The September 11 attacks are the starting point for a claim that a network of intelligence operatives, arms dealers, and political figures financed, trained, and monitored the hijackers before the attacks happened. The film builds its case from what it says are more than 2,000 hours of archival network news clips, many aired only once and since scrubbed from network archives, some requested by the filmmakers and reportedly denied or declared lost. It traces the same names forward and backward through decades of government scandal, arguing that individuals tied to the Iran-Contra affair resurface in the 9/11 story, linking drug trafficking, arms trading, and money laundering to a group operating with apparent impunity. Wall Street figures and Washington think tanks are named as parts of the same network. There are no on-camera experts weighing counter-evidence here; the footage of old news broadcasts is presented as the proof, stitched together to suggest a single continuous conspiracy running from the 1980s through September 2001.