Is it possible for fiction to become reality in the collective consciousness of our society? It seems that Tom Clancy has crossed that threshold.

In a saying quoted from Oscar Wilde in 1889, “ life imitates art far more than art imitates life,” he was making a curious point.

Is society so impressionable that whatever is portrayed in pop culture on the screen, in books, or on the artistic canvass will, in effect, be emulated by the participants in our society? There have been many strangely coincidental occurrences that are not so easily explained away which seem to bear out this observation.

14 years prior to the wreck of the Titanic in 1898 Author, Morgan Robertson, wrote a novel about an unsinkable ocean cruise liner that was the largest ship of its kind ever built and the technical masterpiece of its day. The story published was entitled Futility, or the Wreck of the Titan. Amazingly, even the cover of the original book appears like the art work of one many sinking of the Titanic movies that would later succeed the infamous at sea disaster that occurred 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland around midnight in relatively calm waters after the Titanic grazed an iceberg that tore a ragged opening in the side of the ship above the bulkheads which kept the crew from isolating that flow of sea water to a single compartment.

The similarities between the fictional work of Morgan Robertson and the actual Titanic sinking are astounding. Both ships were British made of steel construction around 800 feet in length, both ships were not equipped with enough rescue boats to adequately accommodate the number of passengers. Like the Titanic, Robertson’s Titan sunk 400 miles off the coast of Newfoundland traveling at 22.5 knots. The Titanic was at a speed of 25 knots when it encountered the iceberg along with its inestimable fate. Robertson’s Titan also collided with an iceberg at midnight though going down much more rapidly than did the actual Titanic which sank gradually as the gigantic ship’s pumps lost the battle to the in rushing Atlantic ocean waters.

Another example of life imitating art could be the UFO phenomena and controversial abduction syndrome. At the turn of the century the horrific tales of H.P. Lovecraft created quite a literary stir with his macabre fascination with the occult and Satanic worship. Lovecraft’s legacy would live on decades later to be immortalized in movies such as
“ Reanimator” as well as TV scripts portrayed on Rod Serling’s “Night Gallery”.

A collaborator of Lovecraft’s known as Aleister Crowley, purported to have been the most evil man in Europe, fast became a mentor of Lovecraft’s. The two writers dabbled in many odd and terrifying practices, but it is Crowley’s work of 1918 “Amalantrah Working” which describes a population of small creatures with dark slanted eyes known as the Lam. Their general appearance has an uncanny resemblance to the Grey aliens that have been described by eye witnesses in abductions ever since the Barney and Betty Hill incident in 1961. The testimony given of these entities even tie in with accounts given of bodies that were supposedly recovered by the USAF 509th Bomb Group at the site of the flying saucer crash near Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. Small humanoid child sized, enlarged heads, huge black slanted eyes, and wearing strange body suits, these crews of crashed alien craft are virtually identical to the Lam in Aleister Crowley’s book of 1918.

The early science fiction movies of  Flash Gordon in the 1930’s as well the more sophisticated classics that would inspire such later films as H.G. Wells “War of the Worlds” and  “The Day the Earth Stood Still” in the 1950’s have also made many psychological researchers wonder. Could it be possible that the young and impressionable audiences of those eras were unconsciously fantasizing or reliving their theater experiences in nightmarish form only to have imagined that they had seen UFO’s or really been visited and abducted by extraterrestrials in years to come?

From the 1980’s through the mid 1990’s author Tom Clancy was the undisputed king of military techno thrillers. Clancy’s intense studies into Jane’s Defence Weekly, a military and intelligence compilation that has been published since the early 1930’s made his work thoroughly informative and that much more believable due to his technically insightful description of munitions, aircraft, and delivery systems. Clancy, a student of history and military conflict, did a good amount of instructive dissertation in each of his novels, often comparing the past and present in terms of geopolitical diplomacy and the impact of its failure measured in war.

Tom Clancy has most likely made several fictional accounts that have had unintentional parallels to the recent acts of terrorism upon the United States of America. The question is, were our enemies reading the works of Tom Clancy in respect of his expertise on weapons and the type of global conflicts that the characters of his novels face, or were these terrible disasters merely coincidentally related to other causes and influences? After reviewing what Tom Clancy describes in his well orchestrated forays into terrorist schemes, one must surely question just how much his ideas could possibly have provided the impetus for unintended inspiration on the part of our cold and calculating enemies the world over.

In the novel “Executive Orders” an angry and disgruntled Japanese pilot steers a passenger Jumbo Jet onto a suicidal collision course with the White House as Clancy’s character, Jack Ryan, is attending a swearing in ceremony. Haven broken away from air traffic control and on a course heading for a crash that will virtually annihilate the entire US government, a secret service agent can only get off one shot with a shoulder mounted SHRIKE missile that only takes out one huge wing engine as the aircraft looms above Capitol Hill. However, that won’t stop the inevitable from happening as a fiery plane crash kills almost the entire Senate and Congress, including the President. Jack Ryan manages to survive and becomes the unwitting President of the United States in the aftermath of the tragedy.

Could Tom Clancy’s “Executive Orders” have been the inspiration for the deadly use of 3 airliners that crashed into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the fourth; Flight 93 that crashed as passengers clashed with the terrorists who had commandeered the cockpit and would have struck the White House had they succeeded? One can only guess, but the scheme drawn up by the terrorists certainly make this a plausible argument.

