The Huffington Post’s Latest Hire: A 9/11 Truther
Late last night, Huffington Post editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington announced that her company had hired 33-year-old Donté Stallworth, the former NFL wide receiver, to cover national security as a paid editorial fellow. One problem: Stallworth apparently believes that the September 11, 2001 attacks were an inside job.
Stallworth is already well-known for pleading guilty to manslaughter in 2009 and hinting at some kind of conspiracy theory involving the vaccine for the H1N1 virus in 2013. He is less well-known for denying that hijackers flew American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon:
Gggrrrrrrrrrrrrr @ ppl who actually believe a plane hit the pentagon on 9/11... hole woulda been ASTRONOMICALLY bigger, God bless lost lives
— Donté Stallworth (@DonteStallworth) July 20, 2009
Or denying that Osama bin Laden masterminded the attacks:
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
— Donté Stallworth (@DonteStallworth) July 20, 2009
Or promoting Loose Change, a series of quasi-documentary films that argued the hijacked planes had been somehow replaced by drones; that the original flights’ passengers had in fact disappeared; and that the World Trade Center had been destroyed by controlled demolitions (among many other conspiracy theories):
this documentary is called Loose Change. Follow it thru, may have 2watch 2x~~~> http://bit.ly/12rTq0
— Donté Stallworth (@DonteStallworth) September 19, 2009
The Huffington Post has previously asserted that its editorial policy “prohibits the promotion and promulgation of conspiracy theories—including those about 9/11.” The site seems to have carved out an exception for Stallworth, though. Washington bureau chief Ryan Grim told Poynter’s Andrew Beaujon: “You know, that was five years ago, and people say dumb things, but that shouldn’t define him.”
But does Stallworth think what he said was actually dumb? We’re not so sure:
@jacobperry 1. con·spir·a·cy/ noun: conspiracy: a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful or harmful. #FactsOnly :)
— Donté Stallworth (@DonteStallworth) October 21, 2013
Update: Three minutes after this post was published, Stallworth tweeted the following:
Just to be clear, I no longer feel the way I did in that tweet 5 years ago.
— Donté Stallworth (@DonteStallworth) September 4, 2014
After a lot of reading and researching on it, my views changed... and that's ok.
— Donté Stallworth (@DonteStallworth) September 4, 2014
Credit goes to James Bamford, whose great book disabused me of that stuff and showed what a disastrous intelligence failure 9/11 was.
— Donté Stallworth (@DonteStallworth) September 4, 2014
However, the most recent tweet indicating Stallworth’s 9/11 beliefs was from 9 months ago—not 5 years:
Oops, I sent that tweet a little too early like the young lady from @BBCNews on the collapse of building 7 on 9/11...
— Donté Stallworth (@DonteStallworth) November 25, 2013