December 24

Originally published September 11, 2010

If I say the name John Hinkley Jr, would you recognized it? Name rings a bell, but you're not sure? Now, how about Lee Harvey Oswald... yeah, much more famous, right? Naturally you've all identified the man who shot JFK, but on the other hand I suppose that those among you who recognized the name of the would-be assassin of Ronald Reagan are not too many. What strikes me the most is the fact that both of them perpetrated the same deed and so should be enjoying a similar level of notoriety; the only real difference between them is that one of them succeeded where the other failed. And yet of the two only Oswald can be considered a household name.

It's true for the general public, and it seems to also be the case among conspiracy theorist circles: if it's about impossible to cross the street without tripping on a conspiracy thesis on the assassination of Kennedy, you have to dig to find one regarding Hinkley's shooting of president Reagan in 81. A Google search gives about 2 million results, but the links' relevance drops like a stone starting on page four. This is certainly not due to any lack of suspicious elements and strange coincidences, starting with the fact that Hinkley came from a family that was close to the Bushes: when you think that George H.W. Bush was vice-president at the time, and would have been slingshoted president in the event of Reagan's death, c'mon, I mean seriously, ain't just this stuff writing itself out? We ought to expect at least an Oliver Stone movie on that, and libraries filled to the brim with one best-seller after another all offering "shocking revelations" based on "previously undisclosed evidence" finally telling the "true story" behind this "historical tragedy". As it is, if 70% of americans continue today to declare in polls that they believe in a plot behind the Kennedy assassination, I'm positively sure that if we were to ask them the same question about the Reagan shooting, 70% of them would answer something along the lines of "No clue". And I strongly suspect that the few who do get interested in it are only doing so because it involves the Bush family; the Reagan conspiracy seems in fact to be nothing more than a footnote in the interminable 911 truthing saga.

It gets better: in 1994, four algerian extremists hijacked an Air France airliner with the intention of suicide-crashing it in Paris, presumably on the Eiffel Tower. The terrorists' plan failed, mainly because they made the mistake of making a stopover instead of flying straight towards their target. This is not a small thing: we are talking about a September 11 before the time, the WTC replaced by the Eiffel Tower, Ground Zero on the Champs-de-Mars. Imagine for a moment that they succeeded: imagine the shock, the trauma, think of the reactions (I can hear Bill Clinton solemny declaring "Today, we are all french"). Try to visualize Balladur, "the axis of good and evil", "you are either for us or against us", the attack being used as a justification for an invasion of Algeria – no wait, that doesn't make any sense, the terrorists were all algerian; let's say Morrocco. Or perhaps Belgium (No reason, it's just to make the french laugh. For some reason it always makes them laugh when someone mentions Belgium).

There's no doubt that we would have been witnesses to the major event of the decade, if not the entire second half of the 20th century, the kind that defines a generation, of which everyone say they remember where they were and what they were doing when it happened. In this parallel universe, you only have to pronounce the words "december 24" to get the emotion taps a-flowing.

And there's no doubt either that this would have spawned countless theories diverging from the official version, an entire subculture of conspiracy accusing everyone and his grandmother of having been part of the plot. However as things stand now, if anyone took upon him to slap together a plot theory accusing the french government to have pulled an inside job, he probably didn't put it online cause I haven't found anything.

Maybe we are beginning to glimpse a fundamental aspect of the peculiar psychology of conspiracy theorists. You would need to be naive to the point of idiocy to believe that there's no such thing as a conspiracy; it seems that the drive to plot against one's fellow person is firmly embedded in human nature. From co-workers gossiping behind their superior's back with the unavowed intent of stealing his position, to extremist groups plotting government overthrows, daily life as well as history is replete with plots and conspiracies either successful or not, and all have inspired numerous authors and scriptwriters. The disposition towards conspiring is written in undeletable letters in our collective unconsciousness.

But those mundane conspiracies are not enough for the conspirationnist; he has to raise the bar to impress his peers, he needs the Conspiracy of conspiracies, THE all-encompassing plot of ages, universal, penultimate, that controls everything. Freemasonry, Illuminati, Bildeberg, trilateral, cosmoplanetary order of the lizards of the Temple of Zurich, farmers wives club of, all this and more somehow all builds up towards some grand old Universal Plan.

