Conspiracy Facts
versus coincidence theories
It is not a "Conspiracy Theory" that the Bush regime is complicit in September 11 -- that is proven beyond any reasonable doubt. There are unproven theories about particular aspects of 9/11 that are not yet proven, not provable, erroneous or deliberately planted disinformation. Some conspiracy "theories" on the web are inaccurate or an effort to invent material not based on detailed evidence in a failed effort to explain discrepancies in the official story. But the paradigm that 9/11 was not a "surprise attack" is a conspiracy fact, not a theory.
"We must speak the
truth about terror. Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories
concerning the attacks of September 11, malicious lies that attempt to
shift the blame away from the terrorists themselves, away from the guilty."
-- George W. Bush speaking before the UN General Assembly November 10, 2001
[translation: We must never speak the truth about terror, and only tolerate the official conspiracy theory that shifts the blame away from the ultimate perpetrators.]
The Most Outlandish 9/11 Conspiracy Theory
www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0301/S00008.htm
Top Ten Conspiracy Theories of 2002
Courtesy of Indymedia New York, Mike Ward of PopMatters lists the most
outrageous top ten officially spun conspiracy theories of the year - Scoop
Editor's Note: If you feel like a laugh then read this!
He forgot to mention the most outlandish conspiracy of them all
(and the most widely accepted): 19 hijackers from a third world terrorist
group armed with boxcutters forced 3 planes into 3 of the the nation's
most important and symbolic structures with no assistance from US government/intelligence
insiders.
those who most loudly disparage "conspiracy
theory" are most often the ones with the least knowledge of the actual
evidence being presented.
www.questionsquestions.net/documents2/conspiracyphobia.html
"How many coincidences does it take to make a plot?" - Mae
Brussell, queen of conspiracy researchers
www.indybay.org/news/2003/11/1661008.php
The word "conspiracy" works much the same way the word "cult"
does to discredit advocates of a certain view or persuasion. Historians
do not use the word "conspiracy" to describe accurate historical
reports. On the contrary, they use it to indicate a lack of veracity and
objectivity.
“Reconstructing Reality: Conspiracy Theories About Jonestown”
by Rebecca Moore http://jonestown.sdsu.edu/AboutJonestown/Articles/conspiracy.htm
On radio shows, I am often asked, “How do we tell the American
people?” And therein lies the great obstacle in telling the truth
-- anyone who tells the truth is going to be instantly labeled
a “conspiracy theorist.” The reason people get that
label is because 90% of the American people don’t understand what
they’re saying. If the American people don’t understand it,
they instantly dismiss it as being “untrue.” And therein lies
another great conspiracy of government. This is simply the conflict of
“belief systems” wherein our government, our educational system
and everything that makes this society work tells you that if you don’t
understand it, then its no good, get rid of it – or it tells you
“Don’t worry. You don’t have to understand it.”
Leave it to Washington. We understand it. You don’t have to . You
just stick to your mind numbing sitcoms, fake “reality” shows
and six packs of Bud and keep sending in your checks to your broker every
month for your IRA/ 401K contribution
- Iran-Contra whistleblower Al Martin www.almartinraw.com
"What's the difference between conspiracy
and strategy?"
- Mike Ruppert
"The right wing benefited so much from September
11 that, if I were still a conspiratorialist, I would believe they'd done
it."
-- Norman Mailer www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/IanMulgrewVS.html
"It is not that modern history is the invention of an esoteric cabal
designing events omnipotently to suit its ends. The implicit claim, on the
contrary, is that a multitude of conspiracies contend in the night.
Clandestinism is not the usage of a handful of rogues, it is a formalized
practice of an entire class in which a thousand hands spontaneously join.
Conspiracy is the normal continuation of normal politics by normal means."
-- Carl Oglesby
"Paranoia is having all the facts."
-- William Burroughs
"A conspiracy is rarely, if ever, proved by positive testimony. When a crime of high magnitude is about to be perpetrated by a combination of individuals, they do not act openly, but covertly and secretly. The purpose formed is known only to those who enter into it. Unless one of the original conspirators betray his companions and give evidence against them, their guilt can be proved only by circumstantial evidence...and circumstances can not lie." [Special Judge Advocate John A. Bingham, quoted in The Trial Of The Conspirators, Washington, 1865]
One of the most important characteristics of a covert operation,
in addition to the fact that it must be secret, is that it be very small.
