New U.S. $20 Bill Caught Up In 9-11 Conspiracy Theory
[Original headline: $20 Bill Oddities: Some Say They Add Up to Secret 9-11 Conspiracy]
Twenty bucks won't buy much these days. But if you have a new $20 bill in your pocket, you at least have the makings of a conspiracy theory intriguing enough to make movie director Oliver Stone drool.
All you need do is fold the bill three times -- bringing the two sides of the White House's roof together on the reverse side of the bank note -- and you reveal an eerily accurate image of the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, with presidential shrubbery masquerading as billowing smoke.
Flip the folded bill over and you can see what looks like one-fifth of the Pentagon, similarly billowing with destruction. And, with an accordian-style fold of the script on the bill's backside, you see spelled out the first name of the world's most wanted man -- Osama.
Conspiracy or coincidence?
The government artists who designed the note, which began circulating in 1998, have a ready answer.
"The bill was introduced years before the tragedy," says Claudia Dickens, spokeswoman for the Bureau of Engraving and Printing, the nation's currency designer. "It's an interesting coincidence, but that's all."
The operators of a Florida-based Web site (www.allbrevard.net) claim to have discovered the quirk in the $20 bill design at a NASCAR party earlier this month. They posted it online, and say that within 10 days they had logged 1 million "hits."
"It is our duty as American citizens to present this web page to you. God Bless America!" trumpets the site.
But a sampling of comments to the Web site shows that many do not appreciate the subject or the patriotism claim:
"What a shameful display of propaganda," reads one.
"Of all the moronic things I've ever heard," scoffs another.
Yet, about a third of those who wrote seemed to detect a government conspiracy in the bill's design. One even noted a sinister math irony -- nine added to 11 (Sept. 11) equals 20.
An expert on urban myth says the images on the folded twenty could actually help people cope with their sorrow over the worst terror attack in U.S. history.
"People use the [Sept.11] event as a focus for many conflicting emotions. If you're able to laugh about it, you're ready to start moving past it," says Camille Bacon-Smith, editor of the online journal New Directions in Folklore.
Sept. 11-related jokes "began almost immediately," says Bacon-Smith, who is editing an article about humor inspired by the tragedy. "Quite simply, if you're not ready for those kind of jokes, you recoil."
And while some may view the folded double-sawbuck as distasteful, only a very few are likely to see the green-backed origami as evidence of a deep-seated government conspiracy in the design of the $20 bank note, Bacon-Smith said.
"There are those people out there who will see it as a secret plot, and we have a name for them -- crazy."
The same word could be applied to the runaway rumors that permeated cyberspace in the days following Sept. 11. One Web site devoted itself to identifying the "UFO" hovering over the North Tower as it burned. Dozens of others showed the "face of Satan" in the smoke rising from the towers.
"The Internet is like a great big party line," said Bacon-Smith. "It is rich in rumor and innuendo -- all things that have been a part of human culture since people sat around the fire in animal skins and wondered about the lightning."
This certainly isn't the first time creative folds in U.S. bank notes have captured the collective imagination, said Dickens, the engravers' spokeswoman. George Washington's visage on the dollar bill can be converted into a mushroom, she pointed out.
"It's funny what some people will come up with."
• Story originally published by:
The Salt Lake Tribune / UT | Kevin Cantera - May 30.02
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