September 11 and other conspiracy theories

YellowTimes.org
Printed on Tuesday, July 09, 2002 @ 03:01:02 EDT
By Eric Walberg

The conspiracy theories surrounding September 11 have been granted a certain legitimacy with an extensive article in the Holy of Holies. Alan Riding (NYT 26/6/02) ridicules "L'Effroyable Imposture" (The Horrifying Fraud) by Thierry Meyssan, a bestseller in Europe, which goes so far as to claim that the Pentagon was struck by an air-to-ground missile fired by the U.S. Air Force and the planes which struck the World Trade Center were flown by similar elements in the US government. Riding hastens to add that the book was quickly followed up by a critique "L'Effroyable Mensonge" (The Horrifying Lie) by Jean Guisnel and Guillaume Dasique.

Curiously, he does not seem to be aware that the same Dasique earlier wrote "Osama bin Laden: The Forbidden Truth" with Jean-Charles Brisard, describing a no less conspiratorial connection between September 11th and a stalled plan to build a pipeline to exploit the vast natural gas fields along the Caspian Sea in Turkmenistan. Their story pointed damning fingers at American petroleum companies and the Bush administration, citing instances where U.S. anti-terrorism efforts were thwarted in order to smooth the way for the pipeline deal.

Brisard & Dasique and other sources reveal that until late last summer "the Bush administration was actively courting the Taliban, protectors of Osama bin Laden, on behalf of Unocal," that last summer Osama bin Laden met with a CIA official while being treated in the American hospital in Dubai [source: Le Figaro, 31/10/01], that FBI deputy director responsible for the search for bin Laden John O'Neill quit the FBI in disgust at that time for their refusal to do anything about all the evidence pointing to a major al Qaida attack (1), and then himself was pulverized at the Trade Center on 9-11. To say these facts do not inspire confidence is an understatement. Nor do the facts that acting Afghani President Hamid Karzai and U.S. advisor on Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad are former Unocal consultants [sources: Le Monde and Pravda].

History is littered with real and imagined conspiracies, especially where the Cold War is concerned. We can laugh in retrospect at attempts to poison Fidel Castro's cigars but the far more serious shenanigans of the radical rightwing at critical junctures when their agenda is threatened (1960s detente, 1990s post-Soviet Union (SU) foreign policy crossroads) show that without or without blatant conspiracies, they will fight tooth and nail to push their agenda, using whatever pretext is athand. We should be careful not to be sidetracked from this broader picture.

The great turning points in the past half century where militarism triumphed have all contained elements of conspiracy - the turning back of dйtente at crucial points during the 60s, 70s, and 80s, and the refusal to honor the "peace dividend" following the collapse of the SU. While in each case mass peace movements created pressure on politicians to resist militarism, the right was always able to triumph. When necessary, using subversion and conspiracy. Sometimes, by merely latching onto imagined threats.

Turning point I

Consider the first great post-WWII crossroads, which was closed with the assassination of President Kennedy. The Nuclear Test Ban Treaty had just gone into effect and the 1962 Peace Prize awarded (a year late) to Linus Pauling, the major public figure behind the test ban campaign (a controversial award, delayed a year with 2 members of the selection committee resigning in protest, saying that Pauling was too pro-Soviet).

In his acceptance speech Pauling said: "The world has now begun its metamorphosis from its primitive period of history, when disputes between nations were settled by war, to its period of maturity, in which war will be abolished and world law will take its place." He saw the test ban treaty as "the first of a series of treaties that will lead to the new world from which war has been abolished forever. The first of a series of treaties that will lead to the new world from which war has been abolished forever."

This was surely the high point of the postwar detente - the Cuban missile crisis was safely behind us, and Kennedy, chastened by both it and the Bay of Pigs scandal, looked ready to talk seriously with Khrushchev, who had denounced Stalin and launched a policy of dйtente with the West, about a new world order. If we are to believe the Oliver Stone school of thought, Kennedy was assassinated, a mere month after the test ban treaty, precisely because he was about to make a sea of change in U.S. foreign policy, embracing detente and making an about-face on Vietnam. Instead, the U.S. war in Vietnam went into full gear, and Khrushchev was deposed. Was this a conspiracy? I don't know, but it was nonetheless followed by "Full speed ahead!" for the U.S. war machine.

