The CIA and September 11 (book)
Encyclopedia
Andreas von Bülow
Andreas von Bülow is a German writer, lawyer and former SPD politician. He has been working on books about intelligence agencies, including In the Name of the State. CIA, BND and the criminal machinations of secret services. and The CIA and September 11...
, a former state-secretary in the German Federal Ministry of Defence
Federal Ministry of Defence (Germany)
The Federal Ministry of Defence is a top-level federal agency, headed by the Federal Minister of Defence as a member of the Cabinet of Germany...
and an SPD
Social Democratic Party of Germany
The Social Democratic Party of Germany is a social-democratic political party in Germany...
member of the German parliament from 1969 to 1994. The book has enjoyed considerable commercial success in Germany, where it is published by Piper Verlag
Piper Verlag
Piper Verlag is a German publisher based in Munich, printing both fiction and non-fiction works. It currently prints over 200 new paperback titles per year. Authors published by the company include Andreas von Bülow and Sara Paretsky. It owned by the Swedish media conglomerate Bonnier. It was...
, and has sold over 100,000 copies. However, it has faced allegations ranging from absurdity and fostering anti-Americanism
Anti-Americanism
The term Anti-Americanism, or Anti-American Sentiment, refers to broad opposition or hostility to the people, policies, culture or government of the United States...
, to anti-Semitism
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
, while the quality of its sourcing
Journalism sourcing
In journalism, a source is a person, publication, or other record or document that gives timely information. Outside journalism, sources are sometimes known as "news sources"...
and the timing of its publication have given rise to debate within the German publishing industry. In subsequent media appearances, Bülow has defended his work, and strongly denied that its content is anti-Semitic.
Book's contents
The book suggests that the 9/11 attacks were self-inflicted: a covert operationCovert operation
A covert operation is a military, intelligence or law enforcement operation that is carried clandestinely and, often, outside of official channels. Covert operations aim to fulfill their mission objectives without any parties knowing who sponsored or carried out the operation...
aimed at influencing domestic opinion and to persuade Americans to support the invasions of Afghanistan
War in Afghanistan (2001–present)
The War in Afghanistan began on October 7, 2001, as the armed forces of the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Australia, and the Afghan United Front launched Operation Enduring Freedom...
and of Iraq
2003 invasion of Iraq
The 2003 invasion of Iraq , was the start of the conflict known as the Iraq War, or Operation Iraqi Freedom, in which a combined force of troops from the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and Poland invaded Iraq and toppled the regime of Saddam Hussein in 21 days of major combat operations...
. It is written in a speculative style, laden with terms such as "could", "might", "maybe" and "if", and does not directly accuse the Central Intelligence Agency
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
of direct responsibility for the attacks. It does, however, attempt to demolish the "conventional" account of the 9/11 attacks, and while it does not build up a substantive account to replace it, it leaves insinuations and rumours to suggest possibilities. For instance, while it is argued that such well-organized attacks could only occur with "the support of the intelligence agencies", the exact details of that support are left unspecified. The book suggests that no plane crashed into The Pentagon
The Pentagon
The Pentagon is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense, located in Arlington County, Virginia. As a symbol of the U.S. military, "the Pentagon" is often used metonymically to refer to the Department of Defense rather than the building itself.Designed by the American architect...
and none in Pennsylvania
Pennsylvania
The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania is a U.S. state that is located in the Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic regions of the United States. The state borders Delaware and Maryland to the south, West Virginia to the southwest, Ohio to the west, New York and Ontario, Canada, to the north, and New Jersey to...
on 9/11, and that the alleged mobile phone calls on United Airlines Flight 93
United Airlines Flight 93
United Airlines Flight 93 was United Airlines' scheduled morning transcontinental flight across the United States from Newark International Airport in Newark, New Jersey, to San Francisco International Airport in California. On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, the Boeing 757–222 aircraft operating the...
were not real.
It states that the theory of the Arab hijackers
Organizers of the September 11, 2001 attacks
The September 11 attacks were carried out by 19 hijackers affiliated with al-Qaeda. The hijackers were organized into four teams, each led by a pilot-trained hijacker with four "muscle hijackers", who were trained to help subdue the pilots, passengers, and crew.The first hijackers to arrive in the...
was created by the CIA, and that these Arabs may not even have been aware that the planes were going to crash. Seven of the alleged hijackers are claimed in the book to have been found alive and well after the attacks. The book explores the possibility that the various aircraft could have been remote-controlled. It cites observations in support of the theory that the collapse of the World Trade Center
Collapse of the World Trade Center
The twin towers of the World Trade Center collapsed on September 11, 2001, as a result of al-Qaeda's September 11 attacks, in which terrorists affiliated with al-Qaeda hijacked four commercial passenger jet airliners, flying one into the North Tower and another into the South Tower...
might have been due to explosives
Controlled demolition hypothesis for the collapse of the World Trade Center
The World Trade Center controlled demolition conspiracy theory is a conspiracy theory which contends that the collapse of the World Trade Center was not caused by the airliner crash damage that occurred as part of the September 11, 2001 attacks, nor by resulting fire damage, but by explosives...
