\u201cInside job,\u201d the bartender piped up, without making eye contact. I asked him if he was just making fun or if he was truly a believer himself.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cYeah, man, I\u2019m a believer,” he said, pouring me a drink.<\/span><\/p>\n Fourteen years after 9\/11, Truthers, as they\u2019ve been pejoratively labeled since 2001, have not gone away. Their conspiracy theories can be traced back to the first months after the attack, multiplying over the Internet through message boards, articles and, eventually, homemade documentaries such as the low-budget cult hit \u201cLoose Change,\u201d which racked up 10 million views<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>and topped Google Video in 2006, an outstanding feat in the pre-YouTube era. Organizations like 911truth.org and Architects & Engineers for 9\/11 Truth cropped up, bringing together like-minded skeptics of the official narrative that 19 Islamic extremists hijacked four commercial airplanes and carried out the most devastating terrorist attack in U.S. history.<\/span><\/p>\n There are even conferences<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0dedicated to discussing a broader strategy to push the movement\u2019s narrative into the mainstream.<\/span><\/p>\n Not that Trutherism has been confined to the bowels of the Internet: Celebrities from Mark Ruffalo <\/a><\/strong><\/span> to Rosie O\u2019Donnell<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>to America\u2019s own TV president, Martin Sheen<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0demand answers about \u201cwhat really happened.\u201d Activists staged<\/a>\u00a0multiple \u201cBush Did It\u201d rallies in 2002. Last year, Architects & Engineers for 9\/11 Truth coordinated with the \u201cRethink 9\/11\u201d campaign to score a huge billboard in Times Square questioning the physics of WTC 7\u2019s collapse. Just this week, staffers from the New York Times complained that the building across from them had been draped in Truther propaganda<\/a><\/strong><\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n And year after year, polls find that a percentage of Americans across the country suspect that the U.S. government has covered up its own role in the attacks.<\/span><\/p>\n Members of the “911 Truth” movement protest near the World Trade Center site and the 9\/11 Memorial in New York on the 13th anniversary of the 9\/11 attacks, Sept. 11, 2014.<\/p><\/div>\n In 2004, half of New York City residents and 41 percent of New York state citizens polled by Zogby<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>said that some in the government “knew in advance that attacks were planned\u201d and purposefully let them happen. In 2006, Zogby found that 42 percent of Americans nationally believed<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0the U.S. \u201cconcealed or refused to investigate critical evidence that contradicts their official explanation of the September 11th attacks,\u201d and that \u201cthere has been a cover-up.\u201d In 2013, Public Policy Polling reported<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0a much lower figure of 11 percent — still more than people who said they believed in other theories such as chemtrails, or that the Apollo 11 moon landing was faked.<\/span><\/p>\n Even taking the lower estimate, that still suggests there are millions of people in the U.S. who believe the official story of 9\/11 is a false flag, and that the real truth has been covered up. That\u2019s not a fringe group. It\u2019s possible that you know a friend who\u2019s a Truther. Or a dentist. Or a bartender. Maybe they just haven\u2019t told you.<\/span><\/p>\n My surprise-Truther bartender\u2019s name was Bryan Ujueta. For the better part of an hour, with lounge music piping at the bar and glasses clinking around us, we had an impromptu interview discussing why he thought George W. Bush did 9\/11.<\/span><\/p>\n Ujueta was raised in New York, originally in a suburb on\u00a0Long Island. He grew up working in a bunch of delis and living the life of what he called the \u201cItalian-American middle class.\u201d He\u2019s 30 years old and has been tending bar for about 10 years, but his real passion is music.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019ve traveled the world to play music,\u201d he said between concocting drinks. \u201cI\u2019m a percussionist, I play piano and drums.\u201d He was being modest: His band, Mr Twin Sister (originally just Twin Sister), is well known on the indie music scene. They\u2019re a staff favorite<\/a>\u00a0at Pitchfork, making the site\u2019s top 100 tracks of the year in 2010. Two years later, their song \u201cMeet the Frownies\u201d was sampled by rapper Kendrick Lamar.<\/span><\/p>\n Bryan Ujueta and his band twin sister<\/p><\/div>\n Long before that, though, Ujueta was a high school freshman trying to make sense of the attack on the World Trade Center, where he lost someone he knew.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI ate dinner at Windows on the World, which was the sushi restaurant at the top of the World Trade Center [in the north tower] one month before it went down,\u201d he said. \u201cI went there for my cousin\u2019s birthday. My dad used to go there; his best friend was a sushi chef. He made what we thought was the best sushi in New York.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cHe died that day,\u201d Ujueta said.<\/span><\/p>\n Like many others, he eventually came across the literature of \u201c9\/11 Truth\u201d online.