Kourosh Ziabari: Mathias Broeckers, a German author and journalist, is of the opinion that 9/11 attacks were carried out with the foreknowledge of the US government and the complicity of Israel to pave the way for launching the imperial agenda of dominating the Middle East.
Mathias Broeckers says that the 19 hijackers who are said to have been recruited by Osama Bin Laden to crash the American Airlines and United Airlines planes into the twin towers of the World Trade Center and Pentagon were being closely monitored by the CIA while they were in the United States, but for unknown reasons, the federal police were prevented from taking legal action against them.
On the wars launched by the United States and its NATO allies against Afghanistan and Iraq following the 9/11 attacks, Dr. Broeckers believes that these military expeditions constitute war crimes, but as long as the United States does not accept the ruling of the International Court of Justice, nobody can be held accountable.
“There is no doubt that these killings are war crimes, but since the main perpetrator, the US, does not accept the International Court of Justice in The Hague, nobody will be held responsible. Since the US-NATO war in Yugoslavia, the international law is increasingly subverted by military force, as the wars in Libya and Syria supported by the West, showed again,” said Broeckers.
“Since the international authorities are mostly dominated by the United States, the silence on these crimes is no surprise,” he added.
Mathias Broeckers is a writer and journalist in Berlin. After getting a master’s degree in politics and literature in 1979, he co-founded the national daily “Die Tageszeitung” (taz). In the 1990s, he was a columnist with “Die Zeit” and worked for public radio stations. In May 2002 he published the book “Conspiracies, Conspiracy Theories and the Secrets of 9/11“ which became a bestseller in Germany and was translated into several languages, followed by two more books on the 9/11 attacks in 2004 and 2011. In his writings, Mr. Broeckers has openly questioned the official accounts of the 9/11 attacks as proclaimed by the US mainstream media and government officials.
Q: Dr. Broeckers; the 9/11 attacks laid the groundwork for the launching of the War on Terror, a military project that led to the invasion and near destruction of two countries and the killing of thousands of innocent civilians. Do you believe that this scenario was premeditated and preplanned to pave the way for the United States to come close to the Middle East and realize its ambitions for dominating its vast energy reserves?
A: The fact that these terrible crimes have seen no proper investigation until today, that the narrative of official report is mainly based on confessions of Khalid Sheik Mohamed who was tortured – waterboarded – more than 180 times and that a sophisticated operation like this can’t be organized and done out of cave in Afghanistan with 19 students equipped with boxcutters indicate that 9/11 was an inside job using Mohamed Atta and his gang as scapegoats. As I showed in my last book on the case, “Zehn Jahre danach – Der Einsturz eines Lügengebäudes”, there are at least more than 20 contradictions and inconsistencies in the official report which would have led any court judging after the rule of law to the conclusion that there is not enough evidence to convict Bin Laden, Atta & Co. for the attacks. That is the reason why no proper investigation was done because this would have led to the real perpetrators, which I don’t know but which have to be inside the military and intelligence branch. Therefore there is a strong suspicion that these attacks were done as a pretext for the following wars.
Q: Why do you think the mainstream media in the United States condoned the possible role of the US government in the 9/11 attacks or its potential alliance with Israel to carry out those heinous and dreadful attacks? Is it because the mainstream media in the West are part of what your colleague Barrie Zwicker calls an “industrial, military, academic, intelligence, media complex” that works hands in glove with the White House to implement its major policy decisions?
A: I agree with Barrie that the mainstream media is part of this “industrial, military, academic, intelligence, media complex”. With the collapse of the twin towers we have not only to be in mourning at the death of 3,000 innocent citizens, but also of the nearly total breakdown of the media’s constitutional function in democratic societies as an instrument of power control and critical investigation. The coverage of 9/11 shows that mass media is doing a perfect job if it comes to grave criminal activities like presidential sex with White House trainees, but if it comes to small sins like the 9/11 events and letting them happen, there had been and still is no investigative journalism at all. The mainstream media have gone to rack and ruin and became a brothel of propaganda. No one – except a handful of journalists on the internet – asked further questions, in spite of the fact that the official version turned out to have all ingredients of an exemplary conspiracy theory: a simple claim, a lousy proof and a loud call to action. But instead of scrutinizing the incredible tale, that Osama and 19 bandits from their Afghan caves conducted this deadly strike against the worlds superpower out of the blue and all alone – the trombone orchestra of corporate media repeated this legend over and over and over again. And at the same time the media is promoting this conspiracy theory ad nauseam, it is spitting the blame on any critical question to be just that: a conspiracy theory.
