Alleged Hijackers

According to the official story, teams of four and five hijackers armed only with primitive weapons (boxcutters) overcame the flight crews of four out of four flights and then proceeded to fly three of the four planes into The World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon.

The alleged hijackers supposedly belonged to semi-autonomous cells, having been in the United States for months and years. The cells were directed by the terrorist organization Al Qaeda headed by Osama bin Laden.

The hijacker story had a great deal of appeal to the American audience. The hijackers were all Muslim extremists, far removed from mainstream American culture. Their fanaticism made their success against overwhelming odds seem more plausible.

Despite its attractive features, the hijacker story is challenged by the facts:

• There is no credible evidence that any of the alleged hijackers were on any of the jetliners, and considerable evidence to the contrary.
  • None of the passenger lists published by the airlines contained any of the alleged hijackers' names.
  • No airport video shows any of the alleged hijackers boarding the flights.
  • Several of the alleged hijackers turned up alive after the attack.
• The hijacker scenario was operationally almost impossible.
  • None of the alleged hijackers were good pilots, and none had flown jet airplanes, let alone large jetliners. Yet they are supposed to have piloted jetliners into small targets. The maneuvers of the jet that targeted the Pentagon required top-gun piloting, if they were even humanly possible.
  • The staggered flight times and long flight paths of the targeted jetliners exposed the plan to certain defeat, had the air defense system been allowed to function normally.
  • According to the official account four flight crews were defeated by bands of four or five hijackers using only "boxcutters", despite several of the airline pilots being Vietnam combat veterans.
  • The hijackers supposedly prevented any of the flight crews from radioing distress or punching in the four-digit hijack codes. ¹  
  • The alerting of flight crews to the hijacking of the first jetliner would have raised their guard and made subsequent hijackings much more difficult.
• The behavior of the alleged hijackers does not match that of committed jihadists on a suicide mission for Allah.
  • Several of the alleged hijackers frequented strip bars, where they drank alcohol and were rude. ²  
  • Alleged hijackers left copies of the Koran behind.

Not a "Single Piece of Paper" Links Alleged Hijackers to Plot

Most of these facts are never acknowledged by government agencies or mainstream media. However, FBI director Robert Mueller did admit that his agency failed to find "a single piece of paper" linking the alleged hijackers to the 9/11/01 plot.

With such a lack of evidence it is no wonder that there has not been a single prosecution leading to conviction anywhere in the world of the alleged perpetrators, with the single exception of Zaccarias Moussaoui, who was only convicted because he admitted to involvement in the alleged plot.

'But I'm Not Dead'

Even more damning for the official hijacking story is the fact that several of the alleged hijackers turned up alive after the attack.

These pages each cite a number of mainstream press accounts that document the efforts by the suspects to proclaim their innocence. Yet despite this, the 9/11 Commission Report repeated the FBI's original list of 19 hijackers without so much as admitting that there was a problem in the identifications.

One of the few areas in which the film Loose Change does a fairly good job of reporting is on the various reports of the alleged hijackers turning up alive. The critique Sifting Through Loose Change contains the transcript of the film, including the passage on identities of the alleged hijackers.