FNA- The United States Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, carried out the September 11, 2001 attacks, a former spy at the agency revealed.

The 79-year-old retired CIA agent, Malcom Howard, has made a series of astounding claims since being released from hospital in New Jersey on Friday and told he has weeks to live, Al Waght reported.

Howard says he was involved in the �controlled demolition� of World Trade Center 7, the third building that was destroyed on 9/11.

Howard, who worked for the CIA for 36 years as an operative, says he was tapped by senior CIA agents to work on the project due to his engineering background, and early career in the demolition business.

Trained as a civil engineer, Howard became an explosives expert after being headhunted by the CIA in early 1980s. Mr. Howard says has extensive experience in planting explosives in items as small as cigarette lighters and as large as �80 floor buildings.�

The New Jersey native says he worked on the CIA operation they dubbed �New Century� between May 1997 and September 2001, during a time he says the CIA �was still taking orders from the top.� Mr. Howard says he was part of a cell of 4 operatives tasked with ensuring the demolition was successful.

Howard says the World Trade Center 7 operation is unique among his demolitions, as it is the only demolition that �we had to pretend wasn�t a demolition job�. He says he had no problem going through with the deception at the time, because

�When you are a patriot, you don�t question the motivation of the CIA or the White House. You assume the bigger purpose is for a greater good. They pick good, loyal people like me.� But even he admits that now, looking back, �Something wasn�t right.� �No good has come from this. This isn�t the America we envisioned.�

Scott Bennett, a former US Army psychological warfare officer based in San Francisco, has also been quoted as saying the 9/11 attacks were part of a carefully designed plan by the United States, Israel and Saudi Arabia to destabilize the West Asia region and push forward a Zionist-Wahhabi agenda, says a counter-terrorism analyst.

Mark Rossini, a former FBI special agent has been quoted by Newsweek as saying the US government has covered up secret relations between the CIA and Saudi individuals who may have abetted the plot. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers who flew commercial airliners into the World Trade Center towers, the Pentagon, and a failed effort to crash into the US Capitol, were Saudis.