The Spectator<\/p>\n
17 January 2004 \u00a0 \u00a0 <\/span><\/p>\n FEATURES\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n I believe in conspiracies<\/strong><\/p>\n John Laughland says the real nutters are those who believe in al-Qaeda\u00a0<\/span>and\u00a0weapons of mass destruction\u00a0 <\/span>Believing in conspiracy theories is rather\u00a0<\/span>like\u00a0having been to a grammar school: both are rather socially awkward to\u00a0<\/span>admit.<\/p>\n Although I once sat next to a sister-in-law of the Duke of Norfolk who\u00a0agreed that you can’t believe everything you read in the newspapers,\u00a0conspiracy theories are generally considered a rather repellent form of\u00a0intellectual low-life, and their theorists rightfully the object of\u00a0<\/span>scorn\u00a0and snobbery.<\/p>\n Writing in the Daily Mail last week, the columnist\u00a0<\/span>Melanie\u00a0Phillips even attacked conspiracy theories as the consequence of a\u00a0<\/span>special\u00a0pathology, of the collapse in religious belief, and of a ‘descent into\u00a0<\/span>the\u00a0irrational’. The implication is that those who oppose ‘the West’, or\u00a0<\/span>who\u00a0think that governments are secretive and dishonest, might need\u00a0<\/span>psychiatric\u00a0treatment.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In fact, it is the other way round. British and American foreign policy\u00a0<\/span>is\u00a0itself based on a series of highly improbable conspiracy theories, the\u00a0biggest of which is that an evil Saudi millionaire genius in a cave in\u00a0<\/span>the\u00a0Hindu Kush controls a secret worldwide network of ‘tens of thousands of\u00a0terrorists’ in more than 60 countries? (George Bush). News reports\u00a0frequently tell us that terrorist organisations, such as those which\u00a0<\/span>have\u00a0attacked Bali or Istanbul, have ‘links’ to al-Qaeda, but we never\u00a0<\/span>learn\u00a0quite what those ‘links’ are.<\/p>\n According to two terrorism experts in\u00a0California, Adam Dolnik and Kimberly McCloud, this is because they do\u00a0<\/span>not\u00a0exist. In the quest to define the enemy, the US and its allies have\u00a0<\/span>helpedto blow al-Qaeda out of proportion,? they write. They argue that the\u00a0<\/span>name ‘al-Qaeda’ was invented in the West to designate what is, in reality,\u00a0<\/span>a\u00a0highly disparate collection of otherwise independent groups with no\u00a0<\/span>central\u00a0command structure and not even a logo. They claim that some terrorist\u00a0organisations say they are affiliated to bin Laden simply to gain kudos\u00a0<\/span>and\u00a0name-recognition for their entirely local grievances.<\/p>\n By the same token, the US-led invasion of Iraq was based on a fantasy\u00a0<\/span>that\u00a0Saddam Hussein was in, or might one day enter into, a conspiracy with\u00a0<\/span>Osama\u00a0bin Laden. This is as verifiable as the claim that MI6 used mind\u00a0<\/span>control to\u00a0make Henri Paul crash Princess Diana’s car into the 13th pillar of thetunnel under the Place de l’Alma. With similar mystic gnosis, Donald\u00a0Rumsfeld has alleged that the failure to find ‘weapons of mass\u00a0<\/span>distraction’,\u00a0as Tony Blair likes to call them, shows that they once existed but were\u00a0destroyed.<\/p>\n Indeed, London and Washington have shamelessly exploited\u00a0<\/span>people’s\u00a0fear of the unknown to get public opinion to believe their claim that\u00a0<\/span>Iraqhad masses of anthrax and botulism. This played on a deep and ancient\u00a0<\/span>seam\u00a0of fear about poison conspiracies which, in the Middle Ages, led to\u00a0<\/span>pogroms\u00a0against Jews. And yet it is the anti-war people who continue to be\u00a0<\/span>branded\u00a0paranoid, even though the British Prime Minister himself, his eyes\u00a0<\/span>staring\u00a0wildly, said in September 2002, ‘Saddam has got all these weapons\u00a0<\/span>…and\u00a0they’re pointing at us!’<\/p>\n In contrast to such imaginings, it is perfectly reasonable to raise\u00a0questions about the power of the secret services and armed forces of\u00a0<\/span>the\u00a0world’s most powerful states, especially those of the USA. These are\u00a0<\/span>not ‘theories’ at all; they are based on fact. The Central Intelligence\u00a0<\/span>Agency,\u00a0the National Security Agency, the Office of Naval Intelligence, the\u00a0<\/span>National\u00a0Reconnaissance Office, the Defense Intelligence Agency and other US\u00a0<\/span>secret\u00a0services spend more than $30,000,000,000 a year on espionage and covert\u00a0operations. Do opponents of conspiracy theories think that this money\u00a0<\/span>is\u00a0given to the Langley, Virginia Cats’ Home?