But leading scientists say the facts of their investigations cannot be ignored and say they have evidence that points to one of the biggest conspiracies ever perpetrated.

Professor Steven Jones, who lectures in physics at the Brigham Young University in Utah, says the official version of events is the biggest and most evil cover up in history.

He has joined the 9/11 Scholars for Truth whose membership includes up to 75 leading scientists and experts from universities across the US.

Prof Jones said: "We don't believe that 19 hijackers and a few others in a cave in Afghanistan pulled this off acting alone.

"We challenge this official conspiracy theory and, by God, we're going to get to the bottom of this."

In essays and journals, the scientists are giving credence to many of the conspiracy theories that have circulated on the internet in the past five years.

They believe a group of US neo-conservatives called the Project for a New American Century, set on US world dominance, orchestrated the 9/11 attacks as an excuse to hit Iraq, Afghanistan and later Iran.

The group says scientific evidence over the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon is conclusive proof.

Professor Jones said it was impossible for the twin towers to have collapsed in the way they did from the collision of two aeroplanes.

He maintains jet fuel does not burn at temperatures high enough to melt steel beams and claims horizontal puffs of smoke seen during the collapse of the towers are indicative of controlled explosions used to bring down the towers.

The group also maintains World Trade Centre 7 - a neighbouring building which caught fire and collapsed later in the day - was only partially damaged but had to be destroyed because it housed a clandestine CIA station.

Professor James Fetzer, 65, a retired philosopher of science at the University of Minnesota, said: "The evidence is so overwhelming, but most Americans don't have time to take a look at this."

The 9/11 Commission dismissed the numerous conspiracy theories after its exhaustive investigation into the terror attacks.

Subsequent examinations of the towers' structure have sought to prove they were significantly weakened by the impact which tore off fire retardant materials and led the steel beams bending under heat and then collapsing.

Christopher Pyle, professor of constitutional law at Mt Holyoake College in Massachusetts, has dismissed the academic group.

He said: "To plant bombs in three buildings with enough bomb materials and wiring? It's too huge a project and would require far too many people to keep it a secret afterwards.

"After every major crisis, like the assassinations of JFK or Martin Luther King, we've had conspiracy theorists who come up with plausible scenarios for gullible people. It's a waste of time."

But University of Wisconsin assistant professor, Kevin Barrett, said experts are unwilling to believe theories which don't fit into their belief systems.

He said: "People will disregard evidence it if causes their faith to be shattered. I think we were all shocked. And then, when the voice of authority told us what happened, we just believed it."

As the fifth anniversary approached, the 9/11 Scholars for Truth is urging Congress to reopen the investigation claiming they have amassed a wealth of scientific evidence to prove their version of the terror attacks.

"We don't believe that 19 hijackers and a few others in a cave in Afghanistan pulled this off acting alone," says Jones. "We challenge this official conspiracy theory and, by God, we're going to get to the bottom of this."

While this sinister spin strikes most American academics as absurd, Jones, a physics professor, is not alone. He is a member of 9/11 Scholars for Truth, a recently formed group of around 75 US professors determined to prove 9/11 was a hoax. In essays and journals, they are using their association with prominent universities to give a scholarly stamp to conspiracy theories long believed in parts of Europe and the Arab world, and gaining ground among Americans due to frustration with the Iraq war and opposition to President Bush's heavily hyped "war on terror".

Their iconoclastic positions have drawn wrath from rightwing radio shows and caused upheaval on campuses, triggering letters to newspapers, phone calls from parents and TV cameras in lecture halls.

In the Midwest, 61 legislators signed a petition calling for the dismissal of a University of Wisconsin assistant professor, Kevin Barrett, after he joined the 9/11 Scholars for Truth. Citing academic freedom, the university provost defended Barrett, albeit reluctantly.

A Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll taken during the summer indicates that Americans are increasingly suspicious of the government's explanation of the events of 9/11: 36% said it was "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that federal officials either participated in the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon, or took no action to stop them, "because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East".

For most of the world, the story of 9/11 begins at 8.45am on September 11 2001, when American Airlines flight 11 smashed into the North tower of the World Trade Centre. But, tumble down the rabbit hole with Jones, and the plotline begins a year earlier, in September 2000. A neoconservative group called Project for a New American Century, which included the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and the vice-president, Dick Cheney, brought out a report arguing for a global expansion of American military and economic supremacy, and for the US to transform itself into a "one-world superpower". The report warned that "the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalysing event - like a new Pearl Harbor".

