Democracy Now! hosted a 9/11 debate between Dylan Avery and Jason Bermas of Loose Change -- the DVD that's helped popularize the notion that 9/11 might have been an inside job -- and James Meigs and David Dunbar of Popular Mechanics, who have released a new book debunking the conspiracy theories.

An excerpt:

AMY GOODMAN: As we take on the issue of what happened on September 11th, 2001, our guests are Dylan Avery, writer and director of Loose Change; Jason Bermas, researcher for the film; James Meigs is also with us, editor-in-chief of Popular Mechanics; and David Dunbar, executive editor of Popular Mechanics, who led the editorial team that produced the book, Debunking 9/11 Myths. Jim Meigs, you’re the editor-in-chief of Popular Mechanics; your response to this excerpt of Loose Change about what happened in Shanksville?

JAMES MEIGS: You know, that clip is really interesting, because it shows how slickly made this film is, how compelling it is at asking a series of sort of hanging questions and putting some spooky music behind it and making it sound as if someone’s covering up these facts. But a brave researcher can dig down and put all the pieces together. In fact, there's answers to all those questions.

If you look at the sources that were used throughout that clip, they’re all things that came up in the first day or two after the attacks. In some cases, somebody is standing across the field and saying, “I don't see a plane.” Well, when a plane strikes the ground at 500 miles an hour, flying almost straight down, there typically isn't much visible above ground.

They also quote the coroner in the Shanksville area. We talked to the coroner. He had the horrific job of collecting the body parts and cataloging and performing all the necessary tests. Those bodies were identified. The plane wreckage in the pieces -- the tiny pieces it was in after it had hit the ground was, you know, collected from the hole, cataloged.

And the black box was recovered. And we know what went on, because of the records of the voice cockpit recorder, and in this case, quite a few phone calls from the aircraft itself to various people on the ground. So we know a lot of what happened on Flight 93.

The film is alleging that no plane crashed there at all. The people were sent off somewhere to somehow be disposed of. If you are going to allege something so far beyond what a huge body of evidence would suggest is the truth, then you do need to pull together some evidence. And so, we fully support asking questions and being skeptical, but if you’re going to ask questions, you also have to look for the answers. And when you get answers, you can't ignore them.

AMY GOODMAN: James Bermas of Loose Change -- Jason Bermas.

JASON BERMAS: I'd just like to thank you for the opportunity to take on the government's lies and Popular Mechanics, which is a Hearst yellow journalism publication’s lies, as well. And I would just say, look for yourself. This is an open field, and for the first time in history, we have a crater and no plane there. Look at any other plane crash, and you’ll find a tail section, a wing section. There were reports that this actually was strewn out over eight miles, and we have videotape of smaller pieces of debris. The coroner speaks for himself. We have the Pittsburgh Gazette, the editor-in-chief there, saying, again, there’s nothing there that looks like a plane.

Again, don’t believe us. Go to seeloosechange.com right now and watch for free. But take a look. All those people -- you would normally have NTSB people in blue jackets to get the plane parts and put them back together. That's what happened with TWA-800 that was in the ocean. And you don’t have that. You have people in hazmat uniforms. Why? So all’s we’re saying is, look, there's no plane in this open field at all. There's a ten-foot crater by 16-foot, and there’s just smoke there. So where is this plane? That's all we're saying.

AMY GOODMAN: What about what the coroner said, collecting body parts?

JASON BERMAS: Well, he's never addressed us. And if you look at all of his media accounts in the days after, when he was first asked, again, he said there were no body parts, and to this day he has not seen a single drop of blood. So, again, I would say that's more reliable than, you know, four years after the fact being contacted.

JAMES MEIGS: Did you talk to him?

JASON BERMAS: He won't address us. Basically we have had people contact him, and he hangs up on us.

JAMES MEIGS: I find typically when we investigate these things, it's very easy to find public records, to find the reports from all the various agencies that have investigated these accidents. The transcripts of the voice cockpit recorder have been released. In many cases, again, the sources, Jason, those are -- newspaper articles are written day of, day after, a couple of days after.

DYLAN AVERY: No, one of them was a year after the fact.

JAMES MEIGS: Perhaps.

DYLAN AVERY: No, it was.

JAMES MEIGS: You know what it was like on those days, and you know how chaotic it was. You know how much misinformation typically comes out in the early hours of a major news event. Over time, with further research and good reporting, you can sift through those things, and you can make progress and get into the truth. Typically, what we see on conspiracy websites is citations that go back to the earliest moments, when the least information was available, and virtually no reference to the voluminous research which was done to follow up.

AMY GOODMAN: Dylan, what about the issue of cell phones?

DYLAN AVERY: The issue of cell phones is that for a majority of Flight 93’s flight, it was flying over cruising altitude, and a number of these -- now, a majority of the phone calls were coming from air phones. But the cell phone calls were coming from cruising altitude. Now, it is pretty much impossible in 2001 to sustain an extended conversation over a cell phone at cruising altitude from a commercial airliner. But, I mean, that's not our strongest evidence. I mean, that’s just one of the many things about that day that don't add up to us.

And we haven't gotten to hear the cockpit voice recorder. We haven't gotten to hear any of these alleged phone calls. I mean, the government is cherry-picking the evidence that it releases to the government. And I feel that if our government was truly attacked by surprise and we had absolutely no inclination of the attacks, they would not be so reticent to release the 84 videos from the Pentagon, the cockpit voice recorder of Flight 93. The list of things that the government is holding from us goes on.

AMY GOODMAN: David Dunbar.

DAVID DUNBAR: With regard to the cell phones, we did what any reporter would do. We talked to experts in the field. And, in fact, cell phones do work at that altitude, up to 35,000 feet and higher. And --

DYLAN AVERY: In 2001?

DAVID DUNBAR: In 2001, and it might be instructive for you to talk to some of the cell phone experts. There are a lot of dropped calls, because the plane is moving at high-speed and the hand-off sometimes get dropped. That’s true, and we know from the public record that, in fact, a lot of the cell phone calls were cut off. And most of the phone calls were made from the air phones. But nevertheless, talk to the experts, and you’ll find out that you can make a cell phone call from a commercial plane.

JASON BERMAS: If I may address that for one moment? If that's true, then why in 2004 did American Airlines spend tens of thousands of dollars to put cell phone towers in their planes so people could make those calls? Why spend tens of thousands of dollars three years after the fact, if they worked so well on September 11? What he's saying is a total lie.

AMY GOODMAN: James Meigs.

JAMES MEIGS: We didn't say they worked well. We said they worked. And if you look at the record, many of the calls were dropped, they were incomplete, but especially over rural areas. You know, if you think about a cell phone tower, it can cover a couple hundred square miles. That coverage area goes up into the sky, as well as horizontally across the ground.

DYLAN AVERY: Actually, they’re designed to point downward.

JAMES MEIGS: The reason that they’ve improved the system was to avoid the dropped calls and to isolate the cell phone transmissions from any possible interference with the avionics.