1
The Gulf of Tonkin Incident, escalator of the Vietnam War, never happened
Conspiracy theory: The Gulf of Tonkin incident, a major escalator of US involvement in the Vietnam War, never actually occurred.

It's true. The original incident – also sometimes referred to as the USS Maddox Incident(s) –involved the destroyer USS Maddox supposedly engaging three North Vietnamese Navy torpedo boats as part of an intelligence patrol. The Maddox fired almost 300 shells.

President Lyndon B. Johnson promptly drafted the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which became his administration's legal justification for military involvement in Vietnam. Problem is, the event never happened.

In 2005, a declassified internal National Security Agency study revealed that there were NO North Vietnamese naval vessels present during the incident. So, what was the Maddox firing at? In 1965, President Johnson commented: “For all I know, our Navy was shooting at whales out there.”

Worth pointing out: The NSA's own historian, Robert J. Hanyok, wrote a report stating that the agency had deliberately distorted intelligence reports in 1964. He concluded: “The parallels between the faulty intelligence on Tonkin Gulf and the manipulated intelligence used to justify the Iraq War make it all the more worthwhile to re-examine the events of August 1964." (Source 1 | Source 2)

2
Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment: Deliberate Non-treatment of Syphilis-Infected Patients
Conspiracy theory: Between 1932 and 1972, the US Public Health Service conducted a clinical study on rural African American men who had contracted syphilis. The Public Health Service never informed these men they had a sexually transmitted disease, nor did they offer treatment, even after penicillin became available as a cure in the 1940s.

Sadly, it's true. Rather than receiving treatment, the subjects of these studies were told they had “bad blood."

When World War II began, 250 of the men registered for the draft and were only then, for the first time, informed they had syphilis. Even then, the PHS denied them treatment.

By the early 1970s, 128 of the original 399 men had died of syphilis and syphilis-related complications, 40 of their wives had the disease and 19 of their children were born with congenital syphilis.

Worth pointing out: A similar experiment conducted on prisoners, soldiers, and patients of a mental hospital in Guatemala actually involved the PHS deliberately infecting the patients and then treating them with antibiotics.
(Source 1 | Source 2)

3
Project MKUltra: CIA Mind Control Program
Conspiracy theory: the CIA ran secret mind control experiments on US citizens from the 1950s until 1973.

It's so true that in 1995 President Clinton actually issued a formal apology on behalf of the US government.

Essentially, the CIA used drugs, electronics, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, verbal and sexual abuse, and torture to conduct experimental behavioral engineering experiments on subjects. The program subcontracted hundreds of these projects to over 80 different institutions, including universities, hospitals, prisons, and pharmaceutical companies.

Most of this was uncovered in 1977, when a Freedom of Information Act exposed 20,000 previously classified documents and triggered a series of Senate hearings. Because CIA Director Richard Helms had most of the more damning MKUltra files destroyed in 1973, much of what actually occurred during these experiments is still unknown and, of course, not a single person was brought to justice.

Worth pointing out: There is growing evidence that Theodore Kaczynski, otherwise known as the Unabomber, was a subject of the Project MK Ultra while he was at Harvard in the late 1950s.
(Source 1 | Source 2 | Photo)

4
Operation Northwoods: US military had plans for ‘false flag' Cuban provocation
Conspiracy theory: The Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US military drew up and approved plans to create acts of terrorism on US soil in order to sway the American public into supporting a war against Cuba.

It's true and the documents are out there.

Fortunately, President Kennedy rejected the plan, which included: innocent Americans being shot dead on the streets; boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami, and elsewhere; people being framed for bombings they did not commit; and planes being hijacked.

Additionally, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, led by Chairman Lyman Lemnitzer, planned to fabricate evidence that would implicate Fidel Castro and Cuban refugees as being behind the attacks.

Perhaps most horrifyingly, Lemnitzer planned for an elaborately staged incident whereby a Cuban aircraft would attack and shoot down a plane full of college students. (Source 1 | Source 2)

5
CIA drug trafficking in Los Angeles
Conspiracy theory: During the 1980s, the CIA facilitated the sale of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles and funneled millions in drug profits to a Latin American guerrilla army.

It's convoluted and complex, but it's true.

