen under its spell.
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THE GREAT 9/11 COINCIDENCE Jon Rappoport

On August 22, 2002, the Associated Press ran a story about 9/11. "Agency planned
drill for plane crash last Sept. 11."

"...one US intelligence agency [NRO, National Reconnaissance Office] was
planning an exercise last Sept. 11 [2001] in which an errant aircraft crashed
into one of its buildings."

The same morning. As. The 9/11 attacks.

Accrding to the NRO, their exercise was canceled when the real thing began.

Barbara Honegger, who worked in the White House under Reagan, points out another
coincidence. Rsearching press reports, she found a 9/16/01 Washington Post story
about the pilot of AA flight 77 that, on the morning of 9/11, was said to have
crashed into the Pentagon.

The pilot, Charles Burlingame, an ex- F4 Navy flyer, had, as his last Navy
mission, helped craft Pentagon response plans in the event of a commercial
airliner hitting the Pentagon.

Pilot drafts plan for response to Pentagon hit. Pilot winds up on plane that
hits Pentagon.

Honegger states that Dick Cheney was ultimately in charge of the NRO exercise on
the morning of 9/11. He was in the White House Situation Room for that purpose.

How do you like all these apples?

The limited hangout on this would be: "The hijackers had found out about the
upcoming 9/11 mock exercise. They ran their op on top of that, hoping the
confusion between Real and Mock would keep the US government from responding to
the actual attacks."

Or, one could take this another step: NRO uses many CIA employees. Some element
of the CIA was involved in the tactics of the actual 9/11 attacks.

All the above coincidences certainly defy the laws of probability.

Since AP eventually ran a story right out in the open about the mock exercise,
one would think the Hill would have exploded in outrage. A hearing would have
been held pronto. The "bizarre coincidence" would have become front-page news
for a week or so.

Didn't happen.

The uncanny ability of the press to suppress---by sheer accident---a story that
could have taken the lid off Washington---THAT should have become a story in
itself as well.

Didn't happen.

Where did AP get its story from? It got it from a classic limited hangout,
revealed in an announcement, in 2002, about an upcoming Homeland Security
conference to be held in Chicago. One of the key speakers at the conference
would be John Fulton, a CIA officer who worked for NRO. The announcement reads:
"On the morning of September 11, 2001, Mr Fulton and his team...were running a
pre-planned simulation to explore the emergency response issues that would be
created if a plane were to strike a building. Little did they know that the
scenario would come true in a dramatic way that day."

Sure.

NRO/CIA/Cheney/the White House were nervous about this story coming to light. So
a limited hangout was arranged. The conference brochure would admit to part of
the truth. Mayor Rudy of NYC was the main speaker at the conference. Perfect.

As in, "See, we're giving you a fascinating tidbit about 9/11.  Why in the world
would we do this if there were more to the whole thing? We've got Rudy himself
on the podium. Don't you think he would go nuts if there were more to this, if
his city had been devastated as part of some plan in which the federal
govenrment were actually INVOLVED?"

Worked like a charm.

It should be noted that, right after 9/11, the White House denied that the
intelligence community had any clue that a-plane-into-a-building was a possible
terrorist scenario. When, in fact, a mock exercise for exactly that eventuality
was in progress on the morning of 9/11.

There is one other possibility here we need to consider. On the morning of 9/11,
THERE WAS NO MOCK EXERCISE UNDERWAY. The whole idea of such an exercise was
fabricated to explain otherwise mind-boggling communications traffic among
intelligence and military and civilian agencies of the US government----traffic
that would have exposed the complete and casual disregard for the very real
events that were underway in the air.

"Oh, all THOSE messages? They were just part of the mock exercise. They had
nothing to do with the real thing. We were slow to catch on that the actual
attacks were happening, because we had this practice deal running. What a
coincidence."

When events like 9/11 occur, if you underestimate the devious quality of the
cover stories, you can miss the true thread.

JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com