TEHRAN - David Ray Griffin, an American professor of philosophy of religion and theology, sees Vice-President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as the architects of the September 11 attacks.

“The attacks were engineered by non-Muslim terrorists, especially Vice-President Richard Cheney and his buddy Donald Rumsfeld, who had become the secretary of defense,” Griffin tells the Tehran Times.

Following is the text of the interview:

Q: Your books about 9/11 have gained a great attraction worldwide. What was your motivation for writing these books?  

A: First, I came to reject the official account of the 9/11 attacks, after at first not having seen good evidence that the attacks were an inside job. But after I finally saw good evidence that the official account of 9/11 was a lie, I realized that this fact was extremely important. At that time, there were already some good books about 9/11, but none of these were by Americans, and few Americans were reading them. So I decided to write a book about it, which became The New Pearl Harbor (2004). The later books were written to answer questions and claims raised by defenders of the official account. 
 
Q: Could you please tell us about the reactions to your works (among mainstream media, academics, officials, and so on)?

A: The mainstream media and most of the academy have either ignored my work or attacked it as a conspiracy theory unsupported by evidence (even though in one week in 2008 the highly respected Publishers Weekly named my 2008 book, The New Pearl Harbor Revisited, the "Pick of the Week"). There was also not much support by academics until after Peter Dale Scott and I edited a volume in 2006 entitled 9/11 and the American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out. Academic support was further increased after architect Richard Gage, having studied my work, started Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, which now has over 3,000 architects and engineers who call the official account of the destruction of the World Trade Center false.  
 
 Q: Do you think 9/11 was a terrorist attack? Please kindly give us your reasons?

A: Quite often this question means, "Were the 9/11 attacks engineered by Muslim hijackers?" The answer to this question is No. But the attacks were engineered by non-Muslim terrorists, especially Vice-President Richard Cheney and his buddy Donald Rumsfeld, who had become the secretary of defense
 
Q: What was the role of neoconservatives and the CIA in 9/11?

A: I discussed this issue in a 2007 essay entitled “Neocon Imperialism, 9/11, and the Attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq.” The 9/11 attacks allowed the agenda developed in the 1990s by neoconservatives to be implemented. This agenda was that the United States should use its military supremacy to establish an empire that includes the whole world--a global Pax Americana. The means for fulfilling this agenda was to be a "transformation of military affairs," which was likely to take a long time, unless there occurred some "catastrophic and catalyzing event--like a new Pearl Harbor.”
 
Q: How do you see the relationship between 9/11 and the Greater west Asia (Middle East) plan? 

A: Afghanistan and Iraq were to be the first two of seven countries in which regime change was to be carried out. The Obama administration tried to finish the plan in Syria and Libya, and the Trump administration has continued the effort in Syria.  
  
Q: Nearly two decades have passed since 9/11, and many questions remain unanswered. In your view, why is the U.S. delaying in finding out the truth about what happened on September 11, 2001?

A: The U.S. has not given up the idea of controlling the planet; the truth about 9/11 has not been publicly revealed; and revealing the truth would undermine the hope to recover the global domination project.