Courtesy of Indymedia New York, Mike Ward of PopMatters lists the most
outrageous top ten officially spun conspiracy theories of the year - Scoop
Editor's Note: If you feel like a laugh then read this!
He forgot to mention the most outlandish conspiracy of them all (and the most
widely accepted): 19 hijackers from a third world terrorist group armed with
boxcutters forced 3 planes into 3 of the the nation's most important and
symbolic structures with no assistance from US government/intelligence
insiders.
By Mike Ward, PopMatters
For about thirty minutes after his chief of staff told him that America was
under attack, George W. Bush continued to sit in an elementary school classroom
listening to a second-grader tell a story about a pet goat. He did a marvelous
job of looking completely unsurprised. Meanwhile, four hijacked jumbo jets were
able to fly off-course across several states without encountering any
opposition from the most powerful and responsive air force in the world.
Less then a month later, on the pretext of pursuing terrorist mastermind Osama
bin Laden, the Bush administration began what it called a "war" on the
impoverished and already war-torn country of Afghanistan. It turns out this
assault had been in the works well before September 11 took place.
Soon after replacing the Taliban government with one more to its liking (and,
in what is surely a coincidence, resuscitating the world's most bountiful opium
fields), the administration began agitating for a similar, but even more
destructive, bombardment of the oil- rich nation of Iraq. This, although Osama
bin Laden was still at large and no link between him and Saddam Hussein could
be established.
For these reasons and hundreds of others, the year following September 11 has
seen probably the most staggering proliferation of "conspiracy theories" in
American history. Angry speculation focused mainly on government dirty
dealings, ulterior motives, and potential complicity in the attacks has risen
to a clamor that easily rivals what followed the Kennedy assassination. Some of
these suppositions are patent balderdash. But many others are coherent and well
argued, and cite disconcerting reports from the U.S. corporate media and
respected overseas news desks to support their claims. Providing grist for the
mill are such odd episodes as last year's partisan anthrax poisonings (using
U.S. army microbes) and the sniper attacks that recently plagued Washington,
DC.
Following are the ten most alarming theories about September 11, the "war on
terror," and the future of the world. Feel free to accept them as gospel, study
them as symptoms of a traumatized culture, or scoff at them as anti-American
propaganda: I'm only the messenger. Personally, though, at this point the only
person I hold above suspicion in the matter of September 11 is that poor kid
with the goat.
1. Great Game in the Caspian Sea.
Among the theories about the administration's real reasons for bombing and
occupying Afghanistan, the one with the most traction argues that Afghanistan
provides the best real estate for an oil and natural gas pipeline. Believers
say that fossil fuels in the Caspian Sea, once part of the Soviet empire, are now
up for grabs in a fierce contest between Russia and the West. To the winner will
go control of much of the energy supply for East Asia. Sources cited in support of
this idea which has gotten ink in England's Guardian newspaper and the BBC,
as well as offhand mention on U.S. Sunday talk shows include Zbigniew
Brzezinski's apology for empire, The Grand Chessboard, and a 1998
Taliban-damning report to Congress from the oil company Unocal. But the most
telling evidence of all: now that Afghanistan is a satellite state of the Bush
administration, the pipeline is actually being built!.
2. The Afghanistan/Enron Connection.
Rumor has it that in the months before Enron's collapse, Bush, Cheney, and the
much-gossiped-about "energy task force" convened daily, high-priority meetings
to try and engineer a bailout for Bush's most generous campaign contributor. At
the peak of the Enron scandal and in the aftermath of the attack on
Afghanistan, a fascinating document surfaced in conspiracy circles that told of a
bank-breaking Enron venture: a power plant the firm had partly built in India.
Plagued with cost overruns and accusations of employee mistreatment that led to
violent labor disputes, the power plant became a cash sinkhole that threatened
to send Enron into insolvency unless the plant could tap into a pipeline
network to be spun off from the Caspian Sea venture and recover some of its
losses by operating on natural gas. A detailed and intriguing read, this
document explains why Dick Cheney would sooner chug a quart of 10W-40 than
surrender the minutes of those energy meetings.
