“What happened on 9-1-1, I told you I was doing some research and watching some videos,” Perutka said during one of the episodes covered by CNN’s KFile. “And I said that if the buildings in New York, the World Trade Center buildings, came down with demolition charges — that is — if there were those indications that something was premeditated there, then the ramifications of that are huge,” Perutka said. .
“I’ve done some reading and studying, and I think it’s very, very real,” he added, before further suggesting that the work was done with controlled explosives.
“The other thing that’s so impressive to me, I can’t get it out of my brain, and that’s the vision of Building 7 falling faster than the speed of gravity, right? Building 7, which didn’t hit anyone airplane.” said Perutka. “And all of a sudden Building 7 falls, very consistent with what they call controlled demolitions or controlled charges, because that building from the top down falls faster than if you had thrown a sledgehammer from the top of the building.”
Perutka’s comments echo the widely debunked conspiracy theory that the Twin Towers and 7 World Trade Center, the smallest building near the towers, were wired with explosives and detonated in a series of controlled demolitions. The Twin Towers collapsed when planes hijacked by terrorists deliberately crashed into the North Tower and then the South Tower, killing 2,753 people. Nearby “Building 7” suffered intense and uncontrolled fires after debris from the North Tower hit the building, causing a chain reaction that led to the building’s collapse, according to a study published in 2008 by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Perutka took his conspiracy logic even further, hypothesizing that every building in New York could have pre-set charges waiting to be detonated by some “elite bureaucrat”.
“This begs the question that if there are predetermined charges in Building Seven, what has to stop there for there to be predetermined charges in Buildings 1, 2, 8, 9 and 27?” said Perutka. “Are there charges on every building in New York? Are they all ready to come down whenever some elite bureaucrat decides they’re going to pull it?”
Perutka also called the 9/11 terrorist attacks an “inside job,” saying “you can’t have an explosion in the basement that was set off by the hijacker on the plane” and claimed that the official account of the 9/11 attack was the real “theory conspiracy”.
The campaign did not address Perutka’s previous conspiracy theories when asked for comment, but Macky Stafford, Perutka’s campaign coordinator, told CNN in a statement that “the results of the primary election show that Maryland Republicans are unhappy with their current leadership.”
But outgoing Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan called out Perutka on Sunday, saying, “These disgusting lies do not belong in our party.”
“We know who was responsible for 9/11. Blaming our country for Al Qaeda’s atrocities is an insult to the memory of the thousands of innocent Americans and brave first responders who died that day,” Hogan tweeted. Perutka ran for president in 2004 as a Constitution candidate. During this campaign, Perutka posted on his website an endorsement from the League of the South — a new Confederate organization supporting southern secession. The home page for his campaign prominently featured a Confederate flag linking to “Southerners for Peroutka,” whose home page had a large Confederate flag displayed over the Capitol saying, “We have a dream.” He also promoted his candidacy to the Council of Conservative Citizens, according to copies of their newsletter obtained by CNN. The CCC is a self-proclaimed White Rights group that opposes non-White immigration and promotes white nationalist ideology. Perutka will face Democratic Rep. Anthony Brown in the November general election. If elected, Brown would be the state’s first black attorney general. Maryland has not had a Republican attorney general since 1952, when he was appointed. the last Republican attorney general elected in the state was in 1919. In other episodes of Peroutka’s radio show reviewed by CNN’s KFile, Peroutka also disputed that the Pentagon was hit by American Airlines Flight 77, asking where the video shows that “incoming attack, airplane or missile,” later saying it was “very plausible that a missile that looked like an airplane hit the Pentagon.” Perutka even questioned whether the remains of the dead were found at the Pentagon, suggesting they were killed elsewhere. He said that he had seen “no evidence” of bodies or baggage on his late co-host and former presidential campaign adviser, John Lofton.
Lofton said, “Ah, but look at the rocket thing. Then you have to count the remains and the body parts and show how all those people got into the rocket. How all those passengers–”
“I saw the pictures. There was nothing that looked like a body or luggage or anything in there,” Perutka interrupted. “And the pictures that I’ve seen — if there are pictures, John — that show body parts or luggage or even an airplane seat that’s consistent with Flight 77, that particular airplane. If there’s anything that’s consistent with that, I’m on the run I didn’t see a picture of him.”
Immediately afterward, Lofton said, “If I can produce for you a person who was a friend or a loved one of one of the passengers who perished on that plane that hit the Pentagon, who says, ‘Yes, we took remains of our loved one the friend”. Will that impress you?’
“No, absolutely not,” answered Perutka. “Where did the remains come from? I don’t doubt that people died.”
“If a plane doesn’t hit the Pentagon, how would the remains of anyone on that flight get into the Pentagon?” Lofton asked.
“I didn’t say they got into the Pentagon. I couldn’t see them in the Pentagon. There was no — I’ve never seen any evidence that anything like a body or luggage of a passenger or a passenger or anything else according to Flight 77 is in the Pentagon. If there is pictures like that, I’d like to see them. Now, you could clearly understand that someone whose loved one was lost on that plane, very likely, would have gotten some piece of forensic evidence that showed their loved one was indeed dead. But who says it came from the Pentagon?”
Perutka said at the time that this was the first time he had heard that the remains of the deceased had been found at the Pentagon.
American Airlines Flight 77 was hijacked by five terrorists on September 11, 2001 and intentionally crashed into the Pentagon, killing all 64 on board and 125 other people in the building.
This story has been updated with additional reaction.
