Alan Hart predicts Palestinian "final solution", supports Assad and Nasrallah

Alan Hart has told interviewers that, on 9/11, Mossad agents using cell phone equipped with transponders steered the planes that hit the World Trade Center.  He went on to explain that this did not bring down the towers. He says that the building were brought down by what he calls "controlled ground explosions".  (Read here.)   He went on to state in that interview that Israel had stolen several nuclear weapons from U.S. military bases which it intends to explode in U.S. cities. When asked for his evidence, he told his interviewer (the former University of Wisconsin instructor and current podcaster and Holocaust denier Kevin Barrett) that he had it, but that he couldn't provide it at that time because it was on a computer he did not have with him. Although Hart had a career as a journalist (he actually worked as a correspondent for ITN and BBC about 30 - 40 years ago), he somehow has failed to perceive that he has uncovered the greatest news story of the past century -- maybe of all time -- and follow up on his revelations with the the evidence which will put him in the pantheon of the greatest journalists ever. Either that, or he made up all the whole thing and he's a completely unreliable nutter posing as a reliable source. I choose the latter.

Not everyone agrees with me on this, of course. RT, the Russia Today network, provide him with a forum, as does the Iranian regime's English language propaganda outlet Press TV. On Press TV, Hart hosts an interview show where his guests have included Norman Finkelstein, John Pilger and Ilan Pappe.  In the U.S., Hart has been a guest on Alex Jones meshuga conspiracy theory radio program, Kevin Barrett's "9/11 truth" podcast, and the public access TV show hosted by Hesham Tillawi.  Hart also writes a regular column for the the atrocious hate website dishonestly called Veterans Today. (If calling a website devoted to hate speech, Holocaust denial and conspiracy theories by that name isn't an insult to veterans, nothing is.)

With all that, Hart has recently come out with the following dire prediction in a blog post he wrote in support of a column by David Hearst which appeared in the Guardian last week:

"Zionism’s in-Israel leaders [may] create a pretext (possibly involving Mossad agents dressed as Arabs planting bombs) to go for a final round of ethnic cleansing – to drive the Palestinians off the West Bank and into Jordan or wherever.

"It's because I believe a Zionist Final Solution . . . is a real possibility in a foreseeable future that I think a way should be found for the major powers, led by America, to put Israel on public notice that if it did resort to a final round of ethnic cleansing, it would be universally condemned as a criminal state and subjected to sanctions of every kind, universally applied."

That column can be read at his blog here: “Could Arab (Palestinian) staying power ultimately defeat Zionism?” or, with insane Veterans Today comment string attached, here.

To restate his comment, Alan Hart writes that Israel may be planning to carry out terrorist attacks on itself in order to blame them on Palestinians. He alleges that this will be the pretext for Israel to expel Palestinians from the West Bank. To prevent this, he proposes that the international community warn Israel that such behavior would be sanctioned.

And this is nothing new for Hart.  Back in July 2010, he told a Russia Today interviewer (read here):

“I think Israel’s leaders will invent a pretext to drive the Palestinians off the West Bank, into Jordan, Syria or wherever. And the blood will flow. The West Bank will be soaked with blood, it will be mostly Palestinian blood… That wouldn’t be the end of the story. It would so inflame Arab and Muslim masses that you will be opening the Pandora’s Box of a much wider conflict.”

If those absurd predictions and recommendations don't impeach Alan Hart as a source, what will?  How about the fact that, as recently as April 28, 2011, he was still defending Bashar Assad? At that time, he told a Russia Today interviewer (read here) that:

I don’t think young Assad is in control. I think Assad is probably more or less a prisoner of his generals and the security services. He gave the world the impression when he came to power 10-11 years ago that he was going to be, not like his father who was a tyrant, he was going to a reformer. I suspect that probably was the genuine “son of the father”, but I think right now he is probably, as I would say, a prisoner. And they are just going to shoot, and shoot, and shoot. And rather like the Israelis don’t give a damn about what the world thinks, I don’t think Syria’s security forces will either.

Hart went to say in that interview that he believes Hasan Nasrallah to be the Middle East's greatest statesman, a champion of democracy, and that Hafez Assad was a puppet of Israel:

I also think Hezbollah has vested interest in what is going on here. I mean, I am not one of those who write Hezbollah off as a terrorist group. I think Sheik Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, is head and shoulders above all other Arab leaders in the region. I think he is a real leader, and I think Hezbollah has evolved into a truly democratic party. So, I don’t think it would want any boats rocked either.

But if Syria were to fall, I think you are really asking me what would happen. Well, I don’t think Syria will fall to the extent that I can’t see a scenario in which Syrian security doesn’t remain in control. And what the world doesn’t know about Syria is that for many years under this present president’s father, it actually cooperated with Israel. It was actually at times an Israeli puppet. In the 1967 war – I tell the full story of this in my book – there was a secret understanding between Syria and Israel before the ‘67 war. So Syria plays its cards very, very well to survive in this region. It’s much too early to write off the regime there in my view.

In a more recent interview with RT, Hart impugns the motives for Western opposition to Bashar Assad's brutality, saying (read here):

The interest of the West is in getting rid of the minority ruling group of the country.  I would assume that British and US policies want Syria detached from Iran.

On another subject, Alan Hart recently used the mass-murder committed by the Norwegian Anders Breivik as an occasion to blame those crimes on Israel.  (Read here.)  In that column, Hart writes:

From the obscenity of the Nazi holocaust to the present, Zionism’s success in selling its propaganda lies as truth is the reason why the search for peace based on an acceptable amount of justice for the Palestinians has been, and remains, a mission impossible .  . . It’s bad enough that Zionist propaganda has prevented a cure for it, but if now that same propaganda is inspiring Europeans in Europe to slaughter their own, the future is very, very frightening.

