Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up to the Facts
Edited by David Dunbar and Brad Reagan
Hearst Books, 170 pp., $14.95

ONE OF THE MORE unpleasant reactions to the terrorist attacks of 9/11 was the nearly spontaneous birth of a community of skeptics questioning the "official" storyline of events. Somehow these theories seem to have gathered steam in recent years.

The conspiracy theories are legion: the twin towers were brought down by a controlled demolition and not airplanes; the towers were brought down by airplanes, but the airplanes were laden with explosives; the Pentagon was struck not by a passenger jet, but by a missile; United Flight 93 did not crash, but was shot down by an F-16. All of these theories incorporate tiny pieces of "evidence" (or the absence of evidence) and lead to the same conclusion: that a massive conspiracy was orchestrated by a shadowy faction of the United States government in order to draw the country into a global conflict with Islam.

While composing their report, the 9/11 Commission was faced with the difficult decision of how to deal with these rumors. "We discussed the theories," the commission's executive director, Philip Zelikow, told the Washington Post. "When we wrote the report, we were also careful not to answer all the theories. It's like playing Whack-A-Mole. You're never going to whack them all. . . . The hardcore conspiracy theorists are totally committed. They'd have to repudiate much of their life identity in order not to accept some of that stuff.

Popular Mechanics decided to step into the void created by the 9/11 Commission and definitively answer the whacky ideas. In March of 2005, the magazine's cover story was "9/11: Debunking the Myths. PM examines the evidence and consults the experts to refute the most persistent conspiracy theories of September 11." The magazine spent 11 pages carefully deconstructing the conspiracies--including theories that the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center couldn't have been passenger jets because they had no windows, puffs of smoke from the towers proved controlled demolitions were used, and that seismographs indicated that the "strongest jolts were all registered at the beginning of the collapse," showing conclusively that explosives must have been used--and explaining why they are incorrect.

The magazine has now expanded that 11 page feature from 18 months ago into a more comprehensive 170 page book. Edited by David Dunbar and Brad Reagan, the book features a foreword by John McCain and contains reports by the National Institute of Standards and Technology on the World Trade Center's collapse and the American Society of Civil Engineers's "Pentagon Building Performance Report." Debunking 9/11 Myths will quickly become the go-to reference for fighting the madness found on the Internet in relation to 9/11. Do you have a friend who emails you the most recent documentary "proving" that a missile impacted the Pentagon or that timed explosions brought down WTC-7? Buy him a copy of this book. He'll thank you later.