It's not only at the World Trade Center where nagging questions remain. Why is it that there are a dozen angles of footage of the Twin Towers being stuck by airliners, and not a single one of the Pentagon? After the Pentagon was hit, the FBI immediately mobilized and commandeered security-camera footage from nearby private businesses. For years, the FBI denied that they had confiscated anything and the only footage that existed was recorded by two grainy security cameras from the Pentagon itself. Eventually, after years of Freedom of Information Act requests, the FBI released two videotapes—one from a local hotel, the other from a nearby gas station. They revealed nothing. Why did the government refuse to admit it had additional tapes in its possession? Did they somehow alter the footage they eventually released in order to cover up something?

Operation Northwoods

Collating all the facts, it is possible to come to a chilling possible conclusion: The attacks of September 11 may have been a false-flag operation; that is, a covert operation designed to appear as if it were carried out by another nation or group. This tactic has been used by many regimes throughout history to justify war or domestic oppression. Some suspected cases of false-flag operations include the 1898 explosion that sunk the USS Maine in Havana Harbor and served as a protest for the U.S. declaration of war against Spain; and the 1933 Reichstag fire that brought the Nazis to power.

More recently there was Operation Northwoods. Submitted by the Head of the Joint Chiefs in 1962, it proposed that the CIA and military attack certain U.S. cities and American citizens under the guise of Cuban agents. They believed this falsely attributed act of belligerence would justify an American invasion of Cuba and ensure the public's support. Fortunately, President Kennedy nixed the proposal and the insidious, treasonous operation was never carried out.

NORAD Stand-Down

Certainly the U.S. Air Force’s failure to intercept any of the hijacked planes on 9/11 could be evidence that the government wanted the attack to proceed unimpeded. Lt. Jeff Dahlstrom, a Vietnam veteran who served in the Air Force, has revealed that just months prior to the attack, hijacking protocols were changed to disallow military commanders from issuing orders to shoot down hijacked commercial airliners. After May 2001, sole permission lay with civilian authorities, such as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney and President George W. Bush. Transportation Secretary Norman Minetta testified to the 9/11 Commission that he overheard Vice President Cheney reiterate his stand-down order to NORAD (the North American Aerospace Defense Command).

Further, NORAD claimed that it was unable to scramble any fighters to intercept the hijacked September 11 flights, even though systems are in place to intercept in just 15 minutes. And in 2000, they were able to investigate errant airplanes in that time frame 129 separate times. On September 11, they failed four times. How did NORAD explain this fiasco? With misinformation. Obfuscation was so severe that the 9/11 Commission considered referring the matter to the Justice Department for criminal investigation.

False Flag Revealed?

9/11 Commission (Getty Images)Lt. Dahlstrom pointed to a possible motive to this false-flag theory: the passage of the Patriot Act and the undeclared war against Iraq and Afghanistan. The Patriot Act severely curtailed many individual freedoms and greatly expanded the power of the federal government, nominally in the service of fighting terrorism. The bill was designed to be temporary but was renewed in 2004 and is still in use today.

September 11 may also have offered the casus belli that many in the government sought to justify an invasion of the oil-rich Middle East. Much as Operation Northwoods was ultimately designed to foment support for war with Cuba, a 9/11 false-flag operation may have been executed by some rogue elements in the U.S. government to give it an excuse for a new war in Iraq and beyond.

It may be decades before the true story of the attacks on September 11 is revealed. But much as Operation Northwoods eventually came to light, thanks to constant and diligent pressure by concerned patriots, so too may the truth of that terrible day be uncovered by those who are unwilling to accept pat government answers at face value. The ranks of those who have refused to swallow the government's line on 9/11 are deep and varied—theologian David Ray Griffin, architect Richard Gage, physicist Steven E. Jones, actors Ed Asner and Charlie Sheen, Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, journalists Thierry Meyssan and Robert Fisk, and many others. As Time magazine noted in regard to 9/11 conspiracy theories, “This is not a fringe phenomenon. It is a mainstream political reality.”