Veterans Today lists as its editorial board of directors former members of the U.S. military Gordon Duff (senior editor and chairman of the board), Major Bobby Hanifin, James H. Fetzer and Clinton Bastin; former members of intelligence agencies Lt. General Hamid Gul (Pakistan), Col. Eugene Khrushchev ((former)Soviet Union), and Jim W. Dean (managing editor), Gwenyth Todd and Leo Wanta (United States); as well as Jeff Rense, Carol Duff, Khalil Nouri and Michael Harris.[5]
Veterans Today publishes original and reprint articles by editorial board members,[5] as well as writers such as Alan Hart,[6] Gilad Atzmon,[7] Ingrid R. Zundel,[8] Ismail Salami,[9] Kevin Barrett,[10] J. Bruce Campbell,[11] Mark D. Siljander,[12] Tim King,[13] and Wayne Madsen.[14]
Content [edit]
Veterans Today features "writing by veterans, for veterans", focusing on a range of topics, including disability benefits, veteran suicide rates, economic disparities for veterans and police violence against Occupy Wall Street protests and injuries to protesting veterans. Jim W. Dean, a managing editor, has said “Our position is, if all we’re ever doing is scrambling for vet benefits and staying quiet on everything else, than nothing is going to change.”[15] It also publishes articles about the Israel lobby in the United States and Israeli political and military policies.[3]
Veterans Today also reprints material from Iran's Mehr News Agency.[16] and its state-owned Press TV news agency.[17] Editor Gordon Duff is a military affairs analyst for Press TV.[18] Jonathan Kay, author of "Among the Truthers", wrote on his blog that Press TV exploits the "anti-Semitic Veterans Today web site to spread 9/11 conspiracy theories".[19] Veterans Today later printed Kevin Barret's poor review of Kay's book which condemned "Kay’s worst, most libelous ad-hominem" his "attempt to link 9/11 truth to holocaust denial". Barrett called him a "holocaust apologist, a supporter of the mass murder of millions of innocent people in the 9/11 wars".[20] Iranian Kourosh Ziabari, awarded "Iranian Superior Youth Award" by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,[21] writes for Veterans Today.[22]
Criticism [edit]
The Anti-Defamation League characterizes Gordon Duff, the VT senior editor and chairman of the board, as a "anti-Semitic conspiracist." In a July 2010 essay on VT, Duff asserted that the "five dancing Israelis" arrested on 9/11 were part of a "team of Israeli intelligence agents" who remotely guided the planes into the World Trade Center with the knowledge of "top members of America's military." He added that America's security continues to be threatened "by a nefarious and disloyal group of Americans who have dual U.S./Israeli citizenship and who control government organizations and private companies." In a separate piece, he wrote that "the Israeli lobby" is "the most powerful and ruthless group in the world."[3] The Southern Poverty Law Center also writes that Veterans Today propagates conspiracies about Israel orchestrating the September 11 attacks as well as about Holocaust Denial.[4] Journalist Arnaud de Borchgrave described Gordon Duff in 2010 as "a 100 percent disabled Marine Vietnam veteran [who] states flatly that Sept. 11, 2001, was a CIA-Mossad conspiracy and that Osama bin Laden was not involved and died in 2001" and that audio and video recordings aired by Al-Jazeera after the attack were "Clever Israeli forgeries."[23]
Two columnists for the National Post have criticized Veterans Today for publishing an article which they claimed "verges into Holocaust denial." The article, written by VT columnist J. Bruce Campbell in May 2011, states that:
“The holy gas chamber is a fake. Which makes the entire Holocaust story a fake. You can study it for a day or for a lifetime and your conclusion will be the same. There was never a plan for exterminating Jews and there was never an instrument. As Professor Robert Faurisson has asked for years, ‘Show me a gas chamber. Draw for me a gas chamber.’ It can’t be done because there was never such a thing.” The author also writes that “the main purpose of keeping alive the Holocaust is to protect Jewish banking practices.”[24][25][26]
According to the Anti-Defamation League, Veterans Today has promulgated the conspiracy theory that Israel orchestrated WikiLeaks as a public relations campaign. Gordon Duff has charged Julian Assange with cooperating with Israeli intelligence,[27] and in an interview with the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, he said that "WikiLeaks is obviously concocted by an intelligence agency. It's a ham-handed action by Israel to do its public relations."[28]
In September 2011, the University of Lethbridge initially congratulated a student, Josh Blakeney, for becoming a writer for VT shortly after his graduation. In response to subsequent criticism, the Dean of Graduate Studies, Dr. Robert Wood, stated that the congratulatory note was the result of an “administrative oversight" and added that "In my capacity as Dean of Graduate Studies, I unequivocally retract this congratulatory note." Dr. Wood also criticized Veterans Today, stating that "The anti-Semitic content that is periodically published in Veterans Today is morally repugnant, and it deeply offends the core principles of tolerance, respect, and citizenship upon which the University of Lethbridge is founded."[29][30][31]
Veteran's Today financial editor Michael Harris was criticized for asserting in an interview on Press TV that December 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting was a "revenge killing" by Israel. The Anti-Defamation League responded stating "Veterans Today is known for promulgating some of the most outrageous anti-Israel and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories."[32]
Harris also alleged that Israeli "death squads" were responsible for the 2011 Tucson shooting, 2011 Norway attacks and 2012 Aurora shooting and that the "Jewish-owned and Jewish-controlled" Hollywood was responsible for perpetuating a "culture of violence" within the United States.[33] A Washington Post story on the interviews notes that Harris "publicly associates with neo-Nazi groups".[34][35] The SPLC stated that Harris' comments indicated that VT "is now squarely in neo-Nazi territory."[36]