. Von Bülow does not believe that Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Laden
Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden was the founder of the militant Islamist organization Al-Qaeda, the jihadist organization responsible for the September 11 attacks on the United States and numerous other mass-casualty attacks against civilian and military targets...
and al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda
Al-Qaeda is a global broad-based militant Islamist terrorist organization founded by Osama bin Laden sometime between August 1988 and late 1989. It operates as a network comprising both a multinational, stateless army and a radical Sunni Muslim movement calling for global Jihad...
are responsible for the 9/11 attacks.
Publication
The book caused a storm at the 2003 Frankfurt Book FairFrankfurt Book Fair
The Frankfurt Book Fair is the world's largest trade fair for books, based on the number of publishing companies represented. As to the number of visitors, the Turin Book Fair attracts about as many visitors, viz. some 300,000....
, together with a number of other German books on the "real story" behind the 9/11 attacks, following the success of Thierry Meyssan
Thierry Meyssan
Thierry Meyssan is a French journalist and political activist.He is the author of investigations into the extreme right wing , as well as into the Catholic Church Thierry Meyssan (born 18 May 1957 in Talence, Gironde) is a French journalist and political activist.He is the author of investigations...
's 9/11: The Big Lie
9/11: The Big Lie
L'Effroyable imposture is the original French title of a highly controversial 2002 book by French journalist and political activist Thierry Meyssan. Its English edition is entitled 9/11: The Big Lie....
in France. Other best-selling books included Mathias Bröckers
Mathias Bröckers
Mathias Bröckers is a writer, journalist and longtime editor of the Berlin newspaper 'taz' . He is most widely known for his writings casting doubt on the commonly accepted version of events regarding the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001.He first wrote on the matter in...
's Conspiracies, Conspiracy Theories and the Secrets of September 11th and Gerhard Wisnewski's Operation 9/11 (ISBN 3-426-77671-5), but The CIA and September 11 became the best known.
The 271 page book has had a vast print run in Germany, with more than 100,000 copies being sold, and became a number three best-seller on the Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. It is one of Europe's largest publications of its kind, with a weekly circulation of more than one million.-Overview:...
non-fiction
Non-fiction
Non-fiction is the form of any narrative, account, or other communicative work whose assertions and descriptions are understood to be fact...
chart.
Piper Verlag is considered a reputable publisher. The editor of Piper Verlag, Klaus Stadler, contended in an interview with Deutsche Welle
Deutsche Welle
Deutsche Welle or DW, is Germany's international broadcaster. The service is aimed at the overseas market. It broadcasts news and information on shortwave, Internet and satellite radio on 98.7 DZFE in 30 languages . It has a satellite television service , that is available in four languages, and...
that:
However, Deutsche Welle found other industry observers who credited an increasingly competitive German publishing market with persuading companies to take on books they previously might not have accepted. A representative from the Börsenblatt bookstore also suggested that in the past, companies would at least have waited longer before releasing such a sensitive book.
The release coincided with widespread skepticism among the German public about the honesty and motivation of the George W. Bush administration
George W. Bush administration
The presidency of George W. Bush began on January 20, 2001, when he was inaugurated as the 43rd President of the United States of America. The oldest son of former president George H. W. Bush, George W...
, to the extent that a Forsa
Forsa institute
The forsa Institute for Social Research and Statistical Analysis , forsa for short, is one of the leading market research and opinion polling companies in Germany...
survey published in Die Zeit
Die Zeit
Die Zeit is a German nationwide weekly newspaper that is highly respected for its quality journalism.With a circulation of 488,036 and an estimated readership of slightly above 2 million, it is the most widely read German weekly newspaper...
in July 2003 found that nineteen percent of Germans (rising to thirty one percent among under 30s) believed that elements within the United States government were behind the 9/11 attacks. This provided fertile ground for The CIA and September 11, which sold strongly: von Bülow eclipsed the sales of writers who clung to a "conventional" interpretation of the 9/11 attacks, such as the intelligence expert Oliver Schrom.
Response
The work has been described as supporting or fostering anti-AmericanismAnti-Americanism
The term Anti-Americanism, or Anti-American Sentiment, refers to broad opposition or hostility to the people, policies, culture or government of the United States...
. However, in an interview with The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph
The Daily Telegraph is a daily morning broadsheet newspaper distributed throughout the United Kingdom and internationally. The newspaper was founded by Arthur B...
, von Bülow denied that his book was contributing to anti-American sentiment in Germany:
The book has also been attacked for the quality of its journalism and research. The author admitted that much of the material came from the Internet
Internet
The Internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet protocol suite to serve billions of users worldwide...
and discharged the burden of proof by claiming that it was for the American government to refute the allegations rather than for him to prove them. This produced anger among authors using more conventional journalistic methods: "The line in the sand is when respectable media and publishers start serving up fiction as truth," was the response of Oliver Schrom (whose study of the 9/11 attacks pointed the finger at intelligence failures, rather than a more spectacular claim of CIA complicity).
The CIA and September 11 was one of the subjects of a cover story in Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. It is one of Europe's largest publications of its kind, with a weekly circulation of more than one million.-Overview:...
in September 2003, along with Gerhard Wisnewski's TV documentary Aktenzeichen 11.9. ungelöst and the books Conspiracies, Conspiracy Theories and the Secrets of September 11th (Bröckers) and Operation 9/11 (Wisnewski). The article, entitled "Panoply of the Absurd", sharply criticizes von Bülow's reliance on Internet research, in particular that he had used archived but inaccurate stories that had been written in the confusion of the immediate aftermath of the attacks and then dropped.
An example of this is the assertion that at least six of the suspected hijackers named in the aftermath of the attacks turned up alive, the so-called "zombie hijackers" claim. Der Spiegel offers an explanation for this apparent mystery: BBC News
BBC News
BBC News is the department of the British Broadcasting Corporation responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs. The department is the world's largest broadcast news organisation and generates about 120 hours of radio and television output each day, as well as online...
used as a source the Arab News
Arab News
Arab News is an English-language daily newspaper published in Saudi Arabia, in the cities of Jeddah, Riyadh, and Dammam. The Editor-in-Chief is Khaled Al-Maeena. The publisher of Arab News is Saudi Research & Publishing Company , a subsidiary of Saudi Research & Marketing Group .Arab News was...
, an English-language Saudi
Saudi Arabia
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia , commonly known in British English as Saudi Arabia and in Arabic as as-Sa‘ūdiyyah , is the largest state in Western Asia by land area, constituting the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and the second-largest in the Arab World...
newspaper, which in turn had compiled reports from Arabic newspapers, of people who obviously had nothing to do with the attacks but happened to share the same names with some of the suspected hijackers. No photographs of the suspected hijackers had been released at this point in time, and thus a few cases of mistaken identity occurred. In one instance, a man with the name of Said al-Ghamdi
Saeed al-Ghamdi
Saeed Abdallah Ali Sulayman al-Ghamdi was one of four hijackers of United Airlines Flight 93 as part of the September 11 attacks....
had given an interview to Asharq Al-Awsat newspaper in Tunis
Tunis
Tunis is the capital of both the Tunisian Republic and the Tunis Governorate. It is Tunisia's largest city, with a population of 728,453 as of 2004; the greater metropolitan area holds some 2,412,500 inhabitants....
, outraged that he had been portrayed by CNN
CNN
Cable News Network is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner. Upon its launch, CNN was the first channel to provide 24-hour television news coverage, and the first all-news television channel in the United States...
as one of the hijackers. CNN had broadcast his photograph after doing research on their own and finding a Saudi "Said al-Ghamdi" who had received flight training in the United States. CNN had found the wrong suspect, which only became clear once the FBI officially released the photographs of the suspected hijackers.
The Spiegel article accuses von Bülow of accepting without due scrutiny any fragment or urban legend
Urban legend
An urban legend, urban myth, urban tale, or contemporary legend, is a form of modern folklore consisting of stories that may or may not have been believed by their tellers to be true...
that fits his suspicions of foul play, and describes him as a "dreamer". However, in his analysis of von Bülow's book and the response to it in Germany, Stefan Theil has contended that Der Spiegel is, itself, not unknown to publish speculative or conspiratorial theories, and suggests that the surprisingly strenuous article had deeper motivations than high feelings over journalistic quality. He speculates that the fact that Germans who claimed to believe that George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
masterminded 9/11 were not actually demonstrating in the streets was a sign that they simply regarded the conspiracy theorist literature as "political entertainment". With American difficulties in Iraq intensifying, and the possibility of Europe becoming dragged in, politicians and journalists alike were being forced to turn away from the escapism
Escapism
Escapism is mental diversion by means of entertainment or recreation, as an "escape" from the perceived unpleasant or banal aspects of daily life...
the plots offered.
Allegations of anti-Semitism and authorial response
Der Spiegel followed up several claims in an interview with the author. One of the claims in the book is that only one Israeli citizen died in the WTC attack (this was reported in the New York Times on September 22, 2001, but the Israeli Consulate later asserted that seven Israelis were among the dead in the WTC), and that "a number of indications" exist "that point to some sort of connection between the Israeli Mossad and the act and perpetrators of 9/11." However, when interviewed about the claim that 4,000 Jewish employees did not attend work at the WTC on the day of the attacks by the magazine, he avoided concrete statements ("They didn't know about it. They had an idea"), an approach the magazine described as "convoluted". It concludes that his allegations were little more than "whispers in the dark", fueled by conspiracy myths circulating on the Internet.Mentions of the theory that Jews stayed away from the WTC on 9/11, and the idea of Mossad
Mossad
The Mossad , short for HaMossad leModi'in uleTafkidim Meyuchadim , is the national intelligence agency of Israel....
involvement in or foreknowledge of the attacks, has led to claims that the book feeds the "new anti-Semitism
New anti-Semitism
New antisemitism is the concept that a new form of antisemitism has developed in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, emanating simultaneously from the far-left, radical Islam, and the far-right, and tending to manifest itself as opposition to Zionism and the State of Israel.The concept...
". A report by the American Jewish Committee
American Jewish Committee
The American Jewish Committee was "founded in 1906 with the aim of rallying all sections of American Jewry to defend the rights of Jews all over the world...
accused the book, along with other so-called 9/11 conspiracy literature of 2003, of perpetuating myths and stereotyping Jews as criminal and conspiratorial. The Anti-Defamation League
Anti-Defamation League
The Anti-Defamation League is an international non-governmental organization based in the United States. Describing itself as "the nation's premier civil rights/human relations agency", the ADL states that it "fights anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry, defends democratic ideals and protects...
has found evidence of Bülow being cited by anti-Semitic publications and websites keen to link Mossad to the 9/11 attacks.
In a prominently placed TV interview ("Menschen bei Maischberger" - ARD, 9.9.2003), Andreas von Bülow said it was a "Medienmasche" (media scam) to accuse him of anti-Semitism. He denied that he ever said or believed anything about "Jews" being warned of the attacks (one of the urban legends). He said such claims were nonsense. He confirmed, however, that in his opinion a number of indications exist which point to some sort of connection between the Israeli Mossad and the act and perpetrators of 9/11.
Editions
- Die CIA und der 11. September. Internationaler Terror und die Rolle der Geheimdienste. Piper VerlagPiper VerlagPiper Verlag is a German publisher based in Munich, printing both fiction and non-fiction works. It currently prints over 200 new paperback titles per year. Authors published by the company include Andreas von Bülow and Sara Paretsky. It owned by the Swedish media conglomerate Bonnier. It was...
GmbH, München 2003, ISBN 3-492-04545-6 and 2004, ISBN 3-492-24242-1
See also
- Bin Laden Issue StationBin Laden Issue StationThe Bin Laden Issue Station was a unit of the Central Intelligence Agency dedicated to tracking Osama bin Laden.Soon after its creation the Station developed a new, deadlier vision of bin Laden's activities. In 1999 the CIA inaugurated a grand "Plan" against al-Qaeda, but struggled to find the...
- The CIA'S tracking unit, 1996-2005 - Organizers of the September 11, 2001 attacksOrganizers of the September 11, 2001 attacksThe September 11 attacks were carried out by 19 hijackers affiliated with al-Qaeda. The hijackers were organized into four teams, each led by a pilot-trained hijacker with four "muscle hijackers", who were trained to help subdue the pilots, passengers, and crew.The first hijackers to arrive in the...
- 9/11 Truth Movement9/11 Truth Movement9/11 Truth movement is a collective name for loosely affiliated organizations and individuals who question the accepted account of the September 11, 2001, attacks....
- 9/11 Conspiracy Theories9/11 conspiracy theories9/11 conspiracy theories are theories that disagree with the widely accepted account that the September 11 attacks were perpetrated solely by al-Qaeda. These theories arose because of what proponents of the conspiracy theories believe to be inconsistencies in the official conclusions or some...