IP: Conspiracy Theory Grips French: Sept. 11 as Right-Wing U.S. Plot

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

June 22, 2002

Conspiracy Theory Grips French: Sept. 11 as Right-Wing U.S. Plot
By ALAN RIDING

ARIS, June 21 ‹ Even before the fires were extinguished at the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon, conspiracy theories began flooding the Internet. A
few quickly spilled out of Web sites and were widely circulated by e-mail
before fading into oblivion. One, however, has taken on a life of its own in
France. It was turned into a book that has become the publishing sensation
of the spring.

In the book, "L'Effroyable Imposture," or "The Horrifying Fraud," Thierry
Meyssan challenges the entire official version of the Sept. 11 attacks.

He claims the Pentagon was not hit by a plane, but by a guided missile fired
on orders of far right-wingers inside the United States government. Further,
he says, the planes that struck the World Trade Center were not flown by
associates of Osama bin Laden, but were programmed by the same government
people to fly into the twin towers.

What really interests him, though, is what he sees as the conspiracy behind
these actions. He contends that it was organized by right-wing elements
inside the government who were planning a coup unless President Bush agreed
to increase military spending and go to war against Afghanistan and Iraq to
promote the conspirators' oil interests.

To achieve their goals, the theory goes, they blamed Osama bin Laden for
Sept. 11 and later broadened their targets to include the "axis of evil,"
centered on Iraq.

The 235-page book has been universally ridiculed by the French news media,
while its arguments have been dismantled point by point in "L'Effroyable
Mensonge," or "The Horrifying Lie," a new book by two French journalists.

A Pentagon spokesman said, "There was no official reaction because we
figured it was so stupid."

Yet in the past three months, Mr. Meyssan's book has sold more than 200,000
copies in France, placing it at the top of best-seller lists for several
weeks. Foreign rights have also been sold in 16 countries (a Spanish version
is already on sale), and Mr. Meyssan traveled to Abu Dhabi in the United
Arab Emirates in April to present his arguments at a local university.

The book's French publisher, Éditions Carnot, said it would release an
English version in the United States in July.

Mr. Meyssan said in an interview that he was surprised his book had so far
provoked no major debate, but he was convinced that his message was being
heard. 

"Two-thirds of the hits on our Web site come from the United States," he
said. "I'm not saying all my readers agree with me, but they recognize that
the official American version of the attacks is idiotic. If we can't believe
the official version, where do we stand?"

It is nonetheless puzzling why so many of the French have been willing to
pay the equivalent of $17 for "The Horrifying Fraud." Is it a symptom of
latent anti-Americanism? Is it a reflection of the French public's famous
distrust of its own government and mainstream newspapers? Or has the French
love of logic been tickled by the apparent Cartesian neatness of a
conspiracy theory? 

Certainly, after Sept. 11, some leftist intellectuals suggested that the
United States had invited the attacks through its support for Israel. Others
recalled that Islamic militants had been financed and armed by the United
States to fight the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980's. Yet, in
this case, Libération and Le Monde, left-of-center newspapers with no love
for the Bush administration, have led the assault on Mr. Meyssan's book.

"The pseudotheories of `The Horrifying Fraud' feed off the paranoid
anti-Americanism that is one of the permanent components of the French
political caldron," Gérard Dupuy wrote in an editorial in Libération. Edwy
Plenel, news editor at Le Monde, wrote: "It is very grave to encourage the
idea that something which is real is in fact fictional. It is the beginning
of totalitarianism."

Guillaume Dasquié and Jean Guisnel, the authors of "The Horrifying Lie,"
favor a different explanation for the book's success. They write of France's
"profound social and political sickness," which leads people to embrace the
idea "that they are victims of plots, that the truth is hidden from them,
that they should not believe official versions, but rather that they should
demystify all expressions of power, whatever they might be."

Still, even if some French are susceptible to conspiracy theories, few had
heard of the book until March 16, when Mr. Meyssan appeared on a popular
Saturday evening television program on France 2, a government-owned but
independently run channel. In the program, Mr. Meyssan was allowed to
expound his theory without being challenged by the host. In the two weeks
that followed, his book sold 100,000 copies.

Mr. Meyssan himself seems an unlikely purveyor of tall stories. A
44-year-old former theology student, he dabbled in leftist politics before
forming a political research company, Réseau Voltaire, or Voltaire Network,
in 1994.

The company's Web site (www .reseauvoltaire.com) adopted specific causes,
like fighting homophobia and opposing Jean-Marie Le Pen's far-right National
Front. Its investigative methods seemed thorough and objective.

In person too, Mr. Meyssan, a slim, wiry man with short hair and penetrating
eyes, comes over as both serious and rational.

French journalists who had given some credibility to his Web site were all
the more surprised, then, to find him building a vast conspiracy theory
around the fact that photographs of the Sept. 11 attack showed no airplane
parts in or near the smoldering gap in the Pentagon. This became the
departure point for his book.

The line of reasoning that follows is a case study in how a conspiracy
theory can be built around contradictions in official statements, unnamed
"experts" and "professional pilots," unverified published facts, references
to past United States policy in Cuba and Afghanistan, use of technical
information, "revelations" about secret oil-industry maneuvers and, above
all, rhetorical questions intended to sow doubts. At the end of each
chapter, Mr. Meyssan presents his speculation as fact.

To gather his evidence, he worked mainly from articles, statements and
speculation found on the Internet. He did not travel to the United States to
interview any witnesses. Indeed, he dismisses the accounts of witnesses to
the crash of the American Airlines Boeing 757 into the Pentagon.

"Far from believing their depositions, the quality of these witnesses only
underlines the importance of the means deployed by the United States Army to
pervert the truth," he said.

His "truth" is that no Muslims took part in the attacks "because the Koran
forbids suicide." To his original claim that the Pentagon was bombed from
the inside, he has now added his conviction that the building was struck by
an air-to-ground missile fired by the United States Air Force. "This type of
missile, seen from the side, would easily remind one of a small civilian
airplane," he said.

In response, Mr. Dasquié and Mr. Guisnel said they traveled to Washington
and interviewed 18 witnesses to the Pentagon crash.

They also have named experts explaining how the Boeing 757 could disappear
inside the crater caused by the impact. Further, they identify several
people mentioned only by their initials in Mr. Meyssan's acknowledgments,
including a French Army officer currently on trial for treason and a
middle-ranking intelligence officer.

The book has proved to be a windfall for Mr. Meyssan's publisher. More
accustomed to publishing marginal books on subjects like the "false"
American moon landing in 1969 and the latest "truth" about U.F.O.'s,
Éditions Carnot can now boast of its first best seller.

Further, confident that this conspiracy theory will endure, Mr. Meyssan and
Carnot have just published a 192-page annex, with new documents, photographs
and theories. They call it "Le Pentagate."

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