Review by John C. Snider © 2009
Aliens landed at Roswell. The Apollo moon landings were faked. HIV doesn’t cause AIDS. And 9/11 was an inside job.
Americans love their conspiracy theories almost as much as they love their religion. Once a crackpot idea grabs the public’s attention, no amount of data, science and common sense will talk them off of whatever ledge they’ve crawled onto–and no one has perfected the art of blithe denialism more than the so-called 9/11 Truthers.
Ask any given crowd of Truthers what the “truth” is, and you’ll find fingers pointing in several contradictory directions. Ironically, there is no One Truth. Was the destruction of the Twin Towers a controlled demolition, a missile strike, or the result of unoccupied passenger jet flown by remote control? Occam’s Razor points to a plot by Al-Qaeda to hijack fully loaded passenger jets for the purpose of flying them into financial and government landmarks. But the Truthers don’t like their truth straight-up; rather, they prefer convoluted, mysterious explanations that beg more questions than they answer. Sometimes I think these folks have been watching too much X-Files.
Possibly the masterpiece of 9/11 Truthism–its Citizen Kane, if you will–is Loose Change. This documentary has been floating around for nearly five years and has gone through a handful revisions. The version I screened is called Loose Change 2nd Edition.
First off, I have to give writer/director Dylan Avery credit for creating a slick, unsettling propaganda piece, complete with a hip urban soundtrack. The look and feel of Loose Change is not amateurish at all.
But you can’t judge a book–or a DVD–by its cover. From start to finish, Loose Change is a veritable zoo of logical fallacies: ad hominems, half-truths, unfounded insinuations, and most of all, proof by verbosity. Loose Change tosses out so many allegations and factoids it would take a six-hour counter-documentary to address and correct all of them–and I certainly won’t attempt to do so here.
Nonetheless, here are some highlights: Loose Change features a montage of alleged eyewitness accounts (including live news reports) to the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, but with conflicting details. Was there a missile, as some claimed? An unmarked jetliner? A small prop-driven plane? A helicopter? They can’t all be right: in fact, it’s possible they’re all wrong. Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable, especially testimony delivered in the heat of the moment, while the eyewitness is emotional and/or in shock.
Much is made of first-responder accounts of “explosions” heard prior to the collapse of each of the WTC towers (this is evidence, supposedly, of the controlled demolition theory, which would have us believe that agents of the government somehow planted thousands of tons of high-tech explosives, complete with the necessary wiring and control mechanisms, weeks in advance and without anyone noticing). But the failure of internal structural elements leading up to the final collapse would probably sound and feel much like a conventional explosion, and this is most likely what the firemen and policemen heard. And while we’re talking about the controlled demolition theory, the documentary never mentions that both towers self-evidently begin their collapse at the points of impact, on the floors damaged most by the impact of the passenger jets. As the buildings collapse, the increased air pressure blows out windows on the stories below, causing puffs of smoke and debris to spew out ahead of the collapse front. These puffs are random and usually singular, rather than the multiple, coordinated, patterned explosions seen in a controlled demolition.
Loose Change also makes the claim that the 9/11 was the first time in history a steel framed building collapsed due to fire. Never mind the thousands of steel framed buildings destroyed during World War II, Loose Change fails to mention the unholy combination of factors that made the WTC collapse possible: the unusual construction of the towers; the intense, concentrated fires fed by a fully loaded jetliner’s worth of burning fuel; and the impact of a large airplane traveling at near top-speed. No other buildings in history experienced this unique set of factors; nonetheless, a rational analysis shows that such an event is perfectly capable of leading to a building collapse. (Another fact this documentary omits is that steel doesn’t need to melt in order to fail as a structural element; it only needs to lose strength. Thus, it is entirely conceivable that the WTC buildings would collapse once the girders became soft enough during the conflagration.
The outrageous claims pile up: the government faked in-flight cellphone calls using simulated voice technology. Flight 93 landed safely in Ohio rather than crashing in Shanksville, Pennsylvania (where are the nearly 10o passengers, then?). Most outrageous of all is the allegation that 9/11 was orchestrated so somebody could collect the insurance on the World Trade Center and make off with the hundreds of millions of dollars of gold bullion stored in the sub-basement.
