Seven

I don't believe in any particular conspiracy theories. I've always been disgusted by the 9/11 Truth people and their gospel, Loose Change. I think it does an injustice to al-Qaeda and its extraordinary skills to attribute 9/11 to the U.S. government. Give credit where credit is due.

Nevertheless, there's something fishy about the collapse of World Trade Center 7. If you'll recall, that was the third building to come crashing down on 9/11. The collapse happened well after the two towers fell, in the late afternoon. By then, the building had been evacuated and fire fighters cleared from the area.

World Trade Center 7 was the first modern building to collapse because of a fire. According to the official explanation, the tower was set alight and damaged by debris from the falling Twin Towers. The fire burned up tons of desks and office chairs until the supporting columns gave way. Here's what it looked like from a few streets away:

There It Goes!

The conspiracy theorists beg to differ. They say that the building was brought down by explosives. The conspiracy theory won so many followers and so much attention that the government finally had to address it. Today, they issued a report that supposedly debunked the conspiracy theorists. A panel of engineers and like-minded intellects concluded that the fire was powerful enough to burn through the columns. They also concluded that explosives would be too loud to carry off the operation in secret. Had there been a detonation, people would've heard the boom from miles away.

One problem with that: the engineers didn't bother to address the conspiracy theorists' claim that a certain well-known type of explosive that doesn't give off a pop might've been situated right next to the main column holding up the building. Why didn't the engineers investigate this theory? Because they didn't think there were explosives next to the column. That's their actual reason. 'Why wonder if there were noiseless explosives next to the column, if we don't believe there were any?'

Another thing: World Trade Center 7 housed the offices of the CIA, the Secret Service, and Giuliani's emergency bunker, designed to allow the mayor to run the city in the event of a disaster (how ironic that it was pulverized in the disaster). Might this world-class consortium of covert organizations have reason to evaporate the immense, unsecured archives in their office building?

The other oddity about World Trade Center 7 is that BBC News reported the building collapsed twenty minutes before it did; and CNN reported that it had either 'collapsed or is near collapsing' an hour before the actual event. See for yourself:

BBC jumps the gun
CNN is even earlier

Maybe the truth got scrambled in real time. Maybe the firefighters on the scene could tell that the building was buckling and warping, and told the media. Or maybe there was an unintelligible conspiracy at the heart of World Trade Center 7.

I happen not to believe in the conspiracy. But I like the eeriness.