Producer of 9/11 conspiracy film arrested

By RYAN LENZ

A film producer and veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan who backed a movie about alleged conspiracy theories behind Sept. 11 has been arrested for deserting the 101st Airborne Division two years ago, military officials said Friday.

Korey Rowe, 24, a private in the Fort Campbell, Ky.-based division, was arrested in Oneonta, N.Y., and returned to Kentucky despite claiming to have been honorably discharged.

Military officials at Fort Campbell on Friday said Rowe was arrested by the Otsego County Sheriff’s Department in Cooperstown, N.Y., earlier this week and returned to his unit.

Rowe, a veteran of tours to Afghanistan and Iraq with the 101st, helped produce the movie “Loose Change,” which alleges a government conspiracy behind 9/11.

In a grainy hand-held video posted online, Rowe suggested being listed as a deserter in a military database was a clerical error.

Oneonta Police Department spokesman Sgt. Dennis Nayor said the U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations contacted police asking to have Rowe arrested after people taking pictures were escorted off a military post in New York in a car registered in his name.

Messages were left Friday with the Office of Special Investigations public affairs office and the investigator who initially contacted police.

Cathy Gramling, a spokeswoman for Fort Campbell, said the Army does not actively pursue soldiers who desert but that soldiers who go AWOL are listed in a national database police can access.

An Associated Press examination last month of Pentagon figures found the U.S. military does almost nothing to find deserters, and that just 5 percent of the 3,301 soldiers who deserted in fiscal year 2006 were court-martialed.

Kristina Kissner, a spokesman for Rowe’s company Louder Than Words LLC, said filmmakers were at a military installation in New York asking permission to film when they were told to leave.

Kissner declined to comment further.

“We’ll comment once we know he’s home safe,” Kissner said.

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