Three and a half years later, not everyone is convinced we know the truth. Go to Google.com, type in the search phrase "World Trade Center conspiracy" and you'll get links to an estimated 628,000 Web sites. More than 3000 books on 9/11 have been published; many of them reject the official consensus that hijackers associated with Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda flew passenger planes into U.S. landmarks.

Healthy skepticism, it seems, has curdled into paranoia. Wild conspiracy tales are peddled daily on the Internet, talk radio and in other media. Blurry photos, quotes taken out of context and sketchy eyewitness accounts have inspired a slew of elaborate theories: The Pentagon was struck by a missile; the World Trade Center was razed by demolition-style bombs; Flight 93 was shot down by a mysterious white jet. As outlandish as these claims may sound, they are increasingly accepted abroad and among extremists here in the United States.

Straight away, the reader is led to believe the author is speaking from a position of authority, with access to information on these events not already in the public domain. The reader is subjectively encouraged to "trust" the author as a source of information. PM then groups various theories together, to suggest that 'if one is incorrect, they are all incorrect'. This is by no mean true, every point raised is entirely independent of the whole.

We are then subjected to a xenophobic statement that attempts to group foreign individuals along with what they have defined as "extremism". Extremism in this case, is simply anyone who would question the official account, whether justified or not.

Ad hominems at this stage indicate that there is going to be little in the way of hardcore science or evidence in this article. Its primary function is therefore PR.

Let's continue...

To investigate 16 of the most prevalent claims made by conspiracy theorists, POPULAR MECHANICS assembled a team of nine researchers and reporters who, together with PM editors, consulted more than 70 professionals in fields that form the core content of this magazine, including aviation, engineering and the military.

There is no mention if these 70 professionals have studied the events of 9/11 in any great detail. Without being able to place questions into their appropriate context, the answers received to questions relating to 9/11 would be misleading.

Whilst the professional may be providing his expert opinion, they may be unaware of surrounding factors that would alter that opinion.

In the end, we were able to debunk each of these assertions with hard evidence and a healthy dose of common sense. We learned that a few theories are based on something as innocent as a reporting error on that chaotic day. Others are the byproducts of cynical imaginations that aim to inject suspicion and animosity into public debate. Only by confronting such poisonous claims with irrefutable facts can we understand what really happened on a day that is forever seared into world history.--THE EDITORS

You are led to believe that "common sense" is a good substitute for science. "Common sense" is based upon subjective reasoning and is unique to the individual. Subjective reasoning is simply a matter of opinion and has no reflection on reality. I'll paraphrase a quote that applies here,

"In combat, when you have left your enemy with only two choices, he will usually take the third."

The point is, what appears to be "common sense" to you and me, is used to the advantage of others. It allows them to perform the unexpected.

An enemy is not above using Occam's Razor to cover their tracks.

Let's continue with page 2 of the article...

THE PLANES
The widely accepted account that hijackers commandeered and crashed the four 9/11 planes is supported by reams of evidence, from cockpit recordings to forensics to the fact that crews and passengers never returned home. Nonetheless, conspiracy theorists seize on a handful of "facts" to argue a very different scenario: The jets that struck New York and Washington, D.C., weren't commercial planes, they say, but something else, perhaps refueling tankers or guided missiles. And the lack of military intervention? Theorists claim it proves the U.S. government instigated the assault or allowed it to occur in order to advance oil interests or a war agenda.

First off, I feel that this is too speculative a point to be debated by those seeking re-investigation. There is no hard evidence to support the use of anything other than commercial aircraft. To be fair, at a technical level, I do recognise that such an illusion is possible. PM is not being entirely honest on this point, they have lost scientific objectivity.

Where's The Pod?
CLAIM: Photographs and video footage shot just before United Airlines Flight 175 hit the South Tower of the World Trade Center (WTC) show an object underneath the fuselage at the base of the right wing. The film "911 In Plane Site" and the Web site LetsRoll911.org claim that no such object is found on a stock Boeing 767. They speculate that this "military pod" is a missile, a bomb or a piece of equipment on an air-refueling tanker. LetsRoll911.org points to this as evidence that the attacks were an "inside job" sanctioned by "President George Bush, who planned and engineered 9/11."

Here PM has tried to tie together the claim of a single group, with the numerous photographs of a bulge on the underside of the 767 that crashed into the South Tower. This is manipulative, in that, it tries to associate anyone who observes this bulge with being unpatriotic and an enemy of America.

