PARIS: In France, where it has become a runaway best seller in less than a month with 250,000 copies sold in near under-the-counter conditions, it is known as ‘L’Effroyable Imposture’ (The Horrible Lie).

It is soon to become a major best-seller in the United States, and perhaps even the subject of a made-for-TV film which - why not? - could very well be shown on primetime TV next Sept 11 throughout America, if not the Western world.

The book, by Thierry Meyssan, claims that although last Sept 11 did happen, at least in the case of New York, that what was purported to happen in Washington never really came about, that the crash into the Pentagon of an American Airlines aircraft was simply another media event manufactured with the same kind of manipulative techniques that some claim also occurred back in July of 1969 when men were said to walk on the moon, but there too, possibly, they say, really didn’t.

“No plane ever crashed into the Pentagon,” claims Thierry Meyssan, founder of Reseau Voltaire, an esoteric organisation that specialises in such disparate subjects as the occult and the fantasy writings of US cult author HP Lovecraft.

“No, he claims, we know nothing about what really happened that day, for we’ve never really been told the truth about what really occured on Sept 11.”

Publisher Patrick Pasin, whose Editions Carnot publishing house is based in the Western Paris suburb of Chatou, says that he was the first to be surprised by the overnight success of a boook that he thought might sel a few hundred copies at best.

Until then, his house specialized in limited edition books devoted to the subject of management, and says that to increase revenues he had just decided to dip into the subject of unidentified flying objects - known here as OVNIs - with a few books done to accompany the French success of TV series X Files.

But, what happened with L’Effroyable Imposture surprised him probably more than anybody else. It was an appearance by Meyssan on March 16 on one of France’s most-watched TV talk shows, Tout le Monde en Parle, hosted by a popular TV personality Thierry Ardisson, that did the trick, for the following morning, a Sunday, people began lining up outside one of the rare Paris bookshops to be opened, Librairie des Abbesses, located in Montmartre, hoping to find copies of the work.

But the owner, Marie-Rose Guarnieri, said she had never heard of the title, and today regrets she did not have any in stock that day. Indeed stocking the book has been a problem for publisher Pasin, who says that he has been going all out simply to get 250,000 copies printed, for he probably would have been able to sell at least double that number if he’d been able to get enough copies printed and bound in time.

He does not despair, though, as he realizes that the true success of Meyssan’s book is still to come. “We’re presently preparing the US edition of the book,” he says, and as part of its promotion, which will see Meyssan undertake a lecture tour of America to ballyhoo his work, says that he’s “enlisted the support of several major US politicians whose names I cannot yet reveal.” What role they will play in promotion of the book, he will not say either.