For more information on what really happened on 9/11, there are a number of good resources, including the Wiki page on Loose Change (which points out many of the film’s flaws), Popular Mechanics‘ excellent analysis, and Thomas Macklin’s PowerPoint presentation on the collapse of the WTC (which circulated via the internet mere weeks after 9/11). I’m sure there are many more.
In the end, Loose Change is nothing more than a cruel joke, an insult to the memory of those who died that day, and an unneeded distraction to the real work of understanding what really happened and figuring out how to stop something similar from happening in the future.
Tags: 9/11, loose change, truthers, world trade center, wtc
I take exception to your off-handed remarks regarding Unidentified Flying Objects as if they are some joke.
I know the main stream media treat them as a joke, but thousands of normal, average Americans have seen them, and a large percentage of these have been reliable, professional observers such as airline pilots, police officers, and air force pilots.
No reputable investigators would definitively say that we know what UFOs are – many are explainable, but a lot of them are not. Evidence exists that proves they exist as solid, real objects, some having landed and left strong evidence of their presence. Air Traffic Control radars have tracked them, air force pilots have shot at them, so authorities DO see them as real.
But we don’t know WHAT they are, or where they come from. Does that mean they don’t exist? No, but it does mean that serious investigators are looking into that- and remarks like yours are uncalled for and unhelpful to those that have experienced a sighting or spend their time investigating these phenomena.
Crazies there are, but that doesn’t mean that everybody involved is too.
Calling “Loose Change, Second Edition” a conspiracy theory documentary is putting a negative spin on it from the get go. Something rationalists usually try to avoid. It’s a little like calling a minority religionist delusional, but allowing mainstream religionists to escape that characterization, because their delusion is accepted by prevailing opinion. So, as that relates to 9/11, the official conspiracy theory (quite magical in its thinking) is not described as a conspiracy theory, because prevailing opinion believes it to be true.
Here are some comments, paragraph by paragraph.
Connecting those four beliefs in a paragraph suggests that a person who believes one, believes all four. No evidence is offered to support that, and I’m quite sure no statistically significant data can be found showing much of a connection.
Don’t know what to say about that next one, denialism. Seems like most of the denialism is with the debunkers.
Quite the contrary, it must be above 95% of Truthers that say controlled demolition brought down the Twin Towers. That’s true, no matter what people think about the planes. Because, the planes don’t really enter in to the question of controlled demolition, or not.
I have nothing to say about Loose Change – Second Edition. it’s quite good.
Propaganda piece? What is propaganda? Yes it promotes a point of view, but to call it biased just because it doesn’t promote the viewpoint you maintain is, I guess, not very objective.
Hard to respond, since nothing specific is offered. However, some of the words put forth as criticism of Loos Change, would be apt to describe what is presented coming from the other side, in the paragraph, itself.
Basically, a complaint about using eyewitness testimony. But, why fling things like private planes and helicopters around, when there were 118 first responders, who, in their oral debriefs spoke of explosions in the towers. Remarkable agreement. Of course, the NYC authorities fought long and hard to prevent these from being released to the public, but finally a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) forced the testimonies to be released, and they were all published in the NY Times.
Yes, the collapse initiations began on the floors of aircraft impact. But, nothing should be read into that other than the demolition went as apparently planned. Rather than comment on any more of what is discussed in that paragraph, I will comment on what wasn’t discussed. (1) The aircraft impacts were asymmetric damage, but the towers were destroyed completely symmetrically. (Contrary to the laws of physics.) (2) There were massive structural members (many tons each) thrown horizontally, at speeds of 50 MPH which a gravity collapse can not explain. (3) Building 7 wasn’t mentioned in your whole writeup, the most mysterious collapse of all. It came down at pure freefall acceleration for over 2 secs, which translates into 8 stories of lower structure that had to have been removed abruptly. If you know any way of doing that other than by explosives, please speak up. (4) The byproducts of thermite/thermate were found, in the proper proportions, through the remains (iron, aluminum, manganese, sulfur, etc.) (5) Evidence of temperatures a 1,000 C greater than what office and jet-fuel fires can explain. (6) unignited nanothermite was found in the dust (a military-grade explosive that shouldn’t have been there.)
What? The thousand steel framed buildings that were destroyed in WWII? They didn’t come down symmetrically. They didn’t collapse at freefall acceleration. There is absolutely no comparison between any other steel-framed skyscrapers, and what happened three times on that single day.