<\/p>\n It would also be churlish to\u00a0<\/span>deny\u00a0that the American military industry plays a very major role in the\u00a0<\/span>economics\u00a0and politics of the US. Every day at 5 p.m., the Pentagon announces\u00a0<\/span>hundreds\u00a0of millions of dollars in contracts to arms manufacturers all over\u00a0<\/span>America ( ‘click on the Department of Defense’s website for details’) who in turn\u00a0peddle influence through donations to politicians and opinion-formers.<\/p>\n It is also odd that opponents of conspiracy theories often allow that\u00a0conspiracies have occurred in the past, but refuse to contemplate their\u00a0existence in the present. For some reason, you are bordering on the\u00a0<\/span>bonkers\u00a0if you wonder about the truth behind events like 9\/11, when it is\u00a0established as fact that in 1962 the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of\u00a0<\/span>Staff,\u00a0Lyman L. Lemnitzer, tried to convince President Kennedy to authorise an\u00a0attack on John Glenn’s rocket, or on a US navy vessel, to provide a\u00a0<\/span>pretext\u00a0for invading Cuba. Two years later, a similar strategy was deployed in\u00a0<\/span>the\u00a0faked Gulf of Tonkin incident, when US engagement in Vietnam was\u00a0<\/span>justified\u00a0in the light of the false allegation that the North Vietnamese had\u00a0<\/span>launched\u00a0an unprovoked attack on a US destroyer.<\/p>\n Are such tactics confined to\u00a0history? Paul O’Neill, George Bush’s former Treasury Secretary, has\u00a0<\/span>just\u00a0revealed that the White House decided to get rid of Saddam eight months\u00a0before 9\/11.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Indeed, one ought to speak of a ‘conspiracy of silence’ about the\u00a0<\/span>role ofsecret services in politics. This is especially true of the events in\u00a0Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. It is the height of\u00a0irresponsibility to discuss the post-communist transition without\u00a0<\/span>extensive\u00a0reference to the role of the spooks, yet our media stick doggedly to\u00a0<\/span>the\u00a0myth that their role is irrelevant.<\/p>\n During the overthrow of the\u00a0<\/span>Georgian\u00a0president, Eduard Shevardnadze, on 22 November 2003, the world’s news\u00a0outlets peddled a wonderful fairy-tale about a spontaneous uprising, ‘the\u00a0revolution of roses’, CNN shockingly dubbed it, even though all the key\u00a0actors have subsequently bragged that they were covertly funded and\u00a0organised by the US.<\/p>\n Similarly, it is a matter of public record that the Americans pumped at\u00a0least $100 million into Serbia in order to get rid of Slobodan\u00a0<\/span>Milosevic in\u00a02000, and huge sums in the years before. (An election in Britain, whosepopulation is eight times bigger than Yugoslavia’s, costs about two\u00a0<\/span>thirds\u00a0of this.) This money was used to fund and equip the Kosovo Liberation\u00a0<\/span>Army;\u00a0to stuff international observer missions in Kosovo with hundreds of\u00a0<\/span>military\u00a0intelligence officers; to pay off the opposition and the so-called\u00a0‘independent’ media; and to buy heavily-armed Mafia gangsters to come\u00a0<\/span>and\u00a0smash up central Belgrade, so that the world’s cameras could show a\u00a0‘people’s revolution’.<\/p>\n At every stage, the covert aid and organisation provided by the US and\u00a0British intelligence agencies were decisive, as they had been on many\u00a0occasions before and since, all over the world. Yet for some reason, it\u00a0<\/span>is\u00a0acceptable to say, ‘The CIA organised the overthrow of Prime Minister\u00a0Mossadeq in Iran in 1953’, but not that it did it again in Belgrade in\u00a0<\/span>2000\u00a0or Tbilisi in 2003. And in spite of the well-known subterfuge and\u00a0<\/span>deception\u00a0practised, for instance, in the Iran-Contra scandal in the mid-1980s,\u00a0<\/span>people\u00a0experience an enormous psychological reluctance to accept that the\u00a0<\/span>British\u00a0and American governments knowingly lied us into war in 2002 and 2003.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n