Excuse for aggression

The group, in concert with about 20 others, orchestrated the attacks of 9/11 as an excuse for pre-emptive global aggression against Afghanistan, then Iraq and soon Iran, the academics say. And they insist that they have amassed a wealth of scientific data to prove it.

It is impossible, says Jones, for the towers to have collapsed from the collision of two aeroplanes, as jet fuel doesn't burn at temperatures hot enough to melt steel beams. The horizontal puffs of smoke - squibs - emitted during the collapse of the towers are indicative of controlled implosions on lower floors. The scholars have collected eyewitness accounts of flashes and loud explosions immediately before the fall.

The twin towers must, they say, have been brought down by explosives - hence the container of dust on Jones's desk, sent to him unsolicited by a woman living in lower Manhattan. He is using X-ray fluorescents to test it for explosive materials.

What's more, the nearby World Trade Centre 7 also collapsed later that afternoon. The building had not been hit by a plane, only damaged by fire. WTC 7 housed a clandestine CIA station, which the scholars believe was the command centre for the planning of 9/11.

"The planes were just a distraction," says Professor James Fetzer, 65, a recently retired philosopher of science at the University of Minnesota. "The evidence is so overwhelming, but most Americans don't have time to take a look at this."

But Jonathan Barnett, professor of fire protection engineering at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, calls such claims "bad science". Barnett was a member of the World Trade Centre Building Performance Study, one of the government groups that investigated the towers' collapse.

Reluctantly, he has familiarised himself with the scholars' claims - many of them have emailed him. Yes, it is unusual for a steel structure to collapse from fire, Barnett agrees. However, his group and others argue that the planes' impact weakened the structures and stripped off the fireproofing materials. That caused the top floors of both towers to collapse on to the floors below. "A big chunk of building falling down made the next floor fall down, and then they all came down like a deck of cards," Barnett says.

The collapse of WTC 7 was also unusual, he admits. However, firefighters do not usually let a fire rage unabated for seven hours as they did on the morning of September 11, because they had prioritised the rescue of victims. "The fact that you don't have evidence to support your theory doesn't mean that the other theory is true," Barnett says. "They just made it up out of the blue."

Since the attacks, the US government has issued three reports into the events of the day, all of which involved hundreds of professors, scientists and government officials. The 9/11 Commission, a bipartisan group, issued a 500-page, moment-by-moment investigation into the hijackers' movements, concluding that they were connected to Osama bin Laden. The National Institute of Standards and Technology, a government agency, filed 10,000 pages of reports examining the towers' collapse. And the Federal Emergency Management Agency weighed in, examining the response to the attacks.

"To plant bombs in three buildings with enough bomb materials and wiring? It's too huge a project and would require far too many people to keep it a secret afterwards," says Christopher Pyle, professor of constitutional law at Mt Holyoke College. "After every major crisis, like the assassinations of JFK or Martin Luther King, we've had conspiracy theorists who come up with plausible scenarios for gullible people. It's a waste of time."

But Barrett says the experts have been fooled by an "act of psychological conversion" not unlike the tactics CIA interrogators use on their victims. "People will disregard evidence if it causes their faith to be shattered," he says. "I think we were all shocked. And then, when the voice of authority told us what happened, we just believed it."

Misleading the public

History has revealed that governments have a tradition of misleading the public into going to war, says Barrett, and the next generation of Americans will realise the truth. "Europe and Canada are way ahead of us on this."

The 9/11 scholars go to great lengths to portray themselves as rational thinkers, who have been slowly won over by a careful, academic analysis of the facts of the day.

However, a study of the full extent of their claims is a journey into the increasingly absurd: Flight 93 did not crash in Pennsylvania but landed safely in Cleveland; desperate phone calls received by relatives on the ground from passengers were actually computer-generated voices from a laboratory in California. The Pentagon was not hit by American Airlines Flight 77, but by a smaller, remote-controlled A-3 Sky Warrior, which shot a missile into the building before crashing into it.

Many of the 9/11 scholars have a history of defending conspiracy theories, including that the CIA plotted both the Lockerbie bombing and the plane crash of John F Kennedy Jr and his wife, and that "global secret societies" control the world.

Professor Robert Goldberg, of the University of Utah, wrote a book on conspiracy theories, Enemies Within: the Culture of Conspiracy in Modern America. He recounts a history of religious and political leaders using conspiracy theories for personal and political gain. The common enemy is usually Jews, big government or corporations. The public laps it up, either because these theories are more exciting than the truth, or out of emotional need.

