life would be much easier for the Truthers if they just suggested that the planes had been taken over by remote control, and the pilots had no way to stop them form hitting the buildings.
or they could suggest that the Mossad were the real hijackers, and crashed them into the buildings.
Well, not really. Both points of view have been proposed on this forum, and shot down quite comprehensively.
The remote control theory can be quite popular with truthers who know nothing about airliner design (although I'm not sure that excludes any). Jim Hoffman's Scenario 404, for example, proposes that a remote control program was installed in the control systems of the 9/11 airliners under the cover of a spin recovery program upgrade to the autopilot. It's a superficially compelling idea for anyone who's completely ignorant of how the autopilot system on a 757 or 767 actually works; the naive assumption is that everything is controlled by a digital computer, and all that's needed to take it over is some kind of trojan. Unfortunately for the credibility of this theory, the autopilots of 757s and 767s, on 9/11 at least, were analogue systems that could be simply disabled by the pilots, and a major rebuild would be required to install any automatic control system that couldn't be locally overridden. Even more damningly, Airbus 300 series and Boeing 777s, whose fly-by-wire systems might conceivably have played host to such a system, were in widespread use on 9/11, presenting the obvious absurdity that the conspirators are supposed to have chosen the airliners least suitable for their purpose.
The Mossad line is more popular with the neo-Nazi wing (in the sense of the word meaning one of the main reasons it's still flying) of the truth movement. The idea is that Mossad commandos storm the cockpit, kill or incapacitate the crew, and install some unknown remote control device; although this could be neutralised quite trivially, there is now nobody to neutralise it. The problem with this, apart from the fact that Israel would have very little to gain and inconceivably large amounts to lose from a false flag attack on its most reliable ally, is that Mossad would be very unlikely to carry out a suicide attack - in the absence of religious fervour, how would the pilots be motivated? - and so would have to exit the airliner after having taken control and rigged up their remote control system. One member suggested that they could have exited through the nosewheel bay (which is not, of course, accessible from the pressurised interior) at cruising speed (which would probably have torn them in half when they hit the slipstream) and parachuted down into upstate New York without being noticed or remarked upon, because apparently this sort of thing happens all the time. It was a good piece of comedy, albeit unintentional.
The nearest any truther has come to a plausible suggestion is the small minority who suggest that Osama bin Laden was a tool of the CIA, and was therefore instructed to carry out the attacks. That's deeply unpopular with truthers, though, probably for two reasons: firstly, everything after the initial idea is exactly as history records it, so it's almost impossible to prove; secondly, it's simply not sexy enough. So they'd rather recreate reality in a more easily proven form.
Dave