3. The Magic Passport Theory.
We can now add Mohamed Atta's reality-defying passport to the Arlen Specter
Gallery of Improbable Projectiles. This incriminating item was thrown intact
from a cataclysmic fireball and miraculously plucked from 1.6 million tons of
debris in a matter of hours. The corporate media rarely mention the
unlikelihood of this. Many in the alternative press, though, are unafraid to draw an
obvious, albeit taboo, inference: that the Atta passport is planted evidence. According to Washington, DC, peace activist John Judge, other potential plants include the Arabic-language flight manuals left in one of the hijackers' cars (with note: The discussion of the flight manuals begins at around 13:30). These manuals
could serve no useful purpose at such a late stage unless the hijackers planned
to finish learning how to fly during a half- hour ride to the airport. But as
deliberately placed articles, they are as if a signed diary called "My Plan to
Kill the President" had been unearthed in Lee Harvey Oswald's flat. Also high
on the possible planted evidence list is a spiritual manifesto for the Al Qaeda
kamikaze pilots, which, to journalist Robert Fisk, sounds an awful lot like it
was written by a God- fearing Christian.
4. Hijacker Oddities I.
Little-observed in the fine print of the FBI rap sheet on the September 11
hijackers was a clumsily phrased disclaimer admitting that the Bureau's
document wasn't, ahem, necessarily a final draft (with note: "It should be noted that
attempts to confirm the true identities of these individuals are still under
way"). Ringleader Mohamed Atta's identity was a slam-dunk, of course, owing to the
propitious recovery of his passport. But bear in mind how quickly the FBI
conjured its 19 Enemies of the State while you ponder the strange case of
Waleed Al Shehri. In an article for the BBC, this Saudi Arabian national says that he
turned up on the FBI list and feels that rumors of his death were greatly
exaggerated. Not to be outdone, the British Daily Telegraph also ran an article
on the subject, claiming to have found no fewer than four of the supposed
September 11 attackers alive, well, and hopping mad. Pending long overdue
clarification from John Ashcroft's vaunted Bureau, one can hardly blame the
conspiracy-minded for crying "patsy."
5. Hijacker Oddities II.
Another theory about the hijackers' real identities takes as its departure an
utterly bizarre and largely overlooked story on MSNBC.com, which says that some
of the hijackers may have trained at U.S. Army bases. Yes, you read that right.
Strange as it may seem, providing terrorists-slash- "freedom fighters" with
lethal skills is a tradition in certain specialized arms of the American
military and U.S. intelligence. The infamous School of the Americas, for
example, helped to train the death squads that claimed so many innocent lives
in Central America. Even so, the idea that the government might aid Osama's
minions is completely beyond the pale, right? Perhaps. But remember the CIA and the
military's record-breaking aid program to the Afghan Mujahedin movement, as
outlined, for example, in John Cooley's Unholy Wars. Questions about hijacker
links to U.S. intelligence got more complicated when the spook watchdog magazine
CovertAction Quarterly claimed that many of the hijackers got into the country
using CIA "snitch" visas. (This article can be found in CovertAction
Quarterly's Winter 2001, 41-44; the BBC conducted an interview with the author, Michael Springmann). As with many issues involving The Agency, this promises to be
shrouded in mystery for a long time.
6. Insider Trades.
Remember right after the attacks when you couldn't watch TV for five minutes
without hearing somebody say "put option"? The 9/11 insider stock trades got
endless airplay on the major networks before Osama bin Laden became fixed in
the popular imagination, whereupon the media bent themselves to the task of
establishing his guilt. Still, even if Al Qaeda placed the 4,744 suspicious
transactions, wouldn't the story still be useful, if only to further illuminate
the terrorist network's money machine? Apparently not, because the story didn't
just fade away over time; it suddenly vanished. Once in a while, a TV news
anchorperson would assure us there had been "nothing to" the rumors while
failing to explain, if this was true, where the story had come from or why it
had gotten so such attention.
