The events of September 11, 2001 evoke the entire range of human emotion. To say that 9/11 is a divisive topic would be quite the understatement, and this couldn't be more evident than when assessing the 9/11 Truth community itself.

Infighting has created an environment where discussing the pros and cons of each theory generally arouses the ire of some faction of the alternative research community.

Memes aside, the official jet fuel/pancake theory is generally considered to be nonsense by 9/11 "truthers".

In the nearly 16 years since the event, the 9/11 truth movement has evolved into four main camps with regards to the mechanism of the murder weapon.

Broadly speaking, these camps can be qualified as follows: a) Standard controlled demolition; b) So-called "nano-thermite"; c) Mini-nukes or other unconventional nuclear weaponry; d) Exotic or "Directed Energy" weaponry.

There's a reason why the debate is so heated, for not only was 9/11 a horrific crime, but establishing the mechanism of the murder weapon is a huge clue. The question of "who did it" is inextricably linked to the questions of "what happened?" and "how was it done?"

Can the various hypotheses of the mechanisms of their collapse be harmonized? Were the same parties involved in the use of these mechanisms? Or do different mechanisms signal the involvement of different groups, perhaps in conflict?

Stepping back for a moment, it's important to consider the many striking parallels between 9/11 and the Kennedy assassination:

1. They were both used to remake American foreign and domestic policy, especially the normalization of war

2. They involved clear examples of "security stripping" (which on 9/11 extended to the entire country)

3. Both events were analyzed by independent investigators who uncovered a vast architecture of conspiracy involving many factional interests, each with the means, motive and opportunity

4. Both have indications of successful coup d'états

5. Suspicious financial activity surrounded them, especially on 9/11, indicating prior knowledge

6. They each involve ominous connections to a sort of nebulous post-war "Fascist International"

7. The events are surrounded with occult symbolic content, suggesting they were rituals and vast social engineering works

Not only is the MO of the perpetrators essentially the same, the organizational structures behind both are the same, indicating that the "latter event was the logical end of the former."

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, the more prevalent theory that was being formulated was the "let it happen on purpose" (LIHOP) hypothesis. The idea was that the US government knew of the operation in advance, then used it to project military power into the Middle East and enact draconian legislation.

Over time, increasing evidence led to the rise of another theory, the "made it happen on purpose" (MIHOP) hypothesis. This theory held that at the first level of the op were the terrorists, who were simply patsies used by a second level, which could potentially involve rogue elements within the American military and intelligence agencies.

For example, numerous military drills were taking place on 9/11 that involved hijacked airliners being used for attacks on American targets. To say this unfortunate timing led to increased confusion on that day is a vast understatement, and proponents of the MIHOP hypothesis note that the probability that the terrorists planned it that way was vanishingly small without some connection to a rogue network in the American national security structure.

Many contenders have been suggested for this rogue network, notably the Project for a New American Century, which had determined that a "new Pearl Harbor" (a term later used by George W. Bush) would be needed to galvanize public opinion for a prolonged presence in the Middle East.

The Late Michael Ruppert viewed 9/11 as "the most significant event in human history: the end of the age of oil", and many researchers agree that oil was a significant geopolitical motivation behind the attack.

Author Laurent Guyenot takes it further by suggesting that 9/11 was about more than just oil and terrorism, it was a pretext for the American militarization of the planet. David Ray Griffin notes the dramatic change in Presidential rhetoric after the attack: it had become a metaphysical conflict that was "a monumental struggle of Good versus Evil."

Peter Levenda argues that 9/11 functions as the sanctioning event for state sponsored paranoia:

The citizens are not allowed to become paranoid unless it is at government direction and sanction. Individual cases of paranoia are frowned upon. The state tells us that if we are not paranoid the way it is paranoid--and about the same things--it's because we don't have all the facts...the logical conclusion of all this paranoia is suspicion of the state apparatus itself.

For Levenda and other researchers like S.K. Bain, 9/11 was a ceremonial magical ritual sacrifice of massive scale, and can be viewed as a grimoire for magical operations.

In between the extremes of these interpretations--9/11 for oil and 9/11 as ritual magical cosmological struggle of good vs. evil--the attack was also was a financial crime of high order. E.P. Heidner suggests that 9/11 was meant to cover up a vast fraudulent financial system.

When taken at face value, these theories imply 9/11 was more than a terrorist false-flag op. It was a multi-layered op which accomplished several objectives at once by those with detailed inside financial, political and occult knowledge.

