By Chris Suellentrop Posted Friday, April 19, 2002, at 10:45 AM ET

All of us have voices in our heads, whispering insanities. Rep. Cynthia McKinney's problem is that she lets hers speak. She's the Christopher Walken character in Annie Hall, except when she's tempted to swerve into a car's oncoming headlights, she actually does it.

After all, she's not the first liberal to spin the fantasy that President Bush had advance knowledge of the Sept. 11 attacks, which McKinney insinuated last month during a radio interview with a Berkeley, Calif., station. The New Yorker's drama critic John Lahr admitted in Slate to a similar notion. And McKinney's colleague, Rep. Melvin Watt, D-N.C., told the Washington Post that “a number of people say it.”

But McKinney, a Georgia Democrat, appears to be the first to take it seriously. After confessing his suspicion, Lahr attributed it to “paranoia.” Watt hastily followed up his comment by saying, “I can't say that it would be a widely held view.” McKinney, weeks after her statement, would say only, “A complete investigation might reveal” that “President Bush or members of his administration have personally profited from the attacks of 9-11.”

It's not the first time McKinney's mouth has gotten her in trouble. In her 10 years in Congress, hardly a year has gone by when she didn't make news for an outlandish accusation or a wild conspiracy theory (ideally, as in this case, a combination of both). During a nasty 1996 congressional campaign with racial tension on both sides, she called supporters of her Republican opponent “holdovers from the Civil War days” and “a ragtag group of neo-Confederates.” Never mind that her opponent was Jewish. And during the 2000 presidential campaign, she wrote that “Gore's Negro tolerance level has never been too high. I've never known him to have more than one black person around him at any given time.” Never mind that Gore's campaign manager was black. (McKinney is not a particularly partisan finger-pointer—there are enough delusions for both sides.)

Around every corner, McKinney sees a secret cabal plotting her demise. After the majority-black district that first elected her to Congress was struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutionally gerrymandered, she lashed out at the court as racist. She compared the verdict to Dred Scott, the decision that declared slaves were nothing more than chattel, and Plessy v. Ferguson, which legitimized separate-but-equal American apartheid. (Never mind that she was re-elected in a white majority district two years later.) During her next election, she declared that Georgia's kaolin industry engineered the case that eliminated her district, as payback for her fights against the industry in Congress. (Kaolin is a white clay that is used in a number of products, including porcelain.) And last fall, she tried to solicit money for black Americans from a Saudi prince who said U.S. policy in the Middle East was partly to blame for the Sept. 11 attacks, then she wrote in a Washington Post op-ed, “Why such a negative reaction to my letter? I believe that when it comes to major foreign policy issues, many prefer to have black people seen and not heard.” (To which the National Review's Jonah Goldberg retorted that “she needs to explain why I keep finding these quotes in my morning paper by Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell.”)

But being the Girl Who Cried Racism means that people will also roll their eyes at the legitimate slights that the first black Congresswoman from Georgia has faced. In August 1993, during her first term in office, a Capitol Hill police officer tried to prevent her from bypassing a metal detector, as members of Congress are allowed to do. For years afterward, The Hill reports, the Capitol Police pinned a picture of McKinney to an office wall, warning officers to learn her face because she refuses to wear her member's pin. (And because officers are innately suspicious of a black woman with braided hair and gold shoes.) Five years later, she blasted White House security after guards thought her 23-year-old white aide was the congresswoman.

Incidents like these ground her wilder scenarios in a reality with which many of her constituents are familiar. As McKinney put it in a 1996 interview with the Progressive, “African Americans have always known that a little bit of paranoia was healthy for us.” Like most conspiracy-mongers, McKinney taps that paranoia to weave facts into a web of fiction.

She knows that a portion of her constituency is receptive to the allegations she makes, and she deliberately plays on their fears. Her comments aren't flippant ad-libs. The Oliver Stone-style plot she relayed to Berkeley's radio listeners was part of a prepared statement, “Thoughts on Our War Against Terrorism,” that McKinney later published in the left-wing newsletter Counterpunch. (Click here to hear her read it on the March 25 edition of KPFA's Flashpoints. Her statement begins at the 30-minute mark.) What many people see as outrageous demagoguery, others see as courageous truth-telling.

