-Caveat Lector-
Top Ten Conspiracy Theories of 2002
By Mike Ward, PopMatters
January 2, 2003
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 than 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 even 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 with 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 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, 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,
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 Determined to Strike in
U.S."
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=14873
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