But conservative scandal-tracker Tom Flocco didn't give up on the hinky stock
trades. In a series of articles, he follows the money back to a bigwig in the
financial firm Deutsche Bank, who also was once executive director of
(surprise!) the CIA. Some might question Flocco's credibility as an
investigative reporter, I suppose although credibility in the news business
appears to be a dead letter anyway, if CNN could accidentally fabricate the
5,000 trades out of whole cloth to begin with.
7. The New World Order Will Not Be Televised.
Assuming you haven't stopped reading yet either to start digging a bomb
shelter in your backyard or to flip on FOX News for a much-needed dose of
pro-war soma you have to be wondering how these flabbergasting stories
escaped the notice of America's intrepid newshounds. Examine this question for even a
minute and you will stumble onto a proven, card-carrying evil conspiracy: it's
called the U.S. Congress, and conclusive evidence links them to a truly
terrifying document known as the Telecommunications Act of 1996.
This legislation is relevant post-9/11 because it allowed the megamergers of
media conglomerates to become ultra- monstermergers. As a result, today a
handful of multinationals control most of what is said in the U.S. about military
actions overseas and the reasons for them. At least one of these companies
General Electric has financial stakes in the weapons racket as well, but this
blatant conflict of interest gets as much coverage as the Telecommunications
Act originally got when it was on the floor of Congress: next to none. Some media
observers and academics, like MIT's Noam Chomsky and Norman Solomon of Fairness
and Accuracy in Reporting, have doggedly pointed out that the bloated media emperor has no clothes. Too bad they stand little chance of appearing regularly
on Face the Nation.
Not many people noticed when the rules governing what gets said about war and
who gets to say it were exposed in Harper's Magazine, which ran a Florida News
Herald memo outlining some of the carefully crafted talking points journalists
must observe in discussing U.S. bombing campaigns. Among them: ignore or
minimize innocent death. "If the story needs rewriting to play down the
civilian casualties" caused by U.S. bombings, the Herald's copy desk decrees, "DO IT.... Failure to follow any of these or other standing rules could put your job in
jeopardy" (1). Lesson? If you live in the U.S. and think you know what your
government is doing to other countries and why, just because you watch cable or
read a daily newspaper think again.
8. Iran/Contra Redux.
Near the end of 2002, a surprisingly lethargic debate was underway in the U.S.
concerning the "war on terror"'s erosion of Americans' civil liberties which
many felt were already pretty meager anyhow, having been picked clean during
two decades of the "war on drugs." The debate took a turn toward the paranormal
when the corporate media briefly went agog over the Bush administration's
citizen-stalking Information Awareness Office. By the time it got mentioned in
the Washington Post, though, the IAO was old news to flying saucer buffs: Art
Bell rival Jeff Rense had already run several articles scrutinizing the IAO's
logo, which with its all-seeing, Masonic pyramid-and-eyeball seems meant to
agitate the growing ranks of the understandably paranoid.
It takes only a few clicks on the IAO's homepage to learn that the agency is
presided over by Iran/Contra luminary John Poindexter, just one weapons-running
Reagan-era alumnus to find an honored seat in Dubya's star chamber. Also
plucked from political ignominy is Elliot Abrams, who has gone from pleading no-contest to charges of perjury before Congress to helping lead the Bush Administration's Mid-East policy. These are only two of the administration's many questionable appointments don't eve n get me started on Henry Kissinger but Iran/Contra is a matter of special note to conspiracy trackers. Take the late Mae Brussell, a minor legend to some for her reflections on the Kennedy murder. She once
provided scathing alternative assessments of Iran/Contra for her underground
radio show, "World Watchers". Like Tom Flocco, Mae Brussell should be taken
with some healthy skepticism. Even so, the rage behind her accusations she links
the Iran/Contra figures with wholesale drug dealing and the CIA wit h the
Jonestown massacre is a predictable result when bloody official policies are
conducted absent anything resembling consent of the governed.
