Green Party candidate Matt Funiciello, in interviews with NCPR and WWNY has confirmed he believes the widely-held views about the terror attacks on September 11, 2001, are a "horrific and nonsensical fairy tale our government has sold us."

Funiciello is seeking the 21st district House seat and is currently polling 10 percent against Democrat Aaron Woolf and Republican Elise Stefanik.

Speaking this week, Funiciello rejected the idea the terror attacks were carried out by Saudi-born terrorists working for Al Quaeda.

I guess you have a source that you believe is correct and I have what I saw with my own eyes.

“I’m definitely as an American in no way satisfied with the official story that we’ve been told over and over again about the three towers that came down and the subsequent damage on 9/11,” Funiciello said.

He insisted he's not a "9/11 truther" and instead described himself as a "9/11 questioner."

In a nearly 20-minute conversation with NCPR, Funiciello declined to say who might have carried out the attacks, but he suggested that "corporate government" officials and members of the "corporate media" helped cover up the truth.

However, in his writings online Funiciello embraced a wide variety of assertions made by the "truther" community which have been debunked by independent investigators, including a claim that damage to the Pentagon in Washington D.C. could not have been made by a commercial jetliner.

Funiciello also rejected engineering studies concluding that one of the towers at the World Trade Center site collapsed following a structural fire triggered by the disaster. Asked why he discounted those findings, Funiciello responded he has friends, family members, and acquaintances “who don’t agree” with the official findings.

At the listen link above, Brian Mann talks with Martha Foley about Funiciello's views on the 9/11 attacks and how they might affect his campaign to win the 21st congressional district seat in November.

You'll find more information about Funiciello's views on our blog the In Box, where a discussion about the issue is underway.

You can listen to Funiciello's interview on the 9/11 truther issue at WWNY TV-7.

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Transcription of the interview:

Brian Mann: Do you believe the American government or the CIA had prior knowledge or was in some way involved in these attacks?

Matt Funiciello: I don’t know that and I don’t believe that. I’ve suggested that’s an alternative. There are many people that you would consider or that we would call “truthers” or conspiracy theorists who said they know what happened. I’m not one of those people. I’m definitely somebody who’s intellectually curious and very cynical, and usually when the government tells me something, I don’t believe it. It’s usually a lie, that’s why.

BM: When you talk about there being a cover-up of this event, you say, “I don’t believe the horrific and nonsensical fairytale our government has told us concerning 9/11.” Why, in your opinion, would the United Sates’ government be lying to its people about these attacks?

MF: Well, I think that anybody who would want to ask me that question should read the “Northwoods Project,” which was a document that was released, I think, just prior to 9/11 as it was 50 years old. “Northwoods” was a CIA projects that was done many years ago when Fidel Castro was still around as an attempt, on the CIA’s part, to figure out how to assassinate him. And one of the things they put forward was why don’t we fly a remote control airplane into the Empire State Building? And say that Fidel Castro did it and go to war with him as a result of that? Our own government, after 9/11, told us over and over again on TV and in the newspapers that no one ever thought that, you know, somebody might hijack an airline and fly it into a major center in urban American. That’s just not true; our own government had thought that might have made sense at some point 50 years ago.

BM: You’ve also written suggesting, and this is fairly explicit, that, some people involved in Wall Street trading or investment trading had some kind of prior knowledge about this. You’ve suggested that there were so-called “put options” on some trades that suggest—and so is it your conviction also that some people on Wall Street or in the Investment community were warned about these attacks in advance?

MF: I, again, don’t know anything about the individuals who bought the put options. There were a historically large amount of put options purchased on only United and American airlines in the weeks prior to 9/11 and those were, coincidentally, the two airlines that were hijacked. So it does seem like if you were to investigate the murder of 3,000 people, especially Americans, you’d probably want to know who bought those put options. And the 9/11 commission, or the 9/11 omission, as I like to call it, did not investigate that. It just said, “Oh we could never figure it out.” I mean, all of these purchases are done with full knowledge of who the purchasers were. So that was something that was swept under the carpet that doesn’t make a lot of sense to me.

BM: There’ve been a large number of investigations of these truther/conspiracy theories—

MF: By who? By corporate America and corporate media, but when individuals or scientists themselves have done this work, or investigative journalists, are discounted. You know, the reason why they are is because Popular Mechanics says they’re not credible. I don’t necessarily see—

BM: Well, let me ask you this; you’re making an extraordinary claim about what would amount to an incredible, let’s just put the right word on it, an incredibly evil idea about the American government perhaps being involved in or, at the very least, covering up the facts.

MF: You are the one saying American government.

BM: You’re the one who said the American government covered it up. You called it a “fairytale,” the report that the American government produced. And, now, am I misunderstanding that?

MF: No, again, the American government is far too many a number of people; it’s far too populous a number of people for me to say that they have done that. But what I will say is, the so-called official story that we were told about what happened on that day is not the whole story. I think we deserve, as Americans, because of how we use 9/11, how the military-industrial complex uses 9/11, to know the truth of it. And to do that we would actually have to properly investigate it. I don’t believe we did that.

BM: And let me ask you this, and, again, it’s an extraordinary claim….

MF: You keep saying that. It’s just a matter of that we need justice and we haven’t had it. We don’t know the facts of 9/11.

