A timely airing of 911 conspiracy theories

Aluminium hats were (presumably) checked at the door at the Foundry in Shoreditch on Wednesday night. In the basement a group of conspiracy wonks and curious bystanders had gathered for a viewing of ‘Loose Change’, a film that attempts to re-examine the footage of what happened on September 11th, 2001, and challenge the ‘official’ explanations given by the government.

The film was a particularly strong cocktail, maybe one part mixer to nine parts absinthe – and we’re talking the strong, Czech stuff here, complete with all the hallucinations it entails. Poring frame-by-frame over the images of the plane hitting the towers, it made a number of typical allegations – that the plane was in fact a cargo jet, or possibly a guided missile, or even a missile-toting commercial jet (quite how that would escape detection at Boston’s Logan airport was never discussed). It also relied overwhelmingly on supposed eyewitnesses – whose legitimacy was never remotely questioned - for the substantial bulk of its ‘evidence’. With unintentional hilarity, the film dragged up a quote from Osama bin Laden in which he claimed that he was a man of peace, and therefore not responsible for the attack. Well, QED. So how to explain all the other occasions when OBL, or Ayman al-Zawahri, have exalted the attacks in America, Madrid, London and countless incidents across the Middle East and Asia, whilst promising to scythe down apostates and infidels? Guess they must have been fabricated by the CIA, or the Illuminati, or whoever.

Possibly the most ludicrous assertion, though, came when the film’s narrator claimed that the telephone calls – made by terrified passengers on the hijacked plane to their loved ones – were actually, well, hoaxed. The proof? Some spurious scientific evidence about the difficulty of making phone calls from high altitude, and a demonstration of computer voice-sculpting technology which – given just a few words from an individual – is able to recreate a passable facsimile of that person’s voice capable of saying anything. So, the documentary would have, while the hijackers were slitting the throats of the crew, keeping the passengers under surveillance and commandeering these jets into skyscrapers, they were also indulging in a little subterfuge by recording the voices of certain hostages and using them to make phone calls to their relatives. What enterprising chaps!

Much is made of supposed ‘missiles’ fired from the hijacked jets before they collided with the WTC. News reporters at the scene – many of whom no doubt in fear for their lives, and hardly providing objective and rigorous analysis of what exactly was happening – describe further explosions after the two initial impacts. Claims are made that the buildings were in fact booby-trapped with explosives to ensure their eventual destruction. All of these are spurious claims in the extreme, and have been handily debunked in this excellent article from Popular Mechanics magazine, which dares to use, y’know, “science” – remember that? – to examine just about every claim made in the film.

At one point the narrator claimed that of the 19 hijackers, seven were still in fact alive. So where are they, and why couldn’t they be approached for interview? No answer was forthcoming. Why would such a claim be made? Well, of course, the great thing about conspiracy theories is that there is no inherent pressure to come up with an alternative theory. Just picking through the wreckage and highlighting relevant points, then bringing in other scraps of ‘evidence’ entirely without context or justification, is suffice. Throughout, the film never really manages to point its finger towards a particular suspect, but you can just imagine the makers sitting back in their editing suites screaming “THE GOVERNMENT!! THE JOOOOOSE!!! MOSSAD!!!” as they watch the planes fly into the twin towers on repeat.

Following this treat of a film, the sparse crowd were sentenced to a half-hour haranguing by celebrity ex-Secret Service whistleblower, David Shayler, who actually has a new book to promote, hence his appearance in a dingy pub basement on a breezy Wednesday evening. Shayler rambled for a while about his life and times at MI5, his fight for ‘justice’ and to clear his name, how MI5 could have prevented the 1994 Israeli embassy bombing, what he knew about British plans to assassinate Colonel Gaddafi, and various other related themes which had little or nothing to do with the film just seen. For anyone familiar with the scribblings of Shayler there was nothing particularly new or noteworthy. While he was once a courageous and vital man, who threw a much-needed spotlight on the shady workings of our undercover governmental operations, he has nowadays become a self-parodying pusher of crackpot theories and ungrounded accusations. Towards the end he threw a few choice bones for conspiracy-junkies, cryptically hinting that the attacks in London last July were in fact government operations. Quite how he, as a disgraced former member of the Service, would ever have access to such information, is another matter. He claimed that special ‘operations’ planned for both September 11th 2001, and July 7th 2005, were indicative of Secret Service complicity. Rather ludicrous, yet one fearful member of the audience demanded to know how and when he could find out such information in order to protect himself from future harm.

Overall the evening was a timely reminder of the creeping fog of complete idiocy that disasters – even ones as heavily filmed as 9/11 – inevitably attract. The conspiracy hacks haven’t really sunk their teeth into the London attacks yet, but a leaflet handed out at the door - and Shayler’s baseless claims – offered a few pointers. No matter the scale of the event, there’s always a few DSS-regulars ready to sit up all night in their parent’s basement writing nonsense that, thanks to the internet, will always get an audience. God bless ‘em… ‘cause nobody else will.