(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Before he was a member of the “Squad,” Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D–N.Y., he apparently was an aspiring poet.
And according to the Daily Beast, one of Bowman’s poems was about the 9/11 terrorist attacks being an inside job—espousing several theories that have varying degrees of plausibility.
The personal website of Bowman was deleted before he was a member of Congress, but the Daily Beast found it in the internet archives.
And the 9/11 poem is a doozy.
“2001/Planes used as missiles/Target: The Twin Towers,” Bowman began in his poem about the terror attack. “Later in the day/Building 7/Also Collaspsed [sic]/Hmm…/Multiple explosions/Heard before/And during the collapse/Hmm…”
According to the Daily Beast, the poem then pursues even more obscure conspiratorial musings.
“Allegedly/Two other planes/The Pentagon/Pennsylvania/Hijacked by terrorist [sic]/Minimal damage done/Minimal debris found/Hmm…” Bowman wrote.
“We blamed Osama/Went to war in Iraq/Captured Saddam/Killed him,” he added. “Bin Laden is Afghan/So we went to war there too.”
As readers can likely tell, Bowman made a rudimentary factual mistake by calling Bin Laden, who was a Saudi Arabian, an Afghan. His line about planes shooting missiles, and his suggestions that flights 77 and 93 were hoaxes also seem bizarre.
But while the Daily Beast said Bowman’s reference to Building 7 was also debunked long ago—”Building 7 buckled and fell after debris from its taller peers struck it and ignited a blaze inside, undermining its structural integrity,” the outlet said—there are engineers still arguing that the structure collapsed via controlled demolition.
Indeed, the Journal of 9/11 Studies published a new paper last June, further making that case. The authors of the research said their measurements indicated that the entire roofline of Building 7 entered free fall instantaneously and simultaneously to within two-tenths of a second—which indicates a controlled demolition, they said.
Building 7 and other conspiracies aside, Bowman’s poem fails to mention the most compelling evidence that government may have had something to do with 9/11: The CIA attempted to recruit at least two of the hijackers months before the attack.
According to a sworn statement from Office of Military Commissions investigator Don Canestraro, at least two FBI agents told him that the CIA had attempted to recruit Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar.
The public could soon know more about the recruitment efforts. In November, a military judge ordered the FBI to produce 3,000 pages of documents about Omar al-Bayoumi, an alleged Saudi and CIA intelligence asset who acted as the handler for two of the 9/11 hijackers.
However, Bowman might not be interested in those records. He has purportedly disavowed his questions about 9/11 as misguided.
Bowman told the Daily Beast on Monday: “I don’t believe anything that these cranks have said, and my life’s work has proven that. As a Congressman, I’ve written a Congressional Resolution condemning a dangerous conspiracy theory, I’ve stood up to MAGA extremists, and I’ve called out the endless bullshit of the far-right.”
He reportedly added that he has “learned how misinformation spreads” since the time of the blog post and “I regret posting anything about any of these people. Anyone who looks at my work today knows where I stand.”
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
