THE RELUCTANT CONSPIRATOR.

Half-Believing the Plot, Fully Seeing the Pattern, Half-Believing Again—

—Neither surrendering to plots nor dismissing the patterns, the Athwart Historian walks upstream — where two halves make a hole, filled with the men and treasure lost in the Middle East wars.

By Peter R. Mossback, Athwart Historian

THE PROPAGANDA OF THE DEED

(First pioneered into theory by Southern Italian, Carlo Pisacane)

September 11, 2025

Pisacane said that deeds could be more eloquent than words — that the violent strike itself would carry a message the pamphlet could not. He was right. In the case of the Twin Towers:

IT WORKED!

The deed spoke louder than all the commentary that followed.

Smoke and First Thoughts

When I saw the column of smoke on that morning twenty-four years ago, my first thought was not of geopolitics, but of my children in school not far from the city. A dirty bomb had been outlined in Operation Bojinka — the plot uncovered in the Philippines, months before 9/11, in which airliners were to be turned into weapons. It was not unthinkable. It was already written.

My second thought: they finally got what they wanted. The U.S. military was pulled into the Middle East — drawn into a war that, by some lights, was never ours to begin with, yet was always waiting to happen.

I cannot shake the suspicion that the plot was known. And that it was allowed to happen. The reasoning: the war was the goal, and the war required a trigger.

The Reporter Who Asked Too Much

Whatever happened to Carl Cameron? Some of us remember his Fox News reporting before it evaporated. Cameron followed the strange trail of Israeli art students, surveillance shadows, and federal agents afraid to speak plainly.

As the archived report put it:

“A dozen Israelis, including the alleged surveillance leader, had been based in Hollywood, Fla., between January and June… quite possibly watching Arabs living nearby who are suspected of providing logistical support to Osama bin Laden’s network… Cameron reported Dec. 13 that federal agents were afraid to criticize Israel. ‘Investigators within the DEA, INS and FBI have all told Fox News that to pursue or even suggest Israeli spying… is considered career suicide.’”

The media, dazzled by the “War on Terror,” went out for a four-martini lunch rather than follow Cameron’s questions.

Reluctant Conspirator

But here is where I must place my mossy heel against the rush of theory. To accept the conspiracy whole is to give the supposed conspirators a power bordering on the divine — omniscience, omnipotence, and flawless execution. I cannot. I resist.

For history is not so neat. It is not one hand moving all the pieces on the board, but a thousand hands, clumsy and crooked, fumbling with pawns. Circumstances, accidents, ambitions, and oversights entangle. To collapse it into one “they” is to mistake the tangle for a single thread.

And yet — the alignments are uncanny. Just this spring, an ex-FBI director posted a photograph of shells arranged in the figure 8647. No caption but “cool shell.” What some noticed immediately: 8647 days was the precise count from September 11, 2001 to May 15, 2025 — the very day of his posting.

But let’s be honest: who would have connected that number to the calendar on their own? The relation is too obscure for casual discovery. Which suggests the breadcrumbs were already scattered. Perhaps by the director himself. A nudge here, a wink there — enough to make sure the arithmetic would surface. Too neat to be missed, too odd to be dismissed.

Was it chance? Mischief? A cryptic message? I do not know. But when coincidences tally with such mathematical precision, they press themselves on the historian’s attention.

So I walk a narrow path: refusing to grant conspirators the all-seeing eye, yet acknowledging that the patterns line up more neatly than randomness should allow. From the larger scheme, the direction is undeniable: the attack delivered exactly what interventionists desired — a war without end, a Middle East in flames, and an American republic stretched thin. Whether plotted, permitted, or providential, the tide rolled that way.

A Father’s Dread

I remember when my first son was born. On the bedside table lay a copy of General John Hackett’s The Third World War: August 1985. It was meant as sober speculation — a “future history” of a war in Europe, but with ominous chapters on the Middle East.

As I held my infant son, I felt a chill of apprehension: he may one day be dragged into this, into the desert sands, into the clash Hackett warned of. It was not prophecy, only paternal dread. And yet — it came about. The war did not come in 1985, but it arrived soon enough, and the Middle East was its stage.

What I feared in that hospital room became the world he inherited.

Athwart History

I stand athwart history, saying stop, even when the tide of events rushes past. Yet I cannot deny that Pisacane’s axiom was proven on that September morning. The propaganda of the deed reshaped the map more effectively than any manifesto.

And now — September 11, 2025 — one day after the assassination of Charlie Kirk. Is that proximity of dates coincidence, or is it one of those iron filings the historian sees aligning in the field of time? I don’t know. But I note it.

The lesson of the Towers remains: words are vulnerable, reports are ignored, but deeds are remembered.

—Peter R. Mossback,

Athwart Historian