Publication
The book caused a storm at the 2003 Frankfurt Book Fair, together with a number of other German books on the "real story" behind the 9/11 attacks, following the success of Thierry Meyssan's 9/11: The Big Lie in France. Other best-selling books included Mathias Bröckers's Conspiracies, Conspiracy Theories and the Secrets of September 11th and Gerhard Wisnewski's Operation 9/11 (ISBN 3-426-77671-5), but The CIA and September 11 became the best known. The 271 page book has had a vast print run in Germany, with more than 100,000 copies being sold, and became a number three best-seller on the Der Spiegel non-fiction chart.
Piper Verlag is considered a reputable publisher. The editor of Piper Verlag, Klaus Stadler, contended in an interview with Deutsche Welle that:
| “ | We told ourselves that we would take it seriously, but we do not feel obligated to independently check each and every detail ... And my own personal position is that Mr. von Bülow poses a number of very interesting and important questions. The answers to these questions should be weighed by responsible readers, who should take time to consider them. We don't want to patronize people. | ” |
However, Deutsche Welle found other industry observers who credited an increasingly competitive German publishing market with persuading companies to take on books they previously might not have accepted. A representative from the Börsenblatt bookstore also suggested that in the past, companies would at least have waited longer before releasing such a sensitive book.
The release coincided with widespread skepticism among the German public about the honesty and motivation of the George W. Bush administration, to the extent that a Forsa survey published in Die Zeit in July 2003 found that nineteen percent of Germans (rising to thirty one percent among under 30s) believed that elements within the United States government were behind the 9/11 attacks. This provided fertile ground for The CIA and September 11, which sold strongly: von Bülow eclipsed the sales of writers who clung to a "conventional" interpretation of the 9/11 attacks, such as the intelligence expert Oliver Schrom.
Read more about this topic: The CIA And September 11 (book)
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