10 Conspiracy Theories That Turned Out to Be True

[villager]

1. Gulf of Tonkin Incident

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. The problem is the event never happened...

<snip>

2. Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment

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.

Tragically, 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...

<snip>

3. Project MKUltra

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...

<snip>

etc.

http://theantimedia.org/10-conspiracy-theories-that-turned-out-to-be-true/

[jfern]

1. 11. Nixon sabotaging the peace talks right before the 1968 election

[villager]

2. Exactly. Kept from everyone at the time, but if they'd only charged him with treason *then*....

...the nation might not be on precipice -- likely irreversible -- that is now.

[MisterP]

7. 12. October Surprise

they can deny it until they admit it, then it'll join the other plots we feel helpless about, or for the other side Jones's endless screaming about the Illuminati

[Enthusiast]

12. Seems treasonous to me.

[pink-o]

29. But Karma is a bitch! The Watergate break-in happened cuz Nixon thought the Dems had proof!

Lovely Liddy and Co were instructed to break into the files to see if the Dems knew about that rat bastard Kissinger and his Paris Peace talks sabotage. Brought 'em all down.

Doesn't even BEGIN to make up for the people who died in their illegal war, though. Nixon got Cambodia and Laos involved, so much unnecessary suffering. I was in Cambodia in 2014; it's a beautiful, forgiving place. Just broke my heart what the American Govt did to them!

[jfern]

34. The Democrats did have proof. LBJ and HHH knew before the election.

They just decided it would hurt the Presidency too much to go public with it.

[Dont call me Shirley]

43. Reagan's handlers sabotaging hostage release in 1980, causing Carter to lose election.

[jfern]

46. While that's probably what happened, we don't have the evidence to prove that

[Dont call me Shirley]

48. Really, no evidence? The word of two country's presidents is not enough evidence?

"Just ask Jimmy Carter.

In 1980 Carter thought he had reached a deal with newly-elected Iranian President Abdolhassan Bani-Sadr over the release of the fifty-two hostages held by radical students at the American Embassy in Tehran.

Bani-Sadr was a moderate and, as he explained in an editorial for The Christian Science Monitor earlier this year, had successfully run for President on the popular position of releasing the hostages:

"I openly opposed the hostage-taking throughout the election campaign.... I won the election with over 76 percent of the vote.... Other candidates also were openly against hostage-taking, and overall, 96 percent of votes in that election were given to candidates who were against it [hostage-taking]."

Carter was confident that with Bani-Sadr's help, he could end the embarrassing hostage crisis that had been a thorn in his political side ever since it began in November of 1979.
But Carter underestimated the lengths his opponent in the 1980 Presidential election, California Governor Ronald Reagan, would go to screw him over.

Behind Carter's back, the Reagan campaign worked out a deal with the leader of Iran's radical faction - Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini - to keep the hostages in captivity until after the 1980 Presidential election.

This was nothing short of treason. The Reagan campaign's secret negotiations with Khomeini - the so-called "October Surprise" - sabotaged Carter and Bani-Sadr's attempts to free the hostages. And as Bani-Sadr told The Christian Science Monitor in March of this year, they most certainly "tipped the results of the [1980] election in Reagan's favor."

Not surprisingly, Iran released the hostages on January 20, 1981, at the exact moment Ronald Reagan was sworn into office."

http://www.truth-out.org/opinion/item/20287-without-reagans-treason-iran-would-not-be-a-problem

[jfern]

49. OK, i hadn't read that

[Dont call me Shirley]

57. Actually, I heard it first on the Thomm Hartmann Show.

[mrdmk]

47. Iran/Contra, also tied into CIA Drug Trafficking, "It’s convoluted and complex, but it’s true"

Which was a plan activated to fund the Contras in an attempt to overthrow the Nicaragua's elected government.

Fortunately for the USA, people went to jail for their transgressions. Unfortunately, these people did not stay in jail.

[Le Taz Hot]

56. Make that Nixon and Kissinger.

Remember Kissinger? Obama and Hillary Clinton admire him as a great statesman.

[PufPuf23]

3. About Admiral Morrison at Gulf of Tonkin ..

I am of Vietnam age but never knew until the last decade that Admiral Morrison was the father of Jim Morrison. Now this info is even in the wiki. Small world.

From wiki:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_of_Tonkin_incident

.......

