Judging Freedom - Pepe Escobar : 25 Years Later - What We Know About 9/11

Episode Date: September 11, 2026

Pepe Escobar : 25 Years Later - What We Know About 9/11See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Undeclared wars are commonplace. Pragically, our government engages in preemptive war, otherwise known as aggression with no complaints from the American people. Sadly, we have become accustomed to living with the illegitimate use of force by government. To develop a truly free society, the issue of initiating force must be understood and rejected. What if sometimes to love your country you had to alter or abolish the government? Jefferson was right? What if that government is best, which governs least? What if it is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong? What if it is better to perish

fighting for freedom than to live as a slave? What if freedom's greatest hour of danger is now? Hi, everyone, Judge Andrew Napolitano here for judging freedom. Today is Friday, September 11th, 2006, a dark day in American history for a variety of reasons. We will soon discuss this with Pepe Escobar. 25 years later,

what do we know about 9-11? But first, this. If you're serious about preparedness like I am, head over to preparewithachadge.com right now. Let me tell you why. Our partners over at My Patriot Supply are the experts when it comes to emergency food and they're serious about making sure you have what you need.

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More protein, more variety, more substantial meals when you need it most. Go to prepare with the judge.com now to take advantage of this great offer. The food is easy to prepare, packed and durable buckets, and designed to last 25 years when stored properly. This is not the time to assume you'll find out what you need later. Build your 90 days of real food security. This offer ends on September 30th, so go now to prepare with the judge. PEPA Escobar welcome here my dear friend you're in Moscow which I just left two days ago this is crazy

the next time we have to make sure that 24 hours right we have to make sure that our trips overlap rather than than have a gap you have studied 9-11 extensively you wrote major pieces about it five years ago do you know any serious any people who've engaged in the serious study of it, who accepts the American government's official version? Absolutely none, Judge. And among the best of the best is Peter Dale's cult. We discussed 9-11. He wrote about it extensively. Well, in my peculiar position, I was there before it happened. And when I mean there is Pakistan, the tribal areas of Pakistan, and Afghanistan. So my story is quite something because it happens to foreign correspondents.

You are at the right moment at the right time. So I was the last personal nurse to interview Commander Ahmad Shahd Masoud in the Hindu Kush, in the Punjir Valley, three weeks before he was assassinated, two days before 9-11. So that was 9-9. There was the assassination of Commander Massoud. And 9-11 happened two days later. And in this interview, it was published by Asia Times. At the time, we were a very, very small website in Hong Kong.

And after 9-11, everybody in the U.S. So who are these guys in this weird website in China talking about 9-11? Well, we happened to be there before the whole thing. And we had a correspondent in Karachi. Salim Shazad, who was later assassinated nine years after 9-11 because he discovered there was an al-Qaeda cell inside the Pakistani military. And we were between Karachi, Islamabad, and Peshawar following everything before my trip to Afghanistan. And I happened to be in Afghanistan talking to Masu three weeks before he was assassinated. And he said, something big is going to happen.

we still don't know what. And why Massoud was assassinated? Because this was part of the overall big plan. They could not have an Afghan nationalist leader after things happened. They needed somebody in control to run Afghanistan. And it happened to be Hamid Karzai. There was another story. When I came back from Afghanistan, Judge, I was in Peshawar,

the, let's say, the Pashtun, Rome, the capital of the tribal heiress by the end of August. And then I got from my local sources because they trusted me because essentially I was not an American journalist. This is the need of greed. They told me, look, the Americans want to infiltrate a commando to Kandahar in Afghanistan, snatch Osama bin Laden in Kandahar and take him to the United States. So what happened when Musharraf, President of Pakistan at the time, knew about it?

He vetoed. He basically told W. And the White House, look, if I do this, I'm going to have a civil war here in five minutes. And the country is going to turn upside down. I simply cannot allow that. Why don't you try to talk to the Taliban? And that's what the American... Who was this shape that you interviewed on September 9th?

And how is it that he would know that something big was going to happen? Well, Masood was one of the top commanders of the Afghan jihad in the 1980s. Later, it's a very complicated situation during the 90s because there was basically a civil war going on in Afghanistan for many years. And this committed in 1996 when the Taliban took power in Kabul. So the Taliban were ruling from 1996 to 2001, exactly, the 2011 year. Masoud was the Afghan resistance against the Taliban. So he was in the Hindu Kush, in the Punjir Valley, is one of the most extraordinarily beautiful places on nurse.

