'THE HORRIFYING FRAUD'
BY
THIERRY
MEYSSAN
For
the time being, I am printing this fairly tongue-in-cheek essay,
from the New York
Times website, on Thierry Meyssan. However, I very
soon hope to have
actual material by Mr Meyssan. Even though Alan
Riding has written,
below, in the normal big media mode of shying away
from anything
that is not in the constricted category of 'normal', you
can see Riding
is quietly impressed. And so are many.
- World-Action
-
THE
NEW YORK TIMES - On the Web
http://www.nytimes.com
June
22, 2002
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/............
CONSPIRACY
THEORY GRIPS FRENCH:
SEPT.
11 AS RIGHT-WING U.S. PLOT
By
ALAN RIDING
PARIS,
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.
[World-Action comment:
I wonder who the main
shareholders are
of Liberation and Le Monde?]
"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."
[ YAWN ! ]
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 (http://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."
A CALL FOR INDEPENDENT PUBLIC ENQUIRY:
WHO
WAS BEHIND THE SEPTEMBER
ELEVENTH
ATTACKS?
A
presentation by Thierry Meyssan at the Zayed Center in
Abu
Dhabi (United Arab Emirates) on April 8, and posted at
http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?id=149495&article=29646
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