9/11 truth movement

Supporters of the 9/11 Truth movement at a Los Angeles demonstration, October 2007

9/11 Truth movement is the collective name of loosely affiliated organizations and individuals who question the accepted account of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Adherents of the movement assert that the explanation of the 9/11 events put forth by the United States government and mainstream media contain significant inconsistencies which suggest, at the least, a cover-up, and at worst, complicity by insiders.

Adherents analyze evidence from the attacks and discuss different theories about how the attacks happened and call for a new investigation into the attacks.

Some of the organizations state that there is evidence that individuals within the United States government may have been either responsible for or knowingly complicit in the September 11 attacks. Motives given include the use of the attacks to initiate the launch of wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and in creating the opportunities to curtail civil liberties.

Characteristics

Name

Truth movement sticker

"9/11 Truth movement" is the collective name of loosely affiliated organizations and individuals that question whether the United States government, agencies of the United States or individuals within such agencies were either responsible for or purposefully complicit in the September 11 attacks. The term is also being used by the adherents of the movement. Adherents also call themselves "9/11 Truthers", "9/11 skeptics" or "truth activists", while generally rejecting the term "conspiracy theorists".

Adherents

Adherents of the 9/11 Truth movement come from diverse social backgrounds. The movement draws adherents from people of diverse political beliefs including liberals, conservatives, and libertarians. A 2010 study of Facebook users affiliated with a 9/11 Truth group known as "We Are Change" found that most members of this group are males in their late 20s. Most members of this group are involved in right-wing politics, particularly with libertarianism and Ron Paul.

Lev Grossman of Time magazine has stated that support for the 9/11 Truth movement is not a "fringe phenomenon", but "a mainstream political reality." However, others, such as Ben Smith of Politico and the Minneapolis Star Tribune have stated that the movement has been "relegated to the fringe". The Washington Post editorial staff went further describing the movement as "lunatic fringe." Mark Fenster, a University of Florida law professor and author of the book Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture, says that "the amount of organisation" of the movement is significantly stronger than the organization of the movement related to doubts about the official account of the assassination of former United States President John F. Kennedy, though this is likely the result of new media technologies, such as online social networks, blogs, etc.

The 9/11 Truth movement is active in the United States as well as in other countries.

In 2004, John Buchanan ran for president on a 9/11 Truth platform.

Views

See also: 9/11 conspiracy theories

Many adherents of the 9/11 Truth movement suspect that United States government insiders played a part in the attacks, or may have known the attacks were imminent, and did nothing to alert others or stop them.

Some within the movement who argue that insiders within the United States government were directly responsible for the September 11 attacks often allege that the attacks were planned and executed in order to provide the U.S. with a pretext for going to war in the Middle East, and, by extension, as a means of consolidating and extending the power of the Bush Administration. According to these allegations, this would have given the Bush administration the justification for more widespread abuses of civil liberties and to invade Afghanistan and Iraq to ensure future supplies of oil. In some cases, even in the mainstream media, hawks in the White House, especially former Vice President Dick Cheney, and members of the Project for the New American Century, a neoconservative think tank, have been accused of involvement in or awareness of the alleged plot.

Many adherents of the 9/11 Truth movement allege that the buildings of the World Trade Center were destroyed by controlled demolition, a theory of major importance for the 9/11 Truth movement.

Communication

The Internet plays a large role both in the communication between adherents and between local groups of the 9/11 Truth movement and in the dissemination of the views of the movement to the public at large.

History

In the years after the September 11 attacks, different interpretations of the events that questioned the account given by the U.S. government were published. Among others, Michael Ruppert and Canadian journalist Barrie Zwicker, published criticisms or pointed out purported anomalies of the accepted account of the attacks. French author Jean-Charles Brisard and German authors Mathias Bröckers and Andreas von Bülow published books critical of media reporting and advancing the controlled demolition thesis of the destruction of the World Trade Center towers.

A 9/11 Truth Movement protest sign, October 2009.

In September 2002, the first "Bush Did It!" rallies and marches were held in San Francisco and Oakland, California organized by The All People's Coalition.

In October 2004, the organization 9/11 Truth released a statement, signed by nearly 200 people, including many relatives of people who perished on September 11, 2001, that calls for an investigation into the attacks. It also asserted that unanswered questions would suggest that people within the administration of former President G. W. Bush may have deliberately allowed the attacks to happen. Actor Edward Asner, former presidential candidate Ralph Nader, former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, former assistant secretary of housing Catherine Austin Fitts, author Richard Heinberg, Enver Masud, founder of The Wisdom Fund, professors Richard Falk of the University of California, Mark Crispin Miller of New York University, Douglas Sturm of Bucknell University, Burns H. Weston of the Iowa Law School and others signed the statement. In 2009, Van Jones, a former advisor to President Obama, said he hadn't fully reviewed the statement before he signed and that the petition did not reflect his views "now or ever."

