The 9/11 deniers

Overall, "Loose Change" presents a story of 9/11 that some have labeled the "no-plane theory," because it argues that the aircraft crashing into buildings were essentially a pyrotechnic distraction from the main destructive acts, the missile at the Pentagon and the controlled demolition of the trade towers. "Loose Change" acknowledges that two planes did actually hit the trade towers -- this marks a variation from more outré versions of the no-plane theory, which propose that live videos of the crash were doctored to include the 767s or that some kind of highly classified holographic technology created the illusion of planes hitting the towers (both theories have obvious flaws). But "Loose Change" suggests that remote-piloted drones, and not American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175, crashed into the World Trade Center; the drones, according to Rowe and Avery, contained no passengers.

It's at this point that your head really begins to spin. Here, as the film discusses Flight 93 landing in Cleveland with all four planes' passengers on board, a merely controversial argument crosses into unhinged ridiculousness. Basic questions -- like, why would the government spare the lives of the people on those planes only to kill thousands more? -- go unaddressed. Your frustration builds when Avery attempts to bolster his theory by proposing that passengers' cellphone calls from the airplanes were phony. He cites a study that he says proves that phones wouldn't get cellular signals at high altitudes, and he argues that the manner in which people spoke to their families -- Mark Bingham identified himself using his full name in a call to his mother -- means that "voice morphing technology" was involved. Come on, really?

Many of "Loose Change's" most vociferous online critics actually agree with its principal conclusion that the government is behind the attack, and only disagree with the film's specific 9/11 story line. Deep down the rabbit hole one day, I found Jim Hoffman, a 49-year-old software engineer in Alameda, Calif., and one of the most diligent 9/11 researchers in the movement. Hoffman, who runs 9-11 Research and 9-11 Review, two enormous troves of attack-related documentation and analysis, has looked into the film's claims more thoroughly than just about anyone else online. Though he agrees with Avery that the government was behind 9/11, he finds much of "Loose Change" wanting. "Sifting Through 'Loose Change,'" Hoffman's point-by-point critique of the movie, is withering. He discovers flaws in just about every second claim in "Loose Change," and he points to a mountain of evidence to rebut two of the film's central arguments, the idea that passenger planes didn't crash into the Pentagon and into a field in Shanksville.

Let's start with the Pentagon. Avery says that photographs from the scene show "no trace of Flight 77," but Hoffman points to pictures that show "engine parts, landing gear parts, and scraps of fuselage that match the livery of an American Airlines Boeing 757." Hoffman also notes that damage to the Pentagon's facade is "consistent in every way" with a 757 crash -- photographs taken before the outer ring of the building collapsed show "punctures in the paths of the densest parts of the plane, and breached limestone in the paths of the wing ends," he writes. The movie's suggestion that eyewitnesses expressed huge differences over what they saw coming at the Pentagon also turns out to be false. As Hoffman explains, most witnesses say they saw a large jetliner approaching the building, and the few who say they saw a small jet were those farthest away from the site.

Hoffman and other "Loose Change" debunkers offer an even more devastating critique of the movie's strange claim that Flight 93 ended up in Cleveland. Avery bases his Cleveland idea on a story posted on the Web site of WCPO, a local TV station in Cincinnati, on the morning of 9/11; Avery says that the report proves that "two planes landed at Cleveland Hopkins Airport due to a bomb threat," and that "United Airlines identified one of the planes as Flight 93." It turns out that Avery is right that WCPO reported this news on its Web site -- but the story was actually authored by the Associated Press wire service, and the AP corrected the news minutes after it was posted, as WCPO has explained. (You'll recall that false media reports were widespread during that morning's hysteria.)

Hoffman finds a host of evidence indicating that Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania, including numerous photographs of the Shanksville site -- some of which were released as part of the Zacarias Moussaoui trial -- in which you can see a deep impact crater and huge airplane parts. Many human remains were found at the scene -- according to the Washington Post, searchers discovered "about 1,500 mostly scorched samples of human tissue" around the crash crater. Hoffman also points to flaws in the study that Avery says proves that cellphones wouldn't have worked at high altitudes. The particular experiment only tested Motorola-brand phones, and it was conducted over London, Ontario, rather than on the flight paths of the 9/11 jets -- thus the research says nothing about whether different kinds of phones might have worked in the parts of the sky that the planes flew that morning. Moreover, Hoffman points out, several crew and passengers placed their calls using on-board GTE Airphones designed to work in the sky.

In addition, Avery seems to be oddly confused about the number of people who were on board the four flights on 9/11. He says that there were either 198 or 243 "passengers" on the planes; in fact, there were 232 passengers on board, excluding the crew but including the hijackers. The number is relatively easy to check, and it's unclear what Avery means when he alleges that the number shifts "depending on who you ask."

"'Loose Change' speculates that 200 people were somehow herded onto Flight 93 ... and then mysteriously disappeared into a NASA research facility," Hoffman writes. "Could it get any more ridiculous?"

Next page: Where "thermobaric" bombs, government spies and Dan Rather come together