Conspiracy Theories

[Michael Hogan]

Jack,

In that link you provided, the author Douglas Linder states:

William Tidwell's Come Retribution: The Confederate Secret Service and the Assassination of Lincoln shows that large numbers of Confederate troops had massed in March of 1865 in the northern neck of Virginia along what must have been a planned route to take Lincoln to Richmond.

Tidwell's landmark book was a collaborative effort with James Hall and David Gaddy and employs painstaking scholarship in detailing the involvement of the Confederate Secret Service and Jefferson Davis. The original plan was not to kill Lincoln, but capture him and take him to Richmond. Of course, the plan took a tragic turn that resulted in Lincoln's death.

Published in 1988, Tidwell's book has stood the test of time and remains widely recognized as the most scholarly modern account of the Confederate plot. (Codename: Come Retribution).

An examination of the sources in the footnotes and attributions in the acknowledgements section confirm this. A majority of documents used in the book came from the National Archives, the U.S. War Department, and the U.S. Navy Department. The authors also relied heavily on individual State Historical Archives.

Spycraft and intelligence operations in the Civil War were far more prevalent and much more sophisticated than commonly believed and in many ways, remarkably similar to methods used by the FBI and CIA a century later.

Being a student of history Jack, I am sure you know all of the above.

Mike Hogan

PS) In my opinion, for the most part, the reviews on Amazon are accurate

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/087805348...glance&n=283155

Edited June 7, 2006 by Michael Hogan

[Len Colby]

Andy...I suggest that you and others read Dr. James Fetzer on

Conspiracy Theories at:

http://www.scholarsfor911truth.org/fetzerexpandedx.htm

It begins:

This is the new penultimate draft of a chapter that will appear in THE 9/11 CONSPIRACY (Chicago, IL: Catfeet Press/Open Court, forthcoming), which I am editing. Comments and criticism are welcome. Email jfetzer@d.umn.edu.

THINKING ABOUT "CONSPIRACY THEORIES": 9/11 and JFK

James H. Fetzer, Ph.D.

ABSTRACT

The phrase "conspiracy theory" harbors an ambiguity, since conspiracies are widespread and theories about them need not be mere speculations. The….

Blah, blah, blah A typical Fetzerian tract, a great deal of verbiage to wow the sheeple that ultimately says nothing.

Every American History textbook tells students that John Wilkes Booth was the lone deranged assassin of Lincoln.

However, this is one case in which later historians were not afraid to pursue all the facts of the CONSPIRACY...so details of the plot are now well known, despite the "official story".

I suggest that you click on:

http://www.law.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/f...conspiracy.html

Jack

Seems like history isn't one of Jack's strong points either.

Yes, the Lincoln assassination was the result of a conspiracy as has been the official story from "day one". It was obviously a conspiracy because one of Booth's co-conspirators stabbed Secretary of State William Steward almost simultaneously. Steward was not seriously injured and indeed continued as Secretary of State for the next four years. A third conspirator was supposed to assassinate Vice-president Andrew Johnson but "chickened out". Within a few days all the plotters had been arrested except Booth who committed suicide or was killed by soldiers (depending on which version you believe). The explanation of Lincoln's death has changed little in the last 141 years. The details are not known "now" due to the work of intrepid "later historians", they've always been known

The vast majority of if not all American History textbooks tells students this and normally contain a photo of the conspirators on the gallows. I remember knowing that Lincoln's assassination was part of a conspiracy from a young age and there were in fact several TV movies about the assassination.

Andy is right all sorts of theories involving deeper or alternate conspiracies started popping up probably even before "Honest Abe" was laid to rest but as far as I know, no serious historian takes them seriously.

Unlike the Lincoln assassination the vast majority of assassinations and attempted assassinations of Presidents, Presidents-elect and presidential candidates were due to "lone nuts".

Len

Edited June 7, 2006 by Len Colby

[Michael Hogan]

Andy Walker wrote:

The projection of all evil into a defined group, race or class has spewed up a series of revolting and repressive ideologies and regimes throughout the 20th century and will not (sic) doubt continue to do so in this century.

Attempts by Mr. Walker to project all "CTs" into a defined group, race, or class as he repeatedly does, makes him guilty of the same mindset that he decries.

Edited June 7, 2006 by Michael Hogan

[John Simkin]

No doubt Andy will end up saying that he was only joking but as this is an educational forum and so it is important to treat his comments as being serious.