BM: Hold on, let me interrupt for a second. You’re actually not simply saying passively that we don’t know the facts. You’re saying, actively, that at the very least, the United States government or at least parts of the United States government have covered up the facts about this terrorist attack. Am I misunderstanding you there?

MF: I, again, don’t believe that that’s what I’m saying. I’m saying that I’m not in any way comfortable that the official story we’ve been told over and over again is actually the whole story at all, or even close to it. I don’t really know who’s covering it up. I would suggest that, if there is a cover-up of any sort, it is a corporate one. It is the corporate media and it is our corporate government working in collusion to foment war because that’s how we make money. Not you and I, not people who work for a living, not the soldiers who are being sent overseas, not the people who died in 9/11 necessarily, but the people who sell munitions and arms; the people who are part of the defense industry. They have every reason to lie to us, so I’m hesitant to immediately believe everything I’m told by the media and by their representatives for sure.

BM: I’ve read incredibly thorough, granular take-downs of 9/11 conspiracy theories and they are technical, they are independent, they are detailed, and they are rigorous. So you disbelieve those? What have you done to investigate this? Where do you draw your suspicions?

MF: I can sum that up quite easily and just say this; that your listeners are listening to my voice, how many of you, in the audience know that tower 7 fell? How many know a third tower fell?

BM: Well, it’s on the Wikipedia. Let me just interrupt for a second because I want to hear you answer this specifically, Matt. That information that you have repeatedly asserted as some part of some mysterious shadow idea, it’s on Wikipedia’s website of information.

MF: How many Americans do you think are investigating 9/11? How many are instead, just believing that two towers fell that day and Osama Bin Laden did it? And that we’re done?

BM: Let’s come back to you. You want to be the congressman for the North Country, and this is one of the essential questions you’ve raised; the military-industrial complex spending on war. So on this issue, this position that you’ve taken, talk us through the rigor that you’ve brought to investigating this. How have you determined, in your own mind, that something—again, you describe it as sort of a nefarious “fairytale”—how have you become convinced that that’s the case?

MF: I can tell you all of the things I have read, whether they were in book form, or in newspapers, or whether they were online. That could be rather boring. What I can tell you is that I’m satisfied we’re being lied to when part of the story is left out of almost every major news coverage we’ve seen since 9/11: and it’s that a major tower of the Trade Centers fell into its own footprint at 5:30 in the afternoon on 9/11. And, yes, it was covered by mainstream media. It was covered the same way that Ralph Nader’s 2000 presidential campaign was covered; hardly at all, and once or twice. But we did then see thousands of iconic photographs and videos of the two towers that were hit by airplanes coming down every day. And we didn’t have major discussions on a daily basis on every news show and talk show, or on the editorial page of every newspaper about why tower 7 fell or that it did. Most Americans are still unaware that another tower fell. So we failed to have the discussion nationally of what actually happened on that day with any kind of investigative rigor.

BM: The specific claim that you’re making, that the collapse of tower 7 is some kind of smoking gun for some other conspiracy or some other trigger, you in your writings have suggested that there was some kind of explosive material found in dust at the Pentagon site. All of these claims have been independently investigated and they’ve been rigorously analyzed, and they’ve been debunked by what most people would describe as mainstream sources. And what you’re saying, if I read you correctly, is that you’ve gone to other sources and you feel like they’re telling you a different set of facts and a different truth.

MF: I’m saying that I have never, in my life, seen a building fall into its own footprint that was on fire. And I’ve seen buildings that were on fire. So right off the bat, as with most Americans on 9/11 who watched it happen on TV or as with some of my friends who watched it in New York City, I don’t really believe that the airline hitting those towers is the reason why they fell into their own footprint.

BM: And at this point you’re unwilling to say what you think the cause is?

MF: I again, Brain, we come back to this over and over again, and you’re asking me if I’m an expert; you’re not an expert, but you’re telling me I’m wrong. What are the sources that you consider are expert that you trust so implicitly?

BM: Ok, let me read you one. This is a report that was done exhaustively and is a detailed technical report from The National Institute of Standards and Technology; a long, detailed, technical engineering report on the collapse of World Trade Center 7 Tower, the one you’ve been describing. Here’s the conclusion, this is a quote, “’Our take-home message today is that the reason for the collapse of World Trade Center Seven is no longer a mystery,” said lead investigator Shiam Sunder. “WTC7 collapsed because of fires fueled by office furnishings. It did not collapse from explosives or from diesel fuel fires.’”

MF: Well, I guess it’s all settled then. I guess you have a source that you believe is correct and I have what I saw with my own eyes. I’m going to say that doesn’t satisfy me that one man is telling us what he feels, because I know people. I have a brother who’s an engineer. I have friends who have worked as investigative journalists. I have people who are in the military at relatively high levels that I am in contact with who don’t agree with that man. I’m just going to say to you again, that if you want to attack me or if one of my opponents would like to attack me and call me a truther, I’m just going to keep saying: I am questioner, there’s no doubt about it, but I’m not a knower. I don’t know what your answers are that you’re looking for. For me, I’m just going to continue to say the same thing; I don’t believe the official story, as most Americans don’t.

BM: Alright, Matt Funiciello, I’m very grateful to you. I appreciate you answering these questions. Thanks so much.

MF: Not a problem at all, Brian, any time.