Their documentary launched lingering conspiracy theories about 9/11. It’s a monster they can’t escape

ONEONTA, N.Y. — Down a dark alley, past boarded-up windows, is a nondescript white door monitored by a network of surveillance cameras.

Inside, the pungent smell of marijuana lingers among the rows of film equipment that childhood friends-turned-lifelong business partners Dylan Avery and Korey Rowe are using in a bid to rebuild their lives and, they hope, their reputations. 

Here in a basement on Main Street in upstate New York, Avery and Rowe have converted a former banana warehouse and karate dojo into an independent film studio. They’re busy these days, they told Straight Arrow, filming advertisements for local governments, music videos and weddings. 

They also boast their lengthy catalogue of independent films, and posters on the walls highlight their favorite creations. Among them is the cover of “Asteroid,” their 2021 sci-fi disaster drama. What’s missing from the walls, however, is their most successful film ever —  the one Vanity Fair dubbed “the first internet blockbuster.”

Avery and Rowe created “Loose Change,” a documentary series that first appeared online in 2005 as an amateur, low-budget “alternate history” of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, helping transform conspiracy theories into a cornerstone of internet culture. 

They are just as skeptical as ever — about the press, about the government, about everything. They also are on the run from the past. More specifically, they’re trying to escape the legacy of a documentary they created two decades ago that has overshadowed everything they’ve produced since. 

Upstairs, they run a recreational marijuana dispensary. 

“We make movies,” Rowe said of their lives in 2026, “and we sell pot.”

How 9/11 conspiracy theories went viral

“Loose Change” helped popularize some of the most expansive conspiracy theories borne out of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The tragedy 25 years ago resulted in nearly 3,000 deaths after radical Islamist terrorists hijacked four commercial jets and flew them into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, the Pentagon just outside Washington, D.C., and a field in Pennsylvania. 

The documentary gave credence to some of the most outlandish theories about what had transpired: Was it an inside job? Were bombs planted inside the towers? Can jet fuel really melt steel beams? Did a missile, rather than a commercial plane, strike the Pentagon? 

The film came to a sweeping conclusion: The U.S. government helped carry out the attack — or, at a minimum, was hiding the truth about what really happened. 

The film, of which there are now several editions, was widely debunked. But that didn’t stop it from reaching millions of people on Google Video, the precursor to YouTube, and elsewhere. 

Just five years ago, news articles highlighted how 9/11 conspiracy theories that went viral in the burgeoning internet era helped propel President Donald Trump, who embraces “alternative facts,” to the White House. With conspiracy theories now aired widely on social media, Avery and Rowe have been dubbed forefathers of modern disinformation.

These days, the duo insist they want nothing to do with contemporary conspiracy theories. They’re just two guys, they told Straight Arrow, who like to make films, play video games and smoke weed. They no longer align with the 9/11 “truther” movement, they insist, or the conspiracy theorists who have grown into disinformation power players in American politics. 

But that doesn’t mean they regret making the documentary. Two decades later, they say they were just asking questions about what transpired on that grim morning in 2001. Avery and Rowe said they’re ready to move on from a conspiracy movement that’s largely moved on from them — all while taking steps to ensure that “Loose Change” never dies. 

“I wasn’t a conspiracy theorist before ‘Loose Change.’ I’m not a conspiracy theorist after ‘Loose Change,’” Avery told Straight Arrow in late August. “I don’t believe the moon landing was faked — I don’t give a s—.” 

‘There’s something really wrong’

Ground Zero was still smoldering when the first conspiracy theories emerged about the unprecedented events of Sept. 11. Their legacy persists at the 9/11 Memorial & Museum.

On a rainy Friday in late August, Lower Manhattan was crawling with activity: People from around the globe were there to visit the museum, where they encountered the physical evidence of the catastrophe they watched unfold on live television a quarter-century ago. 

There’s the firetruck mangled in the collapse of one of the towers, the posters asking for help locating missing persons, the newspaper articles that delivered news of the attack to readers around the globe. By the time the newspapers landed on peoples’ doorsteps, they were already glued to their screens. 

Troy Coleman, a telephone engineer from Kentucky, said he was sitting at his cubicle when he first heard the news on NPR — then rushed to the break room where he watched ABC News as a plane hit the second tower. 

“The towers collapsed and we were trying to tell if that was caused by the plane crash or if something blew up,” Coleman told Straight Arrow. “There was just a lot of confusion. People on TV were trying to figure out what was going on.”

In the absence of clear answers, some people reached their own conclusions. Conspiracy theories often materialize in the wake of rare events and tragedies where mundane explanations leave people dissatisfied and in need of cognitive closure. 

Chris Breidt, a retired German soldier, told Straight Arrow he doesn’t believe in the 9/11 conspiracy theories, including those touted in “Loose Change.” But he understands how they emerged. 

