Inside Job: Unmasking the 9/11 Conspiracies

Author: Jim Marrs

reviewed by Theresa Welsh


What happened on September 11, 2001? We all know the answer, or think we do. But is the story that's been told for all these years really true? I didn't much like George W. Bush or the policies of his administration, but even so, it is hard to believe that Bush and company were actually behind the 9/11 disaster. Nor does Jim Marrs, a noted and respected conspiracy author, actually claim that it is so in this book, written in 2004. Instead, he simply builds a mountain of evidence that tends to indicate that the Official Story cannot be true.

Challenging the Official Story

And it's not just some parts of the Official Story that are shown to be not true. This book challenges our most basic beliefs about the story, creating a picture that could lead a sane person to conclude that NONE of it is true.

Consider the following allegations from Inside Job:

  • The airplanes used as weapons were not hijacked by the Arab terrorists whose names were released after the incident (there is no evidence that many of the supposed terrorists were even on the planes; some of them were later discovered alive).
  • The airplanes crashing into the towers did not bring them down (evidence shows that controlled explosions did)
  • Building 7 collapsed for no known reason and its collapse was never explained (unless, as the evidence shows, it was from a controlled explosion)
  • The airplane that supposedly crashed into the Pentagon could NOT have crashed into the Pentagon (the hole in the building was not big enough for the plane to have penetrated)
  • The airplane that supposedly crashed into the Pentagon was said to be completely consumed in the fire, but this is impossible (no remains of plane or passengers were found)
  • The plane that went down in Pennsylvania did NOT crash because brave passengers attacked the hijackers (more likely, it was shot down)
  • The response from the President and the military was so tepid as to indicate they had no intention of stopping the attacks (jets not scrambled from the closest bases and not flown at full speed and the President's lack of action when told of the attack)
  • Someone stood to gain financially from the disaster, as shown by unusual stock market activity on the day before, involving companies that would suffer losses (seeming to show that these people had foreknowledge of the attacks)

Second-Hand Sources, But Lots of Corroboration

Marrs' book is a collection of incidents and reports from many sources, mostly second-hand (not interviews Marrs personally conducted), but there is a great deal of cross-corroboration of events. For instance, a number of people who were there when the towers were hit reported hearing and seeing the effects of explosions in places not penetrated by the airliners. The evidence that military planes were not dispatched in a timely fashion also has many witnesses.

The book includes the text of a lawsuit brought by Ellen Mariani, the widow of a victim who worked at WTC who refused to take the Victim's Compensation Fund money (she could have gotten $500,000) from what she calls the "shut up and go away" fund. Her suit names George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Condoleezza Rice and others as defendants in a RICO charge. She is more forthright than Marrs in what she says. She outright alleges that Bush and cronies knew about the attacks and failed to stop them. Makes you wonder when you consider that no one was fired, demoted or reprimanded for the obvious failure of our national government on September 11, 2001. The government spends billions of our taxpayer money for defense and yet a bunch of Arabs with boxcutters were able to destroy the WTC and put a hole in the Pentagon!

Marrs mentions a lot of other people involved in trying to find the truth about 9/11 and as a result of reading the book I discovered there are websites devoted to this research. Here are a few:

Original Publisher Pulled Out

Marrs says that the research he did on 9/11 was originally going to be published by HarperCollins, but, after the manuscript was complete, a cover designed and the lawyers had approved it, the book was cancelled by some higher up. Marrs published it himself, then found Byron Belitsos whose Origin Press published the edition I have. Belitsos contributed a Preface explaining his reasons for publishing ("I couldn't forego it and still call myself an American or even a World Citizen.").

What Really Happened?

Marrs has little to say about the motives for the attack, but he does give us a theory of how it happened. He says the airliners involved could all be flown by remote control by someone on the ground. He suggests that the so-called terrorists on board were not planning on a suicide mission and were not piloting the planes when they crashed into the buildings. Indeed, there is much evidence that the terrorists were not good enough pilots to fly airliners. The man who was supposed to be flying the plane that went into the Pentagon was such a lousy pilot that he was kicked out of flight school and not allowed to rent a small trainer plane. And yet that airliner made a maneuver that would have required a great deal of piloting skill.