In that column, Hart fails to indicate what lies about the Holocaust Zionists promote, or how Israel promoted or benefits from the massacre of Norwegian children.

I have no doubt that Alan Hart truly believes the apocalyptic scenarios he imagines to be true, and that he tells the truth when he says that they frighten him.  That he and the media outlets which enable him choose to frighten others with these mad fantasies and give them an air of reality for a credulous, biased or delusional audience does a disservice to everyone, regardless of political opinion.



My prior writing about Alan Hart is available here.  I recommend that readers check out David Aaronovitch's recent column for the Jewish Chronicle, Anti-Zionists Having a Laugh, for more on Hart.  That column describes a recent conference which Hart headlined during which Jews were blamed for causing the Holocaust.  Gilad Atzmon, who made that charge, found it amusing that Jews wouldn't understand why they were to blame. Also for your consideration, from a website promoting Gilad Atzmon, is Alan Hart's amusing description of himself as a "covert diplomat in the Middle East".  (Read here.)  He doesn't indicate on which government's behalf he served in this capacity.  Clearly, Alan Hart has a very tenuous grasp of the difference between reality and his fevered imagination.

No accounting for taste: Glenn Greenwald supports conspiracy monger Alan Hart (...or does he? See comments.)

What does it mean to "like" someone on Facebook?  Salon Columnist Glenn Greenwald says that he is a fan of anti-Israel conspiracy theorist Alan Hart.  I wonder why.  (See screenshot from Hart's website above.  Hart's Facebook widget featuring Greenwald's image is located on the right side.)

Does Greenwald share Alan Hart's belief that, on 9/11, Israeli agents controlled the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center via remote control devices hidden in cell phones?  Does he agree with Hart that Israel has stolen nuclear weapons from a U.S. military base and intends to use them to destroy an American city? (Read my column documenting Hart's conspiracy theories here.)  In May, Hart not only made those bizarre assertions, he also claimed in radio/podcast interviews with conspiracy mongers Kevin Barrett and Alex Jones that he had proof that the World Trade towers were destroyed by controlled demolition, i.e. that explosives had been planted within the buildings and were detonated after the plane crashes to bring down the towers. (This implausible belief is an essential part of truther conspiracy theories.) Hart said in those interviews that his proof for this controlled demolition conspiracy, which he claimed came from a source within "one of the world's leading engineering firms", resided on a laptop to which he didn't then have access because he was away from home on a U.S. speaking tour. That was more than four months ago, and Hart has still not come forward with the computer file that, if it actually existed, would undoubtedly provide him with the biggest scoop of his career as a journalist.  Maybe Hart just hasn't gotten around to looking for it.

I don't believe that Greenwald shares Alan Hart's belief in these bizarre theories, but his "liking" Hart does raise the question: how crazy does an anti-Zionist have to be to be too crazy for Glenn to like?

(The Facebook widget featuring Greenwald's image was found here: Obama speaks at the UN… Goodbye to peace - Alan Hart)

Alan Sabrosky: "Large majority of U.S. Jews are traitors" and Israel did 9/11 attacks. So who the heck is Alan Sabrosky?

Sometimes, when an expert makes a serious charge but has no evidence to back it up, it's still newsworthy by dint of the provenance of the charge.  The reputation of a source can play a big role in determining when to believe unverifiable charges, or at least report them with a grain of salt.

Alan Sabrosky bills himself as the former Director of Studies at the U.S. Army War College.  He has made quite a name for himself in recent months by first declaring himself a military expert with high-level connections in the U.S. military hierarchy, then by outrageously claiming that Israel was responsible for 9/11 and that the U.S. military knows this and is concealing it.  While he offers no evidence for this, he claims that he should be trusted because of his expertise.  The truth of the matter -- with respect to both his background and his claims -- is quite different, of course.  Sabrosky has deliberately inflated his role in the military and has used that ruse to promote a hateful, fact-free conspiracy theory.  In fact, while he did work as an administrator at the U.S. Army War College, he was not, as his job title seems to indicate, the director or dean of the college.  Far from it.  According to the Press Office of the Army War College, in the mid-1980s, Sabrosky served as a civilian administrator at a research department of the college, supervising the publication of papers written within that department.  His job title was "Director of Studies" because he supervised publishing studies done within a department of the college.  He was a mid-level civilian manager at a military college, without access to the sort of highly classified material of the sort he now fraudulently claims to have.  Moreover, since his employment at that school was about 25 years ago, his employment there would provide him with no special insights with respect to 9/11.  How on earth could someone who worked on the level of a college librarian in the 1980s be privy to top secret information revealing a vast hidden conspiracy?  And how on earth could he be the only person to know about it or think it worth revealing?


An expert, privy to the highest levels of the military elite?

Over the past few years, Alan Sabrosky has become a fixture of anti-Israel media.  In numerous, articles, interviews and blog postings, he literally does only two things: promotes conspiracy theories and compares Israel to Nazi Germany.  As I mentioned above, most recently, he has taken this campaign to a new level of absurdity by claiming not only that Israel was responsible for carrying out the 9/11 attacks, but that most of the leadership of the U.S. military knows this and is keeping it secret in a vast conspiracy of silence.   I don't know how many of thousands of officers Sabrosky includes in this conspiracy of silence, but, considering that not a single officer has broken it, it would certainly go down as the most successful such conspiracy in history if true.  Only because of Sabrosky's impressive sounding resume, these reckless and baseless charges have been reposted and repeated countless times, albeit in biased and unreliable places.

