The 9/11 deniers

The official theory of 9/11 -- 19 hijackers, tall fundamentalist bearded guy in a cave -- is, in the strictest sense of the term, also a "conspiracy theory." Indeed, as portrayed in the 9/11 Commission's report, the hijackers exhibit hallmark conspiracy theory behaviors. They meet surreptitiously and talk in code ("'architecture' referred to the World Trade Center, 'arts' the Pentagon, 'law' the Capitol, and 'politics' the White House," to quote the report); they possess unimaginable commitment to their cause, and show superhuman discipline and technical abilities (their proficient piloting skills despite minimal training, their calm while committing murder and suicide); they harbor transparently irrational, immoral beliefs, the sort that cranks usually ascribe to secret societies; most important, they succeed against tremendous odds without anyone wising up, pulling it off right before our eyes.

The whole thing does sound sort of unbelievable, doesn't it? The commission's report is exhaustive, and over the course of hundreds of thrilling pages, it renders the conspiracy in a way that's thoroughly credible. Yet there is a certain are-you-kidding-me quality to any condensed version of the tale: Nineteen guys did that!?

"I think the basic facts here indicate that these attacks occurred as a consequence of a conspiracy," Bob Kerrey, the former Democratic senator from Nebraska who was a member of the commission, told me. "Unlike the Kennedy assassination, we're not asking, 'Was there a conspiracy?' In the case of the attack on the United States you begin with the presumption that there was a conspiracy. The 'conspiracy theorists' are presenting an alternative conspiracy."

Whether you take the official view or the conspiracy theorists' view, the 9/11 attacks were not only spectacularly horrific, they were also spectacularly strange and complex. Ultimately, for many of us who aren't experts, choosing what to believe about 9/11 is something like a leap of faith. If you trust members of the 9/11 Commission and the government's structural engineers you'll put your money on the official explanation; in a larger sense, if you trust your government you'll find it truly difficult to comprehend the possibility that anyone on the inside could have been behind something like this.

And it's on the key point of motive -- why would the government do this? -- that the conspiracy theorists seem most vulnerable.

"Loose Change" addresses the matter only briefly, about five minutes before the film concludes. "I hope you're sitting down," Avery says as if he's going to offer something spectacular. But the blockbuster is mostly bluster. "According to Wikipedia" -- not something you want to hear in a documentary -- "one of the world's largest gold depositories was stored underneath the World Trade Center," Avery says. Without attribution, he alleges that "rumor has it that over $160 billion in gold was stored in the World Trade Center," and that only a couple hundred million dollars of that was ever recovered. So that's why the government did 9/11 -- it was a gold heist?

Another idea comes from Jim Marrs, one of the world's most prolific professional conspiracy theorists and the author of a 9/11-doubting book "Inside Job," which Avery uses as the source for some claims in "Loose Change." Over Memorial Day weekend I watched Marrs give a presentation on ancient astronaut theory at Conspiracy Con 2006, and I listened as Marrs described his belief that human beings were created as slaves by technologically superior aliens who landed on Earth hundreds of thousands of years ago. Marrs' theory (inspired by the author Zecharia Sitchin) mines classic secret society tracts; he believes that the aliens entrusted their superior knowledge to an elite group of humans, and this elite group has kept the knowledge to itself throughout history. The elites aim to cultivate a borderless, one-world government -- and it's to these ends that they would have pushed something like 9/11.

While at the conference, I also discussed the government's possible motive with Phillip Jayhan, a businessman who runs LetsRoll911.org, a prominent 9/11 skeptic site. Jayhan provided some early funding for "Loose Change," and Avery featured Jayhan's theory that one of the Trade Center planes was equipped with a missile in the first version of the movie. "I don't think people can have a proper understanding of 9/11 without understanding the power structure of the international cult," Jayhan explained to me. He went on to describe an extensive theory of satanic cultism, one in which Satanists provide kidnapped children to politicians for sexual trysts; the cult then keeps the politicians in line through blackmail. Jayhan sold me a copy of "The Franklin Coverup," a book by former Nebraska state Sen. John DeCamp that he said would fully expose the situation to me. Jayhan believes that ultimately, Satanists were behind 9/11. "Everything is a lie," he said.

The theory of satanic cultism appeared plausible to others in the movement as well. "It's out there," Korey Rowe told me. "There are definitely controlling interests like that." When I asked Hoffman about it, he said, "That gets into things that are easily exploited -- it sounds crazy when people talk about it, even though I think there's something to it." Hoffman added that he believes the most likely motive is "geopolitical" and probably not satanic, "though it's possible, because our government is so thoroughly corrupt."

Only Avery disagreed with the idea conclusively. "As soon as you say that Satanists were behind 9/11 you start to lose people right off the bat."

I asked Gorelick if she believed the commission had been sufficiently open to investigating the idea that the government, and not terrorists, was behind the attack. "I think it's fair to say that our assumption going in was not that the World Trade Center was blown up by our own government," she said, "but had the facts led us there we would not have hesitated to go there. And we ourselves blew up lots of myths -- for example, that the 19 hijackers were undetectable, or that there was a relationship between 9/11 and Saddam."

Slade Gorton, the former Republican senator and commission member, told me that the most serious threat to the commission's work so far came not from conspiracy theorists but from Rep. Curt Weldon, R-Penn., who alleged that the commission ignored information that the classified military program Able Danger had identified Mohammed Atta and other 9/11 plotters before the attacks. Gorton and the other commissioners believed that the commission weathered that storm with its reputation intact.

Kerrey was dismissive of the conspiracy theories as well. Asked about the possibility of a controlled demolition at the World Trade Center, he scoffed, "There's no evidence for that." But he also noted that, quite apart from what Avery and others in the "truth movement" have proposed, many legitimate mysteries still surround the events of that day. "There are ample reasons to suspect that there may be some alternative to what we outlined in our version," Kerrey said. The commission had limited time and limited resources to pursue its investigation, and its access to key documents and witnesses was fettered by the administration. "I didn't read a single PDB," Kerrey said, referring to the president's daily intelligence briefing reports. "We didn't have access to Khalid Shaikh Mohammed," the mastermind of the plot. "We accepted a compromise, submitting our questions to him through the CIA. Now, that's not the best way to go about getting your questions answered. So I'm 100 percent certain that [bin Laden] directed that attack, but am I completely comfortable saying there was no direct Saudi involvement, or that Saddam Hussein wasn't involved in some fashion, or that the Iranians weren't involved? I'm pretty close to 100 percent certain, but I'd be more comfortable if we'd interviewed Khalid Shaikh Mohammed."

Still, Gorelick says that because the commission operated in a transparent manner, its findings will have enduring appeal. "Before we began we studied the commissions that looked into the Kennedy assassination and Pearl Harbor and we saw that for decades or more there were unanswered questions," she said. "We were trying to be as comprehensive and transparent as possible so people would know what we had looked into even if there were unanswered questions."

Yet Gorelick acknowledges, too, that she may have an optimistic view: "That's why I don't live on the Internet," she said. "I spend a lot of my time online, but I don't live there. And if I were to live there, I'd wish for someone to put me out of my misery. There are lies out there."

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