The Rigorous Intuition list of ‘coincidences’ about September 11 certainly isn’t an impeccably sourced, Seymour Hersh-esque masterpiece (it’s way too reliant on Democratic Underground postings, for a start). It is, however, very scary.
The list tends to conflate examples and cover-ups of breathtaking incompetence with implications of something much more sinister going on. The incompetence is pretty obvious, as anyone who’s paid any attention to the 9/11 commission’s report knows.
But on the sinister side, even the reminders of the things that we already more or less know to be true (the suspiciously-behaving Israeli agents, Osama’s James Bond escapes, the anthrax’s military provenance), combined with reports that are rather more suspect but that don’t appear to have been debunked yet (the suggestion that the pilot who expertly hit the Pentagon was too incompetent to fly a Cessna six weeks beforehand, the strange drugs connections, the potential involvement of Pakistan’s ISI – and the allegation that an ISI colonel wired Mohammed Atta $100,000 and then met up with Bush Sr and Dick Cheney on September 10), are disturbing.
I don’t believe that George Bush, or senior figures in his administration, had advance knowledge of the attacks – and that isn’t even based on assuming they’re moral people. If this were true and to be found out, it would literally lead to a revolution in America: killing innocent foreigners to enrich government cronies may be tolerated by the US public, but killing 3000 innocent Americans is not. And being lynched isn’t the way anyone wants to end their presidency…
It does seem likely that the CIA knew enough about the hijackers and their plans that it’s surprising the attacks took place. It also seems likely that the same is true for Mossad, and various other Western intelligence agencies.
Putting on my conspiracy hat (mmm, real tinfoil) the most plausible explanation appears to be that the CIA were running a covert operation – whether to infiltrate Al Qaida or to do something more nefarious is unclear – but that the attacks happened sooner than they’d expected. If their supposed Al Qaida double agents were actually triple agents, this would make sense: your plans are becoming compromised, so you either go ahead early or pull out altogether.
In the aftermath, everyone involved realises that the outcome if this truth is revealed would be at best mass sackings at the CIA and no 2004 re-election (and at worst, a lot of people going to jail). So it’s time for a cover-up.
Hell, maybe they were just conventionally incompetent. I’d almost rather believe my version of events, since it at least implies intelligence agencies might be able to stop it next time.
More importantly, please can some proper investigative journalists look into this? It’s far too important to leave to armchair pundits and conspiracy theorists.