Sabrosky originally published this conspiracy theory in a column called "Treason, Betrayal and Deceit: 9/11 and Beyond" which he published on the Information Clearinghouse website in September (read here).  That column was reposted verbatim on a number of far-right, pro-Palestinian, 9/11 truth and conspiracy-oriented websites (read here), including, of course, the 9/11 Jewish-Mossad False-Flag Archive.   In March, Sabrosky published his follow-up on Information Clearinghouse, featuring the audio of the interview embedded above. That he called "The Dark Face of Jewish Nationalism: 9/11 - The US Military Knows Israel Did It" (read here).

Based solely on Sabrosky's word, this absurd conspiracy theory has spread far and wide.  Googling the terms sabrosky +9/11 +israel gets about 28,000 hits at the time I'm writing this, reflecting the fact that an ersatz Jewish-American military official's charge that Israel did 9/11 has really gone viral.  (Read here.)  Those Google results include Sabrosky's original column, those quoting or citing Sabrosky's claims, and links to interviews with him.  Among the latter is the Ron Paul Forums website, which posts the above-embedded video  here and here, and touts it here.   The Ron Paul Forums also linked to a posting supporting Sabrosky on the anti-Semitic website TheInformationUnderground.  (Read here.)  More recently, anti-Zionist conspiracy nut Alan Hart and 9/11 conspiracy nut Kevin Barrett gave Sabrosky their seal of approval in a radio interview in which Hart made his own extreme and false charges concerning 9/11, as I wrote here.  Both Hart and Barrett spoke solemnly of their deep respect for Sabrosky and his expertise on Israel and the U.S. military.


Wrapping themselves in the false-flag

A website purportedly devoted to vererens' issues, but which in fact is frequently devoted to promoting conspiracy theories, has been part of the mainstreaming of Sabrosky's views.  Veterans Today (read here) describes Sabrosky's charges as accurate, (falsely) says of him that

What makes him unique is that we have a Jew who can hardly be called “self-hating” or “anti-Semitic” or against Israel.

then quotes Sabrosky that

Zionism is a real witches’ brew of xenophobia, racism, ultra-nationalism and militarism that places it way outside of a “mere” nationalist context...  and goes far beyond the misery for others professed by the Nazis...

Zionism undermines civic loyalty among its adherents in other countries in a way that other nationalist movements (and even ultra-nationalist movements like Nazism) did not.

The column quotes Sabrosky as saying that Zionists regard all non-Jews as "potential enemies".   That's the same column that claims Sabrosky can't be bigoted against Jews because he has some unspecified Jewish family members!

It turns out that Veterans Today isn't quite what it seems.  It's actually edited by another person with an amazingly impressive sounding resume and a penchant for promoting anti-Jewish conspiracy theories.  (Quite a coincidence!)  That man is Gordon Duff, who writes of himself (read here) that he

is a Marine Vietnam veteran, grunt and 100% disabled vet. He has been a featured commentator on TV and radio including Al Jazeera and his articles have been carried by news services around the world. He has been a UN Diplomat, defense contractor and is a widely published expert on military and defense issues. He is active in the financial industry and is a specialist on global trade. Gordon Duff acts as political and economic advisor to a number of governments in Africa and the Middle East. Gordon Duff is currently working on economic development projects in Pakistan and Afghanistan to counter the effects of poverty and global extremism.

I don't know for certain, but excuse me for thinking that Duff's resume sounds more than a bit fishy.


The conspiracy widens...

In a recent radio interview, Sabrosky further widened the dimensions of his conspiracy theory by declaring that "the large majority of U.S. Jews" are "traitors".  After introducing his subject by saying that it was the most important thing he could possibly talk about because loyalty to country is a paramount virtue, Sabrosky told his interviewer that

To my displeasure and my shame, because I have some Jewish relatives -- none of whom is Zionist -- a large majority of American Jews give their allegiance to a foreign country. They may have American citizenship, but their allegiance is to Israel. And as I said in the piece, this is a form of political bigamy that is every bit as dishonest as marital bigamy. And marital bigamy is -- you know -- I'm not married now, but when I was, loyalty to my spouse was absolute. It has to be there. I can look and say "Ah ha! There is Farah Fawcett." You know -- and I could admire someone out there, but I didn't give that person my allegiance. And there's a difference between admiring from a distance and giving allegiance to that thing, and it's the same with a country...

Some of my relatives are German, some are Irish. All of them have a measure of allegiance to those cultures, but it's not a political allegiance, it's a social allegiance. It's like - we're gonna stand up on St. Patty's Day or we're gonna stand up on Oktoberfest and we'll celebrate this, and we're proud of being German or Irish or whatever it happens to be. But none of us gives our allegiance to Ireland or Germany. Jews do.

I don't care if we're called anti-Semites or not. If we don't say "truth is truth -- their allegiance is to a foreign country -- they are traitors", then we're dishonest to ourselves...

I've had a bitter argument with one of my cousins who moved to Israel and kept his American citizenship. If someone loves another country enough to go there, more power to them. They go, and they're gone. But they keep the U.S. citizenship so they can continue to participate in our elections, stand in our offices. Look at Rahm Emanuel! I mean, he served in the Israeli armed forces, not the American armed forces! And he is easily the second most powerful person in the country. Easily. That's treason!"

[The audio of this is available at 4:20 of the below-embedded video.]