Not for the first time Andy has tried to link the people he disagrees with as being somehow anti-Jewish racists. This is intellectually dishonest and politically offensive. It is indeed true that Hitler believed in a Jewish conspiracy. People of all political persuasions believe in conspiracies. In fact, everyone believes in conspiracies of some sort or the other. It is absurd to link all conspiracies together.

It is true that a small percentage of the population are suffering from a mental condition that convinces them that they are a victim of some sort of giant conspiracy. However, these people are usually hospitalized and this description is not relevant to the mental state of members of this forum.

First of all let us work out what Andy is actually saying. According to my dictionary a “conspiracy” is “a secret agreement between two or more people to perform an unlawful act; a plot to carry out some harmful or illegal act (especially a political plot); a group of conspirators banded together to achieve some harmful or illegal purpose.”

As Professor Gerald McKnight said on another thread: “The reality is, of course, that while not all history is a conspiracy there are conspiracies in history. It is a topic that has as much validity as say the politics of railroad building or migration patterns in Missouri.”

The idea that critics of the official version of the truth should be described as a “conspiracy theorist” can be traced back to a secret CIA document (#1035-960) written in response to the publication of Mark Lane’s book, Rush to Judgement in 1966.

The document encourages agents to make use of “friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors)” and “to employ propaganda assets to negate and refute the attacks of the critics”. The document goes on to suggest that it is important to “point out also that parts of the conspiracy talk appear to be deliberately generated by Communist propagandists”.

Interestingly, the CIA document encourages agents to make use of the case of Nazi Germany. “The assassination is sometimes compared (e.g., by Joachim Joesten and Bertrand Russell) with the Dreyfus case; however, unlike that case, the attack on the Warren Commission have produced no new evidence, no new culprits have been convincingly identified, and there is no agreement among the critics. (A better parallel, though an imperfect one, might be with the Reichstag fire of 1933, which some competent historians (Fritz Tobias, AJ.P. Taylor, D.C. Watt) now believe was set by Vander Lubbe on his own initiative, without acting for either Nazis or Communists; the Nazis tried to pin the blame on the Communists, but the latter have been more successful in convincing the world that the Nazis were to blame.)”

The whole purpose of labelling critics of the Warren Commission report as “conspiracy theorists” or “communist propagandists” is an attempt to marginalize them and to prevent other historians and journalists from entering this arena. It was one of the CIA’s most successful operations and has even convinced some fairly intelligent people. In fact, I would go as far as to say that it has become part of the dominant ideology. This is not only true of the capitalist world. Even in communist countries like China and Cuba, the government is likely to label critics as being “conspiracy theorists”.

If we go by the definition of conspiracies above, it is clear that political conspiracies are not uncommon. The reason for this is that those in power have to resort to this tactic in order to keep certain actions from the public. In virtually all cases, conspiracies have usually been aimed against those who pose a threat to the status quo. Another significant ingredient is the use of the intelligence services. This is important as the demands for the release of the necessary documents can be rejected on the grounds of national security.

One of the earliest examples of a political conspiracy concerning the intelligence services took place in 1924. The story begins in the previous year when the Labour Party won 191 seats in the general election. Although the Conservatives had 258, Ramsay MacDonald agreed to head a minority government, and therefore became the first member of the party to become Prime Minister.

This created panic amongst the ruling classes and a conspiracy was developed between MI5 and the capitalist press to destroy the reputation of the Labour Party. In October 1924 MI5 claimed they had intercepted a letter written by Grigory Zinoviev, chairman of the Comintern in the Soviet Union. The Zinoviev letter urged British communists to promote revolution through acts of sedition. Vernon Kell, head of MI5 and Sir Basil Thomson head of Special Branch, told MacDonald that they were convinced that the letter was genuine.

It was agreed that the letter should be kept secret but the contents of this forged letter was passed to the editors of the Times and the Daily Mail. The letter was published in these newspapers four days before the 1924 General Election and contributed to the defeat of MacDonald. The Conservatives won 412 seats and formed the next government.

It is only since the declassification of MI5 documents that historians have been able to discover that the forged letter was created by two MI5's agents, Sidney Reilly and Arthur Maundy Gregory. This letter was passed to another MI5 agent, Major Joseph Ball, who leaked it to the press. In 1927 Ball went to work for the Conservative Central Office where he pioneered the idea of spin-doctoring.

Research carried out by Gill Bennett in 1999 suggested that there were several MI5 and MI6 officers attempting the bring down the Labour Government in 1924, including Stewart Menzies, the future head of MI6.