There is no such thing as a successful big clandestine operation. The bigger the operation, the less chance there is that it can be secret.
- Col. Fletcher Prouty, "The Secret Team"
www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/ST/STchp4.html
Conspiracy and the State of the Union
by Jamey Hecht, PhD
www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/061704_conspiracy_union.html
John Judge: Call me a conspiracy theorist if you like, so long
as you call yourself a coincidence theorist.
-- Coalition On Political Assassinations (COPA) presentation, 2002
Greg Palast: People tell me they don't believe in conspiracy;
I tell them, look - I have the minutes of the meetings! What more do you
want?
-- Interview, in Election 2000 documentary "Unprecedented"
"One of the primary means of immobilizing the American
people politically today is to hold them in a state of confusion in which
anything can be believed and nothing can be known… nothing of significance,
that is."
-- E. Martin Schotz:, History Will Not Absolve Us: Orwellian Control,
Public Denial, and the Murder of President Kennedy
Michael C. Ruppert: I am not a conspiracy theorist. I deal in
conspiracy fact.
-- From The Wilderness
"'Conspiracy
stuff' is now shorthand www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/EnemyWithin.html www.counterpunch.org/vidal03142003.html |
 |
www.antiwar.com/spectator/spec30.html
from The Spectator (UK) January 2004
I believe in conspiracies
John Laughland says the real nutters are those who believe in al-Qa’eda
and weapons of mass destruction
Believing in conspiracy theories is rather like having been to a grammar school: both are rather socially awkward to admit. Although I once sat next to a sister-in-law of the Duke of Norfolk who agreed that you can’t believe everything you read in the newspapers, conspiracy theories are generally considered a rather repellent form of intellectual low-life, and their theorists rightfully the object of scorn and snobbery. Writing in the Daily Mail last week, the columnist Melanie Phillips even attacked conspiracy theories as the consequence of a special pathology, of the collapse in religious belief, and of a ‘descent into the irrational’. The implication is that those who oppose ‘the West’, or who think that governments are secretive and dishonest, might need psychiatric treatment.
In fact, it is the other way round. British and American foreign policy is itself based on a series of highly improbable conspiracy theories, the biggest of which is that an evil Saudi millionaire genius in a cave in the Hindu Kush controls a secret worldwide network of ‘tens of thousands of terrorists’ ‘in more than 60 countries’ (George Bush). News reports frequently tell us that terrorist organisations, such as those which have attacked Bali or Istanbul, have ‘links’ to al-Qa’eda, but we never learn quite what those ‘links’ are. According to two terrorism experts in California, Adam Dolnik and Kimberly McCloud, this is because they do not exist. ‘In the quest to define the enemy, the US and its allies have helped to blow al-Qa’eda out of proportion,’ they write. They argue that the name ‘al-Qa’eda’ was invented in the West to designate what is, in reality, a highly disparate collection of otherwise independent groups with no central command structure and not even a logo. They claim that some terrorist organisations say they are affiliated to bin Laden simply to gain kudos and name-recognition for their entirely local grievances.
By the same token, the US-led invasion of Iraq was based on a fantasy that Saddam Hussein was in, or might one day enter into, a conspiracy with Osama bin Laden. This is as verifiable as the claim that MI6 used mind control to make Henri Paul crash Princess Diana’s car into the 13th pillar of the tunnel under the Place de l’Alma. With similar mystic gnosis, Donald Rumsfeld has alleged that the failure to find ‘weapons of mass distraction’, as Tony Blair likes to call them, shows that they once existed but were destroyed. Indeed, London and Washington have shamelessly exploited people’s fear of the unknown to get public opinion to believe their claim that Iraq had masses of anthrax and botulism. This played on a deep and ancient seam of fear about poison conspiracies which, in the Middle Ages, led to pogroms against Jews. And yet it is the anti-war people who continue to be branded paranoid, even though the British Prime Minister himself, his eyes staring wildly, said in September 2002, ‘Saddam has got all these weapons ...and they’re pointing at us!’
