9/11 was a conspiracy!

7 World Trade Center

(Image from Wikipedia)

A fellow named Richard Brennan posted the following comment to my post about my return to Seoul:

Jeffery, I buzzed through your text about 9-11. I suspect that you didn't know about WTC7. It fell at 5:20pm, on 9-11. No plane hit this building. To look at this go to Google, (WTC7, Larry Silverstein). This might open your eyes to what really happened on 9-11. I stumbled onto your site by accident. I was looking for another person that goes by the name, (Gypsy Scholar) Talk to you later.

I must admit that Richard has made a positive impression upon me by getting my name right. He has spelled it J-e-f-f-e-r-y. Far too many people 'correct' it to J-e-f-f-r-e-y, but the fact that Richard got my name right the first time bespeaks a praiseworthy attention to detail.

I'm not sure, however, as to which 9/11 text Mr. Brennan was referring to. Perhaps he meant my 9/11 talk, "Striving to Understand 9/11: Some Religious Dimensions of the Attack," which I presented on the first anniversary of 9/11 and also published -- and which can be read at my academic website. Or he may have meant some blog entry or other that I've posted over the years.

Anyway, I replied, for I almost always reply:

Richard, your comment belongs on some other blog post than this one. Thanks, anyway, for the advice, but I haven't yet been convinced by any of the various conspiracy theories . . . except for the one about an Al-Qaeda conspiracy, of course. This blog post, however, is not the place to discuss the issue.

In fact, I'm not especially interested in discussing the accusation about controlled demolitions of the various World Trade Center buildings, for I have no expertise in that area and would simply make a fool of myself.

I do wonder, though, how a conspiracy of such magnitude as to involve the US government could be so successfully kept secret when we all know full well just how incompetent the US government is.

Some of the 9/11 conspiracy theorists -- though perhaps not Mr. Brennan -- cite a statement by Larry Silverstein 'admitting' to having demolished WTC 7 through a controlled demolition. You can see Mr. Silverstein on video making this 'admission':

"I remember getting a call from the, uh, fire department commander, telling me that they were not sure they were gonna be able to contain the fire . . . and I said, you know, 'We've had such terrible loss of life, maybe the smartest thing to do is, is pull it.' Uh . . . and they made that decision to pull, and we watched the building . . . collapse."

Since I can't reasonably imagine Mr. Silverstein openly admitting to having okayed the controlled demolition of WTC 7 even if he were in on a conspiracy, I take him to mean that he was advising the fire department to pull out its firefighters to prevent further loss of life if the building did happen to collapse. That was a smart decision, for WTC 7 did collapse.

I therefore don't see this 'admission' as much evidence for a conspiracy.

I have to admit, however, that I don't reject all conspiracy theories, as I've already noted in my reply to Mr. Brennan. I accept the 'theory' that Al-Qaeda conspired to destroy the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and possibly the White House or Congress . . . but I find the evidence for this particular conspiracy theory to be overwhelming.

I reckon that some folks don't.