Voice of the Northern Berkshires
August 14, 2006

WASHINGTON — The sudden collapse, the seamless downward cascade of the crumbling World Trade Center towers planted doubt in Bruce Henry’s mind.

The way the buildings fell didn’t seem right. The implosionlike plummeting, the absence of central beams and girders refusing to fall, the speed of the collapse — all raised suspicion for the retired mathematics professor from Worcester.

“That was the seed,” said Henry, who taught at Worcester State College. “To me it seems so transparent with a minimal amount of reflection that there’s something catawampus,” or cockeyed, with the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Finally, he came to a shocking conclusion that runs counter to the accepted history of America’s darkest day: The towers, he believes, “were brought down by planted explosives.”

He’s not alone.

Henry and several other Bay State residents are members of Scholars for 9/11 Truth, a controversial group that claims elements of the U.S. government, not Osama bin Laden, masterminded the deadly attacks that killed almost 3,000 Americans.

Members of the group, including about 80 professors nationwide, generally believe the attacks were designed around building support for an aggressive U.S. strategy in the Middle East.

Members point to a string of what they describe as discrepancies in the accepted history of the attacks, including continuing uncertainty about why a third World Trade Center tower, known as Building 7, collapsed without being struck by a plane.

“There is something hugely wrong with the official story,” said Gwendolyn Atwood, 45, of Lincoln, a clinical psychologist trained at Harvard University and a group member.

The group’s theories collide with the findings of the 9/11 Commission and an exhaustive investigation by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, a government agency, launched to determine the cause of the buildings’ collapse.

Fires resulting from the impact of the fuel-laden airliners destroyed the twin towers, according to reports by the NIST, which assigned 200 employees to the two-year investigation.

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