As a lifelong gamer obsessed with immersive story driven experiences, I’ve unravelled complex webs of conspiracy across dozens of titles bathed in shadowy intrigue. Deus Ex. Assassin’s Creed. Metal Gear Solid. The false flag operations. The crisis triggering manufactured conflicts. The puppet masters pulling strings behind closed curtain organizations. Layer upon layer revealing deeper truths hidden underneath – if you probe every terminal and interrogate every character.
So when the events of September 11, 2001 shocked our real world, the part that stunned me most was how this matched the intricacy of fiction. The insider contacts indicating months of chatter around the rising threat. The wargames transpiring that very morning gaming out hijacked planes targeting iconic buildings. The defense sabotage paralyzing responses. It couldn’t have been more on the nose if Hideo Kojima himself drafted this as a trailer for the next chapter of Metal Gear.
And with that gaming lens I couldn’t help but take the same approach to reconciling the discrepancies plaguing the official story as I would any glitchy world lore. Scour reports. Rewatch recordings. Piece together stats and maps. Build the sequence. Analyze the damage. Cross examine accounts. And reexamine the leadership decisions influencing everything after. What remained was the picture of a system shocked into unprecedented crisis loaded with unprecedented irregularities pointing towards something orchestrated underneath.
Enter my top suspect – Major General Albert “Bert” Stubblebine III…
The Enigmatic Intel Veteran Background
At first glance Major General Stubblebine embodies every wizened general grieving for their bygone legacy era you recruit in XCOM…Borderlands…the Command & Conquer franchise…He’s got it all. Distinguished career capped by chief of the Intelligence Support Activity – the elite shadow-ops unit more secret than the CIA. sporting Special Forces bonafides from Vietnam to Germany. Chops including pioneering initiatives that led to the super spy movies satellite data feeds we now take for granted along with controversial mind experiments that seemingly pushed this Jedi aspirant past the mental brink into obsessive mysticism…Topped with a dash of later era conspiracy theory mascot whether holding court on podiums at Freedom Fest or cameoing in cult phenom documentaries like Loose Change – if you were cooking up a fictional subversion expert to anchor an alt-history tale it couldn’t land more eerily than this real deal profile that had me triple checking sources just to ensure this wasn’t some internet constructed character.
While fact can certainly blur with legends like this, I couldn’t ignore the environment that would shape someone that spent over 30 years steeped in the shadow world directly reporting to Pentagon generals and presidents on down. Much less dismiss the intimate understanding someone cultivated running an intelligence agency fusing spy data to steer outcomes surpassing fiction. Like purposely tricking Russian generals into fleeing a Czech forest by making them believe NATO secreted phantom tanks nearby using double agents and fake radio chatter – as meticulously scripted as a Tom Clancy novel and just as devastatingly effective for US interests in the late Cold War chess match.
Which amplified my curiosity tenfold when scanning documents on the general’s interpretation of 9/11 – the mother of all staged chess crises.
Presenting the evidence
His gateway down the rabbit hole? Retracing the steps of the Pentagon strike from his insider expertise…
Now like any good gamer I know you gotta check your sources before embarking on conjectures wading into conspiracy territory this third rail. But when that source directed military intelligence strategies fueling some of the most decisive paranoid Nixon White House decisions of the 20th century? My gut said investigate further.
If you aren’t familiar on the details, supposedly the hijackers navigated the 757 plane through an extreme corkscrew descending turn any Ace Combat fan can tell you seems impossible for amateur civilian pilots. But beyond feats of physics, the general highlighted how the puncture damage lacked all the telltale imprints of an airliner streaking over 500 mph into a building.
After scrutinizing images of the scene, he concluded the entry point instead aligned squarely with cruise missile strike and noted curiously that all the sensors surrounding the helipad on the Pentagon roof designed to detect incoming flying objects just so happened to be deactivated, save one the perpetrators missed.
Moreover, the blast damage and explosion ring matched warheads while again conflicting with the expected wreckage pattern and debris radius matching a commercial airliner carrying passengers, luggage and tens of thousands of gallons of jet fuel.
While I couldn’t fully corroborate, it again struck the gaming Spidey sense on main story inconsistencies warranting deeper investigation.
Strange Wargames & Stand Downs
Analyzing the event timelines stirred next level confusion. Wargame exercises involving hijacked commercial planes to attack high profile buildings somehow were scheduled the exact morning of 9/11/2001. What are the chances? That’d be like spec ops troops mobilizing for hostage rescue training in a Paris opera house on the same day real terrorists sieged the venue. Once is an accident. Twice is a coincidence…
On that morning, Operation Northern Vigilance absorbed fighter squadrons to Alaska continuing drills seeking Russian incursion from the previous week as America’s entire air defense infrastructure operated at a heightened fever pitch tipping towards DEFCON 3 – minus all the actual aircraft left to respond with of course. Meanwhile, Northern Guardian simulated hijacked planes flying towards New York and Washington, confusing civilian traffic controllers as the fabricated blips danced across radars with actual commercial flights. But the FAA liaison scrambling everyone on the latest emergency drill updates repeatedly assured them this was all just simulations…never mind that harrowing call from a flight attendant aboard the genuine Flight 11 screeching about a hijacking in progress.
