Gore Vidal on the "United States of Amnesia," 9/11, the 2000 Election and the 
War in Iraq Gore Vidal is one of America¹s most prolific and best-known 
writers. He has written more than 22 books and more than 200 essays -- a collection 
of his essays won the National Book Award in 1993. Vidal is the author most 
recently of Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace and Dreaming War: Blood for Oil 
and the Bush-Cheney Junta. Taken together, the books constitute a comprehensive 
attack on America’s imperialist ambitions and the military industrial 
complex. Writing in the Scotsman, critic Gavin Esler called Perpetual War "the finest 
serious critique of America's use and abuse of power in the 21st century that 
I have read." Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman recently met up with Gore Vidal 
for an extensive interview. The interview aired on May 13, 2003. THIS IS A 
RUSH TRANSCRIPT GORE VIDAL:The United States is not a normal country. We are a 
homeland now under military surveillance and military control. The President 
asked the Congress right after 9-11 not to conduct a major investigation. "As it 
might deter our search for terrorism wherever it might be in the world." So 
Congress obediently rolled over. There was, I remember, Pearl Harbor. I was a 
kid then. And within three years of it I enlisted in the army. That's what we 
did in those days; we did not go off to the Texas Air Force and hide. I realize 
the country has totally changed, that the government is not responsive to the 
people. Either in protecting us from something like 9-11, which they 
should¹ve done, could¹ve done. Did not do. And then when it did happen, to 
investigate, investigate, investigate. So I wrote two little books, one called Perpetual 
War for Perpetual Peace, in which I try to go into the why Osama Bin Laden, if 
it were he, or whoever it was, why it was done. And I wrote anther one, 
Dreaming War, on why we were not protected on 9-11, which ordinarily would have led 
to the impeachment of the President of the United States who had allowed it 
to happen. They said they had no information. Since then every day the New York 
Times prints another mountain of people that say they had warned the 
government, President Putin of Russia, he had warned us, President Mubarek, of Egypt, 
he had warned us, three members of Mossad claim they had come to the US to 
warn us that sometime in September something unpleasant might come out of the sky 
in our direction. Were we defended? No we were not defended. Has this ever 
been investigated? No, it hasn't. There was some attempt at the midterm 
election, there was a pro forma committee in Congress which has done nothing thus far, 
and we¹re three years later. This is shameful. The media, which is controlled 
by the great conglomerates, which control the political system, has done an 
atrocious job of reporting, though sometimes good stories get in. I've worn my 
eyes out studying the Wall Street Journal, which despite its dreadful 
editorial policies is a pretty good newspaper of record, which the New York Times is 
not. If you read the Wall Street Journal very carefully you can pretty much 
figure out what happened that day. At the time the first hijacking, according to 
law, FAA, it is mandatory within four minutes of a hijacking, fighter planes 
from the nearest air military base go up to scramble, that means go up and 
force the plane down, find out who they are, find out what's happening. One hour 
and 50 minutes I think it was, no fighter plane went up. During that hour and 
20 minutes, we lost the two towers, and one side of the Pentagon. Why didn¹t 
they go up? No description from the government, no excuse, a lot of mumbling 
stories which were then retracted, new stories replaced them. That to me was the 
end of the republic. We no longer had a Congress which would ask questions, 
which it was in place to do of the executive. We have a commander in chief who 
likes strutting around in military uniform, which no commander ever did, as 
they are supposed to be civilians keeping charge of the military. This thing is 
surrealistic now and it is getting nastier and nastier, as we are more and more 
kept in the dark about those things which most affect us, which are war and 
peace, prosperity and poverty. These are the main things that the government 
should look after. And we the people should be told about them. We have been 
told nothing. And every voice is silent. So I wrote two little books, which were 
then noticed by people who like to look at the Internet, and then a few 
hundred thousand people have bought them. And I don't come out with conspiracy 
theories, I never became a journalist, I am a historian. Because journalists give 
you their opinions. And pretend they¹re facts. I don't give you my opinions 
because they may be valuable to my mother, but they are of no value to anybody 
else. But I give you the facts as I find them, and I list them and they're quite 
deadly. This government is culpable of, if nothing less, negligence. Why were 
we not protected with all the air bases' fighter planes up and down the 
eastern seaboard? Not one of them went aloft while the hijackings took place. 
Finally two from Otis Field in Massachusetts arrived at the twin towers I think at 
the time the second one was hit. If anybody had been thinking, they would have 
gone on the Washington to try to prevent the attack on the Pentagon. They 
went back to Otis, back to Massachusetts. So I ask these questions, which 
Congress should ask, does not ask, which the press should ask, but is too frightened. 