In 2006, Steven E. Jones, who became a leading academic voice of the demolition theory, published the paper "Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Completely Collapse?". He was placed on paid leave by Brigham Young University following what they described as Jones's "increasingly speculative and accusatory" statements in September, 2006, pending a review of his statements and research. Six weeks later, Jones retired from the university.

In the same year, 61 legislators in the U.S. State of Wisconsin signed a petition calling for the dismissal of a University of Wisconsin assistant professor Kevin Barrett, after he joined the group Scholars for 9/11 Truth. Citing academic freedom, the university provost declined to take action against Barrett.

Several organizations of family members of people who have died in the attacks are calling for an independent investigation into the attacks. In 2009, a group of people, including 9/11 Truth movement activist Lorie Van Auken and others who have lost friends or relatives in the attack, appealed to the City of New York to investigate the disaster. The organization New York City Coalition for Accountability Now collected signatures to require the New York City Council to place the creation of an investigating commission on the November 2009 election ballot. The group collected more than enough signatures to put the proposal before the voters, but Supreme Court Justice Edward Lehner ruled that the petition overstepped what is allowable by city law, and ruled that, despite wording in the petition to allow for elements ruled invalid to be stricken, it would not be allowed to appear on the ballot.

9/11 Commission Report reaction

To the consternation of the families and adherents of the 9/11 Truth movement, many of the questions that the 9/11 Family Steering Committee put to the 9/11 Commission, chaired by former New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean, were not asked in either the hearings nor in the Commission Report. Lorie Van Auken, one of the Jersey Girls, estimates that only 30% of their questions were answered in the final 9/11 Commission Report, published July 22, 2004.

The 9/11 Family Steering Committee produced a website summarizing the questions they had raised to the Commission, indicating which they believe had been answered satisfactorily, which they believe had been addressed but not answered satisfactorily, and which they believe had been generally ignored in or omitted from the Report.

In addition, the 339-page book The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions by David Ray Griffin, claimed that the report had either omitted information or distorted the truth, providing 115 alleged examples. He has characterized the 9/11 Commission Report as "a 571-page lie".

On May 26, 2008 adjunct religious studies professor Blair Gadsby began a protest and a hunger strike outside the offices of Senator and Republican Party nominee for President John McCain's office requesting McCain meet with the principal scientists and leaders of the 9/11Truth movement, specifically Richard Gage, Steven Jones, and David Ray Griffin. McCain had written the foreword to the book Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up to the Facts, published by the magazine Popular Mechanics. Arizona Republican State Senator Karen Johnson joined the protest in support. On June 10 Johnson with Gadsby as her guest and other 9/11 Truth movement members in the audience spoke before the Arizona State Senate espousing the controlled demolition theory and supporting a reopening of the 9/11 investigation. In response to a question, McCain said he did not meet Gadsby, adding: "Because I don't take well to threats."

NIST Report reaction

Iron-rich sphere, found in the dust of the World Trade Center, as documented by the United States Geological Survey and RJ LeeGroup, Inc. As noted by RJ Lee in its report, the iron-rich spheres, which are a common component of the WTC dust, are indicative of molten iron, which forms the spheres due to surface tension. The spheres are of interest to the 9/11 Truth movement in its study of the WTC building failures, as the spheres, the proponents contend, are indicative of the presence of temperatures much hotter than office fires, and they are also a common end product of thermitic reactions

Following the initial government investigation, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Report (May 2002) NIST Report, numerous responses were written by members of the 9/11 Truth movement. Many of these responses claimed that it ignored key evidence suggesting an explosive demolition, "distorted reality" by using deceptive language and diagrams, and attacked straw man arguments, such as the 2005 article by Jim Hoffman entitled, Building a better mirage: NIST's 3-year $20,000,000 Cover Up of the Crime of the Century.

In the fall of 2005, Steven Jones, then a professor at Brigham Young University, announced a paper criticizing the NIST Report and describing his hypothesis that the WTC towers had been intentionally demolished by explosives. This paper garnered some mainstream media attention, including an appearance by Jones on MSNBC. This was the first such programming on a major cable news station. As of September 2009, Jones had not published his research in peer-reviewed mainstream journals. Jones was criticized by his university for making his claims public before vetting them through the approved peer review process. He was placed on paid leave and has since retired. He continues to remain a focus of public interest for his 9/11 research.