Opposition from truthers, support from anti-Zionists

Some in the 9/11 Truth movement have quite sensibly pointed out that Sabrosky's conspiracy theory is not only factually false and illogical,  but that's it's also bigoted.  (Read here.)  Amusingly, they deduce from this that Sabrosky must be an agent provocateur  working with a conspiracy to discredit the other, more sensible, conspiracy theorists.  They think that Sabrosky is a one-man false-flag operation!

But not everyone is as suspicious as the truthers.  For example, the anti-Zionist blog Mondoweiss not only cites Sabrosky as an expert on Israel, it actually published a column he authored at Philip Weiss' request!  In the column, which he wrote for Weiss in 2008 (read here), Sabrosky, after claiming some Jewish heritage by dint of having an unspecified Jewish family member and liking Jewish food, went on to call Benjamin Netanyahu a Nazi -- "Gauleiter in spirt" -- although he didn't bother to say why.  Considering the gravity of that charge, one would think it worthwhile to spell out the crimes that elicited it.  Then, citing those infamous drunken bigots in Max Blumenthal's "Feeling the Hate" video, Sabrosky went on to call Jewish Zionists "barabarians" and "evil", and to compare Zionism to Nazism.  In spite of Blumenthal's claim that his "Feeling the Hate" video wasn't meant to be taken as a reflection of all Zionists, Alan Sabrosky and Mondoweiss certainly saw it that way .  Mondoweiss' editors, while admitting in a column for Talking Points Memo (read here) that the interviews in the Blumenthal video were "cherry-picked", still somehow asserted that the video accurately showed that "Americans who are called to Israel ... don't especially believe in minority rights".  In this way, they illogically argue that cherry-picked facts can support an accurate conclusion.  That sort of logic appeals to those such as Sabrosky who generally operate in a fact-free environment.  They have in that video at least a bit of tangible evidence to support their biases.  Generally, Sabrosky doesn't have any.

Alan Sabrosky

Pat Buchanan website: Israel destroyed WTC via controlled demolition

Pat Buchanan's website (see note below) has published a column claiming that a major engineering firm has concluded that Israeli agents destroyed the World Trade Center via controlled demolition. (Read here. [11/03/2010: No longer available online.  Click here.]) This conspiracy theory is a recent product of a retired TV reporter named Alan Hart, and was the subject of an earlier post on this blog. (Read here. Another prior column on Hart is available here.) Hart claims that an unnamed engineering firm has concluded that the World Trade Center was destroyed not by fires resulting from planes crashes, but by explosives detonated in the buildings. He further claims that Israeli agents steered the planes which crashed into the World Trade Center using remote control devices in their cell phones. Hart also contends that Israel has stolen an American nuclear weapon which it intends to explode in a major American city. He stated in an interview that Israel intends to use this "false-flag operation" to start a war between the U.S. and Iran in order to conceal a planned genocide of Palestinians by Israel.

Hart, who has made a career of anti-Zionist campaigning in a series of barely-read books and a never-ending tour of public appearances, has thus far been unable or unwilling to name the engineering firm he referred to, or to cite his sources for any of his charges. He maintains that this information is stored on a computer which is currently unavailable to him.

UPDATE #1(May 29, 2010): 

An observant reader at Screw Loose Change, the great anti-truther blog, has pointed out (here) that the Pat Buchanan website, buchanan.org is, according to a notice buried on a FAQ page on the website (here), not edited or maintained by Pat Buchanan, but by the webmaster for his 2000 presidential campaign, Linda Mueller.  Hard to believe that Buchanan would be so irresponsible to allow a website -- which is named for him, filled with his image, columns and pitches for his books, and which completely buries the notice stating that he's not editing it -- to post material this offensive.  A lot of the other material, including links to Holocaust denial websites, is equally bad.

Buchanan needs to disavow this website or MSNBC needs to disavow him.

Alan Hart: Israel did 9/11 and may nuke the U.S.

In an interview with an internet radio talk show called "truthjihad.com", former television journalist Alan Hart has claimed that Israel was responsible for the 9/11 attacks and that it is planning a nuclear attack on the U.S. (Read here: truthjihad.com blog: Senior BBC Mideast Correspondent: "Here's what may have REALLY happened on 9/11"!) According to the interviewer, a former university instructor in Islamic studies named Kevin Barrett, Mr. Hart

said that he has been assured by a top-level demolitions/engineering expert who wishes to remain anonymous that the three World Trade Center skyscrapers were destroyed by controlled demolitions, not plane crashes and fires.

and

During the hour-long interview, Hart discussed Israel's record of engaging in outrageous attacks on friend and foe alike, and spreading even more outrageous lies to cover them up. (Around the midpoint of the show he explained the real reason Israel attacked the U.S.S. Liberty in 1967.)

Regarding 9/11, Hart suggested that while there may have been some original terrorist plot conceived by fellow-travelers of Osama Bin Laden, the Israeli Mossad, with its near-total penetration of Middle Eastern governments and terrorist groups alike, would have quickly detected and hijacked the operation to its own ends, orchestrating a spectacularly successful attack on America designed to be blamed on its Arab and Muslim enemies. Hart added that the Mossad operation that became 9/11 would have been aided and abetted by certain corrupt American leaders.

Sounding a chilling note, Hart added that the U.S. is in grave danger of an Israeli-instigated false-flag nuclear attack, perhaps using an American nuclear weapon stolen from Minot Air Force Base during the "loose nukes" rogue operation of August, 2007. The motive would be to trigger a U.S. war with Iran, and perhaps to finish the ethnic cleansing of Palestine under cover of war--which Hart is convinced the Zionists are planning to do as soon as the opportunity presents itself.