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThe first time I heard that \u2018jet fuel cannot melt steel beams,\u2019 which has become a joke almost, I began to dive into it,\u201d he said, referencing the evolution of that phrase into an Internet gag<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0in recent years. \u201cAnd then, from jet fuel, it went to thermite, which shouldn\u2019t be found where explosions like that happened, but it was [on 9\/11]. And you basically fall down the rabbit hole.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Political scientist Michael Barkun, an expert on conspiracy theories, has explained their appeal as both endlessly fascinating and strangely comforting.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201c[C]onspiracy theories claim to explain what others can’t,\u201d he said in an interview with New Internationalist 11 years ago<\/a>. \u201cThey appear to make sense out of a world that is otherwise confusing. Second, they do so in an appealingly simple way, by dividing the world sharply between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. They trace all evil back to a single source, the conspirators and their agents.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Ujueta describes himself as a progressive (he plans on voting for Bernie Sanders in 2016), a political orientation he inherited from his father. But his dad won\u2019t have any talk of jet fuel and steel beams. \u201cHe is not down with 9\/11 Truth,\u201d Ujueta said. \u201cMy dad is very smart, he was a botanist, he\u2019s a skeptic. My dad is a very educated man. He is almost militantly progressive.\u201d His mother, meanwhile, isn\u2019t very political and doesn\u2019t like to argue about the attacks.<\/span><\/p>\n He sighed and said no one in his family shared his understanding of 9\/11, nor did any of his friends. \u201cI basically can\u2019t talk about it.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n I asked what it\u2019s like for him to be the only person he knows who thinks this way. He paused for a long time and began to tear up.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI would say it\u2019s really lonely.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Richard Gage is an architect of 25 years and a member of the American Institute of Architects. He takes dance classes and martial arts classes each week. Driving around his neighborhood in the San Francisco Bay Area, he listens to KPFA\u2019s \u201cGuns and Butter\u201d radio show. He also is the founder and CEO of Architects & Engineers for 9\/11 Truth.<\/span><\/p>\n Unlike Ujueta, Gage didn\u2019t know anyone who died in the attacks. But he was bitten by the Truth bug nonetheless, around 2006. Soon he wondered why other architects weren\u2019t organizing around what he called the obvious evidence that the attack was a controlled demolition.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt just began to turn my world upside down,\u201d he told me over the phone. \u201cI felt like I was in the Twilight Zone.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Not long after he saw the light, Gage huddled with a handful of architects at the firm where he worked until they too converted and signed what would become his group\u2019s petition demanding a new investigation of the attacks. Today, he said, more than 2,300 architects have signed on. He has left his practice behind in favor of leading his Truther group, boasting of 400 presentations around the world, in 37 countries and 85 American cities.<\/span><\/p>\n Gage came from a very different part of the political spectrum from Ujueta, one example of the ideological diversity of the movement.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cAt the time [of 9\/11] I was a Reagan Republican, if you will,\u201d he said. \u201cVery conservative. I was actually rooting for Colin Powell as he was making his indisputable case for weapons of mass destruction and that we needed to go into Iraq and get those bastards.\u201d These days he simply identifies as a libertarian, disgusted with the political system and both major political parties.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve given our DVD to every congressman, Democrat, Republican, and not one of them has seen fit to take any effective action whatsoever of the worst crime of the century,\u201d he complained.<\/span><\/p>\n But one politician recently made an impression: Donald Trump.<\/span><\/p>\n According to Gage, Trump is the only presidential candidate or major public figure who has written the Truther group a custom letter after being sent their DVDs and literature. Trump’s campaign, Gage said, thanked the members of Architects & Engineers for 9\/11 Truth for their \u201ccontinued support.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThank you for your book and DVDs,\u201d read the email, which Gage forwarded to me. \u201cOur advisors will investigate the claims made by the architects and engineers more thoroughly and draw their own conclusions from there. We appreciate your continued support. Sincerely, The Trump Campaign.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Gage and his group were starstruck. \u201cSomeone actually acknowledged we took the time to send them something and said they would look at it,\u201d Gage said. \u201cThat\u2019s historic at this level of politics, a presidential candidate.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Trump\u2019s campaign did not respond to a request for comment.