From the moment the first airplane crashed into the World Trade Center on the morning of September 11, 2001, the world has asked one simple and compelling question: How could it happen?

Three and a half years later, not everyone is convinced we know the truth. Go to Google.com, type in the search phrase "World Trade Center conspiracy" and you'll get links to an estimated 628,000 Web sites. More than 3000 books on 9/11 have been published; many of them reject the official consensus that hijackers associated with Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda flew passenger planes into U.S. landmarks.

So early in the article, and already PM is flat out wrong. You do not get links to 628,000 web sites when you search for "World Trade Center conspiracy" , you get that when you search for World Trade Center conspiracy, with no quotation marks. In the latter case, you get all the pages that contain any of the search terms, not the search terms in that order. If you actually search for "World Trade Center conspiracy" you get, Results 1 - 10 of about 657 for "World Trade Center conspiracy" When you put the search terms in quotes it will give you sites that have those terms in that order, Google calls that an "advanced search". Google it and see Seems odd that the PM panel of experts did not notice this, but this is typical of their whole investigation.

Healthy skepticism, it seems, has curdled into paranoia. Wild conspiracy tales are peddled daily on the Internet, talk radio and in other media. Blurry photos, quotes taken out of context and sketchy eyewitness accounts have inspired a slew of elaborate theories: The Pentagon was struck by a missile; the World Trade Center was razed by demolition-style bombs; Flight 93 was shot down by a mysterious white jet. As outlandish as these claims may sound, they are increasingly accepted abroad and among extremists here in the United States.

These claims of paranoia in this paragraph, are claims, when actually PM is either lying, wrong, or naïve , and exaggerating with the terms “wild conspiracy tales”, painting with a broad brush, to imply that anyone that thinks conspiracy, is crazy. In fact it is PM has gone wild.
CNN covered the 9/11 Truth Movement, as you can see in the poll above, most people seem to think there is a cover-up. See Transcript

To investigate 16 of the most prevalent claims made by conspiracy theorists, POPULAR MECHANICS assembled a team of nine researchers and reporters who, together with PM editors, consulted more than 70 professionals in fields that form the core content of this magazine, including aviation, engineering and the military.

Appeal to authority here, as you will see, that is all it is, an appeal. Isn't it amazing that one guy in Toledo can defeat a panel of 80 so called researchers and experts? PM has arbitrarily chosen "16 of the most prevalent claims", to rebut, and their claims as you will see are extreme, wrong, and absurd.

In the end, we were able to debunk each of these assertions with hard evidence and a healthy dose of common sense. We learned that a few theories are based on something as innocent as a reporting error on that chaotic day. Others are the byproducts of cynical imaginations that aim to inject suspicion and animosity into public debate. Only by confronting such poisonous claims with irrefutable facts can we understand what really happened on a day that is forever seared into world history.--THE EDITORS

In the end PM will be debunked -- The Editors of Grassroots InfoMedia.

THE PLANES
The widely accepted account that hijackers commandeered and crashed the four 9/11 planes is supported by reams of evidence, from cockpit recordings to forensics to the fact that crews and passengers never returned home. Nonetheless, conspiracy theorists seize on a handful of "facts" to argue a very different scenario: The jets that struck New York and Washington, D.C., weren't commercial planes, they say, but something else, perhaps refueling tankers or guided missiles. And the lack of military intervention? Theorists claim it proves the U.S. government instigated the assault or allowed it to occur in order to advance oil interests or a war agenda

“Theorists claim it proves the U.S. government instigated the assault” Grassroots InfoMedia makes no claim of proof, although we may claim that others claim things, and we advocate investigation due to the mountain of strange, unexplained phenomenon surrounding the events of 9/11. For example, the PROMIS discovered criminal insider trading that took place on and prior to 9/11, that conclusively indicates prior knowledge, and possible links to government insiders. There is a mountainous pile of evidence, prima facie, whistle blowers, clues, and eye witnesses, reams of information that any reasonable individual would conclude are extremely suspicious, at the very least.
Read more about insider trading
Read more about insider trading

