The 9/11 conspiracies began the minute the twin towers fell

On a beautiful September morning 20 years ago this Saturday, I took the New York subway to the tip of lower Manhattan and emerged into the blaze of history. There was a loud boom, which I assumed was a bomb, but was the sound of the second plane hitting the south tower of the World Trade Centre. As I ran towards the noise and turned the corner, I saw the gashes in both towers and the smoke billowing. “You don’t want to go there, lady!” someone sprinting in the other direction shouted.

At that moment, the seeds of a conspiracy theory about the deep state were already being planted. I didn’t know it, but I had a walk-on part in the foundation myths of the

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