Van Jones Talks About Resignation, "Truther" Controversy
Jones became a target of Republican lawmakers and conservative commentators, including Glenn Beck, because his name appeared on a petition from the group 911Truth.org suggesting officials in the Bush administration "may indeed have deliberately allowed 9/11 to happen, perhaps as a pretext for war."
He was also criticized for using a derogatory term about Republicans in a speech, for his brief involvement with a radical left-wing group called Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement, and for his support for convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal.
Jones told Tavis Smiley that he "learned a tough lesson" from his experience with the "Truther" petition.
"I believe that 9/11 was a conspiracy -- by Al Qaida and Osama bin Laden and nobody else, trying to hurt America," he said. "What happened to me on that, tough lesson learned from me, six years ago I was at a conference, some people came up to me. They said, 'Hey! We represent 9/11 families.' I'm like, 'Oh, Ok, good to meet you.' They said, 'We need your help, will you help us?' I said, 'Sure, whatever you want.'"
"And then these people, I didn't know what their agenda was, they went and put my name on some abhorrent, crazy language they never showed me, I never saw, and it just saw there on this website for years," continued Jones. "Somebody discovered it and then boom. People actually believed that I actually signed on to something that I never saw and never signed on to. That became a part of this whole firestorm."
On his decision to resign, Jones told Smily he realized he "was becoming a distraction."
"From my point of view, the President of the United States deserved to be able to talk, not about my past and everything I either did or didn't do, but about America's future. And so I chose to step down," he said.
A former civil rights activist, Jones was widely respected in the environmental movement when he signed on with the White House. The revelations about his past inflamed conservative talk radio, however, and Republican lawmakers eventually joined calls for him to step down, with Rep. Mike Pence arguing that "his extremist views and coarse rhetoric have no place in this administration."
The full interview with Jones will appear on PBS on Friday.