In contrast to such imaginings, it is perfectly reasonable to raise questions about the power of the secret services and armed forces of the world’s most powerful states, especially those of the USA. These are not ‘theories’ at all; they are based on fact. The Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, the Office of Naval Intelligence, the National Reconnaissance Office, the Defense Intelligence Agency and other US secret services spend more than $30,000,000,000 a year on espionage and covert operations. Do opponents of conspiracy theories think that this money is given to the Langley, Virginia Cats’ Home? It would also be churlish to deny that the American military industry plays a very major role in the economics and politics of the US. Every day at 5 p.m., the Pentagon announces hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts to arms manufacturers all over America — click on the Department of Defense’s website for details — who in turn peddle influence through donations to politicians and opinion-formers.
It is also odd that opponents of conspiracy theories often allow that conspiracies have occurred in the past, but refuse to contemplate their existence in the present. For some reason, you are bordering on the bonkers if you wonder about the truth behind events like 9/11, when it is established as fact that in 1962 the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Lyman L. Lemnitzer, tried to convince President Kennedy to authorise an attack on John Glenn’s rocket, or on a US navy vessel, to provide a pretext for invading Cuba. Two years later, a similar strategy was deployed in the faked Gulf of Tonkin incident, when US engagement in Vietnam was justified in the light of the false allegation that the North Vietnamese had launched an unprovoked attack on a US destroyer. Are such tactics confined to history? Paul O’Neill, George Bush’s former Treasury Secretary, has just revealed that the White House decided to get rid of Saddam eight months before 9/11.
Indeed, one ought to speak of a ‘conspiracy of silence’ about the role of secret services in politics. This is especially true of the events in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. It is the height of irresponsibility to discuss the post-communist transition without extensive reference to the role of the spooks, yet our media stick doggedly to the myth that their role is irrelevant. During the overthrow of the Georgian president, Eduard Shevardnadze, on 22 November 2003, the world’s news outlets peddled a wonderful fairy-tale about a spontaneous uprising — ‘the revolution of roses’, CNN shlockily dubbed it — even though all the key actors have subsequently bragged that they were covertly funded and organised by the US.
Similarly, it is a matter of public record that the Americans pumped at least $100 million into Serbia in order to get rid of Slobodan Milosevic in 2000, and huge sums in the years before. (An election in Britain, whose population is eight times bigger than Yugoslavia’s, costs about two thirds of this.) This money was used to fund and equip the Kosovo Liberation Army; to stuff international observer missions in Kosovo with hundreds of military intelligence officers; to pay off the opposition and the so-called ‘independent’ media; and to buy heavily-armed Mafia gangsters to come and smash up central Belgrade, so that the world’s cameras could show a ‘people’s revolution’.
At every stage, the covert aid and organisation provided by the US and British intelligence agencies were decisive, as they had been on many occasions before and since, all over the world. Yet for some reason, it is acceptable to say, ‘The CIA organised the overthrow of Prime Minister Mossadeq in Iran in 1953’, but not that it did it again in Belgrade in 2000 or Tbilisi in 2003. And in spite of the well-known subterfuge and deception practised, for instance, in the Iran-Contra scandal in the mid-1980s, people experience an enormous psychological reluctance to accept that the British and American governments knowingly lied us into war in 2002 and 2003. To be sure, some conspiracy theories may be outlandish or wrong. But it seems to me that anyone who refuses to make simple empirical deductions ought to have his head examined.
In his book, "Rogue State: A Guide to the World's
Only Superpower," William Blum warns of how the media will make anything
that smacks of "conspiracy theory" an immediate "object
of ridicule." This prevents the media from ever having to investigate
the many strange interconnections among the ruling class - for example,
the relationship between the boards of directors of media giants, and
the energy, banking and defense industries. These unmentionable topics
are usually treated with what Blum calls "the media's most effective
tool - silence." But in case somebody's asking questions, all you
have to do is say, "conspiracy theory," and any allegation instantly
becomes too frivolous to merit serious attention.
On the other hand, since my paranoid shift, whenever I hear the words
"conspiracy theory" (which seems more often, lately) it usually
means someone is getting too close to the truth.
.... Being a "conspiracy theorist" is like being a creationist.
The educated opinion of eminent experts on every TV and radio network
is that any discussion of "oil" being a motivation for the US
invasion of Iraq is just out of bounds, and anyone who thinks otherwise
is a "conspiracy theorist." We can trust the integrity of our
'no-bid" contracting in Iraq, and anyone who thinks otherwise is
a "conspiracy theorist." Of course, people sometimes make mistakes,
but our military and intelligence community did the best they could on
and before September 11, and anybody who thinks otherwise is a "conspiracy
theorist."
