Twenty-five years after al-Qaeda terrorists murdered nearly 3,000 people on Sept. 11, 2001, Republican candidate for Ohio governor Vivek Ramaswamy has his own history with 9/11: publicly promoting unsupported suspicions about what happened that day.

During his 2023 presidential campaign, Ramaswamy questioned whether the federal government had told Americans the truth about the attacks and said it was legitimate to ask whether federal agents were aboard the hijacked planes that slammed into the World Trade Center.

There is no evidence that federal agents were aboard those planes.

“I think it is legitimate to say how many police, how many federal agents, were on the planes that hit the Twin Towers,” Ramaswamy told The Atlantic.

Ramaswamy acknowledged at the time that he had no evidence for the idea.

“Maybe the answer is zero. It probably is zero for all I know, right? I have no reason to think it was anything other than zero,” he said. “But if we’re doing a comprehensive assessment of what happened on 9/11, we have a 9/11 commission, absolutely that should be an answer the public knows the answer to.”

That is a classic conspiracy-theory formulation: introducing an extraordinary possibility without evidence and presenting the absence of evidence as a question authorities should be required to disprove.

Ramaswamy had already questioned the established account of the attacks earlier that month.

Asked whether 9/11 was an “inside job” or occurred as the government had described it, Ramaswamy responded: “I don’t believe the government has told us the truth,” according to NBC News.

He later told The Atlantic: “I want the truth about 9/11.”

The basic facts of who carried out the Sept. 11 attacks are not an unresolved mystery.

The bipartisan 9/11 Commission, established by Congress to investigate the attacks, documented how 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners. American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 were flown into the World Trade Center. American Airlines Flight 77 was crashed into the Pentagon. United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania after passengers and crew fought back.

The commission’s report identifies the hijackers, reconstructs their movements, documents how they boarded the aircraft and describes how the hijackings unfolded.

CNN later noted explicitly that there was “zero evidence” that U.S. government agents were aboard the planes on Sept. 11.

There have been legitimate investigations into whether people connected to the Saudi government assisted some of the hijackers before the attacks. Documents concerning those contacts have continued to emerge publicly in the decades since 9/11.

But evidence concerning Saudi contacts does not provide evidence that American federal agents were aboard the hijacked aircraft — the separate theory Ramaswamy injected into the conversation.

Ramaswamy said he was misquoted. The recording showed otherwise.

After his remarks generated national backlash, Ramaswamy tried to deny making them.

When CNN anchor Kaitlan Collins confronted him with the quotation during an Aug. 21, 2023 interview, Ramaswamy said the reporting was wrong.

“I’m telling you the quote is wrong, actually,” Ramaswamy said.

He claimed his remarks about federal agents concerned the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol rather than the Sept. 11 attacks.

“The truth is there are lies the government has told about 9/11, but it’s not the ones that somebody put in my mouth,” Ramaswamy told CNN.

Nobody had put the words in his mouth.

The Atlantic released the unedited audio the following day.

The recording showed Ramaswamy saying exactly what the magazine reported.

“I think it is legitimate to say, How many police, how many federal agents were on the planes that hit the Twin Towers?” Ramaswamy can be heard saying on the recording.

He later returned to the idea.

“We did a 9/11 commission, and if there are federal agents on the plane we deserve to know,” Ramaswamy said.

CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale reviewed the recording and concluded that Ramaswamy “was not misquoted at all.” The only material omitted from the published quotation was an unfinished fragment that did not alter what Ramaswamy had said.

After the recording disproved Ramaswamy’s denial, his campaign changed its defense. A spokesperson argued that his words had instead been taken out of context.

The recording also undermined that explanation: Ramaswamy himself introduced 9/11 while discussing government agents, explicitly referred to agents being “on the planes,” returned to the same possibility later in the conversation and repeatedly connected it to the 9/11 Commission.

He stood by the remarks at Ground Zero

Ramaswamy did not subsequently retract the comments.

On Sept. 11, 2023, he traveled to Ground Zero in New York City for the anniversary of the attacks.

Asked there about the remarks that had generated the controversy, Ramaswamy said he stood by them.

“I stand by what I said,” Ramaswamy said, while arguing that Americans deserved a government they could trust.

Three years later, Ramaswamy is no longer running for president. He is the Republican nominee for governor of Ohio.

And the comments remain part of his record as he asks Ohio voters to put him in charge of state government.

On the 25th anniversary of the deadliest terrorist attack in American history, the sequence is straightforward: Ramaswamy raised an evidence-free theory about federal agents being aboard the hijacked planes, questioned whether Americans had been told the truth about 9/11, falsely claimed he had been misquoted when his comments became public, and continued defending the remarks after a recording proved he had said them.