I've had an opportunity to listen to the interview. Hart offers a novel explanation of the attack on the U.S.S. Liberty, asserting (at about 33:00 of the mp3 of the interview) that the Liberty was monitoring Israeli actions to make certain that Israel did not "take land" from Jordan and Syria. This, according to Hart, was the condition of a deal Israel had with the Johnson administration for its permission to go to war with Egypt. Hart offers no evidence to support this apparently implausible motive. The program's host asks Hart why Israel would go to the trouble of sinking the Liberty to conceal territorial gains which were readily apparent. Hart, after several digressions, asserts that he finds it "highly likely" that President Johnson would have called the Israeli leadership and instructed them to immediately retreat from territorial gains against Syria and Jordan if the Liberty had not been sunk.

Hart then calls the Liberty incident a war crime, and says (at 35:50 of the mp3):

The lesson of the cold-blooded attack on the Liberty was that there is nothing that the Zionist state might not do to its friends as well as its enemies to get its own way.

Hart concludes this pseudo-history by defining Zionism as a war by Jews against the rest of humanity. This explains, he says, the mindset behind a deliberate attack on an ally.

In response, Kevin Barrett, the program's host, states (at 40:45 of the mp3):

This actually lends some credibility to the people who argue that 9/11 -- whatever happened on 9/11 -- that it wasn't what we've been told. That whoever ordered the controlled demolition of the World Trade Center -- there are those who argue that Israel, its Mossad and its U.S. allies could have done it, and that it was essentially a Mossad operation. And there are others who say "that's ridiculous. How could a little country like Israel do something like that?" Well ... if you look at the Liberty incident ... it's not clear that there's really any limit to what the Israeli hawks think they can get away with in terms of attacking America.

Hart replies:

I'm going to break a rule now. I mean, you mentioned 9/11. Basically, in public, I don't talk about it because it makes you such a target for abuse and false charges of anti-Semitism and everything, doesn't it?

Barrett breaks in to heartily agree. Hart continues:

Hart: So basically, I've stayed away from it because it give them the focus to take the attention away from your main message. But, since you've mentioned it, I'll tell you what I honestly believe. I think it probably started out as an all Muslim operation, okay? But I think it would be very quickly penetrated by Mossad agents. I detail it in my book. From almost the moment Israel was born, it had its agents penetrating every Arab government, every Arab military organization, and every Arab terrorist group, whatever. So they certainly would have penetrated this. And at some point they said to the bad guys in the CIA, "this is running, what should we do with it?" And the neo-cons said "let's use it".

The twin towers were brought down by a controlled ground explosion, not the planes. Now I'm going to tell you in passing that one of my friends is a consultant for one of the world's leading engineering firms. I'm not going to name him. They've studied the films and they've found that there's no doubt whatsoever that the planes were brought down... sorry, that the towers were brought down by controlled ground explosion. And then we have the film of the -- what is sometimes called the five dancing Israelis. Are you aware of that Kevin?

Barrett: I certainly am. They were celebrating the attacks. They had set up to film before the attacks and they were high-fiving and flicking cigarette lighters in front of the twin towers.

Hart: That's right. But the point is that they all had mobile phones. Right?

Barrett: Right.

Hart: Now they were initially reported as being Muslims. Are you aware of that?

Barrett: Um... Middle-easterners.

Hart: (Impatiently) Alright, middle-easterners. But the impression was that they were Muslims -- they were the bad guys.

Barrett: Right.

Hart: So the FBI gave chase, and these five guys, they tried to avoid being arrested. But they were eventually caught, and they were arrested. And guess what. They were all Mossad agents.

Barrett: That was confirmed by the Forward.

Hart: That's right. It's established fact. It suggests that they knew that it was going to happen. It was possible, and this is Alan Hart speaking, that the planes were fitted with transponders, and these guys were calling in the planes to the targets. It's not impossible.

Barrett: I suppose not. These are many possibilities, but the possibility of remotely-guided planes is a good one, being that, if one had planned a very complex demolition of three skyscrapers which would have been the three largest buildings taken down in history by controlled demolition, one would have to make sure that they were hit in order to justify that.

Hart: And isn't it the case, Kevin, that quite a lot of your top pilots have said that it would have been a bloody difficult job to drive those planes into those buildings.

Barrett: Well, that's right. I've had a number of pilots who are members of Pilots for 9/11 Truth come on my show, and they said that the clocked speed of the aircraft, when it hit the South Tower, was nearly 600 miles per hour at sea level. And that's a speed that, well, some of them say that these 767 aircraft couldn't possibly reach that speed at ground level. They would be torn apart at substantially lower speeds than that by the air pressure of the much thicker air at sea level. But, in any case, that nobody in their right mind could claim that it would be possible to guide a plane at that speed at sea level and hit those targets in the way they were hit.

Hart: So the speculation is that were fitted with some kind of transponder and they were called to the target electronically is not totally irrational?

Barrett: Uh... well no it's not, and in fact, it's even somewhat questionable whether normal passenger aircraft would be able to do that consistently at that kind of speed. In any case, it seems very doubtful that pilots who couldn't even solo in a Cessna would be performing these amazing stunts to hit their targets.

Hart: Well, that and two other things Kevin. We know as a fact that at least six and maybe nine of the alleged hijackers who died are in fact alive and living in...

Barrett (interrupting): Well, that's right. And that's confirmed in Jay Kolar's article "What we now know about the 9/11 hijackers", which was published, actually, in a volume by Europe's top scholarly outfit (inaudible). It's amazing that the scholarly literature is all so one-sided. There's no scholarly counter-literature except for...

Hart (interrupting): Except for "how dare you be so anti-Semitic". That's the only counter-literature.

