by PATRICK LEJTENYI

It didn’t take long for conspiracy theorists to garner attention on the blogosphere and talk-radio airwaves after Sept. 11, 2001. From Alex Jones’ howling into the Texas wilderness to the 20-something makers of Loose Change, an 80-minute Internet film phenomenon that’s been viewed over 10 million times since April, 2005, the idea that elements of the U.S. government were at best criminally negligent or at worst planned and executed the attacks strikes a chord deep in many people’s minds. According to a May 2006 Zogby poll cited in a Vanity Fair article on Loose Change, 42 per cent of Americans believe the U.S. government and the 9/11 Commission did not investigate all the facts and that there has been a cover-up.

That’s also more or less the position of the Canadian Action Party, a fringe federal party founded by Lester B. Pearson’s Defence Minister and exopolitics advocate Paul Hellyer (a Dec. 1, 2005 Mirror Angel of the Week for his work in the field of intergalactic peace activism). Michael Pengue, the CAP’s Montreal-based treasurer, will be holding a day dedicated to exposing “The Truth and Lies Behind 9/11 and the ‘War on Terror’” this Sunday, Oct. 22. All are welcome.

Attack of the cave people

Pengue believes that the official story—that 19 hijackers with poor flying skills taking orders from “people living in caves” were able to pull a fast one on the world’s most sophisticated military machine—is “outrageous.” And while he can’t prove it, he thinks that, by pointing out the holes in the official version, enough doubt can be raised to suggest something much more sinister.

To be sure, Loose Change and fellow travellers point to some curious anomalies. By picking at certain disputable facts—like secondary explosions heard in the Twin Towers before they collapsed, and the horizontal plumes of smoke expelled many floors below the pulverizing concrete and steel as they came down—suggestions are made that explosives brought down the Twin Towers. The hole in the Pentagon suggests a missile, not an airplane, struck the E-wing, and Flight 93 was probably shot down by a U.S. jet. There are other theories, of course, not all of which Pengue believes. “Loose Change is a bit too conspiratorial,” he says.

It doesn’t matter that these suggestions can be refuted, and were. The most famous myth-debunker is the March 2005 Popular Mechanics cover story, easily available online, which dismisses the pseudo-science behind many 9/11 conspiracy theories. But the current White House administration’s pathological secretiveness and its subsequent actions do nothing to allay the fears and suspicions of people like Pengue (who told the Mirror he was taping the phone conversation). Of the Pentagon strike, he says, “There was a gas station security camera that was pointing right at it, it showed what hit the damn Pentagon, but the tape was confiscated by the FBI. Give us the damn truth.”

Mission accomplished?

The conspiracies certainly don’t end with 9/11. The top military and intelligence brass certainly got off easy, he says. “No one was reprimanded, no one was fired and no one was told to resign.” They were rewarded with “skyrocketing” budgets, Pengue says.

He also calls the London 7/7 bombings “another farce” because the British were supposedly carrying out an exercise simulating a terror attack against its subway system the same day, just as the Americans were carrying out exercises simulating a terror hijacking on 9/11. “Was it a coincidence?” he asks. “What was it? A way of hiding their hand in their own complicity?”

But if 9/11, 7/7 and others we don’t know about yet were indeed conspiracies, they certainly weren’t very successful. George W. Bush and the war in Iraq are equally abysmally unpopular, and the Republicans look like they’ll be losing control of Congress next month. “It’s like a snake eating its own tail, they’re digging their own graves,” says Pengue. “But they might pull off something else…. It could happen.”

But the damage may already be done, he believes. That’s why it’s more important than ever to search out the truth. “We want people to learn more, because if we don’t have the truth, democracy fails miserably.”

Concordia economics professor Michel Chossudovsky, Toronto lawyer Rocco Galati, who often represents defendants in terror-related cases, Hellyer and former U.S. Air Force officer Robert Bowman will attend the conference. There will be a screening of Improbable Collapse, a new film that examines the World Trade Center’s alleged demolition by explosives “from a scientific perspective,” and Celsius 9/11: World Takeover and the War on Terror, which, according to a blurb, “asks the tough questions Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11 does not dare delve into.”

The conference takes place uunday, Oct. 22 at Centre St-Pierre (1212 Panet #1205), 2:50 p.m., free, donations welcome