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Huffington Post hires 9/11 truther to cover national security

The Huffington Post's Washington bureau has hired professional football player and 9/11 truther Donte Stallworth as a fellow, covering national security.

Stallworth, a wide receiver in the NFL since 2002, is currently an unsigned free agent and has not played in any games since 2012. As a 9/11 truther, he has publicly stated that Osama bin Laden was not responsible for the attacks and that the Pentagon was not hit by a plane.

"NO WAY 9/11 was carried out by 'dying' Bin Laden, 19 men who couldn't fly a damn kite. STILL have NO EVIDENCE Osama was connected, like Iraq," Stallworth tweeted in 2009. Stallworth also tweeted, "Gggrrrrrrrrrrrrr @ ppl who actually believe a plane hit the pentagon on 9/11... hole woulda been ASTRONOMICALLY bigger, God bless lost lives."

In a statement Wednesday, Huffington Post Washington bureau chief Ryan Grim said Stallworth "has a quick mind, an insatiable curiosity and a passion for politics — the necessary qualities of a great journalist."

Stallworth played college football at the University of Tennessee and was drafted by the New Orleans Saints in 2002. Over the next 10 years, he would play for the Philadelphia Eagles, the New England Patriots, the Cleveland Browns, the Baltimore Ravens and the Washington Redskins.

In 2009, Stallworth plead guilty to DUI manslaughter after killing a 59-year-old man in Florida. Grim said Wednesday, “We obviously believe in redemption and second chances."

UPDATE (10:23 a.m.): Poynter's Andrew Beaujon asked Grim about the truther tweets:

“That doesn’t represent how he thinks today,” Grim said. “You know, that was five years ago, and people say dumb things, but that shouldn’t define him.” ... Journalism, Grim said, “is like football in the sense that it’s done in public and people are judged by how they perform on the field or in print.”

UPDATE (10:33 a.m.): Several folks on Twitter have pointed out that Stallworth's most recent truther tweet was from November 2013, less than a year ago.

UPDATE (1:03 p.m.): Stallworth wrote Thursday, "I no longer feel the way I did in that tweet 5 years ago. ... After a lot of reading and researching on it, my views changed... and that's ok. ... Credit goes to James Bamford, whose great book disabused me of that stuff and showed what a disastrous intelligence failure 9/11 was."