David Duke in a tele­phone inter­view on Press TV

As we com­mem­o­rate the 11^th anniver­sary of the 9/11 attacks, con­spir­acy the­o­ries sur­round­ing the per­pe­tra­tors and alleged cover-up still abound. These the­o­ries range from the idea that the destruc­tion of the World Trade Cen­ter was a “false flag” oper­a­tion in which the U.S. gov­ern­ment attacked its cit­i­zens to pro­vide an excuse for war, to the notion that Jews and/or Israelis per­pe­trated the attacks and then pointed the fin­ger at Islamic extremists.

Press TV, the Iran­ian government’s plat­form to dis­sem­i­nate its ide­ol­ogy to the English-speaking world, exploited the anniver­sary to espouse anti-Semitic ”expla­na­tions” of what hap­pened on 9/11 in three arti­cles pub­lished on their web­site today.

The first, an inter­view with for­mer Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, served as an oppor­tu­nity for Duke to flesh out his anti-Semitic con­spir­acy the­ory that Israel was respon­si­ble for 9/11. When Duke was asked if he believes 9/11 was an “inside job,” he responded: “There are Israeli fin­ger­prints all over the whole 9/11 aspect…Israel has a long record of ter­ror­ism against America…there are a lot of rea­sons that Israel wanted 9/11 to hap­pen.” In addi­tion to blam­ing Israel for per­pe­trat­ing the attacks, Duke also claimed Jews and/or Israel are respon­si­ble for a num­ber of Amer­i­can poli­cies and world events. He stated, for exam­ple, that the Iraq war was merely the result of Zion­ist con­trol. “The Zion­ists orches­trated and cre­ated this war in the media, the gov­ern­ment, and inter­na­tional finance,” he said.

Press TV also inter­viewed Mark Dankof, a con­trib­u­tor to the vir­u­lently anti-Semitic news­pa­per Amer­i­can Free Press. In the inter­view, titled “Zion­ists mas­ter­minded, co-plotted 9/11 attacks,” Dankof explic­itly accuses “Zion­ists” of per­pe­trat­ing the attacks. When asked by the inter­viewer whether it’s likely the U.S. will rein­ves­ti­gate the attacks, Dankof replies:

“It is not going to hap­pen because the peo­ple who per­pe­trated [9/11] are the same peo­ple who con­trol the news media and have a dispro­por­tion­ate influ­ence in Amer­i­can for­eign pol­icy through var­i­ous think tanks and so forth, that are aligned with the nation of Israel.”

Dankof also states that he agrees with the out­spo­ken 9/11 con­spir­acy the­o­rist Alan Sabrosky that “9/11 was an Israeli Mossad inside oper­a­tion from start to fin­ish — one hun­dred per­cent. Period.” Dankof adds that if oth­ers look into 9/11, they will find that:

“Israel had the motive, they had the means, they had the oppor­tu­nity, they had the money, they had the resources, they had the inside con­tacts and they had the people in the Amer­i­can media and the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment to cover it up for them after the fact.”

A third arti­cle posted today, a reprint­ing of com­ments made by Iran­ian pres­i­dent Mah­moud Ahmadinejad about 9/11, was sim­i­larly con­spir­a­to­r­ial. Ahmadine­jad, accord­ing to the tran­script pro­vided by Press TV, stated that the sanc­tity of the media has been “destroyed” by Zion­ists and that the events sur­round­ing 9/11 and the sub­se­quent American-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were the result of a “media oper­a­tion.” His com­ments, though some­what vague and inco­her­ent, seem to imply that the “Zion­ists” cor­rupted the media which in turn has led to U.S. poli­cies in the Mid­dle East that are per­ceived to ben­e­fit Israel.

Press TV has a his­tory of pro­mot­ing offen­sive and unsub­stan­ti­ated the­o­ries on 9/11 behind the veneer of pro­vid­ing legit­i­mate news cov­er­age. In doing so, they also pro­vide a plat­form for those who espouse such the­o­ries and lend legit­i­macy to them.

Tags: 9/11, american free press, anti-Semitism, david duke, Iran, mahmoud ahmadinejad, mark dankof, press tv, September 11