September 11, 2001 attacks |
The September 11, 2001 attacks were a series of coordinated terrorist suicide attacks against the Pentagon and the World Trade Center in the United States on
September 11, 2001.
The attacks were the first highly lethal attack by a foreign force on the U.S. mainland since 1814. With a death toll of nearly 3,000, the attacks exceeded the toll of approximately 2,400 dead
following the surprise Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor
in the territory of Hawaii, which provoked U.S. entrance into World War II in 1941. Whereas Pearl Harbor
was a military base attacked by military forces of a sovereign state, on this occasion the primary targets were civilians and conventional military forces were not used. (Although the Pentagon, a military target, was attacked, the terrorists used a hijacked civilian airliner to do so.)
The attacks involved the hijacking of four commercial airliners. With nearly 24,000 US gallons
(about 91 cubic metres) of jet fuel aboard, the aircraft were turned into
flying bombs. Two aircraft were flown into the two towers of the World Trade Center in New York City and a third into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. The final aircraft crashed into a
Pennsylvania field. It has been speculated, although never proven, that the
hijackers of this aircraft intended to crash it into the United States Capitol building in Washington, D.C., and that passengers onboard the plane prevented the hijackers from doing so before it
reached its target. In addition to the loss of nearly 3,000 lives, a number of important buildings were destroyed or severely
damaged. The most notable buildings were the twin towers of the World Trade Center (WTC), although five other buildings and four
subway stations under the WTC were wholly or partly destroyed.
Also on Manhattan Island, 23 additional nearby buildings were
damaged. Some debate continues over the reasons the buildings collapsed, particularly WTC 7, which was not hit by the planes. In
Arlington, a portion of the Pentagon was severely damaged by fire and one section of the building collapsed.
Shortly after the attacks, the United States
government blamed the attacks on Al-Qaida, a fundamentalist Islamic organization widely held
responsible for numerous terrorist acts. This led to a "War on
Terrorism" that included the U.S. invasion
of Afghanistan in October 2001 and had a major influence on the
2003 invasion of Iraq. In the aftermath of the attacks,
the U.S. government increased pressure on groups accused of being terrorists, as well as governments and countries accused of
harboring them. The attacks also precipitated a focus on domestic security issues and the creation of a new cabinet-level federal
agency, the Department of Homeland Security.
Overview
The combined attack of September 11 on the World Trade Center was the deadliest act of terrorism against the United States and
one of the deadliest attacks of asymmetric warfare in history.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, four passenger jets were hijacked over the United States. American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the north
side of the north tower of the World Trade Center at 8:46 EDT (12:46 UTC). At 9:03 AM EDT, United
Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the south tower. American Airlines Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon at 9:37 AM EDT. Both 110-story towers of
the World Trade Center collapsed along with several neighboring buildings, and part of the Pentagon was destroyed by fire.
The fourth hijacked plane, United Airlines Flight
93, crashed in a field near Shanksville and
Stonycreek Township in Somerset County, Pennsylvania at
10:03 EDT (14:46 UTC). The evidence suggests that it
crashed after passengers and crew tried but failed to retake control of the plane from the hijackers.
Lower Manhattan as seen from New Jersey, shortly after the attacks
There were no survivors from any of the hijacked aircraft.
Casualties were in the thousands: 265 on the planes; at least 2,602 people,
including 343 firefighters, at the World Trade Center; and 125 at the
Pentagon. This adds up to a total of at least 2,992 people dead. At least another 3,000 people filed claims for compensation
because of injuries and trauma caused in the attacks.
Some passengers and crew were able to make phone calls from the doomed flights. They reported that there was more
than one hijacker on each plane (a total of 19 were later identified) and that they
took control of the planes using box-cutter knives. Additionally,
some form of noxious chemical spray, such as tear gas or pepper spray, were reported to have been used on at least one flight. There were
also reports from at least two of the flights that hijackers claimed to be carrying bombs.
Name
The attacks are often referred to as September 11 or 9/11. The latter is from the U.S. style
for writing short dates, and is pronounced "nine-eleven." Within the United States, the typographic styling of the 9/11
designation alludes to 9-1-1 (pronounced "nine-one-one"), the emergency telephone number used by the U.S. and Canada.
