There are a lot of arguments for the official story, and a lot of arguments for a government conspiracy. I think this scenario ties everything together:

1) al-Qaeda, possibly with some "inside" help, orchestrated and carried out the attacks of 9/11.

2) The U.S was caught both embarrassingly unprepared, and possibly with their defense/intelligence compromised by people working with al-Qaeda.

3) In addition to the 4 planes, al-Qaeda planted bombs inside WTC7 to attack and destroy the FBI and CIA headquarters in NY. This would not only embarrass the U.S even more, but it would serve a practical purpose as well -taking out the U.S. anti-terrorism forces in NY.

4) The Flight 93 hijackers did in fact have a bomb on board. Rather than crash the plane the hijackers detonated the bomb in mid-air.

5) In order to minimize that panic that was already pretty high because of the attacks, the U.S. government could not afford to let the public know that WTC7 was taken down with terrorists' bombs, or that Flight 93 was blown up with terrorists' bombs. Therefore, the U.S. had to cover-up what really happened with both WTC7 and Flight 93. Note that there may be a precedent for covering up an in-flight bombing in the TWA Flight 800 case.

6) In order to help the cover-up of their own incompetence, the U.S. cleverly dropped hints of a shoot down of Flight 93, and even hints that the whole attack could have been an inside job. Better for the public to believe that the government was incredibly sophisticated than to believe the government was incredibly inept.

7) The government has purposely fanned the flames of the CT movement to distract what really happened, especially in relation the the Pentagon attack. While CTers all over the world obsessed over the Pentagon, or whether Flight 93 was shot down, nobody asked if the terrorists blew up Flight 93 themselves, or whether al-Qaeda was able to rig WTC7 with explosives.

Imo, from what I can tell, the facts of 9/11 fit this theory better than a complete government conspiracy or the official story.

Do most of the known facts fit into this theory? Or is there something that this theory still cannot explain?

I just want to clarify why I came up with this theory. I just wanted to see if I could create a scenario that would account for all of the evidence on both sides of the argument.

Looking at it from the opposite view, any scenario that can be nullified by a single piece of evidence must be thrown out. Therefore, if you can find a scenario that can't be nullified by known evidence, you at least have a starting point from where you can refine the details.

One of the most perplexing things that you have to believe in order to buy into the official story is that these blood-thirsty sub-human terrorists goof off for years at a time and then strike random targets that have more PR value than practical value.

Something just doesn't make sense about that. Imo, it's just as likely that the CIA funds the terror groups covertly just to have them handly when they need another "incident" to impact policy or to get funding.

If al-Qaeda has the help of FBI or CIA insiders with offices at WTC7, it would have been relatively simple to get access to WTC1 and WTC2 during off hours in which bombs could have been rigged.

What makes this scenario more interesting is that Bush's brother sat on the board of the company that provided the security for the WTCs. No wonder. This company also had to provide security for the CIA and FBI at WTC7. It's not a far leap of reasoning to assume that the people in charge of security were very closely tied in with the FBI.

If a few bad apples in the FBI had access to security passes, etc., it would have been easy enough to make sure al-Qaeda ops had access.

Or there was a bomb on the plane and somebody detonated it. What got me even thinking in this direction was the apparent cover-up of what happened with TWA Flight 800. The cover story was the engine blew up, and the rumor that spread and still exists is that Flight 800 was shot down by a shoulder missile. However, according to sources I've been researching, the actual evidence pointed more to a bomb being smuggled onto the plane.

The parallel to Flight 93 is that the official story is that the passengers were heroes and crashed the plane, and the widespread rumor is that the airforce shot the plane down. However, there were also reports of a bomb on board that the FAA covered up, as well as the cell phone call from the passenger reporting smoke already in the plane.

The "crater" looked like no jet crash in the history of aviation, and there was never an investigation done or report filed by the NTSB as far as I know.