As I’ve said before, conspiracies are a commonplace and occur every day; after all, all organized crime is a form of a conspiracy. With this in mind, successful conspiracies fall into two categories:
- Small groups of people who can keep the secrets to protect the conspiracy
- Collections of small groups who act in their own self interest often without knowledge of the involvement of other groups
There is no way that a small group could have pulled off the 9/11 attack in the way the conspiracy theories suggest; and this means that for it to be plausable it would have to follow the second pattern ...
The second pattern is most famous from Bootleggers and Baptists working to ensure that alcohol couldn't be sold legally on Sunday. While there are some people who have demonstrated how an issue like Global Warming can be promoted in this way (by describing how each of the stakeholders benefits by promoting the theory in the absence of any co-operation), I can’t see how you could argue that this was a viable approach to a conspiracy theory like 9/11.