Where's The Pod?
CLAIM: Photographs and video footage shot just before United Airlines Flight 175 hit the South Tower of the World Trade Center (WTC) show an object underneath the fuselage at the base of the right wing. The film "911 In Plane Site" and the Web site LetsRoll911.org claim that no such object is found on a stock Boeing 767. They speculate that this "military pod" is a missile, a bomb or a piece of equipment on an air-refueling tanker. LetsRoll911.org points to this as evidence that the attacks were an "inside job" sanctioned by "President George Bush, who planned and engineered 9/11

“show an object underneath the fuselage at the base of the right wing.” Actually the pod is more near the center of the fuselage. Here are the photos PM also fails to mention that both planes had a flash of light that came from these pods just before striking the WTC towers. You can see these flashes in a video released by CNN, and in the case of the second plane, you see them from at least 2 camera angles, and that makes reflection a highly unlikely cause of the flashes. Read More

Great footage, Dylan Avery's mini-film "Loose Change", Free 9/11 conspiracy Videos -- Dylan Avery's Loose Change Second Edition Learn More -- Watch Loose Change Second Edition ---

FACT: One of the clearest, most widely seen pictures of the doomed jet's undercarriage was taken by photographer Rob Howard and published in New York magazine and elsewhere (opening page and at right). PM sent a digital scan of the original photo to Ronald Greeley, director of the Space Photography Laboratory at Arizona State University. Greeley is an expert at analyzing images to determine the shape and features of geological formations based on shadow and light effects. After studying the high-resolution image and comparing it to photos of a Boeing 767-200ER's undercarriage, Greeley dismissed the notion that the Howard photo reveals a "pod." In fact, the photo reveals only the Boeing's right fairing, a pronounced bulge that contains the landing gear. He concludes that sunlight glinting off the fairing gave it an exaggerated look. "Such a glint causes a blossoming (enlargement) on film," he writes in an e-mail to PM, "which tends to be amplified in digital versions of images--the pixels are saturated and tend to 'spill over' to adjacent pixels." When asked about pods attached to civilian aircraft, Fred E. Culick, professor of aeronautics at the California Institute of Technology, gave a blunter response: "That's bull. They're really stretching."

Photos of these objects on the belly of the planes as you can clearly see are not reflections, and both planes have the same pod, are we to believe that they are both reflections? Here are some of the photos It is interesting that on the PM site they show none of the photos, they merely talk about them. PM Page.
More photos of these pods can be seen here

BOEING Claims "National Security" On WTC2 Plane, Refuses to Respond to Questions.
The Barcelona daily La Vanguardia, which has run a series of articles based on a technical report on this pod, asked Boeing about these features, Boeing claimed they were unable to respond for reasons of national security! Source

"This concerns the article about the anomaly on the 767 (sic) that struck the tower. I have worked on Boeing 767s as a licensed aircraft mechanic for fifteen years and I can tell you there is nothing that even remotely resembles what I see in the photographs on "normal" aircraft." Paul Higginbotham Source

No Stand-Down Order
CLAIM: No fighter jets were scrambled from any of the 28 Air Force bases within close range of the four hijacked flights. "On 11 September Andrews had two squadrons of fighter jets with the job of protecting the skies over Washington D.C.," says the Web site emperors-clothes.com. "They failed to do their job." "There is only one explanation for this," writes Mark R. Elsis of StandDown.net. "Our Air Force was ordered to Stand Down on 9/11."

