Group of loosely affiliated 9/11 conspiracy theorists
The 9/11 truth movement encompasses a disparate group of adherents to a set of overlapping conspiracy theories that dispute the general consensus of the September 11 attacks that a group of Al-Qaeda terrorists had hijacked four airliners and crashed them into the Pentagon and the original World Trade Center Twin Towers, which consequently collapsed. The primary focus is on missed information that adherents allege is not adequately explained in the official National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) reports, such as the collapse of 7 World Trade Center. They suggest a cover-up and, at the least, complicity by insiders.
They analyze evidence from the attacks, discuss different theories about how the attacks happened and call for a new investigation into the attacks. Some of the organizations assert that there is evidence that individuals within the United States government may have been either responsible for or knowingly complicit in the September 11 attacks. Motives suggested by the movement include the use of the attacks as a pretext to fight wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and to create opportunities to curtail American civil liberties. Support for the movement is negligible from professionals in relevant fields, such as civil and aerospace engineering.
Characteristics.
Name.
"9/11 truth movement" is a term that has been applied to loosely affiliated organizations and individuals that question whether the United States government, agencies of the United States or individuals within such agencies were either responsible for or purposefully complicit in the September 11 attacks. The term is also being used by the adherents of the movement, who call themselves "9/11 skeptics", "truth activists", or "9/11 truthers", while generally rejecting the term "conspiracy theorists".
Adherents.
Adherents of the movement come from diverse social backgrounds. The movement draws adherents from people of diverse political beliefs including liberals, conservatives, and libertarians.
Lev Grossman of "Time" magazine has stated that support for the movement is not a "fringe phenomenon", but "a mainstream political reality." Others, such as Ben Smith of "Politico" and the "Minneapolis Star Tribune" have stated that the movement has been "relegated to the fringe". "The Washington Post" editorial staff went further describing the movement as "lunatic fringe." Mark Fenster, a University of Florida law professor and author of the book "Conspiracy Theories: Secrecy and Power in American Culture", says that "the amount of organisation" of the movement is significantly stronger than the organization of the movement related to doubts about the official account of the assassination of John F. Kennedy, though this is likely the result of new media technologies, such as online social networks, blogs, etc.
The movement is active in the United States as well as in other countries.
In 2004, John Buchanan ran for president on a 9/11 truth platform. Jeff Boss ran in the 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2020 US presidential elections on platforms promoting the movement.
In a 2011 article in "Skeptical Inquirer", Jamie Bartlett and Carl Miller gave an overview and analyzed the members of the 9/11 truth movement. The authors found that people involved in this movement, which seemingly is a disparate group with very diversified backgrounds, could be classified into three groups. They join the movement for different reasons, loosely self-assemble to fill different roles, and are united by their shared mistrust in experts and the establishment (government and reputable sources of knowledge) and have a conspiratorial stance. Through their engagement, they each find their own fulfillment and satisfaction. Together, they contribute to the persistence, resilience, and exaggerated claims of acceptance (in general public) of the movement.
Views.
Many believers in the movement say that United States government insiders played a part in the attacks, or may have known the attacks were imminent, and did nothing to alert others or stop them. Some within the movement who argue that insiders within the United States government were directly responsible for the September 11 attacks often allege that the attacks were planned and executed in order to provide the U.S. with a pretext for going to war in the Middle East, and, by extension, as a means of consolidating.
According to these allegations, this would have given the Bush administration the justification for more widespread abuses of civil liberties and to invade Afghanistan and Iraq to ensure future supplies of oil. In some cases, even in the mainstream media, "hawks" in the White House, especially then vice-president Dick Cheney and members of the Project for the New American Century, the neoconservative think-tank, have been accused of either being aware of, or involved in, the alleged plot.
A relatively common, but not exclusive view within the movement alleges that the buildings of the World Trade Center were destroyed by controlled demolition.
Communication.
The Internet plays a large role both in the communication between adherents and between local groups of the 9/11 truth movement and in the dissemination of the views of the movement to the public at large. Colorado Public Television has aired several films produced by the movement such as "9/11 Explosive Evidence: Experts Speak Out", a documentary produced by Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, which once was one of the "most shared" and "most watched" programs on the national PBS site. The station's airing of such films has been controversial for the affiliate and PBS.
History.
Months before the attack, in June and July 2001, two of the conspiracy theory's earliest proponents, William Cooper and Alex Jones, claimed that the U.S. government planned terror attacks that would be blamed on Osama bin Laden. Both began broadcasting the "controlled demolition" conspiracy theory on the day of the 9/11 attacks. Jones went on to become "one of the loudest voices in the self-styled 9/11 Truth movement".
In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, different interpretations of the events that questioned the account given by the U.S. government were published. Among others, Michael Ruppert and Canadian journalist Barrie Zwicker, published criticisms or pointed out purported anomalies of the accepted account of the attacks. French author Jean-Charles Brisard and German authors Mathias Bröckers and Andreas von Bülow published books critical of media reporting and advancing the controlled demolition thesis of the destruction of the World Trade Center towers. In September 2002, the first "Bush Did It!" rallies and marches were held in San Francisco and Oakland, California, organized by The All People's Coalition.
