Conspiracy theories chase the carnage

WE were sitting in a cafe in Notting Hill Gate. Gian-Carlo had called me 30 minutes before, only saying that he had "some information" and asking me to meet him at the Starbucks.

I had shown up 10 minutes late - he had forgotten to tell me which of the three Starbucks within 100 feet of the Tube station he wanted to meet at.

"Operation Northwoods," Gian-Carlo repeated. He had that aquiline Roman nose, but, in his basketball sports jersey, backwards baseball cap and bandanna, he was pure south London. You wouldn't have guessed that he had studied classics at Lincoln College, Oxford. I suspected that he worked for MI5.

"Around 1962, the joint chiefs of staff of the US military needed an excuse to oust Castro. The generals plotted to blow up an American ship and blame it on Castro."

"And?" I asked, slurping my cappuccino.

Gian-Carlo looked around nervously. "That's not all they said - we could develop a communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington," he recited, as if from memory.

"You dragged me out of bed to drink stale American coffee for some crackpot conspiracy theory?" I asked. I was fuming.

"Conspiracy fact." Gian-Carlo reached into his pocket and showed me a photocopy of what looked like an official document. The top of it was stamped "FOIA."

He continued. "Don't you wonder where the anthrax came from?" I had wondered. Anthrax attacks in the US in 2001 killed five people, but no-one had ever been convicted.

"Steven Hatfill." Gian-Carlo, like a magician, pulled out a photo of a man in a biohazard suit complete with gas mask.

"He was born in the States and, according to him, in 1978, simultaneously worked for the US army Institute for Military Assistance and the Rhodesian special air squadron. He's the closest thing they have to a suspect in the anthrax case. Why haven't they taken him in? Because he knows too much."

I leaned back in my seat. "You've lost me. So they hire white supremacists in the US army. What's your point?"

Gian-Carlo appeared exasperated. "Remember when Bush visited London in 2003? And a million thronged the streets in protest? That was bad news for the neocon hawks in Washington. It proved the lie that the UK was America's ally. What happened then?"

"Istanbul," I said, coldly. "Right. If the terrorists had wanted to do a bigger favour for Bush, distracting people's attention, I don't know what it could have been. And then there was 3/11. Spain, where 90 per cent of the people opposed the war. It looks like the conservatives, Aznar's party, are heading for defeat. And what happens? Bombs in Madrid."

I found the flaw in his argument. "But it backfired. The Spaniards kicked Aznar's party out."

"But you know America better than I do. In the States, the most jingoistic, militaristic party would have won in a landslide after an attack like that. That's what an American neocon would have predicted."

"And now?"

Gian-Carlo continued: "With pressure on the G8, it looks like Bono and Geldolf and Bill Gates and Kofi Annan, even, are actually getting concessions.

"Then this. A bombing in England, in London.

"The city that elected Red Ken and George Galloway. Bombs on Edgware Road, bombs killing Muslims."

"Al-Qaida kills Muslims all the time," I said. "Look at what's happening in Iraq."

Gian-Carlo peered at me with pity in his eyes. "In Iraq, it doesn't make sense either for them to blow up civilians. Collaborators, maybe. But women in the market? No. Those attacks are planned by people who want to smear the resistance."

"You couldn't keep that a secret," I said angrily. "Someone would know. Someone would tell."

"Yeah." Gian-Carlo smiled wanly. "Just tell that to David Kelly."

"You're being irresponsible. We don't need this type of paranoid fear-mongering, not now."

"Exactly," Gian-Carlo whispered. "Question nothing. Just like the old days, just like the Blitz, when the enemy was clear, when we knew we had to follow the leader."

I was feeling sick. "You're crazy," I said. "I can't print this." I got up out of my seat and headed for the door.

"Then print it as a fairytale," Gian-Carlo called after me. "Let them think you made it up. The people deserve ..."

The door closed behind me. I took a deep breath, looked around desperately at a suffering city and walked away.

• Professor Jonathan David Farley is a mathematician based at Harvard University and a 2005-6 science fellow at Stanford University's Centre for International Security.