We all know the official story of September 11th: four jetliners were hijacked by groups of four and five Arabic men armed with box cutters, who proceeded to fly three of the four jets into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. Subsequently the World Trade Center Towers, weakened by the impacts and fires, collapsed into piles of rubble. Later in the afternoon 47-story Building 7, also weakened by fire, collapsed (a fact that most people remain unaware of). The FBI had compiled a list of hijackers within three days, and it was so obvious that Osama bin Laden had masterminded the operation from caves in Afghanistan, that there was no need to seriously investigate the crime or produce evidence. The "retaliatory" attack on the Taliban would soon commence.

Is this story true? Its central assumptions have never been tested by an official government body whose members lack obvious conflicts of interest. There are numerous red flags in the official story, which requires a long series of highly improbable coincidences. Questioning that story is an act of responsible citizenship.

NIST's investigation is often cited as proving the official theory that the plane crashes and fires caused the collapses. Yet the Report does not explain why or how the buildings totally collapsed, despite the lack of a single historical precedent for a steel-framed skyscraper totally collapsing for any reason other than controlled demolition. And, in contrast to the Report's voluminous detail about the plane crashes, fires, and loss of life, it makes no attempt to characterize or explain the demolition-like features of the collapses -- such as their explosiveness, pulverization, verticality and nearly free-fall rapidity -- except for two sentences in a half-page section added to the Final Report to address criticisms of the Draft.

NIST simply avoids these troublesome issues by placing them outside the scope of its investigation, claiming that "global collapse" was "inevitable" after the "initiation of collapse."

A striking feature of the Twin Towers' destruction was the pulverization of most of the concrete into gravel and dust before it hit the ground. This is evident from the explosive mushrooming of the towers into vast clouds of concrete as they fell, and from the fact that virtually no large pieces of concrete were found at Ground Zero, only twisted pieces of steel.

Building 7 was the third skyscraper to be reduced to rubble on September 11, 2001. According to the government, fires, primarily, leveled this building, but fires have never before or since destroyed a steel skyscraper.

The team that investigated the collapse were kept away from the crime scene. By the time they published their inconclusive report in May, 2002, the evidence had been destroyed.

Building 7 had a number of fires of limited extent and unknown duration before its precipitous total collapse at 5:20 PM. Official reports assume that debris from the fall of the North Tower ignited fires at 10:29 AM.

FEMA's report blamed the collapse of Building 7 primarily on fires, though it was inconclusive. NIST's investigation placed much more weight on claims of severe structural damage to the building. Nonetheless, all theories of the collapse that exclude demolition are necessarily primarily fire theories, since the building collapsed almost seven hours after incurring any structural damage from North Tower fallout. It is thus striking that other skyscraper fires exhibited fires that were far more extensive and long-lasting that Building 7's, but none of these other buildings collapsed.

It is standard operating procedure (SOP) to scramble jet fighters whenever a jetliner goes off course or radio contact with it is lost. Between September 2000 and June 2001, interceptors were scrambled 67 times. In the year 2000 jets were scrambled 129 times.

There are several elements involved in domestic air defense. The air traffic control system continuously monitors air traffic and notifies NORAD of any deviations of any aircraft from their flight-paths or loss of radio contact. NORAD monitors air and space traffic continuously and is prepared to react immediately to threats and emergencies. It has the authority to order units from the Air National Guard, the Air Force, or other armed services to scramble fighters in pursuit of jetliners in trouble.

Routine interception procedures were not followed on September 11th, 2001.