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.
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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."
