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Gold9472
09-07-2006, 10:38 AM
For some, the truth about 9-11 is still out there

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/MYSA090706.01A.Conspiracy.309628c.html

Roy Bragg
Express-News National Writer
Web Posted: 09/07/2006 09:29 AM CDT

Four years ago, as Mark Alejandro surfed the Internet in his Northwest San Antonio home, he stumbled upon information he believes exposes the most incendiary and revolutionary plot ever perpetrated on the human race.

He's not sure what that plot is, but he's sure what it isn't.

To Alejandro and thousands of others, the official story that unfolded on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, and in the years afterward — that al-Qaida terrorists hijacked four commercial jets, crashing two into the World Trade Center and a third into the Pentagon, while a fourth fell from the Pennsylvania sky when passengers foiled the plot — is a lie.

For the Americans active in what's been dubbed the 9-11 Truth movement, there are hundreds of suspicious events, questionable coincidences and unanswered questions that make the official story impossible.

Instead, they see an insidious attempt to manipulate foreign and domestic policy for as-yet-unconfirmed reasons.

And since Alejandro found that Web page on an otherwise uneventful day, his quest for answers has turned a guy with a passing knowledge of world affairs into someone who stares hard at everything.

"I'm not a kook," he says. "There are some people with bizarre ideas (in the 9-11 Truth movement) but that's because no one is telling us anything."

The weapon of choice for the 9-11 Truth movement is the Internet.

Experts who study the origins and dynamics of conspiracy theory say the Web is exacerbating a general mistrust of government. In many ways, the Web's ability to move information is making that information less trustworthy.

"People tend to be irrational," said Jerald Podair of Lawrence University. "Incapable of comprehending an event, they draw a conclusion and find facts to support it. The Internet is going to make us more medieval in the future, as more and more inaccurate theories and stories spread like a global virus. In a way, the Internet is going to make us more backward. That's ironic."

Elements of the 9-11 Truth scenarios can be pieced together from hundreds of Web sites with names such as 911Truth.org and Scholars for 9-11 Truth.

The sites come in all styles: message boards, news aggregators and social networks. Almost all lay out a disturbing, cynical and sometimes contradictory case that can be boiled down to this — lots of people in higher places are lying, and many of them would benefit from a terror act on U.S. soil that would spur the nation into a war on terror.

Scholars for 9-11 Truth is run by tenured university faculty from around the world.

The group applies scientific study to physical evidence from 9-11. Professors from the University of Texas at Austin and Texas A&M and Rice universities are among the organization's members.

Key to their work is the collapse of the twin towers and the later collapse of a nearby 47-story building (called "WTC 7") later that day.

Scientists with the group say, based on chemical residue found on steel from WTC 7 and video of its collapse, they suspect the building was taken down by demolition, a process that would've required weeks of advance planning and implementation.

Mark Alejandro's truck bears a sticker advertising an Internet site that promotes alternate theories about the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

They don't offer theories about who did it or why.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology, a federal agency, issued a "fact sheet" last week that answers frequently asked questions about the World Trade Center collapse.

The fact sheet, which is based on the NIST's 43-volume report issued in October 2005, explains how the impact of an airliner and the heat from the resulting fire could weaken structural steel and cause the WTC collapses, arguments that Scholars for 9-11 Truth take to task.

The agency's fact sheet mentions WTC 7 in passing, noting that its investigation is continuing.

On the other side of the spectrum is 911Truth.org, which lists the 40 most suspicious events leading up to and after the events of Sept. 11, 2001.

The list is a hodge-podge of sometimes conflicting theories, questions and suppositions.

At one point, it questions why U.S. air defense didn't shoot down the planes. A few hundred words later, it implies that Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania, was shot down and that the incident was covered up.

The list claims hundreds of Jews and Israelis working in the twin towers didn't show up for work that day.

In another place, however, it says Israeli intelligence officials tried to tip off U.S. officials about the attack months and weeks in advance.

The list also implies that Defense Department officials may have staged the catastrophe to cover up malfeasance, or that Bush administration officials did it as a pretext to establishing a permanent American military presence in the Middle East, or that ghoulish investors profited from insurance or by the stock misfortunes of companies impacted by the collapse of the towers.