Of course some left-wing journalists claimed in 1924 that the Zinoviev letter was part of a conspiracy to bring down the first Labour government in British history. They were of course dismissed at the time as “communists” and unfortunately, because of the power of the state, it remained just a theory for over 50 years.

It is fairly easy to prove a conspiracy theory from the distant past. Unfortunately, when these conspiracies are exposed, the media usually ignores the story and the general public, including some people who teach history for a living, become unaware of it.

For example, in the late 1940s left-wing journalists claimed that the newly formed CIA was involved in a conspiracy to turn the post-war Labour government to the right. The reason for this was the American government had been very concerned by what they considered to be the implementation of “socialist” policies such as the introduction of the National Health Service and the nationalization of some key industries.

In June, 1975, Tom Braden gave an interview to the producers of a Granada television documentary (World in Action: The Rise and Fall of the CIA). In the late 1940s and early 1950s Braden had been head of International Organizations Division (IOD), a unit within the CIA. He admitted that he used CIA money to bribe Labour politicians and trade union leaders to advocate and carry-out right-wing policies. As he admitted in the interview: “the funds were not only unaccountable, they were unvouchered, so there was really no means of checking them.... If the director of CIA wanted to extend a present, say, to someone in Europe - a Labour leader - suppose he just thought, this man can use fifty thousand dollars, he's working well and doing a good job - he could hand it to him and never have to account to anybody... They were handed out for work well performed or in order to perform work well.... Politicians in Europe, particularly right after the war, got a lot of money from the CIA.... Since it was unaccountable, it could hire as many people as it wanted. It never had to say to any committee - no committee said to it – ‘You can only have so many men.’ It could do exactly as it pleased. It made preparations therefore for every contingency. It could hire armies; it could buy banks. There was simply no limit to the money it could spend and no limit to the people it could hire and no limit to the activities it could decide were necessary to conduct the war - the secret war.... It was a multinational. Maybe it was one of the first.”

When Braden’s interview was broadcast it created little attention, despite the fact that several of the politicians were still active in Labour Party politics. One was the Chancellor of the Exchequer who at the time was openly implementing the policies of the IMF. Maybe he was still in the pay of the CIA.

Those accused of being “conspiracy theorists” are often associated with the study of recent political events in the United States. In reality, these events have already been officially admitted as being “conspiracies”.

For example, in 1979 the House Select Committee on Assassinations that had been established by Congress reported that John F. Kennedy had been killed as part of a conspiracy. This was confirmed two years later when G. Robert Blakey, the HSCA’s chief counsel, published his book, The Plot to Kill the President. The deputy chief counsel, Gary Cornwell, also published a book, Real Answers, where he supported the HSCA’s view that JFK had been killed as part of a conspiracy. Gaeton Fonzi, the HSCA’s chief investigator, published his book, The Last Investigation, in 1993, where he provided the evidence for his view that JFK had been killed as part of a plot that included the CIA and anti-Castro Cubans. Unfortunately, Blakey, Cornwell and Fonzi were not able to provide complete details of their investigation as the CIA and FBI have refused permission for the HSCA to publish all the files they had seen while investigating the assassination. It has been announced that all HSCA documents will not be published until 2017. Let us hope that Andy Walker is still alive to find out what is in these documents that the FBI and CIA do not want us to see.

Documents are always emerging. Doug Horne, Chief Analyst for Military Records for the Assassination Records Review Board (August 1995 - September 1998) allowed me to post of the forum yesterday a FBI document dated 22nd November, 1963, that he had obtained during his work for the ARRB. This document shows that two bullets were discovered during the autopsy and one was lodged behind Kennedy’s ear. What happened to these bullets? Were they destroyed because they did not come from Oswald’s gun?

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...opic=6849&st=15

What about the other conspiracies that members of the forum discuss. Was Watergate a conspiracy? Well it was according to the official Congressional investigation headed by Sam Ervin. This was confirmed with the publication of the White House tapes and Richard Nixon was forced to resign and others were sent to prison for their role in the conspiracy.

Was the Iran-Contra scandal a conspiracy? Well it was according to the official report written by Lawrence E. Walsh. In "Iran-Contra: The Final Report " (1994) he details what took place and names some of the people, including government officials and CIA officers, involved in the conspiracy. However, as Walsh admits, because of the unwillingness of people like Ronald Reagan and George Bush to be interviewed under oath, it was difficult to discover the full scale of the conspiracy.