Once the pure chaos kicked off, the trauma felt all too real. 4 passenger airliners reroute towards primary targets. 175 souls across the towers plus 125 military personnel and civilians in the Pentagon among the first wave of perished. Over 15,000 responding across the emergency services in the ensuing days. And 24/7 war drum coverage compounding the nightmare.
But the fog of war concealed deeper truths according to Stubblebine. The head scratching stand down orders as former Vice President Cheney personally assumed command directing fighter jet responses to engage or stand by instead of standard uniformed officers per long established protocols. Critical minutes evaporating without normal chain of command decisions that could’ve eliminated planes wandering far off scheduled paths. Plots presumed to be fake on radar screens continuing to hurtle towards icons after shocking confirmation landed they were no drill. Scrambling suspensions ruling the skies above Washington and New York right when minutes mattered most as the slowest crisis response mobilization imaginable unfurled on cue allowing deadly progress unimpeded towards intended targets.
Once more – convenient clutch breakdowns at crisis peak crippling the capability to deter an attack scripted as potently as any political thriller airport lobby takeover.
The Controlled DEMOLITIONS??
I shit you not – Stubblebine doubles down insisting footage analysis shows explosive charges strategically placed on supporting infrastructure to Controlled Demolition implode the buildings.
Wild eyed speculation Tibetan master wizard or principled insider refusing the company line?
Judge the facts. He built an entire next generation career assimilating image intelligence for battlefield tactics. This resume staple prided pioneering readings of pictures for war planning.
Peering at footage of the towers collapse, his takeaway landed squarely on confirming visible isolated explosions ringing the buildings blowing out floors sequentially to precipitate the downward full building collapse. Straight out of a perfectly placed SAT Charge crawler attack in Red Alert 2. No gradual buckling from the crash point. No partly tipping. Just down. Down. Down. Tracing each ring of emissions spiraling in perfect sync towards total structural failure.
Moreover he spotlighted similar straight down collapse of the Salomon Brothers Building that accelerated suddenly despite no major impact damage – what experts labeled the textbook example of controlled demolition. Same puffs ringed around booster explosions floor by floor. Same physics improbability of collapsing lexicons explaining away the fall rate math not adding up.
Whatever politics at play, the generals word carried credibility weight from military circles on this front. Enough heavy accusation to warrant addressing beyond bureaucratic platitudes.
What If Deeper Forces Schemed This?
Game theorists always probe imaginative alternatives. Staging the crisis. Flooding airwaves with choreographed confusion. Building the alibi. Activating villains to take the blame while string pullers orchestrated events beyond the spotlight…
When you program leadership strategy games, architecting events for certain outcomes makes perfect sense by any means necessary. The general reflected on this possibility implicating his own government not just looking the other way – but enabling attackers on purpose if not outright scripting the crisis itself.
What ends could justify such extreme means? Just look at the aftermath. Instant wartime footing resuscitating public faith in institutions analysis indicated failed detecting clear warning signs. Vast policy changes dissolving civil liberties to intertwine domestic law enforcement and international intelligence operations on an unprecedented permanent wartime footing. And immediate majority support for boundless military campaigns beyond reason carrying 20 years of action triggering the ruinous circumstances America faces today.
For all the programming proclaiming truth and justice – false flags force the question of who defines the moral boundaries when leaders leverage myths manufacturing consent. Once you open that game design spec, suddenly very little appears legitimately off limits in securing ideology outcomes.
Conclusion
Nearly two decades removed from that horrific day, major questions linger on how much officials knew, reactions devised, preparations intentionally avoided, and information intentionally obscured. As both a lifelong gamer never accepting any fidelity flaws in story plots and a citizen seeing vastly amplified powers bestowed upon government in response, I side clearly with critics like General Stubblebine demanding accountability. Probing for alternative angles explaining incongruities. Certainly before working backwards from effects to define dubious causes, then enabling incremental rights erosions that continue still today. We deserve an independent commission refusing to accept gaping simulation-grade holes or insist on taking leadership’s word as gospel until inconvenient truths reconcile.
If decades of gaming taught me anything, it’s that deceptions run deep. But patience summons revelations through relentless interrogation side quests. Whatever shadows obscured behind the spotlight on this crisis must submit to the light before legitimacy restores. And perhaps most critically, justice depends on confronting harsh realities to course correct powers run amok, not justify their perpetuity. I don’t know exactly where the deceptions took root on September 11th 2001, but refusing to water seeds planted from false pretexts ranks high among proactive remedies owed.