NOTE: This interview was conducted on September 22, 2003. Jim's book, "Rule By Secrecy" can be found at: http://www.jimmarrs.com

Victor Thorn: We’re especially excited about tonight’s show because, as many of you know, Oliver Stone’s movie “JFK” owes a great deal to Jim Marrs’ book Crossfire. Plus, whenever anybody asks me how they can become better acquainted with the kind of material that Lisa and I talk about on our radio show – the first thing I tell them is: read Jim Marrs book Rule By Secrecy. The book is that good, and it’s the ultimate starting point for anyone that wants to know more about what’s going on in the world – more than what the mainstream media’s telling them.

I’d have to say the same thing about Jim’s latest book, The War on Freedom: The 9/11 Conspiracies. If someone asked me, “How can I find out what really happened on 9/11?” I’d say, pick up this book. We got a copy of it last week and literally, as soon as I saw it, I couldn’t put it down. I read the whole thing in two days, and as soon as I was done with it, I said, I don’t think there’s a researcher out there that’s more thorough than Jim Marrs. He covers everything there is to cover.

Lisa Guliani: Jim Marrs is a really terrific guy. He’s very down to earth and has a great sense of humor.

Victor Thorn: Jim, it’s an honor to have you here tonight.

Jim Marrs: Victor, it’s good to be with you.

Victor Thorn: We were saying in the introduction that whenever I talk to somebody that’s new to this kind of information, the first thing I always tell them is to read Jim Marrs’ book, Rule By Secrecy.

Jim Marrs: Well, that pretty well covers the gamut, doesn’t it?

Victor Thorn: It sure does. It’s a great way to start, and as soon as I read your new book, The War on Freedom, I thought “If anyone wants a book on 9/11, this is the perfect place to start.” Jim, with all your different books (Rule By Secrecy, The War On Freedom, Alien Agenda, Psi Spies), we could ask you enough questions to keep you here until the middle of next week. But the first question I want to ask you about is about the inscription you wrote in the copy of The War On Freedom which you sent to me. It reads: “Always question authority – and the higher the authority, the harsher the questions.” So, why isn’t the mainstream media questioning authority as diligently and urgently as they should be?

Jim Marrs: Well Victor, the answer to that is very simple, and that is because there IS no mainstream news media in this country. There are only corporate advertising distribution systems. It’s amazing to me. For example, one of the stories that I bring out in The War On Freedom is that in July of 2001 – just less than two months before 9/11 – there were reports all over the European media that Osama bin Laden went to an American hospital in Dubai and underwent some kidney dialysis. While he was there being treated in the American hospital, he was visited by a local CIA official. Now, here’s the thing. Either that story is true or it’s not true. Okay? Now, if it’s not true, we need to know because we need to put to rest such scandalous, fabricated stories. If it is true, we DAMN sure need to know about that, because that means people within our own government – people within the CIA – knew two months before 9/11 EXACTLY where Osama bin Laden was, and we now know that as far back as 1995 when the Philippine authorities busted an Al Quaida cell there and discovered their plans for Operation Bojinka (which was to hijack airliners and crash them into buildings), we KNEW what they were up to and we could have put a stop to it right then. So we damn sure need to know that. The so-called “news media” in this country did not report the story and made no effort to find out if it was true or not. Now, could we have found out if it was true? I think so, because it would be this simple. All you gotta do is send some really sharp reporter to Dubai. He goes and talks to the hospital administrator and says, “Was Osama bin Laden here in July of 2001?” Now, the hospital administrator (chances are) would say, “I can’t comment on that,” or “I can’t tell you about that,” or “No, he wasn’t.” But if it’s a good reporter, he would then go talk to the elevator operators and the secretaries and the groundskeepers and the maintenance people and say, “Hey; was Osama bin Laden here in July of 2001?” And if they all, to a person, said, “No, I’ve never heard that before,” then we know the story is unfounded. If they all say, “Of course, yes, he was here, everybody was talking about it.” Then we know that the story is legitimate. See, I live down in Texas. I can’t go to Dubai. You’re in Pennsylvania, right? Then I doubt you’ve got the money to go to Dubai. But hey! CBS does! NBC does. FOX does. CNN does. Why didn’t they send one person to find out if that was true or not?

Victor Thorn: Plus, according to the story, there were members of his own family from Saudi Arabia that were visiting him there. So, he had a whole entourage visiting him.

