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Daniel Ellsberg: “Secrets ... Can Be Kept Reliably ... For Decades … Even Though They Are Known to THOUSANDS of Insiders”
Judges, prosecutors and journalists all know that collusion happens every day. As I noted last year:
Bernie Madoff's Ponzi scheme was a conspiracy. 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.
Indeed, conspiracies are so common that judges are trained to look at conspiracy allegations as just another legal claim to be disproven or proven by the evidence.
As I pointed out in 2009:
Federal and all 50 state's codes include specific statutes addressing conspiracy, and providing the punishment for people who commit conspiracies.
***
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.
Indeed, even Obama's information tzar - who advocates using the power of the state to shut down talk of conspiracies - admits:
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 CIA did, in fact, administer LSD and
related drugs under Project MKULTRA, in an effort to investigate the
possibility of 'mind control.'” [This post isn't going down the rabbit hole of mind control.]
Can't Hide It
Those
accusing Goldman Sachs, Dick Cheney or some other powerful people of
conspiring to enrich their interests are often met with the argument
that "someone would have spilled the beans" if there had really been a
conspiracy.
But famed whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg explains:
It
is a commonplace that "you can't keep secrets in Washington" or "in a
democracy, no matter how sensitive the secret, you're likely to read
it the next day in the New York Times." These truisms are flatly
false. They are in fact cover stories, ways of flattering and
misleading journalists and their readers, part of the process of
keeping secrets well. Of course eventually many secrets do get out
that wouldn't in a fully totalitarian society. But the fact is that
the overwhelming majority of secrets do not leak to the American
public. This is true even when the information withheld is well known
to an enemy and when it is clearly essential to the functioning of the
congressional war power and to any democratic control of foreign
policy. The reality unknown to the public and to most members of
Congress and the press is that secrets
that would be of the greatest import to many of them can be kept from
them reliably for decades by the executive branch, even though they
are known to thousands of insiders.
History proves Ellsberg right. For example:
- One hundred and thirty thousand (130,000) people from the U.S., UK and Canada worked on the Manhattan Project. But it was kept secret for years
- A BBC documentary shows that:
There
was "a planned coup in the USA in 1933 by a group of right-wing
American businessmen . . . . The coup was aimed at toppling President
Franklin D Roosevelt with the help of half-a-million war veterans. The
plotters, who were alleged to involve some of the most famous families
in America, (owners of Heinz, Birds Eye, Goodtea, Maxwell Hse &
George Bush’s Grandfather, Prescott) believed that their country should
adopt the policies of Hitler and Mussolini to beat the great
depression"Moreover, "the tycoons told General Butler the American people would accept the new government because they controlled all the newspapers."
Have you ever heard of this conspiracy before? It was certainly a
very large one. And if the conspirators controlled the newspapers then, how much worse is it today with media consolidation?
- 7 out of the 8 giant, money center banks went bankrupt in the 1980's during the "Latin American Crisis", and the government's response was to cover up
their insolvency. That's a cover up lasting several decades. The
government is also working to cover up the causes and severity of the financial crisis which started in 2008
- Governments have been covering up nuclear meltdowns for fifty years to protect the nuclear industry. Governments have colluded to cover up the severity of numerous environmental accidents (and see this). For many years, Texas officials intentionally under-reported the amount of radiation in drinking water to avoid having to report violations
- The government's spying on Americans began before 9/11 (confirmed here and here. And see this.) But the public didn't learn about it until many years later. Indeed, the the New York Times delayed the story so that it would not affect the outcome of the 2004 presidential election
- The decision to launch the Iraq war was made before 9/11. Indeed, former CIA director George Tenet said that the White House wanted to invade Iraq long before 9/11, and inserted "crap" in its justifications for invading Iraq. Former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill - who sat on the National Security Council - also says that Bush planned the Iraq war before 9/11. And top British officials say that the U.S. discussed Iraq regime change one month after Bush took office. Dick Cheney apparently even made Iraqi's oil fields a national security priority before 9/11. And it has now been shown that a handful of people
were responsible for willfully ignoring the evidence that Iraq lacked
weapons of mass destruction. These facts have only been publicly
disclosed recently
These examples show that it is possible to keep conspiracies secret for a long time, without anyone "spilling the beans".
