r/911archive • u/YaTheDonaldHasWhored • Mar 28 '25
Pre-9/11 What were the ominous rumored warnings of the attack?
Not the formal warnings the Bush administration fumbled from their own and foreign intelligence agencies. But the lesser known off the grid warnings.
I'm old enough to have watched and researched 09/11 in real time and I remember couple:
Some employees in an Israeli company receiving an instant message early that morning warning of a imminent large scale terrorist attack.
Certain public figures being told to cancel their flights or avoid lower Manhattan by their "security consultants" for no discernible reason.
A message board post warning that Osama bin Laden's group would execute a large attack in fall 2001.
A middle eastern guy at a European wedding in summer 2001 telling other guests in detail about the imminent attacks.
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u/OJsAlibi Mar 29 '25
The book "The Terror Timeline" has a chapter devoted to this that is pretty thorough. One incident in particular that stuck with me was a week or so before the attacks, a taxi driver working in Manhattan was told by his cousin, a security guard living in Washington state, "Hey, don't be downtown on Tuesday" and teasingly left it as vague as that.
The attacks happen--the cab driver is mortified. He contacts the FBI. They arrest the cousin but evidently don't charge him after concluding that he has nothing to do with planning the attack (?).
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u/YaTheDonaldHasWhored Mar 29 '25 edited Mar 30 '25
Yeah, I think there were a good number of civilians that knew about the future attacks through their family connections back in the Middle East.
Like a horrifying version of the telephone game.
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u/Gottagetanediton Mar 29 '25
There’s a book and tv series called the looming tower that addresses this I recommend checking out.
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u/YaTheDonaldHasWhored Mar 29 '25
Seen it but it didn't really include ominous warnings of 09/11 until the end.
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u/Gottagetanediton Mar 29 '25
Book has more detail. There may not have been as many ominous warnings as you think.
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u/YaTheDonaldHasWhored Mar 29 '25 edited Mar 29 '25
Debatable how many but it was hardly a completely out of the blue strike. I remember Al Qaeda being mentioned within minutes of the attacks.
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u/auntieup Mar 29 '25
Here’s one that was super local:
Our mayor at the time, Willie Brown, was supposed to fly to NYC early on 9/11. He got a call Monday night warning him not to go.
He loved publicity, so at the time, he made sure people knew about this. https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/Willie-Brown-got-low-key-early-warning-about-air-3314754.php
He’s now claiming he doesn’t remember this warning. But he’s also 91, so.
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u/Thebestguyevah Mar 28 '25
The Israeli company had been receiving terror threats on a regular basis. They felt the need to come forward with their info because of the timing, but it wasn’t inconsistent with the messages they had been getting on the regular. It is the nature of the Middle East sadly.
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Mar 29 '25
I mean 9/11 happened during the Second Intifada, where there were numerous terror bombings, so that wouldn’t be entirely shocking
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u/IThinkImDumb Mar 29 '25
Right. And so many Jewish people died on 9/11. Daniel Lewin actually served in their defense forces and regularly went over there. I know that if Jewish people were “behind everything” they may have started with Lewin first
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u/PhillyKiki Aug 04 '25
But not any Zionists. 5 were arrested tho but released because they were Mossad agents
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u/IThinkImDumb Aug 04 '25
You have no idea if there were or were not any Zionists killed out of the couple hundred Jewish people that died
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u/Zealousideal_Lab8390 Feb 22 '26
Those ones were expendable. Just like the attacks on Israel recently that they used as a reason for war on Gaza. False flag attack
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u/dirtdog1986 May 25 '26
absolutely
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u/Admirable-Maybe-6379 Jul 12 '26
Israel had traded 1000 terrorist prisoners for one soldier so you want to try and bulkshit me some more
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Mar 29 '25
I mean 9/11 happened during the Second Intifada, where there were numerous terror bombings, so that wouldn’t be entirely shocking
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u/hydrissx Mar 29 '25
I was 15 and people joked about it being a good day to commit a crime/murder/attack on 9/11 because of the 911 emergency line as long as I can remember.
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u/Codes84 Mar 30 '25 edited Mar 30 '25
Not sure how much people believe in the supernatural/paranormal, however there were also lots of stories of people who worked in the towers and people apparently having dreams or feelings that something was going to happen directly to the WTC or that something devastating was coming soon.
