The Big Lie
CBS News
Sept. 4, 2002


If ever the world became a global village, it was last Sept. 11, when 
hundreds of millions of people around the world saw and heard the attacks 
on the World Trade Center.

But the very technology that made that the most communicated and most 
witnessed event in history also has contributed to what some are calling 
"the big lie."

It turns out an overwhelming majority of people in the Muslim world, 
according to a Gallup poll, do not believe the attacks of Sept. 11 were 
orchestrated by Osama bin Laden, or by Arabs, or by Muslims.

Many believe, instead, that the whole thing was a conspiracy orchestrated 
by Jews.

Where did they hear that? From the television and the Internet.

How pervasive is the belief in "the big lie"? We found out when we visited 
a wedding party in a small town in Pakistan.

The scene: Muslims walking into a large tent where wedding party guests are 
gathered. Americans are rarely seen in places like this these days. But our 
guide, Khalid Khawaja, grew up there, and CBS reporter George Crile 
accepted an invitation to join him at this wedding party.

All the town's leading citizens were there: the mayor; the pediatrician; a 
chemical engineer; a businessman; a journalist. And not one of them had 
anything friendly to say about America.

Said one guest: "People hate America. Yeah, that's true."

Such statements have come almost to be expected in the Islamic world. But 
what came next caught reporter Crile completely by surprise.

The Jews did it. That's exactly what they are saying: the mayor, the 
businessman, the journalist, the baby doctor...everyone. And, as one of 
them said, "Osama is totally innocent!"

Totally innocent? It sounds incredible - the idea that Osama bin Laden had 
nothing to with the World Trade Center attacks. But as the Gallup poll 
later confirmed, that's exactly what most Muslims believe.

"I was surprised that very few, even among the elites, believe that bin 
Laden did it," says Dr. Shibley Telhami, the man whom Gallup commissioned 
to analyze the findings of its survey.

What is most important about the results of the polls?

Says Telhami, "Well, if you look at the polls - and the ones that I have 
done in the Arab world - pertaining to Sept. 11, it's clear that there's 
almost a unanimous view that bin Laden was not responsible for Sept. 11. 
And that actually comes as a shock to Americans, given the evidence that is 
obviously out there. How could this be?"

It's a perplexing question. In this information age, it may be that the 
Sept. 11 attack was witnessed by more people than any event in history. And 
there was every reason to believe and hope that a consensus would have 
formed around the world about what had happened and who was responsible.

Mass murder had been committed and pictures of the 19 militant Muslim 
hijackers were printed in the papers. In America, there has never been any 
doubt about who was ultimately responsible. In the words of President Bush: 
"The evidence we have gathered points to a person named Osama bin Laden."

But as pollster Telhami explains it, when the president talks, most Moslems 
simply don't listen. He explains, "People say, 'Yes, you're giving me 
evidence. But frankly, I don't trust the system. I don't trust the 
messenger. I don't trust the message. I just don't believe.'"

But what is widely believed across the Muslim world, is the story we heard 
of the Jewish conspiracy, in which 4,000 Jewish employees at the World 
Trade Center were warned to stay home.

CBS News consultant Milt Bearden ran the CIA's Afghan war against the 
Soviets in the 1980s. Today, Bearden worries that America faces a new kind 
of threat that it doesn't yet understand.

"You couldn't even get a bad movie put out with a science fiction story 
line like this," says Bearden. "But yet that one caught on very quickly 
throughout that part of the world… This current war that we're in now is 
the first war in the information era… information, misinformation, 
disinformation."

Bearden says the story of the 4,000 Jews is an example of the new kind of 
threat we face.

There's always been a belief in the so-called "Jewish conspiracy" in the 
world of Islam. But it seems now to have just taken off, and gone into the 
almost unbelievable stratosphere.

How the myth of the 4,000 Jews became reality in the minds of Muslims 
around the world is a cautionary tale from the dark side of the information 
age.

It began on Sept. 13 in Jordan when rumors of Israeli involvement in Sept. 
11 surfaced as news stories in two Arab papers.

The next day, a crucial element was added: the figure 4,000. That was the 
number of telephone calls an Israeli ambassador told reporters had come 
into his government from worried Israelis unable to contact their relatives 
in New York.

