As the country prepares to mark the third anniversary of the September 11 attacks, hundreds of New Yorkers gathered at Symphony Space yesterday for the “9/11 Omission Hearings,” where a former member of Congress vying to recapture her seat presided over a day of far-fetched conspiracy theories, America bashing, and calls to impeach President Bush.

Organized by the fringe groups 9/11 Citizens Watch and 911Truth.org, the hearing was modeled on the 9/11 Commission’s public hearings held last year. It was chaired by a former congresswoman of Georgia, Cynthia McKinney, who was voted out of office two years ago after she accused the Bush administration of having foreknowledge of the attacks and charged her own critics with being racist.

As Ms. McKinney and her fellow commissioners – the father of a man who was killed at the World Trade Center and a physician who treated victims at ground zero – listened quietly, witnesses spun allegations of CIA collusion with Al Qaeda, described American support for Israel as impetus for the attack, and questioned whether the murder of nearly 3,000 civilians was, in fact, an act of terror.

“The attacks of September 11, 2001, were the pretext for the American, and to a lesser extent, the British and Israeli empires to begin seizing, by force, those energy supplies needed to sustain their power, hegemony and their teetering economies,” said a former Los Angeles police officer, Michael Ruppert. Mr. Ruppert claimed in a biography distributed at the hearing to be “the point man in breaking major stories involving government foreknowledge” of the attacks.

He also “testified” that while he is opposed to violence, “I am not advocating violence in any form but self-defense.”

Canadian journalist Barrie Zwicker, whose film, “The Great Conspiracy,” premiered at Symphony Space after the hearing, compared the September 11 attacks to the infamous Reichstag fire of 1933, the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 that triggered the Vietnam war, and, oddly, Operation Desert Storm. “You live in a cocoon here. It’s all like, ‘USA is the greatest,’ and it harms the judgment, and outsiders can see that,” Mr. Zwicker said.

Interviewed after the hearing, Bob McIlvaine, the father of September 11 victim Bobby McIlvaine, said he was pleased with the atmosphere at the hearing. “No matter where I go, I will tell people [Mr. Bush] had foreknowledge,” Mr. McIlvaine said. He noted that he was the sole family member of a September 11 victim to attend the hearing.