The main players in releasing the Pentagon Papers were Daniel Ellsberg and Senator Mike Gravel.

Ellsberg is, of course, the former military analyst and famed whistleblower who smuggled the Pentagon Papers out of the Rand Corporation.

Senator Gravel is the person who read the Pentagon Papers into the Congressional Record. This act made the papers public record, so that they could not be censored by the government.

Ellsberg and Gravel are receiving a lot of media attention right now for their support of Wikileaks.

But little attention has been paid to Ellsberg and Gravel’s support for a new 9/11 investigation.

Ellsberg says that the case of a certain 9/11 whistleblower is “far more explosive than the Pentagon Papers”. (Here’s some of what that whistleblower says.)

He also said that the government is ordering the media to cover up her allegations about 9/11.

And he said that some of the claims concerning government involvement in 9/11 are credible, that “very serious questions have been raised about what they [U.S. government officials] knew beforehand and how much involvement there might have been”, that engineering 9/11 would not be humanly or psychologically beyond the scope of those in office, and that there’s enough evidence to justify a new, “hard-hitting” investigation into 9/11 with subpoenas and testimony taken under oath (see this and this).

Senator Gravel has long supported a new 9/11 investigation. Gravel told the Daily Caller this week:

Individuals in and out of government may certainly have participated with the obviously known perpetrators of this dastardly act. Suspicions abound over the analysis presented by government. Obviously an act that has triggered three wars, Afghan, Iraqi and the continuing War on Terror, should be extensively investigated which was not done and which the government avoids addressing.

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Other high-level whistleblowers have alleged a cover-up as well.

For example, Air Force Colonel and key Pentagon official Karen Kwiatkowski – who blew the whistle on the Bush administration’s efforts to concoct false intelligence about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction – wrote (page 26):

I have been told by reporters that they will not report their own insights or contrary evaluations of the official 9/11 story, because to question the government story about 9/11 is to question the very foundations of our entire modern belief system regarding our government, our country, and our way of life. To be charged with questioning these foundations is far more serious than being labeled a disgruntled conspiracy nut or anti-government traitor, or even being sidelined or marginalized within an academic, government service, or literary career. To question the official 9/11 story is simply and fundamentally revolutionary. In this way, of course, questioning the official story is also simply and fundamentally American.

Indeed, Ellsberg and Gravel join a long list of high-level former officials in the government and intelligence services – including many well-known whistleblowers – who have publicly demanded a new investigation.

And see this.