The incident

Daniel Ellsberg, who was on duty in the Pentagon the night of August 4, receiving messages from the ship, reported that the ship was on a secret electronic warfare support measures mission (codenamed "DESOTO&quot near Northern Vietnamese territorial waters.[12] On July 31, 1964, USS Maddox had begun its intelligence collection mission in the Gulf of Tonkin. Captain George Stephen Morrison (father of Doors singer Jim Morrison) was in command of local American forces from his flagship USS Bon Homme Richard. Maddox was under orders not to approach closer than eight miles (13 km) from the North's coast and four miles (6 km) from Hon Nieu island.[13] When the SOG commando raid was being carried out against Hon Nieu, the ship was 120 miles (190 km) away from the attacked area.[13]

........

[rhett o rick]

36. Don't forget the USS Turner Joy now proudly on display in Bremerton, Washington. nm

[Behind the Aegis]

4. True and many, many more aren't true.

Take a look in the comment section, one person is calling the Holocaust a hoax; not uncommon anymore. Hell, look at the conspiracies of the Jews running the government or being more loyal to Israel simply for being a Jew. Some conspiracies are real, always have been, always will be. However, there are also those who pimp conspiracies at the drop of a hat. Some things aren't conspiracies as much as information isn't always well known at the time. My issues with conspiracies are those who "use information" which is not provable, then claim it is real because it is not provable.

[villager]

5. Actually, with the Holocaust, much has been kept from general knowledge about the abetting

...of Hitler's rise to power, especially by monied American/corporate interests.

And then of course, there was Operation Paperclip, after the war.

Some of this may speak to a simple lack of information, but that lack of information, I would say, is quite deliberate by those who control access to it.

Thus, the general (and often correct) sense among citizens that they are being lied to, that things "aren't right," is then taken out against the less powerful segments of a society. The truly kooky toxic conspiracy theories are spun, to deflect rage away from where it belongs. That sense of being lied to, in other words, manipulated by the same powerful interests choking off the flow of authentic information.

The final touch is when they can then get people believing that anyone who imagines the powerful might actually collude is "crazy."

None of that excuses "Holocaust denial," obviously.

Remember though that European Jews thought stories of extermination camps were "nuts," when they heard them from escapees, early in the war, because no could imagine anything so monstrous. I think to this day, though, people remain unaware of the true scope, and complicity, of what happened.

[Behind the Aegis]

6. You bring up an interesting fact. The flip side...

...it has also led to even more conspiracies which aren't because of lack of information, but fueled by pure imagination, if not hate. I agree, and know, many connections to the Holocaust have been blurred and obscured, and more information seems to emerge every year. It is the, as you call it, "kooky side" which seem to gain more steam and spin out of control.

Holocaust "minimalization" is ever increasing in popularity and denial is, IMO, regaining ground, usually in response to hate of Israel, even hate of the US, which is, of course, simply an arm of the Zionist New World Order.

Anti-Jewish conspiracies are quite popular, more so now due to the internet, like the same for many "theories". However, I also remember all the AIDS conspiracies too, including the deadly theory" is that HIV is not a real thing, which too is making a comeback, for some ungodly reason.

[LeftOfWest]

8. great post. it is not a conspiracy when it is right in front of your face.

ignorance is a hallmark of too many americans.

too many are called conspiracies imo.

[Enthusiast]

13. The ignorance of too many Americans is another conspiracy.

Seriously.

They® are trying (succeeding) to maintain a high level of ignorance so they can get away with more conspiracies.

[rhett o rick]

35. I would rather call it denial. Many are smart enough but seem to have a need to believe in the

authoritarian power. It's like when we were kids we wouldn't believe anything bad said about our parents. Fear of CT is usually found in the very conservative brain.

[Live and Learn]

9. Saved to read later because I really can't stomach it at the moment. even

though I have probably seen most of it before.

[tecelote]

10. #9 and #10 are still happening

#9 - Secret Global Economic Policies

For years, activists who feared a sinister globalist corporatocracy were told they were being paranoid. Whether you want to call it the New World Order or not: they were right.

In 2013, WikiLeaks released the secretly 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 June 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.


#10 - The US Government Illegally Spies On Its Own Citizens

This used to be laughed at as a dystopian fantasy derived from an 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 cell phone metadata for over a decade, people still 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 we 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.

---

[LuvNewcastle]

11. Some of us were made fun of here on DU

when we believed the reports about the NSA's spying on virtually all of America. We were told that we were paranoid and called libertarians and all sorts of other names. Then, when even the MSM started reporting the stories about the spying, we were told that we needed to shut up and accept it because that's what it took to keep us safe. I had never thought that we had professional government trolls on this board, but when all that shit happened, it became pretty obvious to me.