Discipline
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.
Moreover,
those who think that co-conspirators will brag about their deeds are
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 idealogue.
"All Wars Are Based on Propaganda"
Tom Brokaw notes:
All wars are based on propaganda.
There are numerous examples, such as dressing corpses in fake uniforms and planting false intelligence on them to mislead enemies.
In addition, governments from around the world have admitted to
false flag terror. In all of these cases, more than a handful of
people were involved in planning, funding and carrying out the
attacks. And yet no one spilled the beans or – if someone did – they
were not believed.
For example:
- The CIA admits
that it hired Iranians in the 1950's to pose as Communists and stage
bombings in Iran in order to turn the country against its
democratically-elected prime minister
- Israel admits
that an Israeli terrorist cell operating in Egypt planted bombs in
several buildings, including U.S. diplomatic facilities, then left
behind "evidence" implicating the Arabs as the culprits (one of the
bombs detonated prematurely, allowing the Egyptians to identify the
bombers, and several of the Israelis later confessed) (and see this and this)
- The former Italian Prime Minister, an Italian judge, and the former head of Italian counterintelligence admit that NATO,
with the help of the Pentagon and CIA, carried out terror bombings
in Italy and other European countries in the 1950s and blamed the
communists, in order to rally people’s support for their governments in
Europe in their fight against communism. As one participant in this formerly-secret program stated: "You
had to attack civilians, people, women, children, innocent people,
unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was
quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian
public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security" (and see this)(Italy and other European countries subject to the terror campaign had joined NATO before the bombings occurred)
- As admitted by
the U.S. government, recently declassified documents show that in
the 1960's, the American Joint Chiefs of Staff signed off on a plan
to blow up AMERICAN airplanes (using an elaborate plan involving the switching of airplanes), and also to commit terrorist acts on American soil, and then to blame it on the Cubans in order to justify an invasion of Cuba. See the following ABC news report; the official documents; and watch this interview with
the former Washington Investigative Producer for ABC's World News
Tonight with Peter Jennings. Official State Department documents show
that - only nine months before - the head of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff and other high-level officials discussed blowing up a consulate in the Dominican Republic in order to justify an invasion of that country. (While
the Joint Chiefs of Staff pushed as a serious proposal for Operation
Northwoods to be carried out, cooler heads fortunately prevailed;
President Kennedy or his Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara
apparently vetoed the plan)
- The South African Truth and Reconciliation Council found
that, in 1989, the Civil Cooperation Bureau (a covert branch of the
South African Defense Force) approached an explosives expert and
asked him "to participate in an operation aimed at discrediting
the ANC [the African National Congress] by bombing the police vehicle
of the investigating officer into the murder incident", thus
framing the ANC for the bombing
- An Algerian diplomat and several officers in the Algerian army admit
that, in the 1990s, the Algerian army frequently massacred Algerian
civilians and then blamed Islamic militants for the killings (and see
this video; and Agence France-Presse, 9/27/2002, French Court Dismisses Algerian Defamation Suit Against Author)
- Former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Hugh Shelton says that a Clinton cabinet member proposed letting Saddam kill an American pilot as a pretext for war in Iraq (and see this)
- According to the Washington Post, Indonesian police admit that
the Indonesian military killed American teachers in Papua in 2002
and blamed the murders on a Papuan separatist group in order to get
that group listed as a terrorist organization.
- The well-respected former Indonesian president also admits that the government probably had a role in the Bali bombings
- As reported by BBC, the New York Times, and Associated Press, Macedonian officials admit
that the government murdered 7 innocent immigrants in cold blood and
pretended that they were Al Qaeda soldiers attempting to assassinate
Macedonian police, in order to join the "war on terror".
- Former Department of Justice lawyer John Yoo suggested
in 2005 that the US should go on the offensive against al-Qaeda,
having “our intelligence agencies create a false terrorist
organization. It could have its own websites, recruitment centers,
training camps, and fundraising operations. It could launch fake
terrorist operations and claim credit for real terrorist strikes,
helping to sow confusion within al-Qaeda’s ranks, causing operatives to
doubt others’ identities and to question the validity of
communications.”