Jim Marrs: That’s true. And by the way, I wrote in my book (The War On Freedom), which was first put together back in 2002, the story about how, with the Bush administration’s blessings, the bin Laden family (following 9/11) was quietly and secretly allowed to fly against the “no fly” zone orders into Boston and congregate there until the “no flight over the Atlantic” ban was lifted – in which case, they were all flown out of the country. I wrote about that in 2002, and now there’s a big article in Vanity Fair that substantiates that even further. And they talk about it. So it’s like, I tried to tell people all along what’s going on here, but of course I’m always branded the “conspiracy theorist”.

Victor Thorn: And I heard that these planes made about six different stops in America before finally reaching Boston and getting the bin Ladens out of here, so there were no other planes in the air except for the bin Laden planes.

Jim Marrs: There’s another aspect of this whole 9/11 story that I think people need to be aware of. And that is the Saudi connection. You know; if everybody would stop and think about it, 15 of the 19 identified “hijackers” were not Afghans. They were not Iraqis. They were Saudis. And yet, we were told, “Don’t look at the Saudis.” And now, even to this day, the Joint Congressional Committee’s report on 9/11 has not really been made clearly to the public because of the Bush administration. Yet, according to U.S. News & World Report, one official who has read the report said there’s so much more stuff about Saudi government involvement it would blow people’s minds. Senator Bob Graham of Florida was even more specific. He said scores of contacts occurred between 9/11 hijackers and operatives of the Saudi government. He says they were not rogue agents, but were being directed by persons of significant responsibility within that government. Now, that’s bad enough. So, we need to look to the Saudis for the origins of the 9/11 attacks. And who, may I ask, are the well-documented, long-time business and social friends of the Saudis?

Victor Thorn: That’s easy.

Jim Marrs: The Bush family! Okay? Now HELLO!?! Is anybody awake out there?

Victor Thorn: That’s called “connecting the dots,” Jim.

Jim Marrs: That’s right. And when you go down and pay fifty cents for a newspaper, or you’re tuning in CNN or FOX network, that’s what you really want from those people who proclaim to be the “news media”. You want them to connect the dots for you. You don’t want them to snow you with facts and statistics and data. You want to know “what does that mean,” and more specifically, you want to know “what does that mean to me?” And yet, that’s what they’re NOT doing, is it?

Lisa Guliani: Jim, I’d like you to comment on the mainstream media’s apparent willingness to overlook other inconsistencies in the White House statements and stories regarding 9/11.

Jim Marrs: There’s so many questions about 9/11 – in fact, I think I could pretty well prove to any objective person that there’s essentially been a cover-up of the entire affair. Here’s the thing. The destruction of the World Trade Center – that was the largest structural collapse in the history of the world. It was the largest number of firemen ever killed at one event in North America. It was unparalleled. So you would think that everybody and their dog would be in on an investigation to find out EXACTLY what happened and why these two modern buildings just “collapsed” after a little bit of fire which, supposedly, they were built to withstand. You would think, of course, everybody would be all over that. But it’s not the case. In fact, what we find is, according to Bill Manning, who is the editor of a 125 year old firemen’s industry publication called Fire Engineering, the industry publication for fire investigators and firemen, he wrote in January of 2002 that the official investigation blessed by FEMA and run by the American Society of Civil Engineers is a half-baked farce that may have been commandeered by political forces whose primary interests (to put it mildly) lie far afield of full disclosure. And he was joined by other prominent fire officials from New York and from other places who said that we have a series of unconnected and uncoordinated superficial inquiries. So there really has been no investigation into what the heck happened. We were given this cover story that all those fires produced such heat that the structural steel melted and all those buildings just fell down on themselves. Yet, I’ve talked to too many structural engineers who roll their eyes and say, “It couldn’t happen.”

Victor Thorn: Jim, is it similar to Oklahoma City?