<\/span><\/p>\n Richard Gage, founder and CEO of Architects & Engineers for 9\/11 Truth, speaks during a presentation.<\/p><\/div>\n Apart from his travels and speaking engagements, Gage\u2019s crusade has changed his life profoundly: His wife left him several years ago. \u201cI was married when I learned about the truth about 9\/11,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s very unsettling to most people. My wife was one of those people. While she agreed with the evidence that I was providing, she had a hard time living with it continuously.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt was certainly one of the most difficult personal tolls on my life, having that be the primary cause of our divorce,\u201d he added. \u201cSo everyone around knows as well that I am completely dedicated over the last nine years now to this subject.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIf I form relationships,\u201d he said, \u201cthose relationships are second place to my mission.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Bob Mcllvaine lost his son, Bobby, in the north tower of the World Trade Center. He lives in a suburb of Philadelphia. He used to teach history at a private school in Haverford, Pennsylvania, outside Philadelphia, educating children with dyslexia. That\u2019s where he met his wife, a reading specialist.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t get depressed — although maybe I\u2019m always depressed,\u201d Mcllvaine quipped over the phone. He doesn\u2019t vote anymore. \u201cI have made a journey politically — I would never think of voting. I would move from this country in a moment\u2019s notice if I could.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Bob Mcllvaine, whose son died in the north tower of the World Trade Center, appears in an ad for “Remember Building 7.”<\/p><\/div>\n Identifying with the left, Mcllvaine doesn\u2019t share Richard Gage\u2019s enthusiasm for Trump (\u201can idiot\u201d), but doesn\u2019t have any faith in Ujueta\u2019s man, Sanders, either.<\/span><\/p>\n Bobby was 26 when he died. He graduated from Princeton in 1997, majoring in English with a minor in African literature. He set out for New York City right after school, where Merrill Lynch offered him a job as VP of media relations\u00a0and offered to pay for his graduate studies. Bobby was thinking either Harvard or Penn. He started at Merrill a couple weeks before 9\/11, a rising star.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cHe was just a phenomenal writer,\u201d Mcllvaine said. “He was working on a book.”<\/span><\/p>\n Merrill Lynch\u2019s office was across the street from the towers, but there was a seminar happening on the 106th floor of the north tower on 9\/11, which Bobby was supposed to attend. His father doesn\u2019t believe he ever made it to that part of the building. The fact that Bobby was one of the few bodies recovered within the first few days of the attack, along with the nature of his injuries, suggested he was near the ground floor when the north tower was hit.<\/span><\/p>\n To Mcllvaine, the nature of his injuries suggest\u00a0a lot more. \u201cBobby didn\u2019t get hit by a fireball,\u201d he said, referencing the fire from the fallout of the plane\u2019s collision with the tower. \u201cThat\u2019s what I know. Bobby must have been hit by a bomb.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n He didn\u2019t come to this conclusion right away. But after 9\/11, Mcllvaine became very involved in the anti-war movement.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI just couldn\u2019t understand why we were going to war for a criminal act like this,\u201d he said. \u201cI went everywhere, I spoke a lot, at campuses, at conferences. Spoke about the blowback of our foreign policy. Bobby was a progressive, loved to talk politics and social issues.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Mcllvaine spoke and traveled up until 2005, in Indonesia, South Africa, Ireland, Israel\u00a0and the Palestinian territories, attending conferences on violence. He joined a group called 9\/11 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows, and ended up traveling to Japan where he prayed with Buddhists. Eventually, he helped lead a march of 250,000 anti-war protesters in New York.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t want to be a victim,” he said.\u00a0“I wanted to have change.”<\/span><\/p>\n The turning point came when he attended the 9\/11 Commission hearings.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI felt then that this whole thing has been a big lie,\u201d he said. \u201cPeople just don\u2019t want to talk about it. That, to me, simplifies my life. I don\u2019t have to bicker or complain with other 9\/11 family members — I just say, this is how my son died.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n His status as the father of a victim hasn\u2019t protected him from critics of the Truther camp. Rush Limbaugh once came after him. He also appeared on Bill O\u2019Reilly\u2019s show on Fox News, noting he was careful to do it via satellite in case O\u2019Reilly tried to beat him up. But he also says that after one Fox News segment a few years ago, presidential candidate Mike Huckabee and Fox host Geraldo Rivera both told him footage of WTC 7 looked like a controlled demolition to them.<\/span><\/p>\n Mcllvaine also said he gets anonymous calls from the CIA or FBI encouraging him and saying they agree it was an inside job.