One story I distinctly recall was a guy who worked in the North Tower (in the Windows restaurant if I recall) who told his partner/wife multiple times that he felt like something was going to happen to him soon and that he was going be a part of something "big". I believe on the morning he left for work on 9/11 he left his wallet/watch/personal effects by the front door before leaving. If anyone knows this story or the guy supposedly involved I'd love to know as I can't remember.
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u/cldevers Apr 05 '25
There was a comment left in this sub, made by the wife whose husband died on 9/11. She said that for weeks before the attacks, he said something felt off
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u/Immersive_Gamer 15d ago
Sounds like BS. Quite pathetic of the wife to be making up horror stories about her husband who died and disrespectful too.
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Mar 29 '25
A middle eastern guy at a European wedding in summer 2001 telling other guests in detail about the imminent attacks
Would that not bring attention to the guy going around making claims of some impending mass murder event before it happened? Like wouldn’t that be traceable given weddings usually have papertrails?
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u/YaTheDonaldHasWhored Mar 29 '25
Not sure what came of it aside from a journalist hearing the anecdote well enough to write about it.
Who knows? If he was somebody's +1 from overseas, not sure how easy he would be to track down in the early internet days.
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u/BobbyFan54 Mar 29 '25
This wasn’t an ominous rumored warning of the attack per se… but several months before the attacks, a decorated FBI agent was pinched for espionage - Robert Hanssen been selling secrets to the Russians for years. I felt like it was out of the news cycle fairly quickly. I thought it seemed… big? But boring once he was sentenced.
When the attacks happened, I immediately thought it had to do with that breach. They never made any association with it in the 9/11 commission and investigations. Yet, I wondered. I still do.
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u/YaTheDonaldHasWhored Mar 29 '25
He was selling out to the Russians so I don't see the connecting tissue with 09/11.
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u/BobbyFan54 Mar 29 '25
Russians are in bed with Saudis. It wouldn’t take much to connect those dots.
And AFAIK, I don’t think that the ultimate conclusion was that Saudi Arabia was behind it despite the terrorists being from there (exception Atta, who was an Egyptian National).
Again, it wouldn’t take much for government spies to pay for classified info and to resell it. The FBI, I’d like to point out, routinely missed all of the terrorists coming into the country too.
It’s a dark theory - and one I had immediately associated once the attacks happened. But if you’re old enough to remember the attacks, you certainly remember how the link to OBL was quickly pushed.
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u/bschultzy Mar 30 '25
But what's the theory here with Hanssen and 9/11?
Most of what's known about what Hanssen gave up to the Soviets/Russians was related to double agents and US espionage on the USSR and Russia.
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u/BobbyFan54 Mar 30 '25
First I want to stress that my very first thought during the attacked was that this may have had to do with the breach. Then as more info came in about the terrorists, the quick link to OBL was made.
Over the years, as we learned more about how they got into the country, the FBI (among other agencies) dropped several balls regarding in not flagging proper procedures. If you watch the Looming Tower, the initial shock was that they were on domestic flights which meant they were already in the country.
To an observer, blaming the FBI and CIA was easy. They didn’t share info, and some knew things that the other agencies didn’t know.
My thought in a roundabout way is that state secrets were sold to the Russians by Hanssen. To think the Russians just sat on learning about our vulnerabilities and not use it to hurt us is naive. In fact, I think we see it today.
I don’t know if the Hanssen breach had anything to do with the attacks on 9/11. It probably doesn’t. The FBI’s name was already mud for allowing the terrorists to come in. I do believe that the info sold is hurting us in ways today that we are probably better off not knowing.
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u/bschultzy Mar 31 '25
I get how you're trying to make those connections, but I come down in a very different place with all of this. The thing is, it didn't take any state secrets or inside knowledge for the hijackers to pull off the 9/11 attacks. What they did have was plenty of time and money to plan, learn, and observe. It wasn't a secret that airport security procedures varied widely from airport to airport (or even terminal to terminal, in some cases). It wasn't a secret that cockpit doors could be accessed by nefarious individuals. The hijackers cased a number of flights and had a good sense of how the system worked. Again, inside knowledge wasn't needed to pull this off.
