BERLIN, Sept 11: What do big oil, the CIA, Mossad and US neo-conservatives have in common? They are all fingered in conspiracy theories about the September 11 attacks that are attracting new fans as scepticism replaces shock two years on.

Theories that the US government or its spies were involved in the plot because they wanted to justify a crackdown on Islamists and invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq have been common in the Muslim world, but are now pulling a wider audience.

“We are especially concerned in the Middle East, secondly concerned in Europe, but America’s not immune,” said Abraham Foxman, director of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).

A US group that fights anti-Semitism, the ADL issued a report last week into the proliferation of books, Web sites and pamphlets promoting conspiracy theories about Sept 11, particularly those that suggest Jewish or Israeli involvement.

“Here was the most covered event in terms of what happened, who is responsible,” Mr Foxman said. “To have so much of the world believe these people didn’t do it, that it was somebody else, classically Jews, is a very, very disconcerting feeling.”

“When anti-Americanism is sweeping parts of the world and Israel and Jews are tied to America, one reinforces the other.”

A book by Andreas von Buelow, a former German minister, which suggests the US Central Intelligence Agency or Israel’s secret service Mossad were involved in the Sept 11 plot, has shot to third place in the German bestseller list.

Von Buelow and other popular conspiracy theorists have been roundly criticized in the mainstream European media, but their ideas seem to be gaining broader acceptance while disbelief about the reasons given for the US-led war in Iraq grows.

A poll published in July showed 19 percent of Germans, and 31 percent of those surveyed under the age of 30, believed the US government could have ordered September 11 itself.

A recent survey by the German Marshall Fund of the United States showed a sharp drop in European support for US global leadership in the last year, with disapproval soaring of US foreign policy, particularly in Germany and Italy.

In a statement, von Buelow’s publishers, the Piper Verlag, defended his book, saying the German people were hungry for information: “The public interest and the debate justify the author’s questions and expressions of opinion.”

In Britain, an article in the Guardian daily by former Labour environment minister Michael Meacher, that suggests US officials were complicit in the plot and purposefully stood down air defences on September 11, has provoked fierce debate.

In France, a book by Thierry Meyssan which charges that a right-wing faction of the US government bent on world domination and control of Middle Eastern oil was behind the attacks, was a bestseller in 2002, selling 164,000 copies.

President of a respected left-wing think tank, Meyssan believes the plane that smashed into the Pentagon on September 11, killing 189, did not exist and that the crash was staged.

Sociologist Pierre Lagrange said the book’s success was fuelled partly by traditionally strong anti-American sentiment in France, but also by the need to discuss the attacks.

“For months, we could not talk about it beyond expressing compassion for the victims. All discussion was blocked by the extraordinary violence and the radical novelty of what happened, and what Meyssan did was breach this wall of silence,” he said.

Ronald Thoden, from the German 9/11 Research Network that organised a gathering of self-styled September 11 experts in Berlin last weekend, denied there was anything anti-American about questioning conventional wisdom about the attacks.

“Initially people were mourning together with America and didn’t dare ask questions, but now they want to know who was behind it,” he said. “It can’t be anti-American because lots of Americans are asking the same questions.” —Reuters