Paranoid shift
By Michael Hasty
Online Journal Contributing Writer
January 10, 2004
http://www.onlinejournal.com/Commentary/011004Hasty/011004hasty.html
Paranoid shift
By Michael Hasty
Online Journal Contributing Writer
January 10, 2004--Just before his death, James Jesus Angleton, the legendary
chief of counterintelligence at the Central Intelligence Agency, was a
bitter man. He felt betrayed by the people he had worked for all his life.
In the end, he had come to realize that they were never really interested
in American ideals of "freedom" and "democracy." They
really only wanted "absolute power."
Angleton told author Joseph Trento that the reason he had gotten the counterintelligence
job in the first place was by agreeing not to submit "sixty of Allen
Dulles' closest friends" to a polygraph test concerning their business
deals with the Nazis. In his end-of-life despair, Angleton assumed that
he would see all his old companions again "in hell."
The transformation of James Jesus Angleton from an enthusiastic, Ivy League
cold warrior, to a bitter old man, is an extreme example of a phenomenon
I call a "paranoid shift." I recognize the phenomenon, because
something similar happened to me.
Although I don't remember ever meeting James Jesus Angleton, I worked
at the CIA myself as a low-level clerk as a teenager in the '60s. This
was at the same time I was beginning to question the government's actions
in Vietnam. In fact, my personal "paranoid shift" probably began
with the disillusionment I felt when I realized that the story of American
foreign policy was, at the very least, more complicated and darker than
I had hitherto been led to believe.
But for most of the next 30 years, even though I was a radical, I nevertheless
held faith in the basic integrity of a system where power ultimately resided
in the people, and whereby if enough people got together and voted, real
and fundamental change could happen.
What constitutes my personal paranoid shift is that I no longer believe
this to be necessarily true.
In his book, "Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower,"
William Blum warns of how the media will make anything that smacks of
"conspiracy theory" an immediate "object of ridicule."
This prevents the media from ever having to investigate the many strange
interconnections among the ruling class—for example, the relationship
between the boards of directors of media giants, and the energy, banking
and defense industries. These unmentionable topics are usually treated
with what Blum calls "the media's most effective tool—silence."
But in case somebody's asking questions, all you have to do is say, "conspiracy
theory," and any allegation instantly becomes too frivolous to merit
serious attention.
On the other hand, since my paranoid shift, whenever I hear the words
"conspiracy theory" (which seems more often, lately) it usually
means someone is getting too close to the truth.
Take September 11—which I identify as the date my paranoia actually
shifted, though I didn't know it at the time.
Unless I'm paranoid, it doesn't make any sense at all that George W. Bush,
commander-in-chief, sat in a second-grade classroom for 20 minutes after
he was informed that a second plane had hit the World Trade Center, listening
to children read a story about a goat. Nor does it make sense that the
Number 2 man, Dick Cheney—even knowing that "the commander"
was on a mission in Florida—nevertheless sat at his desk in the
White House, watching TV, until the Secret Service dragged him out by
the armpits.
Unless I'm paranoid, it makes no sense that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld
sat at his desk until Flight 77 hit the Pentagon—well over an hour
after the military had learned about the multiple hijacking in progress.
It also makes no sense that the brand-new chairman of the Joint Chiefs
of Staff sat in a Senate office for two hours while the 9/11 attacks took
place, after leaving explicit instructions that he not be disturbed—which
he wasn't.
In other words, while the 9/11 attacks were occurring, the entire top
of the chain of command of the most powerful military in the world sat
at various desks, inert. Why weren't they in the "Situation Room?"
Don't any of them ever watch "West Wing?"
In a sane world, this would be an object of major scandal. But here on
this side of the paranoid shift, it's business as usual.
Years, even decades before 9/11, plans had been drawn up for American
forces to take control of the oil interests of the Middle East, for various
imperialist reasons. And these plans were only contingent upon "a
catastrophic and catalyzing event, like a new Pearl Harbor," to gain
the majority support of the American public to set the plans into motion.
When the opportunity presented itself, the guards looked the other way
. . . and presto, the path to global domination was open.
