thumb|Jimmy Walter

James W. Walter Jr. (born 1947) He is best known for sponsoring advertisements asking to reopen the investigation of the September 11, 2001 attacks and offering financial rewards to anyone that could prove the World Trade Center was destroyed without the use of explosives.

Biography

Walter is the older of two sons of James W. Walter Sr., a Tampa, Florida home builder and industrialist. He excelled at math and science in school, completing high school at the Asheville School in North Carolina, and was offered a Morehead scholarship to the University of North Carolina, but turned it down at his father's urging in order to enter business school.

Walter earned a B.S. in Business Administration from the University of North Carolina in 1969,

On May 28, 1991, Walter and Jack Edwards co-wrote Banzai, You Bastards (), the story of Edwards's abuse in a Japanese World War II prisoner-of-war camp. Much of that has been spent on his campaigns.

Non-profit organizations

In the early 1990s, Walter used outside funding and US$3 million of his own money to found the Life Skills Foundation, an organization that taught skills and goal setting to Florida prison inmates.

Walter is also the founder of "Walden Three", a non-profit educational foundation in Santa Barbara, California that researches ideas for sustainable, environmentally friendly urban development. The foundation has developed a computer model for the ideal sustainable living, carfree and fossil fuel-free city or society that produces almost all of the consumables, durable goods, structures, mass transportation and social security needed by its citizens. The model uses rational-emotive therapy (REBT), developed by Dr. Albert Ellis. Walter considers Walden Three his "day job" when he is not involved with campaigning.

Walter also created a "Chicken-Hawk-In-Chief" design mocking George W. Bush which he put on t-shirts, sweatshirts, and a full costume. On August 30, 2006, the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the school was wrong to censor the shirt, and on June 29, 2007, the US Supreme Court rejected an appeal, allowing that ruling to stand.

Reopen 9/11 campaign

Walter began a series of advertisements about the September 11, 2001 attacks in October 2004, which included full-page ads in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, and 30 second cable television spots on CNN, Fox News, and ESPN. They implied that no plane flew into The Pentagon, and that 7 World Trade Center was brought down by internal explosives. They called for a new investigation into what happened on September 11, and referred viewers to the website reopen911.org. In conjunction with the campaign, Walter sponsored an October 2004 Zogby poll, which found that 66% of New York City residents wanted a fuller investigation of the events of September 11. while the buildings were brought down by preset explosives, On May 9, 2005, Walter was featured on the "Conspiracy Theories" episode of Showtime cable television program Penn & Teller: Bullshit!,

As of December 2004, Walter estimated the total cost of the campaign at more than $3 million; Rodriguez claims that he saved hundreds of people in the World Trade Center who were trapped behind locked fire escape doors.

In 2006, Walter traveled to Malaysia with Rodriguez, appearing at a conference with Michael Collins Piper. Rodriguez and Walter also traveled to Venezuela.

Confronting the Evidence

Walter produced a video documentary called Confronting the Evidence in 2005 and distributed over 300,000 free copies on DVD, Confronting the Evidence was broadcast on Italian Rai Tre television on September 24, 2006, at 9:00 p.m., during the Report program.

References

  • Jimmy Walter.com Personal home page
  • "Reopen 9/11 - Catch the Real Terrorists" Reopen911.org, site offering award
  • Walden Three Project home page