Loose Change Versions

[Perpetuo Carlson]

Loose Change is a series of films released between 2005 and 2009 that argue in favor of certain alternative theories relating to the September 11 attacks. The films were written and directed by Dylan Avery and produced by Korey Rowe, Jason Bermas, and Matthew Brown.

Coverage of the film increased in 2006 with the recut release having airings on U.S. and European television stations and over four million views online in four months,[4] leading Vanity Fair to say it could be the first Internet blockbuster.[5]

Loose Change asserts that the account of the Pentagon attack, World Trade Center collapse and United 93 phone calls and crash is implausible and instead suggests the 9/11 attacks were a false flag operation. The film's main claims have been debunked by journalists,[6] independent researchers,[7][8] and prominent members of the scientific and engineering community.[9]

In May 2003, when researching for a fictional screenplay based on the 9/11 attacks, writer Dylan Avery felt there was enough evidence to support the 9/11 conspiracy theories that the attacks were orchestrated by members of the United States government, and started working on a non-fiction version.[10][11][12] The name is a pun on the idea of political change concerning 9/11 conspiracy theories and others allegedly related to it, hence renegade or "loose," and the idiom loose change as coins or pocket change.

In April 2005, the first edition of Loose Change was made available for free on the Internet and was given a limited DVD release with 50,000 sold and 100,000 given away.[5] It cost around $2,000 to make and was made primarily on Avery's laptop computer.[13] Avery's childhood friend, Korey Rowe, left the service of the United States Army in June 2005 to assist with the marketing of the movie.[14] Soon after Avery decided that, "There was new information that needed to be added and improvements made,"[citation needed] and so began creating Loose Change: 2nd Edition. Rowe assumed the role of producer, and Jason Bermas, a graphic designer, worked as production assistant. This edition cost around $6,000. It was originally released in December 2005, but was re-released in June 2006 as Loose Change: 2nd Edition Recut. Before the release of this edition, Avery, Rowe and Bermas set up an independent movie production company called Louder than Words, an organization that identifies with the 9/11 Truth Movement.[15] In April 2009 the rights to Loose Change were bought by Microcinema International DVD.[16]

In August 2006, Rowe was featured in an article admitting to the inaccuracy found in Loose Change, such as inaccurately stating a B-52 flew into the Empire State Building (it was actually a B-25 in the 1940s). "We don't ever come out and say that everything we say is 100 percent. We know there are errors in the documentary, and we've actually left them in there so that people discredit us and do the research for themselves."[13] In 2007, media entrepreneur Mark Cuban was going to distribute Loose Change, entrepreneur Matthew Brown would finance, and Charlie Sheen was going to narrate the film.[17][18] However, this did not happen; Fox News political talk show host Bill O'Reilly interviewed Cuban on his radio show and said Sheen's career would be over if he narrated it.[citation needed]

The third edition of the movie, Loose Change Final Cut, was released in November 2007. According to the Loose Change website, this edition "is substantially different from Loose Change and Loose Change 2nd Edition Recut in the way it presents the information surrounding 9/11/2001. However, it remains true to the spirit that has made Loose Change what it is today."[19] Professor David Ray Griffin was brought on as script consultant, and radio host Alex Jones and Tim Sparke of Mercury Media served as executive producers[citation needed]. Due to an estimated cost of $200,000, this version is the first that is not available for free online, although it is in fact available for free on Google Video and YouTube in a lower quality version. This edition is over two hours in length, substantially longer than previous versions.

Director Avery, producer Rowe and entrepreneur Matthew Brown released a new film through their production company, Collective Minds Media Company,[20] entitled Loose Change 9/11: An American Coup on September 22, 2009. The film is distributed by Microcinema International. It is narrated by Daniel Sunjata, and explores historical events leading to 9/11 and its aftermath.[3] It was financed by Joel Bachar and Patrick Kwiatkowski of Microcinema International, and its world premiere was on September 9, 2009, at the 9/11 Film Festival at the Grand Lake Theater in Oakland, California.