- United Press International reported in June 2005:
U.S.
intelligence officers are reporting that some of the insurgents in
Iraq are using recent-model Beretta 92 pistols, but the pistols seem
to have had their serial numbers erased. The numbers do not appear to
have been physically removed; the pistols seem to have come off a
production line without any serial numbers. Analysts suggest the lack
of serial numbers indicates that the weapons were intended for
intelligence operations or terrorist cells with substantial government
backing. Analysts speculate that these guns are probably from either
Mossad or the CIA. Analysts
speculate that agent provocateurs may be using the untraceable weapons
even as U.S. authorities use insurgent attacks against civilians as
evidence of the illegitimacy of the resistance.
- Quebec police admitted that, in 2007, thugs carrying rocks to a peaceful protest were actually undercover Quebec police officers
- At the G20 protests in London in 2009, a British member of parliament saw plain clothes police officers attempting to incite the crowd to violence
- There are many other instances of false flag attacks used throughout history proven by the historical evidence. See this, this and this.
In
summary, the claim that conspiracies couldn't have happened or else we
would have known when someone bragged about their deeds completely
false.
Conspiracies are generally not discovered unless the facts are aggressively investigated and prosecuted.
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Wow, to call you a moron would be an insult to those who have aspired to achieve that moniker.
Please stick head back in bucket and start yelling again.
BetTheHouse aka PUD
No one forces you to read it! By actively seeking to discredit it, you are actually reinforcing GW.
Reinforcing? Maybe. He certainly needs it. I actively seek to discredit him, because he is clearly a loon, and brings down the level of debate on what I consider to be the best financial site on the web. Additionally, by calling EVERYTHING -- and I mean EVERY SINGLE THING -- a conspiracy, he provides cover to those who would dismiss true wrongdoing as imaginary. In short: He is an idiot, and as long as he continues to post nonsense, I will call him on it. But I do appreciate your civil commentary with me.
How about some facts to discredit him instead of your nonsense.
Nice example of Number 5 ... thanks!
Twenty-Five Rules of Disinformation
Take all the numbers you want GW. You're still a clown.
I thought it was a great article.
Make sure everyone has their secret decoder ring, George. Otherwise you might sound crazy (wink!)
Government apologists are eager to label anyone "taking a cynical stance toward politics, mistrusting authority, endorsing democratic practices, ... and displaying an inquisitive, imaginative outlook" as worthy of a Stalinist trip to the insane asylum.
I guess that means the Founding Fathers and most of our presidents were not only terrorists, but they were also crazy?
It should be obvious that the opinions of mental health professionals are only as sound as their knowledge. For example, a mental health professional in 1640 would likely have labeled Galileo crazy for saying that the Earth orbits around the Sun.
More importantly, a German psychologist who heard from a patient in 1933 - when Hitler started consolidating power in Germany - that Hitler was a dangerous fascist who would launch a world war, try to take over the world and kill millions would likely be labeled as delusional.
Indeed, the psychologist for the wife of the United States Attorney General under Richard Nixon labeled her claims of a conspiracy by White House officials as delusional (she was later proven right when the facts of Watergate were revealed).
Just as with any field, the opinions of mental health professional are only as good as their knowledge.
Ok. Now you are Galileo. Gotcha.
You probably have fun playing this game. Probably a fairly lucrative game for you as well. But you know, some of us have these little fantasies we entertain now and then.
Some of us imagine a day when a fed-up populace manages to assume control of the offices out of which Cass Sunstein's wet dreams get administered. Some of us imagine just how interesting it would be to get names and addresses and on-line nicknames of those who love selling out the country that nurtured them.
C'mon, we'll have some laughs at how you duped us...you know? Maybe a formal picnic type celebration ... a loaf of bread, jug of wine...sorta lubricate the reminiscences in a festive environment.
Oh, we haven't decided on a color scheme so it would be a shame to embarrass anyone by setting them up to fail...wearing the wrong colors to the picnic. We'll provide the neckties. Color coordinated of course. Just wear basic black and white for everything else.
Be seein' ya! Looking forward to it actually!
But you know, some of us have these little fantasies we entertain now and then.
And fantasies are all you'll ever have moron.
If you and your "buds" haven't done it by now, you won't.
Enjoy jacking off to GW's senseless rants and your little wet dream fantasies about "taking the country back", trailer trash. It's the only satisfaction you (and he) will ever get.
