See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil

The title words of this post sum up the attitude that our government and our corporate news media vigorously try to instill into all Americans with respect to their own government. While it has been substantially worse during the Bush presidency, it has nevertheless been like that ever since I can remember – at least as long ago as when President Kennedy was assassinated shortly before my 14th birthday.

Anyone who has read much history, and even most of those who haven’t, know that history is filled with evil deeds. Few Americans (or other people) have much trouble accepting the fact that there is evil in the world. In fact, our government and corporate news media (hereafter referred to as “the power elite”, since they have most of the political power in our country) won’t let us forget that. But the idea that our own government may be capable of evil deeds is pretty much a forbidden subject as far as our power elite are concerned – subject to ridicule, accusations of “conspiracy theorist” or even treason, and worse, no matter how compelling the evidence.

The point is that the evidence is to a large degree inconsequential in their eyes. We are supposed to believe that it is logically impossible that our own government could be involved in nefarious activities. To believe otherwise is to be a “conspiracy theorist” or even a traitor. But why do the power elite want us to believe that, and why should we believe it? The answer to the first question is not as easy as it might seem. Certainly one reason is that believing that our government can do no wrong helps to maintain their power. But I believe that the reasons run much deeper than that, into psychological issues that I can only begin to comprehend, and which I won’t delve into in this post.

As far as why should we believe that ridiculously naïve assertion, the answer as far as I’m concerned is that we shouldn’t. We should never believe it reflexively, and we should only believe it when the evidence supports it. To disbelieve it does not automatically qualify us as “conspiracy theorists” or “traitors” or paranoid. Judging these matters instead based on the evidence means that we have enquiring minds and, as Will Pitt says in his 2003 book, “The Greatest Sedition is Silence”.


The conventional wisdom

Think I’m exaggerating? Consider the following bits of conventional wisdom that are pretty much forbidden subjects as far as the power elite are concerned:

John F. Kennedy was assassinated by a lone crazy gunman.

Our then future presidents, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, did not make a deal with the Iranians who were holding U.S. hostages to delay release of those hostages until after the 1980 November elections.

The Nicaraguan Contras, who were so aggressively supported by the Reagan administration, were not habitually involved in atrocities and were not intimately involved in illegal narcotics trade.

The Bush administration had no warning of the 9-11 attacks on our country and did everything they could to prevent and counter them.

The 2004 presidential election was not stolen.


And if you don’t believe all that you’re a “conspiracy theorist” and you hate America. Actually, I don’t see what’s so bad about being a conspiracy theorist, since not being one implies that you subscribe to the ridiculously naïve belief that dark conspiracies are never perpetrated by our own government. But the Right has hijacked that term and made it so odious that almost everyone runs from it. Consider the attitude of Daily Kos, a generally liberal website, to so-called conspiracy theorists. Their rules make it seem as if one of the worst things that could happen on their site would be the posting and recommending of ideas that weren’t sanctioned by our country’s power elite. This is from their rules:


To be fair to them, I did recently post an article recommending the impeachment of our pResident, it’s gotten a lot of attention, and I haven’t been banned yet or even given a warning. But obviously they have some very hot-button issues regarding so-called “conspiracy theories”.

Now let’s take a brief look at the five conventional wisdom issues that I mentioned above:


Examples of the conventional wisdom of our power elite

The JFK assassination
There is so much evidence that President Kennedy was shot from the front, rather than the back where the presumed assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was presumably stationed, that entire sections of book stores are filled with it. I am not intimately familiar with the majority of this evidence, but I do have quite a bit of familiarity with the medical evidence, as discussed in detail in David Lifton’s excellent book, “Best Evidence”, which clearly points to two shots from the front.

Nine physicians and a nurse who treated the President at Parkland Hospital in Dallas are quoted (four in Warren Commission testimony, three in their official medical reports, one in a contemporary newspaper account, and Lifton doesn’t provide the source for the other two) as saying that the fatal head wound produced a large hole (5-7 centimeters by one account) in the back right side of the head. The skull at the back of the head was noted to have “exploded outwards”. All of the physicians characterized this wound as an exit wound (i.e. the bullet came from the front), largely because exit wounds are almost always considerably larger and more destructive than entrance wounds.

The five physicians and a nurse who observed the neck wound maintained that this was an entrance wound (i.e., the bullet came from the front). But Arlen Specter of the Warren Commission had an interesting way of literally twisting the evidence. In response to doctors who maintained that the neck wound was an entrance wound, Specter asked:


And the doctor, who had consistently maintained that the wound was an entrance wound, answered, “With those facts … this would be … I believe … an exit wound.”

The autopsy findings conducted at Bethesda Naval Hospital however, contradicted the views of the doctors who treated Kennedy at the hospital. The likely explanation for that is explained in detail in this post. Here I will simply say that the Secret Service fought for and gained control of the body when it left Parkland hospital, they maintained control of the body through the time that it arrived at Bethesda Naval hospital, and several witnesses observed the body arriving in a very different coffin than the one which left the hospital with Kennedy’s body in it. In other words, either all of the doctors at Parkland hospital were wrong about both of the wounds OR the body was altered prior to arriving at the autopsy room. The bizarre circumstances of the body’s arrival strongly point to the latter conclusion.

