I'M NO CONSPIRACY THEORIST, BUT

I'm not much of a conspiracy theorist. I don't believe aliens built the pyramids either. But Andrew Bolt's tirade against "insane" academics who believe the United States government responsible for September 11 made me curious. For the uninitiated, Bolt is Melbourne's resident right-wing mouthpiece. Andrew provided a link on his blog to a Brit newspaper's URL and their piece on the subject. They shared Andrew's point-of-view re. the immorality of even considering such a thing.

God bless the Internet brothers and sisters. Unsatisfied, I found these people for myself: Scholars for 9/11 Truth sounds like Lisa Simpson's nerdy superfriends. To date I've only read one piece on the site: Steven Jones's "Why Indeed Did the World Trade Centre Collapse".

Interesting. Dr. Jones DOES NOT advocate any conspiracy. He simply posits 13 reasons why he thinks the official report - largely compiled by the National Institute of Science and Technology - is bogus. The 13 points are all based on evidence. I wouldn't call it conclusive but I've still to read anything that brings it down.

A good try, published in eSKEPTIC on Sep 11's 5th anniversaryis Phil Mole's 9/11 Conspiracy Theories: the 9/11 truth Movement in Perspective, . Mole's article is not specifically aimed at Jones but at the 9/11 Truth Movement in general. The 'movement' is a convenient collective noun for a range of persons from those with unanswered questions like 9/11 relatives or Dr. Jones to (I suppose) utter nutbags. I can't really say, I haven't read them all. The 9/11 truth 'movement' will get you a million plus hits on Google. And I'm not much for conspiracy theories.

Mr. Mole's article deals both with the Pentagon and WTC alternate theories. I'm only going to deal (briefly) with his attempts to debunk Dr. Jones' hypothesis re the WTC collapse.

Mole states that the twin towers do not collapse straight down one floor on top of another but that the halves of the buildings above the impact points weaken and buckle first. That's true. Jones doesn't say otherwise. Mole acknowledges that the temperatures inside the towers on impact would not have exceeded 1000 degrees farenheit (when will Americans convert to metric, Bloody hell!) far short of the temparature required to melt steel. However it is hot enough to weaken steel by half. The structure then buckles and down it all comes. He goes on to say (like the NIST report) that the molten metal was probably aluminium.

He does not mention that there was molten metal at the base of all three doomed WTC buildings for weeks. Dr. Jones does. He also counters the aluminium theory.

During and after the collapse a red to yellow hot liquid metal was observed. Indeed weeks after the event molten metal still glowed red-yellow beneath the rubble. Trouble is Aluminium does not glow red-yellow in daylight. It only glows a bit and looks silvery grey. Mole either ignores Jones on this point or didn't read the article. Moreover Mole fails to address Jones's other objections including NIST's tweaking of computer models to make their hypothesis work, the fact that before Sep. 11 no skyscraper ever collapsed because of fire and the eyewitness accounts of several explosions in the buildings on that day.

I'm still not advocating any conspiracy theory. But a very good case has been made questioning the official story with no sufficient answers. Dr. Jones's article by itself doesn't prove US government calluding. It simply throws the standing story into disrepute and calls for further investigation. Of course it implies a collosal cover-up.

Why would the United states Government cover up the truth? And how could such a gigantic conspiracy be organised and kept secret? Good questions and very difficult to answer. But Dr. Jones's article does present solid scientific doubts about the standing story and like him I think they deserve addressing. So far the only response has been hysterical cries of "nutcase".

More on this later.