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by
George Washington
February 23, 2015
from
WashingtonsBlog Website
In 1967, the CIA Created the
Label
"Conspiracy Theorists"
to Attack Anyone Who Challenges
the "Official" Narrative
One of the reasons for
providing this important documentation and commentary is
that even in supposedly "awakened" portions of the
"truth movement", or at least many people who frequent
"alternative" social media pages and websites, there is
a disturbing tendency to dismiss uncomfortable
information as "conspiracy theory" as an emotional knee
jerk reaction in defense of one's worldview.
We expect this infantile
reaction from the so-called "sheeple" who think that the
6 o'clock news is keeping them adequately informed,
however, it comes as a shock to the system when swathes
of people who follow pages and websites that represent
the trend in "new thought" and "alternative/independent
media" exhibit precisely the same thought and behavioral
patterns as their obviously socially
engineered/brainwashed nightly news watching brethren.
This article is both a
shield and a sword of truth with which to respond to
reactionary accusations/dismissals of being a
"conspiracy theorist" whenever someone prefers to attack
the messenger instead of addressing the message (in an
open-minded and adult fashion).
It is still mind-blowing to us at GFM that so many
people are still so ignorant as to struggle with the
fundamental notion that people in positions of power and
influence might actually deliberately conspire among
themselves to engage in morally reprehensible acts for
self-benefit that would seem incomprehensible to the
average person who is not a raging psychopath.
Regardless, the historical
record shows in abundance that this has always been the
case in our known history.
Moreover, the self-appointed
"power elite" have devised - AND SUCCESSFULLY DEPLOYED -
ways and means of manipulating the public's awareness to
such an extent that when a researcher shares an
unpleasant conspiracy truth in an effort to raise
awareness and thus collective empowerment, the would-be
recipients of this unwanted information dismiss the
material using the very terminology designed and
supplied by the System that is duping them! We have, of
course, been on the receiving end of this ourselves,
much to our dismay.
There is something sickening about observing the
brothers and sisters we are trying to assist and awaken
respond to those attempts at facilitating understanding
in PRECISELY THE WAY THAT THE CONTROL SYSTEM HAS
CONDITIONED THEM TO RESPOND, i.e., "Wow, you're a real
tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist" and such like.
Well, below you will learn
just who originated the "conspiracy theorist" label and
to what malicious ends they have been successfully using
it ever since.
If you are not already aware
of this, you might like to grab a bucket to throw up in.
The strategy has worked for the System - BIG TIME.
Attention "truthers" and "spiritual" types: we are all
on notice. We need to grow up FAST, because we are
witnessing a MASSIVE acceleration of Big Brother's
attempt to infiltrate and control every facet of human
existence, rendering us little more than surveilled,
vaccinated, and microchipped obedient sources of revenue
who are running on auto pilot.
Source
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.
Here are screenshots of part of the
memo:
Summarizing the tactics which the CIA
dispatch recommended:
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:
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?
-
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:
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.
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