On 11 September 2001, the World Trade Center was struck by two hijacked planes and reduced to rubble, suffocating downtown Manhattan under a wall of dust, dirt, and death. Simultaneously, the Pentagon, the military command-centre of the World’s only remaining superpower, was hit by a third hijacked plane. Only one plane failed to reach its target, crashing into a field as the hijackers were overpowered by a handful of passengers.

While history is full of bloodbaths, there have been comparatively few witnesses; but with hundreds of cameras pointed at the Twin Towers and continual global broadcasting, the horrifying events of 9/11 were witnessed by millions. It is unsurprising that some people watching these events believed, or have come to believe, that behind them lurked a sinister conspiracy. Certainly, the belief in a conspiracy may help some shell-shocked witnesses to make sense of the chaos that unfolded that day.

Previously, the dissemination of conspiracy theories was a slow process: they circulated in self-published rant tracts, books and magazines, and occasionally on the radio. But the Internet enabled conspiracies to be spread immediately. Not only could information be posted on the ’net, but websites enabled small publishers and distributors to market directly to their readers. Simultaneously, the ready availability of video cameras, easy-to-use editing programmes, and computers with DVD burners has provided another way of disseminating alternative information: via the conspiracy DVD. What was once difficult to learn and expensive to do has now become an easily acquired computer skill, the necessary programmes freely available on most home computers. [1]

The events of 9/11 quickly entered the image reservoir – the footage of two passenger planes striking the South and North Towers in deadly fireballs and the ensuing collapse burned into the collective media unconscious. It is telling that one of the only other bits of footage viewed by so many, and so often, is that of the assassination of President Kennedy, a home ‘snuff movie’ that shocked the world and inspired a generation of conspiracy theorists. The first conspiracies around 9/11 emerged almost immediately after the events but, unlike previous conspiracies, there was an immediate glut of visual material for those who wanted to investigate events, whether to confirm the terrors they witnessed or to search for the evidence behind those horrors. While the Zapruder film was all there was of the Kennedy slaying, the events of 9/11 were more than thoroughly documented. Visual evidence for the JFK murder can only be found in one 8mm home movie that has been watched and re-watched by assassination theorists. By contrast, those searching for evidence of anomalies in the official 9/11 narrative have hours of footage of the events, shot from a variety of angles, in which to find evidence of conspiracy.

Told on film, the official version of events has primarily focused on United Airlines 93, with the TV documentary Let’s Roll: The Story of Flight 93 (2002) and United 93 (2006) both telling the official story of heroic passengers overpowering hijackers. Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004) offered a general criticism of the political response to events and the rush to war in Iraq, but didn’t examine the charges levelled by the 9/11 conspiracy theorists.

Home Brewed Conspiracy Theory

With researchers working at home, using available technologies and distributing their work via online selling or by making free downloads available, an entire subgenre of film has emerged – the 9/11 conspiracy video. These researchers have voiced their questions in a number of low/no-budget underground movies. There is an aura of the forbidden around these DVDs; ordered from the Internet, some arrive in boxes bearing cover art, but others have merely the title scrawled in black marker pen on a DVD-R. Their clandestine nature (whether actual or imagined) is further emphasised by metatextual additions such as the parody copyright notice that opens Dylan Avery’s Loose Change (2005) and informs the viewer that under the Patriot Act:

“ANY PERSON OR PERSONS FOUND IN POSSESSION OF THIS INFORMATION CAN BE HELD UNDER ‘DOMESTIC TERRORISM’ AND DETAINED WITHOUT TRIAL AT GUANTANAMO BAY”.

Loose Change combines newsreel footage, interviews and illustrative computer graphics, all set against an incongruously relaxing quasi-trip-hop soundtrack accompanying the narration.

The video explains the central allegations and examines the gaps and contradictions in the official version of events; it’s probably the best introduction for the uninitiated into both the central anomalies and conspiracies around 9/11 and this new genre of movie-making.

William Lewis’s 9/11 In Plane Site (2004) stylistically echoes mainstream television with its bombastic music, opening montage of destruction, and scenes of fleeing crowds intercut with people burning American flags. Host David von Kleist appears on-screen sitting in front of a bank of televisions and explains the three stages of truth – denial, violent opposition, and widespread acceptance as common knowledge. He goes on to explain that once evidence emerges, even if “flimsy and circumstantial”, a ‘conspiracy theory’ is no longer just a theory but becomes a conspiracy. Von Kleist’s on-screen manner recalls nothing so much as a management training video.

