OK. A little while back I got interested in the various 9/11 conspiracy theories, wrote a few posts about it, then shut up because mentioning the specific ideas seemed to generate much more heat than light. In addition, it’s an area where the discussion rapidly becomes a matter of citing different authorities: I am not a scientist, it’s impossible to investigate these things to scientific standards of accuracy; and so it is impossible to establish certainty. I’ve continued to look into it though, and my mind is solidifying around certain conclusions.

The best book I have read on it, and the one I would recommend to anyone interested, is David Ray Griffin’s ‘The New Pearl Harbour’, not least because his chapter 9 contains a section called ‘problems for the complicity theory’ which was the single thing that I read that most made me want to accept, once more, the official explanation. The gravitational tug of social acceptance, along with a residual ‘surely this can’t be true, I must be barking mad‘, is there given solid and sane grounds for confidence. Yet that confidence is not enough. Having got quite au fait with the various technical elements of the conspiracy theories – many of which I think truly are barking – I am left with the conviction that a) the official story is a cover up; and b) elements of the US government were involved in the attacks on 9/11.