What really happened on September 11th—and why do so many 9/11 conspiracy theories still persist 25 years later?

In this episode of The Brief: Insights From The Inside, Shabbos Kestenbaum sits down with Gerald Posner, investigative journalist and author of Why America Slept: The Failure to Prevent 9/11, to revisit the September 11th terrorist attacks on their 25th anniversary.

Posner explains the official account of 9/11, the intelligence failures between the CIA and FBI, the missed warnings before the attack, and why he believes the evidence points to incompetence—not an inside job. He also responds to some of the most common 9/11 conspiracy theories, including “let it happen on purpose,” Donald Rumsfeld’s $2.3 trillion Pentagon statement, the “Dancing Israelis,” Larry Silverstein and “pull it,” World Trade Center 7, “jet fuel can’t melt steel beams,” the Pentagon missile theory, Flight 93, and unanswered questions about Saudi knowledge before the attack.

Gokapi is a lightweight server to share files that expire after a set number of downloads or days. It is similar to the discontinued Firefox Send, with the difference that only authenticated users are allowed to upload files — anonymous visitors can only download.

This lets companies or individuals share files easily and have them removed automatically afterwards, saving disk space and keeping control over who can access the content.

Key features:

• Expiring links — files are deleted after a configurable number of downloads or after a set number of days

• File Requests — generate a link that lets external users upload files to your server

• Multi-user support — multiple accounts with granular per-user and per-API-key permissions

September 11, 2001, will forever be remembered as a tragic day. However, in the midst of so much horror and loss, remarkable displays of human connection and support shined through.

All flights en route to the United States that day were diverted. One such flight, Delta Airlines Flight 15, heading from Germany to Atlanta, landed in Gander, Newfoundland. Hundreds of affected travelers were bused to Lewisporte, a tiny bayside town, where residents greeted them with open arms.

In 2002, inspired by the acts of kindness she witnessed, and with the assistance of fellow travelers and others, Shirley Brooks-Jones established the Lewisporte Area Flight 15 Scholarship Fund at The Columbus Foundation in appreciation for the hospitality shown to her and thousands of other stranded passengers. The fund pays grateful dividends in the form of hundreds of scholarships to those from the village and surrounding area.

This remarkable story of kindness and human connection has been written about and covered on television all around the world and even spawned a very popular Broadway play, Come From Away.

By Hugh Ross

Published: February 5, 2023

Nearly 25 years ago, I wrote in a former RTB publication that “Big bang cosmology is an explosive topic.”1 It has led to heated reactions over the years from groups opposed to one another. However, the reasons for expressed rejection of big bang cosmology are not scientific. They are religious. Thus, it seems that establishing a biblical basis for the big bang may help turn down the heat.

The Front Pages of Sept. 12, 2001
Explore this collection of archived front pages showing how newsrooms around the world covered the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

09 December 2010
The most people crammed into an old style Volkswagen Beetle is 20 and was achieved by the Asbury University Emancipation Project (USA) at the Lexington Rescue Mission in Lexington, Kentucky, USA, on 9 December 2010. A 1964 Beetle was used for the attempt, which was organised to draw attention to human trafficking.