In a bizarre turn of events 9/11 In Plane Site was broadcast on Australia’s Channel 10 network on 5 January 2006, rumoured to be the result of a programmer seeing it at a clandestine screening. Clearly the underground can penetrate the mainstream in unexpected ways, although this is the first time one of these films has been broadcast. [2]

Overwhelmed by Evidence

These videos share a common æsthetic, re-photographing newsreel footage and zooming-in on key moments to provide ‘evidence’ for their accusations, looking for the ontological certainty of conspiracy in the blurred empiricism of heavily pixellated video. They suggest that the evidence that the planes had devices attached to them can be seen in film from the day, visible in the slowed, blurry footage of the planes hitting the building. But a heavily distorted image is not proof of conspiracy.

In many respects, these films represent the buzz of the Internet from which much of their conspiratorial data is drawn. [3] Here, the images and data flow together until the audience is overwhelmed and analysis impossible.

Produced by Reopen911.org the DVD Reopen 9/11 combines two films, Painful Deceptions and Confronting The Evidence: A Call to Reopen the 9/11 Investigation. The former consists largely of dry narration; it explains the central anomalies using sources beyond the often unverifiable blur of Internet data, including news reports and academic and professional journals, including Scientific American and Fire Engineering. Unlike Loose Change and 9/11 In Plane Site there is less use of newsreel footage and greater employment of photographs and intertitles to emphasise each of its points. Stylistically, this gives the entire film a tone that falls somewhere between the didacticism of propaganda and the apparent objectivity of a science documentary. The evidence as presented here appears more convincing, primarily because rather than relying on repeatedly re-viewing existing video footage the filmmakers spend time meticulously examining the various inconsistencies in the official narrative. It ends up calling on people to sign a petition to have the 9/11 investigation reopened.

Confronting the Evidence documents a series of lectures held in New York on the third anniversary of 9/11, and explains issues ranging from the environmental effects of collapse of the towers through to academic research analysing that collapse as an example of controlled demolition.

Me and Mr Jones

Possibly the most prolific conspiracy filmmaker is radio talk show host Alex Jones. Something of an expert in the production of underground videos, Jones is famous for making Dark Secrets: Inside Bohemian Grove (2000), in which he sneaks into the Bohemian Grove compound in Northern California in order to expose what he believes are the secret occult rituals practised by world leaders and top business executives. [4] Jones has produced several videos which examine 9/11 and its ensuing political transformations, including 9/11 The Road To Tyranny (2002); Matrix of Evil Exposed (2003) and Martial Law 9/11: Rise of the Police State (2005).

More than other researchers examining 9/11, Jones is concerned with the bigger picture. He is interested not merely in the events of 9/11 but in the political ramifications of post-9/11 legislation, “the really hardcore 9/11 issues”. Jones suggests that the Patriot Act heralds the start of a highly militarised police state, the end of civil liberties in America, and the eventual triumph of the New World Order.

While the other video makers concerned with 9/11 have produced comparatively concise statements, Jones’s work is a sprawling epic. In true post-modern, intertextual style his work is not confined to one video, but continues across a number of them as themes are picked up and developed; his work also criss-crosses other media, including Internet and radio.

Jones’s documentary style consists largely of a combination of interviews, both prepared and ‘ambush’ style, direct addresses to camera, and his own narration. His greatest strength, however, is his research, based largely on the rigorous monitoring of news releases and declassified documents. Jones repeatedly tells viewers to look up information to verify what he is saying, empowering them and making them part of the network of investigators out to expose the various and many conspirators he suggests are running the New World Order. Jones’s recent films almost fall beyond the scope of conspiracy theory, and his analyses of the constitutional ramifications of the Patriot Act are incredibly thorough; however he often becomes immersed in notions of global government, the role of the Skull and Bones Society in American politics, and secret Nazi links.

Grand Theory from the Margins

Conspiracies like these are retrospective constructions. All anomalies and coincidences are analysed, the minutiæ of evidence pored over. But searching for the single grassy knoll shot in the hundreds of hours of 9/11 footage becomes redundant. Delving again and again through raw data – whether looking for mysterious flashes on seconds of video or deconstructing single comments by terrified onlookers or shocked officials – becomes pointless. What is so often missing is the cold, clinical rigour of investigative journalism.

Further, these conspiracies are beholden to a grand-narrative that explains everything – so every gap in the official story, every piece of film, and every contradictory statement becomes utilised as evidence for conspiracy, rather than evidence of the impossibility of an absolutely coherent narrative. For example, 9/11 In Plane Site devotes time to one person shouting: “That was not an American plane!” and allegations that the plane had no windows. This is not evidence of a plane switch; more likely, it is a shocked response to seeing a plane from a distance crashing at speed into a building. It is not a statement worthy of serious investigation. Simply put, not all events are worthy of equal investigation, but with no inquiry there is no informational hierarchy.

In viewing events retrospectively and searching for a single, true narrative, conspiracy theorists are effectively stuck within rigid frameworks that seek verification for a hypothesis already presumed true, effectively replacing one orthodoxy with another, when actually it is the events that exist beyond the rigid framework that demand investigation. Focusing on the specific nature of singular events of one day in September, rather than previous or subsequent events, effectively negates any wider political, social, cultural or historical analysis, reducing everything to one spectacular moment rather than a continual, ongoing process.

