I recently heard someone speculating, in the presence of my 18-year-old son, that the military-industrial-government conspiracy was responsible for the September 11 attack. Apparently the military flew a plane into its own Pentagon. "Ask yourself," he said, "who benefits?"

Other people have darkly muttered that not enough Jews were killed in the attack, and therefore it was the "work of the Mossad", a theory that has been picked up by Arabic media and apparently is widely believed amongst young Muslim radicals, and many Middle Eastern Muslims in general, and which, if I may use another therefore, has led to better recruiting by the terrorists, and more anti-Americanism.

Now I'm getting emails suggesting that the anthrax attack is part of a government/industry conspiracy—one that seemingly doesn't mind shutting down its own base of power, throwing Congress and Washington D.C. into a turmoil and screwing the economy—and the emailing people are asking "Who benefits? The pharmaceutical companies!"

Then there's the Internet-spread theory that we're attacking Afghanistan so we can put an oil pipeline through there. If the oil companies plan to put a pipeline through Afghanistan, no doubt their friends in Washington were glad of the opportunity to make that more possible—certainly they are opportunistic—but are we to believe that that is the main reason for the bombing, after 5000 Americans were killed September 11? The pipeline theory too will lead to more radicalization of once-moderate Muslims.

Let's leave aside the fact that Osama bin Laden admitted that the violence was carried out by anti-American forces. No doubt the theorists will say bin Laden is in league with the U.S. Government! Let's leave aside the fact that cellphone calls from passengers confirmed who the hijackers were, and their identity was later verified. Hell, the theorists will tell us, that could all be fabricated, right? The families who got those phone calls are just actors working for the conspiracy.

Let's leave that aside. Let's just suppose for a moment, that, for whatever reason, these theorists are wrong. Just suppose. If they are wrong then they are directly harming the families of those people killed in the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and in the other plane that crashed. Because those families are dealing with this the best they can. And one of the ways of dealing with it is settling in your mind more or less who is responsible. If someone says "No—it was the government, it was the Mossad", then we are emotionally stabbing those people. Suddenly it's all up in the air again, suddenly renewed confusion adds to their misery. And for nothing because at best these theorist's don't know for sure they're right. They're guessing. Me, I'm convinced they're utterly wrong but even they cannot know for sure. And basically for the show-off thrill of guessing, they're promulgating rumors, to be picked up on the Internet and by tabloids, that will hurt the families of the victims. That's number one.

Number two, these Theories are giving aid and comfort to the terrorists. This especially now applies to this "theorizing" about Anthrax. The terrorists have to love it when we turn on each other and start pointing fingers, with no proof, when we start flailing about in confused theorizing, clouding the issue, slowing our planning and our responses.

And such theories could help generate another kind of terrorism. It was 'conspiracy' disinformation that motivated Timothy McVeigh to carry out the Oklahoma City bombing. Such theorizing could be planting the seed of more such attacks.

Conspiracy theories sometimes help conspirators get their way. Only not the conspirators the theorists had in mind…

Copyright © 2001 John Shirley. All Rights Reserved.

John Shirley is the author of numerous works including the recently re-released, revised editions of the ECLIPSE cyberpunk trilogy, from Babbage Press, and the award winning story collection BLACK BUTTERFLIES.