In another Tom Clancy novel “ Debt of Honor” another scenario seems very similar to recent events unleashed in the Arab world that have caught the Obama administration by surprise and have caused the United States to stop and deeply reconsider foreign policy in that region. In this novel secret international coalition of nations target the US in a number of clandestined terrorist strikes through false flag operations designed to confuse American intelligence as to the true identity of the perpetrators.

A powerful Japanese industrialist angry at America due to a financially debilitating hold up in the shipment of new cars plots against our nation. When an unusual mechanical failure causes the death of a family, thousands of Japanese imported auto shipments are held up outside port of entry for inspection. The heavy costs of delay, shipping, and loss of sales begin to have a devastating effect on the Japanese economy as weeks go by, and the US government refuses to allow further importation until all vehicles have been checked.

The Japanese contact militarist factions in China and India who all have a bone to pick with the US over its foreign policy. The Japanese believe if America is hurt badly enough along several different fronts that they will capitulate and be militarily humiliated and forced to negotiate on Japan’s terms. The Indian Premier also has grudge to settle with, President Jack Ryan, whom she is convinced is weak and indecisive.

A series of false flag operations begin all over the world startling the American military and making it difficult for US intelligence agencies to determine who is responsible for the ingeniously executed attacks. One terrorist commander makes a chilling analogy of their strategy saying, “ America is the lion too powerful for any single foe to take on, but when several hyenas attack at once from different directions, the big strong lion will run away while the hyenas nip at his balls.”

Have we not seen a parallel recently in the Middle East and North Africa as 20 American embassies and consulates have been ravaged by terrorist attacks with the White House unable to determine the origin of the aggressors? Even now after weeks of study, the Obama White House and State Department have only admitted the attacks were well planned and coordinated, while still not being able to identify the multitude of terrorist organizations that have combined efforts to attack our diplomatic facilities under a variety of different nations and extremist groups from Al Qaeda to Hamas to the Muslim Brotherhood. No one is sure, making military reprisals difficult and potentially even more dangerous by creating even more enemies of the US if innocents are killed. Even Russia has been caught secretly moving weapons to Syria.

Could Tom Clancy’s novel “Debt of Honor” have inspired such a convoluted operation targeted against US foreign interests in the Arab world? Once again, we cannot easily dismiss the possibility. Would it not be feasible that a joint alliance of nations could carry out operations against the US under the guise of a multitude of terrorist organizations with vague ties to their supporters as in “Debt of Honor”?

In the novel, “Sum of all Fears” another Tom Clancy best seller, once again the most unthinkable threat possible is exploited against the US, only this time instead of  Japan, Russia, or India hiding behind the false flag operations of terrorists, America is under assault by domestic terrorists. The interesting twist involves the Patriot Movement of survivalists and those convinced that one day they will have to take up arms against their very own government in the event of martial law being declared by the White House.

One might recall that Timothy McVeigh, who was convicted of bombing the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City and executed after his trial was revealed as having connections and the financial support of terrorists in Manila, Philippines and Mindanao, but had been aided by a former bomb plot conspirator who had pulled off the first World Trade Center bombing in1993 and escaped the country to move on to other operations, specifically the Arthur P. Murrah Building April 19, 1995. This attack alarmed Patriot groups who felt that the federal government had blown up it’s own building to incriminate them. Co-conspirators, Terry Nichols and Yousef Khan, a former Iraqi soldier, put their plan together along with McVeigh, a former Army sergeant who served in the Persian Gulf War.

In Clancy’s novel “Sum of all Fears” ignorant “Hillbilly” Patriots are manipulated into participating in the bombing plot. An old Israeli aircraft crash site leads to the recovery of an old nuclear device that is restored to deployable condition by a disgruntled German physicist, who polishes and restores the plutonium core to the bomb only to be murdered once he has completed his mission. The plot to score the most devastating attack of all time upon America is almost in place.

The Patriots manipulated by the terrorists, actually plotting the attack are instructed to rent out a hotel room near the Denver Broncos stadium just before the Super Bowl. Just as the Patriot is readying the nuclear device in the bathroom before it is to be smuggled into the stadium, an accompanying Middle Eastern terrorist surprises the country boy Patriot and ritually kills him, mutilating his body, and leaving the corpse behind in the bath tub of the motel room.

Fortunately, the recovered and reconditioned Israeli nuclear device fizzles instead of detonating into a full blown mushroom cloud of devastation. Still thousands of football fans in the stadium itself die from the smaller less deadly partial explosion leaving a macabre football stadium of scorched bodies in the stands in the aftermath of a tragedy that could have been much worse.

Later on, a further plot to deliver a powerful explosive device to Washington DC in a cement mixer truck purchased at an auction is foiled when the strong ammonium smell of stored shaped charges within the cement mixing drum causes suspicion from an 18 wheeler truck driver parked next to it who asks the Patriot to move his vehicle away from his rig while pulled over at a truck stop. A state trooper sitting nearby at the counter overhears the conversation and asks the driver of the cement mixer to step outside in order to examine the Patriot’s suspicious cement mixer to see what is causing the odd smell.

The Sum of all Fears was written in 1991. This best selling novel by Tom Clancy preceded both the first World Trade Center bombing and the Joseph. P. Murrah Federal Building attack in 1995 in Oklahoma City. The author makes it very clear that the cooperation between extremist and terrorist organizations spanning many different nations is not only possible, but as history would soon prove, a very viable theory turned into the grim reality of civilian fatalities on US soil. God help the people of the America in averting any terrorist plots attempting to use fissionable material. It is bad enough that so many aspects of Tom Clancy’s novels have already been realized. Let us hope that no further predictions of such events are unintentionally conveyed to the waiting imaginations of our enemies.