Furthermore, the two "ones" in 9/11 are seen by some as being representative of the two towers of the World Trade Centers. For
these symbolic reasons and convenience, 9/11 has become a common domestic term for the attacks.
Effects
The Honolulu Advertiser was mindful of the attack on Honolulu on December 7, 1941 in its extra edition headline.
The attacks of September 11th, 2001 had immediate and overwhelming effects upon the United States population and prompted
numerous memorials and services all over the world, as well as support
and/or tolerance for the US retaliation upon those accused of supporting the attacks. Gratitude toward uniformed public-safety
workers (especially toward firefighters) was widely expressed in light of both the drama of the risks taken on the scene and the
high death toll among them. The number of casualties among the emergency services was exceptional compared to typical disasters,
with an unprecedented fraction of the emergency personnel involved being killed.
The digits of "9/11" (the American shorthand for the date) corresponded to those of the U.S.-wide phone number for emergency services, 911 (usually
pronounced "nine-one-one" and sometimes spelled 9-1-1). There was some initial speculation that this correspondence was
intentional, to communicate something along the lines "Starting now, life in America is about emergencies rather than ease". It
was also suggested, but apparently never confirmed, that the number may have had some religious significance to the hijackers.
Most Americans seemed to quickly accept press commentators' opinion that mere coincidence would be more in keeping with Islamist
radicals' practice. The coincidence in any case has emotional resonance, and may contribute as much as slips of the tongue to
Americans sometimes saying "nine-one-one" when they mean "9/11". Subconscious awareness of it may also contribute to the enhanced
identification with public-safety personnel.
Others speculated that the date of 9/11 was chosen because on that date many New York fire and rescue vehicles were out of the
state for training purposes. It was also the day of the New York City mayoral primary, which was postponed to a later date after
the attacks.
The highly visible role played by Rudolph Giuliani, the Mayor of New
York City, won him unprecedented popularity among the residents of New York and the entire nation. He was named Person of the Year by Time Magazine for 2001, and at times had a higher profile than George W. Bush.
In the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the United States and other countries around the world were placed on
a high state of alert against potential follow-up attacks. Civilian air travel across the United States was - for the first time
ever - suspended totally for several days, with numerous locations and events affected by closures, postponements, cancellations, and
evacuations.
September 13, 2001: A New York City firefighter looks up at what remains of the South Tower.
Other countries imposed similar security restrictions: in the United
Kingdom, for instance, civilian aircraft were forbidden to fly over London for
several days after the attacks.
The attacks also had a major political effect on the United States and worldwide. Many
countries introduced tough anti-terrorism legislation - in the US, the USA PATRIOT Act - and took action to cut off terrorist finances (including the freezing of bank accounts suspected of being used to fund terrorism). Law enforcement and
intelligence agencies stepped up cooperation to arrest terrorist suspects and break up terrorist cells around the world. This was
a highly controversial process, as many critics regarded governments as having gone too far in restricting civil rights. The imprisonment of suspected terrorists at Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay,
Cuba, caused particular concern.
The reaction to the attacks in the Muslim world was mixed. While the great majority of Muslim political and religious leaders
condemned the attacks - virtually the only significant stand-out was Saddam
Hussein, the then president of Iraq. The US media reported popular celebrations
in some communities hostile to US policies in the Middle East. Scores of
Muslims were also killed in the attacks, an action strictly forbidden by the Qur'an, which prohibits Muslims from killing
Muslims.
As well as the invasion of Afghanistan, claims of a strong link between bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, and the argument that the attack demonstrated the need to preemptively strike at forces
hostile to US and western interests, were used by the US Administration as justification for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and although prior to the 9/11 attacks it
was conventional wisdom that such links existed, the issue was hotly questioned afterwards. The official panel investigating the
attacks reported that, while contacts were made, it had found no "collaborative relationship" between Iraq and al Qaeda.
Rescue and recovery
Fires burned amidst the rubble of the World Trade Center for weeks after the attack.
Rescue and recovery efforts took months to complete. It took
weeks simply to quench the fires burning in the rubble of the World Trade Center and the clean-up was not completed until May.
Many relief funds were immediately set up to assist victims (personally and financially) of the attacks. The task of providing
assistance to the survivors and
the families of victims is still ongoing.
