After 8 years, I continue to meet 9/11 deniers

By Alex P. Vidal

“Refusal to believe until proof is given is a rational position; denial of all outside of our own limited experience is absurd.”—Annie Besant

LIKE the group of “conspiracy theorists” that don’t believe Neil Armstrong and his ilk landed in the moon in 1967, there is a group that continued to convince people attending the 9/11 World Trade Center (WTC) Twin Towers attack anniversary in the Lower Manhattan every year on September 11 that “the US Government planted the explosives that toppled the Twin Towers.”

I first met some members of the group on September 11, 2015, outside the premises of the WTC, which was then under construction after being leveled during the violent terroristic attack when two commercial planes commandeered by Saudi terrorists hit the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001.

Last Monday, during the 9/11 22^nd Anniversary, some of them were still there—but not anymore within the WTC premises.

I walked across the Church Street going to the St. Paul Church and found some of them positioned there or exactly in front the newly refurbished WTC, now a terminal station on the PATH system, within the World Trade Center complex in the Financial District of Manhattan, New York City.

I peeked and listened while they tell the crowd “there were explosives found in every sample of the WTC dust.” Not all those listening believed them hook, link, and sinker.

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The deniers didn’t believe the two planes that hit the buildings had caused the collapse of the two towers and another third tower.

“Did you know a third tower fell on 9/11?” a senior male member sitting on a makeshift chair averred.

“The Twin Tower collapses have all the characteristics of controlled demolitions using explosives, including a rapid onset of destruction and complete dismemberment of structural connections.”

The senior male on the chair alleged all three buildings “had to have their columns severed to fail the way they did, synchronically timed floor by floor.”

He said “these truths” were supported by 3,000 architects and engineers that have allegedly compiled “a vast amount of evidence proving that all three World Trade Center skyscrapers were deliberately destroyed with explosives on 9/11.”

Another speaker talking a separate group of onlookers and passersby who decided to listen, claimed “the discovery of pools of molten iron beneath the piles of all three skyscrapers reveals the use of incendiary cutter charges.”

“Jet fuel does not burn hot enough to melt steel, but incendiaries, like thermite, which were discovered in the WTC dust, can cut through steel like a hot knife through butter.

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Meanwhile, some 9/11 families have supported the Bobby McIlvaine Act which calls for “real” investigation on the 9/11 attack. Below is their petition:

We, whose loved ones were killed in the events of September 11, 2001, join in support of opening a new and truly independent investigation into the destruction of the World Trade Center Twin Towers and Building 7.

For more than 20 years we have waited for truth and justice. During this time, an abundance of evidence has been gathered that casts serious doubt on the official explanation for the destruction of these three skyscrapers.

We therefore call upon the U.S. Congress to enact the Bobby McIlvaine World Trade Center Investigation Act immediately. Only by conducting an open and honest investigation will the millions of people affected by this tragedy finally have the truth they deserve.

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During the ceremony earlier, six times the shiny silver bell was rung, once for each moment lives were lost in droves that morning when four hijacked planes were crashed, and two New York City towers went from touching the sky to choking the ground in seconds.

In between moments of silence at the site where so many died, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, sons, daughters, aunts, uncles and grandchildren read the long list of names of those who perished that day, Sept. 11, 2001.

The dead were waiters, firefighters, accountants, police officers, lawyers, soldiers and investment bankers.

Among those on the sacred ground were Vice President Kamala Harris, Mayor Eric Adams, former Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Gov. Kathy Hochul.

(The author, who is now based in New York City, used to be the editor of two daily newspapers in Iloilo.—Ed)