There is some confusion about whether many of the so-called hijackers were even on the planes (those the government named, but whose names are not on the flight lists). Of course, hijackers may use phony names, but it is still an open question as to who was actually on those flights. The original names released by the Bush administration were later amended, as some of the men named were found to be very much alive and claiming to know nothing about the hijackings.

Interestingly, the military was doing training exercises that day based on a crippled jet crashing into a building. Could that have confused the military and caused their poor response, or is that just an excuse? Why were the military jets that got in the air that day flying at way below their maximum speed? And why wasn't President Bush immediately evacuated from the Florida school where he was reading to children? All of us who saw Michael Moore's movie, Fahrenheit 9/11, know our president just sat there and continued reading when informed of the attacks. Didn't he think the children could be in danger in case he, the President, was a target? Or did he already know he wasn't a target? These are a few of the questions that have no answer. Marrs' book includes "23 questions" that have been asked by victims' families, but never answered by the Bush administration.

Who Did This?

Anyone's first impulse on reading this review is going to be "oh, that can't be true." It's my reaction too to reading Inside Job, but neither can I ignore the information in this book. You have to ask the classic question: Who would benefit from these attacks? Ellen Mariani, the woman suing the Bush administration, seems to think it provided an excuse for Bush to go ahead with his wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. There is some evidence of people benefitting monetarily, through short selling and Put orders on the airline and other stocks, but it is just too hard to believe that dishonest people can't find easier ways to cheat the rest of us than to bring down the two tallest buildings in the world and kill 3000 people. There were also indications that Israel might be involved somehow, but the mind boggles at this point.

What was the motive for these attacks if it wasn't religious fanatics angry at US policy in the Middle East? Marrs does not supply an answer, and the book would be more entertaining if he had. But clearly he did not write this book to entertain us but to enlighten us and give us the evidence he has put together that the Official Story is wrong. He leaves us to figure out the rest of it.

Where Were You When it Happened?

I well remember that terrible day, as do all Americans who were beyond toddler age when it happened. I was at work, sitting in my cube at the research center for Ford Motor Company in suburban Detroit. I saw the picture of the first tower to be hit on a news website. It looked a lot like the picture on the cover of Marrs' book, with the smoke billowing from the burning building.

There was a lot of chatter among the cubes, as my co-workers learned about what was happening ("Hey, that plane was a passenger plane!" one of my co-workers shouted) and I went out to the hallway where a TV monitor that normally broadcasts internal Ford news was tuned to CNN. When I realized MY COUNTRY WAS UNDER ATTACK, and I saw the first tower collapse, I remember just wanting to go home. Without waiting for any permission, I left the building, got into my car and began driving. I heard on the radio that Ford World Headquarters was "locked down" and no one was allowed in or out. I also heard the border with Canada was closed. We had Canadian employees at Ford who crossed the border every day to come to work.

I cried most of the way home and when I got there, my husband was in the living room watching the TV. My daughter was at high school (thankfully, just a few blocks from our house) and her classes had been cancelled and she was with other students watching the attacks on TV. When she came home, she said a lot of the boys wanted to enlist to fight this enemy. If someone wanted to stir up young Americans so they would fight in a war, this event succeeded.

September 11, 2001 was certainly one of the most horrible days of my life. Worse than the day JFK was shot (which I vividly remember) and, according to my mother who is in her 90s, worse than Pearl Harbor. Do we dare to even think that our own government was behind these horrific events? There are several ways we can interpret the material in this book. It might simply show us a cover-up by the Bush administration trying to hide the incompetence of its operatives. Or it could be showing us something more sinister. For my part, I'll have to study the evidence a lot more before I can sign onto the "more sinister" conclusion.

Go to the amazon.com page for Inside Job: Unmasking the 9/11 Conspiracies.
















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