He had five tanks, Judge, and a few hundred Mujahideen to fight against the whole of the Taliban. It was very complicated. When I met him, he took me to a room when he had a map. He was planning a counteroffensive against the Taliban with 300 Mujahideen and five tanks. But he was able to pull it off. He was the most respected Afghan commander anywhere. And very, very important at the time in 2001. He was supported by Russia and Iran, but he was also indirectly supported by the Americans, because the Americans saw that he. he could actually do something really, really bad against the Taliban, even though he had essentially a Soviet weaponry. Like I flew into the Hindu Kush in an old Soviet helicopter.

He had three Soviet helicopters left. There was his air force at the time. But he was a brilliant military commander. He was a mix of, if I can put it, not diplomatically, a mix of a, a mix of, a Tajik Che Guevara in Afghanistan with a very romantic streak and at the same ruthless military commander. And he knew everything about the Taliban, everything about the Pakistani intelligence services, and everything about al-Qaeda. And that's why- Osama bin Laden have anything to do with 9-11? Absolutely not. And in his own words, Judge. In this article that I sent you, this was my last big article about 9-11, five years ago.

I wrote a lot of stuff before that, of course. But I decided to include an interview that Osama bin Laden gave a few weeks after 9-11, where he said, this is absolutely absurd. I had nothing to do with it. And, of course, everybody that analyzed the logistics of the whole thing, Like a guy with a serious dialysis problem, hold up in a cave in the Hindu Kush, coordinate, all that. It's absolutely out of the question.

But he needed to be made a scapegold. And guess who was the first who made Osama bin Laden by name escapegold? If I'm not mistaken, a little over one hour after the collapse of Tower No. 1 in Manhattan. live on BBC World at that very safe. Tony Blair. Ehud Barak. A Hood Barak was the first thing. Even before Tony Blair and even before everybody else on the American Networks

a few hours after night ago. Now, this reminds me of Netanyahu denying that the IDF had anything to do with the murder of Charlie Kirk before they were even accused of it. You're telling me that Ahou. Barack, who was the, at the time, the former head of the IDF and the future prime minister, or had already been prime minister, is pointing figures at somebody other than the Israelis. Yes, absolutely. Why did the Americans murder Osama bin Laden? Why didn't they arrest him if they believed

he was the mastermind behind 9-11? Exactly. And during the discussion, there were some discussions, Judge, throughout the rest of September until early October. I remember because I was in Islamabad and we were talking to basically the Taliban ambassador in Islamabad virtually every day. And he was telling us, yes, there are discussions with the Americas. And we said, if you give us evidence that Osama, Ilana has anything to do with that, we will extradite him. And remember, before that, the Americans actually wanted to snatch Obama from Kandahar. So this would be a kidnapping operation, which was vetoed by Musharo, the president at the time.

Later, Musharra, because the Taliban, I think the, if I'm not mistaken, the only embassy the Taliban had at a time was in Islamabad. So obviously, every day the spokesperson was speaking to the throngs of media everywhere, they were very, very circumspect, very polite, and they said, look, we are open to negotiations, and we're open to, if you have evidence, show us the evidence. Obviously, there was no evidence. Like, even the FBI could not redact a case implicating Osama bin Laden directly. So his figure as the Patsy or as the perfect scapegold was more than perfect.

Because after all, he started his political life as a masset of the Americas on the Afghan Arab jihad against the Soviets in the early. Our friend Alistair Crook was there at the time, a judge. I had this conversation with Alistair in Peshaw. Who financed 9-11? That's a complicated case because there are no traces of Afghan interference. They are very, very loose traces of direct Arab financing. If no, of course, there were a CIA black ops. The financing of CIA black ops is absolutely.

absolutely invisible. The way, the coordination between some of the ultra-hardcore Afghan commanders with Arabs and the CIA is more than proven. For instance, one year after assassination of Masu, I came back to Afghanistan and I went on my own investigation on, okay, what happened? How come we had two people from the Maroud? People from the Maghreb, basically al-Qaeda operators, disguised as a film crew, and they got authorization to go to the Hindu Kush and film an interview with Masoud.

