SOURCE: Massing, Michael. “Surprise Best-seller Blames U.S.” New York Times (4 May 2002): B11.

In the following essay, Massing describes the various popular responses to Noam Chomsky's book 9-11 and the political background behind the work.

In the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, Noam Chomsky, the M.I.T. linguist and political provocateur, was constantly on the telephone, giving interviews to news organizations. In late September, he received an e-mail message from Greg Ruggiero, a senior editor of Seven Stories Press, a New York publisher. The editor of a series of political pamphlets for Seven Stories, Mr. Ruggiero had published several Chomsky pamphlets and said he wanted to publish something quickly about Sept. 11.

During the next few weeks, Mr. Ruggiero edited several of the interviews Professor Chomsky had given, and supplemented them with his own questions. On Oct. 15, just as the war in Afghanistan was beginning, the resulting 125-page...