After some thought, it's becoming obvious that it would be impossible for mere humans to organise such a monster: we are talking here of some super-organisation gathering everything that human society can muster in elite power-gifted individuals, and that managed all through the eons to control the world without getting noticed, and all the while succeed in avoiding the pitfalls of the Peter principle, the Snafu principle, the theorem of the five apes, that miserable exercice in meanness and mediocrity that we usually refer to as 'petty office politics', in short of all those organisational cancers that plague all agencies and hierarchies and turn them into those pathetic, bloated and ridiculous monsters burdened of all those incompetent, career-seeking and fundamentally useless buffoons swarming in all businesses and governments, and end up degenerating in those pachydermic bureaucracies that are the plague of our societies and that we know all too well.

Clearly we are dealing with individuals far above the norm, whether on intelligence, determination and especially an unconditionnal devotion to a common cause. The kind of people – or creature even – that would for instance choose not to have anything to do with four clueless dolts likely to commit such a gross tactical error as to land with an hijacked plane, thereby putting themselves at the mercy of law enforcers. The kind also who, endeavouring to scheme out the assassination of a president, would certainly manage to find better than some confused whacko armed with a .32 purchased in a pawn shop who fired six bullets at point blank and still managed to miss the target on all shots, only owing his single hit on the president to a lucky ricochet on the limousine's bumper.

There's little merit in umasking plots fomented by klutzes and fatally vowed for failure; search 'pope conspiracy' on Google and you will find more pages on the death of John-Paul the 1st than on the assassination attempt on John-Paul the 2nd; there's no doubt in my mind that this would be a far different case if Ali Ağca hadn't miss. For the conspirationist perpetually craving for personal self-esteem, it is much more gratifying to uncover plots from age old organisations formed of supra-geniuses, and better still to publish his findings on the web in all impunity, without fear of reprisals from the hyper-powerful: "they are the greatest minds of all time, and I am smarter than them".

All is left to do now for the conspirationists is to seize power themselves, if they're so smart: isn't this their secret fantasy anyway?

You're never bored when you're paranoid- the truth behind 9/11, part 4

Originally published September 18, 2008

This is the fourth part of a four-part series: for the other parts, click here: 1st part, 2nd part, 3rd part

Those amongst who courageaously put up with me all along – and presumably that's not saying a lot – must be getting a splitting headache trying to figure out who did what where to whom and who got paid. To be perfectly honest, you are not alone. So I will attempt to resume the whole deal with a detailed timeline of the September 11 conspiracy.