Gary Webb's book Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion outlines how CIA-backed Contras smuggled cocaine into the U.S. and then distributed crack to Los Angeles gangs, pocketing the profits. The CIA directly aided the drug dealers to raise money for the Contras.

“This drug network,” Webb wrote in a 1996 San Jose Mercury News article, “opened the first pipeline between Colombia's cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles, a city now known as the 'crack' capital of the world. The cocaine that flooded in helped spark a crack explosion in urban America . . . and provided the cash and connections needed for L.A.'s gangs to buy automatic weapons.”

Worth pointing out: On December 10, 2004, Webb committed suicide under suspicious circumstances, namely the fact that he used two bullets to shoot himself in the head.
(Source | Photo)

6
Operation Mockingbird: Early incarnation of media contro
In the late 1940s, as the Cold War was just getting underway, the CIA launched a top secret project called Operation Mockingbird. Their goal was to buy influence and control among the major media outlets. They also planned to put journalists and reporters directly on the CIA payroll, which some claim is ongoing to this day. The architects of this plan were Frank Wisner, Allen Dulles, Richard Helms, and Philip Graham (publisher of The Washington Post), who planned to enlist American news organizations and journalists to basically become spies and propagandists.

Their list of entrenched agents eventually included journalists from ABC, NBC, CBS, Time, Newsweek, Associated Press, United Press International (UPI), Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps-Howard, Copley News Service, etc. By the 1950s, the CIA had infiltrated the nation's businesses, media, and universities with tens of thousands of on-call operatives.

Fortunately, our media is no longer lured in by corporations and governments to disseminate propaganda and disinformation! (Source 1 | Source 2 | Photo)

7
COINTELPRO: 1960s Counter Intelligence Programs Against Activists
COINTELPRO was a series of clandestine, illegal FBI projects that infiltrated domestic political organizations to discredit and smear them. This included critics of the Vietnam War, civil rights leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King and wide variety of activists and journalists.

The acts committed against them included psychological warfare, slander using forged documents and false reports in the media, harassment, wrongful imprisonment and, according to some, intimidation and possibly violence and assassination.

Similar and possibly more sophisticated tactics are still used today, including NSA monitoring (see #10) (Source 1 | Source 2 | Photo)

8
Operation Snow White: The Church of Scientology infiltrated the government and stole information
Operation Snow White is the name given to an unprecedented infiltration of the US government by the Church of Scientology during the 1970s. They stole classified government files regarding Scientology from dozens of government agencies.

In 1977, the FBI finally cracked Snow White open, which led to the arrest and imprisonment of a senior Church official.

The core mission of the program was to expose and legally expunge "all false and secret files of the nations of operating areas" and to enable Church seniors and L. Ron Hubbard himself to "frequent all Western nations without threat." By the end, of course, there was nothing legal about their endeavors. (Source 1 | Source 2 | Photo)

9
National governments/corporations determine global economic policy in secret (TPP, TISA, etc.)
For years, activists who feared a sinister globalist corporatocracy were told they were being paranoid. Maybe they were, and whether you want to call it the New World Order or not: they were right.

On November 13, WikiLeaks released the secret negotiated draft text for the entire TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) Intellectual Property Rights Chapter. It revealed a closed-door regional free trade agreement being negotiated by countries in the Asia-Pacific region, including Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, the United States, and Vietnam.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation says TPP has "extensive negative ramifications for users' freedom of speech, right to privacy and due process, and [will] hinder peoples' abilities to innovate.”

Worth pointing out: In Jun 2014, WikiLeaks revealed the even more far-reaching Trade in Services Agreement (TiSA), a 50-country agreement that will promote unprecedented levels of privatization across the world. The agreement will essentially prevent governments from returning public services into public hands. This could dramatically affect our ability to enact environmental regulations and keep workers safe.
(Source 1 | Source 2)


10
The US Government Illegally Spies On Its Own Citizens
The US Government Illegally Spies On Its Own Citizens
This used to be laughed at as a dystopian fantasy derived from overactive imagination, Orwell's 1984, and a juvenile distrust of the government. When you claimed ‘they' were spying on you, people labeled you a paranoid conspiracy theorist, a tinfoil hat-wearing loon.