Turning point II

Then there is the culmination of the anti-Vietnam war movement and the disarmament struggle of the 1970s, when popular pressure and a weakened U.S. forced the government to sign major disarmament treaties and to cooperate with the Soviets in outer space ? the Apollo-Souz program. The Olympics were about to be held in Moscow, when the world was suddenly shocked by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Surely, this was not the fault of the American right (though we all know that it went on to arm the anti-Christ bin Laden himself)!

Now we find out that the story was more complex, that in fact, the United States had already begun a program of covert aid to the Afghan guerrillas six months before the Soviets invaded. Former Director of Central Intelligence Robert Gates in his 1996 memoir From the Shadows revealed that peace-loving Jimmy Carter approved a secret $500 million aid program designed to counter the Soviet support to the pro-Soviet regime that had overthrown the dictator Daud (who had just overthrown his cousin, the king) in Kabul.

Some elements no doubt wanted to lure the Soviets into a Vietnam-like entanglement. Others probably viewed the program as a way of destabilizing the government and countering the Soviets. There were no strategic U.S. interests at stake there (unless you argue that the U.S. has strategic stakes everywhere at all times), as the Soviets had been close to Kabul since the 1920s. However, a pro-Soviet regime in Kabul was simply not acceptable to the right, and to poison the underbelly of the Soviet empire was just too tempting to resist.

According to Gates, at a meeting on March 30, 1979, Under Secretary of Defense Walter Slocumbe suggested "there was value in keeping the Afghan insurgency going, 'sucking the Soviets into a Vietnamese quagmire.'" In a 1998 interview in Le Nouvel Observateur former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski admitted, "We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would."

Yet Carter, who authorized the covert program on July 3, 1979, today explains that it was definitely "not my intention" to inspire a Soviet invasion. The then Secretary of State Cyrus Vance's aide Marshall Shulman insists that the State Department worked hard to dissuade the Soviets from invading and would never have undertaken a program to encourage it, but admits he was unaware of the covert program at the time. (2) It is not necessary to argue that Carter wished to provoke an invasion. He was merely hoodwinked. Sound like Powell vs. Rumsfeld? I'll let you be the judge.

Was this a conspiracy? Either way, it created the foundations for the greatest military build-up that the world has ever seen, as Reagan won a landslide election on the promise to deposit the SU in history's trash heap.

The dйtente of Khrushchev, even stodgy conservative Brezhnev, and most certainly Gorbachev were serious threats to the right wing agenda. The case of Gorbachev is particularly tragic. Rarely in history does the leader of a powerful nation honestly propose disarmament and reject any desire for world hegemony, as did Gorbachev.

Of course, the U.S. right could not countenance this betrayal of the rules of the game, and U.S. policy ruthlessly continued to undermine Gorbachev, even while making loud noises in his praise. U.S. funds and arms continued to flow into Afghanistan, even after Soviet troops had withdrawn, and Reagan/ Bush Sr. refused to negotiate disarmament seriously with Gorbachev. Why show magnanimity when your opponent is down?

Turning point III

Unfortunately for the right, Reagan's success had its downside. With the collapse of the Soviet Union the American war machine lost its raison d'etre and allowed a disciple of JFK to occupy the White House. Under eight years of Clinton, the U.S. looked like it just might be coaxed towards a new era of internationalism comparable to that promised earlier by Pauling in his Nobel speech - nuclear disarmament, more reliance on international treaties, and greater authority for the UN.

Meanwhile, fears of global ecological disaster fuelled the rise of a mass environmental movement which argued that the peace dividend that would naturally accompany the demilitarization of the superpowers should be used to save the planet from a fate every bit as tragic as nuclear war. But the halting moves towards a saner world came crashing down with breathtaking acts of terrorism (preceded by a cynical attempt to impeach Clinton and discredit his albeit problematic internationalist perspective).