Too many theories
The cacophony of conspiracy theories weakens the argument, says Podair, an assistant professor of history and American studies. It may be a winning strategy for defense attorneys, whose goal is to create reasonable doubt in a single juror. To explain a single catastrophic event, however, it doesn't work.

Example: a rumor that Jews and Israeli citizens were told by some unknown entity to stay away en masse from the World Trade Center on the day of the attacks.

The Anti-Defamation League includes several 9-11 Truth groups on its list of anti-Semitic groups. It strains credibility, a group spokeswoman says, to suggest that every Jew or Israeli citizen working in the twin towers was phoned in advance and told to stay away.

"These are just extensions of the things we've been hearing for years," said Marilyn Mayo. "It's the 'they control the world' and 'they control the U.S. government' stories. They take an omission of fact or a grain of truth or fact not fully explained and they mix them up to distort them to their benefit."

There are other inconsistencies, Podair said.

"Each story is separate and they don't tie together," he said of the various 9-11 Truth scenarios. They don't pull together into a coherent story. The official word is a coherent story that answers most of the questions.

The 9-11 Truth movement is a product of our times, Podair says.

Beginning with the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dallas in 1963 and the Warren Commission investigation, there's been a mistrust of government. The official investigation, Podair says, was done quickly, was sloppy and rubbed people the wrong way. That lack of transparency, he says, created a cult of JFK conspiracy theory buffs.

"And that," Podair says, "is where it begins."

The JFK conspiracy was followed, in the American consciousness, by the Vietnam War, where numbers were cooked to give the public a false impression of American success, and the Watergate affair, where top officials conspired to silence enemies and then covered up those actions.

"Now, people don't trust the government and automatically assume the government is lying," Podair says.

Conspiracy theories, says Bill Ellis, a professor of English and American studies at Pennsylvania State University, don't necessarily rely on fact.

"They're almost religious in nature," he said. "They are self-healing. If you debunk part of it, something will come up to heal that part of the story."

Logical explanations, in other words, are met with new conspiracies to challenge the new evidence. Experts who give information contrary to the theory are accused of being part of the conspiracy.

"You absolve yourself," Ellis said, "from the responsibility of dealing with the facts in a logical way. A conspiracy cuts to the chase. We don't want to think about the factors that created Islamic fundamentalism. We don't want to hear about Osama bin Laden and his goal to take over the government of Saudi Arabia. This takes a lot of time for people to understand."

On the defense
9-11 Truth proponents dispute the notion that their position is intellectually unsound and that there's an obligation for skeptics to offer alternative explanations.

"When someone is hiding something, it's hard to say what they're hiding," says Brian Sacks of 911Truth.org, "but it's not hard to say they are hiding something."

He acknowledged that 911Truth.org's list of inconsistencies contains some of its own, most notably the assertion the military allowed the hijacked planes to fly unimpeded, while arguing simultaneously that Flight 93 was shot down and that fact was covered up.

"That's a good point," Sacks said. "They both can't be right, but you have to allow people some latitude when they're trying to poke holes in the official story. We don't know what's right and what's wrong. We're pointing out anomalies."

9-11 Truth is a decentralized movement, with hundreds of Web sites and local organizations that aren't officially linked. The movement has gained critical mass, Sacks says. The Web site has 10,000 people on its mailing list, and a conference earlier this year in Chicago drew 1,000.

Alejandro and other Texans active in the 9-11 Truth movement dispute the notion that they've made conclusions about what really happened in 2001.

"We don't know what really happened," he said. "But there are so many holes in the official story to make it believable."

"We're not conspiracy theorists," says Hank Goltz, an Alamo City retiree. "We're just asking legitimate questions."

Government has lied before, Goltz said, and there's no reason to think it's not lying now.

"I'm an average American trying to do my patriotic duty," says Ric Swanson, a high school science teacher in Austin. "It's patriotic to question what happened that day, because I'm not comfortable with the story they're telling us about that day."

Gold9472
09-07-2006, 11:20 AM
"The list claims hundreds of Jews and Israelis working in the twin towers didn't show up for work that day."

Um, no it doesn't.