• ? – four Boeings painted with the colors of the two airline companies take off from a strip of which the exact whereabouts are still unknown; they will be the duplicates of four of the to-be-hijacked planes; three of them are fitted with missiles; a fifth plane, an A-10 Thunderbolt specially modified for air-to-air combat and repainted in white to simulate a private corporate jet, also takes off; it will become the duplicate of flight 93
• 07:00 to 07:45 – At Logan airport in Boston, three of the five pirates from flight 11 are selected for a security check-up; at Newark airport in New Jersey, one of the pirate from flight 93 is selected; at Dulles airport in Washington, two of the pirates from flight 77 are selected after setting the metal detector's alarm off.
• 07:59 – American Airlines flight 11 take off from Boston
• 08:14 – beginning of the hijacking of flight 11
• 08:14 – United Airlines flight 175 take off from Boston
• 08:19 to 08:44 – the conspirators call American Airline impersonating Betty Ong, a flight attendant aboard flight 11
• 08:20 – American Airlines flight 77 take off from Washington
• 08:20 to 08:44 – the conspirators call American Airlines' flight services impersonating Amy Sweeney, an attendant aboard flight 11
• 08:24 – Flight 11 changes course and heads towards New York; the conspirators send two radio messages pretending to be Mohammad Atta, one of the "hijackers"
• 08:26 – American Airlines flight manager Michael Woodward identifies three of the hijackers on flight 11 with the help of the seat numbers provided by the false Amy Sweeney
• 08:30 – flight 11 and its double meet and exchange their radar signatures
• 08:34 – the conspirators send a third message pretending to be Atta
• 08:37 – the conspirators contact an air controller pretending to be the crew of flight 175 and "confirm" visual contact
• 08:37 – NORAD scrambles fighters to intercept flight 11
• 08:42 – flight 93 takes off from Newark
• 08:42 – beginning of the hijacking of flight 175
• 08:44 – the pilot of US Airlines flight 853 receives a brief signal from an emergency locating transmitter (ELT), possibly from either flight 175 or flight 11
• 08:46 – flight 77 and its double meet and exchange their radar signatures
• 08:46 – flight 11's double crashes in the World Trade Center's north tower a fraction of a second after firing its missile
• 08:48 – CNN interrupt their broadcasting and begin live coverage
• 08:51 appr. – beginning of the hijacking of flight 77
• 08:52 appr. – the conspirators leave the practically intact passport of Satam al Suqami, one of the flight 11 "hijackers", on a sidewalk in the WTC vicinity
• 08:52 – two F-15 scramble from Otis base to intercept the phoney flight 11 unawares that it already crashed
• 08:52 – the conspirators call the United Airlines maintenance center in San Francisco impersonating a flight attendant aboard flight 175 of an uncertain identity, possibly Robert Fangman
• 08:52 – the conspirators call the father of one of the passengers of flight 175, Robert Hanson, impersonating him
• 08:53 – flight 11 lands in Harrisburgh
• 08:53 – flight 175 and its double meet and exchange their radar signatures
• 08:54 – flight 77's double changes course and heads towards Washington
• 08:55 – Delta Airlines flight 2315 narrowly avoids a collision with flight 175; another collision is avoided with flight 542 from US Airways
• 08:56 – air controllers lose track of flight 77's double's signal
• 08:57 to 09:32 – the Global Hawk catches up with flight 77 and starts following it
• 08:58 – flight 175's double changes course and heads towards New York
• 08:58 – the conspirators call the wife of a flight 175 passenger, Brian Sweeney, impersonating him; they also call his mother a couple of minutes later
• 09:00 approx. – three F-16 cut short an ongoing exercise and return to Andrews air base
• 09:00 – the conspirators call Peter Hanson's father a second time
• 09:00 and thereafter – Shafig bin Laden, Ossama's brother, attends a conference held by the Carlyle Group at the Washington Ritz Carlton
• 09:00 and thereafter – Mike Ballinger, a United Airlines dispatcher, proceeds to send a warning one by one to all the company's planes
• 09:01 – United Airlines flight 23 cancels its departure from John F. Kennedy airport in New York; the pirates on board start to protest loudly but eventually cancel their plans and flee; flight 23's double goes get lost God knows where
• 09:02 – flight 175 lands in Harrisburgh
• 09:02 – flight 93 and its double meet and exchange their radar signatures
• 09:03 – flight 175's double crashes in the World's Trade Center' south tower a fraction of a second after launching its missile
• 09:03 – NYPD chief Joseph Esposito puts the city of New-York on maximum alert status
• 09:04 – the FAA cancels departures from all airports in New York state and all the states of New England
• 09:06 – President Bush is informed of the crash of flight 175
• 09:07 – flight 93 lands in Harrisburgh, and the passengers of flights 175 and 11 are transferred aboard
• 09:08 – the FAA extends its flight prohibition to the entire US east coast
• 09:08 to 09:13 – the two F-15 from Otis base take an holding flight path east of Long Island
• 09:09 – flight 77 lands in Harrisburgh; the passengers are transferred aboard flight 93
• 09:09 and hereafter – the conspirators flood the airwaves with bogus hijacking reports to confuse air control
• 09:12 to 09:15 – the conspirators call the parents of Renee May, flight attendant aboard fight 77 and impersonate her; they intoxicate them with numerous contradictory informations
• 09:15 to 10:28 – two employees stuck on the 8th floor of WTC7 hear several explosions
• 09:20 – the conspirators call the husband of a passenger aboard flight 77, Barbara Olson and impersonate her; the husband is Theodore Olson, the Dept. of Justice general sollicitor
• 09:21 – the New York Port Authority closes all bridges and tunnels in the city
• 09:24 – the crew of flight 93 receives Mike Ballinger's warning
• 09:24 – Langley air base scrambles their jets
• 09:25 – the two F-15 from Otis air base finally arrive over Manhattan and commence air patrol
• 09:26 – the FAA grounds all departures across the nation, and orders all planes (commercial, private and even military) already in the air to land at the first reasonnable opportunity
• 09:26 – US Air Force raises its alert level to Delta
• 09:28 – beginning of the fake hijacking of flight 93; the pirates' entry in the cockpit is heard by Cleveland air controllers
• 09:29 – President Bush emits his first televised comments
• 09:30 to 09:45 – the conspirators call three times the wife of Tom Burnett, passenger aboard flight 93 and impersonate him
• 09:30 – United Airlines orders all of its airliners to land immediately; American Airlines will follow suit at 09:35