Very few survivors, and a surprisingly small number of bodies, were found in the rubble of the WTC. The forces unleashed by
the towers' disintegration were so great that many of those trapped in the buildings were simply shredded in the collapse. Some
victims had to be identified by as little as a few scraps of flesh or individual teeth. Most bodies were never found at all,
presumably because the heat of the fires had completely incinerated them.
On January 18, 2002, the last
hospitalized survivor of the World Trade Center attack was released from hospital.
Over 1.5 million tons of debris was produced by the collapse of the WTC, which posed unique problems for the cleanup effort:
there had never previously been an instance of a fully occupied skyscraper collapsing in a city center and the environmental and
health consequences of such an event were wholly unknown. About 100 tons of asbestos were used in the construction of the WTC and had not yet been fully removed [1] . The attacks released dense clouds of dust into the air of Manhattan, and samples of the residue have shown small percentages of asbestos. As the
incubation period for asbestos-related diseases is up to 30 years after inhalation, some citizens living in affected areas may
suffer long term effects.
Buildings surrounding the World Trade Center were heavily damaged by the debris and massive force of the falling twin
towers.
Six months after the attack, the 1.5 million tons of debris had been removed from the WTC site and work continued below ground
level, despite concerns that the slurry wall encompassing the site foundation
(known as the Bathtub) might collapse. Ceremonies marking the end of the
debris removal took place at the end of May 2002.
Why did the WTC collapse?
Main article: Collapse of
the World Trade Center
The extremely rapid collapse of the World Trade Center surprised many people, not least the emergency personnel caught in the
buildings. The reason lay in the way that the WTC had been designed, held together by vertical steel columns, bound to each other
using ordinary steel trusses. The strength of the steel drops markedly with prolonged exposure to fire, and it becomes more
elastic the higher the temperature. In both cases this eventually weakened the structure to the point of collapse. However, the
two towers collapsed in markedly different ways, indicating that there were in fact two modes of failure. See main article for
details.
Larry Silvertstein, who held a seven-week-old lease on One and Two World Trade Center, claimed in a documentary that aired on
PBS, that he, jointly with the New York Fire Department, made the decision to deliberately demolish Seven World Trade Center,
also known as the Solomon Building, which he also owned, and which was then the headquarters of the crisis and disaster command
center for the mayor of New York City. FEMA's report on the demolition contradicts this public admission by Silverstein.
Responsibility
Though no group has explicitly claimed responsibility, the Al-Qaida organization has praised the attacks and
the organization's leaders have hinted of their involvement in the incidents. The U.S. government immediately launched a response, stating its intentions to go to war against those it deemed responsible.
Recent statements and revelations
This article is part of the
Terrorism series: |
| Definition & Conventions |
Counterterrorism &
"War on Terror"
|
| Lists: Groups,
State sponsors,
Guerrillas, Incidents,
Most wanted
|
Types: Nationalist, Religious,
Left-wing, Right-wing,
State, Islamic, Ethnic,
Bioterrorism, Narcoterrorism,
Domestic, Nuclear,
Anarchist |
Tactics: Hijacking,
Suicide bomber |
Configurations: Fronts,
Independent actors |
| Other: Terrorism
insurance |
| |
Additional information about the planning and execution of the attacks by Al-Qaida came to light following the capture of two
of its members - Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and Ramzi Binalshibh - in separate raids in 2003 and 2002, and an exclusive interview with al Jazeera journalist Yosro Fauda in September 2002.
Amongst the things that were said to be revealed in these interogations was that Khalid Mohammed was the instigator and prime
organizer of the attacks. The first hijack plan that Mohammed presented to the leadership of Al-Qaida called for several airplanes on both east and west coasts to be hijacked and driven into targets. Mohammed's plan came from an earlier
foiled terrorist plot called Operation Bojinka, which called for
multiple airliners to be hijacked.
Osama bin Laden was aware of these plans, and used his authority
to gradually scale them down to an operation with four planes.
According to the captured al-Qaida members, six of the hijackers played active parts in the planning, including the four who
became the pilots. The other two were Khalid al-Mihdhar and
Nawaf al-Hazmi. CIA operatives monitored these two when they made
visits to the USA, but did not notify the FBI or gain any inkling of what the hijackers were up to.
