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Immediately following the September 11, 2001 attacks, the U.S. government stated that nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial
airplanes by using knives, box cutters, pepper spray, and fake explosives. At 8:46 a.m. and 9:03am, Flights 11 and 175 crashed
into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, causing them to collapse soon after. 7 World Trade Center collapsed later
in the day from fires started by debris from the collapse of the North Tower. Flight 77 crashed into the Pentagon at 9:37
a.m. and Flight 93 crashed in an open field in Pennsylvania at 10:03 a.m. after the passengers stormed the cockpit. US government
intelligence sources identified the hijackers and linked them to the terrorist organisation al-Qaeda, headed by Osama Bin
Laden, which later claimed sole responsibility for the attacks.
The two terms 'mainstream account' and 'official account' both refer to:
* The reports from government investigations - the 9/11 Commission Report (which incorporated intelligence information from
the earlier FBI investigation (PENTBOM) and the Joint Inquiry of 2002), and the studies into building performance carried
out by the Federal Emergency Management Agency(FEMA) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
* Investigations by non-government organizations that support the mainstream account - such as those by the National Fire
Protection Association, Purdue University and Northwestern University.
* Similar articles in magazines such as Popular Mechanics, Scientific American and Time
* Similar articles in news media throughout the world, including The Times of India,the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
(CBC), the BBC, Le Monde,Deutsche Welle,the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC),and The Chosun Ilbo of South Korea.
The 9/11 Commission Report disclosed prior warnings of varying detail of planned attacks against the United States by al-Qaeda.
The report said that the government ignored these warnings due to a lack of communication between various law enforcement
and intelligence personnel. For the lack of inter-agency communication, the report cited bureaucratic inertia and laws passed
in the 1970s to prevent abuses that caused scandals during that era. The report faulted the Clinton and the Bush administration
with “failure of imagination”. Most members of the Democratic party and the Republican party endorsed the commission's
report.
Some criticisms of the 9/11 Commission Report focus on how the government formed and operated the 9/11 Commission, and allege
omissions and distortions in both the 9/11 Commission Report and the NIST Report.
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