And inside the camera, they had planted a bomb. And then many of us following this lead, we discovered that authorization letter introducing these two guys to Masud's people in the Hindu Kush. was via Sayyaf. And Syaf was an ultra-Saudi-Arabian-linked Sheikh, and he also had ties with the CIA. So this is the connection that proves that they had to get rid of Masu for whatever ulterior purposes.

The most important is they could not have had Massoud as the leader of an independent Afghanistan after everything that happened. But how, the mechanics of how everything happened. And the direct interference of Arab sources is not, it's still an absolute maze and nothing is going. It's just speculation. Do we know how Building 7 came down, the one that came down at the end of the day? Control demolition. This has been proved over and over again by people who actually studied physics.

not the NISD. Control demolition by whom? Aha. That's how it gets tricky, Judge, because then we enter, I would say, the outside layers and the inside layers

of mounting such a sophisticated operation. In fact, 9-11 was a mix of several outside layers, several internal layers, which would lead, for instance, to plant the necessary materials for control demolitions in the WTC buildings. Not only seven, but the other two as well. And it remembered that during 9-11 itself, late morning, early afternoon, there were a lot of people from New York Fire Department who was saying we heard loud booms all the time and people who actually entered the towers. So this was completely erased from the record afterwards.

So the problem essentially, Judge, is we can debate the mechanics and the logistics of what happened on 9-11 infinitely, just like the assassination of JFK. We will never reach a definitive conclusion. The only thing that everybody that has been studying it for 25 years knows is, that the official story and the official narrative does not hold. Was there Israeli involvement in the planning and carrying out of 9-11, or at least knowledge of it beforehand? At least knowledge and planning, well, once again, this is an infinite discussion. There are several first-class analysis from different. corners, non-ideological, that more or less prove in detail at least the key links between

Israeli sources of financing and planning and logistics outside of the U.S. and inside the U.S. and especially inside Manhattan. Some of the stories, of course, everybody knows the stories, the famous dancing Israelis, Lucky Larry Silverstein who got 40, how much was this? 4.55 billion dollars for, you know, as reward the leases that he was holding on World Trade Center Tower 1 and 2. So that was the best deals in history. And he secured that only a few days before the actual accident. Let's put it this way.

And of course, Benjamin Netanyahu, in his own words, said on the day of 9-11, this is very good for Israel, which is essentially the graphic realization of that Pearl Harbor moment evoked by the project for the new American century that congregated all the top neo-cons, that this is what the Americans, this is what you. West Israel needed to basically reshape the Middle East to their image. And that led later on to what? Famous Serge General David Petrails when he was visiting the Pentagon, hearing about the famous seven countries in five years. All of them targets.

Libya, Syria, Iraq, etc. And the cherry on the cake was already in 2001 to 23. 2002, Iran. And this brings us to what is happening now. This war launched by Trump. Before we get to Iran, Pepe, I have one or two other questions about 9-11. Yes. We know that the Patriot Act supposedly written in response to 9-11, which eviscerates the Fourth Amendment,

allows one FBI agent to authorize another FBI agent to spy in a person, bypassing the warrant requirement issued by a judge. We know that that was written before 9-11. Before. Was the U.S. plan to invade Afghanistan also crafted before 9-11 and was just looking for a trigger? No, it was crafted before 9-11, and it was crafted before the summer of 2001. It was crafted during the first weeks of the dick chaining. administration for that matter. Not only that, they crafted the invasion on Afghanistan,

and they also were crafting the invasion of Iraq. One of the first things that Dick Cheney's office did, I think it was around March of April 2001, was to request all the geological maps of Iraq because he wanted to pinpoint where the top oil reserves were. So the first two steps of the war on terror, how it was baptized later, they were already delineated by the neocons in power in the US in the first semester of 2001. And we all remember what Rumsfeld said by the end of, I think it was around between October and November, 2001, he said, look, there are no targets in Afghanistan. Everything is already bombed. We need to move somewhere else. And the decision was made before the end of 2001 to start the war on Iraq.

What is the latest? Now I'm switching gears to Iran, Pepe, on any efforts to negotiate via the Pakistanis between the U.S. and Iran. Is anything, any communication going on? I'm very sorry to tell you, Judge, that the famous Deadcat MOU apparently is now terminally dead. after many serial deaths, now it's terminally dead. And even a Simunir, field marshal Simunir, the head of the army in Pakistan, we learned through our connections with the Pakistani government and intelligence that he's not even answering Trump's phone calls anymore. He's fed up. He said, I did everything that you, President of the United States, asked me to do.

