German Sept 11 theory stokes anti-US feeling
By Kate Connolly in Bonn
(Filed: 20/11/2003)
 

A former German cabinet minister is drawing huge crowds and stoking the fires of popular anti-Americanism with a book arguing that the US government mounted the September 11 attacks in a plot to win global domination.

Andreas von Bulow has gone further than Michael Meacher, Tony Blair's former environment minister, who was widely criticised for claiming that America knowingly failed to prevent the attacks.

Mr von Bulow, 66, a former research minister in the German government, believes that September 11, when more than 3,000 people died, was staged to justify the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Berlin has made no official response to the book, but behind closed doors ministers have tried to distance themselves from his radical views.

However, 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.

"If what I say is right, the whole US government should end up behind bars," Mr von Bulow told The Daily Telegraph at his home in Bonn.

"They have hidden behind a veil of secrecy and destroyed the evidence - that they invented the story of 19 Muslims working within Osama bin Laden's al-Qa'eda - in order to hide the truth of their own covert operation.

"What I saw on September 11 was a perfectly executed act that could have happened only with the support of intelligence services, and whoever controlled it must have known could only bring harm to the Muslim world," he said.

"I'm convinced that the US apparatus must have played a role and my theory is backed up by the [Washington] government's refusal to present any proof whatsoever of what happened."

Mr von Bulow's book, The CIA and September 11, has sold more than 100,000 copies, a vast print run for Germany.

In more than 271 speculative pages, full of "ifs", "buts" and "maybes", the lawyer weaves his own version of the world-changing events. In it the Arab hijackers were creations of the CIA and were not even told that the planes were to be used as weapons.

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. His "proof" is that only one Israeli died in the attacks.

Some say the highly lucid politician has become a paranoid publicity-seeker. But he is not alone in his hypotheses. At least two other September 11 conspiracy theory books are on the bestseller lists in Germany.

One, by a Left-wing journalist, Mathias Brockers, claims that President George W Bush is the "reincarnation of Hitler". Another, by Gerhard Wisnewski, asserts that the Pentagon was destroyed in a missile attack.

In France, Thierry Meyssan has had a similar success with such theories.

Mr von Bulow denies that his book is contributing to anti-American sentiment in Germany.

"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."