A shocking 81 percent of the American public believes that the United States government is not telling the truth about the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, according to a recent poll conducted by The New York Times and CBS News.
"The truth about 9/11 is getting harder and harder for the average American to ignore," said Dylan Avery, filmmaker and creator of the 9/11 documentary "Loose Change."
"In spite of minimal coverage by the media, the truth movement is gaining momentum and credibility throughout mainstream America."
Everyday people from all walks of life are turning to political advocacy as a result of disillusionment with American media and a growing mistrust of their own government.
"These statistics are being completely ignored by most major news organizations, or as in the case of the New York Times poll, pushed back below the fold on page 13," said Jensen Bell, a journalist who runs a "truth site" on the Myspace social network. "The media has been proven complicit in printing stories damaging to those in power on a Friday, when it will least affect the public. It's called a news dump.
"These are conscious acts on the part of the corporations that control and profit off of the information media, and it is reprehensible."
Advocates like Avery and Bell are a part of a growing "alternative media" which claims that many of the underlying facts of 9/11 are being purposefully withheld from the American public.
"The mainstream media is owned by parent companies like Viacom, Disney and General Electric. Take a quick look at the people on the board of directors for these companies and you will find that the same people are serving on the board of directors of major weapon companies and banks," said Ryan Dawson, author of "Welcome to the USSA: Corruption in the Government and Media." "War is a method of profiteering and thus the mainstream media promotes it as well as the official story of 9/11."
Many of these advocates adhere to this position that the American media has become, or has always been, more concerned with its own business interests than the welfare of the public it proclaims to serve.
"Corporations who control media serve the elite business community. By consciously reducing the importance of stories vital to the populace and elevating stories that serve to distract or confuse the people, they buy big business another vacation from public scrutiny," Bell said. "If there is any truth to the complicity of military industrial elite forces within our own governmental structure in the attacks of 9/11, pointing the attention of the citizens to it could be disastrous for business."
Regardless of the media's willingness, or lack thereof, to talk about 9/11 "conspiracy theories" these polls show a definite trend towards rejection of the "official story."
The CBS/NYT national survey found that only 16 percent of respondents said that the United States government under George W. Bush was telling the truth about the terrorist attacks, which is down five points from a similar poll taken by CBS/NYT in October of 2002.
The majority, 53 percent, claimed that the Bush Administration is "hiding something," 28 percent said that it was "mostly lying," which is 20 points up from the 2002 poll.
A Scripps-Howard/University of Ohio poll released two months prior worded the question much more specifically. It found that 36 percent of respondents overall said it is "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that federal officials "either participated in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon or took no action to stop them in because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East."
The same poll found that people who regularly use the Internet, but do not regularly watch mainstream media are significantly more likely to believe in 9/11 conspiracies. Likewise, people who regularly read daily newspapers or watch television newscasts were especially unlikely to believe in the conspiracies.
"The American public and international community has a dwindling trust in the United States government and people are almost forced to seek alternative venues for information," Avery said. "The Internet is a way of reporting and archiving information that was either marginalized by the mainstream media, or ignored entirely."
Much of the self-proclaimed "truth movement" is in agreement with this view.
"People turned off their TVs because they were tired of being lied to," Dawson said. "FOX is a total joke and the head anchor for CNN is a former AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee) employee, they couldn't be any more transparent.
"People who were anti-war turned to the web because every television news outlet did nothing but bark out the government's agenda and propaganda."
The Scripps-Howard poll also found that 54 percent of respondents were "personally more angry" with the United States government than they used to be.
It is a commonly held belief by conspiracy skeptics that the statistical increase of those who question 9/11 is in reality a direct result of the unpopular war in Iraq and criticism of the current presidential administration. Opinions inside the "truth community" are divided on this particular matter.
"Yes, I think this is the case. Once the trustworthiness of a source of information is compromised then any aspect of their untrustworthy information is now in question," Bell said. "The previous lack of skepticism was due in large part to an already largely held world-view that our American government would never do anything that evil. Abu Graib, Gitmo, Katrina, the NSA spying, the suspension of Habeas Corpus and the secret detention centers in Eastern Europe all paint a large picture revealing a cruelty and betrayal that many Americans would have never thought possible just a few years ago.
"This new perception allows for more acceptance of clear and convincing science that contradicts the official story."
Some truth activists remain ambiguous on the issue.
"I wouldn't say that it is a direct result," Avery said. "I consider it one of many catalysts."
Many disagree with this premise outright.
"No, I think it's the other way around," Dawson said. "Many question the war because they question 9/11, and they question 9/11 because it is easier to understand. Even a child can figure out that the official story is bogus, the key thing for most being Building 7. If the media had not been telling everyone over and over again that it was terrorism, I think most people would have watched the collapses and assumed they were demolitions. Fire burns buildings, it does not implode them."
The collapse of World Trade Center 7 is a central issue within the truth movement and what many refer to as a "smoking gun." Building 7 collapsed at 5:20 p.m. on Sept. 11 and was the third steel building in history to collapse due to fire. The first two occurred earlier that morning.
The 47-story office complex was home to FBI headquarters, CIA headquarters and Rudolph Giuliani's $15 million Emergency Command Center. It was a 100 percent steel frame building and composed of 58 perimeter columns and 25 core columns. It collapsed completely to the ground in less than seven seconds, due to internal fires.
The collapse of World Trade Center 7 was seldom reported in the news media and was not once mentioned in the 600-page 9/11 Commission Report.
A poll sponsored by 911truth.org and conducted by Zogby International in March of 2006 found that 48 percent of respondents were unaware of World Trade Center 7's collapse.
This is very relevant because the number of respondents who support a new investigation of 9/11(45 percent) is roughly the same as the number who knew about building 7 (52 percent). It can reasonably be surmised that if the entire public were exposed to independent 9/11 research an overwhelming majority would support a new investigation.
