Conspiracy theories about 9/11 persist
Where: Outside Brightleaf Square in Durham, at the corner of Main and Gregson streets.
What: People who believe some of the theories plan to gather and hold signs to outline events they believe contradict "the official story."
Conspiracy theories rarely get more than a dismissive wink and smile in mainstream America.
But as the anniversary of 9/11 nears, a couple of polls show nearly a third of Americans believe the U.S. government either participated in the attacks or allowed them to happen. And conspiracy theorists are getting their day in the sun.
In Durham, the skeptics can fill a church fellowship hall or a library meeting room, casting doubt on the official story -- that al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial jets Sept. 11, crashed two into the World Trade Center and the third into the Pentagon, with the fourth plummeting into a Pennsylvania field after passengers foiled the plot.
As long as there have been historic events, conspiracy theories have followed.
Who hasn't heard the 1969 moonwalk happened in a Hollywood studio. John F. Kennedy was killed by anyone but Lee Harvey Oswald (and Lyndon Johnson was involved). Franklin D. Roosevelt surely goaded the Japanese into attacking Pearl Harbor to start a world war.
"Death usually brings out conspiracy theories," said Jonathan Knight, director of the American Association of University Professors Academic Freedom and Tenure program.
Last week, in an attempt to dismiss the nagging and persistent conspiracy theories, the State Department and a federal science agency released separate reports insisting that the disasters were caused by hijackers using fully fueled passenger jets as missiles.
But a subculture of doubters home in on holes and inconsistencies with video footage, photographs and initial reactions to the catastrophic events. For them it all adds up to one inescapable conclusion: conspiracy.
On a late August evening, nearly 100 people filled a room at Eno River Unitarian Universalist Fellowship in southern Durham. They were from Chapel Hill, Carrboro, Durham, northern Chatham County, Hillsborough, Asheville, Raleigh and Wake Forest -- mostly North Carolina towns with large enclaves left of the political center.
Peter Zarcone, a man who describes himself as a skeptic -- "not a paranoid schizophrenic type of conspiracy person" -- helped organize a presentation with video clips, photographs, collected quotes and other information about events before and after 9/11.
Larry Burk, a self-employed radiologist at the forefront of establishing Duke University's alternative medicine program, was at the front of the room, wearing a small microphone under the fake white rose pinned to his lapel.
The fabric flower represents the White Flower, the nonviolent German resistance group famous for a leaflet campaign calling for active opposition to the Nazi regime during World War II.
Before the laptop presentation began, Burk polled the audience.
Who believed the federal government either took part in or allowed the attacks on the World Trade Center to happen, Burk asked. Most people raised their hands.
A smattering of hands went up when Burk asked who believed the destruction was caused by a planned demolition.
A nationwide poll this summer by the Ohio University Scripps Survey Research Center found more than a third of the 1,010 adults surveyed said it is "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that the U.S. government either participated in the attacks of allowed them to happen.
Sixteen percent said the destruction of the twin towers was aided by explosives hidden in the buildings. Fifty-four percent of those polled said they "are more angry" at the government than they used to be.
"Americans are living through a historical period in which the government is less able to keep secrets from us than it was in the past," said Pete Furia, an associate professor of political science at Wake Forest University. "But precisely because we are now aware of secretive government actions in earlier eras -- nothing on the scale of staging 9/11, but various covert operations and policy machinations -- we're hesitant to dismiss contemporary conspiracy theories outright."
One popular theory is that an elite group in power orchestrated the event as a pretext for going to war in the Middle East.
Many theorists zero in on puffs of dust spurting from the sides of the towers to support claims that the buildings collapsed from planted explosives, not the impact of Boeing 767s and subsequent fuel fires.
The Pentagon, the theorists say, was hit by a cruise missile, not a plane, and Flight 93 did not crash after passengers rushed the cockpit -- it was taken down by an Air Force fighter plane.
"The stuff that's out there is remarkable," said Richard Ned Lebow, a professor of government at Dartmouth University. "People everywhere have a real need to believe that things don't happen randomly. When you have events like Pearl Harbor or 9/11, there's a need to bring them under control. Conspiracies play a role in doing that."
In November, Steven E. Jones, a physicist at Brigham Young University, shot to stardom among conspiracy theorists with an online paper hypothesizing that the twin towers had to have been brought down by a controlled demolition, that the planes could not have caused the extensive damage.
Although there has been much debunking and dismissing, Zarcone, 60, a semi-retired financial adviser and former minister who lives in Durham, buys into the theories. "It's very difficult for people to believe the possibility that our own government would pull off such a thing as this," Zarcone said.
"It creates a trauma within people's minds and hearts because we were all taught to believe that America is the greatest thing since sliced bread and it couldn't happen here, that we had the checks and balances in place to prevent tyranny."
Conspiracy buffs rally around academics who share their views and cry out about academic freedoms being throttled when others question the scholarliness of their work.
"I'm looking for criticisms of the theories, and the only criticisms are even more radical," Burk said. "I'm willing to have a discussion based on facts. I wouldn't be doing this if I weren't persuaded by the facts."
Burk was surfing the Web in 2004, on the day before Christmas. His brother was interested in Kennedy conspiracy theories, so he looked them up. That led to the 9/11 conspiracy world and a host of questions.
"I sort of went down the rabbit hole that Christmas Eve," Burk said.
Un grupo llamado "movimiento del 11-S por la verdad" (en inglés, ''9/11 for Truth Movement''), dirigido por David Ray Griffin, emérito profesor de filosofía, religión y teología de Claremont Graduate University, ha adquirido recientemente gran popularidad por sus afirmaciones acerca de supuestas teorías de conspiración sobre los ataques del 11 de septiembre de 2001.

