9/11 myths that won't go away

Fourteen years later, the effects of 9/11 are still being felt today.

Most people remember exactly where they were and exactly what they were doing on September 11, 2001 with remarkable accuracy. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for what actually happened on that day. With the passage of time, rumours and myths continue to persist.

Conspiracy theorists and “9/11 truthers” have blurred the line between fact and fiction even more. Therefore, as we approach the fourteenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, we thought we'd set the record straight on the most persuasive 9/11 myths out there, still confusing the public today.

1. “Tower Seven was a controlled demolition”

In addition to the Twin Towers, another tower fell on September 11. This one was World Trade Center Seven and it collapsed at 5:20 p.m. EST – several hours after towers one and two. This led many people to believe that Tower Seven was part of a controlled demolition and was brought down by explosive charges placed inside by the U.S. government, rather than by the planes that brought down its sister buildings. Conspiracy theorists point to the fall of Tower Seven as evidence that “9/11 was an inside job” meant to destabilize the world's geopolitical dynamics and provide the Bush administration with an excuse to invade Iraq and “finish the job Bush's daddy started.”

On first reading, there may seem to be legitimate elements to the idea of a controlled demolition. After all, Tower Seven was separate from the Twin Towers and the rest of the buildings on World Trade Plaza -- connected to the main complex only by two pedestrian bridges extending from its third floor. Seven World Trade Center was not impacted by the two planes that hit the Twin Towers and FEMA's initial report concluded that the building received only light damage. Many people also observed that the Tower Seven collapse did not cause damage to any of the surrounding buildings and looked especially clean in its precision.

However, looks can be deceiving. Though the 9/11 Commission report makes no mention of Tower Seven, the National Institute of Standards and Technology [NIST] did release a report that concludes Tower Seven was brought down by fire. Many conspiracy theorists refute this conclusion by saying that fire cannot melt steel or by pointing out that no tall building had ever fallen due to fire before 9/11. In the case of Tower Seven, steel did not need to melt. According to the NIST, it was indeed uncontrolled fires caused by malfunctioning sprinklers. The fires were ignited by falling debris from the Twin Towers that then caused the office furniture to go up in flames.

These fires lasted for approximately seven hours, which eventually led to support beams in the building expanding from heat, causing connecting columns and floors to buckle under the pressure. With columns collapsing, a chain reaction was started and additional floors began to fall like dominoes.

A detailed video below explains the progression of the collapse. A video released in 2011 also appears to support the NIST's conclusion. It shows fires burning in the windows of Tower Seven just before it collapsed. The NIST went on to say that no explosives were involved because even the smallest charge would've made a sound at 120 to 130 decibels that could've been heard over a half-a-mile away. No sound that loud was reported by witnesses or picked up on any video or audio equipment nearby.

2. “First responders were being taken care of from the beginning”

Following the collapse of the Twin Towers, many first responders converged on Ground Zero to begin rescue and recovery efforts. Though they survived the initial terrorist attack, an additional 3,700 first responders became victims of what happened that day. According to The Center for Diseases Control's National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, those responders were diagnosed with cancer related to the toxic carcinogens that wafted from the debris pile.

Many people mistakenly believed that the U.S. government was supporting first responders from the beginning. Benefit concerts like The Concert for New York in October 2001 made a big show of honouring New York's police, firefighters and EMS personnel. It raised $30 million for the Robin Hood Foundation. The assumption was at least some of the money was going to assist surviving first responders in the recovery and clean-up effort, but it was actually going to the families of victims of the initial attack.

Of course this was noble and necessary as well, especially at the time when people weren't aware of the dangers of the chemicals in the debris. However, you would think that for all the praise of New York's first responders as heroes, the government would take care of them in the same way they're supposed to take care of American soldiers who fought in a war.

Instead, New York Governor George Pataki didn't extend state death benefits to the families of first responders who died due to health complications from their rescue and recovery efforts until 2006. That was the year James Zadroga, an NYPD officer who was diagnosed with respiratory disease after spending 450 hours cleaning up Ground Zero, died. Unfortunately, the James Zadroga Health Compensation Act wasn't signed into federal law until 2011. The act provides health monitoring and financial aid to those first responders and workers who became sick because of 9/11. The first version of the bill did not pass and after the second version finally passed the U.S. House of Representatives, it was filibustered in the Republican-dominated senate.

In fact, it was comedian John Stewart who exposed that the bill was being filibustered on The Daily Show. The media and The White House went on to credit him with breaking the filibuster and being instrumental in the eventual passage of the bill. Even still, it took ten years for sick 9/11 first responders to finally be taken care of by The U.S. government, despite the government saying they regarded them all as heroes all along.

3. "The 9/11 hijackers came to the United States through Canada"

High profile U.S. politicians like John McCain and former Department of Homeland Security secretary Janet Napolitano have both reiterated the longstanding falsehood that the 9/11 hijackers accessed the U.S. by crossing the Canadian border.

“Well, some of the 9/11 hijackers did come through Canada, as you know,” John McCain told a Fox News reporter in 2009 in an attempt to defend earlier erroneous comments made by Napolitano.

“Yes, Canada is not Mexico. It doesn't have a drug war going on; it didn't have 6,000 homicides that were drug-related last year," Napolitano told the CBC.

“Nonetheless, to the extent that terrorists have come into our country, or suspected or known terrorists have entered our country across a border, it's been across the Canadian border. There are real issues there."

When asked by CBC political correspondent Neil MacDonald if the terrorists she was referring to were the 9/11 hijackers, she said, “Not just those but others as well.” Napolitano's comments immediately sparked controversy. Her public relations team soon relayed that she didn't understand MacDonald's question.

This misinformation didn't stop with McCain and Napolitano. In 2010, Nevada Republican Sharron Angle said the following about the Canadian border:

“What we know is that our northern border is where the terrorists came through. That’s the most porous border that we have. We cannot allow terrorists; we cannot allow anyone to come across our border if we don’t know why they’re coming.”

Add to that, U.S. presidential candidate Scott Walker recently revealed that he wants to build a wall across the U.S.-Canadian border and now the rhetoric that started with our final 9/11 myth is getting more destructive and discriminatory.

But one needs to only look at the 9/11 Commission report to find out that the 9/11 hijackers had American visas approved by the U.S. Government.

“As the 9/11 Commission reported in July 2004, all of the 9/11 terrorists arrived in the U.S. from outside North America. They flew to major U.S. airports. They entered the U.S. with documents issued to them by the U.S. government. No 9/11 terrorists came from Canada,” said former Canadian ambassador Michael Wilson in a statement issued at the time of McCain's comments.

But whether that puts an end to this myth is another matter entirely.