• 09:30 – three F-16 scrambles from Langley base and heads east towards the Atlantic ocean
• 09:31 to 10:06 – a private flight, ExecuJet 956, spots flight 93 and confirms both visual and radio contact, and even has to maneuver to avoid a collision; it will follow it until it crashes
• 09:32 – the controllers at Dulles airport find flight 77's signal back, unawares that both its double and the Global Hawk are flying right in its wake
• 09:32 – the conspirators send a radio message pretending to be the hijackers of flight 93
• 09:34 to 11:45 – the conspirators jam the radio signal emitted by Air Force One, interfering with President Bush's attempts to contact the White House
• 09:35 – flight 93's double changes course and heads towards Washington
• 09:35 – recordings recovered from flight 93's black box begin now
• 09:35 to 09:41 – the conspirators call United Airlines' maintenance center in San Francisco impersonating a flight attendant aboard flight 93, Sandy Bradshaw
• 09:36 – a E-4B from the US Strategic Command take off from an unspecified base in the vicinity of Washington and fly over the Pentagon to guide to Global Hawk's trajectory
• 09:36 – a C-130 who just took off from Langley air base approaches flight 77 to provide a false confirmation of its presence; it provides a visual distraction as well; after the crash, it will head for Shanksville
• 09:37 – The Global crashes in the western wall of the Pentagon while flight 77's double continues on its course over the complex and towards Ronald Reagan airport a kilometer further ahead
• 09:37 to 10:03 – the conspirators call several friends and relatives of passengers aboard flight 93 and impersonate them all, most notably Todd Beamer, Jeremy Glick and Mark Bingham
• 09:38 – the conspirators knock over a couple of streetlights on Washington Blvd
• 09:38 – a fire squad from Ronald Reagan airport who was helping on the scene of an auto accident near the airport is redirected to the Pentagon
• 09:38 and hereafter – FBI agents seize the recordings from the security camera in commercial buildings nearby the Pentagon
• 09:38 or 09:45 – anti-terrorist agency director Richard Clarke ask for air patrols over all major cities in the United States; however it's not certain if that order was transmitted to everyone
• 09:39 approx. – flight 77's double discreetly lands on Ronald Reagan airport, where it is hacked to pieces
• 09:39 – the conspirators transmit a radio message impersonating Ziad Jarrah, one of the "pirates" of flight 93
• 09:41 –unit 105 from Arlington County Fire Department arrives at the Pentagon
• 09:42 approx. – the E-4B comes back over the Pentagon and circles it a couple of times
• 09:45 – flight 93 takes off from Harrisburgh
• 09:45 – the american airspace is shut off; all incoming international flights are diverted
• 09:47 – the conspirators initiates the controlled demolition of the south tower by causing the collapse of some floors around the 90th
• 09:47 – the conspirators impersonating Jeremy Glick announce to his wife that the passengers are voting to decide whether to revolt
• 09:49 approx. – after a lengthy detour over the Atlantic, the F-16 from Langley air base finally reach Washington
• 09:50 to 10:15 approx. – the conspirators scatter parts of flight 77's double all over the crash scene at the Pentagon; they cross the security perimeter and sneak between "B" and "C" rings to deposit pieces of the Boeing's nose cone and landing gear; they leave some charred bodies still attached to their seat inside the building; they also attempt to make all traces of the Global hawk disappear
• 09:52 – two firemen reach the 78th floor on the south tower and only report two minor fires by radio
• 09:55 – President Bush takes off from Sarasota aboard Air Force One without any precise destination; he circles around Florida
• 09:58 – the conspirators impersonating Todd Beamer announce the beginning of the passenger "revolt" aboard flight 93 to a GTE consumer service supervisor ("let's roll")
• 09:58 – flight 93 is shot down by its double, who continues its course to God knows where
• 09:58 to 10:06 – the conspirators simulates the struggle between the hijackers and the passengers on the controllers radio as well as on the phones of several relatives and acquaintances of the passengers, using a adroitly orchestrated scenario
• 09:59 – the conspirators set off a bomb on the ground floor of the WTC south tower; the 82nd floor falls down, triggering the collapse of the tower
• 10:03 – flight 93 crashes in an abandonned open-quarry mine
  in Pennsylvania
• 10:05 and herafter – the conspirators collect the remains of the passengers from flight 77, 11 and 175 on the site of flight 93's crash and bring them back to the Pentagon and the WTC
• 10:06 approx. – CIA director George Tenet finally receives the passenger manifests after numerous bureaucratic delays
• 10:08 – the C-130 from the Pentagon arrives at the flight 93 crash site to confound again any eyewitness
• 10:10 approx. – Vice-President Cheney authorizes the shooting of flight 93, apparently unawares that it already crashed
• 10:10 – The military level of alert is raised to Defcon 3
• 10:15 – the front wall of the Pentagon's damaged section collapses
• 10:20 – aboard Air Force One, President Bush tells Vice-President Cheney that he has greenlighted the shooting down of any suspect plane if necessary
• 10:28 – the conspirators cause a local earthquake at the base of the WTC north tower, and then set off a bomb on the ground floor; the 98th floor falls down, causing the collapse of the tower
• 10:31 – the FAA authorizes back military and police flights
• 10:35 – Air Force One finally decides on a destination and sets course to Barksdale base
• 10:38 – Andrews air base's F-16 are redeployed after their return from their exercise
• 10:42 – two F-16 take off from Hancock air base
• 10:45 – Major Gibney, who is in fact a lieutenant-colonel take off from Fargo, N.D. heading for Bozman, Mont., to be used as a patsy for the shooting down of flight 93
• 11:45 – Air Force One land on Barksdale base in Louisiana
• 10:50 – a local farmer flies over flight 93's crash site in a Cessna
• 12:00 approx. and herafter – Senator John McCain (R) multiplies tv interviews; he invariably states the necessity of retaliating not only in Afghanistan, but also in Irak, Iran and Syria as well; he will declare during an interview on CNN a couple of days later: «it is evident that Irak is on top on the list»
• 12:15 approx. – the entire american air space is at last empty of all commercial or private traffic
• 17:20 – collapse of World Trade Center 7
• 20:00 and hereafter – flights 175 and 11 take off from Harrisburgh by remote control and are sent towards the Atlantic Ocean to be sunk

