Obfuscated, and rarely punished, the lies of those in power often achieve their goal: to change the course of history.

Who are the liars? Heads of state, politicians and military leaders, supported by their hierarchies. They have no qualms about lying to the radio, on television, to millions of people, end even under oath to the highest authorities and institutions. They use secret services, military strategy or communications agencies to make their lies more credible. Their motto: “The bigger the lie, the more it will be believed!”

"Nicotine isn’t addictive". These words are the ones that the tobacco industry’s seven most important leaders pronounced in front of the United States Congress. It was April 4th, 1994. Four years later, they had to pay a $200 billion fine and to make their archives public. Deep inside these millions of pages that were classified as "confidential", the whole world learned of a large-scale strategy of disinformation and manipulation. Infiltration of advertising and science, political lobbying, pressure on journalists: complex mechanisms were put in place to create a smokescreen of lies for 40 years...

 

Sex, lies and politics. How a sex scandal changed the face of the United States. “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky. These allegations are false.” Those were Bill Clinton’s words. It was January 26th, 1998. Looking straight in the eyes of his interviewers, the President of the United States lied live from the White House during a filmed press conference. Intimidation, manipulation, … “Monica Gate” was the greatest sex scandal that ever shook the presidency of the United States. An eye-opening demonstration of the mechanics of lies at the highest levels of the State.

December 12th 2008, in the very midst of the financial crisis, Bernard L. Madoff was arrested and handcuffed in front of the media. This former stockbroker was behind the largest financial fraud in United States history to the tune of 65 billion US dollars! This lie lasted for over 20 years ... How did this former lifeguard who had become a rich businessman by age 50 manage to convince so many institutions and wealthy individuals to entrust their money to him?

“Gentlemen, our conversation is over. I didn’t think we would stoop to such a degree of despicability.” The offended man speaking these words was François Mitterrand, the French President at the time. In March 1993, two journalists questioned him on the Elysée Palace wiretapping scandal which had just come to light. The President of the Republic denied everything and was disparaging. Who set up this formidable STASI-style intelligence mechanism? Who was pulling the strings? How did this hidden cabinet work? It would take almost twenty years of investigations to get to the bottom of this large-scale spying organization. 

On October 14th 1990, before a US Congress commission, a 15 year old adolescent girl, Nayirah al-Sabah, gives a chilling testimony of the atrocities committed in a Kuwait hospital by Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi troops. Televisions around the world broadcast the speech. On the 17th January 1991, international forces launch the operation Desert Storm. It’s the First Gulf War. But was this war declared on the basis of a lie, entirely invented by communication agencies, financed by the US government and Kuwait?

It’s the lie which made the United States join WWI. On May 7th 1915, the British trans-Atlantic liner Lusitania was torpedoed by a German submarine. The Germans justified the action by claiming that the ship was transporting concealed weapons. The British denied this, and used the disaster to help shift public opinion against Germany, and therefore justify their eventual declaration of war.

From their reconnaissance planes flying over southern England, the Luftwaffe took photographs of field armies ready to cross the Channel to the Pas-de-Calais area. But on the ground, everything was fake: the artillery was made of wood, the tanks were inflatable... This diversion left the field clear for the landings to take place in Normandy. Countless lives were saved.

This is the greatest American lie of the twentieth century. Richard Nixon spared no effort to ensure his re-election on the 7th of November: spying on his opponents from the Democratic party, wiretapping, stealing documents, using slush funds. A team of 50 people were recruited from within the White House to bring down the opposite camp and rig the election. Presidential lies, misuse of the government structure… The truth slowly came to light, right up to his resignation in August 1974. The most famous scandal involving corruption at the highest level of the leading world power, the lie that forced an American president to resign.

In 1979, in the midst of the second oil crisis, two eccentric inventors proposed to the French industrial oil giant, Elf, a concept for an aircraft able to detect oil deposits underground. Encouraged by promising demonstrations, the French state administration eagerly backed the « avian renifleurs » …which turned out to be a complete hoax, and a financial swindle that would soon become a national scandal.

The flagship of the Greenpeace fleet, the Rainbow Warrior, was docked in Auckland, New Zealand. The environmentalists were organizing a large-scale act of protest in order to put a stop to French nuclear testing in Polynesia. In July 1985, a dozen DGSE (French Directorate General of External Security) agents were stationed in New Zealand to launch an operation to sink the Rainbow Warrior at all costs, including death. There was a huge scandal, “an act of state-backed terrorism, an act of war”, declared the New Zealand minister, Geoffrey Palmer. Mitterrand, who had known about the operation from the very beginning, attempted to defuse the crisis. An extensive and pernicious campaign kicked off.

George W. Bush assured the United Nations Security Council that Iraq was in possession of “weapons of mass destruction” and posed a threat to the United States, particularly through its links with Al Qaeda. “We have a first-hand description” of these installations of death, explained Colin Powell, the Secretary of State. However, it was all untrue. A fabrication thought up by a nobody and taken up by the American government who used this as the principal reason for the invasion of Iraq in 2003. It was misleading propaganda with major consequences.