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIf you really decided to look into this, there\u2019s no doubt in my mind you would become a so-called 9\/11 Truther.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n An example of the many charts, memes and graphics put out by proponents of “9\/11 Truth”; this image disputes the official account of how American Airlines Flight 77 crashes into the western side of the Pentagon Sept. 11, 2001. Click to enlarge<\/p><\/div>\n The common thread between these three believers, and others I spoke with, is the sense of isolation from regular social scenes and the reinforcement from the tightly knit 9\/11 Truth community.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s brutal. I will never volunteer to talk about it,\u201d Mcllvaine said. \u201cIn my circles, people ignore it. It\u2019s like I\u2019m a leper. I don\u2019t see many people anymore.\u201d He says his wife supports him, but doesn\u2019t want to talk about how Bobby died. She says it doesn\u2019t matter, if even his theories are true, because it won\u2019t bring her son back. \u201cIf she started talking about that she wouldn\u2019t have any friends.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n When asked if most of his friends come from the movement these days, Mcllvaine said it was indeed a saving grace. \u201cI know so many people through 9\/11 Truth.\u201d Richard Gage, too, said about half of his friends are 9\/11 Truth activists. His colleague and fellow Truther, Steven Dusterwald, said his \u201cregular\u201d friends simply do not want to hear about it. \u201cWe\u2019re out to bowl,\u201d they say. \u201cWe don\u2019t wanna hear your crazy theories.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n But within the movement, they have a safe space. Carrying around the belief that your own government took the lives of 3,000 fellow citizens a few years back is a fair bit heavier than believing the moon landing was a Hollywood production. Some, like Bryan Ujueta the bartender, rely on the wealth of literature online, proof that it\u2019s not just his own wild theory. Others more directly involved, like Gage, Dusterwald or Mcllvaine, belong to a community that understands and accepts them.<\/span><\/p>\n What\u2019s more, they all believe that community, thanks to the disaffected millennial generation, is only getting bigger. \u201cI think it will take about another 20 years,\u201d Ujueta said. \u201cIn about 20 years people will start to piece things together.\u201d Gage is optimistic his group is on the cusp of finally getting some respect.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cI keep wondering, hoping, that this is the year that we get the breakthrough,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n Polling does show that millennials are far less trusting of the government than their parents. A 2014 survey<\/a><\/strong><\/span>\u00a0by Harvard found that young people\u2019s \u201ccynicism toward the political process\u201d has never been higher. \u201cThere\u2019s an erosion of trust in the individuals and institutions that make government work \u2014 and now we see the lowest level of interest in any election we\u2019ve measured since 2000,\u201d polling director\u00a0John Della Volpe said at the time. This year, a second poll<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong><\/span>from Harvard showed more of the same, with 83 percent of millennials showing \u201cno faith\u201d in Congress.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThis is a more cynical generation when it comes to political institutions,\u201d Volpe repeated this time around.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s unclear whether disillusionment with politics will send Trutherism into the mainstream: as Ujueta himself noted, and Gage admitted, the theory remains a widespread joke on and off the Internet these days among the younger generation. While some millennials may view the movement as relevant as it was in 2001, many view it as a punch line<\/a><\/strong><\/span>. That alone is yet another bad break for the ostracized community.<\/span><\/p>\n Near the end of our conversation, even Gage confessed he misses his life before 9\/11 Truth.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cIt is tiring after nine\u00a0years, I have to say,\u201d he said. \u201cI am an architect, I\u2019d rather be practicing architecture. I\u2019ve been full time as a 9\/11 Truth activist for five\u00a0years and I\u2019m looking forward to going back to architecture. I make more money, I have more fun.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n![\"Members](\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/911_truth1.jpg\")
<\/a>\u2018It\u2019s Really Lonely\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"Bryan](\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/bryan_ujueta_and_his_band__twin_sister.jpg\")
<\/a>Trump 2016\u00a0Writes \u2018Historic\u2019 Letter To Truthers<\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"Richard](\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/richard_gage.jpg\")
<\/a>\u2018This Is How My Son Died\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"911_truth_poster\"](\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/911_truth_poster.jpg\")
<\/a>![\"An](\"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/09\/911_truth_pentagon_diagram.jpg\")
<\/a>\u2018It’s Like I\u2019m A Leper\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n