Simple, as long as the media played along. And there is voluminous evidence
that the media play along. Number one on Project Censored's annual list
of underreported stories in 2002 was the Project for a New American Century
(now the infrastructure of the Bush Regime), whose report, published in
2000, contains the above "Pearl Harbor" quote.
Why is it so hard to believe serious people who have repeatedly warned
us that powerful ruling elites are out to dominate "the masses?"
Did we think Dwight Eisenhower was exaggerating when he warned of the
extreme "danger" to democracy of "the military industrial
complex?" Was Barry Goldwater just being a quaint old-fashioned John
Bircher when he said that the Trilateral Commission was "David Rockefeller's
latest scheme to take over the world, by taking over the government of
the United States?" Were Teddy and Franklin Roosevelt or Joseph Kennedy
just being class traitors when they talked about a small group of wealthy
elites who operate as a hidden government behind the government? Especially
after he died so mysteriously, why shouldn't we believe the late CIA Director
William Colby, who bragged about how the CIA "owns everyone of any
major significance in the major media?"
Why can't we believe James Jesus Angleton--a man staring eternal judgment
in the face--when he says that the founders of the Cold War national security
state were only interested in "absolute power?" Especially when
the descendant of a very good friend of Allen Dulles now holds power in
the White House.
Prescott Bush, the late, aristocratic senator from Connecticut, and grandfather
of George W Bush, was not only a good friend of Allen Dulles, CIA director,
president of the Council on Foreign Relations, and international business
lawyer. He was also a client of Dulles' law firm. As such, he was the
beneficiary of Dulles' miraculous ability to scrub the story of Bush's
treasonous investments in the Third Reich out of the news media, where
it might have interfered with Bush's political career . . . not to mention
the presidential careers of his son and grandson.
Recently declassified US government documents, unearthed last October
by investigative journalist John Buchanan at the New Hampshire Gazette,
reveal that Prescott Bush's involvement in financing and arming the Nazis
was more extensive than previously known. Not only was Bush managing director
of the Union Banking Corporation, the American branch of Hitler's chief
financier's banking network; but among the other companies where Bush
was a director--and which were seized by the American government in 1942,
under the Trading With the Enemy Act--were a shipping line which imported
German spies; an energy company that supplied the Luftwaffe with high-ethyl
fuel; and a steel company that employed Jewish slave labor from the Auschwitz
concentration camp.
Like all the other Bush scandals that have been swept under the rug in
the privatized censorship of the corporate media, these revelations have
been largely ignored, with the exception of a single article in the Associated
Press. And there are those, even on the left, who question the current
relevance of this information.
But Prescott Bush's dealings with the Nazis do more than illustrate a
family pattern of genteel treason and war profiteering—from George
Senior's sale of TOW missiles to Iran at the same time he was selling
biological and chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein, to Junior's zany misadventures
in crony capitalism in present-day Iraq.
More disturbing by far are the many eerie parallels between Adolph Hitler
and George W. Bush:
A conservative, authoritarian style, with public appearances in military
uniform (which no previous American president has ever done while in office).
Government by secrecy, propaganda and deception. Open assaults on labor
unions and workers' rights. Preemptive war and militant nationalism. Contempt
for international law and treaties. Suspiciously convenient "terrorist"
attacks, to justify a police state and the suspension of liberties. A
carefully manufactured image of "The Leader," who's still just
a "regular guy" and a "moderate." "Freedom"
as the rationale for every action. Fantasy economic growth, based on unprecedented
budget deficits and massive military spending.
And a cold, pragmatic ideology of fascism--including the violent suppression
of dissent and other human rights; the use of torture, assassination and
concentration camps; and most important, Benito Mussolini's preferred
definition of "fascism" as "corporatism, because it binds
together the interests of corporations and the state."
By their fruits, you shall know them.
What perplexes me most is probably the same question that plagues most
paranoiacs: why don't other people see these connections?
Oh, sure, there may be millions of us, lurking at websites like Online
Journal, From the Wilderness, Center for Cooperative Research, and the
Center for Research on Globalization, checking out right-wing conspiracists
and the galaxy of 9/11 sites, and reading columnists like Chris Floyd
at the Moscow Times, and Maureen Farrell at Buzzflash. But we know we
are only a furtive minority, the human remnant among the pod people in
the live-action, 21st-century version of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."
