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9/11 Conspiracy Theories, Official and Unofficial

Everyone Is a Conspiracy Theorist

The attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on 11 September 2001 cannot have been carried out by one person, and cannot have been accidents. All of the theories in circulation about the 9/11 attacks are conspiracy theories, in the standard, non-ideological definition of the term. Everyone who has an opinion about the events is a conspiracy theorist. Needless to say, only one of these theories can be correct.

Here are the main conspiracy theories relating to the World Trade Center attacks:

  1. A group of hijackers, acting together on behalf of Al-Qaeda, piloted two passenger aircraft into World Trade Center buildings 1 and 2, which caused buildings 1, 2 and 7 to fall.
  2. The hijackers, acting together on behalf of one or more US nation-state institutions, piloted the planes into the buildings, which caused the buildings to fall.
  3. The hijackers piloted the planes into the buildings, but this alone did not cause the buildings to fall. All three buildings collapsed because they contained explosives which were planted and detonated by conspirators.
  4. The hijackers did not pilot the planes, which instead were controlled remotely. Buildings 1, 2 and 7 collapsed because they contained explosives which were planted and detonated by conspirators.
  5. The hijackers not only did not pilot the planes, but did not actually exist. Buildings 1, 2 and 7 collapsed because they contained explosives which were planted and detonated by conspirators.
  6. The planes did not actually exist either, and the plane-like objects the spectators witnessed were holograms. Buildings 1, 2 and 7 collapsed because they contained explosives which were planted and detonated by conspirators.

Differences Between 9/11 Conspiracy Theories

  • Theory no.1 is the official conspiracy theory.
  • Theory no.2 is the least implausible of the unofficial, or inside-job, conspiracy theories, but does not seem to be widely held.
  • Theories nos.1–3 are the only ones that rely substantially on objective evidence, even if the evidence they cite is not always reliable or correctly interpreted.
  • Theories nos.3–6 claim that the three buildings collapsed mainly or entirely because explosives had been planted in each of them beforehand, rather than because buildings 1 and 2 had been hit by aircraft.
  • Theory no.3 is the least implausible of all the theories which claim that conspirators planted explosives in buildings 1, 2 and 7. It appears to be the most widely held inside-job conspiracy theory.
  • Theories nos.4–6 are increasingly far-fetched and appear to be held by only a minority of 9/11 inside-job conspiracy theorists.

Central Feature of 9/11 Inside-Job Conspiracy Theories

Despite their differences, the central feature of almost all 9/11 inside-job conspiracy theories is that the buildings fell primarily not because they were hit by planes but because they had been intentionally blown up. Unlike other well-known conspiratorial controversies such as the JFK assassination, the central question in the 9/11 event is a purely technical one:

  • If WTC 1 and 2 did not fall in a way that is consistent with being hit by planes, the event is likely to have been an inside job.
  • If WTC 1 and 2 did fall in a way that is consistent with being hit by planes, the inside-job explanation adds a superfluous level of complication.

Technical Questions

Almost all 9/11 inside-job conspiracy theories depend on the fundamental claim that the three towers collapsed because WTC buildings 1 and 2 had been sabotaged by controlled demolitions, and that being struck by aircraft could not have caused them to collapse in the way they did. This fundamental claim is associated in the public mind with the group ‘Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth’, or AE911Truth. Read more about the claim and the group: