The second anniversary occasioned the most prominent critic thus far to express doubts about the US government’s official account of 9/11. On Saturday September 6, 2003, former cabinet minister Michael Meacher MP wrote an article in the Guardian headlined, “This war on terrorism is bogus”Meacher’s article mentions a number of issues, including the Project for a New American Century, advance warnings from foreign governments of the attacks, the slow reaction of the US air force, the failure to capture bin Laden, and strategic control of the world’s remaining hydrocarbon supplies.
He ends by writing, “The conclusion of all this analysis must surely be that the ‘global war on terrorism’ has the hallmarks of a political myth propagated to pave the way for a wholly different agenda - the US goal of world hegemony, built around securing by force command over the oil supplies required to drive the whole project.”
Meacher raises many of the same points as Vidal had written about nearly a year earlier. But whereas the response to Vidal’s article was muted, Meacher’s article prompted a flurry of editorials and articles which sought to ridicule and undermine his position.
The Telegraph weighed in the following day with an article entitled, “Meacher allegations over September 11 'monstrous', says US” and an editorial headlined, “Loony tunes”.
The editorial is very direct in its ridicule of Meacher’s ideas. After a very brief summary of some of Meacher’s claims, it ends by linking them to general alternative theories including, ‘Aliens: why they choose to live among us’ or ‘The cabal of jealous starlets who killed Marilyn Monroe’ and ‘The coded Confederate message in the Gettysburg Address.’”
An article by Francis Elliott in the same edition of the Telegraph is slightly more balanced in its approach. After using several paragraphs to outline what Meacher wrote, the article leaves the job of refuting the claims to a series of quotes from a variety of sources.
A spokesman from the US embassy in London is quoted as saying that, “Mr Meacher's fantastic allegations…would be monstrous, and monstrously offensive, if they came from someone serious or credible.” Bernard Jenkin, the shadow defence secretary referred to them as coming from “the loony left” and an unnamed senior Whitehall aide said, “It's the stuff of fantasy.”
Guardian Response
The response in the Guardian was swift and damning. The Monday September 8, 2003 edition contained four letters that refer to the article, all of which are negative. The section of the letters page dealing with the issue is headlined, “An insult to the victims of September 11.” This frames the debate as one in which to question who the perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks were is to give offence to those who died.
The letter writers use a variety of techniques to criticise Meacher. Alcuin Mitchell from London writes, “I'm surprised Michael Meacher didn't go the whole hog and say it was Mossad agents in league with the CIA who flew the jets into the twin towers.” Meacher’s assertions are described as, “pathetic and despicable” whilst Meacher himself is a “political has-been” who, “has managed to embarrass our country, insult the families of the victims of 9/11 and the whole American people, and give succour to our enemies.”
Keith Lodge from Middlesbrough also references peripheral Jewish based 9/11 conspiracy theories: “(And how can the neocons be guilty, when we all know it was the Jews?) Shame on you Mr Meacher.” None of the letter writers directly addresses any of Meacher’s points, but instead resort to ridicule.
David Aaronovitch
However, the following day, columnist David Aaronovitch did address specific issues in his article, “Has Meacher completely lost the plot?” But he chose to completely ignore some of Meacher’s ideas simply by stating that, “The oil and PNAC arguments in points one and two are so complex and recondite that I'll begin at about point three, in which the US may create a pretext for attacks.”
Aaronovitch goes on to challenge some of Meacher’s ideas, such as possible US prior knowledge of Pearl Harbour, and the times of the notification of the hijackings and the subsequent response by the US air force. Leaving Pearl Harbour to the historians, the disagreement between Meacher and Aaronovitch over when the four planes were hijacked could in part be down to the fact that two different official versions of the response had been released at the time of their writing in autumn 2003: the immediate reports and interviews to the media in the days following 9/11; and an official NORAD (North American Aerospace Defense Command) press release on 18th September 2001. This situation was further complicated in 2004 by the 9/11 Commission, which endorsed a third timeline of when the planes were hijacked and when US fighter jets were scrambled to intercept them.
This confusion is detailed in “Without Precedent”, a book published in August 2006 by 9/11 Commission chairman Thomas Kean and vice-chairman Lee Hamilton. A San Francisco Chronicle article quotes from the book, saying that, “NORAD officials advanced an account of 9/11 that was untrue” whilst a Washington Post article headlined, “9/11 Panel Suspected Deception by Pentagon” quotes Kean as saying, “We to this day don't know why NORAD [the North American Aerospace Command] told us what they told us. It was just so far from the truth.” So Meacher and Aaronovitch may have been using different sources to advance their arguments, hence the confusion.
Aaronovitch uses the rest of the article to dispute some of Meacher’s remaining points, before moving towards general ridicule. He describes Meacher’s style of argument as, “conspiracy 101” and his views as, “bizarre nonsense” before concluding that, “I grant that Iraq has made us all a little mad” and that, “many of us struggle to maintain our composure.”
The Mirror
The controversy continued the next day, Wednesday 10th September 2003 as the Daily Mirror’s Sue Carroll devoted a small section of her column to subtly supporting Meacher, albeit in a very tongue-in-cheek way. Although the section is subheadlined, “Dotty Plots”, Carroll doubts her previously negative reaction to alternative theories, claiming that, “there are still enough unanswered questions to fuel doubts about exactly how Princess Diana died” and stating that, “I used to think anyone who bought a conspiracy theory belonged in the puzzle factory. Now, I'm not so sure.”
The article continues it’s theme of equating alternative theories with insanity yet claims that government do not always tell the truth by concluding, “Do we all need medication? No. Some honest answers would do the trick.”
Meacher’s counter attack
Michael Meacher was given the opportunity to respond to the attacks made after his initial article in a lengthy letter published by the Guardian on Saturday September 13, 2003 under the title, “Cock-up not conspiracy.”
In the letter, Meacher distances himself from 9/11 alternative theories and instead emphasises the elements of his article which were ignored by many critics, including David Aaronovitch, such as The Project for the New American Century. He concentrates on the subject matter at hand, and unlike many of his critics, refrains from making personal attacks.
Many of these controversial themes were later revisited in a Thursday July 29, 2004 Guardian interview entitled, “I'm also a believer in the cock-up theory” in which Meacher states, “I am absolutely NOT a conspiracy theorist. I am anything but paranoid. I have an extremely rational belief in systematically collecting the evidence and seeing where the facts and the documents take you.”
The interview is generally sympathetic to Meacher, and quotes him at length. Journalist Matthew Tempest even acknowledges that some of Meacher’s views have been subsequently verified, such as, “The Senate's Kean commission into 9/11 finds a confused chain of command on the day, but confirms that while the Pentagon was hit at 9.38am, planes from nearby Andrews were only scrambled at 10.38am.”
Meacher’s only sign of hostility towards the interviewer comes when he’s asked about the foreword he wrote to “The New Pearl Harbour: Disturbing Questions about the Bush Administration and 9/11” by US theologian David Ray Griffin, a book published in 2004 and largely ignored by the UK media. Meacher responds by saying that, “Writing a foreword does NOT mean I agree with everything in it. It is an unconventional book which says things which deserved to be listened to and have an airing.”
Griffin’s book is highly regarded as one of the best amongst 9/11 alternative theorists, and so Meacher’s reaction is likely a response to the uneasy path which he treads between mainstream respectability and the radical politics of questioning 9/11.
The Truth is out there
With a nod to the alternative TV series “The X-Files”, on Sunday October 5, 2003 freelance journalist Paul Donovan wrote an article entitled, “Why isn't the truth out there?” Published in the Observer, the article defends Meacher’s questioning of 9/11 and brings up many of the same unanswered questions, largely attributed to “retired US army veteran Stan Goff, who taught military science and doctrine at West Point,” and who was major source for Gore Vidal’s book “Dreaming War.”
In addition to Vidal, Donavan notes that, “Meacher is not the first to raise questions regarding the sequence of events post-9/11. John Pilger and Noam Chomsky have consistently exposed the truth and put the sequence of events of the past two years in context.”
The majority of the article deals with the timeline of the hijacked planes and the lack of response by the US military and President Bush. Goff is quoted as saying, “The planes are all hijacked between 7.45 and 8.10am eastern daylight time. Who is notified? This is an event already that is unprecedented. But the president is not notified…By around 8.15am it should be very apparent that something is terribly wrong. The President is glad-handing teachers…Four planes have obviously been hijacked simultaneously, an event never before seen in history, and one has just dived into the world's best-known twin towers, and still no-one notifies the nominal Commander in Chief.”
The article is in some ways similar to Gore Vidal’s article of October 2002: it highlights anomalies with the official story, specifically the lack of response from US fighter jets, and yet received no coverage or counter attacks in the British media.
Andreas von Bulow
On 20th November 2003, the Telegraph published an article headlined, “German Sept 11 theory stokes anti-US feeling” about “The CIA and September 11th” a book authored by former state secretary of the Germany Ministry of Defence, Andreas von Bulow, published in German as “Die CIA und der 11. September.”
According to the Telegraph, von Bulow’s book alleges that, “The World Trade Centre collapsed due to explosives, not the impact of the Boeings; no planes flew into the Pentagon or crashed in Pennsylvania; and mobile phone calls made by those on the latter flight were simulated by the CIA. Mr von Bulow also argues that the Israeli intelligence service, Mossad, was involved in the attacks, warning Israelis to avoid the Twin Towers in the preceding days.”
Here the Telegraph mentions one of the more popular 9/11 alternative theories – that the Twin Towers were demolished by explosives – together with some of the more peripheral ideas, including that the mobile phones calls were faked and that the Israeli intelligence agency Mossad was involved.
The article does quote von Bulow at length however, and finishes with him disputing the charges levelled against him of anti-Americanism. “I'm not in the least anti-American," he insisted. "I'm just part of a growing momentum against Bush and his chess power-politics. I feel sorry for those who are being sucked in by his ideas."
Journalist Kate Connolly also mentions the relatively high number of Germans who believe in such alternative theories, which presents von Bulow as not being alone in his views. She writes that, “…his ideas are very popular in Germany, which is wallowing in a wave of anti-Americanism. Polls show that a fifth of the population, and one in three of those under 30, believe the US government ordered the attacks.”
The article also mentions Thierry Meyssan’s “success with such theories” in France, as well as two other German authors who have published 9/11 conspiracy books: Mathias Brockers and Gerhard Wisnewski. By describing the book as, “…more than 271 speculative pages, full of ‘ifs’, ‘buts’ and ‘maybes’”, the article casts doubt on the veracity of von Bulow’s ideas.
2004 - Fahrenheit 911 & A New Pearl Harbour
No comments:
Post a Comment