America At War: Conspiracy Enthusiasts - Some Blame Jews, Others Bush. Everyone Has A Theory On The Net

America At War: Conspiracy Enthusiasts - Some Blame Jews, Others Bush. Everyone Has A Theory On The Net

by Paul Lashmar
The Independent
September 23, 2001

The terrorist attacks already look set to outstrip the JFK assassination and the death of Princess Diana as the world's greatest provoker of conspiracy theories.

Already dozens of different plots have been exposed on the internet. On the 30,000 or so websites that specialise in conspiracies, the events of 11 September are referred to as "911": the US shorthand for that date, and also the country's emergency telephone number.

In some Middle-Eastern and Muslim circles the idea of a Zionist conspiracy is favoured. This says that Mossad and the Israeli government masterminded the scheme to damage Arab interests internationally. This theory has even emerged on The Independent's own debate website. "What happened last week was not a random act of violence. The reason why no one amongst the Muslim world is claiming responsibility is because they haven't done it. Arabs may have been used as pawns," says one contributor. Another version has it that the Israeli government secretly told 4,000 Israelis who work in Manhattan to stay away on the day of the attacks. However, this is rather spoiled by the fact that large numbers of Israelis died in the tragedy at the World Trade Centre.

Among American conspiracy theorists, fingers are pointed at the Bush administration. One cites the Tarot cards. "The six-pointed star (Jewry's capital after Jerusalem, New York City) and the five pointed star (Masonry's military capital, Arlington's five-sided Pentagon) were show to be symbolically and literally weak on Sept 11."

Robin Ramsay, British author of a book on conspiracy theories, says: "E-mails that are circulating at the moment refer to the WTC attack in terms of the Reichstag fire. According to this theory the CIA orchestrated the terrorism so that the Bush administration can withdraw civil liberties and impose a fascist government. This idea has taken particular hold with those who believe that Waco and the Oklahoma bombing were organised by the US government."

The American conspiracy theorist Sherman Skolnick declared the US government knew about the attacks. "The CIA also was informed prior to the 'terrorist' attacks, scheduled for '911' Emergency Day, that highly skilled Iraqi pilots were among the four thousand Iraqi officers resident in the US."

The Konformist, an American conspiracy site, says the evidence of a fundamentalist Arab involvement in the attacks is just a little too pat. "On Saturday, just days after the attack, they announced that in the rubble of the trade center they found one of the terrorist's passports. We all saw that fireball! The fire was so hot it turned the steel of the building into hot liquid molten metal. But his passport survived? And it was found even though they had only gone through 20,000 tons of debris out of a total of 1.4 million tons? It's like reaching out and taking a pinch from the haystack and lo and behold! There's the needle."

Others do not believe that the jets alone could have caused the two towers to crumple. Mr Ramsay says some find it difficult to credit that the buildings would have collapsed from the top down. "The way they collapsed was like tower blocks that had been professionally and carefully demolished with explosives at every pillar."

There are also endless rumours of prior knowledge. According to one, a US Navy serviceman stationed on an aircraft carrier called his family in America well before the crashes, alerting them that something big "was about to go down in a major urban area".

Even decades-old grudges are re-emerging. "Russia knew in advance, encouraged citizens to cash out dollars," says another report.

Mr Ramsay compares the situation to the fallout from the Kennedy assassination. "Conspiracy theories were out in the margins of margins in 1963. These days we have got conspiracy theories everywhere, about almost everything, and belief in the existence of conspiracies has now penetrated large areas of popular American, and by import British, popular culture."

Perhaps the most unhinged of all the theories is the idea that the Swiss did it. According to this one, there was a meeting of the Bank of International Settlements on the day of the attack. "The BIS is known as the Bank of the world's central bankers." The idea was that it would raise the price of gold, in which the Swiss have large holdings, to strengthen the already strong Swiss position when it joins the euro later this year.

But when so little evidence has been made public, what distinguishes a conspiracy theory from a viable one? Tony Frewin, a British expert on the JFK assassination, says: "Without any substantial evidence produced yet, blaming Osama bin Laden remains merely a conspiracy theory. But America seems determined to press ahead against Bin Laden and the Taliban regardless."

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