[Hydra]

19. They've always been here, scary enough

During the Bush Era when some of us were doing research on the torture, the same lines were trotted it. We couldn't prove it, so we couldn't protest it, but when we could prove it it was a a few bad apples or an aberration, and when we finally had a line to Cheney and Bush it was hearsay. When Cheney just spit it out at us, it was supposed to be acceptable or at least not something actionable- we needed to stay united against the Forces of Evil(tm).

[Enthusiast]

14. And yet, any out of the box suggestions about the highly suspicious 9/11 event are out of bounds.

I call bullshit on that bullshit. [URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]


Did you see Condi Rice actually squirming on the witness chair?

We ought to discuss 9/11 to death right on the front page of DU.

[ChisolmTrailDem]

17. 9/11: The Convenient "New Pearl Harbor". nt

[valerief]

51. That paragraph in the PNAC papers was all I needed to know "the event"

was staged.

[ChisolmTrailDem]

54. That and the fact the people who wrote it ended up stealing the presidency and then populated the

cabinet, the judicial branch, and took command of the military. We're just damned lucky they didn't use a nuke.

[villager]

21. But that would be... too "Underground!"

We might lose all our Beltway respectability that way!

[Enthusiast]

22. Of course. But doubts about the official 9/11 event are inevitable and warranted.

[villager]

23. Or perhaps even "Warren"-ted.

[djean111]

15. You know what I think is delusional? Believing everything any government tells us.

I always assume that entrenched interests (presidents and Congress come and go) are doing things I would be horrified about, cover those things up quite neatly, and so I just try and stay out of the way.
I also believe that the handiest thing to do when someone hits close to a mark is to use scorn and label things "CT".

[villager]

25. That's the willful self-delusion that poisons democracy...

n/t

[Octafish]

16. JFK Conspiracy Debunker John McAdams keeps a listing...

Know your BFEE: A Crime Line of Treason

Some DUers don't believe there's a Vast Right Wing Conspiracy or even a Bush Family Evil Empire.

Hey, I'm a Democrat and respect other's opinions and views.

But I do believe in the VRWC and BFEE, perhaps more accurately termed the Bush Transnational Criminal Enterprise. Here's why:

Bush Crime Line

• Vietnam
• Bay of Pigs
• Chile
• Watergate
• October Surprise
• El Salvador
• Reagan Survives Hinckley and Bush
• NAZI Ethnics for Reagan-Bush
• Voodoo Economics
• INSLAW/Promis
• Haiti
• Iraq-gate / Banca Nazionale del Lavoro arms to Saddam
• BCCI International Money Laundering for Terrorists & Intelligence Community arming Dr AQ Khan
• Savings & Loan scandal in general and Silverado in particular
• Iran-contra Guns/Drugs/Martial Law
• Gulf War I Glaspie Gives Go-Ahead
• Selection 2000 Shreds US Constitution
• Tax Cuts for UltraRich
• Criminal Justice Department
• Suicidal Environmental Policy
• ENRON Energy Policy
• 9-11 Criminal Negligence, at best; Treason, most likely
• Illegal Iraq Invasion
• Paperless Selection 2004

It’s interesting in reviewing the above list, just how much ultra-right, conservative Republican leadership has really been. More than a listing of criminality, the list demonstrates there have been many treasonous activites against “We the People” through “business opportunities” in the finance, energy, and defense industries.

There is one FAMILY name that runs through all the history, the four decades since the JFK administration. Since the very hour of President Kennedy’s death, and through the list of sinister events and unrelenting criminality noted above — a record of infamy stretching back 41 years today — appears the name George Herbert Walker Bush, a tradition continued by his son, George Walker Bush, beard of the BFEE.



DUers: Add, Discuss, Rip -- Whatever. I'd love to learn what y'all think, have to say and believe.

SOURCE http://mcadams.posc.mu.edu/blog/DU_Bush.htm

Original post on DU: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=2748315

PS: Five decades now.

PPS: Please note how now-ex Prof. McAdams even took the time to download and host the image...That is real class.

[Enthusiast]

18. Nice post. I would add extreme war profiteering during Iraq II.

[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

[Octafish]

20. Col. Ted Westhusing observed opportunities open only to certain connected cronies.

Col. Westhusing was in charge of training the new Iraqi army and overseeing civilian contractors.