The issue is not whether the assassination of JFK, Watergate or the Iran-Contra scandal are examples of conspiracies? The main concern of researchers is to discover the full extent of these conspiracies. This can only be done by getting hold of the documents that are currently classified or by persuading people involved in these conspiracies to talk. Both of these things are difficult to do, but I think it is worth doing. Personally, I don’t think we can honestly say that we live in a democratic state if we allow our governments to lie about what really happened in the past. It is why I am determined to investigate these events to the best of my ability. To be labeled as a “conspiracy theorist” or as being “emotionally unstable” is a punishment I am willing to accept.

[Pat Speer]

As someone whose website has been repeatedly attacked by various groups, and was even brought down for several days a year or so ago, I suspect Andy knows all about conspiracies and is just having a little fun.

[Mike Tribe]

John, I think you've raised the crucial point when you say that conspiracy theorists have to rely for "supporting evidence" on documentary evidence, some of which may never be released and much of which will only be released in the distant future, or on the evidence of people concerned at the time.

Both of these sources have obvious drawbacks. Even seemingly clear documentary evidence like the famous film of the JFK assassination or the photographs of astronauts on the moon are, as frequent vistors to the forum are only too well aware, the subject to passionate debate, with neither set of "technical experts" prepared to accept anything the other group says. Any evidence which doesn't seem to fit the proponent's particularly theory is dismissed as a fake -- the product of the same conspiracy -- and anyone attacking the theory is accused of being an "agent provacateur" or paid servant of the conspirators, or ...

The same sort of problem arises with the use of "eye-witness" reports. You have yourself indulged in a long and controversial debate with Tim Gratz who may or may not have had some sort of tangental connection with shady right-wing groups in the 60s. Mr Gratz's recollection of events is a variance with those of other witnesses. Since we can't rely on documentary evidence to support or contradict witness statements, we really have no way to examine objectively. If you accept apriori that the event you're investigating was the result of a conspiracy, then you have the perfect excuse to dismiss any witness accounts which don't "fit" -- they're part of the conspiracy...

One of the problems is that while some of the long-established conspiracy theories do indeed seem to have been borne out by documentary evidence when this finally became available, others seem to stretch the bounds of credibility and it's difficult to see how any sort of documentary evidence could ever support them. Among these, I would include the suggestion that the Asian tsnami was caused by the explosion of a nuclear device on the seabed by Mossad. I have also seen claims on the forum that there was a US government conspiracy to "seed" hurricanes so that they hit areas with black politicians.

Unfortunately, there seems to be quite a bit of "cross-over" among conspiracy theorists. Supporters of "middle-of-the-road" theories -- like the view that there's something seriously defective about the investigation of the JFK assassination -- are often the same people who suggest that the US Airforce is dropping tons of chemicals on unsuspecting citizens for some obscure reason.

Andy has an abrasive tone in most of his submissions. That's the way he writes. I don't think it's true to say he dismisses all conspiracy theorists as anti-semites (although some certainly are) but he certainly has little respect for them as educationalists or historians. This is, perhaps, an over-generalization. However, the fact remains that the banner of the forum says that it's intended audience is "teachers and educators" but the daily content seems distressingly restricted to a diet of conspiracy which can be of little use to the average teacher in his daily labors at the chalkface...

[Guest]

Not for the first time Andy has tried to link the people he disagrees with as being somehow anti-Jewish racists.

Utter and galloping nonsense based on a deliberate misreading of my submissions in this thread and I presume a disagreement in the way I handled the emergence of Holocaust Deniers on this forum a year ago.

I will return to this rather interesting thread later as for now I have a plane to catch.

[Len Colby]

Any evidence which doesn't seem to fit the proponent's particularly theory is dismissed as a fake -- the product of the same conspiracy -- and anyone attacking the theory is accused of being an "agent provacateur" or paid servant of the conspirators, or ...

Very true, there are several cases of 9-11"inside job" proponents very selectively quoting sources as if the single sentence that seems to support their theories is relevant but the context in which was said which contradicts it is irrelevant. They cite "experts" like Dr. Steve Jones who has a PhD in particle physics, Dr. Judy Wood a mechanical engineering prof. whose areas of expertise are bio-materials and dental fillings, Morgan Reynolds and economist, David Griffin a theologian and Jim Hoffman and Eric Hufxxxx computer programmers, to explain the collapse of the WTC while dismissing the opinions innumerous highly qualified fire engineers including several from the NYFD and structural engineers (many of whom have PhD's) including the lead structural engineer (Leslie Robertson) and construction manager (Hyman Brown) of the WTC*.

