Benjamin Chertoff is a journalist, photographer and video producer. He is most known for his work on the Popular Mechanics article 9/11: Debunking The Myths. He also created the Popular Mechanics Show, the weekly podcast of Popular Mechanics magazine. [1] He is currently a freelance photojournalist, writer and documentary producer.
Benjamin Chertoff is a magazine and photo / video journalist. He began his career at the age of 19, working as an intern in the features department at Time Out New York Magazine—including researching the magazine's Urban Legends story—and later contributing to the features section. Along with freelancing for several national magazines, he then worked at Men's Journal. In 2003 he helped start the political non-profit Music for America. He moved to Popular Mechanics in September, 2004. There, he worked as the magazine's research editor, and helped to manage the reporting for magazine's March, 2005 9/11: Debunking The Myths story, as well as the magazine's coverage of the aftermath to Hurricane Katrina, and many other aviation, military and technology stories. He held the position of Online Editor of Popular Mechanics, and edited all the digital outlets of Popular Mechanics Magazine. [2]
The magazine's investigation of 9/11 conspiracy theories was the first of its kind. Chertoff has stated that the magazine's editors decided to investigate 9/11 Myths after seeing Jimmy Walter's full-page ad in The New York Times for a book called Painful Questions. In a June, 2006 column in Scientific American magazine, [3] Skeptics Society president Dr. Michael Shermer called the Popular Mechanics article "the single best debunking of this conspiratorial codswallop." In 2006, the magazine published the book Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up to the Facts , which greatly expanded on the original story, including new myths and much more detail than could fit in the original, magazine article.
In 2007, Benjamin Chertoff left Popular Mechanics and began producing video and audio content for AOL's Switched.com, among other verticals. He currently lives in New York City, where he is a freelance photojournalist, photographer and documentary video producer.
Proponents of the 9-11 conspiracy theories have claimed that one of the researchers at Popular Mechanics, Benjamin Chertoff is the cousin of former Department of Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff because they share the same last name. [4] However, Chertoff has repeatedly denied this claim, most notably in the September 11, 2006 issue of U.S. News & World Report, stating "no one in my family has ever met anyone related to Michael Chertoff". [4] In an audio interview, he noted that any possible relationship would likely only be found in "19th-century Belarus", and that his mother has described any such possible relationship as "distant". [5]
He has been referred to by Coast to Coast AM, [6] a The Washington Post blog, [7] CNN [8] [9] and ABC news. [10]
A debunker is a person or organization that exposes or discredits claims believed to be false, exaggerated, or pretentious. The term is often associated with skeptical investigation of controversial topics such as UFOs, claimed paranormal phenomena, cryptids, conspiracy theories, alternative medicine, religion, or exploratory or fringe areas of scientific or pseudoscientific research.
Popular Mechanics is a magazine of popular science and technology, featuring automotive, home, outdoor, electronics, science, do-it-yourself, and technology topics. Military topics, aviation and transportation of all types, space, tools and gadgets are commonly featured.
Bart Winfield Sibrel is an American conspiracy theorist who has written, produced, and directed works in support of the false belief that the Apollo Moon landings between 1969 and 1972 were staged by NASA under the control of the CIA. He has written, produced, and directed four independent films promoting the ideas, with the first being the 2001 film A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon. In his works, Sibrel in part films himself asking that various Apollo astronauts put their hand on the Bible and swear an oath that they walked on the Moon. In the case of the Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin, whom Sibrel arranged to meet on a false pretense, outside the Luxe Hotel in Beverly Hills, the interaction resulted in Aldrin punching Sibrel, which brought him significant publicity. However, no criminal charges were filed against Aldrin.
NBCNews.com, formerly known as msnbc.com, is a news website owned and operated by NBCUniversal as the online arm of NBC News. Along with original and wire reporting, it features content from NBC shows such as Today, NBC Nightly News, Meet The Press, and Dateline NBC, the MSNBC cable channel, and partners such as The New York Times.
There are various conspiracy theories that attribute the preparation and execution of the September 11 attacks against the United States to parties other than, or in addition to, al-Qaeda. These include the theory that high-level government officials had advance knowledge of the attacks. Government investigations and independent reviews have rejected these theories. Proponents of these theories assert that there are inconsistencies in the commonly accepted version, or that there exists evidence that was ignored, concealed, or overlooked.
David Ray Griffin was an American professor of philosophy of religion and theology and a 9/11 conspiracy theorist. Along with John B. Cobb, Jr., he founded the Center for Process Studies in 1973, a research center of Claremont School of Theology that promotes process thought. Griffin published numerous books about the September 11 attacks, claiming that elements of the Bush administration were involved. An advocate of the controlled demolition conspiracy theory, he was a founder member of Scholars for 9/11 Truth.
Washington Square News (WSN) is the weekly student newspaper of New York University (NYU). It has a circulation of 10,000 and an estimated 55,000 online readers. It is published in print on Monday, in addition to online publication Tuesday through Friday during the fall and spring semesters, with additional issues published in the summer. It serves the NYU, Greenwich Village, and East Village communities in Manhattan, New York City.
