The American Empire and 9/11 - Journal of 9/11 Studies

level.” These fires could not be put out, she adds, because“the collapse of the towers had broken the area’s watermain.” She takes on faith, in other words, the officialstory that the buildings were brought down primarily byraging fires. This is, however, faith in the sense of“evidence of things unseen”: As mentioned earlier,photograph show no raging fires in WTC 7. Even her claimabout the water is false: Fireboats were pumping up greatquantities of water from the Hudson. 100Andrew Cockburn’s main reason for calling members ofthe 9/11 movement “nuts” is that we think the attackssucceeded because of conspiracy rather than incompetence.But he fails to point out that in The New Pearl Harbor---theone book that he mentions---I devoted an entire chapter tothis issue, showing that an incompetence theory becomes ahuge coincidence theory entailing “that FAA agents, NMCC andNORAD officials, pilots, immigration agents, U.S. militaryleaders in Afghanistan, and numerous U.S. intelligenceagencies all coincidentally acted with extreme and unusualincompetence when dealing with matters related to 9/11.” 101With regard to the failure to intercept, Cockburn’sposition implies that although our military would not havebeen efficient enough to pull off this operation (eventhough it had engaged in exercises involving just suchattacks), al-Qaeda operatives would have. Is that not thenutty view?Believing, like Allen, that it is easy to give answersto our questions, Cockburn suggests that the Twin Towersfell because “they were badly built . . . and because they100 Sharon Seitz, “The Little Fireboat That Did,” Time Out New York, No.313: September 27-October 4, 2001(http://web.archive.org/web/20011031135350/http://www.timeoutny.com/aroundtown/313/313u.around.fireboat.box.html), and Huntley Gill, “RetiredFireboat Harvey Helps With World Trade Center Disaster,” NYFD.Com(http://www.firehouse.com/terrorist/17_Pharvey.html).101 Griffin, The New Pearl Harbor, 145.35