One of the final clips featured in the film ·provides a bridge to the academics credentialing the larger 9 I 11 truth movement. The clip is from Hannity and Colmes, a nightly program on the Fox News Channel. Hannity and Calmes are interviewing Kevin Barrett, an adjunct professor teaching an introductory course on Islam at the University ofWisconsin-Madison. Asking about Barrett's "opinion" and whether he "believes" 9 /11 was an inside job, Hannity attempts to browbeat and stigmatize Barrett as a crazed conspiracy theorist. Barrett responds that he knows, he doesn't "believe" i he knows. He has studied the evidence for two and a half years and he knows.
S C H O L.L\RS F O R 9 l 1 1 T RU T H
As an academic, Barrett is a key point of overlap between Loose Change and the second aspect of the 9 I 11 truth movem�nt that distinguishes it from other conspiracy theories, the emergence of the group Scholars for 9 l11 Truth. The group was founded on December 15, 2005, by James H. Fetzer, Distinguished McKnight Professor of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, and Steven E. Jones, professor of physics at Brigham Young University.20 Afated with the group is the peer-reviewed Journal of 9 I 11 Studies. Fetzer is the author and editor of a number of books on the assassination ofPresidentJohn F. K.ennedy, including Murder in Dealey Plaza: TNhat We !(now Now That We Didn't l<now Then, The Great Zapruder Film Hoax: Deceit and Deception in the Death of JFI� and Assassination Science: Experts Speak Out on the Death of JFI(.
In November 2005, Jones posted a paper on the Web in which he argued that the World Trade Center towers fell as a result of a controled demolition.21 As John Gravois notes in the Chronicle of Higher Education, "His paper-written by an actual professor who works at an actual research university-has made him a celebrity in the conspiracy universe:'22 ABC News picked up an AP wire feature on Scholars for 9 I n Truth citing a Canadian chemist critical of Jones's account of the collapse of the Twin Towers. According to the chemist, members of the conspiracy community "practically worship the ground [Jones] walks on because he's seen as a scientist who's preaching to their side:' So even as the ABC feature notes that few mainstream scientists will engage the work of Scholars for 9 I 11 Truth so as not to lend it "unwarranted credibility;' it recognizes that the academic credentials of the group "could do that anyway:'23 More importantly, the feature alludes to a fundamental · characteristic of the group: they already know that the oficial story of 9 I 11 is wrongj their efort is expended so as to prove it.
158
S IX