He is remembered as a good man, a brilliant man who followed the Cadet Code: "I will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do.”



Col. Westhusing was the Army's chief ethicist and someone who suspected something was wrong with David Petraeus, way back when. Then, just when he was about to come home to his loving wife and family, he became a suicide.

Is David Petraeus Dirty? Ted Westheusing Said So, and Then He Shot Himself

By Melina Hussein Ripcoco, Brilliant at Breakfast
Alternet.org
April 8, 2008

Ted Westhusing, was a champion basketball player at Jenks High School in Tulsa Oklahoma. A driven kid with a strong work ethic, he would show up at the gym at 7AM to throw 100 practice shots before school. He was driven academically too, becoming a National Merritt Scholarship finalist. His career through West Point and straight into overseas service was sterling, and by 2000 he had enrolled in Emory University to earn his doctorate in Philosophy. His dissertation was on honor and the ethics of war, with the opening containing the following passage: "Born to be a warrior, I desire these answers not just for philosophical reasons, but for self-knowledge." Would that all military commanders took such an interest in the study of ethics and morality and what our conduct in times of war says about our development as human beings. Would that any educational system in this country taught ethics, decision making, or even political science that's not part of an advanced degree anymore.

Ted Westhusing, the soldier, philosopher and ethicist, was given a guaranteed lifetime teaching position and West Point by the time he had finished with his service and his education. he felt like he could do more for his country by trying to shape the minds coming out of the academy that were the ones that would be military commanders. He had settled into that life with his wife and kids, when in 2004 he volunteered for active duty in Iraq, feeling like the experience would help his teaching. He had missed combat in his active duty and it seemed like an important piece for someone who not only philosophized about war, but who was also preparing the military's future leaders.

But more than that, he was sure that the Iraq mission was a just one; he supported the cause and he bought the information that was put in front of him. Considering that vials of powder were being tossed around hearings by the highest level of military commanders how could he not? This was a man who was so steeped in the patriotism of idealistic military fervor that he barely could fit in regular society. His whole being was dedicated to this path, and he was proud to serve his country.

Once in Iraq, he found himself straddling the fence between a questioning philosopher and an unquestioning soldier. Westhusing had thought he was freeing a country in bondage, keeping America safe from a horrible threat, and spreading democracy to a grateful people. But the reality of what was happening in this out of control war was too much for him. His mission was to oversee one of the most important tasks left from the war; retraining the Iraqi military by overseeing the private contractors that had been put in charge of it.

As the assignment went on he found that everywhere he looked he was seeing corrupt contractors doing shoddy work, abusing people, and stealing from the government. These contractors were being paid to do many of the jobs that would normally be done by a regulated military, and they bore out the worst fears of those who don't believe in outsourcing such vital work. He responded to the corruption that he saw by reporting the problems up the line, but the response from his commanding officers was disappointing. He had, for much of his career, idolized military commanders, and in that assignment he found himself with some of the military's most famous faces, doing the most important job, but he was terribly disappointed and alarmed to realize that they were greedy and corrupt themselves.

CONTINUED...

http://www.alternet.org/story/81678/is_david_petraeus_dirty_ted_westhusing_said_so,_and_then_he_shot_himself

COMPLETE ORIGINAL ARTICLE: http://www.ripcoco.com/2008/04/is-david-petraeus-dirty-ted-westheusing.html

Gee. What kind of person would make money off war?



PS: Thank you for standing up to these arch-criminals, Enthusiast. Old news to you; never seen on tee vee.

[Enthusiast]

24. Thanks for that! Excellent! nt

[MisterP]

31. and they're all constantly squabbling, which is how we find out about these things half the time!

it's not A cabal, it's dozens of little cliques each building a power base but all striving to protect the space that lets them do all this crapola: they also dislike the notion of democracy (good ol' Ollie North despised the very IDEA of Congress: he also worked with Argentina's crazier-than-Japanese-fascists officers, Bolivia's peasant-killers, and Mexico's cartel)

[Octafish]

38. Kissinger on Chile is how Kissinger and Cabal feel on USA.

[font color="green"][font size="5"]"The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves... l don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist because of the irresponsibility of its own people." [/font size][/font color]

-- Henry Kissinger on the US-backed coup d'etat in Chile.

Then there are the neo-liberals, like Mr. Bizarro Krypto-the-Superdog. The author was a Chicago Boy helping implement the scam for Pinochet:

President Clinton and the Chilean Model.

