Note:  The following text (Writing 9) discusses some of the problems with the official story of 911.  It is an expansion of the first section of "Some Elephants Missing", a pamphlet with three sections (Writing 10) which follows this essay.

A story that is true is true throughout. If even one significant element can be shown to be implausible, doubt is cast on the whole story.  If, in looking at the evidence, multiple elements seem unlikely, then the story has almost certainly been invented. That principle underlies this essay.

Many pieces of the government's 911 narrative require technical knowledge beyond that of almost everyone, and that general lack of expertise interferes with an accurate public appraisal of what happened. To make matters worse, because the events of that day are clearly an attack on America and Americans, mainstream media wants to support the American government--and the corporate profits contingent upon that support--more than it wants to report the truth. (A prominent example: PBS presented two separate and somewhat contradictory programs ostensibly intended to explain how the World Trade Center buildings collapsed on 9/11/01.  In two hours on that subject PBS chose to never mention that a third WTC building collapsed on 9/11/01, a building that shared none of the unique structural elements that PBS explained were central to the collapse of buildings 1 and 2.  And, far from being unimportant, the third building was larger, in total square feet, than any highrise on the west coast.  According to the official story, it was the first and only highrise in the history of construction to collapse due solely to fire.)  American media, therefore, does its best to confuse things by ignoring unhelpful evidence and uncritically repeating the government's narrative. But some events of 911 are so large, so open to examination, and so incompatible with the official story that they cannot be convincingly covered up or explained away. Though there are thousands of problems with the government's testimony, this essay looks at just three problems, the most conspicuous ones, the elephants. 

​

Two of the three items involve Boeing 757's, or more precisely, the absence of Boeing 757's, the aircraft pictured to the left (and above). The 757 is 155 feet long, 125 feet wide, 45 feet high, its two engines are 45 feet apart.  It weighs 127 tons at takeoff and carries 186 passengers.  According to the official story, two Boeing 757's crashed within hours of each other on 9/11, one in Pennsylvania and one in Virginia (the planes that crashed into the WTC buildings were allegedly 767's). The government argues they crashed in such a way that, unlike every other plane crash on dry land in history, both completely disappeared forever.

The third problem concerns the collapse of World Trade Center 7.  It was not hit by a plane. It suffered only minor exterior damage and several very small and unexplained fires burned inside for an unknown period of time.  It would seem that a credible explanation of its collapse--other than by controlled demolition--would require a suspension of disbelief. For that reason, the 9/11 Commission chose to ignore WTC7, saying its collapse was not a direct result of the terrorist attacks.  Similarly, the corporate media (actually all media) pretend that WTC7 either didn't happen or that it is not worth talking about. Few Americans have ever seen a photo of the building (except for the day of 9/11, it has never been shown on TV) and most Americans, if they have heard of WTC7 at all, believe that it must have been a small and unimportant structure that partially collapsed as a result of pieces of "the towers" falling on top of it.  But, contrary to those assumptions, it was itself a tower, massive, immensely important, and too large and too far from WTC 1 and 2 for anything from those structures to have caused its collapse by falling on it.  And it collapsed completely, decisively, all at once, straight down, just like the other two towers that day. It was the third high-rise tower in the history of the built environment to collapse due to random structural failure (all on 9/11) and the first to collapse solely due to fire.  It fell in the heart of Manhattan. Had it crashed to the ground on any day other than 9/11, everyone would have seen the videos of its fall countless times and structural engineers would still be trying to understand the event. Either the world's fire codes would have to be radically revised or, following the other conclusion, people everywhere would be demanding that the perpetrators of the demolition be bought to justice. But 9/11 provides cover for the catastrophic end of WTC7 and so, against all odds, relatively few know about it.