Further to this, the arguement itself is over-simplified to make the reader think that accusations were being made based upon obscure links.

More PR and very poor scientific objectivity so far...let's continue...

FACT: One of the clearest, most widely seen pictures of the doomed jet's undercarriage was taken by photographer Rob Howard and published in New York magazine and elsewhere (opening page). PM sent a digital scan of the original photo to Ronald Greeley, director of the Space Photography Laboratory at Arizona State University. Greeley is an expert at analyzing images to determine the shape and features of geological formations based on shadow and light effects. After studying the high-resolution image and comparing it to photos of a Boeing 767-200ER's undercarriage, Greeley dismissed the notion that the Howard photo reveals a "pod." In fact, the photo reveals only the Boeing's right fairing, a pronounced bulge that contains the landing gear. He concludes that sunlight glinting off the fairing gave it an exaggerated look. "Such a glint causes a blossoming (enlargement) on film," he writes in an e-mail to PM, "which tends to be amplified in digital versions of images--the pixels are saturated and tend to 'spill over' to adjacent pixels." When asked about pods attached to civilian aircraft, Fred E. Culick, professor of aeronautics at the California Institute of Technology, gave a blunter response: "That's bull. They're really stretching."

Firstly, a "scanned" single image was sent Mr Greeley. The natural assumption would be that it is a fairing as can be seen here:

However, when we observe photographs from numerous sources, located at different viewpoints, then we can clearly observe something which is out of proportion:

In addition, PM has labeled their reply on this matter as "fact". An opinion from someone who only analysed a single image, is still an opinion. Even if he were to examine a thousand images, it is still only an opinion.

Fact.

I feel that PM did not approach this issue correctly, nor did they leave Mr Greeley with much choice on the findings he would report. Given the political nature of this event, I also do not feel Mr Greeley would have the freedom to be completely objective in his reply.

Let's continue with page 3...

No Stand-Down Order
CLAIM: No fighter jets were scrambled from any of the 28 Air Force bases within close range of the four hijacked flights. "On 11 September Andrews had two squadrons of fighter jets with the job of protecting the skies over Washington D.C.," says the Web site emperors-clothes.com. "They failed to do their job." "There is only one explanation for this," writes Mark R. Elsis of StandDown.net. "Our Air Force was ordered to Stand Down on 9/11."

Once again, numerous claims are attached to the event. Each of the claims, as well as the event itself are quite independent.

Firstly, the event itself is accurate, no fighters were scrambled within appropriate time period. As correctly noted by emperors-clothes.com, "They failed to do their job". This comment, however, was taken out of context by PM. Emperor-clothes.com is referring to the larger picture, their job is to protect America...and they failed.

As for the Air-Force being "ordered" to stand down, I do not have full picture of events to make a judgement on this comment.

PM is consistantly "loading" or introducing a bias into legitimate points. The goal is to attach the failures to certain comments. This functions on many levels, it distracts, undermines and acts as a barrier to investigation.

This article, so far, is not the high standard it should be and has lost critical objectivity.

Let's continue...

FACT: On 9/11 there were only 14 fighter jets on alert in the contiguous 48 states. No computer network or alarm automatically alerted the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD) of missing planes. "They [civilian Air Traffic Control, or ATC] had to pick up the phone and literally dial us," says Maj. Douglas Martin, public affairs officer for NORAD. Boston Center, one of 22 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regional ATC facilities, called NORAD's Northeast Air Defense Sector (NEADS) three times: at 8:37 am EST to inform NEADS that Flight 11 was hijacked; at 9:21 am to inform the agency, mistakenly, that Flight 11 was headed for Washington (the plane had hit the North Tower 35 minutes earlier); and at 9:41 am to (erroneously) identify Delta Air Lines Flight 1989 from Boston as a possible hijacking. The New York ATC called NEADS at 9:03 am to report that United Flight 175 had been hijacked--the same time the plane slammed into the South Tower. Within minutes of that first call from Boston Center, NEADS scrambled two F-15s from Otis Air Force Base in Falmouth, Mass., and three F-16s from Langley Air National Guard Base in Hampton, Va. None of the fighters got anywhere near the pirated planes.

PM appears to miss the point in this information. I find these events very convenient, especially for the hijackers.

How did they know this information?

I mean, if the Air-Force training schedule was not manipulated by an inside group, someone supplied the information about the exercises to the hijackers, or the planners. There is no point in hijacking an aircraft, if you would be intercepted.

Let's continue...