Jim Marrs: Absolutely. In fact, what most people don’t realize is that there was a Mid-east terrorist connection to the Oklahoma City bombing. Of course, all that got swept under the rug. The attention span of the average American seems to be about 15 minutes. We forget that they had already identified Osama bin Laden as the mastermind by the time of the first WTC bombing in 1993 and the Kobar Towers bombing in Saudi Arabia in 1996, and in 1998, the bombing of U.S. embassies. Not to mention the instant with the ship – the Cole, I believe it was. In all those instances, then-president Bill Clinton vowed that he was going to get Osama bin Laden. Yet, of course, it was never done. In fact, the facts show that during the Clinton administration – and this is most significant – during the early part of the Bush administration, there were actually efforts made to block investigations into Osama bin Laden and the Al Quaida network. Of course, this is most typified by the Chief of the FBI’s Counter Terrorist group, John O’Neill. He finally resigned in the summer of 2001 in disgust and said that he was being blocked from investigating and from stopping the Al Quaida network. What happened to him? Well, he was offered a job as Chief of Security at the World Trade Center and was last seen heading towards the South Tower and apparently perished when it collapsed. Now, isn’t that amazing? Here’s the one guy in the United States who could’ve told us whether Osama bin Laden was involved and if that was, indeed, his handiwork, where he was, and why there had been no effort to prevent all this. Yet, he dies in that terrible tragedy. The “War on Terror” is an open-ended carte blanche ticket to do whatever they want to do as far as national policy.

Victor Thorn: A war without end, perpetual war.

Jim Marrs: A war without end. It’s absolutely amazing. And of course, we all know if we’re in wartime, we certainly don’t want to change leadership. We certainly don’t want to question our national policies. We certainly don’t want to question what even went on. Yet, history tells us and gives us guidelines as to what went on. I mentioned the ’93 bombing of the World Trade Center. Are you aware that there was a fellow who testified under oath in court that he was involved in that bombing? That he was actually an undercover operative for the FBI? That he had gone to his FBI superiors and said that they’re going to bomb the WTC - and I think that’s despicable – then finally said, “ I think I can slip some phony explosives in for the ones that they’re going to use and we can catch them in the act.” His FBI superior said, “No.” And they allowed it to go forward.

Victor Thorn: Unbelievable.

Jim Marrs: Absolutely unbelievable!! Now, is that just a fluke? No. Of course, what we now know, thanks to the Kennedy assassination of all things, which in the Oliver Stone movie, which was partially based on my book, Crossfire, and it caused such a stir that in the early 90’s they created the Assassination Records Review Board which had a mandate from Congress to go into every government file and pull out anything having to do with the Kennedy assassination. Guess what they found? They found “Operation Northwood”. Operation Northwood occurred right after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion when President Kennedy gave the power to draw up plans against Castro in Cuba. He took it away from the CIA and he gave it to the Pentagon. The Pentagon brains went to work on it, and guess what their plan was? Operation Northwood – which meant they wanted to set off bombs in U.S. cities, including Miami, to hijack aircraft, to attempt assassinations on certain Cuban leaders and make it appear that Castro was behind it so that they would gain widespread public support for an attack on Cuba. Here’s the clincher. Is that just some hair-brained idiot down in the basement of the Pentagon who comes up with that? NO! This plan was approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It was only President Kennedy who scotched it and said, “Wait a minute! We’re not going to do that! We’re not going to be terrorists ourselves and then try to portray others as terrorists!” And he ordered all of these plans destroyed, but as often happens in government bureaucracy, they were not destroyed. They were filed away and the Assassinations Record Review Board found them in the 90’s, put them in the National Archives, and we are now well aware that in the early 60’s the Joint Chiefs of Staff was perfectly willing to kill Americans and to attack Americans to lead us into war with some perceived enemy.

Victor Thorn: Right – the exact same parallels with 9/11.

Jim Marrs: Exactly.

Victor Thorn: Jim, I think the smoking gun with 9/11 has to be the Air Force stand-down when these planes were hijacked. I want to go over a few things that you brought out in your book and let people really understand how blatant this was.

Jim Marrs: It’s absolutely incredible, and I’ll tell you without going into a lot of detail. If everyone that’s listening will simply think back to 1999; they might recall the story of golf pro Payne Stewart. He and his family members and some other people took off in a Lear jet, their oxygen system malfunctioned, they all died or passed out, the plane was on auto-pilot and it just kept going – but it went off-course. It had not been off-course but about 15 minutes before there were fighter interceptors all over it. And they waggled their wings and they waved and they tried to get the pilot’s attention. They realized there was something really wrong, so they were given instructions to shoot the plane down if it appeared that it might crash into a populated area. But as luck would have it, it went out into an open area and ran out of fuel and crashed. Then, the story just kind of died and everybody said, “that’s a terrible tragedy” and that was the end of that. Nobody thinks back to that. Here on 9/11, we had four commercial airliners all go off-course, their transponders went off, it was clear that they had been hijacked and that this was a coordinated terrorist attack – and yet it was 40 minutes before the Air Force was even notified by the FAA!! It was longer than that before they got any planes in the air.

