Comment: A U.S. senator shouldn’t entertain conspiracy theories

By the New York Daily News Editorial Board

The senior senator from Wisconsin, Republican Ron Johnson, is posing fresh questions about the deadliest attack on the United States in history, feeding into paranoid and dangerous conspiracy theories. Johnson asks as though they’re open questions: “What actually happened on 9/11? What do we know? What is being covered up?”

In an interview we’re loath to amplify, Johnson asserts that an investigation of World Trade Center Building 7 was “corrupt” and suggested its collapse was the result of a “controlled demolition.” He expresses the desire to hold Senate hearings on the topic.

We get that it’s high time in our history for conspiracy theorists to peddle nonsense, like Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy does, but as people who had friends and colleagues perish on that day, and following on editorials in this space that won a Pulitzer Prize for championing the very real health crisis faced by first responders who worked The Pile in the days and weeks after the attacks, we take this particular set of lies a bit personally.

The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, are probably the most extensively studied events in the history of this nation. A joint congressional inquiry held 22 hearings, reviewing a half-million pages of documents, interviewing 300 individuals; and producing an 800-page report.

An independent commission to investigate the attacks held 19 days of public hearings, reviewed 2.5 million pages of documents, interviewed more than 1,200 people in 10 different countries and produced a 567-page document.

Many other hearings by congressional Judiciary, Armed Services and Homeland Security committees went into great depth about precisely what happened and how to close vulnerabilities.

What happened, which Johnson can learn if he cares to read one of those reports or one of the dozens of books written by credible independent journalists, or visit the 9/11 Memorial & Museum in Lower Manhattan, is: 19 al-Qaida terrorists hijacked airplanes and turned them into weapons against the twin towers and the Pentagon. They intended to train another plane at the U.S. Capitol, but that one was brought down by courageous passengers in a field in Pennsylvania. All told, the attacks killed nearly 3,000 people, the vast majority of whom were in New York City.

And the toll of those killed in the panic and chaos of that dark day has now likely been surpassed by the toll of firefighters, construction workers, cops and others who engaged in rescue and recovery efforts amid the smoldering wreckage, even as thousands more continue to struggle with lung diseases, cancers and other terminal conditions.

It is salt in the wounds of those actually harmed by 9/11 that a man like Johnson, who can find the time and energy for corrosive conspiracy-mongering, is nowhere to be found as Sens. Chuck Schumer, Kristen Gillibrand and a broad coalition of House members seek to secure full federal funding for the World Trade Center Health Program for these heroes.

In other contexts, Johnson has said, “When I think of Sept. 11 I think of firefighters, first responders, police walking up the stairs into danger to save others. In these tragedies we always seem to see and witness the absolute best of humanity and the American character.” In his latest words and actions, we see and witness the absolute worst of both.