The above claims of the 9/11 conspiracy investigators are likely correct, as the evidence below would indicate. PM claims there was no stand-down order? That is an argument from ignorance, you can not prove something does not exist. According to this source the stand-down order likely does exist. Found: The 911 "Stand Down Order"? This CJCSI states that "In the event of a hijacking, the NMCC will be notified by the most expeditious means by the FAA. The NMCC will, with the exception of immediate responses as authorized by referenced, forward requests for DOD assistance to the Secretary of Defense for approval."
There is no reason for another link in the chain of command, at least none that I can think of. Think about it, when and under what circumstance would you decide not to scramble fighters to escort a hijacked plane? Contingency protocol could be set, and it was on 9/11, SOP as was set down in the FAA manual.
FAA hijack procedures from a cache
http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/FAA7610_4.htm
Chapter 7. ESCORT OF HIJACKED AIRCRAFT from way back archive before 9/11
http://web.archive.org/web/20010913055838/www.faa.gov/ATpubs/MIL/Ch7/chp7.htm
Note that since 9/11 the way back archive has been changed, and access to parts of the FAA manual has been restricted by robots.txt, and other unexplained reasons.

It does appear that none of the planes of 9/11 were intercepted, we can say that with pretty good certainty. Grassroots Infomedia makes no claim that no fighters jets were scrambled, but would claim that none were scrambled out of Andrews AFB, and that Andrews had 2 tactical fighters groups that were “combat ready” according to their web site, and we would claim that the site was altered just after 09/11/2001. This page is still accessible in its pre-9-11 form, archived at:
http://web.archive.org/web/20010203183700/http://dcandr.ang.af.mil/
Click on "Headquarters" and you should see it.
There are backup copies of these Web pages. They can be read at:
http://emperors-clothes.com/9-11backups/dcandr.htm
and
http://emperors-clothes.com/9-11backups/dcandr2.htm
The fact that the Mission Statement at Andrews AFB was altered may not be proof of wrong doing, but it is surely very suspicious. I witnessed this site change with my own eyes. Here is the Emperors New Clothes Site from which the 3 links above came.

FACT: On 9/11 there were only 14 fighter jets on alert in the contiguous 48 states. No computer network or alarm automatically alerted the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) of missing planes. "They [civilian Air Traffic Control, or ATC] had to pick up the phone and literally dial us," says Maj. Douglas Martin, public affairs officer for NORAD. Boston Center, one of 22 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regional ATC facilities, called NORAD's Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) three times: at 8:37 am EST to inform NEADS that Flight 11 was hijacked; at 9:21 am to inform the agency, mistakenly, that Flight 11 was headed for Washington (the plane had hit the North Tower 35 minutes earlier); and at 9:41 am to (erroneously) identify Delta Air Lines Flight 1989 from Boston as a possible hijacking. The New York ATC called NEADS at 9:03 am to report that United Flight 175 had been hijacked--the same time the plane slammed into the South Tower. Within minutes of that first call from Boston Center, NEADS scrambled two F-15s from Otis Air Force Base in Falmouth, Mass., and three F-16s from Langley Air National Guard Base in Hampton, Va. None of the fighters got anywhere near the pirated planes

When PM says "FACT: On 9/11 there were only 14 fighter jets on alert in the contiguous 48 states" that may be what NORAD has said, but that does not make it a fact, they talk as if any words from a government official are gospel truth, and this is absurd, when entities therein are the suspects. When NORAD et al was contacted by the FAA is still in contention, and was never rectified by the 9/11 Commission. "Within minutes after the first aircraft hit the World Trade Center, the FAA immediately established several phone bridges that included FAA field facilities, the FAA command center, FAA headquarters, DOD, the Secret Service and other government agencies."
9/11 Commission Testimony
Read More
Flight 77: Initial stories after 9/11 suggest the transponder is turned off around 8:13, but one year after 9/11, Pete Zalewski, the flight controller handling the flight, says the transponder is turned off at 8:20. [MSNBC, 9/11/02 (B)] The 9/11 Commission later places it at 8:21. [9/11 Commission Report, 6/17/04] Colonel Robert Marr, head of NORAD's Northeast Air Defense Sector, later claims the transponder is turned off some time after 8:30. [ABC News 9/11/02] So right here you can see a 17 minute discrepancy as to when the transponder was turned off, all sources in the mainstream. Source

According to the 9/11 Commission, Boston flight control contacts NEADS at 8:37, but the FAA says they formed a phone bridge minutes after flight 11 crashed into WTC 1 at 8:46 AM, yet another discrepancy in the timeline.

