It wasn’t only the Twin Towers that collapsed on September 11. A third World Trade Center tower that wasn’t hit by the planes also fell. As a report into Tower 7 prepares to publish its findings, Mike Rudin considers how this conspiracy theory got to be so big.
9/11 is the conspiracy theory of the internet age.
Put “9/11 conspiracy” into Google and you get 7.9 million hits. Put in “9/11 truth” and you get more than 22 million.
Opinion polls in the US have picked up widespread doubts among the American people.
A New York Times/CBS News poll in 2006 found that 53% of those questioned thought the Bush administration was hiding something. Another US poll found a third of those questioned thought government officials either assisted in the 9/11 attacks or allowed them to happen.
In the UK a survey by the BBC’s The Conspiracy Files, carried out by GfkNOP in 2006, found that 16% of those questioned thought there was a “wider conspiracy that included the American government”.
This summer will be a key moment for those who question the official explanation of what happened on 9/11, the self-styled “9/11 truth movement”.
Nearly seven years after the terrible events of that September day, the US authorities are due to publish the final report on a third tower that also collapsed on 9/11. Unlike the Twin Towers, this 47-storey, 610-foot skyscraper was not hit by a plane.
And Tower 7 has become a key issue for “truthers” like Dylan Avery, the director of the internet film about 9/11 called Loose Change.
“The truth movement is heavily centred on Building 7 and for very good reason a lot of people are very suspicious about what went down that day,“ he says.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