And being paranoid, we have to figure out, with an answer that fits into
our system, why more people don't see the connections we do. Fortunately,
there are a number of possible explanations.
First on the list would have to be what Marshal McLuhan called the "cave
art of the electronic age:" advertising. Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's
Karl Rove, gave credit for most of his ideas on how to manipulate mass
opinion to American commercial advertising, and to the then-new science
of "public relations." But the public relations universe available
to the corporate empire that rules the world today makes the Goebbels
operation look primitive. The precision of communications technology and
graphics; the century of research on human psychology and emotion; and
the uniquely centralized control of triumphant post-Cold War monopoly
capitalism, have combined to the point where "the manufacture of
consent" can be set on automatic pilot.
A second major reason people won't make the paranoid shift is that they
are too fundamentally decent. They can't believe that the elected leaders
of our country, the people they've been taught through 12 years of public
school to admire and trust, are capable of sending young American soldiers
to their deaths and slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent civilians,
just to satisfy their greed—especially when they're so rich in the
first place. Besides, America is good, and the media are liberal andoverly
critical.
Third, people don't want to look like fools. Being a "conspiracy
theorist" is like being a creationist. The educated opinion of eminent
experts on every TV and radio network is that any discussion of "oil"
being a motivation for the US invasion of Iraq is just out of bounds,
and anyone who thinks otherwise is a "conspiracy theorist."
We can trust the integrity of our 'no-bid" contracting in Iraq, and
anyone who thinks otherwise is a "conspiracy theorist." Of course,
people sometimes make mistakes, but our military and intelligence community
did the best they could on and before September 11, and anybody who thinks
otherwise is a "conspiracy theorist."
Lee Harvey Oswald was the sole assassin of JFK, and anyone who thinks
otherwise is a "conspiracy theorist."
Perhaps the biggest hidden reason people don't make the paranoid shift
is that knowledge brings responsibility. If we acknowledge that an inner
circle of ruling elites controls the world's most powerful military and
intelligence system; controls the international banking system; controls
the most effective and far-reaching propaganda network in history; controls
all three branches of government in the world's only superpower; and controls
the technology that counts the people's votes, we might be then forced
to conclude that we don't live in a particularly democratic system. And
then voting and making contributions and trying to stay informed wouldn't
be enough. Because then the duty of citizenship would go beyond serving
as a loyal opposition, to serving as a "loyal resistance"—like
the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War, except that in this case the
resistance to fascism would be on the side of the national ideals, rather
than the government; and a violent insurgency would not only play into
the empire's hands, it would be doomed from the start.
Forming a nonviolent resistance movement, on the other hand, might mean
forsaking some middle class comfort, and it would doubtless require a
lot of work. It would mean educating ourselves and others about the nature
of the truly apocalyptic beast we face. It would mean organizing at the
most basic neighborhood level, face to face. (We cannot put our trust
in the empire's technology.) It would mean reaching across turf lines
and transcending single-issue politics, forming coalitions and sharing
data and names and strategies, and applying energy at every level of government,
local to global. It would also probably mean civil disobedience, at a
time when the Bush regime is starting to classify that action as "terrorism."
In the end, it may mean organizing a progressive confederacy to govern
ourselves, just as our revolutionary founders formed the Continental Congress.
It would mean being wise as serpents, and gentle as doves.
It would be a lot of work. It would also require critical mass. A paradigm
shift.
But as a paranoid, I'm ready to join the resistance. And the main reason
is I no longer think that the "conspiracy" is much of a "theory."
That the US House of Representatives Select Committee on Assassinations
concluded that the murder of John Fitzgerald Kennedy was "probably"
the result of "a conspiracy," and that 70 percent of Americans
agree with this conclusion, is not a "theory." It's fact.
That the Bay of Pigs fiasco, "Operation Zapata," was organized
by members of Skull and Bones, the ghoulish and powerful secret society
at Yale University whose membership also included Prescott, George Herbert
Walker and George W Bush; that two of the ships that carried the Cuban
counterrevolutionaries to their appointment with absurdity were named
the "Barbara" and the "Houston"—George HW Bush's
city of residence at the time—and that the oil company Bush owned,
then operating in the Caribbean area, was named "Zapata," is
not "theory." It's fact.