9:38 AM flight 77 crashes into the Pentagon, some 1 hour and 25 minutes after the first plane, flight 77 is hijacked. F 15s can fly at 1875 miles an hour, in an hour and 25 minutes an F 15 could travel almost 3000 miles, yet none of the hijacked planes were intercepted, as per protocol in the FAA manual.
Complete 911 Timeline: cover-up, lies, and/or contradictions is the source of the above timelines.
From Miami to New York City is about 1330 miles, so in an hour and 25 minutes an F 15 could fly from New York City to Miami and back again.

Why couldn't ATC find the hijacked flights? When the hijackers turned off the planes' transponders, which broadcast identifying signals, ATC had to search 4500 identical radar blips crisscrossing some of the country's busiest air corridors. And NORAD's sophisticated radar? It ringed the continent, looking outward for threats, not inward. "It was like a doughnut," Martin says. "There was no coverage in the middle." Pre-9/11, flights originating in the States were not seen as threats and NORAD wasn't prepared to track them.

PM says, "ATC had to search 4500 identical radar blips" not true, they would not be identical, the blips with transponders off would look very different, transponder blips have information on altitude, direction, speed, and flight identification number. Source Not only that but radar is sectored, no one ATC station would be looking at 4500 blips at one time, more likely just the blips near the airport where the radar and ATC towers are, likely no more than 100 or so (just a guess) but obviouly ATC in New York is not looking at blips in Dallas.
Well here is a clue as to why ATC may have had troubles in the NEADS. See More About the War Games
Wargames Were Cover For the Operational Execution of 9/11? "The large numbers of 'blips' on NORAD screens that displayed both real and 'drill' hijacked planes explain why confused press reports emerged hours after the attack stating that up to eight planes had been hijacked. Click here for that article." Read More and Watch Video

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

On 11 September 2001, Brigadier General Winfield, U.S. Army left National Military Command Center at 0830 and came back at 1000 hours leaving an untested rookie in charge. Criminal dereliction of duty?
Read transcripts of mainstream intervews where Winfield claims to have been at NMCC the whole time the attacks were happening.
Story or Alternate Link

Flight 175's Windows
CLAIM: On Sept. 11, FOX News broadcast a live phone interview with FOX employee Marc Birnbach. 911inplanesite.com states that "Bernback" saw the plane "crash into the South Tower." "It definitely did not look like a commercial plane," Birnbach said on air. "I didn't see any windows on the sides."

PM leaves out the "blue logo" part of the quote. Even the Fox anchorperson asked, “Could these have been cargo planes?” Marc Bernbach went on to describe a blue, circular logo located on the front of the plane. He also alluded to the fact that this plane “did not look like it was from around here;” speculating that the plane may have come from a military base - not a commercial airport. The producers of “911 In Plane Site” later interviewed Marc Bernback and he stands firmly behind his on-air account. “No windows…” Source Fox News employee has also been refered to as Mark Burnback.

Great footage, Dylan Avery's mini-film "Loose Change", there are 3 free downloads here, very good, shows the "flash" clearly from 4 different video sources. Watch --- Watch Loose Change Second Edition

Coupled with photographs and videos of Flight 175 that lack the resolution to show windows, Birnbach's statement has fueled one of the most widely referenced 9/11 conspiracy theories--specifically, that the South Tower was struck by a military cargo plane or a fuel tanker.

FACT: Birnbach, who was a freelance videographer with FOX News at the time, tells PM that he was more than 2 miles southeast of the WTC, in Brooklyn, when he briefly saw a plane fly over. He says that, in fact, he did not see the plane strike the South Tower; he says he only heard the explosion.

