Brendan O’Neill has found some folks who are turned all the way up to eleven on them:

Sitting on the comfy couch, their cups of tea in hand, they try to convince me that the 11 September 2001 attacks were executed by elements in the west who wanted to launch wars and “make billions upon trillions of dollars”.

“We know for certain that the official story of 9/11 isn’t true,” says Shayler. “The twin towers did not collapse because of planes and fire; they were brought down in a controlled demolition. The Pentagon was most likely hit by an American missile, not an aeroplane.” Machon nods. In black trousers and black top, this sophisticated blonde in her late thirties comes across more like a schoolmarm than a 9/11 anorak. “The Pentagon’s anti-missile defence system would definitely have picked up and dealt with a commercial airliner. We can only assume that whatever hit the Pentagon was sending a friendly signal. A missile fired by a US military plane would have sent a friendly signal.” She says this in a kind of Anna Ford-style newsreader’s voice, as if she were speaking the truth and nothing but the truth. She takes another sip of tea.

Say the phrase “conspiracy theorist” (but don’t say it to Shayler and Machon if you can help it, because they angrily deny being conspiracy theorists) and most people will think of those nutty militiamen in redneck areas of America who hate Big Government, or of taxi drivers with possibly anti-Semitic leanings in some hot, dusty backwater of the Middle East who revel in telling western clients in particular: “America and the Jew did 9/11.” Yet, here in Highgate, I am talking to a man and woman who have worked in the British secret services and who, together with their landlady Belinda, a professional linguist, truly believe that American elements facilitated 9/11 in order to “justify their adventurism in oil-rich countries in the Middle East”, in Shayler’s words. Here we have a new kind of conspiracy theorist: the chattering conspiracist, respectable, well-read, articulate, but, I regret to report, no less cranky than those rednecks and misguided Kabul cabbies.

Amazing.

[Late afternoon update]

Jim Robbins finds another refugee from Toontown:

Meyssan’s purpose is to uncover a much deeper plot of the United States against the world. He reveals other interesting facts, like bin Laden was an agent of the U.S. who was used by President Bush to destroy secret CIA offices in the World Trade Towers. Seems like a lot of effort