The targets ultimately chosen were the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the United States Capitol. Flight 93 was
apparently meant to crash into the capitol. The White House was considered as a target, but was dismissed as being too hard to
spot from the air. In the communications that developed as the scheme took form, the Pentagon was known as the Faculty of
Arts, Capitol Hill was referred to as the Faculty of Law, and the World Trade Center was referred to as the
Faculty of Town Planning.
There were early plans to have 20 hijackers, but the final list always did consist of 19 hijackers. Binalsibh was meant to be
the 20th, but he was repeatedly denied entry into the US.
Zacarias Moussaoui was considered for the role of the 20th
hijacker, but plans to include him were never finalized, as the al-Qaeda hierarchy had doubts about his reliability. He was also
considered as a replacement for Ziad Jarrah, who at one point threatened to withdraw from the scheme because of tensions amongst
the plotters. But ultimately Moussaoui did not have a part in the hijacking scheme.
September 17, 2001 - A small portion of the scene where the World Trade Center collapsed following the September 11
attacks.
His capture by the US authorities did, however, accelerate the plans of the hijackers. It was hijacker Mohammed Atta who notified Binalsibh after Moussaoui's capture in a coded
telephone message, "two sticks, a dash, and a cake with a stick down", meaning that the September 11 was the day in which the
attack would occur.
Moussaoui may have been included in a series of proposed followup attacks that never eventuated, and he may have been involved
in some way with Nick Berg, whose college email password was found in Moussaoui's
possession [2] .
Earlier revelations
In late September, British Prime Minister Tony Blair released information
compiled by Western intelligence agencies connecting Osama bin Laden to the Afghan Taliban leadership, and Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaida organisation.
The Taliban refused to extradite Osama bin Laden and all other Al-Qaida leaders based in Afghanistan to the United States
without conclusive evidence, although they proposed to extradite to an Islamic country. (Previously, the Taliban had refused to
extradite bin Laden without conclusive evidence that he was involved in the 1998 U.S. embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, and the bombing of the
USS Cole in a harbor in Yemen.) The setting of that open-ended standard was treated as a refusal based on sympathy with and
dependence on Al Qaida, and a coalition led by the United States launched an invasion of Afghanistan on October 7.
After the U.S. attack removed the Taliban from power in many parts of Afghanistan, a videotape was discovered abandoned in Kabul, the Afghan capital, which showed bin Laden discussing the attacks in which he claims
foreknowledge of the attacks.
U.S. Investigators have nearly a decade of statements directly from bin Laden that state the motives for the attacks on the US
and US interests. Bin Laden has been interviewed by western journalists and has for several years repeatedly broadcast a common
list of grievances, which he cites as the reason for his jihad. Most of these statements have been confirmed as those
from bin Laden but at least one hasn't, a letter , purporting to be written by bin
Laden, which appeared on the Internet in Arabic. It was reported in a November
24, 2002 article in The
Observer, in an article that cites no intelligence-agency estimates about the likelihood of its authenticity, only using
journalists' beliefs that it is really a letter from bin Laden explaining the motivations for the attacks.
Reasons to question the authenticity of this particular letter include
- a style different from all the interviews
- a strange intro to the letter that acts like the motives have not been stated before.
- lack of any other source that includes as motives either
There have been many interviews with bin Laden, all of them listing specific foreign policies of the US as the reasons for
attacks on the US.
An audio tape said to be from bin Laden stated in part:
"... the Mujahideen saw the black
gang of thugs in the White House hiding
the Truth, and their stupid and foolish leader, who is elected and supported by his people, denying reality and proclaiming that
we (the Mujahideen) were striking them because we were jealous of them (the Americans), whereas the reality is that we are
striking them because of their evil and injustice in the whole of the Islamic World, especially in Iraq and Palestine and their occupation of the Land of the Two Holy
Sanctuaries. Upon seeing this, the Mujahideen decided teach them a lesson and to take the war to their heartland. On the blessed
Tuesday 11 September 2001, while the Zionist-American Alliance was targeting our children and our people in the blessed land of Al-Aqsa, with American tanks and planes in the hands of the Jews, and our people in Iraq were
suffering from the America's sanctions upon them, and the Islamic world was very far away from establishing Islam properly." -Osama bin Laden, February 14, 2003
In the paragraph before that he again recaps motives that he has claimed for years:
" ... in 1995, the explosion in Riyadh took
place, killing four Americans, in a clear message from the people of that region displaying their rejection and opposition to the
American policy of bankrolling the Jews and occupying the Land of the Two Holy Sanctuaries.
