4 July 2008
It wasn't only the Twin Towers that collapsed on September 11. A third World Trade Center tower that wasn't hit by the planes also fell. As a report into Tower 7 prepares to publish its findings, Mike Rudin considers how this conspiracy theory got to be so big.
9/11 is the conspiracy theory of the internet age.
Put "9/11 conspiracy" into Google and you get 7.9 million hits. Put in "9/11 truth" and you get more than 22 million.
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This summer will be a key moment for those who question the official explanation of what happened on 9/11, the self-styled "9/11 truth movement".
Nearly seven years after the terrible events of that September day, the US authorities are due to publish the final report on a third tower that also collapsed on 9/11. Unlike the Twin Towers, this 47-storey, 610-foot skyscraper was not hit by a plane.
And Tower 7 has become a key issue for "truthers" like Dylan Avery, the director of the internet film about 9/11 called Loose Change.
"The truth movement is heavily centred on Building 7 and for very good reason a lot of people are very suspicious about what went down that day," he says.
See World Trade Center 7's location
Avery points out that Tower 7 housed some unusual tenants: the CIA, the Secret Service, the Pentagon and the very agency meant to deal with disasters or terrorist attacks in New York - the Office of Emergency Management. And some people think Tower 7 was the place where a 9/11 conspiracy was hatched.
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In April 2005, the first thousand DVDs of Dylan Avery's Loose Change movie were pressed. It cost just $2,000 to make. It was a critical moment for the development of the movement. The makers of Loose Change claim it has now been viewed by more than a hundred million people.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/7488159.stm