Then on Sept. 17 in Beirut, al Manar, a television station controlled by 
the radical Islamic group Hezbollah, aired the full fantasy for the first 
time. Billed as a special investigative report, al Manar claimed that 4,000 
Israelis employed at the World Trade Center had not shown up for work on 
Sept. 11.

The next morning, this tale hit the Internet and began moving from one 
Islamic Web site to the next. In the days and weeks that followed, the 
story spread like wildfire all across the Muslim world, surfacing in 
newspapers, radio and TV reports and talk shows in Iran, Egypt, Pakistan 
and beyond

In just a matter of days, one falsehood piled on top of another and passed 
on to audiences around the globe had produced "the big lie" - a lie now 
accepted as fact throughout the Muslim world.

Most Americans probably would say that's ludicrous. And they also might say 
that if certain people want to believe it, there's not much to be done 
about it.

But Bearden says, "That's been the way Americans go at it. We say, 'Let 
them believe what they like.' You know: 'Sticks and stones.' Well, guess 
what? That doesn't work any more. We've got to come to deal with that."

As an example of how quickly lies can lead to violence, Bearden points to 
the 1979 incident at the U.S. embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan. At Friday 
prayers, a mullah told a fantastic tale of American and Israeli soldiers 
marching on the holy city of Mecca. Within minutes, thousands of Pakistanis 
headed for the U.S. embassy and onto newscasts around the world.

 From CBS Evening News: "The invaders ran shooting through the corridors, 
took over the roof and set fires, reportedly with Molotov cocktails..."

Adds Bearden, "And a lot of Americans barely escaped through a hatch onto 
the roof. Otherwise, it would have been an even greater disaster. That is 
just simply the information thing just going crazy."

Two Americans and two Pakistani employees were killed. The embassy burned 
to the ground. And all because of a rumor.

There was absolutely nothing to it?

"Nothing," says Bearden. "No, there was just nothing there… You know, 'the 
big lie' usually has something somewhere. This had nothing."

But in 1979 Islamabad, it spread like a proverbial prairie fire, but on a 
somewhat limited basis, in and around Islamabad. And Bearden's point is: 
Now, when that sort of spark goes out, it reaches a billion people plus.

"The world is connected," he explains, adding, "1979 was still sort of a 
steam-driven world. And now anything that goes on in the information world 
is instantaneous.

Undersecretary of State Charlotte Beers is in charge of promoting America's 
image abroad. A successful Madison Avenue advertising executive, Beers was 
recruited by the Bush administration to use her skills to sell America.

Has she taken her own poll on the Arab world?

Beers: "We do a lot of internal polls…we have an ongoing recognition of how 
moods and feelings, as well as opinions are in the…"

Rather: "If your polls reflect anything close to what the gallop poll ..."

Beers: "They are close."

Rather: "Imagine that i'm a person, at a Pakistani wedding party. And i'm 
absolutely convinced bin Laden didn't do it. No Muslim did it. The Jews did 
it. Israel did it. Israeli intelligence did it, I say to you. You say what?"

Beers: "I would like to make available to you all the data, and the 
information that we have. Let me refer you to our Web site. Here's this 
booklet we just produced, which will help you follow the complete 
activities of the hijackers - their relationship to bin Laden. Let me show 
you the very words bin Laden himself has used to talk about his role."

Undersecretary Beers was outlining the Bush administration's strategy for 
countering disinformation. The centerpiece of that effort -published two 
months after the attack - was a glossy, four-color booklet spelling out the 
evidence of who was behind the Sept. 11 attacks. The State Department 
printed 1.3 million copies.

"The embassies took this piece," recalls Beers, "and it became the most 
widely published document we ever put out in the State Department."

But it hasn't worked.

Says Beers, "Well, we're dealing with a large, tumultuous environment right 
now. And I will grant you we probably did not get that booklet in as many 
hands as we wished. The literacy rate in some of these countries is very 
low. And we have to communicate on a different level."

Can we turn this around?

"I'm spending every hour that I have," Beers replies, "and I'm surrounded 
by an amazingly devoted group that says we must turn this around."

This summer, the House of Representatives passed a $255 million bill aimed 
at improving America's image abroad. The centerpiece: a new 24-hour 
Arabic-language satellite television network designed to beam America's 
message to the Muslim world.



© MMII, CBS Worldwide Inc. All Rights Reserved.


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