500 Conspiracy Buffs Meet to Seek the Truth of 9/11

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Tue, 6 Jun 2006 03:26:52 -0700 (PDT)

500 Conspiracy Buffs Meet to Seek the Truth of 9/11

 

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/05/us/05conspiracy.html?_r=2 & oref=slogin & oref=slo\

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New York Times

 

June 5, 2006

500 Conspiracy Buffs Meet to Seek the Truth of 9/11

By ALAN FEUER

 

CHICAGO, June 4 — In the ballroom foyer of the Embassy Suites Hotel,

the two-day International Education and Strategy Conference for 9/11

Truth was off to a rollicking start.

 

In Salon Four, there was a presentation under way on the attack in

Oklahoma City, while in the room next door, the splintered factions of

the movement were asked — for sake of unity — to seek a common goal.

 

In the foyer, there were stick-pins for sale ( " More gin, less Rummy " ),

and in the lecture halls discussions of the melting point of steel.

" It's all documented, " people said. Or: " The mass media is mass

deception. " Or, as strangers from the Internet shook hands: " Great to

meet you. Love the work. "

 

Such was the coming-out for the movement known as " 9/11 Truth, " a

society of skeptics and scientists who believe the government was

complicit in the terrorist attacks. In colleges and chat rooms on the

Internet, this band of disbelievers has been trying for years to prove

that 9/11 was an inside job.

 

Whatever one thinks of the claim that the state would plan, then

execute, a scheme to murder thousands of its own, there was something

to the fact that more than 500 people — from Italy to Northern

California — gathered for the weekend at a major chain hotel near the

runways of O'Hare International. It was, in tone, half trade show,

half political convention. There were talks on the Reichstag fire and

the sinking of the Battleship Maine as precedents for 9/11. There were

speeches by the lawyer for James Earl Ray, who claimed that a military

conspiracy killed the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, and by a former

operative for the British secret service, MI5.

 

" We feel at this point we've done a lot of solid research, but the

American public still is not informed, " said Michael Berger, press

director for 911Truth.org, which sponsored the event. " We had to come

up with a disciplined approach to get it out. "

 

Mr. Berger, 40, is typical of 9/11 Truthers — a group that, in its

rank and file, includes professors, chain-saw operators, mothers,

engineers, activists, used-book sellers, pizza deliverymen, college

students, a former fringe candidate for United States Senate and a

long-haired fellow named hummux (pronounced who-mook) who, on and off,

lived in a cave for 15 years.

 

The former owner of a recycling plant outside St. Louis, Mr. Berger

joined the movement when he grew skeptical of why the 9/11 Commission

had failed, to his sense of sufficiency, to answer how the building at

7 World Trade Center collapsed like a ton of bricks. It was his " 9/11

trigger, " the incident that drew him in, he said. For others, it might

be the fact that the air-defense network did not prevent the attacks

that day, or the appearance of thousands of " puts " — or short-sell

bids — on the nation's airline stocks. (The 9/11 Commission found the

sales innocuous.)

 

Such " red flags, " as they are sometimes called, were the meat and

potatoes of the keynote speech on Friday night by Alex Jones, who is

the William Jennings Bryan of the 9/11 band. Mr. Jones, a syndicated

radio host, is known for his larynx-tearing screeds against corruption

— fiery, almost preacherly, addresses in which he sweats, balls his

fists and often swerves from quoting Roman history to using foul

language in a single breath.

 

At the lectern Friday night, beside a digital projection reading

" History of Government Sponsored Terrorism, " Mr. Jones set forth the

central tenets of 9/11 Truth: that the military command that monitors

aircraft " stood down " on the day of the attacks; that President Bush

addressed children in a Florida classroom instead of being whisked off

to the White House; that the hijackers, despite what the authorities

say, were trained at American military bases; and that the towers did

not collapse because of burning fuel and weakened steel but because of

a " controlled demolition " caused by pre-set bombs.

 

According to the group's Web site, the motive for faking a terrorist

attack was to allow the administration " to instantly implement

policies its members have long supported, but which were otherwise

infeasible. "

 

The controlled-demolition theory is the sine qua non of the 9/11

movement — its basic claim and, in some sense, the one upon which all

others rest. It is, of course, directly contradicted by the

10,000-page investigation by the National Institute of Standards and

Technology, which held that jet-fuel fires distressed the towers'

structure, which eventually collapsed.

 

The movement's answer to that report was written by Steven E. Jones, a

professor of physics at Brigham Young University and the movement's

expert in the matter of collapse. Dr. Jones, unlike Alex Jones, is a

soft-spoken man who lets his writing do the talking. He composed an

account of the destruction of the towers

(www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html) that holds that

" pre-positioned cutter-charges " brought the buildings down.

 

Like a prior generation of skeptics — those who doubted, say, the

Warren Commission or the government's account of the Gulf of Tonkin

attack — the 9/11 Truthers are dogged, at home and in the office, by

friends and family who suspect that they may, in fact, be completely nuts.

 

" Elvis and Area 51 — we're sort of lumped together, " said Harlan

Dietrich, a recent college graduate from Austin, Tex. " It's attack the

messenger, not the message every time. "

 

To get the message out, the movement has gone beyond bumper stickers

and " Kumbaya " into political action.

 

There is a plan, Mr. Berger said, to create a fund to support

candidates on a 9/11 platform. There is a plan to create a network of

college campus groups. There is a plan by the British delegation (such

as it is, so far) to get members of Parliament to watch " Loose

Change, " the seminal movement DVD.

 

It would even seem the Truthers are not alone in believing the whole

truth has not come out. A poll released last month by Zogby

International found that 42 percent of all Americans believe the 9/11

Commission " concealed or refused to investigate critical evidence " in

the attacks. This is in addition to the Zogby poll two years ago that

found that 49 percent of New York City residents agreed with the idea

that some leaders " knew in advance " that the attacks were planned and

failed to act.

 

Beneath the weekend's screenings and symposiums on geopolitics and

mass-hypnotic trance lies a tradition of questioning concentrated

power, both in public and in private hands, said Mark Fenster, a law

professor at the University of Florida and author of " Conspiracy

Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture. "

 

As for the 9/11 Truthers, they were confident enough that their

theories made sense that on Friday, as a kickoff to the conference,

they met in Daley Plaza for a rally (though some called it Dealey

Plaza). They marched up Kinzle Street to the local affiliate of NBC

where, at the plate glass windows, they chanted, " Talking heads tell

lies, " as the news was being read.

 

" I hope you don't end up dead somewhere, " a companion said to a

participant, hours earlier as he dropped him at the Loop. " Don't

worry, " the participant said. " There's too many of us for that. "

 

 

 

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company