Posted on 04/02/2002 2:17:48 AM PST by 2Trievers
PARIS (Reuters) - The French are lapping up a Sept. 11 conspiracy theory that argues the plane that smashed into the Pentagon (news - web sites) never existed and that the world has been duped by a murky U.S. government plot.
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Meyssan, president of Reseau Voltaire, a respected left-wing think tank, reckons the American Airlines Flight 77 that crashed into the Pentagon in Washington killing 189 on September 11 did not exist and that the whole thing was staged by the government.
"I believe the American government is lying... No plane crashed into the Pentagon," he told France 2 television.
Meyssan did not provide an alternative theory for what may have damaged the Pentagon.
And although French media has scoffed at Meyssan's musings, comparing them to the Roswell alien cover-up theory dramatized in the hit TV show "The X-Files (news - Y! TV)," the public are intrigued.
"Copies have been flying off shelves," a saleswoman at FNAC bookshop in central Paris told Reuters. It shot to the top of Amazon France's bestseller list and made it to second place in the booksellers' weekly Livres Hebdo's sales list.
SCIENCE FICTION
Daily newspaper Liberation slammed the book as "a tissue of wild allegations," marveling at its quick rise to fame, from Internet chatrooms, via television chat shows, to bestseller.
Conspiracy theories like the rumors that swirled around the 1963 shooting of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, or the idea that man never actually set foot on the moon, are not uncommon in the United States, but are fairly rare in France.
"This phenomenon is not typical of the French," sociologist Pierre Lagrange told Liberation.
"But the events of September 11 gave us a reality so similar to science fiction, that there has been more of a market for paranoid interpretations." Meyssan says key evidence shows witness accounts are contradictory, that there are few photographs of the crash and that those that do exist show no debris from the plane.
He also asks why the facade of the Pentagon did not immediately collapse from the shock of the impact and questions the fate of the passengers on the flight.
"What became of the passengers of American Airlines Flight 77? Are they dead?" he asks.
Daily newspaper Le Monde and Liberation both probed Meyssan's theory, tracking down relatives of the victims, and quizzing officials over the crash.
News weekly Le Nouvel Observateur denounced the book as revisionism. "This theory suits everyone -- there are no Islamic extremists...everyone is happy. It eliminates reality."
But while Le Monde dismissed Meyssan's theory as flimsy, it admitted that information available did not quite add up.
"There is no official account of the crash...the lack of information is feeding the rumor."
Retourne à faire vin et fromage.
How I liberated Paris, by DeGaulle
Sketches of French WW II heroes
One Million French were in the resistance....
Get a grip. The publisher of this site is a moron, pure and simple. Try this instead:
(Faintest) Regards, Snidely
There is only one explanation, obviously the Pentagon cut off the the jet liner.
Any act that is possible has to be considered to be put forth into actuality, therefore it is the criminal investigator's duty to know every possibility.
I'm all for the war on terrorism, I have been for the past 16 years because of my terrible La Belle experience. But I don't particularly buy the 911 story---I have a few hunches about it.
Go ahead. I'm interested in hearing what you think.
Instead of looking for the "missing" Boeing, this guy should be looking at the faces of those who lost their lives. Here is the Army's memorial page. I cry everytime I visit it.
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