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NAT SOUND:
(AMAZING GRACE ON THE FLUTE)
NARR:
A street musician sits against a chain-linked fence that separates pedestrians from Ground Zero and plays "Amazing Grace" over and over on a battered flute. He's been playing the song every day for years.
(CONTINUE FLUTE)
But on Saturday afternoons at Fulton and Church Streets, he sometimes is forced to compete with another noise. (Sound up)
DOC SOUND:
9/11 was an inside job! 9/11 was an inside job!
NARR:
The people who are shouting are the New York chapter of 9/11 Truth. Luke Rudkowski, a 20-year old from the Bronx, is one of the group's de facto leaders.
AX:
Believing that 9/11 is an inside job as an American is not an easy thing to believe and it's hard to believe and sometimes I don't even want to believe it.
NARR:
Rudkowski wears a black sweatshirt bearing a picture of a magnifying glass over the twin towers. Like many of the other members he is young, bright and male. Rudkowski was inspired to join 9/11 Truth after an incident with the police when he was 17 years old.
AX: I had some friends who were African-American and they were mistreated, and when I tried to explain to the officer that he was the actual victim, that's why I called the police officers they basically beat me up. There was no justice for me; it basically made me realize what kind of a system we live under. EDIT
NARR:
The essence of all the 9/11 conspiracies is that the American government lies. For example, Rudkowski and other members of 9/11 Truth believe the US government has long carried out what he calls "false flag operations."
AX:
When ships used to fly false different flags to make them look like they were somebody else. And it's actually an attack to make somebody look better, to make somebody's cause. When Hitler burned down his own parliament and blamed the communists, the Spanish American war, the gulf of Tonkin. It does tell a story and it looks like it's repeating. EDIT
NARR:
Rudkowski and about 20 other members of 9/11 Truth hand out literature and preach their message. Tourists take photos and some stop and listen.
DOC SOUND:
If a terrorist were trying to hit the Pentagon why would they hit a side that nobody was in? Donald Rumsfeld was on the other side of the building?
They really knew that?
(Fade under Narr)
NARR:
As a group of children and their parents wait to cross the street, another member of the group provokes a confronation.
DOC SOUND:
Don't listen to your parents, don't listen to your teachers, you're going to be the same people sent to Iran. Investigate 9/11. Because you guys are going to be sent to war.
Find Bin Laden, that's all, George Bush didn't do it; he was in the White House.
You moron, shut the fuck up you're on hallowed ground here. Stop spewing nonsense. You're spewing nonsense on hallowed ground, you moron, you liberal fuck.
NARR:
A lot of the 9/11 conspiracies theories became popular through a film called Loose Change. Three college students made it for about 6000 dollars. It has been downloaded an estimated 20 million times.
Among other things, the film asserts that the Pentagon was attacked by a U.S. military missile and that the twin towers were brought down in a planned demolition by the American government.
The video fingers president Bush's family.
(Start in with loose change theme music under)
VIDEO:
President's Bush's brother, Marvin, is a principle at Secureicom, a company that provides security for United Airlines, Dulles International Airport, and from the early 1990's up to 9/11, the World Trade Center.
(More music)
NARR:
Ideas about a 9/11 conspiracy have since begun to permeate popular culture. Rosie O'Donnell mentioned them on the daytime TV show the View.
SOUND:
Conspiracy in terms of the attack of 9/11?
No but I do believe it is the first time in US history that fire has ever melted steel. It impossible for a building to fell the way it fell without explosives being involved. EDIT
NARR:
An episode of the cartoon show South Park mocked the conspiracy theories. Here, a fictional President Bush explains.
SOUND:
It was quite simple to pull off really. All I had to do was have explosives planted in the base of the towers. Then on 9/11 we pretended four planes were being hijacked when really we just rerouted them to Pennsylvania then flew 2 military jets into the world trade center filled more explosives then shot down all the witnesses on flight 93 with an F-15 after blowing up the Pentagon with a cruise missile. It was only the world's most intricate and flawlessly executed plan ever, ever.
NARR:
Official sources contradict the claims.
The bipartisan 9/11 Commission unamimously concluded Islamic terrorists carried out the attacks.
And Popular Mechanics magazine gathered experts to offer a point-by-point refutation of Loose Change.
Conspiracy theories have served a purpose throughout history, according to Michael Barkun, author of A Culture of Conspiracy: Apolayptic Visions in Contemporary America.
AX: I think that the major role that they've played for many people is to take complex and troubling subjects and to radically simplify them.
He says conspiracy theories grew popular in America after the Kennedy assassination and even more popular after the end of the Cold War.
AX: That simple notion of good vs. evil disappeared and in its place was a reality far more confusing to many people, and I think many people search for some way of looking at the world that could once again make it simple.
(NAT SOUND OF DELI)
NARR:
After a long day at Ground Zero, members of 9/11 Truth go to a nearby deli to talk about future plans and to chat. They talk about the JFK assassination.
But an argument breaks out between Rudkowski and a group member everyone calls Red because of his hair.
DOC SOUND:
Well I don't give a fuck I ain't you. Yo I'm out man I'm out, fuck you Luke.
What happened?
They had an argument over how something was being formatted some technical thing. Video formatting or something, I have no idea (Laughing)
NARR:
The members of 9/11 Truth argue a lot. While everyone in the group agrees that the American government had something to do with 9/11, they don't agree about the specifics. According to Ryan Rodriguez, a student at Columbia University who's a member of the group, there are two main categories of believers.
AX:
You have your LIHOP people which say they let it happen on purpose, which obviously if you're in a controlled demolition belief that's kind of hard to imagine that kind of make it happen, that's kind of "make it happen on purpose" that there's a group within the government that planned the attacks in some way.
Rodriguez says he falls into the second category, the Make it Happen on Purpose or MIHOP category. He's so passionate about his beliefs that he sent a paper written by one of the so-called 9/11 scholars to every physics professor at Columbia.
Barkun says conspiracy theorists often use academics as a way of promoting their beliefs.
AX: In many of the 9/11 conspiracy theorists is a very strong drive to present evidence and reasoned argument. One of the striking thing about a lot of conspiracy writing is that adopts many of the conventions of mainstream scholarship.
Indeed, members of 9/11 truth frequently say that they are simply "sticking to the facts."
Over the last year, 9/11 Truth has reached out to another group hat mistrusts the government.
AX:
My name is John Feal. Back on 9/11 I was working and doing demolition, I was a supervisor for a demolition company. On 9/17 about 8000 pounds of steel crushed my left foot, and I lost half of my left foot.
NARR:
Feal now runs a foundation that helps people with 9/11-related health issues. Many responders and cleanup workers say they were given false assurance about air quality. 8000 of them have filed a lawsuit.
9/11 Truth has been an advocate and fundraiser for the workers. Some of them don't want to be associated with the conspiracy theorists, but Feal welcomes their support.
AX:
They support the 9/11-responder community and therefore the 9/11-responder community should support them. Because like what we are doing. Seeking the justice, the truth and the compensation, they seek the justice, they seek the truth.
NARR:
Skeptics say any conspiracy would have been too complex and would have involved too many people. Barkun says the public recognizes the difference between conspiracies - which certainly have occurred - and conspiracy theories, which are mental constructs.
AX:
The conspiracy theories generally involve pictures of reality so complex that the likelihood that they would supplant conventional accounts is not very great.
9/11 Truth's ultimate goal is another official investigation. The group announced yesterday that it will try to force a ballot initiative during next fall's election that would require such an investigation.
Chris Bragg, Columbia Radio News