The 9/11 Truth Movement: The Top Conspiracy Theory, a Decade Later - CSI
The conspiracy theories started flying just days after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC. Over the decade since, several technically elaborate claims have been refined by the “9/11 Truth” movement. Do these intricate arguments—including the rapid collapses of the towers, alleged evidence of thermite usage at Ground Zero, and the collapse of World Trade Center (WTC) 7 (a forty-seven-story building damaged by the fall of WTC 1) “into its own footprint at freefall acceleration”—disprove the mainstream consensus that the September 11, 2001, attacks were the work of al-Qaeda terrorists using hijacked airplanes? In a word: No.
The Players
Dylan Avery and Jason Bermas, the creators of the low-budget documentary film Loose Change, did much to give the 9/11 Truth movement significant momentum in 2005 and in following years. The film, which has undergone several revisions, has been shown on many television stations but is primarily an Internet and DVD phenomenon. Its basic claims are that Flight 77 could not have accounted for the damage at the Pentagon, that the Twin Tower fires were insufficient to cause their collapse, and that cell phone calls from the hijacked airplanes would have been impossible at the time (Avery 2009).
David Ray Griffin is a theologian whose voluminous writings on 9/11 are frequently cited by other 9/11 theorists. NASA scientist Ryan Mackey has written a very thorough critique of Griffin’s claims (Mackey 2008).
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