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OF BIG OIL, BY BIG OIL, FOR BIG OIL
The 10 Most Startling Speculations and "Conspiracy Theories" About September
11 and America's New War
[27 December 2002]
by Mike Ward
PopMatters Film Critic
e-mail this article
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."
***
(1) "Burying the Bodies," a reprint of the 31 October 2001, Panama City,
Florida, News Herald copy desk chief Ray Glenn's memorandum, can be found in
the January 2002 issue of Harper's Magazine.
(2) Details about the hoax perpetrated to excuse the Nazi invasion of Poland
can be found in many places. I most recently read about it in David
Brinkley's World War II history, Washington Goes to War.
�
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