Len

*The architect of and at least 2 of the other engineers involved in the design and construction of the WTC died on or before 9-11, I'm not sure if any of the others were still alive after 9/11, if they were they haven't made comments either way about the collapses that I have heard about...

Edited June 7, 2006 by Len Colby

[Owen Parsons]

---EDIT---

I just realized that this post of mine amounts to thread hijacking, so I've deleted it. Nothing to see here. Move along.

---EDIT---

Edited June 7, 2006 by Owen Parsons

[Jack White]

No doubt Andy will end up saying that he was only joking but as this is an educational forum and so it is important to treat his comments as being serious.

Not for the first time Andy has tried to link the people he disagrees with as being somehow anti-Jewish racists. This is intellectually dishonest and politically offensive. It is indeed true that Hitler believed in a Jewish conspiracy. People of all political persuasions believe in conspiracies. In fact, everyone believes in conspiracies of some sort or the other. It is absurd to link all conspiracies together.

It is true that a small percentage of the population are suffering from a mental condition that convinces them that they are a victim of some sort of giant conspiracy. However, these people are usually hospitalized and this description is not relevant to the mental state of members of this forum.

First of all let us work out what Andy is actually saying. According to my dictionary a “conspiracy” is “a secret agreement between two or more people to perform an unlawful act; a plot to carry out some harmful or illegal act (especially a political plot); a group of conspirators banded together to achieve some harmful or illegal purpose.”

As Professor Gerald McKnight said on another thread: “The reality is, of course, that while not all history is a conspiracy there are conspiracies in history. It is a topic that has as much validity as say the politics of railroad building or migration patterns in Missouri.”

The idea that critics of the official version of the truth should be described as a “conspiracy theorist” can be traced back to a secret CIA document (#1035-960) written in response to the publication of Mark Lane’s book, Rush to Judgement in 1966.

The document encourages agents to make use of “friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors)” and “to employ propaganda assets to negate and refute the attacks of the critics”. The document goes on to suggest that it is important to “point out also that parts of the conspiracy talk appear to be deliberately generated by Communist propagandists”.

Interestingly, the CIA document encourages agents to make use of the case of Nazi Germany. “The assassination is sometimes compared (e.g., by Joachim Joesten and Bertrand Russell) with the Dreyfus case; however, unlike that case, the attack on the Warren Commission have produced no new evidence, no new culprits have been convincingly identified, and there is no agreement among the critics. (A better parallel, though an imperfect one, might be with the Reichstag fire of 1933, which some competent historians (Fritz Tobias, AJ.P. Taylor, D.C. Watt) now believe was set by Vander Lubbe on his own initiative, without acting for either Nazis or Communists; the Nazis tried to pin the blame on the Communists, but the latter have been more successful in convincing the world that the Nazis were to blame.)”

The whole purpose of labelling critics of the Warren Commission report as “conspiracy theorists” or “communist propagandists” is an attempt to marginalize them and to prevent other historians and journalists from entering this arena. It was one of the CIA’s most successful operations and has even convinced some fairly intelligent people. In fact, I would go as far as to say that it has become part of the dominant ideology. This is not only true of the capitalist world. Even in communist countries like China and Cuba, the government is likely to label critics as being “conspiracy theorists”.

If we go by the definition of conspiracies above, it is clear that political conspiracies are not uncommon. The reason for this is that those in power have to resort to this tactic in order to keep certain actions from the public. In virtually all cases, conspiracies have usually been aimed against those who pose a threat to the status quo. Another significant ingredient is the use of the intelligence services. This is important as the demands for the release of the necessary documents can be rejected on the grounds of national security.

One of the earliest examples of a political conspiracy concerning the intelligence services took place in 1924. The story begins in the previous year when the Labour Party won 191 seats in the general election. Although the Conservatives had 258, Ramsay MacDonald agreed to head a minority government, and therefore became the first member of the party to become Prime Minister.

This created panic amongst the ruling classes and a conspiracy was developed between MI5 and the capitalist press to destroy the reputation of the Labour Party. In October 1924 MI5 claimed they had intercepted a letter written by Grigory Zinoviev, chairman of the Comintern in the Soviet Union. The Zinoviev letter urged British communists to promote revolution through acts of sedition. Vernon Kell, head of MI5 and Sir Basil Thomson head of Special Branch, told MacDonald that they were convinced that the letter was genuine.

