William A. Christison (former CIA) (1928-2010) , by David Ray Griffin

June 22, 2010, Published: Foreign Policy Journal

William A. (‘Bill’) Christison (1928-2010)

Bill Christison (former
senior analyst for the CIA) in “Stop
Belittling the Theories About September 11?, Dissident Voice, August
14, 2006):

“Why is it important that we not let the so-called conspiracy theories
surrounding 9/11 be drowned out? After spending the better part of the
last five years treating these theories with utmost skepticism, I have
devoted serious time to actually studying them in recent months, and
have also carefully watched several videos that are available on the
subject. I have come to believe that significant parts of the 9/11
theories are true, and that therefore significant parts of the ‘official
story’ put out by the U.S. government and the 9/11 Commission are
false. I now think there is persuasive evidence that the events of
September did not unfold as the Bush administration and the 9/11
Commission would have us believe.”

This article was originally published
at 911truth.org.
It has been republished here with permission from the author.

William A. (“Bill”) Christison, a former
senior analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency who became a
supporter of the 9/11 Truth Movement, died June 13, 2010, due to a
rapidly advancing neurological disease, which he had contracted three
months earlier. He leaves behind his wife, Kathleen McGrath Christison
(who had also been a CIA analyst), two daughters (Lynda Carlson and
Judith Wooten), and a son (Eric). He had been preceded in death by two
other sons (Robert and Thomas). The memorial service was held in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on Friday, June 18.

Born in Boston
in 1928, Christison graduated from Princeton in 1950 and immediately
joined the CIA to begin what would become a distinguished 28-year
career. Starting out as an analyst on Soviet affairs, he worked in the
1960s on the problem of global nuclear proliferation, with special
emphases on France, Israel,
India, and Pakistan. In the 1970s, he became the National Intelligence
Officer for South Asia, Southeast Asia, and
Africa. (He and Kathleen met while they were both working in
Saigon.) He finished his career as Director of the CIA’s Office of
Regional and Political Analysis, supervising over 200 analysts covering,
between themselves, every region of the world.

In 1979, he and his wife retired from the CIA and moved to
Sante Fe, where he started becoming more critical of US foreign policy,
especially when he saw that the fall of the Soviet Union, which by
ending the Cold War was supposed to bring a “peace dividend,” did no
such thing, but instead prompted the United States to advance its
imperial interests.

Becoming
especially critical of US policy with regard to Israel and the Middle East, he (along with his wife)
began writing articles for Counterpunch. Some of Christison’s most
important work, Counterpunch editor Alexander Cockburn told the Santa Fe
New Mexican (Steve Terrell, “Former
CIA Agent Bill Christison Advocated for Palestinians,” The Santa Fe
New Mexican, June 15, 2010), came in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist
attacks. In a March 2002 Counterpunch article, Christison wrote:

“My number one root
cause (of terrorism) is the support by the U.S. over recent years for
the policies of Israel with respect to the Palestinians, and the belief
among Arabs and Muslims that the United States is as much to blame as
Israel itself for the continuing, almost 35-year-long Israeli occupation
of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip.”

At that time, Christison accepted the idea that the 9/11
attacks were “blowback” for US foreign policy, especially in the Middle
East — a view that was controversial enough. But he later came to accept
an even more controversial view, which he articulated in an article
entitled “Stop Belittling the Theories About September 11,” which he
posted August 14, 2006, on the Dissident Voice website (Bill Christison,
“Stop
Belittling the Theories About September 11?, Dissident Voice, August
14, 2006), and in which he wrote:

“Why is it important that we not let the so-called
conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11 be drowned out? After spending the
better part of the last five years treating these theories with utmost
skepticism, I have devoted serious time to actually studying them in
recent months, and have also carefully watched several videos that are
available on the subject. I have come to believe that significant parts
of the 9/11 theories are true, and that therefore significant parts of
the ‘official story’ put out by the U.S. government and the 9/11
Commission are false. I now think there is persuasive evidence that the
events of September did not unfold as the Bush administration and the
9/11 Commission would have us believe.”