By José Piñera

Midnight at the House of Good and Evil

"It is 12:30 at night, and Bill Clinton asks me and Dottie: 'What do you know about the Chilean social-security system?'” recounted Richard Lamm, the three-term former governor of Colorado. It was March 1995, and Lamm and his wife were staying that weekend in the Lincoln Bedroom of the White House.

I read about this surprising midnight conversation in an article by Jonathan Alter (Newsweek, May 13, 1996), as I was waiting at Dulles International Airport for a flight to Europe. The article also said that early the next morning, before he left to go jogging, President Bill Clinton arranged for a special report about the Chilean reform produced by his staff to be slipped under Lamm's door.

That news piqued my interest, so as soon as I came back to the United States, I went to visit Richard Lamm. I wanted to know the exact circumstances in which the president of the world’s superpower engages a fellow former governor in a Saturday night exchange about the system I had implemented 15 years earlier.

Lamn and I shared a coffee on the terrace of his house in Denver. He not only was the most genial host to this curious Chilean, but he also proved to be deeply motivated by the issues surrounding aging and the future of America. So we had an engaging conversation. At the conclusion, I ventured to ask him for a copy of the report that Clinton had given him. He agreed to give it to me on the condition that I do not make it public while Clinton was president. He also gave me a copy of the handwritten note on White House stationery, dated 3-21-95, which accompanied the report slipped under his door. It read:

Dick,
Sorry I missed you this morning.
It was great to have you and Dottie here.
Here's the stuff on Chile I mentioned.
Best,
Bill.

Three months before that Clinton-Lamm conversation about the Chilean system, I had a long lunch in Santiago with journalist Joe Klein of Newsweek magazine. A few weeks afterwards, he wrote a compelling article entitled,[font color="green"] "If Chile can do it...couldn´t North America privatize its social-security system?" [/font color]He concluded by stating that "the Chilean system is perhaps the first significant social-policy idea to emanate from the Southern Hemisphere." (Newsweek, December 12, 1994).

I have reasons to think that probably this piece got Clinton’s attention and, given his passion for policy issues, he became a quasi expert on Chile’s Social Security reform. Clinton was familiar with Klein, as the journalist covered the 1992 presidential race and went on anonymously to write the bestseller Primary Colors, a thinly-veiled account of Clinton’s campaign.

“The mother of all reforms”

While studying for a Masters and a Ph.D. in economics at Harvard University, I became enamored with America’s unique experiment in liberty and limited government. In 1835 Alexis de Tocqueville wrote the first volume of Democracy in America hoping that many of the salutary aspects of American society might be exported to his native France. I dreamed with exporting them to my native Chile.

So, upon finishing my Ph.D. in 1974 and while fully enjoying my position as a Teaching Fellow at Harvard University and a professor at Boston University, I took on the most difficult decision in my life: to go back to help my country rebuild its destroyed economy and democracy along the lines of the principles and institutions created in America by the Founding Fathers. Soon after I became Secretary of Labor and Social Security, and in 1980 I was able to create a fully funded system of personal retirement accounts. Historian Niall Ferguson has stated that this reform was “the most profound challenge to the welfare state in a generation. Thatcher and Reagan came later. The backlash against welfare started in Chile.”

But while de Tocqueville’s 1835 treatment contained largely effusive praise of American government, the second volume of Democracy in America, published five years later, strikes a more cautionary tone. He warned that “the American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.” In fact at some point during the 20th century, the culture of self reliance and individual responsibility that had made America a great and free nation was diluted by the creation of [font color="green"] “an Entitlement State,”[/font color] reminiscent of the increasingly failed European welfare state. What America needed was a return to basics, to the founding tenets of limited government and personal responsibility.

[font color="green"]In a way, the principles America helped export so successfully to Chile through a group of free market economists needed to be reaffirmed through an emblematic reform. I felt that the Chilean solution to the impending Social Security crisis could be applied in the USA.[/font color]

CONTINUED...

http://www.josepinera.org/articles/articles_clinton_chilean_model.htm

And we wonder why the US keeps moving to the right, even when we vote in leaders who promise to move things to the left.

[Dont call me Shirley]

45. The USSC turning of the 2000 election over to gwb.

[blm]

26. CONGRESSMAN Richard Cheney told press Sen Kerry was a CT nut (IranContra)

Now who turned out to be telling the truth?

[villager]

27. I wonder under which name Cheney is posting his "tow the line" admonitions here...

...on DU?