However, these videos represent a more profound change. It is not the web of alleged conspiracies that matters, or whether we believe them or not: these videos are important because they reveal something about their audience and wider socio-cultural responses to 9/11. With national and global media ownership dominated by a handful of powerful multinational companies, critical or dissenting voices are marginalised and rarely heard. 89 per cent of respondents to a 2004 CNN Poll believed that the US government was covering up information regarding 9/11, yet their concerns are only rarely reflected in the mainstream media, and demands that investigations be opened and evidence released are ignored. Clearly many viewers are profoundly dissatisfied by most broadcast news, and this means that they will turn to other sources for their information. 9/11 has emerged as a focus because it has been used politically by some governments to introduce potentially repressive legislation and to justify the increasingly unpopular War on Terror. With so many people feeling disenfranchised and distrust of such governments becoming more widespread, there is little chance of the voices that now find expression in 9/11 videos being silenced.

Allegations and Objections

The central allegations proposed by 9/11 conspiracy theorists [1] are:

There was advanced knowledge of the attacks, and some public figures (supposedly including Salman Rushdie) were warned not to travel on 9/11.

The planes that hit World Trade Center 1 and 2 were, variously, unmarked planes or remote-controlled guided planes or were guided in following a homing-beacon.

Some suggest that the plane that hit the South Tower had a mysterious pod underneath it and fired something prior to crashing into the building.

American Airlines Flight 77 did not hit the Pentagon, which was hit by either a missile or a small drone aircraft. Strangely, the only footage released of this from Pentagon security cameras shows no plane and is dated 12 September.

The collapse of the Twin Towers was due to reasons beyond the impact of the planes and the ensuing fire. Some have suggested that charges were planted in the buildings. This explains the demolition-style collapse of the buildings and numerous reports of people saying they heard explosions prior to the collapse.

Although appearing largely undamaged, save for a small fire, World Trade Centre 7 collapsed at 5:30pm on 9/11, in what many consider a controlled explosion. Coincidentally, the NYC Office of Emergency Management, the CIA, and the Department of Defense all had offices in this building.

The hijackers’ behaviour was contradictory to their faith and even risked exposing the plot.

Some suggest that United Flight 93 – the “let’s roll” flight – was shot down.

Cell phones do not work well at an altitude of 33,000 ft (10,000m), raising the question of how passengers called relatives.

Interceptor planes were not launched in time, despite the four hijacked planes’ transponders being turned off and despite the previously successful interception of planes flying off course.

The comparatively rapid removal of rubble effectively destroyed evidence of a crime scene.

Hijacker Satam Sugami’s passport was found undamaged in the street in downtown Manhattan; in contrast, the black box flight recorders for American Airlines Flight 11 and United Flight 175 were never found.

Some of the named 19 hijackers are allegedly still alive in the Middle East.

Reportedly, the hijackers comparatively poor flying skills suggest that they would have been unable to perform the actions needed to crash into their targets.

There was a large-scale military training exercise happening simultaneously with the hijackings, leading some to speculate that this caused confusion and enabled the hijacked planes to reach their targets.

There are, of course, arguments against all of these allegations, but these are largely made by journalists or those individuals or groups out to debunk conspiracies. In contrast, the official report is deafening in its silence when addressing these claims. Despite the overwhelming number of alleged conspiracies the report fails to adequately address any of the anomalies and thus directly feeds the idea of an official cover-up.

But, while there may be gaps within the official version of events, what would be the reason for such a conspiracy? Al-Qaeda was already viewed as dangerous following the attacks on the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. If the US government wanted an excuse to attack Iraq then why, amongst the advance planning the organisation of such events would presumably demand, didn’t they manufacture any evidence directly linking the attacks to Iraq?

Subsequent events, such as the flooding of New Orleans, have revealed a government that lacked the organisational skills to evacuate a few hundred people from a sports stadium, despite the press repeatedly demanding action; it seems unlikely that this same government could organise 9/11. Moreover, an event like 9/11 would have needed numerous conspirators and co-conspirators to make sure that it would work according to plan. With such a large number of people involved, surely somebody would eventually, even accidentally, spill the beans.

In viewing a cabal of either American secret agencies or the New World Order as responsible for the attacks there is a wilful blindness to the very real dangers presented by fundamentalist Islamist terrorism and its stated aims and operational tactics. The truth is that Islamist terrorists do advocate and perform suicide attacks and do see America as the Evil Empire; viewing the attacks as the work of the West avoids asking uncomfortable questions about some interpretations of Islam and repressive Islamic governments, many of which have been supported, both overtly and covertly, by the West.