Then, after listing nine judgments that had led him to this
conclusion — one of which was that the “North and South Towers of the
World Trade Center almost certainly did not collapse and fall to earth
because hijacked aircraft hit them” – he added:

“If [these] judgments . . . are correct,
they . . . strongly suggest that some unnamed persons or groups either
inside or with ties to the government were actively creating a ‘Pearl
Harbor’ event, most likely to gain public support for the aggressive
foreign policies that followed — policies that would, first, ‘transform’
the entire Middle East, and second, expand U.S. global domination.”

Moreover, contrary to the view that any
attempt to bring this issue into political debates would be politically
suicidal, Christison suggested that “the untrue stories peddled by The
9/11 Commission Report are clearly susceptible of being turned into
major political issues.” He based
this judgment partly on two polls: The Scripps Howard/Ohio University
poll of July 2006 — which found that “more than a third [36
percent] of the American public suspects that federal officials assisted
in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them, so that
the United States could go to war in the Middle East” — and the Zogby
poll of May 2006 — which found that 42 percent of Americans
believed there had indeed been a cover-up of the true events of 9/11
(with an additional 10 percent “unsure”). This Zogby poll, Christison
said, “suggested even more strongly that the issue could become a ‘big
one’ if aggressively publicized.”

Seeing
these polls as implying the existence of “considerable support for
making a major political issue of the subject,” he suggested that we
“work as hard as is humanly possible to defeat . . . any candidate who
refuses to support a no-holds-barred investigation of 9/11 by the
Congress or a high-level international court. No more evidence than is
now available is needed in order to begin this process.”

Christison argued that an international
trial, resulting in the conviction and punishment of the criminals
responsible for 9/11, would be of great benefit: “Such a trial,
accompanied by actual change in U.S. policies, would show that some
people on this globe are at least trying to move closer to more just and
decent behavior in human relationships around the world.”

Contrary to those members of the left (like
his friend Alexander Cockburn) who regarded the 9/11 Truth Movement as a
distraction from more important issues, Christison wrote:

“A manageable volume of
carefully collected and analyzed evidence is already at hand . . . that
elements within the Bush administration, as well as possibly other
groups foreign or domestic, were involved in a massive fraud against the
American people, a fraud that has led to many thousands of deaths. This
charge of fraud, if proven, involves a much greater crime against the
American people and people of the world than any other charges of fraud
connected to the run-up to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. It is a
charge that we should not sweep under the rug because what is happening
in Lebanon, Gaza, Iraq, Syria, and Iran seems more pressing and
overwhelming. It is a charge that is more important because it is
related to all of the areas just mentioned — after all, the events of
9/11 have been used by the administration to justify every single aspect
of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East since September 11. It is a
charge that is more important also because it affects the very core of
our entire political system. If proven, it is a conspiracy, so far
successful, not only against the people of the United States, but
against the entire world.”

Explaining
in an email letter to friends, the same day the article was posted
(August 14, 2006), why he had written it, Christison said:

“I spent the first four
and a half years since September 11 utterly unwilling to consider
seriously the conspiracy theories surrounding the attacks of that day. .
. . [I]n the last half year and after considerable agony, I’ve changed
my mind. The subject is a difficult one, and I fully recognize that many
of you will feel that I’ve made a monstrous mistake. But I can live
with such criticism, and will continue pressing to force a new and
independent high level investigation of the events of 9/11. The only
real investigation to date, that of the 9/11 Commission, was a joke. We
can do better.”

In March 2009, when Intelligence Officers for 9/11 Truth
was formed, Bill Christison was the first person to accept the
invitation to join.

Finally, giving
the lie to the claim that a concern for 9/11 truth prevents people from
working on other causes, he in 2009 published Palestine in Pieces: Graphic Perspectives on the
Israeli Occupation, which he co-authored with his wife, and
which earned high praise from Ramzy Baroud, John Pilger, and Richard
Falk.