It's a reign of terror now. AMY GOODMAN: A recent expose shows that even a 
Congressional Committee that¹s looking into this can't get a hold of documents 
that are classified, and even public testimony is now being reclassified. GORE 
VIDAL: Well isn't it pretty clear that the dictatorship is in place. We¹re not 
supposed to know certain things and we¹re not going to know them. They¹re 
doing everything to remove our history, to damage the Freedom of Information Act. 
Bush managed to have a number of Presidential papers, including those of his 
father, put out of the reach of historians, or anybody for a great length of 
time, during which they will probably be shredded, so they will never be 
available. And what I have always called jokingly the United States of Amnesia will 
be worse then an amnesiac it will have suffered a lobotomy, there will be no 
functioning historical memory of our history. AMY GOODMAN: How has George Bush 
accrued so much power? GORE VIDAL: Well, the election of 2000 was the end of 
the republic. It was the second time that it happened that somebody who got the 
popular vote did not get the election. 1876, when Governor Tilden, a Democrat 
of New York, won the election. But they were able -- we still had troops in 
the south -- they were able to turn the election around, the electoral college, 
Tilden didn't want another Civil War, so he just withdrew, but there was no 
sinister group taking charge, it was just a party group of Republicans who 
wanted to continue the reign of General Grant. That was mildly sleazy. This is 
major corruption. This is corporate America, as one, putting in place a president 
who was not elected. Getting the Supreme Court to delay and delay, when under 
the 10th amendment, every decision about the voting in Florida, should be 
made by the Florida Supreme Court. Not the U.S. Supreme Court, which the 
Constitution rules out in matters of election. AMY GOODMAN: How did that happen? Well 
isn't he your relative, Al Gore? GORE VIDAL: That's nothing that I go through 
the streets boasting of no, but yes, he's my cousin. And very un-Gore. The 
Gores are known for their belligerence and he is not known for self-defense let 
us say. He should have asked ­ it¹s easy to say he should¹ve, but it was pretty 
clear at the time. I would've, and I¹ve been in that situation ­ to count the 
total Florida vote. He has every right to demand that, and they couldnt¹ve 
played games, cause it's too big of a vote. Instead he asked I think three 
counties, Dade and Brower and one other, to do their count over again. AMY GOODMAN: 
Concern that he wouldn't win outside of those? GORE VIDAL: No I think he 
figured that he had won those, Dade is certainly a large minority vote, which had 
all voted for him, there's a wonderful book by [John] Nichols, called Jews for 
Buchanan, and it¹s a marvelous shot of four Jewish gentlemen looking terribly 
alarmed, and you see Dade County goes for Buchanan. And even Buchanan goes 
'these are not my votes down there, something's wrong.' And it was stolen by the 
Secretary of State, that lady who now has been rewarded with a seat in 
Congress, the president¹s brother, the losing president candidate¹s brother, was 
governor, and he took part in it. And the court did by five to four. Two of the 
five should have recused themselves, should have just withdrawn from the case 
when Gore vs. Bush came before the court. Why? One of them, [Anthony] Scalia, 
had a son, who was working for the Bush team of lawyers before the Supreme 
Court. Did Justice Scalia recuse himself as he should because his son is arguing? 
No. He wants to kill Gore. He wants to make sure that the bad guys win. 
Thomas' wife was busy, getting Curricula Viti of potential people to serve in a Bush 
administration. Clarence Thomas should have recused himself and withdrawn for 
the case, in which case it would have been 4 to 3 for Gore, who would now be 
president. And Iraq and Afghanistan I can guarantee would not have been 
knocked down, in order to benefit Halliburton and Bechtel. AMY GOODMAN: Scalia 
recently went to Cleveland, he spoke at the Cleveland City Club, which is known as 
the oldest free speech forum in the country, he allowed no press in, and the 
night before he spoke in the city, and he said that that vote, choosing George 
Bush, was his proudest moment. GORE VIDAL: I would impeach him and in a 
well-run country the Senate should make a move toward the trial of Justice Scalia. 