Even after it was revealed that the NSA has been illegally eavesdropping on us and collecting our cellphone metadata for over a decade, people hedged on the meaning of it. Yes, they are analyzing our transmissions, but it's under the auspices of national security. ‘In a post 9/11 world,' certain liberties must be sacrificed for the sake of security, right?

It turns out that is patently untrue. Not only is there no evidence that the NSA has protected us from terrorism, there is growing evidence that it makes us more vulnerable. Thanks to revelations about the NSA and their Prism project, we know that the scope of the NSA's eavesdropping is even beyond what many conspiracy theorists originally believed.

In early June of 2014, the Washington Post reported that almost 90% of the data being collected by NSA surveillance programs is from Internet users with NO connection to terrorist activities. According to the American Civil Liberties Union, this is in clear violation of the constitution.

The ACLU is pursuing a lawsuit against the NSA, claiming that the dragnet-style mass collection of data violates the Fourth Amendment right of privacy as well as the First Amendment rights of free speech and association.
(Source | Photo)


so there ya go spielburg, 10 "conspiracy theories" that were actually true.

Pine-Apples ain't Apples,you know!

funny conrad, you claim conspiracy theories are just theories. yet i just showed you 10 "conspiracy theories" that were actually true. and what do you do? same exact BS you always do



post a couple laughing smileys and act like that somehow proves your point?

Hhhaaaa... like I said in another thread " Some are just waiting for a superhero & will have a long a@@ wait. So they better bring there coloring book & crayons "

its just funny to me how conrad always try to trash other peoples news sources as if theyre un trustworthy. but then he posts stuff from other news sites that i never heard of, but somehow his are always more reliable than anyone elses. like if i post something from reuters, he will post

Conrad_73: reuters

than an hour later he will post something from a site nobody has ever heard of and pass it off as 100% fact.

and he tries to say conspiracy theories arent true, so i show him 10 examples of conspiracy theories that ARE true. and what he does answer with?



as if somehow that proves his point and somehow discredits me. i just find that funny. i guess conrad just has some sort of superior knowledge the rest of us dont have. because he only knows the good news sources and says that things that are facts arent facts and believes himself.

got another one for you,Fellows!

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/06/04/theres-a-wild-rumor-about-john-kerrys-bike-accident/

Some Iranian news outlets are claiming that Secretary of State John Kerry was injured this weekend not in Switzerland in a bicycle crash but rather in an assassination attempt during a secret meeting with Islamic State group representatives.

The Jerusalem Post reported Wednesday that the Iranian news agency Nasim posted a report on the claim that the alleged secret meeting Sunday culminated in an armed clash and an attempt to kill the top U.S. diplomat.

The conspiracy theory was cloaked in an aura of international intrigue with plot twists connecting Switzerland, France, Russia and a U.S.-trained Islamic State loyalist from Tajikistan, which the Jerusalem Post described as follows:

Kerry’s meeting, in which the alleged assassination attempt took place, was with Gulmurod Khalimov, a senior Tajik police commander, trained in the United States, who announced his defection to Islamic State in a video released last week, the [Iranian news site] report states.

Having received training from the US State Department previously, Khalimov was well aware of State Department security procedures and he used the knowledge to get another member of his entourage into the secret meeting with Kerry, with the intention of assassinating him, the report claims.

The Nasim news site – which noted its report was based on another website that claims to cite Russian intelligence reports – quoted an alleged secret message transmitted from France and then intercepted by Russian intelligence which conveyed the report that two others were shot during the altercation, killing one.

The Jerusalem Post noted that though the story was first posted by Nasim, it was later picked up by dozens of Iranian news sites.

Kerry was in Geneva this weekend for meetings with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif just weeks before a self-imposed deadline to secure a permanent agreement between Iran, the U.S. and five world powers over Iran’s nuclear program.

U.S. officials said Kerry’s injury would not stop him from participating in the negotiations.

Iranian media often put forth far-fetched conspiracy theories, such as last year when an Iranian news site alleged that Israel was engaged in a “dangerous global plot” to spread the Israeli martial art Krav Maga internationally.

I take orders from the top?
Pfffft... I am the top.

NWO are wussy upstarts.

Illuminati rule!

hahah i knew it! well played gnome, the old misdirection game.