It was agreed that the letter should be kept secret but the contents of this forged letter was passed to the editors of the Times and the Daily Mail. The letter was published in these newspapers four days before the 1924 General Election and contributed to the defeat of MacDonald. The Conservatives won 412 seats and formed the next government.

It is only since the declassification of MI5 documents that historians have been able to discover that the forged letter was created by two MI5's agents, Sidney Reilly and Arthur Maundy Gregory. This letter was passed to another MI5 agent, Major Joseph Ball, who leaked it to the press. In 1927 Ball went to work for the Conservative Central Office where he pioneered the idea of spin-doctoring.

Research carried out by Gill Bennett in 1999 suggested that there were several MI5 and MI6 officers attempting the bring down the Labour Government in 1924, including Stewart Menzies, the future head of MI6.

Of course some left-wing journalists claimed in 1924 that the Zinoviev letter was part of a conspiracy to bring down the first Labour government in British history. They were of course dismissed at the time as “communists” and unfortunately, because of the power of the state, it remained just a theory for over 50 years.

It is fairly easy to prove a conspiracy theory from the distant past. Unfortunately, when these conspiracies are exposed, the media usually ignores the story and the general public, including some people who teach history for a living, become unaware of it.

For example, in the late 1940s left-wing journalists claimed that the newly formed CIA was involved in a conspiracy to turn the post-war Labour government to the right. The reason for this was the American government had been very concerned by what they considered to be the implementation of “socialist” policies such as the introduction of the National Health Service and the nationalization of some key industries.

In June, 1975, Tom Braden gave an interview to the producers of a Granada television documentary (World in Action: The Rise and Fall of the CIA). In the late 1940s and early 1950s Braden had been head of International Organizations Division (IOD), a unit within the CIA. He admitted that he used CIA money to bribe Labour politicians and trade union leaders to advocate and carry-out right-wing policies. As he admitted in the interview: “the funds were not only unaccountable, they were unvouchered, so there was really no means of checking them.... If the director of CIA wanted to extend a present, say, to someone in Europe - a Labour leader - suppose he just thought, this man can use fifty thousand dollars, he's working well and doing a good job - he could hand it to him and never have to account to anybody... They were handed out for work well performed or in order to perform work well.... Politicians in Europe, particularly right after the war, got a lot of money from the CIA.... Since it was unaccountable, it could hire as many people as it wanted. It never had to say to any committee - no committee said to it – ‘You can only have so many men.’ It could do exactly as it pleased. It made preparations therefore for every contingency. It could hire armies; it could buy banks. There was simply no limit to the money it could spend and no limit to the people it could hire and no limit to the activities it could decide were necessary to conduct the war - the secret war.... It was a multinational. Maybe it was one of the first.”

When Braden’s interview was broadcast it created little attention, despite the fact that several of the politicians were still active in Labour Party politics. One was the Chancellor of the Exchequer who at the time was openly implementing the policies of the IMF. Maybe he was still in the pay of the CIA.

Those accused of being “conspiracy theorists” are often associated with the study of recent political events in the United States. In reality, these events have already been officially admitted as being “conspiracies”.

For example, in 1979 the House Select Committee on Assassinations that had been established by Congress reported that John F. Kennedy had been killed as part of a conspiracy. This was confirmed two years later when G. Robert Blakey, the HSCA’s chief counsel, published his book, The Plot to Kill the President. The deputy chief counsel, Gary Cornwell, also published a book, Real Answers, where he supported the HSCA’s view that JFK had been killed as part of a conspiracy. Gaeton Fonzi, the HSCA’s chief investigator, published his book, The Last Investigation, in 1993, where he provided the evidence for his view that JFK had been killed as part of a plot that included the CIA and anti-Castro Cubans. Unfortunately, Blakey, Cornwell and Fonzi were not able to provide complete details of their investigation as the CIA and FBI have refused permission for the HSCA to publish all the files they had seen while investigating the assassination. It has been announced that all HSCA documents will not be published until 2017. Let us hope that Andy Walker is still alive to find out what is in these documents that the FBI and CIA do not want us to see.

Documents are always emerging. Doug Horne, Chief Analyst for Military Records for the Assassination Records Review Board (August 1995 - September 1998) allowed me to post of the forum yesterday a FBI document dated 22nd November, 1963, that he had obtained during his work for the ARRB. This document shows that two bullets were discovered during the autopsy and one was lodged behind Kennedy’s ear. What happened to these bullets? Were they destroyed because they did not come from Oswald’s gun?