Well, this is not working, it's even more fucked up as it is. This is worse than the Gordian knot.

Anyways, that doesn't change anything. Of course, it's all highly speculative, and there are a lot of details that could be different: we could very well for example switch the Global Hawk with an AGM-86D in our scenario, which would have the merit of being more consistent with the size of the hole as a Global Hawk is about as wide as a Boeing. Or we could imagine that the passengers and crews of the planes have in fact never even existed, that their identities were made up out of the blue and that amateur actors have been hired to play the role of the grieving families.

But regardless of all the variations, the working principle remains the same: never in the history of mankind a group of conspirators have spent so much energy and ressources, involved, bought off or duped so many people, conceived a plan so hairbrained and so complex in its conception as well as in its execution. The number of official agencies that they had to let in the plot, the staggering amount of money that they had to invest (you have any idea how much a Boeing jumbo jet costs?), the thousands, even the millions of man-hours of preparation (picture yourself filing away all the serial numbers on the two million parts that make up a Boeing), the sheer Mount Everest of governmental paperwork that they had to glean and get rid off, not to mention all of the authorizations, clearances and permits that they had to obtain to access them.... never a plot will have necessitate so much to in the end amount to so little.

And I stress "so little". You may think that I'm coming apart at the seams by referencing to 2700 dead and a dozen destroyed buildings as "so little", but I'd like to remind you that three farmers, operating under a five figure budget, managed to kill 168 people and razed a 10-story building in Oklahoma City in 1995; if Tim McVeigh could have afforded the retail price of a single 757 Boeing airliner, there's no doubt in my mind that he would have succeeded in leveling the entire city.

As for the Reichstag conspiracy... yeah right, you want to talk about the Reichstag, by all means, let us: a handful of nazi conspirators led by Hermann Goering come in contact with a communist political activist fallen on hard times, pretend to befriend him and eventually end up putting up in his somewhat confused mind that you know what it would be a swell idea to set fire to the Parliament; they open the doors for him and while he runs around the Commons they spill gasoline in the basement. And that's about it. Total cost of the operation... well, how much was worth a jerrycan full of gasoline in 1933?

