NASHVILLE — Minister Louis Farrakhan told an audience at Tennessee State University that the federal government purposely deceived the American public on the tragic events of 9/11 and sought to use the attacks to start a war with the Middle East.
The 82-year-old Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam, drew a few thousand spectators Saturday night to see his keynote speech for the Black United Summit International Leadership Conference.
He spent a large portion of his more than one-hour of remarks focusing on his mantra of “BUSIness is warfare” — the main theme of his speech and the two-day conference designed to foster leadership among students at historically black colleges and universities.
He also unpacked his theory that al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden were not responsible for the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, in New York and at the Pentagon — and that the U.S. government set out to exploit the event.
“The whole idea of the government was to give America a reason to go to war because war is profitable,” Farrakhan said, later adding: "It's the truth that's going to set us free, not the lies of a deceptive government. The government is Satan."
Farrakhan has made similar 9/11 conspiracy theories in previous speeches.
He told the crowd Saturday that the airplanes that crashed into the World Trade Center did not have enough fuel to ignite the flame to melt the steel beams of the skyscrapers. He said the towers fell “in its own footprint,” which he said meant their falls couldn’t be as a result of the planes. He also said the pilots from the Middle East lacked the flight training to pull off the 9/11 attacks.
He claimed 2,500 scientists disagree with “the government’s claim that it was some Arabs that did that."
“They wanted regime change in Libya, in Syria, in Somalia," he said of the government. "And once this 9/11 hit, the American people are fired up. ‘These Muslims did this.’ So, the hatred for Muslims and Islam began to rise. But what you don’t know is what you see over there is a response to America’s wicked foreign policies — which most of you don’t know anything about. You don’t study world events. Your mind is on pot, and smoking joints and having sex!”
He also raised the killing of bin Laden, arguing that the government had a chance to "extract the so-called ‘secrets’ of al-Qaeda" if they had simply captured him.
“Why did they kill him? Because then they could tell you he was the mastermind of the fall of the Twin Towers."
Saturday's speech, held at Tennessee State University's Kean Hall Gymnasium, was guarded heavily by security from the Nation of Islam. About three-fourths of the grandstands were full and floor seating was completely filled.
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