Barrett: Right, right. And then there's Cass Sunstein's counter-literature published in the Harvard Law Review. He's that Harvard guy who's advising Obama...

After Barrett discusses Cass Sunstein's article on how to counter conspiracy theories, Hart spends several minutes detailing how Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle were likely conspirators in planning a Pearl Harbor-like attack (i.e. 9/11) designed to involve the U.S. in a war with Iraq. After discounting the threat posed by a nuclear-armed Iran, Hart claims that

The reason why the Israelis are hyping up Iran is to take attention away from the continuing Zionist colonization and genocide in Palestine.

Barrett replies by citing anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists Gordon Duff and Alan Sabrosky to the effect that the Mossad carried out 9/11 and that many in the U.S. military establishment know this to be so. Hart responds by saying that he knows Sabrosky and respects him. Then he drops the big one, so to speak. He unleashes a conspiracy theory for the ages, claiming that Israel has been covertly supplied with a nuclear weapon by Dick Cheney, who Hart calls "Dr. Strangelove". Hart speculates that this nuke is still in the United States and the Israelis intend to detonate it here as a "false flag" operation designed to implicate Iran.

Barrett: Do you have any sources where we could follow up on this?

Hart: I would have to dig deeply into my computers to find this, but it's been very well documented.

With that dismissive statement, Hart leaves the listener to either wonder in amazement at the audacity of such an undocumented claim, or to cower in fear that his tin-foil hat will fail to protect him.

The interview can be heard via a player embedded on Hart's website here or at a website called noliesradio.org. A direct link to an mp3 of the interview is available here.

By the way, in the course of the interview, Hart makes several less sensational if equally false arguments, including claims that Israel's existence has never been threatened by its enemies ("not in 1948, not in 1967, not even in 1973") and that the 1967 war "was a war of Israeli choice and aggression". These run-of-the-mill, doctrinaire falsehoods are hardly surprising coming from a man who believes that the World Trade Center attack was accomplished by Mossad-operated remote control planes and planned demolitions and Israel will soon be nuking the U.S. to cover up a genocide in Palestine, but I thought it worth mentioning if only to show that, however extreme his current conspiracy theories may be, Hart is nothing if not a monomaniacally consistent ideologue. The facts, and even a desire to maintain a semblance of sanity, has never interfered with his spinning a good anti-Zionist yarn.

From the truthjihad website:

UPDATE #1 (May 28, 2010):

Bloggers at a truther website called 9/11blogger.com have picked up on this interview and on my reaction to it (read here).  They are for the most part supportive of Hart and Barrett, although a few raise questions as to why Hart would make such explosive charges (so to speak) without having any supportive documentation or even being better identify his sources or, for that matter, cite any evidence.  One blogger at that website points out that, as with Alan Sabrosky, it is the news that someone with the appearance of an impressive resume is making that charge that makes the charge notable.  I would point out to them that, both in the case of Hart and Sabrosky, this veneer of expertise is hardly sufficient to cover the paranoia and bigotry underlying their fraudulent conspiracy theories.  As I intend to write here within the next few days, Sabrosky has been dining out on his having worked at the Army War College in the 1980s and his allegedly having a Jewish grandparent, hardly enough to compensate for his promoting without any evidence whatsoever the charge that most of the military elite in the U.S. believe the Mossad responsible for 9/11, a charge with is patently false.  Similarly, Hart unintentionally reveals just how foolish and reckless he is by making his extreme charges without any documentation -- and even asking his interviewer if the charges seem plausible -- all the while falling back on his having been a TV reporter many moons ago in order to lend some credence to his drivel.

For the most part, however, those at 911blogger.com support Hart's charges.  They link to a conspiracy theory website called propagandamatrix.com where a blogger called Paul Joseph Watson has posted an article which swallows Hart's charges hook, line and sinker.  His headline: "Top Construction Firm: WTC Destrtoyed by Controlled Demolition".  Watson describes Hart as "Respected Middle East expert and former BBC presenter".  He goes on to write:

Given his biography and standing, Hart's comments are not to be taken lightly. Hart is a former Middle East Chief Correspondent for ITN News and has also presented for BBC Panorama specializing in the Middle East. He was also a war reporter in Vietnam and the first journalist to reach Suez Canal with the Israeli army in 1967. Over the decades, Hart has developed close relationships with numerous high profile political figures, including the Shah of Iran, Yasser Arafat and Shimon Peres.  Hart has been a successful author for years and has no reason to fabricate the fact that a top construction firm told him point blank that the towers were brought down in a controlled demolition.

On of the bloggers at 911blogger points out that the cartoon posted above, which I found on Kevin Barrett's website, was authored and originally published by a Nazi website.  I haven't verified this.  Any readers with information about the source of that cartoon should feel free to comment here.


UPDATE #2 (May 28, 2010): 

Pat Buchanan's website has signed onto this conspiracy theory.  Read here.

Alan Hart: Israel kidnapped Alan Johnston ... "by default"

Regular readers of this blog may remember my posts about retired journalist and anti-Israel polemicist Alan Hart blaming Israel for the kidnapping of BBC reporter Alan Johnston. (Read here and here and here.) Before it was known whether Johnston was alive or dead, Hart had the gall to state that, if Johnston had been killed, the Israelis were behind it. His "reasoning" for these absurd accusations?

"The Palestinians were the party with absolutely nothing to gain and much to lose from Alan's permanent removal from the scene ... He was, in short, the best and most informed provider of news about the Palestinian side of the story; a story which, in many of its details, is an embarrassment to Israel ... (A)nd if he has been murdered, Alan's death, if it could be blamed on a Palestinian or a pro-Palestinian Arab and/or other Islamist group, would be a huge political setback for the legitimacy of the Palestinian struggle and the present leadership of it."