Accordingly, in April 2007, some 9/11 victims' family members and some members of the new Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice submitted an additional request for correction to NIST, containing their own views on the defects in the report. NIST responded to this request in September 2007 supporting their original conclusions; the originators of the request wrote back to them in October 2007, asking them to reconsider their response.

Criticism

In 2006, a book critic with Time magazine noted that a major problem with films such as Loose Change and most 9/11 conspiracy theories in general is that "the more one thinks about them, the more one realizes how much they depend on circumstantial evidence, facts without analysis, quotes taken out of context, and the scattered testimony of traumatized eyewitnesses". Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone assessed that the movement "gives supporters of Bush an excuse to dismiss critics of this administration" and expressed concerns about the number of people who believe in 9/11 conspiracy theories.

Stand-up comedian Bill Maher has repeatedly denounced 9/11 conspiracy theorists as "lunatics."

Linguist Noam Chomsky stated that, regarding US government involvement in the 9/11 attacks, "the evidence that has been produced is essentially worthless" and while the American government stood to benefit from the incident, "every authoritarian system in the world gained from September 11th." He argues that the enormous risk of an information leak, "it is a very porous system and secrets are very hard to keep", and consequences of exposure for the Republican party would have made such a conspiracy foolish to attempt. He dismisses observations cited by conspiracy proponents saying, "if you look at the evidence, anybody who knows anything about the sciences would instantly discount that evidence," arguing that even when a scientific experiment is carried out repeatedly in a controlled environment, phenomena and coincidences remain that are unexplained.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology engineering professor Thomas W. Eagar was at first unwilling to acknowledge the concerns of the movement, saying "if (the argument) gets too mainstream, I'll engage in the debate." In response to Steven E. Jones publishing a hypothesis that the World Trade Center was destroyed by controlled demolition, Eager said that adherents of the 9/11 Truth movement would use the reverse scientific method to arrive at their conclusions, as they "determine what happened, throw out all the data that doesn't fit their conclusion, and then hail their findings as the only possible conclusion.

Former President Bill Clinton dismissed 9/11 conspiracy theories saying "Nine-eleven was NOT an inside job, it was an Osama Bin Laden job with 19 people from Saudi Arabia, they murdered 3000 Americans and other foreigners including Muslims".

In a research paper written in 2008, Cass R. Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule conclude that theories supported by 9/11 truth movement members "typically spread as a result of identifiable cognitive blunders, operating in conjunction with informational and reputational influences. A distinctive feature of conspiracy theories is their self-sealing quality. Conspiracy theorists are not likely to be persuaded by an attempt to dispel their theories; they may even characterize that very attempt as further proof of the conspiracy...those who hold conspiracy theories typically suffer from a crippled epistemology..."

Calling conspiracy theorists "the truthers", Bill Moyers states they "...threw out all the evidence of al-Qaeda's involvement, from contemporaneous calls from hijack victims on the planes to confessions from al-Qaeda leaders both in and out of captivity that they had indeed done it. Then, recycling some of the right's sophistry techniques, such as using long lists of supposed evidence to overcome the lack of any real evidence, the "truthers" cherry-picked a few supposed "anomalies" to build an "inside-job" story line".

Organizations

Since the publication of the official reports, a number of interconnected 9/11 Truth movement organizations have been formed.

Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth

Two people holding a banner of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth.

See also: Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth

Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth is an organization of architectural and engineering professionals who support the controlled demolition hypothesis for the collapse of the World Trade Center and are calling for a new investigation into the destruction of the Twin Towers and WTC 7. The group is collecting signatures for a petition to the United States Congress that demands "a truly independent investigation with subpoena power" of the September 11 attacks, which, according to the organization, should include an inquiry into the possible use of explosives in the destruction of the World Trade Center buildings. Richard Gage, a San Francisco Bay area based architect, founded Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth in 2006.

Investigations by the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) have concluded that the buildings collapsed as a result of the impacts of the planes and of the fires that resulted from them. Gage criticized the government agency NIST for not having investigated the complete sequence of the collapse of the World Trade Center towers and claims that "the official explanation of the total destruction of the World Trade Center skyscrapers has explicitly failed to address the massive evidence for explosive demolition." To support its position, the group Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth points to the "free fall" pace of the collapse of the buildings, the "lateral ejection of steel", and to the "mid-air pulverization of concrete", among other things.

9/11 Truth

This organization was launched in June 2004 and has become the central portal for all the 9/11 Truth movement organizations. It is run by Janice Matthews (Executive Director), David Kubiak (International Campaign Advisor) and Mike Berger (Media Coordinator), among others, and its advisory board includes Steven E. Jones, Barrie Zwicker and Faiz Khan.