[Octafish]

28. Cheney also went on to help institutionalize the Secret Government crapola.

Which never seems to go away. And to which the conservatives failed to invite the Democrats when put in place on Sept. 11, 2001, coincidentally, I'm certainly told.

'Continuity of Government' Planning:

War, Terror and the Supplanting of the U.S. Constitution

Peter Dale Scott

In July 1987, during the Iran-Contra Hearings grilling of Oliver North, the American public got a glimpse of "highly sensitive" emergency planning North had been involved in. Ostensibly these were emergency plans to suspend the American constitution in the event of a nuclear attack (a legitimate concern). But press accounts alleged that the planning was for a more generalized suspension of the constitution.



As part of its routine Iran-contra coverage, the following exchange was printed in the New York Times, but without journalistic comment or follow-up:

(Congressman Jack) Brooks: Colonel North, in your work at the N.S.C. were you not assigned, at one time, to work on plans for the continuity of government in the event of a major disaster?

Both North's attorney and Sen. Daniel Inouye, the Democratic Chair of the Committee, responded in a way that showed they were aware of the issue:

Brendan Sullivan (North's counsel, agitatedly): Mr. Chairman?

(Senator Daniel) Inouye: I believe that question touches upon a highly sensitive and classified area so may I request that you not touch upon that?

Brooks: I was particularly concerned, Mr. Chairman, because I read in Miami papers, and several others, that there had been a plan developed, by that same agency, a contingency plan in the event of emergency, that would suspend the American constitution. And I was deeply concerned about it and wondered if that was an area in which he had worked. I believe that it was and I wanted to get his confirmation.

Inouye: May I most respectfully request that that matter not be touched upon at this stage. If we wish to get into this, I'm certain arrangements can be made for an executive session.1

But we have never heard if there was or was not an executive session, or if the rest of Congress was ever aware of the matter. According to James Bamford, "The existence of the secret government was so closely held that Congress was completely bypassed."2 (Key individuals in Congress were almost certainly aware.)

Brooks was responding to a story by Alfonzo Chardy in the Miami Herald. Chardy's story alleged that Oliver North was involved with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in plans to take over federal, state and local functions during a national emergency. This planning for "Continuity of Government" (COG) called for "suspension of the Constitution, turning control of the government over to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, emergency appointment of military commanders to run state and local governments and declaration of martial law."3

To my knowledge no one in the public (including myself) attached enough importance to the Chardy story. Chardy himself suggested that Reagan's Attorney General, William French Smith, had intervened to stop the COG plan from being presented to the President. Seven years later, in 1994, Tim Weiner reported in the New York Times that what he called "The Doomsday Project" -- the search for "ways to keep the Government running after a sustained nuclear attack on Washington" -- had "less than six months to live."4

To say that nuclear attack planning was over was correct, But this statement was also very misleading. On the basis of Weiner's report, the first two books on COG planning, by James Bamford and James Mann, books otherwise excellent and well-informed, reported that COG planning had been abandoned.5 They were wrong.

Mann and Bamford did report that, from the beginning, two of the key COG planners on the secret committee were Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, the two men who implemented COG under 9/11.6 What they and Weiner did not report was that under Reagan the purpose of COG planning had officially changed: it was no longer for arrangements "after a nuclear war," but for any "national security emergency." This was defined in Executive Order 12656 of 1988 as: "any occurrence, including natural disaster, military attack, technological emergency, or other emergency, that seriously degrades or seriously threatens the national security of the United States."7

CONTINUED...

http://japanfocus.org/-Peter_Dale-Scott/3362/article.html

Cheney is so crooked, he can't even pee straight.

[closeupready]

30. Organized crime is, by its nature, a conspiracy.

[Octafish]

33. Like the time CIA partnered with the MAFIA to assassinate people.

That was a crime, highly organized too. And despite what the CIA and their stooges in Corporate McPravda still are saying, it wasn't the Kennedy brothers' idea. It was Allen Dulles' plan, and his boss at the time was Dwight D. Eisenhower.

The story: If things had gone according to plan in November 1960, Nixon would've been president during the Bay of Pigs and would've been happy to send in the Marines, along with the Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard and Cosa Nostra, making Allen Dulles and Meyer Lansky and all their rich and corrupt friends very, very, very, very happy.