That George Bush was the CIA director who kept the names of what were
estimated to be hundreds of American journalists, considered to be CIA
"assets," from the Church Committee, the US Senate Intelligence
Committe chaired by Senator Frank Church that investigated the CIA in
the 1970s; that a 1971 University of Michigan study concluded that, in
America, the more TV you watched, the less you knew; and that a recent
survey by international scholars found that Americans were the most "ignorant"
of world affairs out of all the populations they studied, is not a "theory."
It's fact.
That the Council on Foreign Relations has a history of influence on official
US government foreign policy; that the protection of US supplies of Middle
East oil has been a central element of American foreign policy since the
Second World War; and that global oil production has been in decline since
its peak year, 2000, is not "theory." It's fact.
That, in the early 1970s, the newly-formed Trilateral Commission published
a report which recommended that, in order for "globalization"
to succeed, American manufacturing jobs had to be exported, and American
wages had to decline, which is exactly what happened over the next three
decades; and that, during that same period, the richest one percent of
Americans doubled their share of the national wealth, is not "theory."
It's fact.
That, beyond their quasi-public role as agents of the US Treasury Department,
the Federal Reserve Banks are profit-making corporations, whose beneficiaries
include some of America's wealthiest families; and that the United States
has a virtual controlling interest in the World Bank, the International
Monetary Fund, and the World Trade Organization, the three dominant global
financial institutions, is not a "theory." It's fact.
That—whether it's heroin from Southeast Asia in the '60s and '70s,
or cocaine from Central America and heroin from Afghanistan in the '80s,
or cocaine from Colombia in the '90s, or heroin from Afghanistan today—no
major CIA covert operation has ever lacked a drug smuggling component,
and that the CIA has hired Nazis, fascists, drug dealers, arms smugglers,
mass murderers, perverts, sadists, terrorists and the Mafia, is not "theory."
It's fact.
That the international oil industry is the dominant player in the global
economy; that the Bush family has a decades-long business relationship
with the Saudi royal family, Saudi oil money, and the family of Osama
bin Laden; that, as president, both George Bushes have favored the interests
of oil companies over the public interest; that both George Bushes have
personally profited financially from Middle East oil; and that American
oil companies doubled their records for quarterly profits in the months
just preceding the invasion of Iraq, is not "theory." It's fact.
That the 2000 presidential election was deliberately stolen; that the
pro-Bush/anti-Gore bias in the corporate media had spiked markedly in
the last three weeks of the campaign; that corporate media were then virtually
silent about the Florida recount; and that the Bush 2000 team had planned
to challenge the legitimacy of the election if George W had won the popular,
but lost the electoral vote—exactly what happened to Gore—is
not "theory." It's fact.
That the intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was deceptively
"cooked" by the Bush administration; that anybody paying attention
to people like former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter, knew before the
invasion that the weapons were a hoax; and that American forces in Iraq
today are applying the same brutal counterinsurgency tactics pioneered
in Central America in the 1980s, under the direct supervision of then-Vice
President George HW Bush, is not a "theory." It's fact.
That "Rebuilding America's Defenses," the Project for a New
American Century's 2000 report, and "The Grand Chessboard,"
a book published a few years earlier by Trilateral Commission co-founder
Zbigniew Brzezinski, both recommended a more robust and imperial US military
presence in the oil basin of the Middle East and the Caspian region; and
that both also suggested that American public support for this energy
crusade would depend on public response to a new "Pearl Harbor,"
is not "theory." It's fact.
That, in the 1960s, the Joint Chiefs of Staff unanimously approved a plan
called "Operation Northwoods," to stage terrorist attacks on
American soil that could be used to justify an invasion of Cuba; and that
there is currently an office in the Pentagon whose function is to instigate
terrorist attacks that could be used to justify future strategically-desired
military responses, is not a "theory." It's fact.
That neither the accusation by former British Environmental Minister Michael
Meacham, Tony Blair's longest-serving cabinet minister, that George W
Bush allowed the 9/11 attacks to happen to justify an oil war in the Middle
East; nor the RICO lawsuit filed by 9/11 widow Ellen Mariani against Bush,
Cheney, Rumsfeld and the Council on Foreign Relations (among others),
on the grounds that they conspired to let the attacks happen to cash in
on the ensuing war profiteering, has captured the slightest attention
from American corporate media is not a "theory." It's fact.