Victor Thorn: Right. The plane that went into the Pentagon – by the time they knew it was hijacked until it struck the Pentagon, a total of 55 minutes had elapsed.

Jim Marrs: That’s right. It’s just absolutely unconscionable – and here’s the thing. I’m old enough to remember back in the Fifties and Sixties during the height of the Cold War. We were constantly propagandized and told that, “Hey, not one Russian bomber could come across the North Pole without being picked up by the radar of the North American Air Defense Command, and that we would have fighter interceptors in the air within minutes and they’d be all over them. Now, we lived with that rubik all through the Cold War. Then they tell me it takes more than an hour to respond to four hijacked airliners? And again, going back to “Project Bojinka” and the Philippines and the numerous warnings that were coming in from everybody around the world that something was coming up, that Osama bin Laden was about to strike at some part of America, it was all going to happen – in fact, there was a fellow in Canada who is on record before 9/11 saying that the World Trade Center was going to be attacked. They had all this warning, and yet four airliners go off-course and there’s no response for almost an hour?

Victor Thorn: Plus, around New York City and Washington, DC, not only is that the most guarded airspace in the country, but I understand there are nine or ten different Air Force and National Guard bases that have planes on stand-by that are supposed to go up immediately…

Jim Marrs: That’s right – and yet, when they finally scrambled Air Fighters, they came from Connecticut. Come on, folks! Wake up and smell the coffee!

Lisa Guliani: What about the President’s statement that he saw the jetliner crash into the first Tower?

Jim Marrs: That’s right. Well, I think there are a lot of questions about President Bush’s activities that day – a lot!! Beginning with the fact that he clearly stated that he watched the first plane strike the first building on television, which nobody else did. Nobody got to see that first airplane, because supposedly, it was unexpected. In fact, I remember watching TV well into the afternoon before, finally, they had found some film that had been made by a European film crew – and they accidentally got that first plane coming in. That was the first time anybody got to see that. If he saw that, and if he was informed that there had been a terrorist hijacking and terrorists were attacking the United States, why did he continue to sit in that Florida schoolroom with grade-schoolers for about 25 minutes? And the best one yet is that I distinctly recall a photograph that floated around on the Internet for awhile that showed Bush in there with the teacher and these kids – supposedly reading to them from a book. Yet, the book is upside down!! Maybe he can read upside down better than I can, but I don’t know. The whole thing just stinks and I think the key to it is – and it’s exactly the same situation as in the John F. Kennedy assassination – to this very day, on both of those events – 9/11 and the Kennedy assassination, to this very day, there has never been a dedicated, objective, honest, in-depth investigation. All we’ve had is government pronouncements.

Victor Thorn: And who did Bush want to have appointed as his first investigation commissioner? Henry Kissinger!!

Jim Marrs: Henry Kissinger. I really got a chuckle out of that one because among thinking people who consider 9/11, I think everyone regardless of your party affiliation, regardless of your politics – anybody who’s really thinking about it, I think would agree that 9/11 was a direct result of U.S. foreign policy. Okay? Osama bin Laden has made it very, very clear that he hates America because we have stationed troops in his homeland of Saudi Arabia and that he didn’t like the fact that we sent troops to Yugoslavia. And that we did this and that. So it’s obvious that it all comes back to U.S. foreign policy. Who’s been in charge of U.S. foreign policy for about twenty of the last thirty years? Henry Kissinger. So yeah, he would be the right guy to decide what the real cause was, wouldn’t he? Of course, he also didn’t last very long.

Victor Thorn: No, that was short-lived.

Jim Marrs: They said he resigned because he didn’t want to reveal his client list, which is probably true because we would have found out that he’s probably – and not probably – we know this – that he, too, is in bed with the Saudi Arabians. But, the real reason was because it was a little bit too blatant, wasn’t it?

Victor Thorn: Arrogant, I would say is the right word.

Jim Marrs: Arrogant! What a great word. That was it. It was arrogant It was like, Hey! Up Yours! What are you going to do about it?

Victor Thorn: Jim, let’s talk about one of the dirty little secrets of Afghanistan. – opium production.

