Was 9/11 a U.S. Plot?

No, but Such Wild Theories Gain Surprising Attention in Europe

By Ian Johnson
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal

How’s this for a theory? A German named Andreas von Bulow argues in a new book that the U.S. government staged the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington to justify wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It is a tentative theory, Mr. von Bulow admits, based mostly on his doubt that Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda terrorist group launched the attacks.

Is Mr. von Bulow some kind of crackpot? A conspiracy theorist who believes that Elvis lives and the CIA murdered Kennedy?

Not exactly. Actually, he is a former German government official whose book, a bestseller in Germany, comes from one of the country’s most prestigious publishing houses and who lectures at well-known public institutions. And he’s not alone: In recent months, Germany’s leading broadcaster, ARD, ran a purported documentary making similar claims, while several other German authors have published like-minded books.

“If we are being asked to participate in a new world war that’s going to last years, then I expect that the cause of [the Sept. 11 attacks] be explained in the minutest detail,” Mr. von Bulow told a crowd of 500 at Literaturhaus in Munich, a popular meeting place for the local literary community. “What we have received is a joke. I’ve just put together the things that don’t match up.”

Sinking Credibility

Conspiracy theories have long been part of the discourse in some parts of the globe, especially in places where a muzzled press and political repression warp public debate. But over the past two years, improbable theories about the Sept. 11 attacks have attracted serious attention in some Western countries, often in direct proportion to the sinking credibility given to the U.S. and its motives in international affairs.

In Britain, cabinet minister Michael Meacher, who resigned in the fall, published a blistering attack in the Guardian newspaper, implying that the U.S. government was involved in the attacks to justify a more-interventionist foreign policy. In France, Italy and Spain, authors have hit the bestseller charts over the past year by claiming that the U.S. is hiding the truth about 9/11.

In most European countries, conspiracy theories have remained the domain of a fringe minority. In Germany, however, the theories have had legs, and over the past few months, waves of improbable and outrageous assertions have received serious hearings. A recent opinion poll by one of Germany’s leading polling organizations found that one in five Germans believes “the U.S. government ordered the attacks itself.”

The credibility given these theories has become so pronounced that the country’s leading newsmagazine, Der Spiegel, ran a cover story recently, giving a point-by-point rebuttal to the most widely spread myths. Among them: that Jewish people stayed out of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, because they had been tipped off. ARD had to backtrack on its purported documentary, later identifying the program’s producer as a proponent of conspiracy theories whose ideas weren’t accepted by experts.

A leading newspaper in Munich published a lengthy piece recently called “Fools of Fear,” ridiculing the ideas. Conspiracy theories are “having so much success,” says Hans Leyendecker, who wrote the piece. “We had to do something to counteract it.”

Germans have long been among the most pro-American societies in continental Europe. But over the past year, German opinion has turned, opinion polls show. The war in Iraq was a turning point. Right after the Sept. 11 attacks, Germany pledged “unlimited solidarity” with the U.S. and sent troops to help out in Afghanistan. But when sights turned to Iraq, Germans had second thoughts.

“Somewhere between Kabul and Baghdad, we lost each other,” says Ron Asmus, a senior fellow of the German Marshall Fund, a foreign-policy group. “We didn’t just disagree on the policy but on the facts of what happened, and from that there was a jump to the conspiracy theories.”

‘Could Haves’

Few people have profited more from this changing view than Mr. von Bulow, a longtime legislator who left the German government in the 1990s and began writing on such issues as the role of intelligence in the Cold War. After Sept. 11, he had doubts, he says, about the source of the attacks. “Muslims wouldn’t do this because they would know that it would hurt the Muslim world,” he says.

For a year, he says, he gathered information, mostly from Internet sites. His book contains many of the same ideas found in a bestseller from France last year called “The Big Lie.” This summer, just as German outrage over the war in Iraq was starting to boil, Mr. von Bulow came out with his book, “The CIA and the 11th of September, International Terror and the Role of the Secret Services.”

Mr. von Bulow is careful to phrase his ideas in the subjunctive. “Could haves” and “might haves” are sprinkled liberally throughout his book. But he is among those who question whether planes actually crashed into the Pentagon or in Pennsylvania and suggests that the crashes might have been staged to whip up popular outrage. He implies that the alleged hijackers who were on those planes could still be alive.

At Mr. von Bulow’s reading at Munich’s Literaturhaus, not all those in the audience agreed with, or were familiar with, his specific charges. He seemed to win favor with his more-general claim that the U.S., once a model for postwar Europe, has become an unreliable nation, from which Germans had best keep their distance. “Each one of our countries has in the past tried to be the dominant world power,” he said. “But I don’t want to be dragged into another world war, one that will last for years and years.”

In conversations with a dozen visitors, one woman said she found Mr. von Bulow’s theories bunk, while others said they found them plausible. “I can’t believe all of it. That would destroy my belief in humanity,” says Daniel Feifal, a student. “But that they knew about the attacks and let them happen because it could further their foreign-policy aims, yes, I’m prepared to believe that.”