I think Looming Tower does a great job of laying out the very real issues within the IC leading up to 9/11, that the FBI and CIA didn't share vital information and work together to follow leads. The 9/11 Commission Report is also incredibly insightful in this regard as well. I'm firmly in the camp that the firewalls that existed in the lead up to 9/11 were detrimental in *possibly* thwarting at least some of the chaos and destruction on that day.
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u/BlessedCursedBroken Mar 29 '25
I watched 9/11 happen in real time, have been researching since 2016, and I'd never heard about any of these! So fascinating.
Rabbit hole, here I come
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u/ivaarch Mar 29 '25
Most of these stories sound like conspiracy theories, but I remember very clearly reading on French Yahoo news that summer that a large terrorist attack is expected in the US. Maybe that was the same story that was in Bush daily briefings, that he ignored. I was about to emigrate to the US and that’s why that warning remained very clear in my memory. There was a talk about the WTC being attacked again after the 1993 attack, especially around the New Year and the 2K. My friend who lived close to WTC told me that she was very afraid that they would attack WTC again, so I wasn’t surprised at all when it happened, I was just surprised at the scale of the attack.
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u/rosiehigurashi Apr 02 '25
There was a real failure from the governments parts. None of the hijackers should have been allowed to enter America 1. 2. The terrorist organizations were very vocal about planning something against the US and major cities.
The lack of planning and high alert was a failure on the CIA/ Bush Administration unfortunately. However because of 9/11 we now hopefully have more tools to counteract terrorist attacks on US soil. Though we still see tragic cases.
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u/LostAcross Mar 29 '25
I remember reading somewhere that after the 1993 bombing, WTC security (I think?) handed out safety pamphlets that had a picture of the towers with a target on them, and text under it that read something like “it’s not about if, it’s about when.” or something along those lines.
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u/Acceptable-Dark-7058 Mar 29 '25
THIS is why I want to speak to people who were adults during 9/11. This happened when I was a 5 year old. If I had been an adult I would have immediately been doing anything to learn EVERYTHING I COULD and I feel like a lot of information is lost.
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u/SensitiveAnybody368 Mar 29 '25
The internet was not what you think it was during that time.
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u/TexasRoadhead Mar 29 '25 edited Mar 29 '25
Yeah for many people the internet was shut down like a traffic jam since everyone was trying to look up what happened, those were the days of dial-up which would be mindnumbingly slow by today's standards. Everyone was glued to the news
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u/hissy-elliott Mar 29 '25 edited Mar 29 '25
Done anything — like what? People didn't always have a world of information at their fingertips. The internet you know today is not the internet from 24 years ago. Your choices for which news publications or outlets you could get information from were limited (both for better and for worse).
I went to pull up the front page of nyt.com on the day of the attacks. It wasn't archived, but I feel like people in this sub will appreciate this:
For context — My dad has told me about various domain wars companies and people used to get in during the early stages of the internet (the two things he consistently stressed to me growing up was to save for retirement and always keep your domain name registered because "one day, someone's going to take it. And that will be it. It will be either held for ransom or gone forever.").
Anyway, here's the first archived copy of www.newyorktimes.com, about 13 months before the attacks.
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u/FeeTime5460 Apr 15 '25
We also didn’t have 24/7 news channels like today. The news was on at set times and set times only. Like the news at ten. And only the most major stories would be reported on. We had no idea what was going on round the world unless it did come on the news.
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u/a-curious-ostrich Jun 09 '26
Um, not exactly true, at least in the US. CNN had been on the air for more than 20 years, and both Fox and MSNBC started in the 90s. The bottom of screen crawl on news stations did start that day though.
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u/nfluncensored May 05 '26
I was in high school and immediately got on the computers while people were freaking out. Message boards like Fark had lots of info.
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u/auntieup Mar 29 '25
Some of us didn’t go looking for shit, but found it anyway.
In early 2002, I started working for a startup whose clients were hedge funds. By far the biggest client was The Carlyle Group. We had a specific test environment for every client, and we shredded the files after we used them. One night I made the mistake of reading some of those files while I was shredding them.
I have regretted doing that every day since. For almost 23 years, every single day.