Conspiracy Theories are just that, theories. Posting them in a forum doesn't make them true or false. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion and response to them. Sorry that's the way it is, goes with the turf.

theblaze.com

see i can do that too conrad

http://www.eutimes.net/2015/06/us-secretary-of-state-kerry-reported-gravely-wounded-after-french-gun-battle/

http://www.eutimes.net/2015/06/obama-made-secret-boston-visit-as-kerry-reported-at-deaths-door/

President Barack Obama made a highly secret nighttime visit to Boston on Tuesday (2 June) where he met with US Air Force surgeons and medical personal fighting to save the life of US Secretary of State John Kerry who was gravely wounded this past Sunday (31 May) during a gun battle with what has been described as Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS/ISIL) assassins.

yea but, there has been theories that turned out being true, just because something is labeled a conspiracy theory doesnt mean theres no truth to it. conspiracy theory is a term that was made up by the CIA many years ago to attack people that challenge the official narrative of a story. to make them look like "crazy tin foil hatters". look it up. notice how the day after 9/11 george bush said "we wont tolerate any conspiracy theories". i dont care if people think im a "conspiracy theorist" i like to question everything and not just take the governments word for it. governments are notorious for being corrupt liars. i still havent found anyone who can explain how building 7 which wasnt hit by anything, collapsed in on itself like a controlled demolition. and why the "plane" that hit the pentagod let absolutely zero wreckage of a plane. and they said that the jet fuel from the planes was hot enough to melt the steel in the twin towers, but yet if you look at the picture of where the "plane" hit the pentagon, in the very next room where the hole is theres an open book laying on a desk. so jet fuel is hot enough to burn the steel in the towers, but not hot enough to catch a book on fire in the very next room where the "plane" hit. and like i said there was zero wreckage of a plane at the pentagon, and theres actually video evidence or whatever it was hitting the pentagon, and it doesnt look like a plane to me, more like a missle.

OK

Conspiracy theories like the illuminati are a distraction welcomed to those who can't face the truth. The culprit in human despair isn't the Illuminati, or the Bilderbergs, or the Rothschilds, or the Freemasons, or the Zionists, or the Satanists, or the Jesuits,or The anti-Christ, or anything resembling those. It's easy to believe it's one of those, because in your subconscious you are thinking, "Well if the _______ is revealed as the controllers of the world and if we depose them, the world will go back to being sunshine and rainbows and perfection!"
The reality is that it is never going to happen like that. Conspiracy theories, like voting, only show that people still place blind faith in the "right" person in authority instead if the "wrong" person. Either way, people who believe this refuse to see that it is and has always been the State that oppresses people. It is the nature of government itself to oppress.


Daniel Hawkins (High-Schooler)

Uh...

Mater, the term "conspiracy theory" has been around, since at least, the days of the U.S. civil war.

The C.I.A., didn't exist back then.


Or did they?

*que "spooky music"*

Dang it! That blows half the CT's out the window.
Thanks a lot.

That"spooky music", do you hear it too?

In 1967, the CIA Created the Label "Conspiracy Theorists" ... to Attack Anyone Who Challenges the "Official" Narrative
George Washington's picture
Submitted by George Washington on 02/23/2015 20:26 -0400



inShare32

Conspiracy Theorists USED TO Be Accepted As Normal

Democracy and free market capitalism were founded on conspiracy theories.

The Magna Carta, the Constitution and Declaration of Independence and other founding Western documents were based on conspiracy theories. Greek democracy and free market capitalism were also based on conspiracy theories.

But those were the bad old days …Things have now changed.
The CIA Coined the Term Conspiracy Theorist In 1967

That all changed in the 1960s.

Specifically, in April 1967, the CIA wrote a dispatch which coined the term “conspiracy theories” … and recommended methods for discrediting such theories. The dispatch was marked “psych” – short for “psychological operations” or disinformation – and “CS” for the CIA’s “Clandestine Services” unit.

The dispatch was produced in responses to a Freedom of Information Act request by the New York Times in 1976.

The dispatch states:

2. This trend of opinion is a matter of concern to the U.S. government, including our organization.



***



The aim of this dispatch is to provide material countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists, so as to inhibit the circulation of such claims in other countries. Background information is supplied in a classified section and in a number of unclassified attachments.