Jim Marrs: Right. Well, back during the “selection” of 2000, there were a lot of charges that came up from various people saying that George W. was a cocaine sniffer – and how did he respond? Well, he didn’t really deny it. But he said that was “youthful indiscretion” and “I’m not going to talk about that.” Of course, about 90% of the Texas prison system is in for drug-related offenses. I’d be willing to bet that every one of those guys would like to say, “Well, that was just a youthful indiscretion. Why don’t you let me out?” So now we have all of the evidence – and in fact in my book The War On Freedom, you will see the documentation and the materials that are available from a variety of sources who say the Bushes, particularly George W. – I mean, it goes beyond just cocaine use – it goes into the importation of cocaine. Then of course, you get into the drug trade and we know that certain high-ranking people – for instance, the rumors since the Vietnam War – the CIA funds its covert operations through the importation of hard drugs, such as heroin. Heroin is made from the poppy, and the key point of manufacture and growth cultivation of the poppy is Afghanistan. Now, you can say what you want about the Taliban, and I don’t have a whole lot of regard for them – but they were, after all, religious zealots. And as a result, they destroyed about 90% of the poppy crop in Afghanistan, which would have meant no more heroin trade. And yet once we moved into Afghanistan and ran the Taliban out – according to a variety of credible sources – the poppy fields are in full growth and they expect a bumper crop this year.

Victor Thorn: You point out in your book that after the Taliban destroyed the poppies, they were down to 185 tons being produced. And last year, 3400 tons came out of there – a bumper crop - more than ever came out of Afghanistan, and that’s when our CIA is back in there again – exactly the same as with Vietnam, they’re back to their old tricks.

Jim Marrs: It’s the same thing again – our collective memory is about 15 minutes. If you go back to our invasion of Panama when we grabbed Manuel Noriega, the whole idea was that he was some kind of drug kingpin and that we had to stop him from allowing the exportation of cocaine into the United States. And yet, according to U.S. News & World Report, a year after we went down there and killed about 5,000 people and destroyed a good central portion of Panama City trying to grab Manuel Noriega, there were MORE drugs flowing through Panama than there were the year before when we did all that. Which means that, obviously, our REAL reason for getting rid of Manuel Noriega was NOT that he was involved with drugs, but that he was slowing up the drug trade.

Victor Thorn: I think he was putting his fingers a little bit too much into the pie, too.

Jim Marrs: Yes!

Victor Thorn: Let’s talk about another tie here between the Bush family and the Bin Ladens, and that’s the Carlyle Group.

Jim Marrs: Oh, absolutely. In fact, a lot of your listeners might be interested to know that there are major radio networks in this country right now that include some of the most prominent nationwide talk show hosts – and these radio networks are all owned by an outfit out of San Antonio called Clear Channel. Clear Channel can be directly connected to the Carlyle Group, which are the Bushes and Henry Kissinger. And they wonder what happens to all their favorite talk show hosts, why they suddenly go off the air. It all comes back to my old adage, which is that “freedom of the press belongs to the fellow that owns the press.”

Victor Thorn: Right, right. As a matter of fact, Salem bin Laden (Osama bin Laden’s brother), was George Bush’s first investment partner in Arbusto Energy.

Jim Marrs: Arbusto Energy of Houston, Texas. That’s true. There are three important things about the Bushes that everybody needs to know so they can try to understand what’s really going on, rather than the propagandist crap that the national non-news media puts in their head every day. First is that the Bin Ladens were the ones who funded George Bush in the oil business to begin with, and the fact that the Bush family were close business and social friends with the Bin Ladens. Now let me tell you, this is all well-documented in my book, The War On Freedom and it’s not just conspiracy theory. This information was gleaned from The Austin American Statesman, the large newspaper in Austin, Texas, and from court records and business records. So, this isn’t just some theory. Now, the second thing they need to know about the Bushes is that they are blood relatives to the Windsors, the ruling royal family of England. Now, what’s that got to do with anything? Well, number one, just ask yourself: what do you think the odds are that the same bloodline family should be ruling both the United States and Great Britain? Also, we keep saying that we went into Iraq for oil – yet, if you’ll really look at the figures and the industry statistics, you’ll find that we didn’t really need that Iraqi oil. We were only importing about 16% of our oil needs from Iraq. But Britain certainly did. In fact, they’ve been after Iraqi oil all the way back into the last century, when by British military might, they quite illegally carved Kuwait out of Iraq. They just took it away from them, and that’s so they could tap into those South Iraqi oil reserves. It all has to do with oil, but Britain’s the one that wanted it, so who’s pulling who’s string? Did Britain simply follow our lead and join us as faithful allies in our invasion of Iraq, or was it Britain that wanted the oil, but they just couldn’t go and attack Iraq. But since George, Sr. already fought a war with Saddam Hussein, it was easy to drum up support and go back in after him again and get that oil. The trick there, and the key is, for people to start using their own head and start noticing which companies – particularly, which British oil companies are now becoming involved in “the rebuilding of Iraq”. The third thing that people need to know about the Bushes is that back in 1942, with America in the middle of World War II, there was a merchant businessman and banker who was prosecuted by the Federal government under the Trading with the Enemies Act and accused of being nothing but a financial front man for Hitler and the Nazis. That was Prescott Bush, the father of former President George Herbert Walker Bush and the grandfather of the President, George W. Bush.