In October 2004, the organization 9/11 Truth released a statement, signed by nearly 200 people, including many relatives of people who perished on September 11, 2001, that calls for an investigation into the attacks. It also asserted that unanswered questions would suggest that people within the administration of President George W. Bush may have deliberately allowed the attacks to happen. Actor Edward Asner, former presidential candidate Ralph Nader, former congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, former assistant secretary of housing Catherine Austin Fitts, author Richard Heinberg, professors Richard Falk of the University of California, Mark Crispin Miller of New York University, and others signed the statement. In 2009, Van Jones, a former advisor to President Obama, said he had not fully reviewed the statement before he signed and that the petition did not reflect his views "now or ever."
In 2006, Steven E. Jones, who became a leading advocate of the demolition theory, published the paper "Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Completely Collapse?". He was placed on paid leave by Brigham Young University following what they described as Jones's "increasingly speculative and accusatory" statements in September 2006, pending a review of his statements and research. Six weeks later, Jones retired from the university. Skepticism arose as to the scientific claims made by Jones and the efficacy of the peer-review process involved in the publication of his hypotheses, and conspiracy theorists responded to criticism by positing still more elaborate ostensible cover-ups.
In the same year, 61 legislators in the U.S. state of Wisconsin signed a petition calling for the dismissal of a University of Wisconsin lecturer Kevin Barrett, after he joined the group Scholars for 9/11 Truth. Citing academic freedom, the university provost declined to take action against Barrett.
Several organizations of family members of people who have died in the attacks have called for an independent investigation into the attacks. In 2009, a group of people, including 9/11 truth activist Lorie Van Auken and others who have lost friends or relatives in the attack, appealed to the City of New York to investigate the disaster. The New York City Coalition for Accountability Now collected signatures to require the New York City Council to place the creation of an investigating commission on the November 2009 election ballot. The group collected more than enough signatures to put the proposal before the voters, but New York Supreme Court Justice Edward Lehner stated that the petition overstepped what is allowable by city law, and ruled that, despite wording in the petition to allow for elements ruled invalid to be stricken, it would not be allowed to appear on the ballot.
9/11 Commission's "Commission Report".
According to some adherents of the 9/11 truth movement, many of the questions that the 9/11 Family Steering Committee put to the 9/11 Commission, chaired by former New Jersey Governor Thomas Kean, were not asked in either the hearings nor in the Commission Report. Lorie Van Auken, one of the Jersey Girls, estimates that only 30% of their questions were answered in the final 9/11 Commission Report, published July 22, 2004.
The 9/11 Family Steering Committee produced a website summarizing the questions they had raised to the commission, indicating which they believe had been answered satisfactorily, which they believe had been addressed but not answered satisfactorily, and which they believe had been generally ignored in or omitted from the Report.
In addition, "The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions" written by David Ray Griffin, claimed the report had either omitted information or distorted the truth, providing 115 examples of his allegations. Griffin has characterized the 9/11 Commission Report as "a 571-page lie".
On May 26, 2008, adjunct religious studies professor Blair Gadsby began a protest and a hunger strike outside the offices of Senator and Republican Party nominee for President John McCain's office requesting McCain meet with the principal scientists and leaders of the 9/11 truth movement, specifically Richard Gage, Steven E. Jones, and David Ray Griffin. McCain had written the foreword to the book "Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up to the Facts", published by the magazine "Popular Mechanics".
Arizona Republican State Senator Karen Johnson joined the protest in support. On June 10, Johnson with Gadsby as her guest and other 9/11 truth movement members in the audience, spoke before the Arizona State Senate espousing the controlled demolition theory and supporting a reopening of the 9/11 investigation.
FEMA and NIST report reactions.
Following the initial government investigation, the Federal Emergency Management Agency issued FEMA 403 in May 2002, titled "World Trade Center Building Performance Study: Data Collection, Preliminary Observations, and Recommendations". The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) subsequently issued final reports on building collapse in 2005 and 2008. 
Numerous responses to these reports were written by members of the 9/11 truth movement. Many of these responses claimed that it ignored key evidence suggesting an explosive demolition, "distorted reality" by using deceptive language and diagrams, and depicted the report(s) as consisting of straw man arguments, such as the 2005 article by Jim Hoffman entitled "Building a better mirage: NIST's 3-year $20,000,000 Cover Up of the Crime of the Century".
In late 2005, Steven E. Jones, then a professor at Brigham Young University, announced a paper criticizing the NIST Report and describing his hypothesis that the WTC towers had been intentionally demolished by explosives. This paper garnered some mainstream media attention, including an appearance by Jones on MSNBC. This was the first such programming on a major cable news station. Jones was criticized by his university for making his claims public before vetting them through the approved peer review process. He was placed on paid leave and has since retired.
Accordingly, in April 2007, some 9/11 victims' family members and some members of the new "Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice" submitted an additional request for correction to NIST, containing their own views on the defects in the report. NIST responded to this request in September 2007 supporting their original conclusions; the originators of the request wrote back to them in October 2007, asking them to reconsider their response.
Pamphlets at National September 11 Museum.
Members of the movement distributed pamphlets that they say told the