AUG 1960: Richard Bissell meets with Colonel Sheffield Edwards, director of the CIA's Office of Security, and discusses with him ways to eliminate or assassinate Fidel Castro. Edwards proposes that the job be done by assassins hand-picked by the American underworld, specifically syndicate interests who have been driven out of their Havana gambling casinos by the Castro regime. Bissell gives Edwards the go-ahead to proceed. Between August 1960, and April 1961, the CIA with the help of the Mafia pursues a series of plots to poison or shot Castro. The CIA’s own internal report on these efforts states that these plots "were viewed by at least some of the participants as being merely one aspect of the over-all active effort to overthrow the regime that culminated in the Bay of Pigs." (CIA, Inspector General's Report on Efforts to Assassinate Fidel Castro, p. 3, 14)

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/bayofpigs/chron.html

Details on the actual sit-down:

Ever wonder about the sanity of America's leaders? Take a close look at perhaps the most bizarre plot in U.S. intelligence history

By Bryan Smith
Chicago Magazine
November 2007
(page 4 of 6)

EXCERPT...

By September 1960, the project was proceeding apace. Roselli would report directly to Maheu. The first step was a meeting in New York. There, at the Plaza Hotel, Maheu introduced Roselli to O'Connell. The agent wanted to cover up the participation of the CIA, so he pretended to be a man named Jim Olds who represented a group of wealthy industrialists eager to get rid of Castro so they could get back in business.

"We may know some people," Roselli said. Several weeks later, they all met at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami. For years, the luxurious facility had served as the unofficial headquarters for Mafioso leaders seeking a base close to their gambling interests in Cuba. Now, it would be the staging area for the assassination plots.

At a meeting in one of the suites, Roselli introduced Maheu to two men: Sam Gold and a man Roselli referred to as Joe, who could serve as a courier to Cuba. By this time, Roselli was on to O'Connell. "I'm not kidding," Roselli told the agent one day. "I know who you work for. But I'm not going to ask you to confirm it."

Roselli may have figured out that he was dealing with the CIA, but neither Maheu nor O'Connell realized the rank of mobsters with whom they were dealing. That changed when Maheu picked up a copy of the Sunday newspaper supplement Parade, which carried an article laying out the FBI's ten most wanted criminals. Leading the list was Sam Giancana, a.k.a. "Mooney," a.k.a. "Momo," a.k.a. "Sam the Cigar," a Chicago godfather who was one of the most feared dons in the country—and the man who called himself Sam Gold. "Joe" was also on the list. His real name, however, was Santos Trafficante—the outfit's Florida and Cuba chieftain.

Maheu alerted O'Connell. "My God, look what we're involved with," Maheu said. O'Connell told his superiors. Questioned later before the 1975 U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (later nicknamed the Church Committee after its chairman, Frank Church, the Democratic senator from Idaho), O'Connell was asked whether there had ever been any discussion about asking two men on the FBI's most wanted list to carry out a hit on a foreign leader.

"Not with me there wasn't," O'Connell answered.

"And obviously no one said stop—and you went ahead."

"Yes."

"Did it bother you at all?"

"No," O'Connell answered, "it didn't."

CONTINUED...

http://www.chicagomag.com/Chicago-Magazine/November-2007/How-the-CIA-Enlisted-the-Chicago-Mob-to-Put-a-Hit-on-Castro/index.php?cparticle=4&siarticle=3

Yet, the Mighty Wurlitzer plays the false tune that Kennedy was the guy who wanted Castro dead.

Spies: Ex-CIA Agent In Raleigh Says Castro Knew About JFK Assassination Ahead Of Time

Former CIA agent and author Brian Latell in Raleigh

By The Raleigh Telegram

RALEIGH – A noted former Central Intelligence Agency officer, author, and scholar who is intimately knowledgeable about Cuba and Fidel Castro, says he believes there is evidence that Castro’s government knew about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963 ahead of time.

SNIP...

Robert Kennedy, as the Attorney General of the United States, was in charge of the operation, said Latell. Despite the United States’ best efforts, the operation was nonetheless penetrated by Cuban intelligence agents, said Latell.

Latell said there were two serious assassination attempts by the United States against Castro that even used members of the mafia to help, but both of them were obviously unsuccessful.

He also said that there was a plot by the United States to have Castro jabbed with a pen containing a syringe filled with a very effective poison. Latell said that he believes the experienced assassin who worked for Castro who originally agreed to the plan may have been a double agent. After meeting with a personal representative of Robert Kennedy in Paris, the man knew that the plan to assassinate Castro came from the highest levels of the government, including John F. and Robert Kennedy.

