University of Guelph professors Say 9/11 was an inside job

A pair of University of Guelph professors have joined a growing number of academics and filmmakers who are writing and broadcasting their doubts about the official explanation behind the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001.

In a host of public forums, John McMurtry, professor emeritus of philosophy, and Michael Keefer, a professor in the School of English and Theatre Studies, have presented arguments alleging a plot on the part of the American government, business and military leaders related to the events of Sept. 11, 2001.

More than 2,700 people died.

"I found when I started to read about this that I had this feeling of absolute nausea," Keefer said in a telephone interview. "It's nauseating, I find, to contemplate the kind of possibility that forces itself on you from the evidence -- that highly placed people within the America state perpetuated the crimes. That is what I believe."

Keefer and McMurtry aren't alone. According to reports, some 3,000 books have now been published, each attempting to debunk the official explanation, while offering an array of theories on what really happened.

There have been nearly 1.5 million views of the documentary "Loose Change" on YouTube, and tens of thousands of viewers have watched "911 Mysteries."

Both documentaries delineate the widely held theory that the World Trade Center's Twin Towers and Building 7 were toppled in a planned demolition.

"What I find difficult is to find a single substantiated fact in the official conspiracy theory," McMurtry says in a presentation posted on YouTube.

McMurtry argues the official explanation for the attacks -- that al-Qaida terrorists flew passenger planes into the World Trade Center and other targets, causing the collapse of the Twin Towers and WTC Building 7 -- is, in itself, a conspiracy theory, one that cannot be believed.

"The fall of those buildings could not be explained by airplanes knocking into them," he states, explaining that numerous firefighters reported hearing explosions throughout the buildings just before their collapse.

Keefer said an examination of the evidence shows that more than 100 firefighters reported hearing internal explosions, and it appears that there was a Norad stand down in effect during the attacks. Fighter jets normally respond within minutes to reports of jetliners going off course.

According to McMurtry, the planes flew "around all together for 75 minutes without intervention."

Keefer recently made a presentation to the International 9/11 Citizens' Inquiry conference in Toronto, and has published in The Journal of 9/11 Research. The International 9/11 Citizen's Inquiry brings 9-11 researchers together in public forums.

"The airplanes had to hit the towers to produce, effectively, the cover story," Keefer said. "Whoever primed the buildings somehow knew that the planes would get through. It starts to look extremely murky."

In the time since 9-11 a number of damning theories have emerged suggesting that forces within the U.S. government, along with business and military co-conspirators, perpetrated the assault on New York City and Washington as a way to justify military intervention in the Persian Gulf.

Allied intervention in Afghanistan began in October 2001, while the American intervention in Iraq began March 20, 2003.

Ian Woods is a political activist based in the Barrie area. He has published "Global Outlook" and runs the website www.911inquiry.org.

"The number 1 smoking gun is that Building 7 collapsed," he said. "No one can explain it. They say a report is coming, but it never comes."

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Woods said, a vacuum was created in the Middle East.

"All the Bush administration was looking for was an attack, like a new Pearl Harbor, to be able to jump at the opportunity to attack a country like Iraq," he said, adding 9-11 provided that opportunity.

Fear of being mocked or called a fool, McMurtry says in the video, drives many away from "even engaging the facts of 9-11."

But even a brief examination of the facts, he asserts, would lead to the conclusion that the "official conspiracy theory" is false. Some of the most glaring evidence to date, he said, is that a BBC documentary team discovered as many as seven of the hijackers are alive and well.

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