"What the conspiracy theorists do is present their case with facts and figures: they have dates, meeting places and always name names," he says. "The case is always presented in a prosecutorial way, or the way an adventure writer presents a novel. It's a breathless account. They are willing to say hearsay is a fact, and rumour is true, and accidents are never what they seem.

"One of the stories is that a missile hit the Pentagon, and all the data is there. But what is missing is: what actually happened to the plane and the people on it? Conspiracy theorists avoid discussion of those facts that don't fit."

Perhaps it is no coincidence that the public's willingness to believe conspiracy theories parallels their dissatisfaction with the Bush administration. In recent years, the American public has felt misled over false claims that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and that Saddam Hussein was connected to 9/11.

Many fear infringements on their civil liberties now the National Security Agency has gained access to phone billing records from telecommunications companies, the Bush administration has engaged in wiretapping without court warrants and there are thousands of cases of indefinite detentions of American and foreign citizens without trial. Those who criticise the Bush administration's "war on terror" are accused of being unpatriotic.

By taking their criticisms to such extremes, though, the scholars risk caricaturing the opposition. None the less, they are pushing on, and imploring Congress to reopen the investigation.

"We're academics and we're rational, and we really believe Congress or someone should investigate this," says David Gabbard, an East Carolina education professor and 9/11 scholar. "But there are a lot of crazies out there who purport that UFOs were involved. We don't want to be lumped in with those folks."

Some, vilified by the public, would even receive a cash windfall which attracted others' husbands. And, most pitifully, some would get very little at all - their spouses deemed worthy of only a pittance under a system which favoured the rich.

Those who took the 'blood money' of up to $7 million each were banned from suing the government or airlines for further compensation, their rights stripped away.

Now the widows' stories are being told for the first time in a graphic television documentary to be shown tonight on Channel 4.

The partner of one victim of the terror attack says: 'The public must assume that these families have been taken care of and everything worked out great, not realising that in many cases things worked out horribly.'

Eileen Cirri's husband was one of the 2,823 people killed in the 9/11 attack. Her immediate thought when she heard that the first plane had crashed into the North Tower at 8.46am was for her husband, Robert, a policeman.

'I remember it like yesterday,' she says. 'I was on my way to work when I heard of the attack, it felt like the longest ride in the world. When I got to my desk, I called his station. No one answered.'

As she watched the second plane, United Airlines Flight 175, hit the South Tower at 9.03am, Eileen became increasingly distraught.

Then the telephone rang. 'It was him calling me, and I was like: "Thank God!" she says. 'It was 9.24am. He said: "I love you very much." I said: "You just need to get out of there!" and he goes: "I have to do something!"'

A policeman with more than 17 years' experience and a paramedic in his spare time, Robert told his wife that he was going to try to save people trapped in the North Tower. It would be the last conversation between the couple.

'He sounded very, very confident,' his widow recalls. 'I said: "Just be quick. I love you. I'll see you at home tonight." And I thought I was going to see him.'

Half an hour later, Eileen watched the towers collapse live on television. She returned home and waited for Robert to call again. When the phone finally rang, it would change her life.

Her husband died inside the North Tower when it fell down, although his body would not be found for another five months. He was discovered in rubble on a stairwell, and had been trying to carry a woman in a wheelchair to safety.

When her husband's life was valued at $1.5 million by the Victim Compensation Fund in the months following his death, Eileen rejected the money.

'Covert and sneaky'

'Congress did a three-in-the-morning session when the country was still horrified, the Ground Zero fires still burning,' she says. 'I felt like it was covert and sneaky, and it was really targeted to bail out the airlines.'

The financial awards were based on the victim's age and potential earnings. Senior master of the fund, Kenneth Feinberg, explains: 'Over the course of 33 months I met about 1,500 families.

'In calculating awards, the law decreed that I take into account pain and suffering. That was the first requirement. The second requirement was that I must take into account the economic circumstances of each claimant.'

He adds: 'When I hear people say: "Mr Feinberg, you gave different amounts to every claimant, that's very un-American," I say: "It may not have been a good idea. Maybe everybody should have got the same amount. Congress didn't allow that. But it's very American!"'

The dependants of cleaners through to stockbrokers received between $250,000 and $7 million. The average award was $1.6 million - tax-free - but the widows of high-earners became instant multi-millionaires. In the event, 65 families litigated, while eight, perhaps overcome with grief, did not claim at all.

