The Biggest Unresolved Question About 9/11

--in my mind anyway: were the planes that flew into the WTC and Pentagon part of the live-fly hijacking exercise (Operation Vigilant Guardian/Vigilant Warrior)?

This is really the linch-pin of the MIHOP (Make It Happen On Purpose) theory.

The LIHOP (Let It Happen On Purpose) theory doesn't make much sense, since the outcome was too unpredictable. The HIHOP (Help It Happen On Purpose) suffers from the same problem.

So really, we have two extremes:
the conventional official story of 9/11, or a full-on deep-in-the-woods conspiracy-land tin-foil-hat-territory theory where somebody in the US government "made" 9/11 happen.

But the thing is, there are just TOO many things wrong with the official story for it to be true.

Thus we are left with MIHOP.

So how on earth would someone in the government "make" 9/11 happen?

Here's the overall theory.

Bu the simple answer is run a military operation where planes are targeted to fly by remote control into buildings and NORAD is supposed to shoot down the planes before they get reach the targets. Let's call it a "live-fly hijacking exercise". This in fact is similar to exercises NORAD is known to have run prior to 9/11. Then someone at NORAD makes the exercise harder, and confuses the interceptors by inserting extra blips onto the radar simulating other hijacked aircraft. Sounds impossible? Yet we know there was a live-fly hijacking exercise being run on 9/11 AND someone did insert extra blips onto NORAD and probably FAA radar (see here as well as "Crossing the Rubicon" for sources on this).

At minimum, if the 9/11 hijackings were unrelated to the "live-fly hijacking exercise", the exercise confused NORAD when they needed to respond to flight 11.

At the natural extreme, however, we have a clear mechanism for how someone in the government could have set-up 9/11.

Facts in favor of the 9/11 planes being part of the "live-fly hijacking exercise":
1) it is unlikely the 9/11 hijackers could navigate the planes so perfectly to the targets and fly the planes so skillfully into three targets.
2) even though black boxes were recovered from the WTC, they have been kept a secret.
3) black boxes were supposedly found at the Pentagon, but never released the contents.
4) the many other incongruities of the attacks-- in particular lack of real weapons used by the hijackers and the odd and improbable phone calls from the hijacked flights.
5) the clear post-attack cover-up.

Problems with this theory:
1) presumes a large-scale covert operation the likes of which has never been run before.
2) either presumes there was a plane-swap of the passenger jets with remote-controlled drones (a tricky operation), OR the passenger jets were taken over by remote-control presumably after the hijackers killed or otherwise incapacitated the pilots (also tricky but perhaps more likely than the plane-swap).

It's a hard call, but I think what tips the balance overall towards a "Happen On Purpose" scenario and thus towards MIHOP and thus to the "live-fly hijacking exercise" mechanism is:
1) the clear advance warnings of attacks
2) the clear infiltration of Al Qaeda by US and Pakistani (and Israeli?) intelligence
3) the reasonably clear fact that the WTC underwent controlled demolition
4) the clear motive the Bush administration had for the attacks
5) the clear evidence that the Bush administration is composed of ruthless liars.

So, again-- were the planes that flew into the WTC and Pentagon part of the live-fly hijacking exercise (Operation Vigilant Guardian/Vigilant Warrior)?