(2008) An hour-long documentary from BBC-TV, directed and produced by Guy Smith, with narration by Carolyn Catz, debunks the more than 50 conspiracy theories, especially those promoted in the film Loose Change, surrounding the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, as well as the crash site near Shanksville, PA.

After I'd watched a debate between editors David Dunbar and James Meigs of Popular Mechanics, publisher of Debunking 9/11 Myths, and the director/writer of Loose Change, Dylan Avery, and his researcher Jason Bermas on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! program of 2006 on the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy, I wasn't convinced by the rebuttal.

Was United Flight 93 shot down over Pennsylvania or did the passengers onboard overcome the hijackers, resulting in its crashing? Somerset county coroner Wally Miller several times told the media there were no body parts to collect at the site. Where are the aircraft debris and black box with flight-recorder data the editors claim have been recovered? "The plane is not there," insists Bermas.

At the Pentagon Loose Change stated that vaporization from the heat of the jet-fuel fires, according to experts, had been the cause of the disappearance of American Airlines Flight 77 after it struck the west wall, but each of the six-ton Rolls Royce engines were manufactured from steel and titanium, capable of withstanding such temperatures. Besides, if the inferno had been so intense, how is it that bodies were recovered and identified and at least one person walked out of the building through the hole soon after the penetration? And that small hole looked too narrow for a commercial jet to pass through. So where are the engines and other pieces of the plane? What about Vice President Cheney's stand-down order?

At the World Trade Center, an Underwriters Laboratories employee, Kevin Ryan, offered proof that jet-fuel fires could not have been responsible for the collapse of the Twin Towers; secondary explosives (note the blast points on film footage) planted throughout the lower floors brought them down demolition-style. Better still, WTC building #7, untouched by the aircraft, collapsed in perfect freefall into its own footprint; witnesses inside the building testified to bombs going off beneath them.

Suggesting 9/11 was an inside job by government agencies, the passionate Avery and Bermas (accusing the opposition of lying) argued articulately with specificity, while the rational Dunbar and Meigs calmly countered with generalities and reliance on their experts' testimony (in most instances not presented as detailed refutation). Disappointed by the latter's the weak performance (because I don't believe such a conspiracy, involving hundreds if not thousands of people in the know, could have been pulled off without someone by now spilling the beans), I looked for another viewpoint.

While sides have been taken in the US, the British can be counted on for a measure of objectivity in this dispute. Granting that Avery (referring to himself and his team as civilians asking questions) has created in Loose Change a phenomenon seen by millions, the Internet's first blockbuster, and giving the spokesman of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, Jim Fetzer, a retired professor of philosophy and former Marine, as well as Texas talk-radio-show host and writer/producer/director of Endgame: Blueprint for Global Enslavement Alex Jones ("the government story's a fraud") an opportunity to establish that the federal government under the Bush/Cheney administration was either criminally negligent or directly involved in the 9/11 attacks (to mobilize the American people for a Middle East war of domination), the documentary brings in the experts and witnesses, along with Davin Coburn of Popular Mechanics, making direct comparisons of the claims posited by the conspiracy theorists, in most cases effectively demonstrating that the official interpretation and conclusions (no conspiracy) were accurate.

What actually happened, while sometimes having an outward appearance of looking like what Avery and others say was sinister (intentional demolition of buildings) or impossible (a Boeing 757 smashing into the Pentagon, instead arguing it was a cruise missile or drone), has a scientific explanation. For example, the confusion and chaos (and coincidence of several drills occurring at the same time) during the real-world scrambling of military jets to intercept the hijacked planes without any interception (some of the fighters flew east over the Atlantic Ocean) was the result of human error in the "fog of war" due unpreparedness of the way the hijackers took control of the aircraft and flew them into buildings.

On camera the coroner Wally Miller says he was often misquoted. The pilot of a C-130 in the air over Washington at the same time as Flight 77 came in low to ram the Pentagon identified it as a commercial jet. A glimpse of an engine among shredded fuselage inside the wrecked military fortress appears in a photograph. When the Twin Towers accordioned to the ground (steel girders lose half their strength at about 600º F), the "blast points" were puffs of debris blown through windows as the floors pancaked one upon the next. Explosions from diesel storage tanks in WTC building #7 would have sounded like bombs to anyone inside the structure.

Intense, independent academic analysis has been applied to every aspect of this dispute, often resulting in researchers being personally insulted and denigrated by those displeased with the conclusions. The conspiracy theorists undermine their own credibility by making outlandish assertions, such as that 4,000 Jews were alerted beforehand not to go to work at the World Trade Center on September 11th - in fact, nearly 200 Jewish employees died in the buildings - and that Flight 93 landed in Cleveland - in fact, the plane that was initially mistaken for the United Airlines from Boston was actually Delta Flight 89, yet the rumors persisted long after the mistake was clarified.

Citing his communication with then NSA chief Condoleezza Rice, former Senator Bob Graham says there was a conspiracy on the part of the Bush/Cheney administration, post-9/11 to cover up its mistakes during and after the attacks. Conspiracy theories involving the government - beginning with President Kennedy's assassination on through Watergate and the various -gates since - have fertile ground in which to grow because of a lack of transparency from within federal agencies, especially the FBI and CIA. In being arrogantly less than forthcoming about their ineptitude at connecting the dots, our intelligence apparatus was doubly guilty in its failure to act on the intelligence in its grasp at preventing and then at fully explaining what took place to the American public.

"We're being lied to" from all sides, says former writer for The X-Files Frank Spotnitz, - co-producer of an episode of the TV series The Lone Gunman broadcast six months prior to 9/11, coincidentally featuring a commercial flight from Boston hijacked to be flown into the World Trade Center - and as a result people don't find the truth convincing.

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Copyright © 2010 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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