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This has been said a lot of times in lots of places. Did the US government know about the attacks prior to the attacks, and were they involved with the attacks?

Jason Plank
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picakhu
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    Please restrict your question to a particular claim, we can't debunk every single conspiracy theory about 9/11 in one question. – Mad Scientist Apr 13 '11 at 06:04
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    Is the claim that the President knew? Or that it was a black op, e.g. CIA? Please be specific. – Paul Apr 13 '11 at 06:12
  • @Paul, is it possible to avoid being specific? I mean to say any US intelligence. – picakhu Apr 13 '11 at 06:13
  • That helps... but I think some will say its unknowable whether an intelligence group within the US Govt had some (presumably classified) role in 9/11. – Paul Apr 13 '11 at 06:15
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    It's extremely unlikely to have been an inside job. I think it's likely that if this was the case, there'd be far more murmur than there is. The truth will always out, as it were. – Chris Dennett Apr 13 '11 at 08:14
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    Well, once the answers are posted, we will finally know the truth :-) – Paul Apr 13 '11 at 08:20
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    @Paul: **I** already know. The question what I know, and that depends on whether the conspiracy theorists are crazy, or if I'm a part of the conspiracy. And I ain't telling. ;-) Anyway, the US Government consists of millions of people. Until specified more than that this isn't a real question. Unless he means everybody who works for the government. – Lennart Regebro Apr 13 '11 at 13:20
  • @Lennart, obviously not ALL people. but basically if any, and especially important people like the President/CIA. – picakhu Apr 13 '11 at 13:44
  • @picakhu: Well, if you restrict yourself to the president and top level officials in the CIA, then it would be a useful question. To which the answer is: There is no reason to believe that they did. – Lennart Regebro Apr 13 '11 at 13:56
  • @Lennart: Is that "There is no reason to believe that they did" a one sentence rebuttal of the wiki article? – picakhu Apr 13 '11 at 13:58
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    Dear @picakhu, that Wikipedia article *documents* the conspiracy theories. Rebutting it would require proving that the conspiracy theories *does not exist*. Which they clearly do. You seem to assume that there is some rationality behind the conspiracy theories. There isn't. – Lennart Regebro Apr 13 '11 at 16:56
  • @Lennart: Clearly I am talking about the claims of the theories rather than the fact that the theories exist. – picakhu Apr 13 '11 at 17:00
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    @TK, Lennart, picakhu: The alleged demolition of 7 World Trade Center was addressed in [another question](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1368/on-9-11-was-building-7-destroyed-in-a-controlled-explosion). – Patches Apr 14 '11 at 03:58
  • @picakhu: That's not the "flaw in the argument". Every single thing he says is incorrect or illogical in one way or another. You haven't yet grasped the level of reality-denial involved here. – Lennart Regebro Apr 14 '11 at 06:35
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    @TKKocheran [The WTC7 issue is addressed in another question](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/1368/on-9-11-was-building-7-destroyed-in-a-controlled-explosion) as Patches noted. This discussion is somewhat off-topic here, and if you make such significant claims please provide an answer and cite your claims, don't just use the comments. – Mad Scientist Apr 14 '11 at 08:20
  • It's impossible to answer this question in the negative. If such prior knowledge existed the US government is unlikely to divulge such knowledge publicly. Therefore you'll never get a positive answer. A negative answer could be a lie or truth, and you'd never know. – jwenting Apr 20 '11 at 09:19
  • Removed all comments re WTC7: there is another question for that and it's pointless to re-discuss it here. – Sklivvz Apr 20 '11 at 11:16

1 Answers1

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Depends on what you mean by prior knowledge, and what you mean by the U.S. Government.

The 9/11 Commission Report highlights many failings by the FBI and the CIA and suggests that they had credible information about the attacks even though that they did not realise what they had at the time. This could be taken as them having prior knowledge even if they didn't know about it.

Ardesco
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    I call this the fourth category: aside from the "known knowns" and "known unknowns" and "unknown unknowns", you have the "unknown knowns" -- things you know but don't realize are relevant until after it's too late. – Shadur Sep 30 '15 at 07:25