Q: The global War on Terror was the prelude to an all-out media, psychological attack on Islam and the Muslims. Several blasphemous movies ridiculing Islam were produced after that date, many sacrilegious articles were written, cartoons deriding Prophet Mohammad (PBUH) were drawn and the holy book of Muslims was burnt on several occasions by an American pastor who, on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, claimed that Islam threatens American democracy. It’s quite clear that the 9/11 attacks played into the hands of the White House to give the green light for a Global War on Islam. Do you agree with this premise?
A: After the collapse of communism and the Soviet Union, the military industrial complex was strongly missing an enemy to justify the further raise of its budgets. So “radical Islam” was invented to fill the gap and was portrayed as the new world enemy and threat to the West. Despite there are some real radical Islamists in some parts of the world, these groups never ever would have been able for an attack like 9/11, but after they were blamed to have done it anyone in the world was brought to fear this new and powerful terrorist monster.
Q: Some independent scholars and officials, including the British Member of Parliament Michael Meacher, maintain that the US intelligence apparatus was informed of the possibility of terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon few months prior to the day of attacks. It’s also noted that in August 2001, two senior Mossad experts traveled to Washington and provided the intelligence officials with a list of terrorist suspects including four of the 9/11 hijackers; however, the US government and the security organizations didn’t take any action and literally ignored the warnings they had received. Is it really the case that they intentionally overlooked the alarms and preferred to let the plans go forward?
A: While in the US, the 19 “hijackers” were closely monitored by agents of the CIA and Mossad, and the FBI and local police were inhibited to follow suspicious leads on some of them. 15 of them were infiltrated to the USA with faulty visa through US-consulate in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia – a well-known hub of the CIA for foreign agents and fighters. Since a huge operation like this has to gain some foreknowledge, the plans came also to knowledge of some intelligence agencies outside the US, which warned the US government few weeks before. Ignoring these warnings and the hindering of FBI investigations to some of the later “hijackers” led to the strong suspicion, that parts of US intelligence were deeply involved.
Q: The Brown University has estimated “very conservatively” that the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have cost the lives of around 137,000 civilians. Is the killing of innocent civilians a war crime? If so, then who is responsible for investigating this crime and bringing its perpetrators to justice? Why have the relevant authorities and international organizations in charge remained silent about it?
A: There is no doubt that these killings are war crimes, but since the main perpetrator, the US, does not accept the International Court of Justice in The Hague, nobody will be held responsible. Since the US-NATO war in Yugoslavia, the international law is increasingly subverted by military force, as the wars in Libya and Syria supported by the West, showed again. Since the international authorities are mostly dominated by the United States, the silence on these crimes is no surprise.
Q: The US government has been trying strenuously to inculcate this conviction that Muslims are terrorists, sponsor terrorism across the world and pose a threat to the security of the United States. However, there are conscious Americans who deny this charge, asserting that it’s the very US government that traditionally supports dictatorial regimes and terrorists in different countries for the sake of political purposes. What’s your take on that? Which idea do you agree with?
A: Muslims are not more or less “terrorists” than Christians or Jews; they all have the same religious roots and their common “one God” has one main and most important message: love.
The US became somehow the inventor of weaponized, militarized Muslims in modern times when they financed and trained the Mujaheedin to fight against the Russians in Afghanistan. Religion was used as an ideological tool to motivate people like Bin Laden to fight on the side of the US a war, which had nothing do to with religious purposes but only with America’s geopolitical and business interests. As you see in Iraq right now, where the ISIS terrorists occupied huge parts of the country, Islamic fighters still work as a covered tool of the US superpower and the old imperial motto: “divide and rule.” Instead of working to make Iraq strong and united, the US policy is to divide it into small regional nations fighting each other. The US supports whatever its interests need; dictators, despots, fascists, terrorists.
Q: What are the most important unanswered questions surrounding the 9/11 attacks? Have you ever investigated into the claims that the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center collapsed not because the planes had crashed into them, but because of the detonation of explosive materials that were fixed in the lower stories of the towers?
A: In my latest book, we list 37 open questions, from which, in a regular trial, every single one would lead the general attorney to reopen the case, to hear the witnesses and to subpoena the government to release certain documents. I did not investigate the collapse of the towers closely, but I interviewed William Rodriguez, a janitor at the WTC and the last man leaving the north tower alive. He heard a blasting in the basement just seconds before the blasting in the upper stores and he saved a man who came up in the lift from the basement burning. Rodriguez’ statement was not included in the 9/11 report, as so many witnesses contradicting the official story. Especially the “free fall” collapse of the third tower, WTC 7, which was not investigated at all, seems to indicate the using of explosives.