The Motive for the 9/11 Attack

The official legend of the 9/11/01 attack is rather sparse on motive. Muslim extremists attacked the United States "because they hate our freedoms". This was the only motive articulated by the Bush Administration, but more rational motives were available to consumers of print media: perhaps Osama wanted to punish the United States for stationing troops in Saudi Arabia, and perhaps he wanted to provoke the United States into attacking Arab nations in order to recruit jihadists. But the issue of bin Laden's motive was never a big issue, since he had already been tried and convicted on TV on the day of the attack. All that was important is that he hated us, that lots of Arabs hated us, and that military action was required to stamp out the terrorist training camps in Afghanistan.

Beneficiaries of the Attack

The purely ideological motive ascribed to the elusive Osama bin Laden contrasts with the very tangible and material benefits that flowed to individuals and organizations within the power structures of the United States. Indeed, the number of beneficiaries is so large that attempting to identify them may shed little light on how the crime was perpetrated. Determining who had the means to execute the attack is more likely to lead to the individuals who planned and executed the attack.

Despite the near certainty that the vast majority of beneficiaries had no operational role in the attack, it is clear that many worked to facilitate it, aided its coverup, and actively exploited the reaction to it. Since many of these actions involved commission of crimes, their investigation and prosecution could be instrumental in unraveling the vast crime of 9/11.

Beneficiaries of the attack included the highest officials in the New York City and Federal governments, and corporations benefiting from policies enacted by those officials.

• George W. Bush enjoyed an immediate surge in popularity and the burying of investigative reports on electoral fraud by his brother Jeb's Republican election machine in Florida. "United We Stand" slogans propagated across the nation as Bush boasted of "smoking out" the terrorists.
• Rudolph Giuliani became an instant hero by immediately appearing for photo ops as the hands-on mayor at Ground Zero, and by taking command of the situation. He was exalted as Man of the Year by Time magazine while he managed the largest evidence destruction operation in history.
• The new War on Terror would become the umbrella for whole new levels of pork, unaccountability, and corruption in the nexus of government and industry that would fight the war.
• The weapons industries prepared for a new orgy of corporate welfare, as the Pentagon budget would be further bloated. Certainly we would need billion-dollar stealth bombers to smoke the elusive Osama bin Laden out of his cave.
• Vice President Cheney's company, Halliburton, would soon be getting fat no-bid contracts to rebuild the infrastructure that American bombs would destroy in Afghanistan and Iraq.
• The owner of the World Trade Center complex would receive a $3.6 billion payout for the destruction of the seven buildings, and would seek a second payout on the basis that the attack was two "occurrences" (because there were two plane crashes). Silverstein Properties had just acquired a 99-year lease on the World Trade Center, and a new insurance policy, in July of 2001. Silverstein would be ridded of those white elephants, the Twin Towers, with their obsolete office space and asbestos abatement problems.
• The Project for a New American Century got the new Pearl Harbor that it said would be needed to rapidly achieve its goals.