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...opic=6849&st=15

What about the other conspiracies that members of the forum discuss. Was Watergate a conspiracy? Well it was according to the official Congressional investigation headed by Sam Ervin. This was confirmed with the publication of the White House tapes and Richard Nixon was forced to resign and others were sent to prison for their role in the conspiracy.

Was the Iran-Contra scandal a conspiracy? Well it was according to the official report written by Lawrence E. Walsh. In "Iran-Contra: The Final Report " (1994) he details what took place and names some of the people, including government officials and CIA officers, involved in the conspiracy. However, as Walsh admits, because of the unwillingness of people like Ronald Reagan and George Bush to be interviewed under oath, it was difficult to discover the full scale of the conspiracy.

The issue is not whether the assassination of JFK, Watergate or the Iran-Contra scandal are examples of conspiracies? The main concern of researchers is to discover the full extent of these conspiracies. This can only be done by getting hold of the documents that are currently classified or by persuading people involved in these conspiracies to talk. Both of these things are difficult to do, but I think it is worth doing. Personally, I don’t think we can honestly say that we live in a democratic state if we allow our governments to lie about what really happened in the past. It is why I am determined to investigate these events to the best of my ability. To be labeled as a “conspiracy theorist” or as being “emotionally unstable” is a punishment I am willing to accept.

John...a wonderful rebuttal to Andy's well-uninformed nonsense.

Everything you say is "right on".

Jack

[Evan Burton]

(post deleted - double post for some reason)

Edited June 9, 2006 by Evan Burton

[Evan Burton]

Andy,

You raise a good point - and I think you have raised another when you have said good conspiracy theory.

If I believe that Queen Elizabeth II is actually a reptile from the planet Zammat in disguise but offer no proof to that effect, then even though it is a theory it hardly is worth discussing.

On the other hand, there are a number of aspects about the JFK assassination that make it worthy of a good conspiracy theory (CT). There are aspects which can be debated or remain unexplained.

I place the 9/11 CT in the middle ground. The events as recorded withstand scientific scrutiny, and so I accept them. Why they happened is another matter (i.e. did the US government conspire to orchestrate the events of 9/11? Did they arrange for a religious extremist group to hijack the aircraft?).

The 'Apollo hoax' is one that falls into the 'bad' CT arena. See my posts within this board on that matter.

Some people speculate that some people need a CT to replace the beliefs that have been disproven. We know that earthquakes are not the sign of an angry god; we know that a solar eclipse is not some supernatural event. People can therefore transfer their feelings of guilt / inadequacey / awe / wonder / fear onto something else, upon which they can assign "blame". We have seen this with racisism ("it is all because of the blacks / asians / muslims / etc"). Belief in a CT can also help bolster ones own ego, because you are "too smart to be fooled" or "are in the know about the REAL events". Jack has kindly demonstrated this with his reply to your opening post:

Andy has clearly been taken in by CIA/media propaganda.

"Conspiracy Theory" is a code phrase used to discredit serious research into govt wrongdoing.

He implies that he is "smarter" than you because he is not "fooled".

You can also shift responsibility with it in the right circumstances. A serial killer might claim that they have been the victim of a "mind control experiment" in order to not admit (mainly to themselves) that they knowingly committed the acts.

I think there will always be abundent 'conspiracy theories'; the sad thing is that because there are so many 'crackpot' theories when a true CT comes around, people will tend to dismiss it. You can only ever look at both sides of the equation, examine the evidence on both sides, seek expert advice when the evidence is beyond your ability to rationally judge, and then make up your own mind.

And once having taken a position, be prepared to defend it and be prepared to change your position if new evidence comes to light.

Edited June 9, 2006 by Evan Burton

[Len Colby]

Very well put Evan. I agree with everything you said above but would like to add a point.

"Belief in a CT can also help bolster ones own ego, because you are "too smart to be fooled" or "are in the know about the REAL events". Jack has kindly demonstrated this with his reply to your opening post:"

"He implies that he is "smarter" than you because he is not "fooled"."

This kind of thinking seems to motivate most of the more crackpot conspiracy theorists who frequently go on about how they are members of some select group who unlike the "sheeple" are too smart to be fooled / brainwashed by propaganda. For many it does seem to be an ego trip.

That is not to say that I don't think that governments and other powerful groups often conspire to achieve their aims and manipulate the media to report their version of events. This of course happens and as John has pointed out is part recorded history but it doesn't happen nearly as often as some people seem to think.