Yet, corporate media whores like Tucker Carlson, who are probably totally ignorant of the evidence surrounding the JFK assassination, repeatedly use it (See 6th paragraph) as an arch-typical case, referring to anyone who espouses ideas that contradict their version of reality as “grassy knoll conspiracy theorists”.

The “October Surprise”
The “October Surprise” mystery refers to allegations that Republicans associated with the Reagan/Bush presidential campaign of 1980 made a deal with the Iranians who held American hostages to withhold the release of those hostages until after the November elections – thus ensuring the continuing humiliation of Jimmy Carter’s presidency and a Reagan/Bush victory. In support of those allegations, Robert Parry’s investigations uncovered more than twenty witnesses to the negotiations, as well as documentary evidence of shipments of U.S. arms to Iran.

In response to the October Surprise allegations, The New Republic and Newsweek claimed in 1991 to have debunked the story by finding an alibi for William Casey (the Reagan/Bush campaign chairman) for the period in late July of 1980 during which some October Surprise witnesses had placed him at a meeting in Madrid. They not only “debunked” the story, but they heaped ridicule on anyone associated with it. Then the alibi collapsed. But since neither the New Republic nor Newsweek ever issued a retraction, their original stories continued to provide plenty of fuel for Congressional Republicans to stall an investigation into the matter.

Nevertheless a special House Task Force was finally created in 1992. To chair the committee the Democrats picked Lee Hamilton (Yes, the same one who co-chaired the 9-11 Commission), who was well known for his bi-partisanship, mild manners, and willingness to give Republicans the benefit of the doubt when faced with wrong-doing. While acknowledging that the original alibi, which placed Casey in London on July 28, 1980, was bogus, the Committee proceeded to find another alibi, this one placing Casey in Bohemian Grove, California, during the weekend of July 26th. When documentary evidence was later found showing that Casey was not in Bohemian Grove the weekend of July 26th, but instead was there the following weekend (of August 2nd), the House Task Force refused to let go. To counter that, they claimed proof that Casey couldn’t have been in Bohemian Grove during the weekend of August 2nd, by finding his phone number on a list of phone calls made to New York that weekend. They had no evidence that he answered a phone call in New York, just a phone number on a list (sigh). Thus the Task Force concluded, despite the documentary evidence to the contrary, that Casey was in Bohemian Grove on July 26th, therefore he couldn’t have attended the meeting in Madrid, and therefore the October Surprise witnesses who placed him there were liars – again.

Evidence of Contra drug dealing with CIA complicity
Supporting the Contras in their efforts to take over Nicaragua was one of the primary goals of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, despite abundant evidence of repeated atrocities perpetrated by the Contras. Evidence of Contra drug dealing had surfaced during the 1980s, but it was swept under the rug. Then in 1996, investigative reporter Gary Webb published a series of articles in the San Jose Mercury News that documented extensive cocaine dealing by the Contras, CIA involvement, and the tying of all that to the mid-1980s crack cocaine epidemic in Los Angeles. This caused a major uproar in the press, which ridiculed Webb’s allegations and eventually pressured the Mercury News into letting him go.

But in 1998 the CIA’s Inspector General, Frederick Hitz, released his final report on the matter, not only confirming Webb’s allegations, but going beyond them. Robert Parry, writing an editorial in IF Magazine, said it all:



The 9/11 Commission’s description of the events of 9/11/2001
Will Pitt, in a recent DU post, discussed a mountain of evidence, not told to us by our corporate media, that proves that the Bush administration was thoroughly and repeatedly warned of the likelihood of the 9-11 attacks on our country, and that it could have done a lot more than it did to prevent them. David Ray Griffin, in “The 9/11 Commission Report – Omissions and Distortions”, summarized in this article, provides a mountain of evidence that the 9/11 Commission’s staff was riddled with conflicts of interest and that its report was a whitewash. Consider here just one issue, the failure of our military, the most powerful and technologically advanced military that ever existed, to prevent Flight 77 from hitting the Pentagon:

Flight 77 was lost to FAA controllers at 8:57 a.m., and according to NORAD’s account they were not notified of this until 9:24 a.m., 27 minutes later. The 9/11 Commission basically accepts this absurd account, despite the fact that it would have required a complete breakdown of standard operating procedures, despite the fact of FAA testimony to the effect that a phone bridge (where Flight 77 was discussed) was established between FAA and NORAD even prior to the losing of Flight 77, and despite testimony by Richard Clarke of a teleconference established between the FAA and the White House long before 9:24. None of this was discussed by the 9/11 Commission. Nor does the 9/11 Commission discuss the preposterous implication that the shutting off of the plane’s transponder precluded our military from tracking it, even though they already knew that our nation was under attack.

