DAY OF INFAMY 2001
$100,000 offer on 'truth' about Sept. 11
Conspiracy theorist claims attacks on U.S. were 'inside job'
Posted: December 16, 2004
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2004 WorldNetDaily.com
Ground-level view of the Twin Towers prior to the Sept. 11 attacks.
A millionaire activist convinced the Sept. 11 attacks against the U.S. were the result of an "inside job" is putting up cash if anyone can prove him wrong.
Reuters reports Jimmy Walter is offering $100,000 to any engineering student who can prove the World Trade Center collapsed the way the government claims it did.
More than 2,700 people were killed when two commercial airliners slammed into New York's Twin Towers three years ago.
"It wasn't 19 screw-ups from Saudi Arabia who couldn't pass flight school who defeated the United States with a set of box cutters," Walter told the wire service as he dismissed the official Sept. 11 commission report. "I don't trust any of these 'facts.'"
He says a panel of expert engineers would judge the submissions.
"Of course, we expect no winners," he added.
Walter is also looking to launch a contest next month among U.S. high school and college students looking for alternative theories as to why the Center collapsed. The top prize is $10,000, with 100 runners-up receiving $1,000 each next June.
Walter, the 57-year-old heir to an $11 million home-building fortune, maintains explosives planted inside the towers caused them to fall in the manner they did, despite official investigations which lend no credence to that stance.
He also dismisses the government's explanation for the damage at the Pentagon.
"We have all the proof," Walter told Reuters, citing videotapes and eyewitness testimony. "I am a patriot fighting the real traitors who are destroying our democracy. I resent it when they call me delusional."
Walter has already spent millions of dollars – some 30 percent of his net worth – pushing his case with full-page ads in publications such as the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the New Yorker and Newsweek. He's also paid for some 30-second TV commercials.
Walter points to a Zogby poll earlier this year showing half of New York City residents believed some government leaders "knew in advance that attacks were planned on or around Sept. 11, 2001, and that they consciously failed to act."
The survey, which was conducted on the eve of the Republican National Convention, showed 66 percent want Congress or New York's attorney general to open up a new investigation of "unanswered questions" surrounding the attacks.
The poll was sponsored by 911truth.org, a coalition of researchers, journalists and victim family members "working to expose and resolve the hundreds of critical questions still swirling around 9-11."
Another poll in May revealed 63 percent of Canadians were convinced U.S. leaders had "prior knowledge" of the attacks yet declined to act.
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