I even was on the point of bringing the Iranians back to the table. the Iranians were even willing to give a last window of opportunity for the MOU. And you blew it over and over again. So that's it. So the Pakistanis gave up on being mediators between the U.S. and Iran. There's nothing. As we can see right now, there's only one thing ahead of us, escalation ladder.

And the escalation, even the escalation ladder is going sideways because now Yemen has entered the chat, which we all knew was going to happen. and they entered the chat judge in an absolutely devastating way, conquering everything in the western coast of Yemening that they had not conquered before in a manner of a few days. And now they are officially in charge of the Bab al-Mandeb, the gate of tears straight. What are the Houthis doing in the Red Sea?

They live close by the Red Sea, Judge. I was in Yemen last year. I was trying to get to the port of Hodeida, which at the time, by the way, was being bombed by the Americans when we were there in May last year, April May last year. Now they control all the western coast of Yemen from the border with Saudi Arabia in the mountains, in the northwest of Yemen,

along the coastline of the Red Sea, all the way to the Bab Almondab, including a key strategic island in the middle of the Bob Almondab. They accomplished that judge in a manner of four to five days. As Sarala describes it as the largest confiscation operation in modern warfare, because they confiscated tons and tons. tons of tons of Saudi American equipment. They killed a lot of mercenaries, but at the same time, they liberated prisoners from all the prisoners in the region

and conceding an amnesty to everyone. They were welcomed as liberators everywhere they went, including the legendary port of mocha. Yes, from the mocha coffee that we all drink all over the world. Moka is now Yemeni land again, and not run by mercenaries from Saudi Arabia or the Emirates. What was the reaction in the Middle East to the report in Haaretz that the President of the United Arab Emirates called Prime Minister Netanyahu

a week before October 7th and warned him of an earthquake coming from Gaza very soon in early October, a warning that, of course, Netanyahu denies it couldn't come at a worse time for him in the middle of a re-election campaign with his poll numbers very down. What was the reaction in the Middle East to that report, which was picked up everywhere thereafter? Well, the best reaction, Judge, is in the Arab Street. It's not in chancellaries. It's not diplomats.

It's not the Petro Sheikhs. It's what you hear in a souk in Cairo. you know, in a cafe in Baghdad or in a cafe in Beirut. This is what really matters. And the consensus in the Arab street, a little bit everywhere, is, of course, the Emirates, they are essentially a Zionist branch. They are totally aligned with Israel. And then, of course, some people may know about the IMAC deal about the Abraham Accords and all that. But even people who are not aware of geopolitics, they know that the relationship.

between Tel Aviv and Abu Dhabi is extremely close. And they were together in the beginning of the war fighting against Iran. The UAE was side by side with the Americas in Israel fighting Iran in the beginning of the war. They're going to have to pay a price for that later on. And of course, if Netanyahu ignored, obviously, because he wanted it to happen. That was part of the planning. Of course, Israeli intelligence knew something was going to happen. They are infiltrated a little bit everywhere across Gaza.

So they let it happen because they needed it. There was the perfect pretext for what came later, the genocide, you know, the mass killings, the normalization of genocide because they knew that the West would normalize the genocide, wouldn't ask too many questions. So they had a perfect pretext. Pepe, thank you for this fascinating, fascinating conversation. Thank you, Judge. Maybe 25 years from now. I don't know if you and I will be around. Probably not. We'll find out what really caused 9-11, but we can conclude that nobody believes the, no rational person who's gone beneath the surface believes the government version.

Thank you, Pepe. All the best. Thank you, Judge. Thank you, Mr. Moscow. Next time in Moscow together, my friend. You bet. Thank you, Judge. All the best. Dasvidania. Thank you.

Dosvidanya is right. Coming up, if you're watching us live in 32 minutes, a special edition of the Intelligence Community Roundtable, with Larry Johnson, of course, our regular from Moscow, and making a special return appearance, Ray McGovern, and joining us the great Colleen Raleigh. If that name does not ring a bell, she is the former FBI agent who, while on duty, warned Bob Mueller, then the director of the FBI,

these people are learning how to crash planes but not fly them. Would you authorize me to get a warrant to search what's going on? And the FBI director declined. All of that, at 4 o'clock Eastern Unjudging Freedom, the Intelligence Community Roundtable. Thank you for watching. Judge the Palatano for judging freedom.