The following year, another explosion in Al-Khobar killed 19 Americans and
wounded more than 400 of them, prompting them to move their bases from the cities to the
desert. Then in 1998, the Mujahideen warned
America to cease their support to the Jews and to leave the Land of the Two Holy Sanctuaries, but the enemy refused to heed this
warning, so the Mujahideen, with the ability from Allah, smashed them with two mighty
smashes in East Africa. Then again America was warned, but she refused to pay attention to the warnings, so the Mujahideen destroyed the
American Destroyer, the USS Cole,
in Aden, in a martyrdom operation, striking a solid blow to the face of the American
military and at the same time, exposing the Yemeni Government as American agents,
similar to all the countries in the region." -Osama bin Laden February 14,
2003
For many years bin Laden stated motives. He said in an interview in 1999, "The
International Islamic Front for Jihad against the U.S. and Israel has issued a
crystal-clear fatwa calling on the Islamic nation
to carry on jihad aimed at liberating holy sites. The nation of Muhammad has responded to this appeal. If the instigation for jihad against the Jews and the Americans in
order to liberate Al-Aksa Mosque and the Holy Ka'aba Islamic shrines in the Middle East is considered a crime, then let history be a witness that I am a criminal."
"We swore that America wouldn't live in security until we live it
truly in Palestine. This showed the reality of America, which puts Israel's
interest above its own people's interest. America won't get out of this crisis until it gets out of the Arabian Peninsula, and until it stops its support of Israel." -Osama bin
Laden, October 2001
A German friend of Mohammed
Atta is quoted as describing him as "most imbued actually about Israeli politics in
the region and about US protection of these Israeli politics in the region. And he was to a degree personally suffering from
that."
The FBI testified that Al-Qaeda had specific
goals. "One of the primary goals of Sunni extremists is the removal of U.S. military
forces from the Persian Gulf area, most notably Saudi Arabia."
Terrorism expert Richard E. Rubenstein writes that Bin Laden has made clear in previous remarks that he is seeking to
force a U.S. withdrawal from the Arabian peninsula.
The shoe bomber (Richard Reid) has said: "The reason for me sending you
(a document he calls his "will") is so you can see that I didn't do this act out of ignorance nor did I just do it because I want
to die, but rather because I see it as a duty upon me to help remove the oppressive American forces from the Muslim land and that this is the only way
for us to do so as we do not have other means to fight them."
These statements suggest a motive for attacking the WTC in 2001 that is consistent with the motive expressed by terrorists in
a letter sent to the New York Times after the 1993 bombing attack of the WTC, "We declare our
responsibility for the explosion on the mentioned building. This action was done in response for the American political,
economical, and military support to Israel the state of terrorism and to the rest of the dictator countries in the region." It is
also the same motive that Mir
Aimal Kasi had for killing CIA employees Frank Darling and Lansing Bennett outside CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia in
1993. Mir Aimal Kasi said, "What I did was a retaliation against the US government for American policy in the Middle East and its support of
Israel."
The Bush Administration and others have stated that
terrorists are motivated to attack by "hatred of America". President Bush said: "America was targeted for attack because we're
the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world." The purported statements of bin Laden in the disputed 2002 letter
include depravity of Western civilization as a motive for
attacks. The letter says that the motive for attacking is because they have been wronged. It starts with a quote talking about
them being wronged: "Permission to fight (against disbelievers) is given to those [believers] who are fought against, because
they have been wronged and surely, Allah is Able to give them (believers) victory"
Quran 22:39 The letter also states, "Why are we fighting and opposing you? The answer is
very simple: (1) Because you attacked us and continue to attack us." The letter goes on to points never raised in anything that
has actually been verified as coming from Osama bin Laden.
Following the attack, the United States government has been on heightened alert for new attacks.
Prediction
Photo of lower Manhattan, showing fires still burning at the WTC site, taken by Landsat 7 satellite at 11:30 a.m. local time,
September 12, 2001. Courtesy of NASA.
The U.S. Government released, on April 10, 2004, the text of a previously top secret President's Daily Briefing "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.". See U.S. White House briefing on terror threats of August 6,
2001.
