LONDON, Aug 15: Thierry Meyssan, the French author of a best-selling expose _ L’Effroyable Imposture (The Horrible Lie) _ has published a new chef d’oeuvre _ Pentagate _ which claims that no attack took place on the Pentagon on Sept 11.

A large part of the support for his theories has come from the Arab world, with Mr Meyssan having been invited in April to Abu Dhabi where, under the auspices of the Arab League, he gave a major talk in which he developed his ideas before the international press and diplomatic corps.

He referred to the new book he has just issued in Paris, which goes even further in accusing Washington of having manipulated the Sept 11 attacks in support of its own strategic and economic interests, especially in Central Asia and in the Sub-continent, not to mention the Gulf.

In Mr Meyssan’s most recent work, Pentagate, the writer claims that it was not an American Airlines aircraft that crashed into the Pentagon last September, as given out by the US government, but rather a missile purposefully fired against its own headquarters by the US Defense Department.

which in turn is said by Mr Meyssan to have manipulated the event to give the impression that the Pentagon had been hit by the same kind of airliner that had earlier in the day twice flown into the World Trade Center in New York.

“Why else,” asks Mr Meyssan in the Pentagate, “is there evidence in three different parts of the Pentagon of the passage of a small circular device, thought to be a missile, and none of the extensive damage that would have been caused had the Pentagon been hit, as they claim, by a fully-fledged aircraft?”

Thierry Meyssan’s theories are developed on a special website (www.reseauvoltaire.fr) which has created controversy in recent weeks not only because of the unusual theories developed in his books, but also in making a claim that a prominent Taliban dignitary, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef, has been “tortured to death” at Guantanamo Bay last month.

According to a dispatch issued in Paris on Aug 7, Reseau Voltaire (the website) said it had learnt from its own special sources that Mullah Zaeef, who had served as the Taliban ambassador to Islamabad, had been “tortured to death” while undergoing interrogation at Guantanamo Bay by US authorities.

In attempting to authenticate the story as published by Reseau Voltaire, a Swiss daily, Le Temps, was told by an official of the Red Cross that “Mullah Zaeef was last seen alive at Guantanamo in mid-July,” a statement that does not contradict Reseau Voltaire’s claim that he had died at the US military facility late last month.

Reseau Voltaire is named after the 18th century French philosopher, Voltaire, who defended his views to the point of undergoing imprisonment rather than abandon ideas that were not always to the liking of the governments and literary establishment of his day.