For Immediate Release:

Contact: Senator Karen S. Johnson (602-926-3160)

Senator Karen Johnson Blasts Congress for Failure to Defend U.S.

 In a formal Floor speech in the Arizona Senate tomorrow (Tuesday, June 10), Senator Karen S. Johnson plans to blast Congress for their failure to defend U.S. citizens who were killed on September 11, 2001, and their failure to properly investigate those attacks.

“It has been nearly seven years,” says Johnson, “and we are faced with new evidence that turns the conclusions of the 9/11 Commission upside down. We are fighting a war because of 9/11 – and we still don’t really know what happened. We have spent billions of dollars on the war, with an additional $340 million per day. Thousands of U.S. servicemen and women have lost their lives, not to mention the lives of innocent Iraqi and Afghan civilians.”

Johnson revealed in a committee hearing in April that she did not accept the official report of the 9/11 Commission and has since defended supporters calling for a new independent investigation of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. “Ground Zero was treated like little more than the site of a building demolition – which, of course, is exactly what it was,” says Johnson. “Everyone who has studied it recognizes that the Twin Towers and Building 7 came down as a result of controlled explosions – not because of the airplanes and fires.”

Johnson has joined forces with local 9/11 activists who for more than two weeks have been staging a protest outside the Phoenix office of presidential candidate U.S. Senator John McCain. One protestor, college professor Blair Gadsby of Scottsdale, began a hunger strike on May 26 to bring attention to the need for Congress to re-open the investigation into 9/11. Gadsby plans to fast until Senator McCain agrees to meet with experts who will present evidence that the WTC buildings came down through controlled demolition. Tomorrow will be Day 16 of the Hunger Strike. Senator Johnson has invited Gadsby to the Senate to listen to her Floor speech.

“The U.S. government is constantly interfering with states in matters that are none of its business,” said Johnson. “Yet when it comes to the one really significant job the Constitution assigns to the government — defending our nation – the federal government failed miserably. Not only did they fail to put up any sort of a defense after the first plane struck the North Tower (Tower 1), but they failed to mobilize the air defense system, they failed to protect the President, who sat reading in a public school for 20 minutes while the attacks continued, and they failed to defend our most important military installation – the Pentagon. The public is sick to death of do-nothing politicians in Congress who forget what their job is the minute they arrive in Washington. Finding out what happened on 9/11 and bringing the perpetrators to justice is the job of Congress and the Executive branch. We need to know what happened to Building 7. We need to get answers to the many unanswered questions that still exist. We need an investigation – especially of the new evidence. It’s time for Congress and our President to act.”

Lawmaker asks McCain to talk with 9/11 theorists

Matthew Benson
The Arizona Republic
Jun. 3, 2008 10:42 PM

An Arizona state senator is petitioning presumptive GOP presidential nominee John McCain to meet with 9/11 conspiracy theorists, including an adjunct professor from Scottsdale who has been fasting outside McCain’s Phoenix office for more than a week.

State Sen. Karen Johnson, a Mesa Republican, delivered a letter to McCain’s Senate office Tuesday asking that he sit down with Scottsdale activist Blair Gadsby and a pair of leading members of the 9/11 Truth Movement to consider alternative explanations for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the collapse of the World Trade Center towers. Gadsby’s fast outside McCain’s Senate office entered its 10th day today.

“There are so many questions left unanswered,” said Johnson, who called for a new, independent investigation into the attacks.

She has previously been the focus of media attention for her vocal misgivings about the government account of 9/11. Again Tuesday, she said, “There’s no explanation – no legitimate explanation – about why those towers and Building 7 came down.”

WTC 7 was the third building to collapse at the complex, though it wasn’t directly struck by either aircraft.

Gadsby said he’ll maintain his office vigil until McCain pledges to sit down with him, Richard Gage, founder of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, and Steven Jones, a physicist who claims to have done laboratory analysis and found evidence of explosives in the WTC rubble. Their conditions: a pledge of two hours with McCain, plus national media coverage.

Gadsby, an adjunct community college professor, said he’s been told by McCain staffers that the senator is too busy to meet. The Republic had no luck Tuesday reaching representatives of either McCain’s Senate office or presidential campaign. But he appears unsympathetic to 9/11 conspiracy theorists, and occasionally has sparred with them on the campaign trail over the past year.

He also wrote the foreword to a 2006 book titled Debunking 9/11 Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories Can’t Stand Up to the Facts. It was written by the editors of Popular Mechanics magazine.

“We cannot let these tales go unanswered,” McCain wrote, saying that the “9/11 conspiracy movement exploits the public’s anger and sadness” and “traffics in ugly, unfounded accusations of extraordinary evil against fellow Americans.”

Well aware of McCain’s earlier comments, Gadsby said it’s his belief that the senator “has been deceived by these scientists” and the “whitewash” surrounding 9/11.

“I believe he has the character to do the right thing,” continued Gadsby, who has lost 20 pounds during his fast on a diet of water and electrolytes.

Generally speaking, his theory for the 9/11 attacks involves a government-led inside job with the intent to provide an impetus for war in the Middle East. He and Johnson point to the possible use of controlled explosives planted prior to Sept. 11 to bring down the WTC towers, saying collisions with the airliners alone wouldn’t have been sufficient.

“We need to know what happened on 9/11,” Johnson wrote in her letter to McCain. “Nearly 3,000 Americans died that day, and we deserve to know the truth about what happened.”

This week Visibility 9-11 welcomes Blair Gadsby who is now in day 8 of his Hungry for Truth street action outside of the Phoenix office of Republican Neo-Con boot lick and presidential candidate John McCain. Blair has repeatedly requested an audience with the senator and has pledged to camp outside his office 17 hours a day and continue his hunger strike for as long as possible or until Mr. McCain agrees to meet with him. So far, Blair’s efforts have been met upon with the deaf ears of Mr. McCain and the mainstream media establishment. Visibility 9-11 urges all listeners and interested parties to contact the local Phoenix media outlets as well as the national media representatives and urge them to DO THEIR JOB and cover this historic non-violent action for 9-11 truth.

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