IT’S criminally easy and tempting to equate the idea of a conspiracy theory with gossip, unverified or motivated slander, usually pertaining to a high-profile political event, not excluding assassination. Call a story a conspiracy theory and kill an unanswered question with a smirk. Karl Popper was wary of pinning conspiracy theories onto individuals or institutions that could sway outcomes. He felt theories upfronting individuals or groups masked the trigger that prompted the event in the first place.

I have my own conspiracy theory, if that is what one must call it, about the origins of the phrase and I pin it on the zealous and potent Zionist media. Technically, the phrase is ascribed to the 19th-century claim that Britain backed the Confederates in the American Civil War. But its first significantly notable use was the CIA’s attempt to debunk compelling questions about the assassination of JFK in 1963, particularly those leading to an Israeli hand. We’ll come to that. Nipping curiosity or agreeable narratives about the Israel lobby in the imperial hub of the US, which John Mearsheimer wrote a book about, remains a problem for Third World media consumers of Western-origin reports, which subtly or staunchly, knowingly or unwittingly root for the Zionist worldview.

A new potentially important theory has surfaced about the over-chewed 9/11 narrative. Renowned anti-establishment American anchor Jimmy Dore interviewed Curt Weldon last week. The former 10-term Republican Congressman from Pennsylvania claimed new revelations into the affair. Weldon has spent decades claiming that a secret US military intelligence programme called Able Danger identified 9/11 hijackers before the attacks, and that the information was deliberately buried. Unsurprisingly, the claims routinely have been officially denied.

Weldon served as Congressman from 1987 to 2007 and was vice chairman of the House Armed Services Committee. Before Congress, he was a lifelong volunteer firefighter, and he responded to the 1993 World Trade Centre bombing and the 9/11 attacks themselves. He has long argued that he lost his 2006 re-election bid as retaliation for his efforts to expose pre-9/11 intelligence failures.

A new potentially important theory has surfaced about the over-chewed 9/11 narrative.

Weldon’s new book, Able Danger: What the 9/11 Commission Never Told You, is scheduled for release today (Sept 22), and presents more than his hitherto detailed accounts of 9/11 allegations.

The central claim is that a classified US Army data-mining programme called Able Danger used supercomputers to analyse intelligence databases and identified leading hijacker Mohamed Atta and his ‘Brooklyn cell’ over a year before 9/11. Weldon alleges that Able Danger team members tried to pass this information to the FBI at least three times by late 2000, but were blocked by military lawyers and bureaucratic ‘walls’.

The 9/11 Commission released its report in 2004, and Able Danger’s findings were nowhere to be seen, the book laments. Weldon claims that the Commission deliberately omitted the most consequential facts to protect reputations and avoid accountability. He said his 2006 election loss was part of a “deep state” plot to prevent him from becoming Armed Services Committee chairman and exposing the truth.

Why was Weldon bringing up the charges today, a quarter century after the event and what’s new? Dore believes the book offers a series of explosive allegations that go beyond the standard ‘Able Danger’ intelligence failure narrative, directly accusing senior US officials of not just failing to prevent 9/11, but of actively planning and covering it up.

A personal memo Weldon retrieved from his archives ties the FBI raid on his daughter’s home three weeks before his 2006 election to the Able Danger cover-up. According to Weldon, the memo was sent by a top adviser to then defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld on the same day as the raid, and it stated: “Kurt, I warned you about Able Danger. Dick and Don are now going to destroy you.” He frames this as proof that his political destruction was orchestrated by Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld to prevent him from becoming chairman of the House Armed Services Committee and exposing the programme.

Weldon’s key assertions include the claim that the administration played games with Mohamed Atta’s identity, referring to him as ‘Mohamed Elsa’ to obscure that Able Danger had identified him. He also claims that army intelligence officer Erik Kleinsmith was ordered to destroy 2.5 terabytes of Able Danger data to prevent it from coming to light. Crucially, Weldon alleges that the US knew where Osama bin Laden was when it invaded Afghanistan and actually helped hide him in the Balochistan region (overlapping Iran and Pakistan), while sending American soldiers to die searching for him. He specifically accuses Commission director Philip Zelikow of leading a “whitewash”.

It doesn’t matter much what Weldon is aiming to do with the new book. The point to note is that a former Congressman from the Republican circuit is making claims as an insider, which pits his version of the story against the familiar flat denial sans a winning logic.

Comparing Kennedy’s assassination with 9/11 terrorism throws up several points to ponder, keeping Israel in the crosshairs. In the 9/11 event, five Israelis were arrested after being reported for allegedly dancing with joy, according to Chinese news reports of the attack. The arrests happened but the joy was apparently not proved and the men were freed. The FBI found no foreknowledge of the terror event with the men. In Kennedy’s case, a widely shared belief that the Mossad killed him is backed by a clear motive — Kennedy’s documented push for inspecting Israel’s illegal Dimona nuclear facility. Declassified files showed the CIA redacted ‘Israel’ among other countries. As many would prefer to see it, the bristling scorn Israel reserves for JFK’s legacy is readily reflected in Donald Trump’s furious plans to shut down the Kennedy Centre over false claims that it was a financial drain. Conspiracy theory? Dampen your enthusiasm till we come to the Epstein files, whenever they become public, if ever.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.

[email protected]

Published in Dawn, September 22nd, 2026