And in back of that there¹s some interesting organization going on, which is 
hard to determine, Opus Dei, both Scalia and Thomas have connections with Opus 
Dei, a secret Catholic order, originally fascist. General Franco is Spain was 
sort of a Godfather to it, and we don¹t know much about it, and it¹s all over 
the place, about 80,000 worldwide, Louis Freeh of the FBI at that time was a 
member, as was Mr. [Robert] Hanssen, the spy, who had been giving all of our 
secrets, he was with the CIA, he had been giving our secrets to the Russians for 
many years. I make no charges, but I simply bring up questions, why not ask 
questions of these people. Does it suit Opus Dei that Bush is President? Now 
we're getting into God territory, which I normally would stay away from as any 
good American should, it¹s not my business other people¹s religions. But Bush is 
Born Again, that¹s why he used biblical language. (imitating Bush) ³He's 
evil! He¹s an evildoer!² Well that¹s theological language. You can say he's a bad 
man, a dishonest man, a ruthless man. Evildoer? And he believes the end of the 
world is coming. Born Agains believe in rapture, they don't care about this 
world. When it ends George W. Bush will be lifted up in a state of rapture into 
the bosom of our lord. Also among the born-again category, not that kind of 
protestant, is Tony Blair, who has become likes his wife, Roman Catholic, which 
is difficult for a British Prime Minister, since the Prime Minister is 
supposed to be an Anglican ­ what we would call Episcopalian -- as he picks the 
Bishops of the Anglican Church, so you can¹t have a Roman Catholic picking 
Anglican Bishops, but he is. So now we have two boys who think "Jesus wants them for 
sunbeams," who are willing to put at risk -- I¹m extrapolating on my own just 
from the evidence at hand. This is mostly humorous. You can judge it as you 
may -- But two believers in our Lord¹s coming, an Armageddon and the end of the 
world -- this is the way the Reagan used to talk -- and it made him very 
popular with the southern states, that¹s why this big thing was just about South 
Carolina that's the heart of it ­ why? Well those states don¹t have much in the 
way of population, but they have very strong born-again Evangelical 
Protestants, and they believe in our Lord returning at any moment, and if you can 
collect them all, by saying you hate abortion and this and that. They have a swing 
vote in those states because of the Electoral College, they don¹t have much 
population, but they have a lot of electoral votes among them. The Electoral 
College was devised -- you call yourself democracy, you¹re very un-American, the 
founding fathers did not want democracy in the US ever. They also did not want 
tyranny, a king or Hitler, they wanted a Republic. And they devised the 
Electoral College so the majority could never control anything. So you have a 
popular vote out there and in those days it was just for congress, so there was one 
electoral vote per congressmen, one per senator and the state, and they get 
together and decide the election. So what Scalia was doing was going back to the 
Electoral College in order to put together a majority to put in his candidate 
who will probably hasten the end of the world. I don¹t know where Scalia will 
be during rapture. He may be [points up and points down.] AMY GOODMAN: You¹re 
talking about religion, you¹ve written about Pat Robertson and John Ashcroft. 
GORE VIDAL: Yes I have, they are very religious men. The wall that Thomas 
Jefferson thought that he had built, as did John Adams who was pretty much an 
antagonist of Jefferson, but they were both agreed that religion ought not to in 
any way intrude itself into politics, it was something quite separate, 
whatever your religion, you obeyed its laws, if you believed in those laws and nobody 
would stop you. But once you start raising money in tax free institutions, 
who's tax-free money you use to influence elections, like Mr. Robertson, and Mr. 
Falwell then you are out of the constitution, and you should be taxed anyway 
before you use it, but they are free of taxation and with that the whole 
country began to change and this very small minority of Evangelicals, mostly in the 
south and southwest, have achieved great power, in states of small population 
where their electoral college count, state by state, adds up to quite a lot, 
in fact added up to a Bush "victory." AMY GOODMAN: Gore Vidal, you've said, I 
don¹t see us winning this war, you¹ve also said that this will force Saddam 
Hussein to use whatever weapons of mass destruction he may have. Maybe you were 
prophetic, and maybe in fact that was true that if he had them he would have 
used them, and he didn¹t. GORE VIDAL: Well, it's pretty plain he didn't have 
them, nobody in Europe thought he did. The Europeans at least have a free press 
which we don't, or most of the countries there do. I said he probably would, 
if we pressed him hard enough. You see when you live with nothing but lies 
being told to you in the media, nothing but lies, and it¹s done the way they do 
advertising, it¹s repetition: "Weapons of mass destruction! He¹s got weapons of 
mass destruction! Mass destruction! Mass destruction! Mass destruction!" When 
you hear that 10,000 times a day, you finally think he must have, they can¹t 
go on like this forever, well he didn¹t have them, now I'm sure we¹re busy 
planting them all over the place, and we¹ll be: "Oh look what we found! Goodness 
me! Here¹s at Atom Bomb! Made in USA. No, scratch that out, scratch that out. 