That the FBI has completely exonerated—though never identified—the
speculators who purchased, a few days before the attacks (through a bank
whose previous director is now the CIA executive director), an unusual
number of "put" options, and who made millions betting that
the stocks in American and United Airlines would crash, is not a "theory."
It's fact.
That the US intelligence community received numerous warnings, from multiple
sources, throughout the summer of 2001, that a major terrorist attack
on American interests was imminent; that, according to the chair of the
"independent" 9/11 commission, the attacks "could have
and should have been prevented," and according to a Senate Intelligence
Committee member, "All the dots were connected;" that the White
House has verified George W Bush's personal knowledge, as of August 6,
2001, that these terrorist attacks might be domestic and might involve
hijacked airliners; that, in the summer of 2001, at the insistence of
the American Secret Service, anti-aircraft ordnance was installed around
the city of Genoa, Italy, to defend against a possible terrorist suicide
attack, by aircraft, against George W Bush, who was attending the economic
summit there; and that George W Bush has nevertheless regaled audiences
with his first thought upon seeing the "first" plane hit the
World Trade Center, which was: "What a terrible pilot," is not
"theory." It's fact.
That, on the morning of September 11, 2001: standard procedures and policies
at the nation's air defense and aviation bureaucracies were ignored, and
communications were delayed; the black boxes of the planes that hit the
WTC were destroyed, but hijacker Mohammed Atta's passport was found in
pristine condition; high-ranking Pentagon officers had cancelled their
commercial flight plans for that morning; George H.W. Bush was meeting
in Washington with representatives of Osama bin Laden's family, and other
investors in the world's largest private equity firm, the Carlyle Group;
the CIA was conducting a previously-scheduled mock exercise of an airliner
hitting the Pentagon; the chairs of both the House and Senate Intelligence
Committees were having breakfast with the chief of Pakistan's intelligence
agency, who resigned a week later on suspicion of involvement in the 9/11
attacks; and the commander-in-chief of the armed forces of the United
States sat in a second grade classroom for 20 minutes after hearing that
a second plane had struck the towers, listening to children read a story
about a goat, is not "theoretical." These are facts.
That the Bush administration has desperately fought every attempt to independently
investigate the events of 9/11, is not a "theory."
Nor, finally, is it in any way a "theory" that the one, single
name that can be directly linked to the Third Reich, the US military industrial
complex, Skull and Bones, Eastern Establishment good ol' boys, the Illuminati,
Big Texas Oil, the Bay of Pigs, the Miami Cubans, the Mafia, the FBI,
the JFK assassination, the New World Order, Watergate, the Republican
National Committee, Eastern European fascists, the Council on Foreign
Relations, the Trilateral Commission, the United Nations, CIA headquarters,
the October Surprise, the Iran/Contra scandal, Inslaw, the Christic Institute,
Manuel Noriega, drug-running "freedom fighters" and death squads,
Iraqgate, Saddam Hussein, weapons of mass destruction, the blood of innocents,
the savings and loan crash, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International,
the "Octopus," the "Enterprise," the Afghan mujaheddin,
the War on Drugs, Mena (Arkansas), Whitewater, Sun Myung Moon, the Carlyle
Group, Osama bin Laden and the Saudi royal family, David Rockefeller,
Henry Kissinger, and the presidency and vice-presidency of the United
States, is: George Herbert Walker Bush.
"Theory?" To the contrary.
It is a well-documented, tragic and—especially if you're paranoid—terrifying
fact.
Michael Hasty is a writer, activist, musician, carpenter and farmer.
His award-winning column, "Thinking Locally," appeared for seven
years in the Hampshire Review, West Virginia's oldest newspaper. His writing
has also appeared in the Highlands Voice, the Washington Peace Letter,
the Takoma Park Newsletter, the German magazine Generational Justice,
and the Washington Post; and at the websites Common Dreams and Democrats.com.
In January 1989, he was the media spokesperson for the counter-inaugural
coalition at George Bush's Counter-Inaugural Banquet, which fed hundreds
of DC's homeless in front of Union Station, where the official inaugural
dinner was being held.
Permission to reprint is granted, provided it includes this autobiographical
note, and credit for first publication to Online Journal.