(Original posted April 16, 2007, archived here.)

Hart started with the conclusion that best fit his bias, then determined that the facts simply had to support that conclusion. To Hart, this constituted proof positive. His post understandably elicited a deluge of criticism in the form of posted comments condemning Hart's absurd "logic" and accusing him of anti-Semitism. Hart responded by moderating his blog comments and the criticism ceased.

In fact, as became clear over the ensuing months, Alan Johnston had been kidnapped and held for a huge ransom by an Islamist group styling itself the "Army of God" or "Tawhid and Jihad Brigades" -- an "army" which, it was later discovered, was one of Gaza's crime families , the Doğmuş. (Read here.) It is unclear whether the Islamist jihadi cause was merely a cover for the Doğmuş, or if the distinction between jihadi and criminal is one imposed by outside observers -- a distinction without a difference.

On July 4, 2007, Johnston was released by his Palestinian captors. None of what Hart had written had been true. His allegations were merely a conspiracy woven by a mind consumed with hatred for everything Israeli and blinded to any evil without an Israeli behind it.

Well...everyone makes mistakes. Under the circumstances, one would hope that Hart would apologize, post a correction, or at least let the subject drop. But he hasn't done this. In fact, a few days ago, Hart posted this:

"...re Alan Johnston... We still do not know, and may never know, if his kidnappers were proxies - by design or default - for another party..."

The Delphic pronouncement "proxies by design or default" is a puzzle. Hart seems to be intimating through this ineffable koan that he believes Israel responsible for the kidnapping "by default" even if they were not directly involved. We must meditate upon this then consult the bepompadoured oracle.


It's pretty clear that Hart seems unconcerned when the facts don't live up to his idea of what they should be; he simply invents his own. He's also not worried about seeming a bigot. For the sheer absurdity of it, you gotta love Hart's catch-all permanent defense against charges of anti-Semitism (read here):

"One of my favourite souvenirs from my television reporting days for ITN and then the BBC's Panorama programme is a signed photograph of Prime Minister Golda Meir. The inscription in her own hand is: "To a good friend, Alan Hart. Golda Meir." Question: Do you think that old lady, Mother Israel, was so stupid that she could not have seen through me if I was ... a 'Jew hater'?"

Hart, who may be prone to what psychologists describe as "magical thinking", seems to think that Golda Meir was clairvoyant on these matters. He also seems to think that, by inscribing that photo "good friend", she was granting him some sort of continuous absolution.

Hart's magical thinking sometimes takes the form of prophetic narcissism -- a sort of Jerusalem syndrome where he sees himself as Jeremiah speaking truth to power. The following excerpts from a rambling bio were apparently written by Hart about himself in the third person. He features the full length self-promo both on the main page of his blog and attaches it to his postings on other websites (read here and here):

"Alan has long believed that what peacemaking needs above all else is some TRUTH-TELLING, about many things but, especially, the difference between Zionist mythology and real history, and, the difference between Jews and Judaism on the one hand and Zionists and Zionism on the other. (The Zionism of the title and substance of Alan's latest book is, of course, political Zionism or Jewish nationalism as the creating and sustaining force of the Zionist state, not what could be called the spiritual Zionism of Judaism).

"* Alan Hart, author of Zionism: The Real Enemy of the Jews, is indicting mainstream media complicity in suppression of truth!"

and

"Alan is a fiercely independent thinker. He hates all labels and isms and has never been a member of any political party or group. He prefers to judge issues on their merits. When asked what drives him, he used to say: “I have three children and, when the world falls apart, I want to be able to look them in the eye and say, ‘Don’t blame me. I tried.’” ... Alan ... has to be able to live with himself. He believes that heaven and hell are states of mind."

On the website for his book entitled ZIONISM THE REAL ENEMY OF THE JEWS A Book for Peace, he refers to his own book as:

"the first ever informed and honest debate about who must do what and why if there's to be a peaceful resolution of the Palestine problem."

He also claims (in the video embedded below) that he "could have stopped" the 1967 Six Day War.



If you think his vanity, unreliability and absurd grandiosity would discredit Hart in the eyes of other anti-Israel zealots, forget about it. He fits right in.
Counterpunch publishes Hart's calls for an end to the state of Israel (read here). MPACUK (Muslim Political Action Committee U.K.) promotes his books with online interviews (read here).

Britain's Islam Channel tapped Hart to chair a 2006 anti-Israel conference. A glowing account of his participation is featured on the conspiracy website Rense.com (read here). The Jerusalem Post account is online here. Hart's fellow participants at that conference included Ilan Pappe (to his right in the photo below), and one of the oft-photographed Naturei Karta guys in full charedi regalia.

[As an aside, the Rense website amusingly describes the charedi guy as "Rabbi Ahron Cohen, whose house had been bombarded with 1,000 eggs, presumably by Zionists, (a) few weeks ago". (Please post your punchlines to the comments section of this post.) An explanation for this high cholesterol barrage may be found in the the Jerusalem Post report. It says Cohen "was a member of the delegation that went to Iran to offer support to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in March following his comments that Israel should be wiped off the map."]


There's a danger in my pointing out just how absurd Alan Hart is. You may not take his potential impact seriously. That would be a mistake. Hart's first book, a laudatory biography of Yassir Arafat, is very widely read and cited. Hart also continues to be featured as a speaker at international conferences. In 2007, Hart delivered the keynote address at the Empower India Conference in Banagalore, which was sponsored by the Muslim political organization Popular Front for India . (Read here and here and here.) Not surprisingly, Hart's prescription for empowering India focused on India opposing Israel and resisting America's

"imperial project to have India as their Israel in this part of the world".