3. Action. We do not recommend that discussion of the [conspiracy] question be initiated where it is not already taking place. Where discussion is active addresses are requested:



a. To discuss the publicity problem with and friendly elite contacts (especially politicians and editors) , pointing out that the [official investigation of the relevant event] made as thorough an investigation as humanly possible, that the charges of the critics are without serious foundation, and that further speculative discussion only plays into the hands of the opposition. Point out also that parts of the conspiracy talk appear to be deliberately generated by … propagandists. Urge them to use their influence to discourage unfounded and irresponsible speculation.



b. To employ propaganda assets to and refute the attacks of the critics. Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose. The unclassified attachments to this guidance should provide useful background material for passing to assets. Our ploy should point out, as applicable, that the critics are (I) wedded to theories adopted before the evidence was in, (II) politically interested, (III) financially interested, (IV) hasty and inaccurate in their research, or (V) infatuated with their own theories.



***



4. In private to media discussions not directed at any particular writer, or in attacking publications which may be yet forthcoming, the following arguments should be useful:



a. No significant new evidence has emerged which the Commission did not consider.



***



b. Critics usually overvalue particular items and ignore others. They tend to place more emphasis on the recollections of individual witnesses (which are less reliable and more divergent–and hence offer more hand-holds for criticism) …



***



c. Conspiracy on the large scale often suggested would be impossible to conceal in the United States, esp. since informants could expect to receive large royalties, etc.



***



d. Critics have often been enticed by a form of intellectual pride: they light on some theory and fall in love with it; they also scoff at the Commission because it did not always answer every question with a flat decision one way or the other.



***



f. As to charges that the Commission’s report was a rush job, it emerged three months after the deadline originally set. But to the degree that the Commission tried to speed up its reporting, this was largely due to the pressure of irresponsible speculation already appearing, in some cases coming from the same critics who, refusing to admit their errors, are now putting out new criticisms.



g. Such vague accusations as that “more than ten people have died mysteriously” can always be explained in some natural way ….



5. Where possible, counter speculation by encouraging reference to the Commission’s Report itself. Open-minded foreign readers should still be impressed by the care, thoroughness, objectivity and speed with which the Commission worked. Reviewers of other books might be encouraged to add to their account the idea that, checking back with the report itself, they found it far superior to the work of its critics.

Summarizing the tactics which the CIA dispatch recommended:

Claim that it would be impossible for so many people would keep quiet about such a big conspiracy

Have people friendly to the CIA attack the claims, and point back to “official” reports

Claim that eyewitness testimony is unreliable

Claim that this is all old news, as “no significant new evidence has emerged”

Ignore conspiracy claims unless discussion about them is already too active

Claim that it’s irresponsible to speculate

Accuse theorists of being wedded to and infatuated with their theories

Accuse theorists of being politically motivated

Accuse theorists of having financial interests in promoting conspiracy theories

In other words, the CIA’s clandestine services unit created the arguments for attacking conspiracy theories as unreliable in the 1960s as part of its psychological warfare operations.
But Aren’t Conspiracy Theories – In Fact – Nuts?

Forget Western history and CIA dispatches … aren’t conspiracy theorists nutty?

In fact, conspiracies are so common that judges are trained to look at conspiracy allegations as just another legal claim to be disproven or proven based on the specific evidence:

Federal and all 50 state’s codes include specific statutes addressing conspiracy, and providing the punishment for people who commit conspiracies.



But let’s examine what the people trained to weigh evidence and reach conclusions think about “conspiracies”. Let’s look at what American judges think.



Searching Westlaw, one of the 2 primary legal research networks which attorneys and judges use to research the law, I searched for court decisions including the word “Conspiracy”. This is such a common term in lawsuits that it overwhelmed Westlaw.



Specifically, I got the following message:

“Your query has been intercepted because it may retrieve a large number of documents.”

From experience, I know that this means that there were potentially millions or many hundreds of thousands of cases which use the term. There were so many cases, that Westlaw could not even start processing the request.