Victor Thorn: They were the money launderers.

Jim Marrs: Yes, they were the money launderers. So once again, what we’re seeing here is that the Bush family has supported, and perhaps even created, or helped create, three of our worst enemies in the world in the last one-hundred years: Adolph Hitler, Saddam Hussein, and Osama Bin Laden. They’re all in bed with these guys. That’s a little too cozy for my liking.

Victor Thorn: This trading was so blatant and out-of-hand that Congress finally had to step in and shut them down, saying, “You guys are so out of control with the money-laundering that we have to do something.” That’s how bad it was.

Jim Marrs: That’s right. It’s absolutely amazing, and yet nobody gets told these things. I don’t really think the average American is stupid. But they’re ignorant. They’re ignorant of the facts. Then again, I can’t really blame them because they turn on the television and watch CNN or their local network channel and they read their local newspaper, and they really think they’re well-informed. But, they’re not being told anything. They don’t have a CLUE as to what’s really going on.

Lisa Guliani: What’s your take on Bush’s September 17th statement that there is no evidence linking Saddam Hussein with 9/11?

Jim Marrs: You know what? That was a preemptive strike. He was trying to blunt all of this criticism that was going on because number one, maybe it wasn’t Bush who led all this, but if you listen to Dick Cheney particularly, and some to Colin Powell, and some to Condaleezza Rice, you definitely got the impression that we had to get Saddam Hussein because he was behind 9/11. And this was reflected in national polls that showed as high as 45-50% of the people in this country – prior to our attack on Iraq – truly believed that Saddam Hussein had some kind of role in 9/11, and it was therefore right and proper to attack him. The bald-faced fact is, as Bush finally owned up to, there’s no evidence he had ANYTHING to do with it.

Lisa Guliani: So, can he undo the great harm that’s been done by this war, and can he get himself off the hook politically?

Jim Marrs: Can he bring back those 500,000 children who died of cancer over there thanks to the depleted uranium left over from the first Gulf War? What about all the casualties we’ve had – all the poor guys who are suffering from Gulf War Syndrome, or what about all the people who are going to come back here suffering from Gulf War Syndrome? Can he bring all those people back? Can he get off the hook? No, I don’t think so. But you see, he knew that there was no evidence so he jumps out and says, “Well, there’s no evidence,” so they can’t come around and point the finger of evidence at him. And as I said, I’m not sure he said that anyway, but Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Colin Powell – they all essentially made that argument. They certainly left that impression, and they certainly made no effort to dispel that impression. In other words, this whole little Iraqi war – and let’s face it – when you have tanks and bombs and planes and ground combat troops and they’re coming in past national boundaries and they’re blowing up stuff and they’re shooting people, you can’t style it as anything other than a war. This whole war was built on a tissue of lies, half-truths, and spin.

Victor Thorn: It has. Jim, one of the most amazing things in your book is this secret FBI document. It’s called number 1991WF213589, and it says that they – the FBI - blame the terror attacks on connections between “the CIA, Saudi Arabia, the Bush men, and the Bin Ladens.” That’s right from the FBI’s own documents.

