Conspiracy Theory

Move over Fox Mulder, here comes Thierry Meyssan. Like the unrelenting FBI hero of the popular X Files TV series, Meyssan is a player in the conspiracy business. But in contrast to the fictional Mulder's sympathetic crusades — one geek's quest to combat a farcical cabal of sociopathic humans and the world-conquering extraterrestrials they serve — Meyssan's campaign has attracted audiences with a singularly despicable suggestion: that the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 were carried out by U.S. government officials as part of a murderous economic and military plot.

Meyssan makes that astonishing proposition in the book l'Effroyable Imposture (The Horrifying Fraud), a controversial tome that topped France's best-seller list in six of the seven weeks since its release. Meyssan defiantly dismisses the universally accepted version of the 9/11 tragedy as "a loony fable" patched together by the White House and the Defense Department "as one lie called forth another." He maintains that neither American Airlines Flight 77 nor any other aircraft crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11 — the explosion supposedly detonated on the ground. He similarly rejects notions that the planes that struck the World Trade Center towers were flown by al-Qaeda terrorists and argues they were in fact directed from the ground by remote control.

So what does Meyssan think really happened? Although he stops just short of the categorical, the militant libertarian champions the theory (previously limited to Internet forums and sites, including his own) that the attacks — and the 3,000 victims they claimed — were the work of officials in the U.S. government and military, looking for an excuse to launch war on Afghanistan and Iraq. "If the energy lobby was the main beneficiary of the war in Afghanistan, the biggest victor of Sept. 11 was the military-industrial lobby," Meyssan writes. "Its wildest dreams have now been fulfilled."

To support his theory, Meyssan plays up factual oddities or gray areas surrounding the attacks — a skeptical focus facilitated by secrecy rules imposed in the ongoing investigations. He notes that no film footage of the Pentagon explosion exists and regards eyewitness testimony of the crash as suspicious, contradictory or flatly incredible. He similarly argues that the photos offer no evidence of the debris typical of an airplane crash (discounting expert explanations that the extreme violence of the impact and heat of the explosion caused virtual atomization of the jet), and says the area of destruction to the Pentagon is impossibly small given the size and span of the craft.

Meyssan's theories on the New York City attacks are even more counterintuitive. He cites unnamed "professional pilots" who claim the World Trade Center strikes could not have been carried out by neophyte fliers. Meyssan then recounts testimony from similarly unidentified New York amateur radio operators, who say they picked up the signals of navigational beacons within the towers guiding the planes to their targets. Using tones of stony authority fused with acidic mockery, Meyssan casts the events of Sept. 11 and those that followed as the work of a virtual shadow junta within the U.S. government that has masterfully manipulated American media and public opinion.

The terminally serious Meyssan, 44, launched the book on one of France's flashiest, trashiest talk shows, and he followed up with a string of controversy-churning TV appearances that further piqued public curiosity. The print press denounced the volume in turn — Libération retitled it The Horrible Swindle — but that too helped fuel purchases. The book now has the distinction of breaking the French publishing record for first-month sales previously held by Madonna's Sex.

Given the dogged manner in which his quirky association Réseau Voltaire defends free thought and speech from a host of nefarious threats, Meyssan's unconventional speculation on 9/11 isn't entirely novel. More surprising was the rush of French readers, who had so earnestly commiserated with a wounded America, to get a copy of the tract. French observers say the book's fascination has more to do with the sheer entertainment value of spooky, over-the-top conspiracy scenarios than it does with any blossoming of anti-American paranoia in France. The publisher, Carnot, plans to release an English-language translation this month and an additional 18 foreign versions by September. What's next — a movie version? A TV series? If only Meyssan had worked in a few aliens, he might have had a real shot at the X Files market.