So I searched again, using the phrase “Guilty of Conspiracy”. I hoped that this would not only narrow my search sufficiently that Westlaw could handle it, but would give me cases where the judge actually found the defendant guilty of a conspiracy. This pulled up exactly 10,000 cases — which is the maximum number of results which Westlaw can give at one time. In other words, there were more than 10,000 cases using the phrase “Guilty of Conspiracy” (maybe there’s a way to change my settings to get more than 10,000 results, but I haven’t found it yet).



Moreover, as any attorney can confirm, usually only appeal court decisions are published in the Westlaw database. In other words, trial court decisions are rarely published; the only decisions normally published are those of the courts which hear appeals of the trial. Because only a very small fraction of the cases which go to trial are appealed, this logically means that the number of guilty verdicts in conspiracy cases at trial must be much, much larger than 10,000.



Moreover, “Guilty of Conspiracy” is only one of many possible search phrases to use to find cases where the defendant was found guilty of a lawsuit for conspiracy. Searching on Google, I got 3,170,000 results (as of yesterday) under the term “Guilty of Conspiracy”, 669,000 results for the search term “Convictions for Conspiracy”, and 743,000 results for “Convicted for Conspiracy”.



Of course, many types of conspiracies are called other things altogether. For example, a long-accepted legal doctrine makes it illegal for two or more companies to conspire to fix prices, which is called “Price Fixing” (1,180,000 results).



Given the above, I would extrapolate that there have been hundreds of thousands of convictions for criminal or civil conspiracy in the United States.



Finally, many crimes go unreported or unsolved, and the perpetrators are never caught. Therefore, the actual number of conspiracies committed in the U.S. must be even higher.



In other words, conspiracies are committed all the time in the U.S., and many of the conspirators are caught and found guilty by American courts. Remember, Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme was a conspiracy theory.



Indeed, conspiracy is a very well-recognized crime in American law, taught to every first-year law school student as part of their basic curriculum. Telling a judge that someone has a “conspiracy theory” would be like telling him that someone is claiming that he trespassed on their property, or committed assault, or stole his car. It is a fundamental legal concept.



Obviously, many conspiracy allegations are false (if you see a judge at a dinner party, ask him to tell you some of the crazy conspiracy allegations which were made in his court). Obviously, people will either win or lose in court depending on whether or not they can prove their claim with the available evidence. But not all allegations of trespass, assault, or theft are true, either.



Proving a claim of conspiracy is no different from proving any other legal claim, and the mere label “conspiracy” is taken no less seriously by judges.

It’s not only Madoff. The heads of Enron were found guilty of conspiracy, as was the head of Adelphia. Numerous lower-level government officials have been found guilty of conspiracy. See this, this, this, this and this.

Time Magazine’s financial columnist Justin Fox writes:

Some financial market conspiracies are real …



Most good investigative reporters are conspiracy theorists, by the way.

And what about the NSA and the tech companies that have cooperated with them?
But Our Leaders Wouldn’t Do That

While people might admit that corporate executives and low-level government officials might have engaged in conspiracies – they may be strongly opposed to considering that the wealthiest or most powerful might possibly have done so.

But powerful insiders have long admitted to conspiracies. For example, Obama’s Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, Cass Sunstein, wrote:

Of course some conspiracy theories, under our definition, have turned out to be true. The Watergate hotel room used by Democratic National Committee was, in fact, bugged by Republican officials, operating at the behest of the White House. In the 1950s, the Central Intelligence Agency did, in fact, administer LSD and related drugs under Project MKULTRA, in an effort to investigate the possibility of “mind control.” Operation Northwoods, a rumored plan by the Department of Defense to simulate acts of terrorism and to blame them on Cuba, really was proposed by high-level officials ….

But Someone Would Have Spilled the Beans

A common defense to people trying sidetrack investigations into potential conspiracies is to say that “someone would have spilled the beans” if there were really a conspiracy.

But famed whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg explains:

It is a commonplace that “you can’t keep secrets in Washington” or “in a democracy, no matter how sensitive the secret, you’re likely to read it the next day in the New York Times.” These truisms are flatly false. They are in fact cover stories, ways of flattering and misleading journalists and their readers, part of the process of keeping secrets well. Of course eventually many secrets do get out that wouldn’t in a fully totalitarian society. But the fact is that the overwhelming majority of secrets do not leak to the American public. This is true even when the information withheld is well known to an enemy and when it is clearly essential to the functioning of the congressional war power and to any democratic control of foreign policy. The reality unknown to the public and to most members of Congress and the press is that secrets that would be of the greatest import to many of them can be kept from them reliably for decades by the executive branch, even though they are known to thousands of insiders.

