still more paranoia ...

[rich]

There was enough publicity about KSM's plans in the mid-90s to hijack a
number of planes in Asia, part of the plan including hijacking a plane and
crashing it into a high value target like CIA HQ. where else would h'wood
writers get their ideas from--reading newspapers I would think


On Thu, Feb 27, 2014 at 2:16 PM, <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:

> From the description of the book: The United States of Paranoia (posted by
> Dave Monroe): "When a tale takes hold, it reveals something true about the
> anxieties and experiences of those who believe and repeat it, even if the
> story says nothing true about the objects of the theory itself."
>
> Last night I watched the pilot episode of the Lone Gunmen (a spin-off of
> the X-Files, cancelled after one season).
>
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRtqQLMAZek
>
> I'd watched and enjoyed the 13 episodes of the show when they were aired
> from March - May, 2001, but had forgotten what happens in the pilot: a
> government conspiracy to crash a domestic airliner into the World Trade
> Center. As a would-be whistleblower explains it (paraphrasing): "The Cold
> War is over. It's abad time for arms manufacturers, so the plan is to crash
> the plane, let some nutcase dictator claim credit, then smart-bomb the hell
> out of them."
>
> I could put myself in the mindset I must have had when I originally
> watched it: that's contrived and dopey. I certainly didn't remember it when
> 9/11 happened, six months later. I gather 911 conspiracists have seized on
> the episode as "proof" of whatever, but I see it as a fascinating example
> of the "ethos" (or "mythos"? - using terms I don't have a solid grounding
> in), of the times. Because all the tropes were there for the creative
> reassembling: vehicle crashing into the Trade Center? Already happened.
> Plane crash linked to terrorism? Already happened. Cynical US invasion of
> Iraq for murky reasons? Already happened. I remember the flurry of anxiety
> after the US bombed Libya in 1986, that Libyan terrorists would retaliate
> by bombing the Trade Center (and that's after Back to the Future, where
> Libyan terrorists are the big threat). Yes, all of it solidly in the
> public's imagination, long before 9-11.
>
> Laura
>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
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