He made that mark." I fully expect us to plant something or other, but as it's 
the United States of Amnesia, why go to the trouble, it's expensive to have 
troops going around looking for stuff. I think they think the public will have 
forgotten it, I think the public is forgetting it, doesn't much care. I thought 
when I said that we would lose the war, I still think we will. Afghanistan 
the fighting is going on, rather rougher then it was during the so-called war. 
It will keep right on going as long as we have a presence in Iraq. And we will 
eventually be driven out. Somebody will have a bright idea, one of those 
neo-conservatives, we know what they¹re like, and will decide to kill everybody 
there, that this would be a very good thing to do. Gotta show force. And all 
these sissies, all of whom who ran from the idea of going into the army, talk so 
tough when they get together, we¹re gonna show our muscle , you look at Mr. 
Crystal, and Mr., who¹s the sidekick who rides with him? Fat Boys With Asthma, 
talking tough, it makes their blood run cold. So I think that we haven't a 
chance of winning in the Middle East, nobody has, nobody except the Turks, with the 
Ottoman Empire, which Woodrow Wilson, one of the great fools of our history, 
decided to break up at the end of WWI, so we get Turkey, which turns out to be 
really quite a formidable country now, and broke up bits and pieces, into 
Syria, and Jordan, into this into that, which became British and French mandates, 
and are now countries which are uneasy, with all sorts of warring religious 
groups. AMY GOODMAN: Gore Vidal, you developed a relationship with Timothy 
McVeigh. Can you talk about that? GORE VIDAL: I never met him, nor did we talk on 
the telephone, but we did exchange letters, he read a piece I wrote in Vanity 
Fair, about the shredding of the Bill of Rights, which has been further 
shredded since his death, and he wrote me a letter, and I wrote him back, and he 
wrote me some very informative letters about himself, he was very smart, knew the 
constitution backwards and forwards. I was struck by reading about his trial, 
at first I had no interest, he was the lone crazed killer, that our public 
must always have, Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, we all know that, you can get 
the Warren Commission to say that, he was obviously not alone. But that worked 
so well that, the people always fall for it every time, so they decided that 
Timothy McVeigh, a rather slight young man, with no knowledge of explosives, 
had put together this two ton bomb, which he himself, and this guy called 
Nichols loaded on a Ryder truck -- it took at least 9 people it¹s been figured out, 
to get that bomb onto that truck, and then a very careful, experienced driver 
to get that thing without blowing himself up into Oklahoma City in front of 
the building. He was not alone, and we have a pretty good idea of some of the 
people he was associated with who might have been in on it. The FBI began quite 
professionally, they had infiltrated a lot of these Patriot movements out 
there in the middle-west, people who don¹t like the government and others who were 
as angry, as was McVeigh at what the federal government had done to the 
Branch Dividians at Waco, for McVeigh this was revenge upon at what he regarded was 
an odious government, a tyrannical government, he had gone out there and 
watched them using military, army stuff. And remember he was an army hero of the 
Gulf War, and he watched them break the law. The Posse Commitus Act of 1876. 
and in one of the letters to me, these are all reprinted in Perpetual War for 
Perpetual Peace, if you want to read McVeigh's actual words about it. He said 
You know soldiers are trained to kill. The police are trained to protect persons 
and property. These are two different functions. The justice dept. called in 
the army. They wanted tanks and all sorts of things, army material. With which 
they shot up the buildings that fired oil and people died.' There was once 
again no proper investigation. In the course of McVeigh's trial, which was a 
kind of joke, the FBI behaved pretty well, they had a lot of interesting leads, 
305s I think they¹re called, they take down the evidence that people give them, 
directions in which to look and so on. They followed up nothing. And I wrote 
Louis Freeh who was then the head of the FBI, a letter which I include in the 
little book, a letter which I read aloud on the Today Show, just to make sure 
that he saw it, no answer, but I said there's certain very interesting leads 
here, and this is all from evidence at the pre-trials, which anybody can get 
at, and I said these should have been investigated, but they weren¹t, they 
decided it was McVeigh and that was it. Now a couple of days ago we find out that 
the FBI was faking it, some anti-McVeigh stuff in their labs, trying to prove 
that he built the bomb, that he had ammonia on his trousers or something. Well 
he may well have been in on it, I don¹t know, I'm not a prophet, but my 
impression is that he could not have done it alone. So there were others to follow 
up, and on television I said you¹ve got to start doing your job, at the FBI, at 
the Justice Department, your job is to protect persons and property. You 
didn¹t follow up there may be 100 McVeighs out there, waiting to take another 
crack at us. And you did nothing, cause you want to unload Gray¹s killer, and you 