'I'm not placing a value on the intrinsic moral worth of any victim,' says Feinberg. 'I'm not saying that "Mr Jones" who died was worth more as a human being than "Mrs Smith".'

Yet that was precisely how the news that her husband was in line for a bottom-of-the-scale payment felt to Eileen. 'I'm angry because people should have been compensated equally,' she says. 'I'm a strong advocate of that.'

A feisty, dignified woman of 45, Eileen also objected to having her right to sue the authorities or airlines removed, and refused the award. Robert's children - by his first marriage - wanted to take the compensation, and launched their own action against Eileen. They argued that if she lost a legal case against the fund, they could end up with nothing.

'Knife in the back'

'When I got a lawsuit in the mail, it was just such a knife in my back,' she says. After three years of wrangling, Eileen's step-children won their case, and she was forced to enter the fund - eventually getting $3 million for the family.

Feinberg assumed that once families received their money, they could move on with their lives, but women such as Eileen were too griefstricken to do so.

'This man was a treasure to me. He was much loved,' she says. 'But it was as if I was being told to shut up and take the money.'

Those who willingly accepted the compensation also found that it brought little solace. Kathy Trant made national news headlines when her spending spree turned her into a celebrity. An attractive blonde, she has reportedly spent $5 million in the past five years, including £300,000 on designer shoes, £1,000 on Botox injections for friends and thousands of dollars on breast enlargement surgery.

James Langton, a writer who has followed the fate of the 9/11 widows, says: 'Kathy is one of the loneliest people I've ever met. She told me that in the middle of the night, when she wakes up surrounded by all of these possessions, she just has this emptiness because that's really not what she wants. What she wants is her husband back.'

Kathy, who was the focus of an entire Oprah Winfrey show and much criticism at the height of her spending spree, describes the awful void which she tries to fill.

'I'm dying inside,' she says. 'Every day when I read something that really bothers me I get so frustrated I go out and I shop because it's the only thing that makes me feel good.' She is battling depression and facing an uncertain future with her children Jessica, 23, Daniel, 17, and 14-yearold Alex.

Another woman's story captured the public imagination for different reasons. When Madeleine Bergin's husband, John, died in the 9/11 attack, she became a fireman's widow.

She received a million-dollar payout, and married her liaison officer and John's best friend in the fire service, Jerry Koenig, who left his wife, Mary, for her after ten years of marriage.

Mary believes that Madeleine's payout was part of the attraction for her philandering ex-husband. 'I don't know when it [the relationship] started, but three weeks after 9/11 the signs were there,' she says. 'So I'm going to assume it happened almost immediately.'

Mary, who lives alone on the farm that she and her husband were decorating as their dream home, adds: 'In a sense I would say she "bought" him. And if I had $5million, I think I could do a little better than him.'

The most bitter family disputes have involved the relatives of unmarried victims who had not prepared for their mortality as they were only in their prime. 'One of the problems we had was that only 20 per cent of the victims had wills,' says Feinberg.

Lisa Goldberg's partner, Martin McWilliams, would surely be appalled at the tangled legacy he left his tiny daughter, Sara, and the corrosive financial struggle which has faced her mother, a paramedic. The couple were not married, and McWilliams, a fireman, left no will.

Having seen the devastation near her husband's fire station on TV and waited all day for news, Goldberg answered the door to three of his colleagues the evening of the attack.

They told her that Martin had been crushed to death as he ran from the North Tower. 'I remember just dropping to my knees,' she says. 'It felt like someone had just cut me open and took my guts out.'

Goldberg soon realised that her husband's family were not being supportive. 'I think I knew I was in trouble the first week,' she says. 'The whispers, the things that were said. I couldn't work it out then - but I knew something was coming.

'One of the fire fighters said: "Take pictures of everything he's got, all his clothes, everything in his house." I asked: "Why?" As things evolved, I began to realise - I wasn't getting any phone calls, I wasn't getting that type of respect as a spouse.'

No automatic rights

McWilliams's estate was entitled to $2 million, but as a domestic partner, Goldberg didn't have the automatic rights of the widows of other firemen.

Her baby, Sara, would get everything as McWilliams's next of kin, but his family wanted to control the money.

When Lisa applied for money on Sara's behalf from the Victim Compensation Fund, McWilliams's mother filed an objection. Hurtfully, she claimed that her son had not been in a relationship with Goldberg - despite the scores of carefree photographs of the couple together around the Goldberg home.