In spite of his monomaniacal focus on Israel and Jews, his pomposity and his long-windedness, Hart knows how to communicate his message effectively. He made a career as a television journalist and his skills as a public speaker are well-honed. An audience which is either naive or receptive to his message might well be convinced that what he says is true. That's why it needs to be pointed out that his unfounded accusation that Israel's hidden hand was behind Alan Johnston's kidnapping is not an anomaly. It's entirely consistent with Hart's worldview of fantastic conspiracy theories with Israel at their center.

Plausible sounding conspiracy theories presented by articulate, seemingly reliable figures present a real threat and need to be exposed.

The alternate universe of Alan Hart

Remember Alan Hart, the anti-Israel conspiracy nut who claimed that Israel had Alan Johnston killed in order to silence him? I posted about that here and here. Well...in a futile attempt to rationalize his previous paranoid musings, he still claims that Israel might be responsible. What a horse's ass!

from the alternate universe called Alan Hart's blog:

In my expression of fear as posted to this blog, I said I believed it was wrong to jump to conclusions about who, really, had taken Alan (and might have killed him) and why. I went on to speculate that if one took motive in account, there was a case, repeat a case, for saying that Israel was one of the parties with a motive. That suggestion provoked a barrage of organised Zionist hate mail. Some of which I published.

Question: Does what we know today enable us to be any more certain about who, really, was responsible for Alan's abduction? I say NO!

On the face of it, I seem to be wrong. Alan was abducted by a Mafia-like, Palestinian extended family or clan. For what purpose? Apparently to have Alan as a bargaining chip in a power struggle with Fatah and Hamas.

That is one possible explanation. But in the Middle East nothing, absolutely nothing, is ever what it seems to be. (I think it was Lebanon's last murdered president who once said, 'Believe nothing of what you read and only half of what you see.' He was speaking about events in his own country, but what he said holds good, generally speaking, for the region. My own rule of thumb for interpreting Zionist statements is to assume they mean the opposite of what is stated).

In my assessment, any attempt to establish the truth about who, really, was responsible for Alan Johnston's abduction must recognise a fact of life – that Palestinian and other Arab groups such as the one that kidnapped the BBC's man are easily penetrated by outside agencies ranging from Israel's secret services to Al Qaeda.

It is by no means impossible that Alan Johnston's kidnappers were acting, knowingly or not, for an outside agency. If so, which one? And for what purpose, actually?

Alan Hart's Lie: If Alan Johnston is dead, Israel was responsible.

As we collectively watch the agony of Alan Johnston, kidnapped and held for ransom by a gang of fascist thugs calling themselves the "Army of Islam", forced to wear explosives and relay death threats against himself, let's take a moment to look back at who Alan Hart, a lunatic anti-Israel ex-journalist, blamed.


If Alan Johnston is dead, who, really, was responsible? (April 16, 2007)

At a public meeting in London on Wednesday 11 April, I was asked for my thoughts (as a former ITN and BBC Panorama correspondent) about Alan Johnston's "disappearance" in Gaza. I said that I feared he could be dead, and that if he was, he might well have been shot in the head within minutes of being taken more than a month ago.

If Alan is dead, the truth about who killed him might be in accordance with the claim of the Tawhid al Jihad Brigades group that it was responsible; but it also might not be (repeat might not be).

The group which claimed responsibility in a fax to news agencies on 17 April is an Al Qaeda franchise (driven by events in Iraq), and was unknown in the Palestinian territories; and what can be said for certain is that the Palestinians were the party with absolutely nothing to gain and much to lose from Alan's permanent removal from the scene. And they had much to lose on two counts.

On Count One, Alan was not only the BBC's man, he was the only permanent foreign correspondent in Gaza. He was, in short, the best and most informed provider of news about the Palestinian side of the story; a story which, in many of its details, is an embarrassment to Israel and those governments, most notably the Bush and Blair regimes, which support Israel's efforts to break the will of the Palestinians to continue their struggle for an acceptable minimum of justice.

On Count Two, and if he has been murdered, Alan's death, if it could be blamed on a Palestinian or a pro-Palestinian Arab and/or other Islamist group, would be a huge political setback for the legitimacy of the Palestinian struggle and the present leadership of it. (The Al Qaeda franchise would not give a damn about harming the Palestinian cause).

There is a case for saying (repeat a case) that the party with most to gain from Alan Johnston's permanent disappearance was Israel. It would not be the first time that Israeli agents had dressed as Arabs to make a hit.

If Alan Johnston is dead, it's my hope that the BBC at executive management level will rise above its fear of offending Zionism too much and allow its reporters (Frank Gardner and Jeremy Bowen are second to none) to make a full, thorough and honest investigation.

Alan Hart: If Alan Johnston is dead, who, really, was responsible?

Here, for all to see, is an example of paranoid anti-Israel bias, which in Britain circa 2007 is taken for sanity.

Alan Hart argues that, because the kidnapping and claimed murder of Alan Johnston harm the Palestinian cause, Israel MUST be responsible. Moreover, if the BBC doesn't allow its reporters to investigate Israel's responsibility, it MUST be because of pro-Israel bias. The logical fallacies, false assumptions and conspiracy theory paranoia pile up as Hart starts from his bigoted conclusion and, marching backwards, tramples the facts.

Hart's website states that he is the author of ''Zionism: the REAL enemy of the Jews'', and ''Zionism: the REAL enemy of the Jews, Volume 2''.