Jim Marrs: Right. That’s another thing. When you talk about this stuff and try to figure out where the true blame behind 9/11 lies, and the evidence seems to track back through the Saudis and the CIA, and the Bushes – that is NOT anti-American or anti-government. Our own government agents have said that, right? And they have got people all over the world saying the same thing. And yet, we simply don’t want to deal with that, so most people try to ignore it and try to act like it’s not happening. But let me tell you folks, I’ve often wondered in my years of research and study about Hitler and his Third Reich. I’ve often wondered how could the German population of the 1930’s and the early 40’s who – let’s face it – were among the world’s most civilized, cultured, sophisticated, educated populations of any nation – how could they get sucked into Hitler and his terror and tyranny? Well folks, this is how. Turn your thought processes off, and you simply follow the leader, and when he says “sieg,” which means “victory” – you go “heil” – “Hail Victory.” Just like Ashcroft right now has been tromping around the countryside declaring victory. And everybody’s going “yeah!” But it’s not everybody. It’s only selective audiences. Select audiences of elected police officials and other government functionaries. They don’t allow anybody in those meetings who would actually raise a debate with him and ask why is it necessary to destroy democracy in this country in order to save it?

Victor Thorn: Jim, this question’s a little bit away from your book, but we have a longtime listener who read a book that you might be familiar with. It was published in the 1970’s by a man named Carl Oglesby called The Yankee and Cowboy War.

Jim Marrs: Oh, I’m very familiar with it.

Victor Thorn: Tell our listeners a little bit about that book.

Jim Marrs: Well, The Yankee and Cowboy War refers to demographics. The Southern realm, as Kirkpatrick Sales calls it, which includes Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona – all of which are where the major defense establishments are – and these are the “nouveau riche” states. They’ve made money in recent years thanks to the defense industry and also to oil – particularly in Texas and Southern California, etc. So, this is the Cowboys. The Yankees are the old established money in the United States, which takes in the Yankee states. So that’s the Yankee-Cowboy war and it has been a sub-rosa struggle between which one of those groups is going to dominate the whole country. We could go into this at great length, but I know at one point just in my lifetime, say back about the time that Johnson was president – Vietnam War was going heavy, the Cowboys were definitely in the catbird seat. You had a Texan - Johnson as President - Sam Rayburn had just been the Speaker of the House. Senator John Tower was very prominent up there from Texas, Jim Wright – and I’m just talking about Texas. Other southern states also – Strom Thurmond. He had a lot of very powerful people in Washington that were all from the southern rim states and were Cowboys. These Cowboys were the ones who wanted to prosecute the Vietnam War. Now the thing is, look where all those guys are. Most of the power has shifted, and it’s really outside of the southern states. You go, “OH! But wait! George Bush is a Texan.” No, no, not really. His family came from Connecticut. They’re Yankee carpetbaggers, okay. They came down and looted Texas, and now they’re trying to loot the United States. It’s amazing that nobody seems willing or able or capable of stepping back a half-step and looking objectively at the record and seeing for themselves what’s going on. I mean, let’s look at George Bush’s record. He’s attacked and taken over two countries that have not provoked us, he spent the entire surplus that we had in 2000; he’s bankrupted the Treasury. He’s now responsible for the biggest annual deficit in history, he presided over the most private bankruptcies filed in any 12 month period; he also presided over the biggest drop in the history of the Stock Market; he’s been the first president in decades to execute a federal prisoner; first president in history to enter office with a criminal record – I mean, I could go on and on – I have three pages of this stuff. And nobody seems to pay attention or seem to think that matters for anything. This guy and his cabinet are the most secretive and the most anti-constitutional administration ever. And why is that? The provocation, of course, is 9/11. Everything that the Bush administration has done has been in the name of the “War on Terror”. And now, we’re right back to the question. Wait a minute – who TRULY was behind the attacks of 9/11? I’ll tell you something, Victor, right there is where I 100% support George W. Bush. If you’ll recall, the very day of 9/11, when he finally got through running and talked to the American people, he said, “We should not rest until we find out who is responsible for this and prosecute them.” And I’m with him. I’m with him 100%. The problem is; we don’t know who’s truly behind it. I’ll give you another great example. To me, this is the smoking gun. Again, we don’t remember this stuff, but I think it’ll trigger some memories in people when I say that just a few days after 9/11, the mass media was full of stories about how there had been some very suspicious short trading of stock, particularly of United and American Airlines and their insurance carriers. Now, this indicated that somebody was betting that those stocks would fall – which they did dramatically following 9/11. And they sold short and they profited from it. These news stories correctly said “this indicates foreknowledge” and it indicates that somebody knew this was going to happen and could not resist the temptation to profit from it. And they said, we’re going to – FBI, CIA – they’re going to follow this – they’re going to see if this doesn’t track to Osama Bin Laden. And yet, we’ve never heard any more out of it, have we?

Victor Thorn: Nothing.