The couple had been planning to move from a little apartment to a bigger house, and home videos show them playing with their baby. Bathing the child and cradling her in his strong arms, Martin glows with paternal pride and domestic bliss.

Five years after 9/11, Goldberg is clearly a shadow of the woman beside him in those images, despite battling to provide a happy childhood for her daughter - now a bubbly, pretty little girl, who loves dancing.

'Sara is the best thing that came my way since he's not here,' she says. 'She's part of him, he didn't leave me here alone. She has pictures of her dad, and I tell her stories. Sometimes she asks me to tell a story about Daddy. His shirts that he used to wear, I have them hanging up. He is very much a part of this house.'

Each month, Lisa must apply to court to access her daughter's funds for treats such as trips. She has to collect receipts to support her claims.

Her legal battle continues, however, as she is trying to get a bill through Congress to access Martin's pension, like other widows.

'I've lost five years to this injustice,' says Lisa. 'It's not about the money. My existence with this man has been deleted. That's the hardest thing that I have to live with, besides him really being gone.'

She adds: 'I know the last thing he did tell me, and that's what I hold onto the most. When he left that morning, he gave me a kiss and said: "I love you." Not everybody got that - so, that's what I hang onto.'

The common strand to these women's stories is that money is not the most precious commodity. No one knows that more clearly than Eileen Cirri. She no longer speaks to her step-children, and her new-found wealth has brought no joy.

A new sports car sits in her drive, attracting neighbourly resentment, but the gossips do not know that this is the car her husband dreamed of buying for their retirement, which she now uses mainly on her visits to tend his grave.

'Five years on, people's perceptions have changed,' she explains. 'You are in a fishbowl, with jealousy and vengeance coming at you. I was very surprised recently when pulling out of my driveway, my neighbours said something cruel, like: "There she goes again."'

Eileen has come to terms with her husband's death and the destruction of her family, and generally ignores the catty comments she attracts. Yet there is one thing for which she would exchange all the money in the world.

'That morning, it was early and I was still lying in bed so I just said: "See you later,"' she remembers. 'If I could only have five minutes to say a proper goodbye.'

"It wasn't surprising to me to see these effects from a toxic exposure that goes on for that length of time, even for several days or weeks, with deposition of metals in the lung and no way for the lungs to clear it," said Dr. Len Horovitz, a pulmonary specialist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.

World Trade Center dust, according to Horovitz, was now known to contain heavy metals such as nickel, titanium and cadmium. "These are some of the heavy metals found in cigarette smoke which we know is toxic to the lungs," Horovitz said. The dust also contained large and small particles, the smallest able to reach the deepest recesses of the lungs.

About 40,000 rescue and recovery workers -- including firefighters, police officers and construction and public-sector workers -- were exposed to caustic dust and toxic pollutants following the attacks, according to the study. The findings were based on medical examinations of 9,442 of these responders that were done between July 2002 and April 2004.

Sixty-nine percent of those examined reported new or worsened respiratory symptoms while working at the World Trade Center site. Symptoms were still present at the time of examination in 59 percent of participants.

Sixty-one percent of those who had not had any respiratory symptoms before 9/11 developed symptoms while working at the site.

Pulmonary-function tests revealed that World Trade Center responders had twice the rate of abnormalities as those experienced in the general population. These abnormalities persisted for months and sometimes years, the report found.

Severe respiratory conditions such as pneumonia were much more common in the six months following 9/11 than in the six months prior.

Those who arrived first at the smoldering site had the heaviest exposure and, consequently, more respiratory problems.

The report, released Tuesday by Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City, is scheduled to be published Thursday in Environmental Health Perspectives.

It seems likely that some problems will continue or worsen. "It's not clear whether we're going to see a rise in malignancies but one would suspect that that certainly is possible," Horovitz said.

The report underscores the need to keep monitoring and treating World Trade Center responders, the study authors stated.

Mount Sinai has been the center of 9/11-related research. Of responders treated at the hospital in the past year, 84 percent have had upper-respiratory illness; 47 percent have had lower-respiratory disorders such as asthma and "World Trade Center cough;" 37 percent have had psychological disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder; and 31 percent have had musculoskeletal problems.

According to the Associated Press, the report was released as public concern over the fate of Ground Zero workers has increased. One class-action lawsuit against New York City and its contractors involves 8,000 workers and civilians who blame 9/11 for cancer, sinusitis and other problems.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is expected to announce programs to support those who worked at the site after 9/11.

On Aug. 31, the New York City Health Department released updated clinical guidelines for New York City health-care providers on how to treat adults exposed to the disaster. The guidelines also include screening approaches to improve detection of health problems.

