A Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll released last week shows more than a third of Americans suspect that federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East.
Somehow it’s easier to believe that our government participated in the horror of 9/11 rather than accept that government intelligence and airline security was unable to prevent it?
(For the record, the survey found that people who regularly use the Internet but who do not regularly use so-called “mainstream media” are significantly more likely to believe in 9/11 conspiracies. People who regularly read daily newspapers or listen to radio newscasts were especially unlikely to believe in the conspiracies.)
There can never be too much questioning or investigating about the events of that day, and what led up to it. But simply making stuff up is not part of a vigorous intellectual inquiry. The conspiracy theorists are gaining some on-the-surface credibility because a few college professors have joined their cause. University of Wisconsin professor Kevin Barrett believes the U.S. government may have destroyed the World Trade Center. And Brigham Young University professor Steven Jones joins others who believe explosives detonated inside caused the twin towers to collapse, not the airliners.
These academics have created a group called Scholars for 9/11 Truth. That’s great, if they can add to the facts. But as the Associated Press points out, most of the professors are not “experts in relevant fields.” For example, while BYU professor Jones is a scientist, his field of expertise is not building demolition.
The Sept.11 Commission’s report, which has been criticized by non-conspiracy theorists, did reach some conclusions that are accepted as fact. The commission, which interviewed 1,200 people in 10 countries and reviewed 21/2 million pages of documents, concluded that al-Qaida operatives hijacked four commercial airplanes. Two were crashed into the Twin Towers, one into the Pentagon and the fourth is believed to have crashed into a Pennsylvania field after passengers rushed to the cockpit to fight the hijackers.
The report cited intelligence failures that allowed the hijackers to carry out their plan.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology concluded that the fires from the crashed planes were more than sufficient to collapse the buildings.
Those are the bare facts. It doesn’t mean there isn’t more to learn. But the leaps of logic and unsubstantiated accusations offered by conspiracy theorists isn’t helping to get at the truth, which is what they insist they are after.
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