And by disseminating her more fanciful messages in obscure media outlets, McKinney insulates herself somewhat from the chunk of her constituents who would be outraged by her antics. She backs down slightly when the mainstream media come calling. After her comments about Gore's “Negro tolerance level” were posted on her House Web site, she disclaimed them and canceled four scheduled interviews with the Associated Press to discuss the incident. She employed a similar strategy in '96 when her father repeatedly called her opponent a “racist Jew.” (When asked about his comments by the New York Times, he replied, “He is a racist Jew, that's what he is, isn't he?”) After ignoring his comments for a week, she distanced herself from them and “fired” him from her campaign, though he had no formal role.

Despite her controversial reputation, McKinney hasn't had a close race in her five congressional elections, winning with at least 58 percent of the vote each time. This year she faces a primary opponent, Denise Majette, who says she will exploit her 9/11 comments. But if history is any guide, Majette will discover that voters don't elect McKinney in spite of her mouth. They elect her because of it.

WASHINGTON: Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney claims the Department of Defense executed 5,000 prisoners with one bullet to the head and then dumped their bodies in a Louisiana swamp during Hurricane Katrina.

Thursday, October 02, 2008

Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney, known for her provocative statements when she was a congresswoman from Georgia, accused the Department of Defense this week of using Hurricane Katrina to cover up the slaughter of 5,000 prisoners.

At a news conference in Oakland, Calif., on Sunday, McKinney claimed the Pentagon authorized the execution of the prisoners with one bullet to the head three years ago and then dumped their bodies in a Louisiana swamp.

McKinney said she heard the story from the mother of a National Guard soldier who said her son was assigned to help dispose of the bodies.

“And these were mostly males and her son was afraid to talk because he had signed a silence agreement,” McKinney told the crowd. “So he only complained to his mother. But the data was entered into a Pentagon computer.”

McKinney said she verified the story from “insiders” who wanted to remain anonymous.

“I suspect that these are prisoners. … So this investigation of the whole prison industrial complex is extremely important and it should not end with just a question of the nature of prisons in our country,” she said to a captivated audience. “These 5,000 souls also need some justice too.”

A Defense Department spokesman dismissed McKinney's accusation.

“The claim is outrageous on the very face of it and doesn't merit any further consideration,” said Lt. Col. Les' Melnyk. “It would be inconceivable that 5,000 people would go missing in America without anyone noticing it prior to this.”

Psychologists and psychology professors contacted by FOXNews.com wouldn't comment on McKinney's mental condition, but they expressed shock at her assertion.

“Wow! What a conspiracy theory,” one professor exclaimed before declining comment and hanging up the phone.

Dr. Celia Ward, a clinical psychologist in Washington, D.C., said she wouldn't speculate on McKinney's state of mind because McKinney heard the story from someone else.

“This sounds like a game of telephone,” Ward said, explaining how a rumor can change as it passes from one person to another. “But to take something that has so many questions attached to it and to treat a rumor as fact is the basis for mass distortion. It's really a good example of Swift-boating.”

Ward said McKinney could have easily verified the story by checking prison records.

“This is the kind of rumor that warrants fact-checking,” she said.

McKinney's presidential campaign noted her work with Hurricane Katrina survivors, including serving on a congressional bipartisan committee to investigate the Bush administration's preparation for and response to the storm.

“During the course of Congresswoman McKinney's focus on the victims and their mistreatment, she and her staff received reports of illegal use of force and shootings against innocent citizens from multiple, unrelated sources, including reports of attempts by law enforcement authorities to conceal the evidence of their crimes,” the campaign said in an e-mail to FOXNews.com.

“Because these stories came from multiple, unrelated sources, Congresswoman McKinney did not dismiss them out of hand. She attempted to verify them with limited resources, to speak out about them and to get congressional attention through the Katrina committee hearings. Many aspects of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, despite numerous House and Senate committee hearings, remain unanswered and unresolved, including any final or reliable body counts.”

A member of the House for 12 years until 2007, McKinney is no stranger to controversy. Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, she suggested that President Bush knew about the plot in advance but failed to warn Americans because of his father's business interests. Some political analysts say that statement contributed to her defeat in 2002.

After McKinney was re-elected in 2004, she tried to impeach Bush, Vice President Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on charges that they lied and manipulated intelligence to justify the war in Iraq.

McKinney hit a career low point in 2006 when she was accused of striking a Capitol Police officer who grabbed her after she passed a security checkpoint without wearing a congressional lapel pin. She later apologized for the incident. She was defeated in a Democratic primary later that year and left the Democratic Party in 2007. She was nominated in July to run for president on the Green Party ticket. There are 245 other Green Party candidates running for office this fall.

YouTube video on 5000 people executed: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YbEEyTIVKMI