EIGHT years after Sept. 11, the debate over what ex actly happened that tragic day — and who is to blame — rages on.
Several of the most widely known tenets dear to the hearts of those who don’t believe the official explanation for what brought down the Twin Towers are put to the test Monday night in an unusual National Geographic Channel special, “9/11: Science and Conspiracy.”
* Was the Pentagon hit by an airplane or a missile?
* Did the Twin Towers really collapse from fires caused by burning jet fuel?
* Or were carefully placed explosives inside the buildings the real cause of its collapse?
The special is built around a series of scientific experiments that were conducted under the watchful eyes of a group of Truthers — the name the conspiracy movement has given itself.
But at least one local Truther — Sander Hicks, producer of WeDemandTransparency.com and author of the controverisial conspiracy book, “The Big Wedding” — has seen a critic’s DVD of the special and has his own reaction:
“This documentary is clearly part of the cover-up,” he says.
Hicks takes issue with everything from the way the documentary seemed to brush off Truthers as being “sick, stupid and psychologically damaged because we need the truth,” he says, to its choice of scientific experts.
Not suprisingly, his biggest criticism was with the way the experiments were conducted.
“It’s pseudo-science,” Hicks says. “Any high school student would tell you, to do experiments in New Mexico [where much of the pyrotechnic tests were conducted] with different kinds of materials is a joke.”
The explosives planted in the WTC argument? The TV special tested with only regular thermite (a pyrotechnic compound) and not “super thermite” as Truthers believe was the culprit.
“That’s like saying, ‘We want to do an experiment with whiskey, but we’re going to use beer instead,” Hicks says.
While the reason for this is explained in the documentary — there’s a question as to super thermite’s actual existence — executive producer Erik Nelson says he’d been dealing with the debunking debunkers for a while now.
Nelson, who says he “didn’t have a dog in this hunt,” insists that the goal of “9/11: Science and Conspiracy” wasn’t to debunk Truthers, sway any minds or hide contrary test results.
The producer concedes he would’ve loved it if the Truther theories were proven correct.
“Our ratings would’ve gone through the roof!” he says.
“What do you think is more ratings grabbing: proof 9/11 was a conspiracy or proof that the official story was correct?” he asks. “It would’ve been fantastic to prove that the Truthers were correct, but sadly — as far as my ratings are concerned — that’s not what happened.
“I would say that [Hicks’] response would be no different from the Truthers we shared our results with in the film,” Nelson says — “absolute rejection of every single point we’re bringing up.”
He goes on to add that “there’s no more pseudo-science used in our forensic tests than the pseudo-science used in promoting the Truther theo-
One thing that Hicks did like about the documentary was that it gave the featured Truthers a fair shake.
They “come off as careful and professional, unemotional, but compassionate about the truth,” he says. “A lot of times a documentary like this will cut up their words,” but this one didn’t.
“I actually take great hope from this [documentary] because it really shows that our opposition is on the ropes,” Hicks says.
“One good thing about this documentary is that it’s showing that the topic is still relevant and that the case isn’t closed.”