Sixteen years after a series of coordinated terrorist attacks by al-Qaeda (as the story goes) shook the United States and the world, the number of questions-raised-left-unanswered has perhaps never been any higher. Through their constant probing, investigating and challenging of the official story, world-class journalists, architects, engineers and families of the victims of 9/11 in particular have, however, to their credit, managed to unearth and pool together enough evidence over the years, to make a compelling case to suggest that the “official” narrative of 9/11 is only a “story” and not an accurate narration of what had actually happened.

Having fought tooth and nail, survivors and family members of victims of 9/11 finally forced the US government to release a classified 28-page section of the 9/11 Commission Report only last year and got through a civil suit against Saudi Arabia for its alleged involvement in the events of that day despite the US government’s desperate attempts to thwart it. Meanwhile, the detailed works of Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh and award winning author Professor David Ray Griffin, among others, have raised many other questions particularly in regards to the background of the alleged attackers which the official story completely fails to address.

This, of course, leaves unanswered the most obvious question: “What did really happen on September 11, 2001?” Well, one answer is: “not what the public has been told to accept.” Another (or rather an extension of the previous) answer, would be, that it gave the US government the “catastrophic and catalysing event like a new Pearl Harbour,” which the Project for the New American Century (co-written by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and seven others who went on to serve for the Bush administration) said was needed in a 90-page report titled Rebuilding America’s Defences: Strategies, Forces, and Resources For a New Century, nine months prior to the events of 9/11, to bring about “revolutionary changes” in the Middle East and “secure energy supplies” for the US.

While commemorating the 60th Anniversary of the Japanese attack against Pearl Harbour on December 7, 2001, the then US President George W Bush had even said that 9/11 was, for the US, “a second Pearl Harbour.” Interestingly, since the attack on Pearl Harbour, many declassified US government documents including one from the Office of Naval Intelligence quoted by the likes of The Independent (UK), The Telegraph (UK), The Guardian, among others, have led many to theorise that it had let Japan attack Pearl Harbour, knowing that that would shift public opinion (set against war at the time) in favour of the US entering the Second World War.

Similarly, top US officials also said after 9/11 that regardless of all else, given the sophistication of America’s aerospace defence system, it is impossible that the attacks could have caught the North American Aerospace Defence Command (NORAD) and by extension, the US top brass, by surprise. While the PNAC document mentioned earlier had, oddly enough, mentioned among its “four core missions for US military forces”, the need to fight and win “multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars [emphasise mine]”, which itself raises a few eyebrows.

But the water gets murkier when one takes into consideration the testimony of General Wesley Clark, former Supreme Allied Commander Europe of NATO, who said in an interview with Amy Goodman back in 2007 that shortly after the 9/11 attacks, he had received a memo from the then US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld. This memo, according to him, described “how the US government was going to take down seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and finishing off Iran.” And what has been done to all of those countries since 9/11 despite none of them having had any hand in the events of that day? Either exactly what General Clark said would happen, or attempts to bring about those ends.

But even if all of these are merely circumstantial, that the facts presented in the “official story” actually contradict the basic laws of physics and other related sciences still cannot be dismissed and has largely been ignored by the propagators of the establishment’s line. Before going into details, let us recall, however, that the Twin Towers and the Solomon Building (World Trade Centre Building 7) that came down on 9/11 are the only skyscrapers in history anywhere in the world to have ever fallen down from a fire, let alone vertically on their own footprints, which alone is impossible, according to thousands of engineers and experts from other fields.

But let’s take even that out of the equation; where the story must collapse scientifically is when one asks: “How did the steel beams melt in a matter of minutes, allowing for the three buildings to vertically collapse the way that they did?” This is because, according to the official story, the buildings collapsed as they did, after jet fuel had melted the steel beams holding them up. But thousands of experts have contested this by pointing out the irrefutable fact that jet fuel—an ordinary hydrocarbon—has a maximum burning temperature of 1200°F, while steel doesn’t start melting until it reaches a temperature of 2750°F. Then how could jet fuel have melted the steel beams leading to their collapse? Common sense says it couldn’t; and that it never did.

Then there are the other scientific anomalies which the official story cannot or doesn’t even attempt to explain, such as the presence of nano-thermites in dust samples, etc. and why the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) final report on the collapse of World Trade Centre Building 7, issued on November 2008, was examined to have had many flaws by numerous other experts including the Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth (a non-profit organisation representing more than 2,500 architects and engineers), which even said that the report included “blatant frauds”. In fairness to the NIST, however, back in 2002, it did say that given that there were “no other known cases of total structural collapses in high-rise buildings caused by fires, it is deeply unusual that it should have happened three times in the space of one day”. Concluding, that the case was “exceptionally bizarre”.

What changed then for the NIST during the six years in between? If we don’t ask, I guess, we may never know. And it is precisely because of the mounting scientific evidence which shows the official story to be a complete fantasy that it must continue to be questioned, if for no other reason.

And some of the most compelling (if there was ever any need for more) such evidences were provided as recently as 2016 in the reputed European physics magazine, Europhysics News, by Steven Jones, former professor of physics at Brigham Young University, Robert Korol, professor emeritus of civil engineering at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, Anthony Szamboti, a mechanical design engineer with over 25 years of structural design experience in the aerospace and communications industries, and Ted Walter, the director of strategy and development for Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth. Their comprehensive study “directly challenges the establishment narrative and lends to a growing body of evidence that seriously questions the accuracy” of the facts incorporated in the official story of the events of 9/11.

The most damning of them all, experts claimed, after a thorough forensic analysis of video footage of the building’s collapse, was that “it revealed signs of a controlled implosion”. A common theory that had been lurking in the fringes of the official narrative for years.

What is most shocking, however, is that all of the evidence mentioned so far actually pales in comparison to the total number of abnormalities that have credibly been identified in the official 9/11 story. The 9/11 Consensus Panel (a peer reviewed research source) alone, for example, has now in total reviewed 50 official claims and has found each to be “a substantially flawed account”.

However, even in the face of such overwhelming evidence, the propagators of the establishment line, unfortunately, have refused to budge from their position (looking flimsier by the day) even after all these years. And the fact that the truth has been kept hidden for so long is a testament to the lengths those who want to keep it hidden are willing to go, including sticking to the increasingly unbelievable official story that the US government and, shockingly, the entire corporate media have been attempting to sell to the public since day one.

But it is perhaps because the official story is so unbelievable given the hard facts that the public has, at large, refused to buy it. According to a joint New York Times and CBS poll back in 2011, for example, 84 percent of Americans at the time did not believe the official 9/11 story.

And it is perhaps because of their scepticism that there still remains hope that the truth will one day come out. But until it does, all the victims of 9/11 and their families, and all the victims whose death was justified using the excuse of 9/11 and their families, will have to wait their turns for justice.

It is a justice that is long overdue. Nevertheless, one which we must continue to fight for, in honour of the now millions of victims of 9/11.

Eresh Omar Jamal is an Editorial Assistant at The Daily Star, Bangladesh, the largest circulating English daily newspaper in Bangladesh. He has a Specialised Honours in Financial and Business Economics from York University, Canada, and can be reached at [email protected]

This article was originally published by The Daily Star.