wanted the book shut (SHUTS A BOOK). So what sort of government is this. I'd 
say a bad one. AMY GOODMAN: What effect do you thin that the Persian Gulf was 
had on Timothy McVeigh? It said that he was involved with bulldozing people in 
the highway of death, as Iraqi soldiers retreated after surrender. GORE VIDAL: 
Well he was shocked by it, he also got the Bronze Star, he was a great 
marksman, and he did his share of shooting soldiers, but he was appalled at the 
civilians, the children. That¹s why it¹s so ironic, 'oh, he killed all those 
children,¹ as though he got up in the morning to kill all the children in the 
nursery in that building. He says in one of his statements, he finally says, I did 
it, because he didn¹t want to spend the rest of his life in a box, he could 
live 30-40 more years and then as he wrote me, I¹d rather have federally 
assisted suicide, which is how he termed the injection in the arm, then a lifetime in 
a box. Because he saw there was no way out. He could have sung, but he 
didn¹t, he could have said who else was involved in this, but he did not. He was a 
complex character, and endlessly interesting I thought, and he should have been 
kept alive, so we could find out who these other people were. AMY GOODMAN: 
Would you put Timothy McVeigh in the same category as Mohammed Atta? GORE VIDAL: 
No no no. We don¹t know that story either. Mohammad Atta was obviously a 
Muslim zealot. Also in Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace there¹s another question 
that goes unanswered, the head of the Pakistan Secret Service, was in 
Washington a week or so before 9-11, while he was there, it was just a ceremonial 
visit with the head of the CIA, they worked together, he sent back word to 
Islamabad about one of his henchman, to wire $100,000 to Mohammad Atta in the United 
States, which was duly done. The FBI, I think it was the Wall Street Journal 
where I got the story from, only said American Secret Services found out about 
this, they complained to the Pakistani Government. 'What is the head of the 
Secret Service in Washington telling somebody to send $100,000 to a guy that we 
now know was the lead bomber, lead hijacker just a week before 9-11.' Times of 
India published the whole story, Wall Street Journal did a pretty good 
version for them, now shouldn¹t that be examined? Wouldn¹t Congress be interested in 
this guy in Washington meeting with all our top secret people? Says ok, send 
him $100,000. Not one more word, not one more word. Now in a country with any 
curiosity, in a public that was informed of anything, there would be a great 
deal of outcry. I couldn¹t imagine this happening in England, maybe questions 
in Parliament, the papers would be full of it until it was solved. It couldn¹t 
happen in Italy, which dearly loves a conspiracy, or Germany. In the U.S., 
everybody listens to 19th Century Fox TV News. In which a bunch of loons just 
scream and scream and scream. And with each scream they tell another lie. How are 
we ever going to have an informed citizenry? Which means then how can we have 
an informed election? AMY GOODMAN: So what¹s it like for you, Gore Vidal, to g
o back and forth between Italy and the United States through this period. 
GORE VIDAL: Let¹s clear up one thing. The right wing has been desperate to 
explain to Americans that I live in Italy, that I¹m an ex-patriot. "He hates 
America." Just because I dislike them. I¹ve had a house in California for 30 years. 
I¹ve had a house in Southern Italy for 30 years. Sometimes I¹m there when I'm 
working, but I¹ve always been involved in American politics, and American 
history. That's a fact that you can look at a long line of books, to attest to that 
fact. The idea of geography is very exciting to people, because I think it¹s 
only 7% of the American people have passports, only 7% have been abroad. Not 
counting the ones who were sent in the military of course, but 7% have 
voluntarily gone abroad. It's a tiny percent of those in congress who¹ve been abroad. 
Bush had never set foot in Europe before he became President. He had spent 10 
minutes in China when his father was Ambassador there, and obviously never 
went outside of the compound. What I have to do lot of times in Europe is explain 
to them that Americans are not stupid, when they meet them, they think 
they¹re very stupid because they don't know anything, I have to explain the them 
that we're not stupid, I think we¹re rather brighter then the average, but we¹re 
ignorant, which means not knowing, we have no information because it isn't 
given to us. Our public schools are a scandal, they stopped teaching geography in 
1950 in most of the public schools, by which time we were a global empire, we 
have a global empire and nobody knows where anything is, nobody knows any 
languages, so our statesmen go abroad and people laugh at them, because they are 
so dumb, or seem to be so dumb.      



"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are 
evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it."
 - Albert Einstein
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change 
the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has."
- Margaret Mead 
"When the government fears the people, you have liberty. When the people fear 
the government, you have tyranny." 
- Thomas Jefferson
"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing" 
- Edmund Burke