Despite long and expensive inquiries, thousands of eye witnesses, and conclusive video, sound and picture evidence, more than five years after the attacks, sceptics continue to challenge every part of the official story of what happened on 11 September 2001. Unsourced photos, quotations taken out of context and confused eyewitness accounts have inspired complex and often bizarre conspiracy theories.
Rather than a terrorist attack, on that day in 2001 the Pentagon was in fact struck by a missile, the World Trade Centre buildings were brought down by a controlled demolition, Flight 93 never actually crashed, and some of the hijackers are still alive in Pakistan -- a logistical feat planned and executed by the US government using remote-controlled planes.
September 11 conspiracy theories generally fall into two categories. Either US government agencies knew that the September 11 attacks were going to occur and failed to act, or, alternatively, the government was directly involved in planning and executing the attacks. A MIHOP is, therefore, someone who believes that the government Made It Happen On Purpose while a LIHOP believes the government Let It Happen On Purpose. A large and growing number of people subscribe to these theories.
A poll taken by the Scripps Survey Research Centre in September 2006 found that 36 per cent of American respondents thought it was very likely or somewhat likely that the government either took part in the attacks or allowed them to happen. Meanwhile, 16 per cent thought the destruction of the World Trade Centre was aided by explosives. Other polls have reflected these results around the world.
A simple web search on September 11 conspiracy comes up with hundreds of websites and groups devoted to the topic. Some are simple websites set up by individuals but others are the work of complex organisations such as The 9/11 Truth Movement which is a collection of individuals, researchers and collections of people who are working together to reveal the conspiracy.
Another group, known as the Scholars for 9/11 Truth, believes September 11 was a psychological operation to launch somewhere from 50 to 100 years of aggressive warfare against Middle Eastern and Central Asian countries. That the official account of 9/11 is a lie and that 9/11 appears to have been an inside job is no longer a matter of serious scientific debate. Many of the experts used by the Scholars and other conspiracy theorists to explain why it would be impossible for the World Trade Centre to have collapsed the way it did, have very little scientific training apart from watching a couple of cheaply-produced videos on the Internet.
Conspiracy theorists co-operate tightly, despite the contradictions that may arise. One theorist who claims that a missile was fired into the Pentagon will associate himself with another theorist who thinks that a remotely controlled plane flew into the Pentagon.
With every new video posted on YouTube, or book published, or website launched, there arise new opportunities for the theorists to quote each other and therefore claim to have overwhelming evidence of the conspiracy. This has led to the popularity of videos such as Loose Change, which had 10 million views in 2006 alone. The producer of Loose Change supposedly originally investigated the attacks to make a fictional story about the attacks being an inside job, only to find evidence that there was a real cover up: That 19 hijackers are going to completely bypass security and crash four commercial airliners in a span of two hours, with no interruption from the military forces, in the most guarded airspace in the United States and the world? That to me is a conspiracy theory.
Most of the September 11 theories are about as credible as a belief in Nazis on the moon. And although the theories are a form of entertainment and fantasy for many people, it isn't just boredom driving the conspiracy theory movement. Psychologists believe humans are compelled to conspiracy theories, particularly for world-changing events such as September 11. The authors of Debunking 9/11 Myths, a comprehensive rebuttal published by the engineering magazine Popular Mechanics, argue conspiracy theories share a basic thought pattern: great tragedies must have great reasons.
A conspiracy theorist will look at an event such as September 11 and quickly conclude it is impossible for a small handful of terrorists to inflict widespread death and destruction against the world's most powerful nation. Conspiracy theorists then proceed to find supporting evidence. At this point, science and conspiracy theory split. Whereas science makes an evaluation of the truth based on all the available evidence, conspiracy theories generally look for evidence to support conclusions that have already been established. Other evidence is either ignored or discredited.
For the conspiracy theory to gather a popular following, it needs to explain elements of the story that the official account is unable to explain easily to a lay person. In the case of 9/11, it was strange the World Trade Centre building 7 also collapsed, despite not being directly hit in the attacks.
Similarly, many find it strange that the Pentagon was so easily attacked, and even more bizarre that not one of the planes was shot down by the military. Many people also find it impossible to believe that the World Trade Centre could fall in such a uniform fashion without that being the result of a controlled demolition.
Conspiracy theorists also often connect unrelated information and sources. September 11 conspiracy theorists, for instance, claim the World Trade Center buildings could not have collapsed because of a plane impact as temperatures inside the building would not have been high enough to melt metal. This is true but is disingenuous. Although it is true steel's melting temperature is 1500°C and that temperatures in the World Trade Centre would not have likely exceeded 1100°C, steel heated to over 1000°C softens and is reduced in strength to 10 per cent of its room-temperature value.
September 11 conspiracies all suffer from serious factual and logical flaws. How could anyone have possibly prepared a controlled demolition in the World Trade Centre without being noticed? Why would the government go to so much trouble planning such a complex conspiracy using foreign terrorists? Why were black-box recorders and bodies found at the Pentagon if a 747 didn't crash there?
September 11 is the most watched event in history and one of the most important events of our lifetime. The 9/11 Commission produced a 571-page report that explains the events in full. The National Institute of Standards and Technology also produced 10,000 pages of evidence on how and why the World Trade Centre buildings collapsed the way they did. It could find no corroborating evidence for alternative hypotheses suggesting the WTC towers were brought down by controlled demolition using explosives planted prior to September 11, 2001. Certainly there is strong evidence to suggest there were serious errors made by the Bush and Clinton administrations in the lead-up to the September 11 attacks. But suggestions that the United States Government, or aliens, or the X-Files' Cigarette Smoking Man were involved in the tragic events of our past have little basis in reality even though they might feed some deep-seated psychological need for operatic complexity.
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