Griffin es conocido por la publicación de un libro titulado “''El Nuevo Pearl Harbour: Preguntas Alarmantes Sobre la Administración Bush y el 11-S''” (''The New Pearl Harbor: Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11''). A él se le han unido otros 74 investigadores y académicos quienes han publicado una serie de ensayos en los que analizan las inconsistencias de la versión oficial de los eventos de ese fatídico día, así como la reacción del gobierno frente a los mismos.

Algunas encuestas señalan que el 36% de los estadounidenses creen que los ataques del 11-S fueron elaborados con la complicidad de elementos del gobierno de Bush, otro 16% cree que las Torres Gemelas y la torre número 7, que no fue atacada, fueron demolidas con la ayuda de explosivos y un 12% cree que fue un misil tipo crucero lo que golpeó el Pentágono.

La popularidad de las teorías de conspiración fomentadas por este movimiento es tal que importantes medios noticiosos como la revista ''TIME'' y los diarios ''The Washington Post'' y ''The Guardian'', entre otros, han publicado sendos artículos sobre el tema. La revista TIME, por ejemplo, resalta en la portada de la edición con motivo del 5o. aniversario de los ataques un artículo titulado ''The Conspiracy Myths of 9/11''. The Washington Post publicó el viernes (8) un artículo titulado ''The disbelievers'' y señala que los promotores de esta teoría están elaborando un caso en contra del gobierno en esta materia.

Este movimiento y sus teorías fueron hasta hace unos días totalmente ignorados por la prensa y los medios. Su popularidad se debe al auge del internet y a la coyuntura de la conmemoración de los atentados, y se espera que gane fuerza, puesto que el debate público sobre estas teorías apenas está empezando.

En días pasados, el físico Steven Jones, profesor de la Brigham Young University en Utah publicó un ensayo titulado "¿Cuál es la verdadera razón por la que se derrumbaron los edificios del WTC?" (''Why Indeed did the WTC Buildings Collapse?''), en el cual postula la hipótesis de la demolición controlada de las torres. La reacción al ensayo fue tal que 67 legisladores estadounidense unieron su voz para exigir a la universidad el despido fulminante del científico. El alma mater decidió que las declaraciones del profesor Jones necesitaban ser investigadas para lo cual puso al funcionario bajo licencia con sueldo.

Dos días antes del 5o. aniversario de los ataques, el profesor Griffin y otros investigadores se reúnen en Londres para dar una conferencia. Se espera una nutrida asistencia puesto que los boletos han sido vendidos en su totalidad.