The 9/11 truth movement encompasses a disparate group of adherents to a set of overlapping conspiracy theories that dispute the general consensus of the September 11 attacks that a group of Al-Qaeda terrorists had hijacked four airliners and crashed them into the Pentagon and the original World Trade Center Twin Towers, which consequently collapsed. The primary focus is on missed information that adherents allege is not adequately explained in the official National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) reports, such as the collapse of 7 World Trade Center. They suggest a cover-up and, at the least, complicity by insiders.
Loose Change is a series of films released between 2005 and 2009 that argue in favor of certain conspiracy 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.
Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can't Stand Up to the Facts is a non-fiction book published by Hearst Communications, Inc. on August 15, 2006. The book is based on the article "9/11: Debunking the Myths" in the March 2005 issue of Popular Mechanics and is written by David Dunbar and Brad Reagan, responding to various 9/11 conspiracy theories. The authors interviewed over 300 sources for the book, relying on expert and witness accounts.
Benjamin Radford is an American writer, investigator, and skeptic. He has authored, coauthored or contributed to over twenty books and written over a thousand articles and columns on a wide variety of topics including urban legends, unexplained mysteries, the paranormal, critical thinking, mass hysteria, and media literacy. His book, Mysterious New Mexico: Miracles, Magic, and Monsters in the Land of Enchantment, was published in the summer of 2014 and is a scientific investigation of famous legends and folklore in the state of New Mexico. In 2016 Radford published Bad Clowns, a 2017 IPPY bronze award winner, and he is regarded as an expert on the bad clowns phenomenon.
Some conspiracy theories contend that the collapse of the World Trade Center was not solely caused by the airliner crash damage that occurred as part of the September 11 attacks, and the resulting fire damage, but by explosives installed in the buildings in advance. Controlled demolition theories make up a major component of 9/11 conspiracy theories.
George Edward Griffin is an American author, filmmaker, and conspiracy theorist. Griffin's writings promote a number of right-wing views and conspiracy theories regarding political, defense and health care. In his book World Without Cancer, he argued in favor of a pseudo-scientific theory that asserted cancer to be a nutritional deficiency curable by consuming amygdalin. He is the author of The Creature from Jekyll Island (1994), which advances debunked conspiracy theories about the Federal Reserve System. He is an HIV/AIDS denialist, supports the 9/11 Truth movement, and supports the specific John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory that Oswald was not the assassin. He also believes that the Biblical Noah's Ark is located at the Durupınar site in Turkey.
Luke Michael Smith is an American writer. He is a staff member at the video game development company Bungie, and is a former video games journalist. Smith wrote for a college newspaper and weekly papers in Michigan before being hired as one of the first new freelance writers for Kotaku. At Kotaku, Smith developed his writing style but soon left the site for a staff position as 1Up.com's news editor. Smith made a name for himself at 1Up, particularly through an article he wrote focusing on problems with the game Halo 2.
Aaron Sagers is an American television presenter, journalist — including a self-described "paranormal journalist" — podcast host, and expert of geek culture and paranormal media. He is also an author, social media micro-influencer, and founder of ParanormalPopCulture.com, a website which covers paranormal topics in popular culture.
Benjamin Swann is an American television news anchor, investigative journalist, and political commentator. He became a TV sports producer, and later a news journalist and producer, and managing editor on network affiliates, FOX, and RT America of the Russian state-owned TV network RT.
UFO sightings in outer space are sightings of unidentified flying objects reported by astronauts while in space that they could not explain at the time. These sightings have been claimed as evidence for alien visits by ufologists.
Big Pharma conspiracy theories are conspiracy theories which claim that pharmaceutical companies, especially large corporations, act in sinister and secretive ways, such as concealing effective treatments, or even intentionally causing and worsening a wide range of diseases, in pursuit of profitability, or for other nefarious reasons. Some theories have included the claim that natural alternative remedies to health problems are being suppressed, the claim that drugs for the treatment of HIV/AIDS are ineffective and harmful, the claim that a cure for all cancers has been discovered but hidden from the public, claims that COVID-19 vaccines are ineffective, and that alternative cures are available for COVID-19. In most cases the conspiracy theorists have blamed pharmaceutical companies' search for profits. A range of authors have shown these claims to be false, though some of these authors nevertheless maintain that other criticisms of the pharmaceutical industry are legitimate.
The FEMA camps conspiracy theory is a belief, particularly within the American Patriot movement, that the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is planning to imprison US citizens in concentration camps, following the imposition of martial law in the United States after a major disaster or crisis. In some versions of the theory, only suspected dissidents will be imprisoned. In more extreme versions, large numbers of US citizens will be imprisoned for the purposes of extermination as a New World Order is established. The theory has existed since the late 1970s, but its circulation has increased with the advent of the internet and social media platforms.
Mick West is a British-American science writer, skeptical investigator, and retired video game programmer. He is the creator of the websites Contrail Science and Metabunk, and he investigates and debunks pseudoscientific claims and conspiracy theories such as chemtrails and UFOs. His first book is Escaping the Rabbit Hole: How to Debunk Conspiracy Theories Using Facts, Logic, and Respect.