Why couldn't ATC find the hijacked flights? When the hijackers turned off the planes' transponders, which broadcast identifying signals, ATC had to search 4500 identical radar blips crisscrossing some of the country's busiest air corridors. And NORAD's sophisticated radar? It ringed the continent, looking outward for threats, not inward. "It was like a doughnut," Martin says. "There was no coverage in the middle." Pre-9/11, flights originating in the States were not seen as threats and NORAD wasn't prepared to track them.

The hijackers demonstrate a sound knowledge of FAA technological capabilities and appeared well aware that no hidden secondary transponders existed. They also demonstrate a sound knowledge of radar coverage within the US and appear to have used that to their advantage.

PM has failed to identify tell-tale signs that the hijackers were very familiar with all the various agencies and their technologies. They also fail to identify that this was a well planned route and not something the hijackers left to chance.

PM's lack of objectivity has blinded them to the most obvious facts that can be derived from the scenario.

Let's continue...

While heading a Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) probe into the collapse of the towers, W. Gene Corley studied the airplane wreckage. A licensed structural engineer with Construction Technology Laboratories, a consulting firm based in Skokie, Ill., Corley and his team photographed aircraft debris on the roof of WTC 5, including a chunk of fuselage that clearly had passenger windows. "It's ... from the United Airlines plane that hit Tower 2," Corley states flatly.

This is a good piece of information, however, it does not tell us what was inside that aircraft. Any attempt to describe that would be assumption.

Let's continue...

Intercepts Not Routine
CLAIM: "It has been standard operating procedures for decades to immediately intercept off-course planes that do not respond to communications from air traffic controllers," says the Web site oilempire.us. "When the Air Force 'scrambles' a fighter plane to intercept, they usually reach the plane in question in minutes."

FACT: In the decade before 9/11, NORAD intercepted only one civilian plane over North America: golfer Payne Stewart's Learjet, in October 1999. With passengers and crew unconscious from cabin decompression, the plane lost radio contact but remained in transponder contact until it crashed. Even so, it took an F-16 1 hour and 22 minutes to reach the stricken jet. Rules in effect back then, and on 9/11, prohibited supersonic flight on intercepts. Prior to 9/11, all other NORAD interceptions were limited to offshore Air Defense Identification Zones (ADIZ). "Until 9/11 there was no domestic ADIZ," FAA spokesman Bill Schumann tells PM. After 9/11, NORAD and the FAA increased cooperation, setting up hotlines between ATCs and NORAD command centers, according to officials from both agencies. NORAD has also increased its fighter coverage and has installed radar to monitor airspace over the continent.

PM once again misleads the reader. In the previous 9 months, there were 67 scrambles. The communication channels between NORAD and the FAA were well established and in frequent use. The FAA's stalling to inform NORAD directly led to 9/11.

In addition, this stalling of the FAA can also be interpretated as an act that assisted the hijackers.

How could they know this would happen?

I mean, when terrorists plan an operation, they factor in all the possible scenarios and interception is top of the list on an operation such as this.

Let's continue with page 4...

Widespread Damage
CLAIM: The first hijacked plane crashed through the 94th to the 98th floors of the World Trade Center's 110-story North Tower; the second jet slammed into the 78th to the 84th floors of the 110-story South Tower. The impact and ensuing fires disrupted elevator service in both buildings.

This is misleading. Reports exist of people taking the elevators from the 104th floor of the North Tower, to the lobby. The elevators were only "possibly" compromised at the floors on fire.

Plus, the lobbies of both buildings were visibly damaged before the towers collapsed.

The lobbies were over 70 floors away from the incident and each floor was hermetically sealed. Only the freight elevators ran the length of the building...the same elevators our witness travelled 104 floors down after the impact. The impacts only delivered forces just over half of what the building was designed to take [NIST].

Let's continue...

FACT: Following up on a May 2002 preliminary report by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), a major study will be released in spring 2005 by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a branch of the U.S. Department of Commerce. NIST shared its initial findings with PM and made its lead researcher available to our team of reporters.

The NIST investigation revealed that plane debris sliced through the utility shafts at the North Tower's core, creating a conduit for burning jet fuel--and fiery destruction throughout the building. "It's very hard to document where the fuel went," says Forman Williams, a NIST adviser and a combustion expert, "but if it's atomized and combustible and gets to an ignition source, it'll go off."

This is not fact, its not even a theory, it is a hypothesis based upon a computer simulation that must assume a wide-range of factors. Thus, it is unreliable. In addition, these simulation have never been made public, indicating they are not as technically sound as being suggested.