What’s so outrageous about thinking someone would arrange to make billions off of this? Even today, Goldman Sachs made money in the stock market every single day the markets were open in the third quarter, except one. That’s better than 95% success rate. Some well connected folks are making billions off of everyone else. People do some pretty outrageous things if they see a way to make some big bucks.
Wikipedia can’t be trusted on this subject. I have spent enough time trying to get them to be more of an honest broker, but they have no interest in being even handed.
The way to stop something similar from happening in the future is to insist the evidence that is already available be taken seriously. If it is taken seriously, the next thing to insist on is that our governmental scientific institutions (NIST in particular) correct all the faulty information they’ve been giving us, and start reporting factually correct information from here on out. (This includes going back and correcting the shocking falsehoods they put out in their WTC reports.
Congratulations for watching the whole movie. I probably wouldn’t be able to make it. :-)
The crazies are really coming out of the woodwork on this one. Just to respond to the falling buildings claims, I watched the towers come down on TV and I remember the top floors coming down slightly crooked, not symetrically. There were plenty of chunks of building that came down faster than the majority of the building. Why would we not expect damage to surrounding buildings when two 100+ story buildings collapsed right next to them?
I’m guessing logic and observation are not these people’s strong points.
Oh, John, look what kind of responses you get. Very reminiscent of creationist tactics – pick away at the established facts, and when you think you find an anomaly, that’s proof that magic works. An object remains unidentified after investigation – proof of aliens visiting the earth. “Symmetrical” destruction and freefall acceleration – the gubmint did it. Both are indulging in false dichotomies, just like creationists think that “gaps in the fossil record” means Jehovah.
By the way – I’d love to see Dwain Deets’ proof of “symmetrical destruction” and the buildings falling at “freefall acceleration”. These are buzzwords just like “irreducible complexity”. I’ve been participating (yet mostly lurking) in 9/11 conspiracy discussions over at the JREF forums for a number of years and I have yet to see actual figures to back up those contentions.
Oh, and has Dwain worked out how “nanothermite” would burn across the main supports and not down, like thermite works? Or how thermite is not an explosion and would not make the sounds you say the first responders heard?
Forget that, because it’s just details. I buy the official explanation – that hijackers flew airplanes into buildings and the resulting destruction caused the collapse of the towers. That debris from the towers and fire caused the collapse of building 7. What’s your explanation? What are the facts and evidence that show your explanation is more correct than mine?
Jerry Jobe,
Just to pick on one of your points, “freefall acceleration.” NIST admitted to, what they called a “freefall drop” lasting 2.25 sec. on Building 7. They made that statement in their FINAL REPORT, issued Nov 2008. Even though, their draft final report of August 2008 said the building came down 40% slower than freefall.
They also attempted to hide this admission, in that they didn’t list this change under their list of changes between their draft and final reports.
Dwain,
You might want to back that up. I’d like a citation so I can see it in context. I’d also like to see the calculations used – either to determine it fell at freefall acceleration, or 40% slower than freefall.
I’m sorry if this comes across as rude, but my experience is that truthers tend to change the subject when actual calculations come into play. I also realize that I am offering no such calculations, but “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”. And I have seen no evidence that the building fell as though ALL support was eliminated simultaneously, a necessary component for “freefall” acceleration.
Jerry,
Thank you very much for asking. The pertinent words I copied from the NIST Final Report, which can be downloaded from:
http://wtc.nist.gov/NCSTAR1/NCSTAR1Aindex.htm
This is from page 45:
For discussion purposes, three stages were defined, as denoted in Figure 3-15:
• In Stage 1, the descent was slow and the acceleration was less than that of gravity. This stage corresponds to the initial buckling of the exterior columns in the lower stories of the north face. By 1.75 s, the north face had descended approximately 2.2 m (7 ft).
• In Stage 2, the north face descended at gravitational acceleration, as the buckled columns provided negligible support to the upper portion of the north face. This free fall drop continued for approximately 8 stories or 32.0 m (105 ft), the distance traveled between times t = 1.75 s and t = 4.0 s.
• In Stage 3, the acceleration decreased somewhat as the upper portion of the north face encountered increased resistance from the collapsed structure and the debris pile below. Between 4.0 and 5.4 s, the north face corner fell an additional 39.6 m (130 ft.)
