9/11 at 25: The Questions That Still Refuse to Go Away
By JM Talboo
Twenty-five years after September 11, 2001, Americans have heard the official story of 9/11 many times.
We know that 19 hijackers carried out the attacks and that al-Qaeda was responsible for planning the operation. We know that Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed were central figures in the conspiracy. We know that the United States government failed to prevent the attacks despite possessing significant pieces of information about the emerging threat.
But there is another question that has never completely gone away:
How much do we really know about everything that happened before, during, and after September 11?
That question is not the same thing as claiming that every alternative theory is true. It is not even necessarily a claim that the official account is false.
It is a recognition that there are documented discrepancies, unresolved questions, disputed testimony, intelligence failures, and allegations that deserve to be examined on their evidence rather than dismissed simply because they challenge a conventional explanation.
As the 25th anniversary approaches, two recent interviews—one with broadcaster Richard Syrett discussing the late airline captain Philip Marshall, and another with former Congressman Curt Weldon discussing his book Able Danger: What the 9/11 Commission Never Told You—have brought some of those old questions back into the public conversation.
I have spent years examining these issues myself through Debunking the Debunkers. My own position has never been that every alternative explanation surrounding 9/11 has been proven. Rather, I believe the evidence needs to be examined honestly, including evidence that makes us uncomfortable.
And after 25 years, there are still some uncomfortable questions.
The Questions Began Almost Immediately
Richard Syrett recalls beginning to question aspects of the 9/11 story almost immediately after the attacks.
Among the questions that caught his attention were the discovery of a passport reportedly belonging to hijacker Satam al-Suqami, the apparent failures of the air-defense system, intelligence warnings concerning Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, the identities and capabilities of the hijackers, the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings, and the destruction of World Trade Center Building 7.
Some of those questions have straightforward answers. Others have complicated answers. And some remain matters of genuine disagreement.
The important point is that asking a question is not the same as answering it with a conspiracy theory.
The official investigation itself documented serious intelligence failures.
The 9/11 Commission found that the CIA had identified Khalid al-Mihdhar and had information connecting him to an al-Qaeda gathering in Kuala Lumpur in January 2000. Nawaf al-Hazmi was also associated with that group. The Commission documented failures in passing information between agencies and ultimately described a government that possessed pieces of the puzzle without putting them together in time.
Those failures are not conspiracy theories.
They are part of the historical record.
The San Diego Question
One particularly interesting area involves Hazmi and Mihdhar.
The 9/11 Commission reported that the two arrived in Los Angeles on January 15, 2000, but that investigators could not determine where they went during their first two weeks in the United States.
The Commission considered it unlikely that the two inexperienced men arrived in America without arranging some assistance in advance.
They subsequently encountered Omar al-Bayoumi, who helped them relocate to San Diego, assisted them in obtaining an apartment, and helped them with practical matters.
At the same time, the Commission said it found no evidence that Bayoumi knowingly assisted the terrorists in their planned attacks.
That distinction matters.
There is a documented relationship.
There is documented assistance.
There are also documented gaps in what investigators were able to determine.
But those facts alone do not prove that Bayoumi was knowingly acting as an agent of Saudi intelligence or that the Saudi government participated in the attacks.
That stronger allegation requires additional evidence.
This is exactly where the debate often breaks down. One side sees the documented facts and immediately concludes that the official story must be false. The other sees the lack of conclusive proof for the larger allegation and concludes that there is nothing worth investigating.
Neither approach is particularly useful.
The responsible approach is to examine the evidence and determine exactly what it establishes—and what it does not.
The Hijackers and the Question of Flight Training
Philip Marshall, the former airline captain discussed by Richard Syrett, became particularly interested in the question of how the hijackers acquired the aviation skills necessary to conduct the attacks.
Marshall had extensive experience flying Boeing aircraft, including the 727, 737, 747, 757 and 767.
His argument was not simply that the hijackers had never flown airplanes before. Rather, he questioned whether the training publicly documented in their histories adequately explained what they accomplished on September 11.
There is an important factual foundation for asking that question.
The 9/11 Commission documented that Hazmi and Mihdhar attempted flight training in San Diego. Their progress was poor. They were reportedly interested in learning to fly large Boeing aircraft and were disappointed when instructors explained that they would have to begin with smaller aircraft. Their formal efforts essentially went nowhere.
Hani Hanjour presents a somewhat different case.
He already possessed a commercial pilot certificate, had previous flight experience, and later trained on a Boeing 737 simulator in Arizona. The Commission reported that instructors considered his simulator performance substandard and discouraged him from continuing, although he persisted. The Commission also reported evidence suggesting he obtained additional training later.
Those facts do not establish that there was a secret third stage of flight training.
That was Marshall's theory.
Syrett acknowledges that there is no established evidence proving Marshall's speculation that the hijackers received clandestine hands-on training on Boeing 757 or 767 aircraft at a facility such as Pinal Air Park.