While heading a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) probe into the collapse of the towers, W. Gene Corley studied the airplane wreckage. A licensed structural engineer with Construction Technology Laboratories, a consulting firm based in Skokie, Ill., Corley and his team photographed aircraft debris on the roof of WTC 5, including a chunk of fuselage that clearly had passenger windows. "It's ... from the United Airlines plane that hit Tower 2," Corley states flatly. In reviewing crash footage taken by an ABC news crew, Corley was able to track the trajectory of the fragments he studied--including a section of the landing gear and part of an engine--as they tore through the South Tower, exited from the building's north side and fell from the sky.

Intercepts Not Routine
CLAIM: "It has been standard operating procedures for decades to immediately intercept off-course planes that do not respond to communications from air traffic controllers," says the Web site oilempire.us. "When the Air Force 'scrambles' a fighter plane to intercept, they usually reach the plane in question in minutes."

FACT: In the decade before 9/11, NORAD intercepted only one civilian plane over North America: golfer Payne Stewart's Learjet, in October 1999. With passengers and crew unconscious from cabin decompression, the plane lost radio contact but remained in transponder contact until it crashed. Even so, it took an F-16 1 hour and 22 minutes to reach the stricken jet. Rules in effect back then, and on 9/11, prohibited supersonic flight on intercepts. Prior to 9/11, all other NORAD interceptions were limited to offshore Air Defense Identification Zones (ADIZ). "Until 9/11 there was no domestic ADIZ," FAA spokesman Bill Schumann tells PM. After 9/11, NORAD and the FAA increased cooperation, setting up hotlines between ATCs and NORAD command centers, according to officials from both agencies. NORAD has also increased its fighter coverage and has installed radar to monitor airspace over the continent.

Sorry PM, wrong again, and again, and again, it was not 1 hour and 22 minutes that it took an F 16 to reach Payne Stewart's Lear, it was 20 minutes according to the Air Force. The Dallas Morning News reports: Instead, according to an Air Force timeline, a series of military planes provided an emergency escort to the stricken Lear, beginning with a pair of F-16 Falcons from the Air National Guard at Tyndall Air Force Base, Fla., about 20 minutes after ground controllers lost contact.
http://www.wanttoknow.info/991026dallasmorningnews

Wrong when you say NORAD had intercepted only one commercial aircraft in the decade before 9/11, according to an Associated Press story, fighters were scrambled 67 times between September, 2000 and June, 2001. Scrambling, or getting fighters in the air, is the first step in carrying out an interception, which consists of catching up with and examining the errant aircraft. Source
Last year (Oct 2000 to Oct 2001) , there were 425 unknowns -- pilots who didn't file or diverted from flight plans or used the wrong frequency. Jets were scrambled 129 times. Source
"Normally, our units fly 4-6 sorties a month in support of the NORAD air defense mission." General Ralph E. Eberhart, USAF Commander in Chief North American Aerospace Defense Command Source

This is the NTSB report: 0927: Last full transmission from aircraft at 23,000 feet 0952: First intercept by Eglin F-16 http://www.ntsb.gov/events/2000/aberdeen/Opening%20Presentation.htm

PM's own expert source Maj. Douglas Martin, told the Associated Press that NORAD scrambled over 60 times in the year prior to 9/11 Source

FAA protocol is well defined, whenever a commercial plane, goes off course, radio off , transponder off, no radio response, or is hijacked, a scramble, intercept and escort is called for.
FAA hijack procedures from a cache
http://www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/FAA7610_4.htm
Chapter 7. ESCORT OF HIJACKED AIRCRAFT from way back archive before 9/11
http://web.archive.org/web/20010913055838/www.faa.gov/ATpubs/MIL/Ch7/chp7.htm
Note that since 9/11 the way back archive has been changed, and access to parts of the FAA manual has been restricted by robots.txt, and other unexplained reasons.

After reading these pages, please contact Popular Mechanics and urge them to print a retraction, and give them a link to this page. Email Popular Mechanics

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