A HISTORY OF THE 9/11 TRUTH MOVEMENT AND 911TRUTH.ORG Ever since the moment of the first impact at the World Trade Center, a struggle has raged between two broad, competing ideas of what really happened on September 11th, 2001. The US administration delivered an almost immediate verdict, which can be described as follows: Dispatched by Osama Bin Ladin's network and motivated by hatred and religious fanaticism, 19 suicide bombers hijacked four planes, crashed three of them into their targets, and caused the collapse of the Twin Towers as a consequence of the resulting damage and fires. The 19 men did not necessarily require any accomplices within the United States; and no one in the US government could have possibly anticipated or prevented the attacks. Even as the administration exploited this Official Story as the pretext to launch new wars long in the making, independent researchers began to accumulate a vast body of evidence suggesting a different narrative for 9/11: one that considered the significant body of evidence pointing toward official foreknowledge and perhaps even complicity in the attacks. Loose networks of researchers and investigators formed via the Internet to generally become known as the "9/11 skeptics." They presented substantial bodies of evidence to show that elements within the US government must have been involved in facilitating or orchestrating the attacks - in other words, that 9/11 was possibly a classic case of "false-flag" or synthetic terrorism, such as corrupt states have often perpetrated on their own citizens. The first two years after September 11th saw the rise of the Families' Movement , which kept the issue of the "unanswered questions" alive, and which forced the creation of the official 9/11 Commission. The Bush administration acted to delay, stonewall and starve all official investigations - with the complicity of the mainstream media, who either ignored the festering questions or ridiculed those who asked them. Many signs confirmed that there was indeed a 9/11 Cover-up: outrageous conflicts of interest within official investigating bodies, such as the appointment of Henry Kissinger and then Philip Zelikow to the 9/11 Commission; destruction of evidence; the silencing of whistleblowers; and the promotion of the very officials who were responsible for the supposed failures of September 11th. For many, the 9/11 cover-up itself became the smoking gun pointing to wrongdoing: the untenable excuses of massive serial incompetence; the endless coincidences; the insulting meme that "no one could have imagined planes as weapons"; signs that the alleged hijackers enjoyed high-level protection against discovery by honest investigators; evidence that the alleged hijackers were financed by states allied with US intelligence; suspicious and massive international financial trades suggesting foreknowledge of the attacks; and the omission and/orsuppression of any evidence contradicting the official story. The 9/11 truth movement evolved alongside the families' movement. In September 2003, the 9/11 skeptics network was able to draw thousands of participants to research conferences in New York City, Berlin, London, Toronto, the Bay Area, Durham NH, and other cities. March 2004 saw the "Citizens' Inquiry into 9-11: Phase One" at the historic Herbst Theater in San Francisco (where the UN Charter was signed). Researchers and dissidents from many cities and countries flocked to the movement's first great summit, achieving the first breakthroughs in the US mainstream media. The 9/11 truth movement entered American politics as a growing presence. On the final days of the San Francisco conference, veterans of the previous two years of actions and energetic newcomers came together to contemplate how to boost the resources available for 9/11 truth activism; sharpen the message and coordinate actions and conduct a national campaign for 9/11 truth, keeping in mind that full disclosure could trigger enormous global transformations. These meetings resolved to create a formal organization to serve these ends. As a result, 911Truth.org was launched in June 2004. (The web site at http://www.911truth.org had already served the movement as a switchboard and events calendar under the name of "9/11 Truth Alliance." That name is still shared by certain local activist groups, as in the Bay Area.) Under its first executive director David Kubiak and current executive director Janice Matthews, 911Truth.org has been ahead of major developments, breaking exclusives, promoting the best in research and action, and orchestrating coups like the Zogby 9/11 poll of August 2004, which found that a majority of New York City residents believe government leaders were in some way complicit in 9/11. The skeptical paradigm is now the subject of a dozen well-researched books and, since 2004, "Justice for 9/11," a citizens' complaint and petition to the New York State Attorney General, sponsored by 911Truth.org, 911CitizensWatch and World Trade Center Environmental Organization. The petition demands a grand jury be convened to investigate the still-unsolved crimes of September 11th (see www.Justicefor911.org). 911TRUTH.ORG MISSION STATEMENT TO EXPOSE the official lies and cover-up surrounding the events of September 11th, 2001 in a way that inspires the people to overcome denial and understand the truth; namely, that elements within the US government and covert policy apparatus must have orchestrated or participated in the execution of the attacks in some fashion for these to have happened in the way that they did. TO PROMOTE, and in part to provide, the best in investigative reporting, scholarly research and public education regarding the suppressed realities of September 11th, its aftermath and exploitation for political ends, the toxic air cover-up, and the anthrax attacks; mindful always of standards of fact and logic, the limits of what we know in the absence of official investigative powers, and the dangers of rumor and unconfirmed or false claims. TO SEEK justice and redress for those wronged on September 11th, or as a result of the events, beginning with complete disclosure of all records and evidence; reversal of all domestic and foreign policies following from the false premises of the official story; and full accountability for any and all individuals inside and outside the US government involved in the attacks who engaged in crimes of commission, facilitation, complicity, gross negligence, cover-up or obstruction of justice after the fact. TO ADVANCE the insight that ending a world in which 9/11-type and other "synthetic" events dictate the agenda requires the fall of the present US and global system of warfare and fraud, of secret government and hidden economics, of power concentrated in the hands of the vanishingly few; the rebirth of constitutional, open and accountable republican institutions with absolute protection for the natural rights and liberties of human beings; the rise of popular sovereignty over polity and economy; and commitment to the purposes of truth and justice, freedom and equality, peace and solidarity among human beings of all lands, and security and a sustainable living for all; cognizant that the tensions inherent among these purposes are to be addressed and resolved only in an open and peaceful fashion by a sovereign, educated and fully informed people who always hold truth first. TO END, in short, by way of integrity and creativity, the regime that made 9/11 happen; and to replace the system that made 9/11 necessary. We shall work with others who are committed to achieving these goals by way of peaceful transformation.