The organization co-sponsored opinion polls conducted by the U.S. market research and opinion polling firm Zogby International that have shown substantial numbers of people believing the government did not tell the full truth about the September 11 attacks. Of the people surveyed, those in lower education and income brackets were more likely to express disbelief in government accounts, rather than those in higher income/education brackets.

Scholars for 9/11 Truth

The original Scholars for 9/11 Truth, founded by James H. Fetzer and Steven Jones on December 15, 2005, was a group of individuals of varying backgrounds and expertise who rejected the mainstream media and government account of the September 11 attacks. Initially the group invited many ideas and hypotheses to be considered, however, leading members soon came to feel that the inclusion of some theories advocated by Fetzer—such as the use of directed energy weapons or small nuclear bombs to destroy the Twin Towers—were insufficiently supported by evidence and were exposing the group to ridicule. By December 2006, Jones and several others set up a new scholars group titled Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice, whose focus was in the use of the scientific method in analysis. The original members took a vote on which group to join and the majority voted to move to the new group. By 2007, James Fetzer had been openly rejected by the 9/11 Truth Movement, banned from and criticized on popular forums and no longer invited to public 9/11 events.

Scholars for 9/11 Truth & Justice

Scholars for 9/11 Truth & Justice (STJ) formed in January 2007 and is "a group of scholars and supporters endeavoring to address the unanswered questions of the September 11, 2001 attack" with a focus on scientific research. The group is composed of more than 900 members, including Richard Gage, Steven E. Jones, Jim Hoffman, David Ray Griffin, Peter Phillips, former Congressman Daniel Hamburg, and Kevin Ryan. Most members support the conspiracy theory that the World Trade Center Towers and the third skyscraper, WTC 7, were destroyed through explosive demolition.

In 2008 and 2009, several Scholars for 9/11 Truth & Justice members published essays in science and engineering journals. In April 2008, a letter by members Steven E. Jones, Frank Legge, Kevin Ryan, Anthony Szamboti and James Gourley, was published in The Open Civil Engineering Journal. In July 2008, an article by Ryan, Gourley and Jones was published in the Environmentalist. In October 2008, a comment by STJ member James R. Gourley describing what he considers fundamental errors in a Bažant and Verdure paper was included in an issue of the Journal of Engineering Mechanics. And in April 2009, Danish chemist and STJ member Niels H. Harrit, of the University of Copenhagen, and eight other authors, some also STJ members, published a paper in The Open Chemical Physics Journal, titled, 'Active Thermitic Material Discovered in Dust from the 9/11 World Trade Center Catastrophe'. The paper concludes that chips consisting of unreacted and partially reacted super-thermite, or nano-thermite, appear to be present in samples of the dust.

9/11 CitizensWatch

Main article: 9/11 Citizens Watch

The group was formed in 2002 by John Judge and Kyle Hence and, along with the Family Steering Committee, played an active role in calling for the establishment of the 9/11 Commission, and monitoring the commission closely.

William Rodriguez at American Scholars Symposium: 9/11 and the NeoCon Agenda in Los Angeles, California, June 24–25, 2006.

9/11 Commission Campaign

Founded in 2011 by Senator Mike Gravel, the 9/11 Commission Campaign's objective is to enact subpoena-capable, state-level commissions through state ballot initiatives, namely in Oregon, Alaska and California. These commissions are envisioned as citizen-driven, independent organizations that would form a semi-unified grassroots national presence by exercising joint powers authority.

Hispanic Victims Group

Main article: William Rodriguez

The Hispanic Victims Group is a group created after the 9/11 attacks, founded by William Rodriguez, an adherent of the 9/11 Truth movement. The group was one of the key forces behind the creation of the 9/11 Commission. William Rodriguez, as founder of the group, was a member of the Families Advisory Council for the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation.

Conferences

Members of the 9/11 truth organizations, such as 911truth.org and Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice, regularly hold meetings and conferences to discuss ongoing research about 9/11 and to strategize about how best to achieve their goals. Many of these conferences are organized by 911truth.org, and some have been covered by the international media.

Internal critique

While there is general agreement within the movement that individuals within the United States government may have played a role in some aspects of the attacks, whether it be cover-up or complicity, alternative theories differ about what may have happened. There have been a number of articles and responses written by members critiquing the methods and theories of other members in the Journal of 9/11 Studies. Sites such as 911 Research and 911 Review typically include essays or pages analyzing claims in the movement which are erroneous, have little basis in evidence, or which appear to misinform readers.

While Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice states that they advocate the use of the scientific method and civil research activities over public debate, Jim Fetzer's group, Scholars for 9/11 Truth, "has emphasized that science can only proceed by considering a full range of alternative hypotheses", and held a conference which invited the public to "review the most hotly debated 9/11 theories and evidence". The range of hypotheses Fetzer considers as "alternative" were described in a Madison Times article on the conference held by Fetzer's group, which stated: "By Sunday the conference had covered weather control, weapons from space, and the idea that the planes that struck the towers never existed at all."

Media

Books

A prominent author of the 9/11 Truth movement literature is theologian David Ray Griffin. His two books, The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11 (March 2004), which claimed to outline a methodical, deductive framework for researching 9/11, and The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions (October 2004), became best-sellers. His Debunking 9/11 Debunking (May 2007) looks at the way magazines such as Popular Mechanics have sought to debunk the alternative 9/11 theories. His 2008 book, The New Pearl Harbor Revisited: 9/11, the cover-up, and the exposé, was written to update his original book, The New Pearl Harbor, reflecting information and insights from five major developments that have occurred since his original publication, while The Mysterious Collapse of World Trade Center 7: Why the Final Official Report About 9/11 Is Unscientific and False, published in 2009, examines the credibility of the official investigations into and hypotheses about the destruction of the third skyscraper, WTC 7, focusing on the final official report published in November 2008.

In September 2004, the interactive "Complete 9/11 Timeline" website by Paul Thompson, which is a collection of mainstream media reports presented chronologically, was made into the book The Terror Timeline.

Films

Films made by people associated with the 9/11 Truth movement include:

• The Great Conspiracy: The 9/11 News Special You Never Saw (2004) by Barrie Zwicker
• Martial Law 9/11: Rise of the Police State (2005) by Alex Jones
• 9/11: Press for Truth (2006).
• 911 Mysteries: Demolitions (2006)
• 9/11: Blueprint for Truth (2007) and updated 2008 Edition by Richard Gage
• Loose Change: An American Coup (2009) by Korey Rowe
• New World Order (2009) by Luke Meyer and Andrew Neel

Details

These documentaries present a range of alternative theories about how the attacks might have been carried out.

9/11 Press for Truth (2006) documents the struggle by the Jersey Widows to open a full investigation of the events, and their frustration while monitoring the 9/11 Commission as part of the Family Steering Committee.

Alex Jones, 9/11 and New World Order conspiracy theorists are the subject of the documentary film New World Order directed by Luke Meyer and Andrew Neel that debuted on the Independent Film Channel on May 26, 2009. The documentary, while not endorsing the movement, is described as giving the movement "more sympathetic, or less critical, airing than they've yet had (except among the converted)".

See also

• Criticisms of the 9/11 Commission Report
• World Trade Center controlled demolition conspiracy theories
• 9/11 advance-knowledge debate
• Casualties of the September 11, 2001 attacks
• Collapse of the World Trade Center
• Health effects arising from the September 11, 2001 attacks

External links

• 9/11 Truth
• 911 Truth News
• 911 Research
• 9/11 Review
• Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth
• The Journal of 9/11 Studies
• Scholars for 9/11 Truth And Justice
• Artists for 9-11 Truth

Media coverage

• Robynn Swan and Anthony Summers (July, 2006). "The Kingdom and the Towers". Vanity Fair Magazine. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
• Jennifer Senior (September 15, 2006). "The Memorial Warriors". New York Magazine.
• Nancy Jo Sales (August, 2006). "Click Here for Conpiracy". Vanity Fair. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
• Jonathan Curiel (September 3, 2006). "The Conspiracy To Rewrite 9/11". San Francisco Chronicle.
• Asquith, Christina (September 5, 2006). "Who really blew up the twin towers?". The Guardian. London. Retrieved April 23, 2010.
• Jaya Narain (September 6, 2006). "Fury as academics claim 9/11 was "inside job"". Daily Mail. London.
• The Truth Is Out There - Part I Financial Times Magazine June 7, 2008
• The Truth Is Out There - Part II Financial Times Magazine June 7, 2008
• The Truth Is Out There - Part III Financial Times Magazine June 7, 2008
• Truth and Conspiracy in the Catskills New York Times August 23, 2010

Book

• Summers, Anthony (2011). The Eleventh Day: The Full Story Of 9/11 And Osama Bin Laden. Random House. ISBN 978-1-4000-6659-9.
• Kay, Jonathan (2011). Among the Truthers: A Journey Through America's Growing Conspiracist Underground. Harper. ISBN 978-0062004819.