A much-publicised opinion poll, conducted earlier this year, found that 19% of Germans considered it possible that the US intelligence services had carried out the attack on the World Trade Center.
Today, I learn that a book promoting this conspiracy theory is climbing the best-seller lists in Germany. The book, “The CIA and Sept. 11: International Terror and the Role of the Secret Services” written by Andreas von Bülow, a former member of the German cabinet, claims that the attacks on 9/11 would only have been possible with the co-operation of US intelligence agencies.
Rejecting the official claim that Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda network were behind the worst terrorist attacks in American history, von Bülow suggests that the four hijacked jets had been secretly fitted with equipment that allowed unknown parties on the ground to deprive the pilots of control and then direct the aircraft, by remote control, into their targets.Young Germans seem particularly susceptible to this kind of propaganda and consume it with unthinking relish. It seems to feed a certain darkness of the soul, which at times has come to dominate the German psyche, sometimes with disastrous results.
When asked to identify his sources, von Bülow told Der Spiegel in an interview that “a lot came from the Internet”.
