In the face of the dark horrors fed to us daily from the Middle East and Ukraine one risks being deemed Pollyanna-ish to detect any comforting points of light. Who can draw much consolation when a UK Labour Government proscribes a direct-action pro-Palestine group as terrorists in the same week that its staunchly uncritical Parliamentarians celebrate the direct action of the Suffragettes?
But when many of our MPs display the cynical behaviour that Tom Paine well described during the American Revolution as that of “summer soldiers and sunshine patriots”, it is encouraging to learn of the recent activities of some present-day US Republicans.
One is Curt Weldon, for 20 years until 2007 the Republican member of Congress for the seventh district of Pennsylvania. Another is Senator Ron Johnson, the current senior US senator from Wisconsin. Both have come to wider attention recently thanks to the efforts of a third Republican, the conservative commentator and former Fox News presenter Tucker Carlson.
And what in “voodoo history” – the phrase is that of former Communist and Murdoch columnist David Aaronovitch – has brought this trio together? The events of September 11 2001.
When the three Manhattan towers came down almost a quarter of a century ago Weldon was about to progress from being vice-chair of the House Armed Services Committee to leading it. But as a long-time volunteer firefighter close to some of the hundreds in the New York Fire Department who died that day, Weldon began asking questions, much to the annoyance of the George W Bush White House.
He claims in his Carlson interview that the Bush administration took their revenge by threatening his daughter before finishing his career. Far from being intimidated, this has only intensified his angry curiosity about the events of 9/11. The 77-year-old veteran of Washington politics who says he is still paying off his mortgage, rubbishes the work of the 9/11 Commission reluctantly set up by Bush. He actively supports the many whistleblowers who have challenged its findings and is calling on President Trump to set up a new inquiry.
Senator Johnson tells Carlson his demands for answers to 9/11 questions result from his wider concern for “integrity in science”. He says he has lots of unanswered ones about the “seminal event in our lifetime”. He believes that World Trade Center 7 (WTC7), which came down in its own footprint on the afternoon of September 11, was destroyed by controlled demolition. He dismisses the report on it by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and regrets the absence of any reference to it in the 9/11 Commission Report.
Carlson, who says he feels guilty about his earlier abuse of 9/11 “truthers”, is now producing a series of investigative reports on 9/11 for his big online audience. Listening to him and his two interviewees is to hear from mainstream figures many of the arguments those of us writing, reflecting and broadcasting about 9/11 have tried unsuccessfully to publicise for many years.
Sadly the one British politician who tried to generate public interest in 9/11 is unable to join them. Michael Meacher, a minister in Labour governments led by Harold Wilson, James Callaghan and Tony Blair, died in 2015. He was an early critic of Blair’s decision to invade Iraq and his 2003 Guardian article on 9/11 and the “war on terror” foreshadowed much of what we are hearing from Carlson and his Republican interviewees 20 years later.
Meacher was promptly abused by Aaronovitch, then a Guardian columnist. The late MP for Oldham West and Royton quickly disappeared from Blair’s government after raising doubts about the “war on terror” much as Weldon says his Congressional career was ended by the White House after questioning 9/11.
Since those frenetic post-9/11 days when Bush, Vice-President Cheney and their Neoconservative allies rushed through the Patriot Act, fanned the public panic over anthrax attacks and NATO Secretary-General George (now Lord) Robertson supported their declaration of war, we have lived through decades of conflict abroad and increasing domestic repression at home.
Questioning the conventional version of 9/11 – fanatical Muslims taking control of planes and demolishing buildings – has not hitherto proved a prudent career move on either side of the Atlantic. But that may change as the efforts of these three critical Republicans is being aided not only by the thousands of architects and engineers in AE911 Truth but by the work of the International Center for 9/11 Justice. Its website has now been bolstered by the addition of the Complete 9/11 Timeline.
This searchable database of thousands of mainstream 9/11-related articles was offline for several years. It is now fully restored and freely available to anyone curious about the events surrounding September 11 2001.
The Timeline index is useful not only on details of the 9/11 attacks. It offers insights into wider issues. So, for example, searches confirm the influence of American Neoconservatives and Zionists in 9/11 events. There is everything from the dancing Israelis working as spies for Urban Moving Systems to the prompt BBC framing of events by former Israel Prime Minister and friend of Jeffrey Epstein, Ehud Barak. We can learn more about Sandy Berger, President Clinton’s national security adviser, stealing documents from the National Archive.
It tells us about Philip Zelikow, the Neoconservative the Bush White House appointed as executive director of the 9/11 Commission. It will be remembered that Zelikow later joined his friend Condoleezza Rice in the Bush Administration and that the joint chairs of the Commission later said that the body had been “set up to fail”.
Benjamin Netanyahu appears in the Timeline. He is reported by Ha’aretz in 2008 saying: “We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq. […] [The attacks] swung American public opinion in our favor”. The Timeline tells us more about Netanyahu’s property magnate friend Larry Silverstein acquiring the asbestos-filled Twin Towers six weeks before 9/11.
Towards the end of my conversation with Professor Ilan Pappe on his 2024 book Lobbying for Zionism on both sides of the Atlantic he made the distinction between optimism and hope.
The Timeline and the questioning words of Weldon, Johnson and Carlson are not in themselves going to change our violent world. But in chipping away at the façade of deceit and deception that is the “war on terror” they are helping us move to a more balanced and humane understanding of the world post 9/11.
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