BIG EVENTS BIG CAUSES: MIHOPs, LIHOPs and the 'truth' behind September 11

Review - Institute of Public Affairs, Mar 2007 by Tobin, Hugh

Despite long and expensive inquiries, thousands of eye witnesses, and conclusive video, sound and picture evidence, more than five years after the attacks, sceptics continue to challenge every part of the official story of what happened on 11 September 2001.

Unsourced photos, quotations taken out of context and contused eyewitness accounts have inspired complex and often bizarre conspiracy theories.

Rather than a terrorist attack, on that day in 2001 the Pentagon was in tact struck by a missile, the World Trade Center buildings were brought down by a controlled demolition, Flight 93 never actually crashed, and some of the hijackers are still alive in Pakistan-a logistical feat planned and executed by the U.S. government using remote-controlled planes.

The investigation into the death of Princess Diana continues nearly 10 years after the accident. All sorts of theories have surfaced: from Dianas alleged pregnancy, her drivers blood alcohol reading, and Paparazzi and Royal family involvement in her death. It is, apparently, too hard for some people to believe that a Princess could have died in a simple car crash.

The most famous alleged conspiracy of the last 100 years-and one about which seven out of ten Americans remain sceptical-was the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy in 1963. From CIA involvement, to a second gunman on the grassy knoll, the incident has become one of the most reviewed in history.

Since then, the public has developed an enthusiasm for conspiracy theories that has been reflected through popular culture with hits such as the X-Files, and movies and books such as The Da Vinci Code. Scandals such as the Watergate affair have only fuelled the public's passion for often bizarre and baseless theories. Most notably, in Australia, there have been persistent claims that Australian Prime Minister Harold Holt didn't drown in the sea off Point Nepean in 1967, but was in fact taken by a Chinese submarine.

S11: An Inside Job

For all the different September 11 conspiracy theories that exist, they generally fall into two categories. Fither U.S. government agencies knew that the September 11 attacks were going to occur and failed to act, or, alternatively, the government was direcly involved in planning and executing the attacks. A 'MIHOP' is, dierefore, someone who believes that the Government Made It Happen On Purpose while a 'LIHOP' believes that the Government Let It Happen On Purpose.

A large and growing number of people subscribe to these theories. A poll taken by the Scripps Survey Research Centre in September 2006 found that 36 per cent of American respondents thought that it was 'very likely' or 'somewhat likely' that the government either took part in the attacks or allowed them to happen. Meanwhile, 16 per cent thought that the destruction of the World Trade Center was aided by explosives. Other polls have reflected these results around the world.

A simple web search on 'September 11 conspiracy' comes up with hundreds of websites and groups devoted to the topic. Some are simple websites set up by individuals, but others are the work of complex organisations such as The 9/11 Truth Movement which is a collection of individuals, researchers and collections of people who are working together to reveal the conspiracy. Another group, known as the Scholars for 9/11 Truth, believes that September 11 'was a psychological operation to launch somewhere from 50 to 100 years of aggressive warfare against Middle Eastern and Central Asian countries'.

According to the Scholars' website, there is no longer any need to debate the fact that the attacks were carried out by the U.S. Government:

Academics, experts, and scholars who have examined the physical evidence and considered this event within its historical context tend to converge in agreement that the inside-job hypothesis is, in fact, strongly supported by the available evidence, while the version advanced in The 9/11 Commission Report is not only false but provably false and in crucial respects physically impossible. That the official account of 9/11 is a lie and that 9/11 appears to have been an inside job is no longer a matter of serious scientific debate.

Problems with Credibility

Many of the 'experts' used by the Scholars and orher conspiracy theorists to explain why it would be impossible for the World Trade Centet to have collapsed the way it did, have very little scientific training-apart from watching a couple of cheaply produced videos on the Internet.

Conspiracy rheorists cooperate tighdy, despite the contradictions that may arise. One theorist who claims that a missile was fired into the Pentagon will associate himself with another theorist who thinks that a remotely controlled plane flew into the Pentagon.

With every new video posted on YouTube, or book published, or website launched, there arise new opportunities for the theorists to quote each other and therefore claim to have overwhelming evidence of the conspiracy. Indeed, it is the cumulative effect of having hundreds of loosely sourced pieces of 'evidence' thrown at the viewer of a 9/11 conspiracy documentary that gives them their power. Each piece of evidence seen individually may be obviously fake or naïve, but the whole is far more convincing than the sum of the parts.