Conspiracy theories about 9/11 alive and well in U.S.

ANNE BLYTHE - Raleigh News & Observer | September 10 2006

RALEIGH, N.C. — 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, N.C., for example, 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.

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.’’

POPULAR THEORIES

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.’’

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