WSJ Page 1: Two Ex-Ministers Insulted as "Conspiracy Theorists"

In the 80s, everyone was thankful, when investigative journalists tried to solve the Iran-Contra Scandal -in the 21st Century, Investigation is not allowed anymore and covered up with hipocrisy

Conspiracy Theories About Sept. 11 Get Hearing in Germany

Update: 9/11 Authors now also Header in Herald Tribune ( NYT Analysis) -October 1

Distrust of U.S. Fuels Stories About Source of the Attacks

By IAN JOHNSON

Wall Street Journal -Monday September 29, 2003

MUNICH, Germany -- Andreas von Bulow's book has climbed the German bestseller list, his lectures are jammed and, after two years of mounting frustration, his ideas are gaining traction. His thesis:

The U.S. government staged the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington to justify wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is a tentative theory, he admits, based mostly on his doubt that Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist group launched the attacks. "That's something that is simply 99% false," he said at a reading of his book on the second anniversary of the attacks.

A crackpot? A conspiracy theorist who believes that Elvis lives and the CIA murdered Kennedy? Not exactly.
Mr. von Bulow, 66 years old, is a former German cabinet minister, a trim, silver-haired man whose book comes from one of the country's most prestigious publishing houses and who lectures at well-known public institutions.
He's not alone:

Advertisement

In recent months, Germany's leading broadcaster, ARD, ran a purported documentary making similar claims, while half a dozen other German authors have published like-minded books."If we are being asked to participate in a new world war that's going to last years, then I expect that the cause of [the Sept. 11 attacks] be explained in the minutest detail," Mr. von Bulow told a crowd of 500 at the reading at Munich's Literaturhaus, which often hosts famous authors.

"What we have received is a joke. I've just put together the things that don't match up." Conspiracy theories have long been part of the discourse in some parts of the globe, especially in places where a muzzled press and political repression warp public debate.

Wild conjectures have also flourished on the perimeter of Western societies, with mini-industries devoted to plots alleged to have surrounded certain events. But over the past two years, improbable theories about the Sept. 11 attacks have attracted serious attention in some Western countries, often in direct proportion to the sinking credibility given to the U.S. and its motives in international affairs.

In Britain, cabinet minister Michael Meacher, who resigned from office this month, published a blistering attack in the Guardian newspaper, implying that Washington was involved in the attacks to justify a more-interventionist foreign policy.

In France, Italy and Spain, authors have hit the bestseller charts over the past year by claiming that the U.S. is hiding the truth about 9/11.In most European countries, conspiracy theories have remained the domain of a fringe minority, with even bestsellers vanishing from the public forum after a brief flash in the limelight.

In Germany, however, the theories have had legs, and over the past few months, wave after wave of improbable and outrageous assertions have received serious hearings. A recent public-opinion poll, by forsa, one of Germany's leading polling organizations, found that one in five Germans believes "the U.S. government ordered the attacks itself.

"The credibility given these theories has become so pronounced that the country's leading newsmagazine, Der Spiegel, ran a cover story earlier this month, giving a point-by-point rebuttal to the most widely spread myt

..."We are fighting a war on the basis of this attack, so we should get some answers," says Gerhard Wisnewski, a freelance TV producer, who made "Unsolved Case 9.11," which appeared on ARD, a publicly run German broadcaster. In a subsequent broadcast shown on the same network, Mr. Wisnewski was presented as a proponent of conspiracy theories.

"We don't claim to know what happened," says Ekkehard Sieker, producer of another program alleging U.S. manipulation of 9/11 facts, which ran on "Monitor," one of Germany's leading television news shows. "But we demand that those who claim to know answer these questions. Otherwise, we can't believe them."

The well-known institutions that have given the conspiracy theorists a forum say they did so in the spirit of open discussion. The prestigious Piper Verlag in Munich, which published Mr. von Bulow's book, said in a statement: "The public interest and the debates justifies the questions and opinions of the author. They are a contribution to the democratic process of forming opinions."Likewise, a spokeswoman for the television network that produced the program that ran on ARD said: "We should have the courage to bring controversial theses to the public and to discussion."

Another profiteer of the conspiracy theories has been Zweitausendeins, a book chain and publisher that has a knack for latching onto hot topics. The company devoted several pages at the front of its recent catalogue to books and videos questioning the source of the 9/11 attacks. It even published some books itself.

"Our publisher stands behind the content, or else he wouldn't have published it," a spokeswoman says.

At Mr. von Bulow's reading at Munich's Literaturhaus, not all those in the audience agreed with, or were familiar with, his specific charges...

..."We Europeans shouldn't be arrogant. Each one of our countries has in the past tried to be the dominant world power," Mr. von Bulow said to murmurings of approval.

"But I don't want to be dragged into another world war, one that will last for years and years. "In conversations with a dozen visitors, one woman said she found Mr. Bulow's theories bunk, while others said they found them plausible.

"I can't believe all of it," said Daniel Feifal, a 24-year-old architecture student. "That would destroy my belief in humanity. But that they knew about the attacks and let them happen because it could further their foreign-policy aims, yes, I'm prepared to believe that."

News analysis: Fertile soil for Sept. 11 theories

International Herald Tribune -October 1

BERLIN The first sign of the appeal of the new theory among people for whom it should have none was a standing-room-only meeting in June at Humboldt University of Berlin, one of Germany's premier institutions of higher learning. But a lower sort of learning was taking place.

More than 700 people enthusiastically greeted a series of speakers whose argument was that the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were not actually carried out by the 19 young Islamic militants identified by the FBI. That, the argument went, is one of many lies and distortions being perpetrated by something vaguely called "the media" and by something very specific: the United States government and the administration of President George W. Bush.

Who, then, did carry out the attacks? The answer was not clear, but the implication was: It was either allowed to happen or supported by the United States itself, or the United States actually organized the attacks to give it a pretext to send troops to Iraq and, more generally, to dominate the world.

Since the meeting at the university, the Sept. 11 conspiracy theory mania has grown in strength in Germany. At least four books are on the market here. One of them, "The CIA and Sept. 11: International Terror and the Role of the Secret Services," by Andreas von Buelow, who was Germany's federal research minister from 1980-82.

Von Buelow's book, which has been as high as No. 3 on the bestseller list in Germany, is, as the magazine Der Spiegel put it, "full of the subjunctive, would have, could have, may have." He does not directly accuse Washington of anything, but he writes that the planes hijacked on Sept. 11 had been secretly fitted with equipment allowing them to be guided from the ground.

Most unsettling, perhaps, in a poll first published by the newspaper Die Zeit in April and published again two weeks ago by Der Spiegel, roughly one in five Germans agreed with this statement: "Do you believe that the attacks were carried out by the United States government itself?"...

<  Pilger aired TV-"Evidence": Rice and Powell in 2001: "Hussein was no threat" | Claims 911 Was An Inside Job Go Mainstream  >