The problem with "crackpot" CT's is that they often distract from real misdeeds and diminish the credibility of people trying to uncover true conspiracies. The US and NYC governments did conspire it seems after 9/11 to cover up the high levels of toxic substances in and around "Ground Zero". A friend of mine who lived near the Trade Center was one of the leaders of groups of local residents who spoke out about this. He was upset with the "truth movement" because he felt that they made it more difficult to attract attention to the pollution issue and made it easier for it proponents to be dismissed as cranks. Unlike leaders of the "truth movement" he received death threats*, which indicates he stepped on the toes of unsavory people.

Len

* AFAIK the only member of the "truth movement" who claims to have gotten such threats is Jimmy Walter but after seeing him crow like a chicken in his jumpsuit and helmet on Penn and Teller it's hard to take him seriously. Why would he be the only one? Jim Hoffman says he gets more grief from fellow members of the "truth movement" than anybody else.

Edited June 9, 2006 by Len Colby

[Pat Speer]

Very well put Evan. I agree with everything you said above but would like to add a point.

"Belief in a CT can also help bolster ones own ego, because you are "too smart to be fooled" or "are in the know about the REAL events". Jack has kindly demonstrated this with his reply to your opening post:"

"He implies that he is "smarter" than you because he is not "fooled"."

This kind of thinking seems to motivate most of the more crackpot conspiracy theorists who frequently go on about how they are members of some select group who unlike the "sheeple" are too smart to be fooled / brainwashed by propaganda. For many it does seem to be an ego trip.

In Jack's defense, this is a two-way street. If you go to some of the other forums, where Lone-nut theorists have the upper-hand, you will see this condescension all-day long. "Tsk, tsk, you poor poor conspiracy theorist, if only you'd go to the McAdams site or read Posner's book, you'd realize just how big a xxxx Ollie Stone and Jim Garrison are....you'd realize that there's not one SCINTILLA of evidence suggesting anyone but Lee Harvey Oswald pulled the trigger. Pity you're just not intelligent enough to understand the mountain of empirical evidence compiled by the various investigations. If you weren't mentally deficient you'd see the error of your ways." On alt.assassination.JFK Dr. Kenneth Rahn made one comment on my presentation--"read Larry Sturdivan's book; it'll answer all your questions"--failing to grasp that I had read Larry Sturdivan's book, and that it had only raised more questions, and that I had mentioned these questions in my presentation. While I would agree that many CTs are overly obsessed with questioning everything that's official, but frequently deficient in questioning the conspiracy myths created by their heroes and/or friends, it should not be doubted that the LNTs are deficient in questioning just about everything. You won't find more than a small minority that will seriously question the single-bullet theory, and yet you won't find one in a hundred who will tell you where the bullet entered Kennedy and how it made its way to his throat, for example. They just accept that it made its way through without striking bone, as an article of blind faith.

Now how is that "scientific," or empirically-based? How is accepting the vague theory of one subset of doctors and experts being rational, but accepting the actual words of textbooks written by another subset of doctors and experts not being rational?

Edited June 12, 2006 by Pat Speer

[Guest]

I must say that having been away for a few days it has been most interesting reading through the many thousands of words my initial observations have stimulated.

For those of you who rather hopefully suggested that I was 'just having a bit of fun' by posting as I did, and those of you who rather clumsily and totally spuriously suggest that I like to label anyone who disagrees with me as an anti-Semite it would be wise to disabuse yourselves of these strange and unsubstantiated notions.

I am interested in the psychological profile of the conspiracy theorist and it is clear from the violence of the responses to my raising of such issues that elements of paranoia and obsession are indeed present in the minds of some who post here.

I use the word paranoia in its proper sense viz the tendency to project negative attributes into others to protect the self. I believe this is a common general tendency which could be used to help to explain why the "Jews, capitalists, communists, republicans, disinformation agents, CIA, Cubans, Blacks etc. etc." (delete for paranoid preference) can be accused of such a range of historical misdoings. I am also interested in the role paranoia plays in the formation of ideologies - fascism, Marxism, feminism - but this is the stuff of another thread to annoy you all

I have also been interested by the attempts half way through the thread to differentiate between the 'lunatic’ and the legitimate conspiracy theories. I would not presume to be able to make such a distinction but would advise those investigating "conspiracies" to proceed both with an appropriate respect for the academic discipline of history and a clear understanding of how the desire to project may vitiate the validity of what may appear to the conspiracist as self evidently sensible conclusions.