Burning fuel traveling down the elevator shafts would have disrupted the elevator systems and caused extensive damage to the lobbies. NIST heard first-person testimony that "some elevators slammed right down" to the ground floor. "The doors cracked open on the lobby floor and flames came out and people died," says James Quintiere, an engineering professor at the University of Maryland and a NIST adviser. A similar observation was made in the French documentary "9/11," by Jules and Gedeon Naudet. As Jules Naudet entered the North Tower lobby, minutes after the first aircraft struck, he saw victims on fire, a scene he found too horrific to film.

This does not sound accurate. An elevator has a gravity assisted breaking mechanism that stops any elevator when it begins to drop. Even if all the cables were cut and the electricty was interrupted, this gravity breaking mechansim will still function. A frieght elevator shaft also decends beyond the ground floor. Another explanation is sought for these events.

I feel this is appropriate at this point:

Let's continue...

"Melted" Steel
CLAIM: "We have been lied to," announces the Web site AttackOnAmerica.net. "The first lie was that the load of fuel from the aircraft was the cause of structural failure. No kerosene fire can burn hot enough to melt steel." The posting is entitled "Proof Of Controlled Demolition At The WTC."

This is misleading. The real claim is that molten steel was observed after the collapse. Photographs exist to confirm this event.

PM has isolated someone's interpretation and presented that as the only claim of molten steel.

Let's continue...

Puffs Of Dust
CLAIM: As each tower collapsed, clearly visible puffs of dust and debris were ejected from the sides of the buildings. An advertisement in The New York Times for the book Painful Questions: An Analysis Of The September 11th Attack made this claim: "The concrete clouds shooting out of the buildings are not possible from a mere collapse. They do occur from explosions." Numerous conspiracy theorists cite Van Romero, an explosives expert and vice president of the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, who was quoted on 9/11 by the Albuquerque Journal as saying "there were some explosive devices inside the buildings that caused the towers to collapse." The article continues, "Romero said the collapse of the structures resembled those of controlled implosions used to demolish old structures."

FACT: Once each tower began to collapse, the weight of all the floors above the collapsed zone bore down with pulverizing force on the highest intact floor. Unable to absorb the massive energy, that floor would fail, transmitting the forces to the floor below, allowing the collapse to progress downward through the building in a chain reaction. Engineers call the process "pancaking," and it does not require an explosion to begin, according to David Biggs, a structural engineer at Ryan-Biggs Associates and a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) team that worked on the FEMA report.

A pancaking effect on this type of building would leave 47 columns sticking almost 100m into the air. The core itself, was destroyed. We can observe this here:

Video 7: The Psuedo-Scientific Model of the Pancake-style Collapse

Like all office buildings, the WTC towers contained a huge volume of air. As they pancaked, all that air--along with the concrete and other debris pulverized by the force of the collapse--was ejected with enormous energy. "When you have a significant portion of a floor collapsing, it's going to shoot air and concrete dust out the window," NIST lead investigator Shyam Sunder tells PM. Those clouds of dust may create the impression of a controlled demolition, Sunder adds, "but it is the floor pancaking that leads to that perception."

PM fails to note that the event can also be due to explosives and the ballistic nature of ejections are also consistant with explosives.

PM is not being objective.

Demolition expert Romero regrets that his comments to the Albuquerque Journal became fodder for conspiracy theorists. "I was misquoted in saying that I thought it was explosives that brought down the building," he tells PM. "I only said that that's what it looked like."

Romero, who agrees with the scientific conclusion that fire triggered the collapses, demanded a retraction from the Journal. It was printed Sept. 22, 2001. "I felt like my scientific reputation was on the line." But emperors-clothes.com saw something else: "The paymaster of Romero's research institute is the Pentagon. Directly or indirectly, pressure was brought to bear, forcing Romero to retract his original statement." Romero responds: "Conspiracy theorists came out saying that the government got to me. That is the farthest thing from the truth. This has been an albatross around my neck for three years."

I'm forced to agree with Romero, the collapse did indeed resemble explosives. As observed in the photos below, the visual characteristics are more consistant with explosives. I have yet to find a photograph of any other event that matches the collapse of the WTC.

Storax Sedan 104 Kt Shallow Underground Nuclear Detonation

Let's continue with page 5...

Seismic Spikes
CLAIM: Seismographs at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y., 21 miles north of the WTC, recorded the events of 9/11. "The strongest jolts were all registered at the beginning of the collapses, well before falling debris struck the earth," reports the Web site WhatReallyHappened.com.