Whether or not these tragic events were the active work of the CIA, etc., there is no doubt that in each case the events fit the needs of a U.S. imperialism under attack, and they were (are being) readily used to feed the U.S. war mentality and to protect the military industrial complex, which even General Eisenhower denounced in his final address to the nation as President. The entrenched militaristic logic of the U.S. economy was bound to react to the forces threatening it, come hell or high water, and history is bound to take its course with or without these footnotes.

Arms + oil = conspiracy?

With the announcement on May 30 that the leaders of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkmenistan have agreed to construct a $2bn pipeline to bring gas from Central Asia to the sub-continent, the conspiracy theories around September 11 have taken on a new lease on life. The questions now being asked are:

- Did the threats of war levied against the Taliban on behalf of Unocal spur Osama bin Laden into murderous action on behalf of his host nation?

- Was his attack made easier because the Bush administration willfully weakened our intelligence apparatus so as to avoid offending potential client states?

- Is it possible that the dust and ruin in New York and Washington are byproducts of a pipeline deal that was pursued before the attacks, and has been allowed to come to fruition in the aftermath?

The answers to these "lesser" conspiracy charges [truthout.com, William Rivers Pitt] is without doubt a tragic yes. Bush's total ignorance of international affairs, combined with his devotion to Saudi oil money for buying out his bankrupt oil company back in 1984 (3), and all the Enron/Unocal cronies flitting around him in the past 5-6 years have caught up to him with a vengeance.

Once it was clear the Taliban would not cave in to the offer of millions of dollars last summer, it became a matter of waiting for the appropriate terrorist pretext to be found to replace them (4). If there is some element of active conspiracy, let's say the conspirators were at most hoping for a botched job that would serve as their pretext for steering the U.S. economy more securely onto its warpath, away from international treaties and UN-sponsored policing of trouble spots. No need to be too nefarious ? lazy and stupid gets the job done without the nasty side effects.

Besides, the silly plots to overthrow Castro (and not so silly ones) show that where money and Disney fail, real honest-to-goodness conspiracy is always an option.

[Eric Walberg is a Canadian writer and journalist who has been working out of Uzbekistan for the past 7 years. Prior to that he worked for Greenpeace in Moscow. He is also a translator of film subtitles, and books on Uzbek classical music and applied arts. He submitted this piece to YellowTimes.org.]

Eric Walberg encourages your comments: walberg@lycos.com

Footnotes:
(1). In January, 2001, the Bush Administration ordered the FBI and intelligence agencies to "back off" investigations involving the bin Laden family, including two of Osama bin Laden's relatives (Abdullah and Omar) who were living in Falls Church, VA - right next to CIA headquarters. This followed previous orders dating back to 1996, frustrating efforts to investigate the bin Laden family. [Sources: BBC Newsnight & The Guardian].


--------------------------------------------------------------
- A question of Identity by Beny Irzanto
- Pacific Rim 2010 by Hatmadita Ramuny
- Liberal Imperialism by Justin Raimondo
- Letter: A 'Great Nation' by Frank Gubasta
- Secret group manipulates vote machines by Christopher Bollyn
- Militant Patriotism and America's Jihad by Matthew Riemer
- Thoughts on Thanks(taking)giving Day by Frank Gubasta
- Challenges facing sustainable development in the next 20 years by Choo Zheng Xi
- Why The Chicken Crossed the Road!
- On invading Iraq: less talk, more unity by Alexander M. Haig, Jr.
- Violence and Islam by Charles Krauthammer
- The Arab Role by Amir Taheri
- The War on Freedom: How and Why America was Attacked September 11, 2001
- The Myths that prevent a real Palestinian peace
- September 11 and other conspiracy theories
- Anti-Flag, 911 For Peace (song lyric)
- Unicwash.org petition