People watched an unprecedented situation unfold before their eyes, he said, and “needed some way to explain it and built a reality they could understand.” 

‘We made a digital piece of art’

Avery and Rowe met as teenagers while delivering newspapers in Oneonta, a small city in the Catskill Mountains about 3 and a half hours north of New York City. They’ve been friends ever since. 

“We just get along, there’s common ground,” Avery said of their friendship. “We can just be real with each other, and sometimes it doesn’t even take words. It just takes a look. We’ve been through a lot of s— together.”

Rowe wound up enlisting in the Army just weeks before the terror attacks, a decision he would come to regret. He was deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq. 

Avery, still in Oneonta, focused on film — including a fictional account of 9/11 that, after he researched the topic further, became a documentary. The project became “Loose Change,” with Rowe joining Avery as a producer after returning home from war. 

“The reason I produced ‘Loose Change’ is because I wanted accountability for the people that died in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Rowe said. “We were there for f—— lies.”

The film dropped at perhaps the perfect time. Americans were growing increasingly skeptical of the War on Terror, and the internet was primed for its first big hit. In 2006, a third of respondents to a Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll said it was at least “somewhat likely” that federal officials were either involved in the attacks or took no steps to stop them “because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East.”

While online video streaming platforms were still relatively new, “Loose Change” — which has taken on several forms over the years — racked up millions of views online. 

“We definitely proved that Google Video and YouTube was a viable business model, that’s for sure,” Avery said. 

Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, the InfoWars creator perhaps best known for spewing false claims that the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012 was a government hoax, helped finance and produce a third cut. They sought to produce a version for theaters — with Charlie Sheen as narrator. 

“Loose Change” built them up, Avery and Rowe said, until everything came crashing down. 

“You can never go past what ‘Loose Change’ did,” Rowe said. “‘Loose Change’ became its own being. Literally, we made a digital piece of art that grew into a monster.”

‘You have to pay attention’

At the 9/11 museum in Lower Manhattan, exhibits highlight how media accounts of the tragedy helped inform — and disinform — people about a tragedy that, for many, was the biggest news event of their lives. 

It highlights “public doubts” about the government’s account of what had transpired — and the investigations that set out to debunk them.  

“Responding to assertions by conspiracy theorists, the magazine Popular Mechanics conducted its own investigations,” according to a display in the museum. “It concluded that none of the conspiracy theories, notably that explosives had been planted, held any merit.” 

James Meigs, who was the editor of Popular Mechanics at the time, called Avery a “brilliant filmmaker” and the documentary “super compelling.” But the conclusions in “Loose Change,” he said, were “crazy” and easily debunked.

Skepticism of government has merit, Meigs told Straight Arrow, and it’s important at times for people to question official narratives. 

“It’s great to ask questions, but you have to pay attention to the answers,” said Meigs, now a columnist for The Wall Street Journal and a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. “If you’re going to ask questions, you can’t then turn your nose up at legitimate, carefully researched answers to your questions.” 

Avery and Rowe, he said, did just that. Initially, Meigs said, their audience found a particular following among Democrats who opposed President George W. Bush and the wars that followed in the attacks’ wake. Public distrust in institutions intensified in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis as populist movements grew on the left and and the right. Some of the 9/11 skeptics on the left, he said, would soon find themselves as “part of the MAGA base” and adherents to Trump.

“Trump seemed to be speaking for them,” Meigs said. “You couldn’t trust the news media, you couldn’t trust anything, and therefore you needed this outsider to kind of blow it all up.” 

‘Everything’s a conspiracy’

Much has been written about how “Loose Change” provided a blueprint for conspiracy theories embraced by Trump and his followers, including election denialism, QAnon and Pizzagate. Just last year, far-right pundit Tucker Carlson released a documentary claiming that “for nearly 25 years, the true story of 9/11 has been withheld from the American people.” 

Online conspiracy theories have fueled real-world violence, including on Jan. 6, 2021, when a crowd of people upset with Trump’s electoral defeat attacked the U.S. Capitol. 

Avery was there. Not as a participant, he wanted to make clear, but as a journalist. People keep claiming that “Loose Change,” led to Trump’s rise, but the duo said they want nothing to do with MAGA — including other members of the truther movement like Alex Jones, who they once considered allies. The only bright spot in the country right now, Avery said, is the election of progressive New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. 

“It was an anti-war film, and now the right wing is using it as a talking point to fire up their base to get more people to vote for these f—— psychotic people,” said Rowe, who referred to Trump as “the conspiracy president.” 

“Everything’s a conspiracy, the reflecting pool is a conspiracy,” he said. “And I hate it. I hate it so much.”

As conspiracy theories about 9/11 spread, leading proponents of the truther movement embraced xenophobia, including antisemetic claims that Jewish people were “supposedly manipulating world events for their own benefit,” according to the Anti-Defamation League.