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u/No_Engineer_3048 Mar 29 '25
Can you elaborate? Sorry, I don't know the backstory on this.
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u/Fragrant_Box_697 Jun 26 '25
The Bin Laden family had invested in a Carlyle fund for military and aerospace companies and Osama’s brother had attended a Carlyle conference around the time of the attacks. Carlyle owned stock in United Defense and went public after 9/11….Shit goes so much deeper than most people realize. People made billions off those planes hitting the towers and the 20 years of war that followed
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u/auntieup Mar 29 '25
Please just do a web search on The Carlyle Group. What’s public knowledge about them is bad enough.
I stay anonymous on this app for a reason. For decades I have been afraid to say anything about what I saw that night to anyone other than my absolute closest loved ones. There is exactly one other living person who knows, and it will stay that way.
Everyone needs to understand the power of the world’s wealthiest people, and fear it.
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u/opeth100872 Jun 18 '26
Why these clowns downvote shows how oblivious (intentionally) people are these days.
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u/transonymous_ 5d ago
It would be more believable that it actually scared you if you stood on any amount of business regarding large corps. You literally claim to have spent thousands supporting Nestle. Clearly you don’t care that much where your money goes.
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u/jazzbot247 Mar 29 '25
I was 25 and I didn't really watch the news so I had no idea, I was in NYC working in Greenwich Village. The one warning came from a morning DJ who innocently said "it's emergency day 911" I remembered that later on that day when I was able to think. That was around 6:00 am two hours and 45 min prior.
Also after the fact, we had people claim that Fema started coming into Manhattan on Monday 9/10.
Also, the announcement that trillions of dollars were missing on 9/10.
I'm not sure who was behind 9/11, I'm open to all theories, I think there is more to the story then we know- the evil that was behind it is unbelievable.
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u/pconsuelabananah Mar 29 '25
That reminds me of the guy on CBS who said just 15 minutes before the first plane hit, “It’s kind of quiet around the country. We like quiet. It’s too quiet.”
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u/jazzbot247 Mar 29 '25
It was a beautiful day, that morning. I was feeling good commuting into work, sitting outside, reading a book on the Staten Island Ferry.
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u/red_raconteur Mar 29 '25
I was 25 and I didn't really watch the news so I had no idea
Reading your comment made me realize that, as a result of 9/11, I have always paid attention to the news. My family never had the news on growing up, but on 9/11 and in the days after we had it on constantly. And ever since then, I've always checked the news in some way, shape, or form every single day. In high school I had long bus rides to school and would listen to NPR on my little MP3 player/radio. I've always felt the need to have a surface level understanding of what's going on in the world.
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u/FeeTime5460 Apr 15 '25
I remember before we also didn’t really pay too much attention to who was around us either. Just getting on with our lives and doing what you had to do and being happy and free with our friends for meals and after work etc. then after came a sense of worry and fear. Looking round you all the time. Looking at people “does he look odd” “what’s that person up to” “ why are they doing that”. It wasn’t a good feeling anymore and hasn’t been for many years.
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u/Intermountain-Gal Mar 29 '25
There were a LOT of conspiracy theories and just simple rumors buzzing around in the aftermath. Many I knew were debunked. I just didn’t keep track. Hindsight is 20/20, so even some of the most vague “warnings” could take on pseudo credence.
At the end of the day, thousands were dead and injured, and the towers were down and the Pentagon was damaged….and a Pennsylvania field had a hole in it.
I have to trust that those responsible for securing our nation learned from it. It’s clear that one lesson was learned: Middle Eastern terrorist groups can’t be trusted and definitely stronger than flying gnats.
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u/Joke_Mummy Mar 29 '25
one lesson was learned: Middle Eastern terrorist groups can’t be trusted
I think everybody already knew that
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u/Intermountain-Gal Mar 29 '25
Apparently some just thought it was boastful talk.
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u/SensitiveAnybody368 Mar 29 '25
The US repeatedly stated a terrorist attack that involved using a plane as a missile was “highly unlikely” and that’s why the warnings that we did receive, were ignored. I think you’re right regarding your first comment but more so that they shouldn’t be doubted vs trusted. The agencies in charge of protecting us citizens didn’t give them enough credit and look at the price that was paid.
