Debunking 9/11 Myths

American air defenses were ordered to “stand down” on 9/11. The South Tower of the World Trade Center was struck by a military aircraft, not a commercial jet. Flight 93 was hit by an air-to-air missile before it crashed in Pennsylvania. The tragic events of 9/11 inspired an active community of conspiracy theorists who disbelieve the official verdict on its cause. Debunking 9/11 Myths effectively argues why the claims above and many other like them simply don’t hold water.

In creating the book, Popular Mechanics editors David Dunbar and Brad Reagan consulted more than 300 experts in a wide selection of fields ranging from metallurgy to air traffic control. They explain why the Trade Center fires were, indeed, hot enough to bring down the towers; why the hole in the Pentagon was smaller than the plane’s wingspan; how cellphone calls were possible on Flight 93; and more.

The book is structured as a series of claims and facts. Consider, for example, the argument that the clearly visible puffs of dust and debris ejected from the sides of the Twin Towers were not possible from a mere collapse, but were the result of controlled explosions. As the book explains, just like the majority of office buildings, the Twin Towers were mostly air—and as each floor of both towers collapsed onto the ones below, all that air, along with the concrete, drywall, and other debris pulverized by the force of the collapse, was ejected with enormous energy.

Another theory notes that many of the Pentagon windows remained in one piece, even those just above the point of impact from the Boeing 757 that hit the building, proving that a missile hit the Pentagon instead. Actually, as we learn, those windows survived the initial concussion and ensuing explosion because that is what they were designed to do—the windows in that section of the Pentagon are blast resistant and had been installed just weeks earlier as part of a modernization plan.

A third notion concerns a claim that chemical traces of unreacted thermite, an aluminum powder and metal oxide mixture that burns at up to 4,500°F when ignited and may have been used as an explosive, was found in four dust samples or chips near the collapsed Twin Towers. In reality, as Dunbar and Reagan explain, there are multiple problems with this theory; for example, experts at the National Institute of Standards and Technology concluded that the aluminum content in the chips actually came from the aircraft, rather than from charges attached to the building intentionally.

Complete with annotated photographs and an exhaustive analysis of the 9/11 Commission’s final report, Debunking 9/11 Myths comes to a clear conclusion—Al Qaeda acted on its own on that terrible day.