[iwar] [fc:Conspiracy.theories.arise.from.Sept..11.attacks]

From: Fred Cohen (fc@all.net)
Date: 2002-01-12 18:19:50
Next message: Fred Cohen: "[iwar] [fc:Jane's.Defence.News.Briefs.-.9.January.2002]"
Previous message: Fred Cohen: "[iwar] [fc:Court.closes.Russia's.last.independent.TV.station]"
Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] [ attachment ]
Message-Id: <200201130219.g0D2Jo108252@red.all.net>
To: iwar@onelist.com (Information Warfare Mailing List)
Organization: I'm not allowed to say
From: Fred Cohen <fc@all.net>
Mailing-List: list iwar@yahoogroups.com; contact iwar-owner@yahoogroups.com
Precedence: bulk
Date: Sat, 12 Jan 2002 18:19:50 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [iwar] [fc:Conspiracy.theories.arise.from.Sept..11.attacks]
Reply-To: iwar@yahoogroups.com
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

ANALYSIS: Conspiracy theories arise from Sept. 11 attacks

Copyright © 2002
Scripps McClatchy Western Service


By JAMES ROSEN, McClatchy Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON (January 11, 2002 8:53 p.m. EST) - Even in the wake of
unspeakable evil, some people can't leave bad enough alone. Four months
after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a fresh crop of conspiracy theories is
growing in American pop culture.
While the vast majority of Americans accept their government's claim that
Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida network launched the attacks, a number of
boisterous malcontents are peddling alternative explanations.
Fueled by factual nuggets gleaned from mainstream news reports and spread on
the Internet and radio talk shows, the conspiracy theories point electronic
fingers of blame in every direction.
Jump on the Internet or open some unsolicited e-mail, and you can quickly
find knowing claims to the REAL VILLAINS behind the attacks.
- President Bush did it, the better to forward his ultimate aim of quashing
individual liberties and creating a police state.
- The first President Bush did it in order to complete the New World Order
he started with his international coalition during the Gulf War.
- President Clinton allowed it to happen by letting bin Laden roam free
despite numerous opportunities for his capture.
- The Israeli Mossad secret service did it - and warned thousands of Jews
who worked at the World Trade Center to stay home that day - as a pretext
for suppressing the Palestinian revolt.
- The KGB - which still exists, by the way, despite the demise of the Soviet
Union - did it to draw the United States into war against the ruling Taliban
militants across the Russian border in Afghanistan.
"It is the latest and most dramatic attempt to move the world towards a
state of fear, so that the people who control the globe - called by many
'the Illuminati' - can speed up their agenda for a One World Government, a
One World Currency, One World Bank and total control of the masses," Richard
Higgins, identified as a "popular television journalist," wrote in an essay
carried on www.conspiracyplanet.com.
President Bush castigated those who spread such claims in a speech at the
United Nations in November.
"We must speak the truth about terror," Bush said. "Let us never tolerate
outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of September the
11th - malicious lies that attempt to shift the blame away from the
terrorists themselves, away from the guilty."
Bush didn't specify any theories, but he may have been talking in part about
widespread reports in Middle East newspapers, some of them state-run,
linking Israel to the attacks.
Those articles have been spread around the Internet, by both conspiracists
seeking culprits and pro-Israel groups discrediting them.
While it took years for Kennedy assassination theories to seep into popular
culture, all sorts of ideas about the Sept. 11 attacks were in wide
circulation virtually hours after they happened.
"Every individual can be a publisher and a broadcaster on the Internet with
global reach," said Deborah Hurley, director of the Harvard University
Information Infrastructure Project. "And for those who have a conspiracy ax
to grind, it's easier to find like-minded people on the Web. At very little
cost, they have a bigger pulpit and a larger congregation."
As wacky as most of the Sept. 11 theories are, conspiracy experts say they
fit right into an American culture in which shadowy plots are a weekly
staple of TV shows such as "The X-Files" and untangling the JFK
assassination has become a parlor game.
"Conspiracy thinking is an American tradition," said Robert Goldberg, a
University of Utah historian. "When Americans got off the boat in the 17th
century, they carried ideas of conspiracy thinking. They believed that God
had sent them on a mission into the wilderness and that Native Americans
were the minions of Satan.
"Thomas Jefferson wrote about a diabolical plot to enslave us. Richard Nixon
repeatedly talked about a communist conspiracy that was hoodwinking kids.
Lyndon Johnson blamed the Vietnam protests on a left-wing conspiracy. Hilary
Rodham Clinton warned of a 'vast, right-wing conspiracy.' When we embrace
conspiracies, we're just following the lead of our leaders," Goldberg said.
Americans' propensity to believe in conspiracies, Goldberg and other
scholars say, was magnified in recent decades by rising distrust in
government through a pattern of secrecy, distortions and outright lies.
Among the key examples they cite are the Warren Commission and subsequent
government probes of Kennedy's assassination; Johnson and Nixon's handling
of the Vietnam War; Nixon's Watergate scandal; the Iran-Contra affair under
President Reagan; and Clinton's impeachment and smaller scandals around his
personal life.
By now, more than three-quarters of Americans don't believe that Lee Harvey
Oswald acted alone in killing Kennedy. Two-thirds believe that the
government is withholding information about its contact with aliens from
other planets. More than half of African-Americans believe the CIA helped
introduce crack cocaine into black communities. One in 10 Americans think
the 1969 moon landing never occurred.
Americans are hardly alone in their love of conspiracies. There are 3,600
Web sites about Princess Diana, many of them offering nefarious notions
about the cause of her death.
While the Sept. 11 attacks are sparking new conspiracy theories, they have
also prompted a marked new willingness by Americans to trust their
government. Such trust, if it lasts, could prevent the Sept. 11 conspiracy