9. The Reichstag Fire and Operation Northwoods.
Now things get really weird. To those who scoff at the idea that the government
could have had foreknowledge of or complicity in the September 11 attacks,
conspiracy researchers respond that attacks have been faked or manufactured
plenty of times before, usually to maneuver the public into supporting a war
they would otherwise oppose. The Nazi party, for instance, most likely set fire
to the Reichstag building in order to pin the crime on the communists and
galvanize the people behind their police-state tactics. They also forged a fake
battle to justify their invasion of Poland (2). Sure, you say, but the Nazis
were like that. Unfortunately, similar incidents pop up in the U.S.'s recent
past, as well. Frequently mentioned examples include Pearl Harbor which many,
such as Day of Deceit author Robert Stinnett, feel was allowed to happen to
prompt America's entry into World War II and the weird Gulf of Tonkin
incident. Researchers discussing this issue often cite an interesting find: an internal Pentagon document from the early 1960s, which appears in James Bamford's book on military subterfuge, Body of Secrets, and puts the lie to the contention that
the government would never manufacture incidents or attack its own people to
lead the country to war. The Operation Northwoods memo is the result of a
brainstorming session on ways to help sell military action in Cuba by
fabricating or committing acts of violence and blaming them on Fidel Castro.
Among its suggestions: shoot down a plane full of college students, sink an
American ship ("casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of
national indignation"), or rig astronaut John Glenn's rocket to explode. The
Northwoods memo invites us to rethink what some in the government might be
capable of not only in terms of September 11 but also the Kennedy
assassination.
After all, if spectacular murders of people like John Glenn are conceivable, is
it so fantastic to plot the assassination of a sitting president?
10. Things to Come.
For many writers like http://www.rense.com's Diane Harvey the corruption of
American empire is relevant, but only as a sidebar. The real problem stems from
two incontrovertible facts: that reserves of oil and other non-renewable
resources will someday run out, and that on its current course, the Earth is
soon to become overloaded with people. If these twin problems go unaddressed,
our species faces a gloomy fate. As the situation gets worse, governance in the
traditional mode, based around at least the pretense of liberal democracy, will
become impossible. Instead, naked power grabs will become the norm for wealthy
elites capable of mounting them. "The people"'s job will be simply to provide
money and labor for the war machines that make these imperial conquests
possible; those who aspire to a role in their own governance beyond subsidizing
imperial expansion will be brutally repressed.
Harvey and others feel that such a global transformation has already begun, and
episodes like September 11 and the U.S. government's bizarre obsession with
oil- laden Iraq are among its harbingers. But, you say, oil supplies look fine
from where you sit. According to hard-on-the-eyes website, http://www.dieoff.org, the
problem won't manifest itself all at once, when the world's oil wells suddenly
dry up. It is instead happening incrementally, because the rate of production
has started to lag behind the world's increasing demand. Among numerous cases
in point, http://www.dieoff.org cites "The Coming Anarchy," an Atlantic Monthly article
describing intolerable government repression in the long-neglected region of
sub-Saharan Africa. Such will be the harvest of empire for our overextended
world: warlordism, brutal dictatorships that verge on chaos death, and in
vast quantities. I don't know whether these predictions will come to pass. But after
this past year, I find the possibility an awful lot easier to imagine (29).
Honorable Mentions
The top 10 conspiracy theories, speculations, and plain odd things I didn't
have space to discuss here:
1. The Mel Carnahan and Paul Wellstone plane crashes.
2. Jeb Bush's 7 September 2001 martial law declaration in Florida (Executive
Order 01-261).
3. The Flight 93 debris patterns and the ease with which the Flight 93 story
that circulated in the major media fits into an archetypal "hero" narrative.
4. Warren Buffett, who among with several other World Trade Center executives
went to Offutt AFB before the attacks on the morning of September 11. This is
where Bush went after the attacks began.
5. Potential CIA links to the coup in Venezuela.
6. Cynthia McKinney's insinuation of possible government complicity in
September 11 on the floor of Congress.
7. The Phoenix memo and the curious case of the FBI whistleblowers.
8. The idea that the anti-aircraft missiles used when Bush visited Genoa,
Italy, we intended to thwart a kamikaze attack.
9. The Bin Laden family's clandestine flight out of the United States in the
days after September 11.
10. Bush's 6 August 2001, comprehensive briefing, "Bin Laden
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