History proves Ellsberg right. For example:

One hundred and thirty thousand (130,000) people from the U.S., UK and Canada worked on the Manhattan Project. But it was kept secret for years

A BBC documentary shows that:

There was “a planned coup in the USA in 1933 by a group of right-wing American businessmen . . . . The coup was aimed at toppling President Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse & George Bush’s Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great depression”

Moreover, “the tycoons told General Butler the American people would accept the new government because they controlled all the newspapers.” Have you ever heard of this conspiracy before? It was certainly a very large one. And if the conspirators controlled the newspapers then, how much worse is it today with media consolidation?

7 out of the 8 giant, money center banks went bankrupt in the 1980′s during the “Latin American Crisis”, and the government’s response was to cover up their insolvency. That’s a cover up lasting several decades

Banks have been involved in systematic criminal behavior, and have manipulated every single market

Governments have been covering up nuclear meltdowns for fifty years to protect the nuclear industry. Governments have colluded to cover up the severity of numerous other environmental accidents. For many years, Texas officials intentionally under-reported the amount of radiation in drinking water to avoid having to report violations

The government’s spying on Americans began before 9/11 (confirmed here and here. And see this.) But the public didn’t learn about it until many years later. Indeed, the the New York Times delayed the story so that it would not affect the outcome of the 2004 presidential election

The decision to launch the Iraq war was made before 9/11. Indeed, former CIA director George Tenet said that the White House wanted to invade Iraq long before 9/11, and inserted “crap” in its justifications for invading Iraq. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill – who sat on the National Security Council – also says that Bush planned the Iraq war before 9/11. And top British officials say that the U.S. discussed Iraq regime change one month after Bush took office. Dick Cheney apparently even made Iraqi’s oil fields a national security priority before 9/11. And it has now been shown that a handful of people were responsible for willfully ignoring the evidence that Iraq lacked weapons of mass destruction. These facts have only been publicly disclosed recently. Indeed, Tom Brokaw said, “All wars are based on propaganda.” A concerted effort to produce propaganda is a conspiracy

Moreover, high-level government officials and insiders have admitted to dramatic conspiracies after the fact, including:

Supporting terrorists to promote geopolitical goals

Supporting false flag terror

The admissions did not occur until many decades after the events.

These examples show that it is possible to keep conspiracies secret for a long time, without anyone “spilling the beans”.

In addition, to anyone who knows how covert military operations work, it is obvious that segmentation on a “need-to-know basis”, along with deference to command hierarchy, means that a couple of top dogs can call the shots and most people helping won’t even know the big picture at the time they are participating.

Moreover, those who think that co-conspirators will brag about their deeds forget that people in the military or intelligence or who have huge sums of money on the line can be very disciplined. They are not likely to go to the bar and spill the beans like a down-on-their-luck, second-rate alcoholic robber might do.

Finally, people who carry out covert operations may do so for ideological reasons — believing that the “ends justify the means”. Never underestimate the conviction of an ideologue.
Conclusion

The bottom line is that some conspiracy claims are nutty and some are true. Each has to be judged on its own facts.

Humans have a tendency to try to explain random events through seeing patterns … that’s how our brains our wired. Therefore, we have to test our theories of connection and causality against the cold, hard facts.

On the other hand, the old saying by Lord Acton is true:

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely.

Those who operate without checks and balances – and without the disinfectant sunlight of public scrutiny and accountability – tend to act in their own best interests … and the little guy gets hurt.

The early Greeks knew it, as did those who forced the king to sign the Magna Carta, the Founding Fathers and the father of modern economics. We should remember this important tradition of Western civilization.

Postscript: The ridicule of all conspiracy theories is really just an attempt to diffuse criticism of the powerful.

The wealthy are not worse than other people … but they are not necessarily better either. Powerful leaders may not be bad people … or they could be sociopaths.

We must judge each by his or her actions, and not by preconceived stereotypes that they are all saints acting in our best interest or all scheming criminals.

And see ...