I really hope you and your (toothless?) ilk are targeted. Clean up the gene pool a little.
Anyone want to give odds that the great Harvard Constitutional lawyer and current Minister of Truth (re George Orwell), Cass Sunstein, is Obama's next nominee to the Supreme Court? We are fucked!
Thanks! If I'm ever out by the trailer park, I'll definitely stop in! Until then, here's a hint: If you are trying to refute the idea that George Washington and the people that support his posts are gullible crackpots, maybe tone down the "come the revolution, the elites will swing from the lampposts," rhetoric. I mean, it's certainly catchy. All Le Miz, and whatnot. But it makes ya seem. I don't know. A little crazy?
I think you forgot to post the facts that would support your view.
Numbers 1,2,4,6,7...I will assume, naturally, Sweeney granted these reproduction rights used so liberally around here ;-)
T'was real nice of y'all to come by for a short spell of some jawboning here at ZeroHedge Hollow. Why you's such a knee-slapping humorist and all time bestest funny man... that we is always looking forward to ur's visits.
So you's and Bubba and SmokeyQuinn and all dem others is more then welcome back and to provides us with some more comic book relief by puttin' on public display yous' total ignorance and absolute lack of schoolin "such as" in the Logic and Reason and "such like" Science learnin.
I will try ma best to keep all them ZH bloodhounds of Truth on the porch this time so they don't be rippin' and chewin' your sorry ass to pieces like they a done already on other GW threads.
Profit from this extreme corruption and manipulation legally...
http://deadcatbouncing.blogspot.com/
well this is no secret
Texas Senate Antigroping bill pulled after TSA threatbut lest you think the Senators of the Lone Star State lack cajones
Texas Senate Approves CockFighting LawGive me a break, this proves that the TSA (government) is actively involved in personal oppression, is undemocratic (muscling the will of the people in Texas) and is anti-business.
The first state that would tell Uncle Sam to pound sand would be the lonestar state -- for this reason.
Not to mention the government of crotch grabbers and child molestation is asserting physical contact and violation of personal privacy to average Joe citizen presumed guilty... total bullshit.
Watch Texas, they may just succeed. The irony is that cock fighting won't change but grabbing your crotch for no reason will! Who can blame them?
GW:
Keep on rippin' em a new one !
Sooner or later the hard, real life lessons will sink in that...
"Ignorance is not Bliss" !
And watch out for hotel maids.
George Washington,
I think that Obama was set up the big time:
Consequently, Obama is under a total control of his "advisers" and puppeteers.
Suddenly, Obama comes out with a Middle East strategy blueprint that is totally unacceptable to the America Zionist owners. The Obama proposals are a total anathema to the Zionist core principals. Due to his incompetence, Obama did not realize what he has done.
Two days later, Israeli PM Netanyahu goes in front of the US Congress and condemns Obama. The US Congress unconditionally supports Mr. Netanyahu and kisses his ass.
IMHO, Obama has been set up and there is no way for him to recover. Now, the question is how will he act after realizing that he was "thrown under a steamroller"?
If you think Netanyahu wasn't told what Obama would say or that Obama didn't know what Netanyahu would reply, or that Netanyahu didn't know what Obama would say to Aipac or that Obama didn't know what Netanyahu would reply at Aipac, or that Obama didn't know what Netanyahu would say to Congress, you are too politically naive to judge the situation.
Nobody mentioned to JFK that he would be met in Dallas by assassins. The assassins were ready and have perfectly executed their mission.
Yes, people-in-know were informed in advance of the Obama proposals. They also were well prepared to get him into a trap with a noway out.
Watch, Obama political career is finished. He is a one-term president.
Always thought that Obama was set up to be a one-term puppet, like Carter. Put in a Dem so bad - and then crash a couple of helicopters en route to Iran - that everybody forgets about the last Repub and they're in for another round.
If Bush Sr hadn't pissed off Israel he would have been a two termer. Instead, out pops Perot to split the right and in comes Clinton, a DINO who played by the rules.
My biggest concern is that the Obamites are such a bunch of radicals that they will do too much damage in the meantime.
But now that Barry has bitten the hand who placed him, he's either going to have a rapid conversion or he is toast.