The Third Level

Webster Griffin Tarpely was among the first to suggest that a possible third layer was involved that day, beyond the "rogue element" of the LIHOP and MIHOP scenarios.

For Tarpley, the MIHOP hypothesis "represents the analytical point of view which sees the events of 9/11 as a deliberate provocation manufactured by an outlaw network of high officials infesting the military and security apparatus of the US and Great Britain, a network ultimately dominated by Wall Street and City of London financiers."

Although a natural development of the 9/11 Truth movement, after a few years the LIHOP hypothesis became increasingly at war with masses of evidence, as it simply couldn't address the absence of air defense for one hour and forty-five minutes, nor the incredible destruction of the towers.

Even the Bush-Cheney MIHOP position is mostly untenable, as although they may have had limited knowledge or even a planning role, they likely weren't involved at the top of even level two.

Tarpley and others believe 9/11 was a coup d'état, a false flag event of state-sponsored synthetic terror designed to unleash the clash of civilizations:

The goal was to shock the entire US political system and the public in general out of their inertia of normal everyday life into a kind of war psychosis and paranoid obsession with phantom threats agreeable to the outlook of the neocon faction.

Joseph P. Farrell speculates that this third layer is entirely fascist, and international in scope. The well-documented connection of various intelligence agencies (ie the CIA, KGB, GRU) to international criminal undergrounds and their trafficking networks allows agencies a significant source of income free from oversight for covert ops and black projects, and it also provides them with a means of monitoring those criminal organizations and in turn providing them with an independent internationally-extensive source of intelligence.

IOW, post-WII, the Fascist and Nazi elites were connected with these underground criminal organizations, and liaised with the similarly-minded rogue elements within various nations' deep states. This certainly included the American financial and business interests that shared the same basic Fascist ideology.

For both parties, this was a post-war marriage of convenience, and from that point of view, 9/11 may have been the announcement of a divorce.

The detailed planning of 9/11 had to have come at some point from within the American national security and military structure (level 2). Tarpley highlights the significant number of wargaming exercises and drills occurring that day and how the cover of these drills provided confusion in the command and control structure.

Global Guardian was one such drill that involved all of America's strategic nuclear and thermonuclear arsenal: ICBMs, SLBMs, nuclear bombers, and the "Doomsday/Night Watch/Looking Glass flying command posts."

It also involved airbases that house hydrogen bombs, including Barksdale in Louisiana and Offut in Omaha, Nebraska. As it happens, President Bush flew to both bases on 9/11 after leaving Florida.

Tarpley notes that on 9/11 at Offut were some interesting characters, including Warren Buffet and General Brent Scowcroft...a potential "Committee of Public Safety". This group converged at the command HQ of US strategic nuclear forces as a potential element of a coup-d'état, necessitating that Bush be personally present to reassert control over America's nuclear forces:

Thus, on the morning of 9/11, before a single hijacking had been reported, the US had assumed a strategic nuclear posture comparable to that observed during the Cuban missile crisis: B-1 and B-52 bombers were in the air; ballistic missile submarines were at their launch points, presumably near Russia and possibly China, and land-based ICBMs were ready for launch.

The air defenses of North America were also on high alert, both in terms of interceptor aircraft and space assets. Everything, in short, was ready for a nuclear first strike like the neocons have talked so much about in recent years. All of this was observed in real time from Moscow by General Leonid Ivashov and his colleagues of the Russian General Staff.

It is highly significant that Bush's 9/11 flight itinerary included both Barksdale and Offut, two US nuclear command centers which were part of Global Guardian. Global Guardian was a massive exercise in nuclear blackmail.

But how does this constitute a coup d'état? And why would Bush need to have reasserted control over the nuclear command structure by his personal presence at Barksdale and Offut?

Tarpley also describes how the Global Guardian Computer Network Attack exercise that occurred on 9/11 was designed to simulate a cyber attack on STRATCOM's computer network command control structure by using denial of service attacks and other means.

A bad insider could easily have flipped the drill to "live" status by being a plant or mole for "some other organization" and thus missiles might actually have been launched. Here was the invisible government's back door to worldwide thermonuclear escalation, if that had been necessary, on 9/11.

This suggests a three-tiered op, with the deepest layer penetrating the second, and threatening it with blackmail by compromising the command and control structure.