There are many, many strange things about the stew of conspiracy theories that fall under the umbrella of “9/11 Truth”—the false, often antisemitic worldview purporting that the US government had inside knowledge of or even actively participated in the September 11 attacks. But perhaps the strangest is that the seed of these theories was planted three months before the attacks themselves.

It was June 28, 2001, when Milton William “Bill” Cooper took to the air on his national radio show after watching a news report on CNN. “Supposedly, a CNN reporter found Osama bin Laden, took a television camera crew with him, went into Osama bin Laden’s hideout, interviewed him and his top leadership, his top lieutenants and colonels and generals in their hideout,” Cooper told his listeners. “He came out and told everybody, ‘Within three weeks, Osama bin Laden is going to attack the United States and Israel.’”

Cooper had part of the story right—a reporter had indeed just reached the inner sanctum of al Qaeda in the mountains near Kandahar, Afghanistan, but he was actually a correspondent for a Middle Eastern broadcaster. And that reporter, the MBC correspondent Baker Atyani, had actually interviewed al Qaeda’s military chief, Mohammed Atif, not bin Laden. “In the coming weeks, there will be a big surprise; we are going to hit American and Israeli installations,” Atif told Atyani. “The coffin business will increase in the United States.” According to Atyani, bin Laden—who was present for the interview—smiled and nodded.

To Cooper, speaking on the radio that day, the interview represented either a major embarrassment for the US government, which had been hunting bin Laden for years, or it was evidence that the government was lying about the threat from bin Laden.

“Now, don’t you think that’s kind of strange, folks?” Cooper said. “The largest intelligence apparatus in the world, with the biggest budget in the history of the world, has been looking for Osama bin Laden for years and years and years and can’t find him. The FBI, also under the leadership of Louis Freeh, has been looking for Osama bin Laden for years and years and years and years and years and many years and can’t find him. Some doofus jerk-off reporter with a camera crew waltzes right into his hideout and interviews him?”

“Now that tells us two things: Either everyone in the intelligence community and all of the intelligence agencies of the United States government are blithering idiots and incompetent fools, including the entire apparatus of the FBI and all of their personnel—or they’re lying to us. They’re not looking for him at all.”

Cooper went on to say that “the CIA created Osama bin Laden” and that “they’re now using him to help bring about world government by making him the big boogeyman because they can’t use [Iraqi dictator] Saddam Hussein anymore.”

Cooper argued that the whole threat from bin Laden was a farce—what would now be called a “false flag” operation. “If you believe it, you are one of the stupidest jerks that ever lived on the face of this earth, and whatever’s going to happen they’re going to blame on Osama bin Laden.”

About 10 weeks later, Cooper’s comment would come to be seen as a prophecy.

The events and aftermath of 9/11 altered almost every aspect of American society: from the ever-present security theater of daily life—the 3.4-ounce liquid bottles at airports, the defensive bollards that now dominate so many urban landscapes—to the expansion of the surveillance state, to 20 years of war in Afghanistan, to the backdrop of fear and anxiety that permeates the culture. Few, though, rightly recognize one of the most important and pernicious impacts of 9/11: how it changed our society’s very understanding and relationship to facts and truth.