Six days later, the Nazi Party won the election, and thanks to the dismantling of the Communist Party got hold of the majority. The next month, Hitler assumed absolute power by suspending the constitution. If the original intent of the september 11 conspirators was to establish a fascist state, the least we can say is that the nazis could teach them a thing or two: in a totalitarian regime the Democrat Party would have been dissolved a long time ago and all its leaders arrested as well as the entire staff of the Washington Times, not to mention all those smart-alecky wiseguys a la Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert who would have been sent hammering rocks in a concentration camp ages ago.

I won't budge on this one: the intention of the conspirators, their modus operandi have conformed to the letter to the motto why make it simple when you can make it complicated. It is obvious that the whole ordeal had never constituted a means, but in fact an end in itself. No force on earth will ever convince me that an underground organization who had enough leverage to be able to embezzle 1.3 trillion (that's right, 1 300 billions) dollars from the most powerful organization on the planet could have even for one second thought that they needed to blow it all in such a boondogled plan to take a power that in the end they in effect already possessed.

Only Rube Goldberg and his disciples conform to the psychological make-up that would satisfactorily explain the behavior and actions of the conspirators. As far as I'm concerned the final conclusion is inevitable: the 9/11 conspiracy was a Rube Goldberg device.

P.S.: I've just been told that Rube Goldberg died in 1970, or 31 years before the events. Well, well, how convenient, an ironclad alibi! When I said they thought of everything... if you thought you would get me with that one, think again, in your face: as far as I'm concerned, it only strenghtens my convictions. Besides, how do you know he's not alive somewhere on a deserted island? Heads you lose, tails I win: welcome to the wonderful world of conspiracy theorism.

You're never bored when you're paranoid- the truth behind 9/11, part 3

Originally published September 13, 2008

This is the third part of a four-part series: for the other parts, click here: 1st part, 2nd part, 4th part

A favorite theme of Rube Goldberg in his drawings of combobulated machines was the introduction of an animal's action in tyhe mechanism, for example a parrot jerking up upon receiving a kick in the butt, or a hamster starting to gallop in his wheel after a stimulation of some sort. The idea was of course to take the complexity and uncertainty factor up a notch. Needless to say, people who build rube goldberg devices as a hobby or for contests hardly ever use animals in their machines, if at all.

Well, not only the 9/11 conspirators introduced the animal factor in their plan, but they went all out and selected the most unpredictable, the most random of them all: the human, namely the passengers of flight 93.

The plan was at first put in motion once again with the hijacking of an airliner, this one from United Airlines. But this time, and contrary to the three other flights, this one was hijacked by genuine kamikazis, actually determined to crash on the Capitol (or the White House, nobody's certain). We could see in this a concession to simplicity, but as you no doubt understand by now that suicide crash didn't represent the real intent of the conspirators; at best it constituted a contingency plan.

The central element in this plan was the strict instructions given the pirates to hold their attack until absolutely sure that the other targets had already been hit; if those orders haven't been followed to the letter, they nevertheless successfully accomplished their purpose. By the time they started setting things in motion, their plane was flying almost over Cleveland, and would need a minimum of thirty minutes to make the way back to Washington.

This delay then allowed the passengers to learn about the attacks on the WTC from phonecalls lodged to their relatives, to understand the situation and so hence to form plans for a revolt. We know the rest: the heroic epic of average american joe against the forces of evil and the famous "let's roll" still to this day co-opted to death by untold numbers of heroe wannabes and venal demagogues. In this baroque machinery, the passengers were the hamsters, the plane the wheel and the hijacking the prod poked in the hamster's ass.

All there remained to do was to sent flight 93 crashing somewhere in a field in Pennsylvania. The conspirators dispatched a US Air Force fighter plane which had been sneaked away beforehand and (did you notice that I use the word "beforehand" quite a lot? Like I said, they thought of everything), and sent it to simply shoot down the Boeing, while sending a private jet to fly around the scene to confound any eyewitness. The fighter then casually returned to its base.