A columnist on Prisonplanet.com, a Web site run by radio talk show host Alex Jones, claims the seismic spikes (boxed area on Graph 1) are "indisputable proof that massive explosions brought down" the towers. The Web site says its findings are supported by two seismologists at the observatory, Won-Young Kim and Arthur Lerner-Lam. Each "sharp spike of short duration," says Prisonplanet.com, was consistent with a "demolition-style implosion."

FACT: "There is no scientific basis for the conclusion that explosions brought down the towers," Lerner-Lam tells PM. "That representation of our work is categorically incorrect and not in context."

The report issued by Lamont-Doherty includes various graphs showing the seismic readings produced by the planes crashing into the two towers as well as the later collapse of both buildings. WhatReallyHappened.com chooses to display only one graph (Graph 1), which shows the readings over a 30-minute time span.

On that graph, the 8- and 10-second collapses appear--misleadingly--as a pair of sudden spikes. Lamont-Doherty's 40-second plot of the same data (Graph 2) gives a much more detailed picture: The seismic waves--blue for the South Tower, red for the North Tower--start small and then escalate as the buildings rumble to the ground.

Translation: no bombs.

The conclusion that no bombs were present is misleading. The 1993 bombing of the WTC was not registered on siesmograph either. The reason for this is that the devices are not coupled to the ground itself. The building absorbs the shockwave.

Translation: There could have been...

WTC 7 Collapse
CLAIM: Seven hours after the two towers fell, the 47-story WTC 7 collapsed. According to 911review.org: "The video clearly shows that it was not a collapse subsequent to a fire, but rather a controlled demolition: amongst the Internet investigators, the jury is in on this one."

FACT: Many conspiracy theorists point to FEMA's preliminary report, which said there was relatively light damage to WTC 7 prior to its collapse. With the benefit of more time and resources, NIST researchers now support the working hypothesis that WTC 7 was far more compromised by falling debris than the FEMA report indicated. "The most important thing we found was that there was, in fact, physical damage to the south face of building 7," NIST's Sunder tells PM. "On about a third of the face to the center and to the bottom--approximately 10 stories--about 25 percent of the depth of the building was scooped out." NIST also discovered previously undocumented damage to WTC 7's upper stories and its southwest corner.

NIST investigators believe a combination of intense fire and severe structural damage contributed to the collapse, though assigning the exact proportion requires more research. But NIST's analysis suggests the fall of WTC 7 was an example of "progressive collapse," a process in which the failure of parts of a structure ultimately creates strains that cause the entire building to come down. Videos of the fall of WTC 7 show cracks, or "kinks," in the building's facade just before the two penthouses disappeared into the structure, one after the other. The entire building fell in on itself, with the slumping east side of the structure pulling down the west side in a diagonal collapse.

According to NIST, there was one primary reason for the building's failure: In an unusual design, the columns near the visible kinks were carrying exceptionally large loads, roughly 2000 sq. ft. of floor area for each floor. "What our preliminary analysis has shown is that if you take out just one column on one of the lower floors," Sunder notes, "it could cause a vertical progression of collapse so that the entire section comes down."

There are two other possible contributing factors still under investigation: First, trusses on the fifth and seventh floors were designed to transfer loads from one set of columns to another. With columns on the south face apparently damaged, high stresses would likely have been communicated to columns on the building's other faces, thereby exceeding their load-bearing capacities.

Second, a fifth-floor fire burned for up to 7 hours. "There was no firefighting in WTC 7," Sunder says. Investigators believe the fire was fed by tanks of diesel fuel that many tenants used to run emergency generators. Most tanks throughout the building were fairly small, but a generator on the fifth floor was connected to a large tank in the basement via a pressurized line. Says Sunder: "Our current working hypothesis is that this pressurized line was supplying fuel [to the fire] for a long period of time."

WTC 7 might have withstood the physical damage it received, or the fire that burned for hours, but those combined factors--along with the building's unusual construction--were enough to set off the chain-reaction collapse.

You would think from the length of this piece that there is a lot of scientific information contained within. Well, there's not. Firstly, this is only a working hypothesis, that means they have no physical evidence and must speculate. Secondly, what we are told is that there was a fundemental design flaw with the building. By taking out a single column, the entire building would come down. This may help to explain how the Fire Department "pulled" the building on the day of the collapse. There was no one in the building to "pull out".

In summary, there are numerous glaring holes in this Popular Mechanics article and it is not something that should be presented to the public as "fact".