More information

The New York City Department of Health has more information on the aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks.

And that's something he didn't always share with his bandmates, who were reluctant to join Lennon as he spoke out against the Vietnam War, said Ono.

"He is the only one who really wanted to do something about it when he was a Beatle," Ono explained.

Star Watched by the FBI

Lennon's rebelliousness may have come at a price. In the 1970s, Lennon was convinced that government agents were watching him. As it turns out, he was right.

Almost 20 years after his death, the government released the FBI file on Lennon, which included nearly 300 pages of text. One document that went from the FBI to the CIA reports that Lennon planned to take part in a protest at the 1972 Republican National Convention.

South Carolina Sen. Strom Thurmond seized on that, suggesting to President Nixon's attorney general that Lennon's visa be terminated.

A few weeks later, Lennon was given 30 days to leave the country and was notified that his visa had been terminated because of an old drug arrest in England.

"I think that the world really loved the Beatles for being charming and sweet," Ono said. "But some people did resent the fact that they were no more the sweet, nice, charming boys."

Ono and Lennon did not want to leave the United States, and a legal battle ensued.

In 1976, after the end of the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal, Lennon won.

The judge in the case wrote that the British singer's battle to stay in the United States was a "testimony to his faith in the American dream."

To refresh the memory, Ms. O'Neill, a scrupulous reporter of long and good standing, was spied on and her home and office raided after she wrote an article in the Ottawa Citizen about Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen deported to Syria by US authorities in 2002 on the basis of alleged terrorist ties. The article said the RCMP had identified Mr. Arar as a possible member of an Ottawa-based al-Qaeda support group. The Mounties obtained search warrants under the post-9/11 Security of Information Act, maintaining that the journalist's story was based on secret government information.

The matter was before the courts last week, with the Ottawa Citizen seeking to have the search warrants declared unconstitutional. Under the Security of Information Act, Ms. O'Neill could face criminal charges and the possibility of up to 14 years in prison if found guilty.

Ms. O'Neill's article cited "a security source" and a leaked document offering details of what Mr. Arar allegedly said under torture in Syria. The use of leaked information is what journalism often thrives on, to enlighten the public on what is going on behind closed doors. In this great democracy of ours, that's a crime?

Ms. O'Neill's lawyers made the point in court this week that the Security of Information Act is so vague as to contain no definition of "secret" information. Conceivably, the police could pursue any journalist receiving government information if that information were not sanctioned for release. That's the type of thing that used to go on in police states such as the Soviet Union. That's why the case against Ms. O'Neill needs to disappear.

The Citizen was right to publish Ms. O'Neill's story. When the press starts withholding information for reasons of "national security" - which can be defined so as to include most anything - look out. The slippery slope? You're on it.

The New York Times got on that slope a while ago - and went all the way down it. The Times withheld a story for a year on the Bush administration's secret program of warrantless domestic eavesdropping. It did so at the urging of the White House: reasons of national security. The Times's decision had potentially huge consequences. Had the story, uncovered just before the 2004 election, been printed, the damage might have been enough to tip the vote to the Democrats. All the Democrats needed was a changeover of 60,000 votes in one state (Ohio) to win. But the Times was under the gun for previous transgressions. It lost its nerve. It failed the public interest.

A case similar to the one involving Ms. O'Neill occurred when the RCMP went after reporter Andrew McIntosh to find out his sources and to retrieve a document in connection with a story he wrote on the Shawinigate controversy. Ironically, on the very day that Ms. O'Neill's home and office were being raided, an Ontario Superior Court judge ruled in favour of Mr. McIntosh, saying a search warrant that would have forced him to reveal a confidential source should never have been granted. "Freedom of expression is a cornerstone of our society," wrote Madam Justice Mary Lou Benotto. "Confidential sources are essential to the effective functioning of the media in a free and democratic society."

This week, the Crown filed an ominous-sounding factum in the O'Neill case. The Crown appeared to be arguing that the media's publication of any security-related information beyond what is authorized under the government's Access to Information Act can be grounds for criminal charges. Disclosure under the 1983 act can take months or years and, at that, large portions are often blacked out. But try to get around it, the Crown seems to be telling journalists, and you risk being charged with a criminal offence.

That's how serious this whole thing is getting. That's the type of intimidation that the post-9/11 environment has wrought. That's why the O'Neill case is so important. That's why the courts must respond with a clarion declaration that this is a free society.