You certainly imagine that all those preparations left traces: minutes from secret meetings, blueprints, recordings... they had to get rid of it all. Obviously if you followed carefully so far and got the general idea well, you probably already figured that simply gathering all this stuff and burn it away in a discreet area certainly wasn't part of their plan. Far from it, they still needed a money shot, the cherry on the top, the grand finale that would conclude the whole affair in an apotheosis of extreme intricateness (I'm really running out of synonyms here).

For their secret planning sessions, the conspirators had... that's right, beforehand elected to rent offices in nothing less than the 7 World Trade Center, which is to say right across the street from the Twin Towers. You remember the controlled demolitions of those towers? Well, hang on to your lugnuts, those explosions were carefully and expertly calculated to make the towers damage WTC7 on their way down so as to cause it to collapse as well, a couple of well placed charges completing the process with a third controlled demolition. The entire scheme then resulted in the disappearing of any and all evidence of the plot. A domino chain!

What would be a good rube goldberg without its domino chain? Our conspirators understood that well and went to the point of using whole skyscrapers in lieu of dominoes. I've said it before and I'll say it again, why make it simple when you can make it complicated?

Tomorrow, the conclusion

You're never bored when you're paranoid- the truth behind 9/11, part 2

Originally published September 12, 2008

This is the second part of a four-part series: for the other parts, click here: 1st part, 3rd part, 4th part

That was for the World Trade Center (actually there's more but I'll get back to it later); we'd think that our conspirators would be satisfied with it and leave it at that, but that's misunderstanding the philosophy of Rube Goldberg's disciples: when they want to indulge in the convoluted they mean business. For the Pentagon they would elevate elaborateness to a whole new level.

The original idea was of course to send another plane, but once again, why not flesh it out some? Hijacking an airliner and crashing it on the Pentagon may be more sophisticated than just planting bombs, but there's still room for improvement. So instead of an airplane, the conspirators decided to send a missile. They sneaked out that missile right under the nose of the Dept. of Defense – either a AGM-86D, or a Global Hawk spy plane which had beforehand been fitted with a charge specially designed with "BROACH" technology – camouflaged it with American Airlines colors, and discreetly brought it on a strip on Ronald Reagan Airport from where they fired it on the Pentagon. Meanwhile, flight 77 was hijacked and then just like flights 175 and 11 it proceeded towards the rendez-vous point with the missile, where they exchanged their radar signals by crossing paths so as to once again counfound air controllers.

Meanwhile, a C-130 was following the Boeing, in order firstly to guide by radio the UAV-converted-to-Cruise-missile, and secondly to provide a visual distraction to the hundreds of eyewitnesses to keep them from realising that a 757 Boeing jumbo jet looks like a Cruise missile the way a fluffy rhubarb and quark clafoutis looks like an ass – which nevertheless wasn't enough to keep them from confusing one with the other.

Even as the missile/spy plane was en route to the Pentagon, flight 77 was landing on an out-of-way strip and the scenario just repeated itself: slaughtering of the passengers, chopping off of the plane and returning to the crash site to place the pieces just in time for investigator Allyn Kilsheimer to find pieces of the tail, fuselage debris, flight recorder, shreds of uniforms and even body parts. Truely, they thought of every detail, down to the macabre.

There still remained dozens of little details to take care of: knock down a couple of streetlights while everyone's back was turned to make it look like a Boeing went throught them; widen the impact crater on the wall to prevent any observer to wonder how a drone the width of a Boeing 757 would be able to leave a hole barely 25 meter wide; knock over an outside generator to create the illusion it was hit by an engine, get rid of all incriminating evidence left on surveillance video records where a missile would be visible... Regarding the hole, I'll concede they botched the job some, but hey, nobody's perfect. In falling dominoes competitions, sometimes it happens so that a piece refuses to tip over and necessitates a little nudge to keep the chain going. Let us deduct them 1 point and move on.

One more important detail: they still had to make all traces from the missile disappear, on the crash site as well as in the army's inventory, who you no doubt imagine would certainly wonder how come they're missing a hundred million dollar drone, especially a modified prototype specially equipped with a technology that was still experimental back then – in other words, classified. Observe the remarkable efficiency with which they managed to cut through the DoD's legendary red tape, where as legend has it 7 forms and four weeks are required just to change a light bulb. The swiftness they showed in corralling all concerned personnel and ammassing all the relevant paperwork without leaving a trace is absolutely amazing, even supposing they had inside help.