Another prediction came from The Wall Street
Journal:
- Just four months before the attack on the twin towers, he (Daniel
Pipes) and Steven Emerson wrote in The Wall Street Journal that Al
Qaeda was "planning new attacks on the US" and that Iranian operatives "helped arrange advanced ... training for Al Qaeda
personnel in Lebanon where they learned, for example, how to destroy large buildings." Boston Globe
22 June 2003 (emphasis added).
The attacks as war crimes
The September 11 attacks involved a number of war crimes, as specified by the Hague Convention and Fourth Geneva Convention. Despite the fact that Al Qai'da
or others who may be shown to have been behind the attacks may not be parties to these conventions, those who perpetrated them
could be prosecuted under those statutes. "If unlawful
combatants furthermore commit serious violations of international humanitarian law, they may be prosecuted for war crimes."
[R. R. Baxter, British Yearbook of International Law, 1951 "Unprivileged Belligerency," , p.
344.]
The offences would include:
- Willful killing of protected persons (i.e. civilians)
- Causing extensive destruction to property not justified by military necessity and carried out wantonly and unlawfully (both
grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions of 1949)
- Wanton destruction of cities (a violation of the Hague Convention)
- Bombardment of an Undefended Place [Annex to Hague Convention No. IV embodying the Regulations Respecting the Laws and
Customs of War on Land] (18 October 1907), Article 25;
- Unnecessary Killing and Devastation (a "grave breach" under Geneva Conventions of 1949) [Geneva Convention Relative to
the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War] (12 August 1949), Article 147;
- Lack of Notice of Bombardment Where Civilian Population Exists [Annex to Hague Convention No. IV embodying the
Regulations Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land] (18 October 1907), Article 26
See also Camp X-Ray for a related discussion on the war-criminal
status of Al-Qaida detainees.
Investigations
A joint Congressional committee concluded its investigation in July 2003. While the events show inadequacies in some parts of
the United States government, in terms of both the way the attacks may have been prevented with better use and gathering of
intelligence and in the way that defense forces reacted to the attacks, not a single public official was removed from office.
In May 2003, a ten-member group was formed, the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United
States, chaired by former New Jersey Governor Thomas H. Kean. Among
other requests, the Commission requested information from the Federal Aviation Administration on air traffic control tracking of hijacked aircraft and
the FAA's communication with NORAD. By October, the information had not been handed over,
provoking the Commission to subpoena the FAA for the information and accuse it of slowing the probe. On November 7, the Commission subpoenaed the military's North American Aerospace
Defense Command records for information NORAD promised but never delivered. The
Commission also threatened to subpoena the White House if information
regarding intelligence reports given to the president was not turned over.
On June 16, 2004, the Commission issued an
initial report of its findings, which concluded that, while meetings between al-Qaida representatives and Iraqi government
officials had taken place during the 1990's, no credible evidence that Saddam Hussein
had assisted al-Qaida in preparing for or carrying out the 9/11 attacks had been found.
There were many access limitations encountered by the Joint Inquiry. Of particular interest are concerns about the President's
Daily Brief (PDB). This is reflected in the declassified yet heavily censored publication (see Appendix: Access Limitations
Encountered by the Joint Inquiry):
JOINT INQUIRY INTO INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY ACTIVITIES BEFORE & AFTER THE TERRORIST ATTACKS OF SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
REPORT OF U.S. SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE Together with Additional Views
H. Rept No. 107-792 S. Rept. No. 107-351
107th Congress 2d Session
Arab and Muslim denials of Responsibility
Since the attacks, Arab and Muslim newspapers have repeatedly denied the involvement of either Arabs or Muslims in the attacks
of September 11, 2001. Rather these sources propose a variety of actors including, the United States Government, the Israeli
Government, the Israeli intelligence agencies, and the Jews collectively. A recent example from the Egyptian government weekly Al-Ahram April 1-7, 2004 (translation provided by MEMRI)
The claim that the Greater Middle East Initiative aims, wholly or partly, to eliminate terror of the type seen on September
11, 2001 is unconvincing, for several reasons. One is that there is still doubt that the September attacks were the outcome of
Arab and Islamic terror. No conclusive proof to this effect is yet available. Many writers, American and European, as well as
Arab, suspect that the attacks were carried out by Americans, or with American assistance, or that Americans knew about them and
kept silent.
See also
External links
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