As noted above, the collapse time was approximately 40 percent longer than that of free fall for the first 18 stories of descent. The detailed analysis shows that this increase in time is due primarily to Stage 1. The three stages of collapse progression described above are consistent with the results of the global collapse analyses discussed in Chapter 12 of NIST NCSTAR 1-9.
(my commentary on this last sentence is the following: to call it consistent with the analyses completely dishonest. Their analyses contained no mechanism that would account for freefall. Thus, this statement is equivalent to sweeping it under the carpet.)
Thank you, in turn, for showing the quote in context.
As I am not a structural engineer, I turn to others to help in analyzing the data and report – others who are structural engineers. A thread on the JREF forums from last year – in between the draft and final versions of the NIST report – discusses the findings of one David Chandler, who pointed out the freefall portion of the collapse.
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=128194
I would point out in particular, the second post, which explains that the core failure would result in the load from the upper building falling on the exterior columns, which, according to the NIST report page 44, buckled between floors 7-14. This is the “negligible support” spoken of and accounts for the portion of the collapse that was at freefall speed.
But post 29, by R. Mackey (a structural engineer), addresses the overall point more when he says, “NIST acknowledged your observation, but that is because it appears to be correct, within the limits of experimental error. What is at issue is the interpretation of that observation. NIST certainly does not agree with you that explosives are the only thing that could cause it, and neither do I.”
As a matter of fact, on pages 26-28 of the NIST report, there is a discussion of the possibility of controlled demolition that might account for the observations. The conclusion was that the lack of a blast effect on windows and sound of a blast rules out controlled demolition.
Therefore, NIST provided an explanation that is consistent with observations. They presented the data that said a portion of the collapse was at freefall acceleration. I fail to see how anything is being swept “under the carpet”. They even took a look at the CD hypothesis and found it inconsistent with the data.
While I would be glad to discuss this further in my non-technical way, I concede that my knowledge is such that I have to defer to experts. If you are such an expert, I would love to see your smoking-gun evidence for CD. If you are not such an expert, perhaps you should also concede that there are experts who have looked into the points you are trying to make and have found the evidence wanting.
For now, I will correct one point. R. Mackey is not a structural engineer. He is, as he describes it, a specialist in vehicle autonomy and Integrated Systems Health Management for aircraft and spacecraft. Although most people will not know for sure what that means, I have enough experience as an engineering manager at NASA to know that the distinctions between these two disciplines.
R. Mackey first says, in his post #26 responding to David Chandler, “NIST certainly does not agree with you that explosives are the only thing that could cause it, and neither do I.”
Mackey makes an even stronger statement at the end of his post, “Feel free to propose your own hypothesis if you think you have a better one. I have yet to hear one that is even vaguely plausible.” Thus, not only does Mackey not think explosives are the only thing that could cause it, he doesn’t even think explosives are vaguely plausible.
That is simply an amazing statement to come from a NASA scientist/engineer.
Mackey apparently places no importance on the fact that WTC 7 came down completely symmetrically, whereas the single column NIST assumed in their little study to have explosives placed on it, column 79, was in the extreme corner of the set of core columns. I don’t which is more absurd. To suggest a controlled demolition contractor would only place explosives on a single column and expect the whole building to come down symmetrically, or to pick the single core column in the most asymmetrical position possible.
I think, even though you aren’t a structural engineer, you should be able to see the deficiencies in Mackey’s position.
WTC7 did not come down symmetrically. If you go to the Popular Mechanics article, it shows, very clearly, how the center section of the building fell first – due to the failure of the main supporting structures, which NIST said were overloaded in the first place because of an unusual design. The rest of the building was pulled down after the center, pulled in towards the center by that collapse. In a news clipping, one can clearly see the penthouse beginning its collapse first.
Also, to Jerry,
I NEVER said they were extraterrestrial, I said we don’t know where they come from – that’s a far cry from what you allude. What I said is that they are REAL, solid objects, or at least some of them are. Those that attempt to say otherwise aren’t looking at the evidence, which there is plenty of.
What we don’t have is evidence of where they come from or who/what they are. If you can prove otherwise, please show it.
Rwahrens,
Symmetrically, in this case, primarily means it came down evenly into its own footprint. True, the penthouse started first, but that doesn’t change the fact that the overall structure came down symmetrically. Popular Mechanics did not recognize or acknowledge the fact that it (the exterior structure, which was connected solidly to the interior structure) came down at freefall acceleration for the first 2+ seconds.
Popular Mechanics got it wrong.