But the underlying question remains legitimate:
Exactly what training did the hijackers receive, from whom, and was everything about that training fully documented?
Those are two different questions.
Where Marshall Went Further
Marshall did not stop with questions about flight training.
He also questioned the Saudi connections, the intelligence failures, the government's handling of evidence, the confessions attributed to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, and the broader official explanation of the attacks.
Some of his conclusions went substantially beyond what the available public evidence establishes.
That distinction should be preserved.
There is nothing wrong with investigating a theory.
There is a problem when a theory is presented as established fact before the evidence has earned that conclusion.
Marshall's death in 2013 introduced another layer of controversy.
According to the official investigation described by Syrett, Marshall killed his two children and dog before taking his own life. Authorities found no evidence of an outside shooter, forced entry, or struggle.
Syrett does not claim to have proven that conclusion false.
Instead, he raises a disturbing possibility: could Marshall have been deliberately silenced and made to appear responsible for the deaths of his children?
That is an extraordinary allegation.
At present, it remains an allegation.
And that distinction is important.
Perhaps even more curious, Syrett says that after Marshall's death he searched his own email account and discovered that roughly 17 months of correspondence with Marshall had disappeared.
Again, that does not prove that intelligence agencies deleted the correspondence.
It does not prove that Marshall was murdered.
It does, however, constitute a factual claim about missing correspondence that can be independently investigated.
That is where evidence-based inquiry should begin.
Curt Weldon and Able Danger
Curt Weldon's allegations are considerably more sweeping.
In his interview with Tucker Carlson, Weldon argues that the Army intelligence program known as Able Danger identified Mohammed Atta and an al-Qaeda cell in the United States before September 11.
Weldon further alleges that attempts were made to transfer information about those individuals to the Justice Department and that those attempts were blocked.
These claims have been disputed for years.
That makes them neither automatically true nor automatically meaningless.
They require examination of the underlying records, testimony, and competing accounts.
Weldon's position goes considerably further than simply alleging an intelligence failure. He says that documents he encountered convinced him that certain individuals within the government actually planned the attacks.
That is an extraordinary claim.
It should therefore be held to an extraordinary evidentiary standard.
There is an enormous difference between saying:
"The government possessed information that it failed to act upon."
and saying:
"Government officials deliberately planned the attacks."
The first proposition has substantial documented material behind it.
The second requires direct evidence demonstrating intentional participation in the attack.
Weldon says such evidence exists.
That is precisely the sort of claim that should be tested against the underlying documents rather than accepted or rejected solely because of who is making it.
The Bigger Problem: False Choices
This is where my own research has led me to a position that I laid out years ago in the permanent post at Debunking the Debunkers.
The 9/11 debate is frequently reduced to a false choice:
Either al-Qaeda did it, or the United States government did it.
Reality does not necessarily have to fit into those two boxes.
It is entirely possible to accept that al-Qaeda operatives carried out the attacks while still investigating whether other people knowingly assisted them, whether intelligence agencies possessed information they failed to act upon, whether foreign intelligence services played some role, or whether individual government officials concealed information afterward.
In fact, the 9/11 Commission itself documented circumstances that demonstrate how complicated the story actually was.
The Commission found that Hazmi and Mihdhar were al-Qaeda operatives. It also found that they received assistance after arriving in the United States, while acknowledging that investigators could not establish the full circumstances surrounding their arrival and early activities.
That is not an "inside job" conclusion.
It is simply a recognition that complicated events can have complicated chains of responsibility.
My permanent post makes essentially this point: rejecting the simplistic black-and-white choice does not require rejecting al-Qaeda's involvement. The possibility of assistance, facilitation, intelligence failures, or other forms of complicity can be investigated independently.
The NORAD Problem
Another issue that has never disappeared from the debate concerns the military response.
My own blog has long highlighted the contradictory accounts surrounding NORAD and the failure to intercept the hijacked aircraft.
This isn't merely a matter of internet speculation.
Former 9/11 Commission chairman Thomas Kean was quoted by The Washington Post in 2006 saying that the information NORAD provided the Commission was "so far from the truth" and describing the matter as a loose end that had never been resolved. The quotation is reproduced in the permanent post at Debunking the Debunkers.
That statement does not prove a deliberate stand-down.
It does demonstrate something much less dramatic—but still important:
There were significant discrepancies between what the military initially said happened and what the 9/11 Commission subsequently determined had happened.
That deserves historical scrutiny.
And it raises a simple question:
If the discrepancies were merely the result of confusion and institutional failure, why did the discrepancies become so substantial?
The answer may ultimately be mundane.
Or it may not be.
But the question should not be prohibited simply because some people dislike where it might lead.
The Physical Evidence
My research at Debunking the Debunkers has also examined the physical evidence surrounding the destruction of the World Trade Center buildings, including Building 7.
This is another area where the discussion often becomes needlessly polarized.