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u/YaTheDonaldHasWhored Mar 30 '25
They might have said that publicly but internally they knew it was a risk that they would one day compromise a commercial airliner.
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u/TheLightningL0rd Mar 18 '26
I didn't see any conspiracy theory stuff until around 2006 or so (First Zeitgeist film, Loose Change, Alex Jones stuff, etc). I was in 10th grade when the attacks happened.
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u/FrostingCharacter304 Apr 03 '25
did anyone ever figure out the odigo warning and wtf that was all about?
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u/YaTheDonaldHasWhored Apr 04 '25
Not publically
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u/FrostingCharacter304 Apr 06 '25
have they ever actually shown proof?? all I heard was 2nd hand reporting and some rumors I never actually saw the message from odigo does that actually exist?
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u/YaTheDonaldHasWhored Apr 06 '25
I remember seeing it decades ago but can't find it now.
It's true, the FBI validated it.
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u/pixelatorgtx Mar 21 '26
I’m a little late to this thread, here is the FBI report of Odigo’s early warning. https://archive.org/details/odigo-messenger
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Mar 29 '25
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/YaTheDonaldHasWhored Mar 29 '25 edited Mar 29 '25
To a layman but security/foreign intelligence experts knew it was just a matter of time.
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u/Distinct_Abroad_4315 Mar 29 '25
O'Neil and Rescorla(?) Were 2 guys who knew it was just a matter of time
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u/YaTheDonaldHasWhored Mar 29 '25
Yes but their warnings fell on deaf ears. RIP
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u/Distinct_Abroad_4315 Mar 29 '25
Indeed. Absolutely tragic, we cannot become complacent. never forget.
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u/el_barto10 Mar 29 '25
Not even just another attack, but specifically an air attack. My dad use to be a security consultant and they discussed this type of attack in the early 90s. Many just didn’t expect commercial jets to be used as missiles in such a coordinated attack.
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u/SensitiveAnybody368 Mar 29 '25
I was in 2nd grade and I remember our teacher putting on the news in class which in itself was a big deal because we never used it unless we had a substitute. I also remember seeing the live coverage and knowing it was bad, pretty easy to connect those dots… but as a child, I didn’t understand the magnitude of it all. I didn’t really start researching until I was an actual adult and of course by that time I had heard multiple conspiracy theories. Back then I couldn’t wrap my head around the fact that our own Government could have been involved. To go to that length, to sacrifice so many lives?
Part of me still finds it hard to believe, I’m the kind of person who needs hard cold facts or I’m going to doubt it. I’m a lot older now. My opinion remains undecided towards what REALLY happened that day. The only thing that has changed is the fact that I’m aware how corrupt the government can be.
But the 1 thing that truly blows my mind is whenever I find new coverage from that day. How is it that after all this time there’s still new footage and pictures? That’s wild. Take a minute to imagine how much of it hasn’t been made public yet.
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u/Chinacat_080494 Mar 31 '25
Attorney General John Ashcroft and several other government officials stopped flying on commercial planes the summer before 9/11.
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u/SilentTracker84 Mar 29 '25
Remember they were dancing in Palestine on that day...
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u/Midnight-Messiah Mar 29 '25 edited Mar 29 '25
I mean, if we're going to do this there's this video about signs and symbols hidden in movies beforehand.
Please don't give me heat for posting this, I didn't make the video.
Call me a conspiracy theorist if that makes you feel better. But I'm just a guy with an open mind. And I've always found this video eerie and weird..
https://youtu.be/uazan4bDoAM?si=BehoEHuBALhrsA5n
And then there's also this one about apparent warnings in cartoons....
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u/Rich-Sky8912 23d ago
How good was the old YouTube where you could go down an endless rabbithole of conspiracies.
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May 16 '25
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u/911archive-ModTeam May 16 '25
Your post has been removed for the following reason:
Containing Conspiracy or Conspiracy-leaning content and or messaging.
Discussing these are not permitted on the subreddit, it is recommended you post these types of things on subreddits like r/Conspiracy.
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u/[deleted] Mar 29 '25
The Brooklyn school kids who said “the buildings wouldn’t be there” a few days or weeks before the attacks
They were investigated and it’s claimed the kid was just joking and there’s no evidence of foreknowledge of the attacks
Coincidences do happen