Okay, Shanksville's is still up; to be continued tomorrow.

By the way here's a link that isn't particularly relevant, but is certainly ironic given the circumstances (look at the date)

You're never bored when you're paranoid- the truth behind 9/11

Originally published September 11, 2008

This is the first part of a four-part series: for the other parts, click here: 2nd part, 3rd part, 4th part

I found out who perpetrated the 9/11 terrorist attacks, or more precisely who was behind it: Rube Goldberg. If you dont know who that is, you can always check WikiPedia, but to make it short, Rube Goldberg is a cartoonist famous for having invented in his drawings an astounding array of hairbrained contraptions each more ludicrous than the preceding, so famous that his name is now used to designate the genre: if you played Mousetrap when you were a kid, you've seen a classic example of a "rube goldberg machine".

So what has any of this to do with September 11? Well, nothing, if you believe the official story, namely the one that says that Osama Bin Laden, at the head of an international terrorist ring, has selected amongst a seemingly unending source of brainwashed loonies 19 of the best (including a half-dozen who have some experience as airplane pilots), and sent them on a suicide raid against three landmarks representing the three pillars of America's power (government, banks, army). Simple, straightforward, efficient, badabing badaboom, no useless complications, no horsing around. Even if the operation hasn't turned out to be a complete success, the beauty in the plan lays in its simplicity, by implicating about thirty people at most. Keep it simple, stupid.

But as you may havew figured out, the real story is far more complicated. The Twin Towers to begin with: you'd think crashing two Boeing at full speed would be enough to draw some attention, but the towers were built to withstand this sort of event, meaning the buildings' collapse wasn't guaranteed. To make sure they fall down, it was then necessary to plant bombs in them. It sort of make the planes somewhat redundant, if not a show of outright overkill, but why keep it simple when you can make it complicated.

While we're at it, instead of sending jumbo jets, why not flesh it out some and use military planes? So the conspirators have painted military cargo planes with American Airlines and United Airlines liveries, then hid a missile in each of them, in specially prepared bulges fitted under the fuselage. The two planes then crashed in the towers while each firing its missile a fraction of a second before impact, like a kamikaze barreling down on a house with a semi but still taking care of shooting a .45 bullet from a magnum that he took the precaution of hiding behing the fender. We really have to tip our hat to our conspirators' commitment to the cause of useless complexity.

But they certainly didn't stop there: au contraire. They could have happily planted their bombs in a haphazard way, but once again why make it simple when you can make it complicated. So they carefully placed the charges in such a way as to provoke a controlled demolition. Instead of crashing down more or less chaotically, both towers collapsed in a predictable fashion, each floor falling squarely on the lower one in a graceful manner that was almost elegant in its eeriness. You have to admit you don't get to see that every day, terrorists who take the time and pain to methodically deconstruct their target instead of just blowing shit up as they're usually wont, all the more so considering the fact that they successfully managed to trick the National Institute of Standards and Technology who to this day still holds that fire was the only cause of the towers' collapse.

Now there remained the tricky matter of the passengers. Just creating fictive identities wouldn't have sufficed, because there still was the problem of two commercial airliners who would normally show as missing in their respective companies' inventories. So they hijacked the two flights in question towards New-York, and there made them crossed paths with the two disguised military planes at a pre-determined point. They then shut down all transmitters, activated some sort of radar scrambling device that has been previously installed in secrecy, and then casually went their merry way undetected while taking the precaution of seizing all cellular phones from the passengers, while all this time air controllers who being none the wiser kept following the fake airliners on their radar screens.

Finally, they discreetly landed on an out-of-way strip, where they killed all the passengers and staff in cold blood, then hacked both planes to bits and brought pieces back to the WTC surroundings, including the flight recordings, and up to – man, those guys are good! – a piece of fuselage that they carried all the way to the top of WTC5 right under the nose of all bystanders, including NYPD officers who had cordoned off the entire area. And all this while they could just been happy with loading four or five trucks full of explosives, pulled over in the parking lot under the towers and just stroll out whistling innocently. I said it and will say it again, why make it simple when you can make it complicated.

And when I say complicated, I'm really understating. If you thought it was over, think again, the fun has just begun. But this is beginning to get tiresome, so I'll take a break. To be continued tomorrow.