Loose Change 2nd Edition Recut (2006) opens with a brief description of past suspicious and questionable motives in the history of American government. This discussion mentions Operation Northwoods, a plan put forward during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 to launch false flag terrorist attacks against the United States and blame them on Cuba as a pretext to invade that country. Focus is particularly directed at the previously proposed plans to substitute real commercial airliners with pilotless drone aircraft in order to investigate the plausibility of covertly using them as weapons while maintaining the cover of an accident.[21]

Attention is also given to the Project for the New American Century, a neo-conservative think-tank that released a report in 2000 titled "Rebuilding America's Defenses". In particular the film points out a line from that report that states:

It also highlights the fact that during the same year the report was released, the Pentagon conducted the first of two training exercises that simulated a Boeing 757 crashing into the building. It also says that from September 6 to 10, an unusual amount of put options were placed on the stock of American Airlines, Boeing and United Airlines.[22] The opening montage intertwines clips of the collapse of the twin towers and building 7 with a Hunter S. Thompson interview, who talks about the motive, the public version of 9/11, and answered a question saying "Absolutely," that this worked in the favor of the Bush administration.

This is followed by an examination of the attacks on the Pentagon. The film opposes the official story of Flight 77 hitting the Pentagon, alleging that the path of destruction does not match what a 757 would leave. In particular it claims that the size of the hole in the Pentagon, a lack of debris and, little landscape damage seem inconsistent with prior airliner crashes. It also alleges that too few parts were recovered from the crash site to reliably ascertain that they were of a Boeing 757, and that a flywheel observed at the site seemed too small to have been part of the aircraft's engine turbine. Experts officially declared that the wheel was part of the APU, but others say it didn't come from the APU of a 757 but likely from an E-3 Sentry aircraft.

The film also claims that the alleged hijacker-pilot Hani Hanjour had difficulty operating basic controls on a small Cessna that he rented at a flight school, and that perhaps not even an experienced pilot could have maneuvered the reflex angle of turn at the airspeed and altitude at which the aircraft approached the Pentagon, without going into a high speed stall. The film mentions three cameras on nearby buildings that allegedly caught the entire incident at the Pentagon on film, which it says the government confiscated and has refused to release in full.[23]

The next section focuses on the destruction of the World Trade Center. The film favors the controlled demolition theory of the destruction of World Trade Centers 1, 2 and 7. It cites as evidence eyewitness reports from a janitor, firemen, and other people near the buildings who heard bangs, many of them describing them as explosions as well as videotapes that show windows far below the burning floors blow out during the collapse, and seismograph results recorded during the collapse compared to the collapse of other similar buildings. The film falsely claims that WTC 1, 2 and 7 were the first steel frame buildings in history to collapse due to fire. Another allegation centers on an audio recording that the film claims contains two distinct explosions at the time of the impact. The film also posits that the official story of the collapse ignores the laws of physics.[24]

In particular, the video alleges that the fires inside the twin towers were not hot enough to bring the buildings down. An audio tape is presented in which the Captain of Ladder 7 claims that the fires can be brought under control by two lines and it is mentioned that building 7 had taken only minor damage before its own collapse. These allegations follow a listing of buildings that burned longer than the Twin Towers and did not fall.[25]

For Flight 93, the video ignores the mainstream theory of passengers crashing the plane to instead allege that it landed safely at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport where it was evacuated by government personnel into an unused NASA research center. As evidence, the film contains photographs and eyewitness reports of the crash site, media reports of a corresponding and bizarre evacuation at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, oddities in the transcripts of cell-phone calls supposedly placed from the plane during the hijacking, and the sighting of the tail number of Flight 93 on an aircraft in use at a later date.[26][unreliable source?]

In the end, the film gives financial motives for people it says would have benefited from launching the attacks. It first mentions Larry Silverstein, who supposedly stood to receive a substantial insurance payout after the attacks due to a fictional "anti-terrorism clause". It makes other allegations of insider trading and Halliburton's benefiting from the subsequent launch of America's War on Terror.[28][29]

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