Jim Marrs: Not a word. And why is that? Because it did not track to Osama Bin Laden. It tracked to investment bankers in Canada who could be directly linked to our CIA.

Victor Thorn: You read my mind because that was the next question I was going to ask you. The three weeks prior to 9/11, the stock market dropped 900 points and you talked about the short selling of stocks and the put options, and there’s actually millions of dollars out there right now still unclaimed because this money’s so hot that the people that were going to get it knew that if they came forward, they’d get fingered right away.

Jim Marrs: That’s right.

Victor Thorn: It’s amazing – you’re right – this is probably the least inspected and least analyzed aspect of 9/11 that there is – the stock market. It was only these two airlines involved. The only ones with these put options on them.

Jim Marrs: That’s right. I mean, it’s absolutely blatant. Somebody, somewhere, knew exactly what was going to happen. And do you know what? Again, it’s parallel to the Kennedy assassination. Somebody made over $600 million dollars on the stock market by selling short in the hours just prior to the JFK assassination. Somebody knew it was going to happen. And it certainly wasn’t you or I or Joe Blow Investor. It was someone who was in a position to sell short and to profit from the whole turmoil of the stock markets.

Victor Thorn: If you had a crystal ball, Jim. What do you see happening not only to the Untied States, but this war in the Middle East – what do you see happening in the next six months or one year down the line?

Jim Marrs: Well, I’d hesitate to predict anything in the Middle East – that’s such a powder-keg, you know. That’s such a confluence of racial, religious, and tribal blood family conflicts going on over there. Who knows? I tell you what worries me over here is that of course we know that the son of Patriot Act is already in place and they’re working on it within the Justice Department. What’s funny is that according to that, because of new enhanced security under the Patriot Act II, you cannot give any information regarding our security arrangements, which means that would make it illegal to go back and really read Patriot Act #1. Now, that’s worrisome enough, but I know that right now, with passions cooled a little bit, emotions kind of calmed, and people thinking a little more clearly, I don’t think they’ve got much chance of getting something like that passed through Congress. So that worries me, and then my worry is doubled when I consider that George Bush’s popularity rating – which soared right after 9/11 when it looked like he was really taking charge and kicking butt and taking care of our enemies – of course, now we find out that he still hasn’t captured Osama Bin Laden. In fact, he’s on the record as saying, “I don’t worry about him much anymore.” Wait a minute – excuse me, George! Wasn’t that the whole cause celebre for our war on terrorism? And with people beginning to get more thoughtful and getting more information – like the information I present in The War On Freedom - and his popularity is now down to the mid-40 percentile and if it drops down around 40 or goes below, then I’m really, really afraid that we’re going to see another terrible terrorist attack. Doesn’t that seem to be what’s shaping up to you?

Victor Thorn: Well, that’s it part-and-parcel. Short of that happening, if things remain unchanged in that regard, what do you see in the 2004 election?

Jim Marrs: Well you know, the Democrats have got the seven dwarves and Bush has already globbed onto a $40 million dollar campaign chest, which means that all the powerful moneyed interests are behind him. Which means that, by and large, the news media – there’ll be a few caustic stories here or there just so they can claim there’s some balance – but you know, it’s all going to be the same old ramrod thing. But I’ll tell you what worries me over and above all of that is that the only thing that can keep a thinking person from absolutely going insane is the idea that, well, we still have our vote. But you know what? I think if you study the issue, you’ll find that we don’t even have our vote anymore. All the states are moving to the computerized voters – owned by two companies – both of them by brothers - and they will not tell you what programs they’re using. Yet, the programs that we do know they’re using have been found to be rife with problems and glitches and open to security breaches and hackers. In fact, one of the academic experts who studied their codes said a telephone lineman with a hundred dollars worth of equipment could hack into those computer codes and plug in numbers and we’d have no way of knowing where they came from or if they’re legitimate or not. So, we can’t even be sure that our vote counts anymore.

Victor Thorn: You can’t even look at the source codes because they consider them a corporate secret.

Jim Marrs: That’s right. It’s proprietary. Well, excuse me. So let me tell you something – unfortunately, I don’t think this country will even have a chance of getting back on the right track until we return to paper ballots and poll watchers.

Victor Thorn: Jim, it’s been highly informative. I can’t tell you enough how much we’ve enjoyed this hour with you.

Jim Marrs: Well, thank you for having me on, and I would just encourage everybody out there to question authority, and the higher the authority, the harsher the questions.