A former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under President Reagan stepped back into the political spotlight this week, expressing doubt about the official 9/11 story and claiming "if they lied to us about Ruby Ridge, Waco and weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, why should we believe them now."

Paul Craig Roberts, listed by Whos Who in America as one of the 1,000 most influential political thinkers in the world, has evolved over the years into a major Bush basher as well as neo con critic. Roberts said he hasnt changed his political ideology or jumped from the Republican-conservative ship but "just cant respect a party leadership who doesnt respect the truth."

He is another in the long list of "Republican faithful," including top-ranking government and military officials who have left or been pushed out Washington, since Bushs neo con followers continue demonstrating a lack of desire and patience to compromise even with conservatives refusing "to toe the neo con line."

Expressing doubt about the governments official version of 9/11 but deferring detailed criticism to the experts, Roberts concerns come on the heels of recent criticism leveled by Morgan Reynolds, a former chief economist in the Bush I administration.

Reynolds is the highest-ranking public official so far to step forward and criticize the government account of 9/11, calling the government story "bogus" and saying the WTC most likely fell from a controlled demolition.

Saying 9/11 is only a part of a mysterious but deadly neo- con puzzle, Roberts looked back at history for some answers.

"They (neo cons) are making such fatalistic mistakes and are about as insane as Hitler and the Nazi Party when they invaded Russia in the dead of the winter," said Roberts who now, as a hobby, syndicates a national newspaper column, adding to his long and impressive list of academic, journalistic and political credentials.

Serving under President Reagan in 1981-82, Treasury Secretary Regan credited him with having a major role in the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981. He was then awarded the Treasury Departments Meritorious Service Award for "his outstanding contributions to the formulation of United States economic policy."

Roberts is given much of the credit for structuring and drafting a major portion of the famous Kemp-Roth bill as well as having a leading role in developing bipartisan support for a supply-side economic policy. In 1987, the French government recognized him as "the artisan of a renewal in economic science and policy after half a century of state interventionism," inducted him into the Legion of Honor.

Even with his impressive background, Roberts, once a former columnist for Business Week and a thorn in the side of liberals back then, said "the times have drastically changed," adding his views are no longer welcome in the mainstream media if they are critical of Bush or any of his policies.

" Its like the Nazis removing dissent without using the Gestapo," said Roberts, whose articles are circulated widely on the Internet and appear regularly in the American Free Press, an alternative publication. "Most publications, like the Washington Times, for example, will not print anything critical of Bush, his strategies and, definitely, anything seriously opposing the war is off base."

Although professing to know "a little about engineering" from his undergraduate days at Georgia Tech, Roberts deferred formulating any serious conclusions about the fall of the WTC, but expressed doubt as to the credibility of the entire official version based on past government lies uncovered at Waco, Ruby Ridge and the threat of WMD in Iraq.

Roberts said the recent statements made by Reynolds, however, reveals just how flimsy and unbelievable the government story comes across.

"This is not some kind of conspiracy nut or kook talking. He is a man with extremely qualified credentials, whose opinions I respect," said Roberts referring to Reynolds comments which have been highly publicized across the country.

"The real story is not Morgan Reynolds or myself, but why have so many former Republican conservatives and top ranking officials who disagree with the neo cons been systematically run out of Washington? And, also, why is the media so intent on covering up the Bush-neo con agenda and all the mistakes surrounding it?

"I guess the real story about 9/11 is about what the people are actually saying. Ive gotten hundreds of emails in response to my columns and many of them talk about not getting the truth from the government or the media about what really happened at the World Trade Center. I know many qualified engineers and scientists have said the WTC collapsed from explosives. In fact, if you look at the manner in which it fell, you have to give their conclusions credibility."

Besides 9/11 and blasting the neo con economic agenda as suicide for America, Roberts in his latest column seriously attacks the Bush Iraq war policy. Without mincing words, he wrote:

" The reasons they (the American people) were given by their president, vice president, secretary of defense, national security adviser, secretary of state, and the sycophantic media were nothing but a pack of lies."

Accusing Bush of also lying to the American people in his recent June 18 radio address, he added:

"Bush again lied to the American people when he told them that the U.S. was forced into invading Iraq because of the Sept. 11 attack on the WTC.

"Bush, the greatest disgrace that America has ever had to suffer, actually repeated at this late date the monstrous lie for which he is infamous throughout the world: "˜We went to war because we were attacked, and we are at war today because there are still people out there who want to harm our country and hurt our citizens."

Roberts other impressive credentials include being awarded a John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy, a Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute.

In 1992, he received the Warren Brookes Award for Excellence in Journalism and, a year later, the Forbes Media Guide ranked him as one of the top seven journalists in the country. He was also Distinguished Fellow at the Cato Institute from 1993 to 1996 while also from 1982 through 1993, holding the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.