The plan was never carried out, as the man later defected to the United States, but with so many double agents working for Castro also pledging allegiance to the CIA, Latell said it was likely that the information got back to Havana that the Kennedy brothers endorsed that plot with the pen.

CONTINUED...

http://raleightelegram.com/201209123311

Which to an amateur detective interested in justice would seem like a lead worth pursuing.

[ancianita]

32. Killing the messengers is SOP in the U.S.

[rhett o rick]

37. How about issues like, "Did the GOP steal the election in 2004?" We know quite a bit

but maybe not enough. The Iran-Contra affair was considered CT for a long time.

Politics is full of conspiracies. Think Tanks conspire per their charters. Karl Rove makes a living conspiring.

[Mojorabbit]

39. Marking to read later. nt

[Initech]

40. No mention of the Business Plot?

[villager]

41. Well, the article was evidently sticking with 10. Obviously there are many more...

There was some happenstance that brought us to the present juncture. And a lot of "non-happenstance," as well...

[Initech]

50. That is a pretty damn big one, should have been included.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot

[MinM]

42. 10a) The U.S. Military Once Tested Biological Warfare On The Whole Of San Francisco

Mike ‏@olemissliberal: The U.S. Military Once Tested Biological Warfare On The Whole Of San Francisco | IFLScience http://www.iflscience.com/health-and-medicine/us-military-simulated-biological-warfare-san-francisco …

[Dont call me Shirley]

44. People need to understand that to those who commit these conspiracies, this is just their normal

mode of thinking. Con is short for Conspiracy, a scam. This is the way the oligarchs and their minions think. It is the way their brains are wired. It's normal modus operandi for them. And it's so easy to scam us because most of us do not have this type of conniving scamming thinking.

[villager]

53. Right -- we already know they're sociopaths...

Do we imagine that none of these sociopaths ever work... in concert?

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

55. Actually, no. Con isn't short for conspiracy. It is short for confidence.

Con
adjective
1. involving abuse of confidence :
a con trick.
verb (used with object), conned, conning.

2. to swindle; trick:
That crook conned me out of all my savings.

3. to persuade by deception, cajolery, etc.

noun
4.a confidence game or swindle.
5.a lie, exaggeration, or glib self-serving talk:
He had a dozen different cons for getting out of paying traffic tickets.

Origin: 1895-1900, Americanism; by shortening of confidence

A number of people in this thread are forgetting what a conspiracy actually is. It involves people conspiring--that is agreeing and planning to do something bad.

Conspire
verb (used without object), conspired, conspiring.
1. to agree together, especially secretly, to do something wrong, evil, or illegal:
They conspired to kill the king.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/conspire?s=t

In criminal law, a conspiracy is an agreement between two or more persons to commit a crime at some time in the future.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_%28civil%29

A civil conspiracy or collusion is an agreement between two or more parties to deprive a third party of legal rights or deceive a third party to obtain an illegal objective.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_%28criminal%29

[Dont call me Shirley]

58. Close enough for thesaurus....

http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/confidence%20game

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

59. Yes, the thesaurus supports what I said. Con is short for confidence, not conpiracy.

Not sure what you mean by close enough, though. What's close enough to what?

[Dont call me Shirley]

60. The thesaurus notes conspiracy as a synonym for confidence game. They are interchangeable terms

for con, but generally con is short for confidence game. The both terms are similar enough to use the noun Con for short.

[Dark n Stormy Knight]

61. Again, no. Thesaurus lists the folowing words as synoyms for confidence game:

bait-and-switch star
boiler room star
bunco game star
bunko star

con star
con game star
confidence trick star
flimflam star

hustle star
Ponzi star
racket star
rip-off star

shell game star
skin game star
sting star
swindle

The entry only finally mentions conspiracy as a word related to confidence game, along with a number of other words, none of which you could reasonable say con is short for. As I said at the beginning, con is not short for conspiracy.

Con is short for the confidence in confidence game. A conspiracy is a particular kind of con game, one specifically involving people working together, or conspiring, to pull off the evil deed, which I also noted in my first reply to you.

[Dont call me Shirley]

62. From my link above...

racket
noun. criminal activity
cheating
con game
confidence game*
conspiracy*
corruption
crime
dirty pool
dishonesty
dodge
extortion
fraud
game
graft
illegality
illicit scheme
intrigue
lawlessness
lay
plot
push
scheme
shakedown
squeeze
swindle
swindling
theft
trick
underworld

[Rex]

52. Only a total moron would believe humans lack the ability to conspire against each other.