Popular Mechanics revisited the reporting last year, with new commentary about conspiracy theorists who have accused it of “being a tool of the federal government and drawing tinfoil-hat diagrams to tie Popular Mechanics to the Bush Administration and the supposed big conspiracy.” 

“If all this nonsense accomplishes anything,” the magazine wrote, “it was to presage our current era of ‘alternative facts’ and attacking the messenger whenever the message clashes with one’s predetermined beliefs.” 

‘An alternate history book’

Despite the online virality of “Loose Change,” Avery and Rowe said that, in many ways, its legacy has ruined their lives. They can’t escape the film — whether they want to or not. 

Rowe served in Afghanistan and Iraq, yet the scars from war, he said, were nothing compared to the fallout from the film. When he and Avery briefly relocated to Los Angeles with hopes of propelling their film careers, they couldn’t escape their past as the leading purveyors of 9/11 disinformation. 

“My entire life now is a byproduct of ‘Loose Change’ because no one would give me jobs,” Rowe said. “Making the most controversial documentary of all time at the dawn of the internet — which was the first viral video — you would think a couple of people would be like, ‘Oh ya, cool, let me hire you.’” 

The opposite, he learned, was true. In fact, he said, many people were out to get them.

“I went to California and almost didn’t make it, I was literally rolling loose change at the moment I got my first job,” Rowe said of his time in Los Angeles before relocating back to upstate New York. “And it was making videos about car wash soap.” 

“Loose Change,” meanwhile, still rakes in views. The film is readily available on YouTube and a version is available to rent or buy on Apple TV, which describes the film “as an alternate history book, setting out to ask the hard questions from that fateful day.”

Yet in the last few years, social media platforms have taken steps to stem the reach of misinformation and disinformation. YouTube, for example, announced in 2019 it would tweak its algorithm to deprioritize conspiracy theory videos, including those “promoting a  phony miracle cure for a serious illness, claiming the earth is flat or making blatantly false claims about historic events like 9/11.” 

Rowe said their work was largely removed from YouTube “during that decade of wokeness.” 

“I had it on my YouTube channel, which is established and monetized, it’s been there since the early days of Google,” Rowe said, adding that he got a message saying that the videos were removed for promoting hate speech. 

Avery uploaded a high-definition version of the film to the Internet Archive, a move he wrote on the platform was necessary “due to frequent removals from YouTube.”

With “numerous requests to find a solution,” he wrote, “we are uploading a master of the film to Internet Archive where it can hopefully live forever.” 

‘Asking questions’

Avery and Rowe pointed to elements of contemporary life as evidence to support the very arguments they made in the film. Most apparent is the rise of surveillance, with cameras everywhere — including the multiple lenses that monitor the entrance to their studio. Algorithms, they said, control the information that makes its way to peoples’ screens. 

“It’s the surveillance state, it’s the Patriot Act, it’s the Department of Homeland Security, it’s knowing what everyone’s doing at all times,” Avery said. “This is exactly what I was worried about.”

Results from a YouGov poll released earlier this year show that large swaths of Americans buy into at least one conspiracy theory, yet more than 70% of respondents said they were at least “somewhat confident” in their ability to spot fake news. 

About one-fifth of people said claims that “the U.S. government was behind the 9/11 attacks on New York City” were at least “probably true.” Political affiliation didn’t appear to matter, though independents were more likely to believe the conspiracy theory than either self-identified Democrats or Republicans. 

Shawn Rodgers, who visited Ground Zero from Pittsburgh last month, said he considers himself a “documentary buff,” and, in the years that followed the terrorist attack, he watched “pretty much every single one that’s out there about 9/11 — even the conspiracy ones.” 

“A lot of people think that our government was involved or they knew about it,” Rodgers told Straight Arrow, and “there’s definitely valid points.” 

Among the films he’s watched is “Loose Change,” which he found on YouTube. He said it’s among the “more legitly done” truther documentaries out there. 

“I always want to catch up on the conspiracy ones, too, because you want to hear from both sides,” he said. “I think YouTube still has it up, but I knew that when it started to disappear, I downloaded it. I was smart enough to download it because it seems like a lot of the conspiracy ones are getting taken down left and right.”

Yet none of the documentaries compared to visiting Ground Zero in person, Rodgers said. And while people can reach different conclusions about the sequence of events that unfolded in Lower Manhattan that morning 25 years ago, just about everybody can agree about one fact. 

“So many people died for no reason,” Rodgers said. “It’s useless.” 

Even as Avery and Rowe try to move on from Loose Change and build their business ventures in Oneonta, they don’t regret making the movie. In fact, they still question the government’s official account of what transpired that dreadful morning in September 2001. 

“I can’t sit here and spell out exactly what happened and who was involved and all that,” Avery said. “We were always asking questions.”

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