theories from taking deep root in the American psyche or gaining widespread
popularity.
John McAdams, a political science professor at Marquette University in
Milwaukee, teaches a course on the Kennedy assassination. His extensive Web
site debunking various conspiracies about the JFK murder has earned the ire
of conspiracists, some of whom, on their own Web sites, accuse him of being
a CIA mole.
McAdams believes that some conspiracy theories about the Sept. 11 attacks
will endure, but he doubts they will have broad popular appeal.
"Your father-in-law, a couple of your cousins and your barber all believe in
a Kennedy conspiracy theory," McAdams said. "Twenty or thirty years from
now, there will be Sept. 11th conspiracy theories, but only hardcore people
who are radically alienated from the government are likely to believe them.
The vast majority of Americans will be quite happy to blame Osama bin Laden
rather than the U.S. government. They have an explanation that seems simple
and understandable - that the attacks were done by some crazy Muslims who
hate America."
Chip Berlet tracks hate groups as an analyst with Political Research
Associates in Cambridge, Mass. His group's Web site has a list of links to
other sites promoting conspiracy theories about the attacks.
"People believe conspiracy theories because they believe power is being
exercised unfairly," he said. "They seek to explain this by devising a
narrative that makes them both the victim of the conspiracy and the hero for
exposing it."
Berlet believes that the government's refusal for years to release
information about the Kennedy assassination helped spur conspiracy theories.
He fears that the secrecy around the current terrorism investigation could
have a similar effect on popular thinking about the Sept. 11 attacks.
"I think the government is starting to make the same mistakes it made after
the Kennedy assassination in sealing up documents," Berlet said. "I'm
worried that it will lead to keeping these conspiracy theories alive longer
than they would persist normally."
Not all of the Sept. 11 conspiracy theories are being spread on wacky Web
sites. Some have been given currency by mainstream media:
- Agence France-Presse, the main French wire service, quoted a former German
parliament member, Andreas von Bulow, as saying the Israeli Mossad was
behind the attacks.
- The British Broadcasting Corp. aired a program reporting that FBI agents
who had been pursuing bin Laden were told to back off after Bush became
president. Joe Trento, author of "The Secret History of the CIA," said, "The
sad thing is that thousands of Americans had to die needlessly." An
unidentified American spoke of "a hidden agenda at the very highest levels
of our government."
- CNN in recent days carried extensive reports on a new French book. It
claims that a former FBI deputy director, John O'Neill, resigned in protest
last year because U.S. pursuit of bin Laden was slowed while the Bush
administration tried to negotiate a deal with the Taliban to build an oil
pipeline across Afghanistan.
- David Schippers, former chief counsel to the House Judiciary Committee
during the Clinton impeachment hearings, claims to represent FBI agents who
believe that bin Laden was tied to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. And he
says the government has ignored his requests for the agents to testify in
closed congressional hearings.
- Le Figaro, a French newspaper, reported that a senior CIA official met
with bin Laden last July at an American hospital in the Saudi capital of
Dubai, where he had been treated for a kidney infection.
- The Los Angeles Times carried a column by Mansoor Ijaz, a member of the
Council on Foreign Relations, who said he had negotiated several
opportunities for bin Laden's capture, but that Clinton ignored them.
- A Pakistani general, Hamid Gul, told The New Yorker magazine that Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon was behind the attacks.
- The Wall Street Journal reported extensively on ties between bin Laden's
family in Saudi Arabia and former President Bush, former Secretary of State
James Baker, and former Defense Secretary Frank Carlucci.
Wherever they come from, the various explanations for the Sept. 11 attacks
are competing with longer-standing conspiracy theories. Some purveyors of
those more venerable theories are none too pleased.
"It's a setback," said Stephen Bassett, a registered Capitol Hill lobbyist
who tries to persuade lawmakers that the government has covered up the 1947
landing of aliens in the desert near Roswell, N.M. "The Internet is ripe for
concocting theories about events. Most of the theories are nonsense. People
involved in UFO research have no interest whatsoever in connecting September
11th with what we do."
Jim Marrs, though, has posted an essay about the Sept. 11 attacks on his
popular Web site devoted to JFK assassination theories. Since the attacks,
Marrs said, the number of visits to his Web site has quadrupled to 20,000 a
day.
"When you boil it down, you find out that this al-Qaida terrorist network
we're supposed to be fighting was our creation," Marrs said. "We created
this bunch of mercenaries. We armed 'em, we trained 'em, we funded 'em. And
now we're expected to believe that they're operating entirely on their own.
I agree that we've got to find out who is behind this terrorist attack, but
I don't think you can stop with one bearded guy in a cave in Afghanistan."
Bill McIlhany founded the Individualist Research Foundation in Westwood,
Calif. He claims to have uncovered the secret to all conspiracies.
"It's called the master conspiracy thesis," McIlhany said. "Unfortunately,
it covers 225 years of history, so it is very cumbersome to summarize. I
have a 70-page summary on my Web site."

------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~-->
Sponsored by VeriSign - The Value of Trust
Pinpoint the right security solution for your company - FREE
Guide from industry leader VeriSign gives you all the facts.
http://us.click.yahoo.com/pCuuSA/WdiDAA/yigFAA/kgFolB/TM
---------------------------------------------------------------------~->

------------------
http://all.net/ 

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
Next message: Fred Cohen: "[iwar] [fc:Jane's.Defence.News.Briefs.-.9.January.2002]"
Previous message: Fred Cohen: "[iwar] [fc:Court.closes.Russia's.last.independent.TV.station]"
Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] [ attachment ]
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.2 : 2002-12-31 02:15:02 PST