Someone can believe that the official engineering explanations deserve serious consideration while still examining criticisms of those explanations.
Likewise, someone can believe that evidence suggests controlled demolition without pretending that this automatically establishes who planned or carried out such a demolition.
Those are separate questions.
What happened to the buildings?
Why did they collapse the way they did?
What evidence supports competing explanations?
And, if someone concludes that explosives or some other deliberate mechanism were involved:
Who placed them there, when, and why?
A hypothesis about physical destruction does not automatically answer questions about intelligence operations, foreign governments, or the identity of the perpetrators.
Again, the categories need to be separated.
Twenty-Five Years Later
What strikes me most about these two recent interviews is that they come from very different directions.
Richard Syrett's discussion of Philip Marshall is largely about questions: aviation capabilities, training, Saudi connections, intelligence failures, missing correspondence, and the mysterious circumstances surrounding Marshall's death.
Curt Weldon goes much further. He claims that Able Danger uncovered information about the future hijackers and alleges that some government officials went beyond failing to act—they actually planned the attacks.
Those claims should not simply be lumped together.
Marshall's theories were not proven by his death.
Weldon's allegations are not proven merely because he says he possesses documents.
But neither should the existence of unresolved questions be dismissed merely because some proposed answers are controversial.
The official investigation itself documented major intelligence failures.
It documented the presence of Hazmi and Mihdhar in the United States long before September 11.
It documented their attempts to learn to fly.
It documented assistance they received after arriving in California.
It documented the failure of agencies to connect critical pieces of intelligence.
And it documented the extraordinary difficulty investigators faced in reconstructing parts of the story.
Twenty-five years later, we should be capable of acknowledging all of those facts simultaneously.
What Would Actually Settle the Debate?
The answer is not another argument between people who already agree with each other.
It is evidence.
If someone claims there was secret flight training, produce the records.
If someone claims Saudi intelligence knowingly assisted the hijackers, produce the evidence establishing that connection.
If someone claims Able Danger identified Mohammed Atta before September 11, examine the original records, identify what was known, when it was known, and who received the information.
If someone claims officials deliberately planned the attacks, identify those officials and produce the documentary or testimonial evidence demonstrating their participation.
If someone claims the World Trade Center buildings were deliberately demolished, examine the physical evidence and competing engineering analyses.
If someone claims the official explanation is correct, that explanation should likewise be subjected to the same standard.
That is what a genuine investigation looks like.
It doesn't begin by deciding the answer.
It begins by following the evidence.
We Might Be Wrong
There is one sentence from the permanent Debunking the Debunkers post that I think is especially important after 25 years:
"We might be wrong about where we suspect this all leads."
That is not a weakness.
It is intellectual honesty.
If evidence emerges tomorrow showing that one of the theories discussed for the last 25 years is wrong, we should change our minds.
If evidence emerges showing that something previously dismissed actually happened, we should change our minds about that too.
The purpose of investigating 9/11 should not be to defend a preferred conclusion.
It should be to determine what actually happened.
Twenty-five years is long enough to have strong opinions.
It is not long enough to stop asking questions.
The people who died on September 11, 2001 deserve better than slogans.
Their families deserve better than political arguments.
And the public deserves better than being told that difficult questions are themselves evidence of disloyalty.
Perhaps the final answers will ultimately vindicate the conventional account.
Perhaps they will complicate it.
Perhaps some of the alternative theories will prove correct, while others will not.
But after a quarter century, the standard should remain the same:
Follow the evidence wherever it leads—even if it leads somewhere none of us expected.
Sources
Richard Syrett — "9/11 Questions Remain: Missing Emails and Philip Marshall"
Interview/transcript discussing Philip Marshall, hijacker flight training, Saudi connections, intelligence failures, Marshall's death, and missing correspondence.
YouTube interview
Tucker Carlson — "This Video Will Change the Course of the 9/11 Investigation" — Curt Weldon
Interview concerning Able Danger, alleged pre-9/11 intelligence regarding Mohammed Atta and al-Qaeda, and Weldon's broader allegations concerning government involvement.
YouTube interview
JM Talboo & Steve W. — "Permanent Top Post" — Debunking the Debunkers
The author's longstanding framework concerning the black-and-white fallacy, NORAD discrepancies, whistleblowers, physical evidence, and unresolved questions surrounding 9/11.
National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States — The 9/11 Commission Report
Chapters concerning Hazmi, Mihdhar, Bayoumi, Hani Hanjour, flight training, intelligence failures, and the development of the "planes operation."
9/11 Commission Hearing — June 16, 2004
Commission testimony and staff presentation concerning the hijackers' movements, San Diego, Bayoumi, flight training, and Hani Hanjour.
The Washington Post — August 2, 2006
Reporting concerning the 9/11 Commission's concerns about contradictory NORAD information, reproduced and referenced in the permanent Debunking the Debunkers post.
