Was HST Working on the WTC Story?

It would truly be interesting if Hunter S. Thompson was working on a story about the WTC collapse on 9/11 before he died under somewhat suspcious circumstances. Unfortunately, the primary source for that idea is a strange Globe and Mail tribute to Thompson, where the author, Paul Craig Roberts, takes unfortunate liberties with reality in his opening paragraph:

Hunter telephoned me on Feb. 19, the night before his death. He sounded scared. It wasn't always easy to understand what he said, particularly over the phone, he mumbled, yet when there was something he really wanted you to understand, you did. He'd been working on a story about the World Trade Center attacks and had stumbled across what he felt was hard evidence showing the towers had been brought down not by the airplanes that flew into them but by explosive charges set off in their foundations. Now he thought someone was out to stop him publishing it: "They're gonna make it look like suicide," he said. "I know how these bastards think . . ."

That's how I imagine a tribute to Hunter S. Thompson should begin. He was indeed working on such a story, but it wasn't what killed him. He exercised his own option to do that. As he said to more than one person, "I would feel real trapped in this life if I didn't know I could commit suicide at any time."

"He was indeed working on such a story", is a rather important assertion yet Roberts offers no source or substantiation nor does he follow-up on this point.

Interestingly, the NY Post gossip page appears to confirm that Thompson was working on such a story.

So, this fact certainly puts Thompson's death in a rather mysterious light. And as the NY Post goes on:

There are some serious irregularities surrounding the demise of the
gonzo author, who was found shot to death in the kitchen of his Woody
Creek, Colo., ranch on Feb. 20, and local cops seemed to have done a
lackluster job of investigating.

Police reports obtained by the Rocky Mountain News note that cops
arriving on the scene heard shots being fired, that Thompson's son,
Juan, was allowed to be alone with the body, and that there was
something odd about the gun Thompson supposedly used to kill himself.

Before his death, Thompson seemed in good spirits and was not known to
be depressed. And considering his long-winded style, the absence of a
note seems strange - he'd typed only the single word "counselor."

There were no eyewitnesses to the shooting, only an "earwitness" -
Thompson's wife, Anita, who was on the phone with him at the time and
who later drank scotch with the corpse. Her account of the incident is
inconsistent: She alternately has said that she heard a loud, muffled
noise and that she heard nothing but clicking.

The behavior of Juan, who was in the house at the time of the shooting,
also was unusual. Pitkin County Deputy Sheriff John Armstrong said that
when investigators arrived on the scene they heard shots, but Juan
assured them he had merely been firing off a salute to his dead dad.
Investigator Joseph DiSalvo also let Juan enter the kitchen alone and
drape a scarf over the body.

And in his report, Deputy Ron Ryan noted the semi-automatic Smith &
Wesson 645 found next to Thompson's body was in an unusual condition.
There was a spent shell casing, but although there were six bullets
left in the gun's clip, there was no bullet in the firing chamber, as
there should have been under normal circumstances.

DiSalvo said he did not check the gun, adding, "I think a bullet from
the magazine should have cycled into the chamber" unless there was a
"malfunction." A spent slug was found in the stove hood behind the
body.

At this point, who knows what really happened? Particularly the ante is raised if Thompson was also working a story about pedophile-sex rings in Washington DC.