Furthermore, the 9/11 Commission is tasked with explaining why, though they claim that NORAD was not notified of Flight 77 being missing until 9:34 (four minutes before it struck the Pentagon), three fighter planes from Langley AFB were up in the air by 9:30 – and why, though that would have given them plenty of time to defend our nation’s capitol, they nevertheless failed to do so. To explain all that, the 9/11 Commission makes the claim that the fighter planes were ordered to become airborne shortly before 9:30 because the military was informed that Flight 11, which had in reality hit the World Trade Center in New York long before that time, was still airborne and headed south towards Washington; and as to why our fighter planes couldn’t have defended the Pentagon against Flight 77, the Commission claims that the lead pilot misunderstood his orders and headed east towards the Atlantic Ocean.

And how did the press respond to the pitiful response by the Bush administration to the attacks and the subsequent whitewash by the 9/11 Commission? Just like they respond to virtually all other important news that casts our government in an unfavorable light. George W. Bush, a man who did nothing to prepare for the attacks on his country despite repeated warnings, and who after being informed of them sat in a classroom reading a story to school children for several minutes, was made out by our national news media to be some sort of hero, consequently raising his approval ratings to 90%. It boggles the mind to think about how they accomplished that trick.

As an example of the near total lack of accountability with which our corporate news media held the Bush administration following the 9/11 attacks, here is an interview between Tim Russert and Dick Cheney on Meet the Press that took place a few days later:


Russert must have known that Cheney’s contention that “the toughest decision was this question of whether or not we would intercept incoming commercial aircraft” was a lie, since fighter jets routinely intercept commercial aircraft under certain designated circumstances (such as hijacked aircraft) without requiring or asking for approval from the White House. Yet he made no challenge of that ridiculous assertion by Cheney, and did not even follow up on it.

The stealing of the 2004 presidential election
Though exit polls showed both an electoral and a popular vote victory for John Kerry in the 2004 election, virtually no attention was given to that fact by our corporate news media, despite the fact that the discrepancy between the exit polls and the official vote count was the largest ever demonstrated in a U.S. Presidential election. There are several excellent publications out on this issue, which leave little doubt that massive election fraud was involved, including John Conyers’ “Preserving Democracy – What Went Wrong in Ohio”, Robert Kennedy Junior's well documented article in Rolling Stone, “Was the 2004 Election Stolen?”, Steven Freeman’s “Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen?”, Mark Crispin Miller’s “Fooled Again”, and Bob Fitrakis’ “Did George W. Bush Steal the 2004 Election?”. A huge part of the fraud occurred in Ohio, where the election was decided, and where it appears that about 165,000 registered voters were illegally purged (targeting Democrats) in Cuyahoga County alone.

Yet despite the abundance of evidence for massive election fraud, our corporate news media has been so contemptuous of anyone who questions the election results that even liberal journalists and publications have been pressured into dismissing the issue. For example, Andrew Gumbel in “Steal this Vote”, after presenting a great deal of highly informative information on the susceptibility of DRE voting machines to malfunction or purposeful fraud, goes on to say:


This has to be one of the most ridiculous statements I’ve ever read. here we have both an admittedly unreliable product, a product capable of being used to steal elections (as Gumbel himself meticulously pointed out), exceptionally good evidence that it was used to steal at least the 2002 Georgia Governor and Senate elections, AND obvious political allegiance to the Republican Party. Yet Gumbel dismisses the possibility of a stolen election, for no discernable reason.

Similarly Mark Hertsgaard, writing in Mother Jones, notes several of the findings of election fraud or serious irregularities discussed in John Conyers’ report, and then he goes on to dismiss those findings based on nothing but the unsubstantiated statements of the election officials whom he interviewed.

And the result of the widespread negligence of our news media in failing to cover the massive election fraud of 2004 has been that Republicans in Congress have been able to stall meaningful election reform to the point where it could very well happen again in 2006 and 2008. Time will tell.


Final thoughts

Those are just five examples. This kind of thing is a continuous occurrence in our country today.

Whenever I see some arrogant and stupid talking head on TV (which is hard to avoid if you watch any news at all) make some snarky remark about “conspiracy theorists” it just makes my blood boil. I really wonder what is going on in their small little brains. Do they really believe that an intelligent person would sit there and believe all the things that s/he hears on TV, and that anyone who doesn’t is some sort of paranoid “conspiracy theorist”? Or do they really know what's going on, but are simply trying to suck up to their corporate masters? Or have they simply internalized the value system of a robot?

I suspect that the answer to these questions is both a combination of the above and more complex as well. There are many people in our country (and certainly others as well) who, while recognizing the existence of evil in the world at large and among scattered individuals within their own country, are not psychologically prepared to recognize it within their own government. Our government and our corporate media certainly recognize that fact, and whatever their motives may be, are prepared to utilize it to their own advantage. With the ascension of the Bush administration in 2001, that is now truer than ever before in the United States.

See no evil, hear no evil, and above all, speak of no evil. That is the attitude of the power elite in the United States today, and it is the attitude that they wish to instill into all of us. It is one of the most pernicious doctrines that I know of. The absence of widespread coverage and protest against our abuse and torture of our military detainees is one of its primary manifestations, and a phenomenon that reminds me very much of Germany in the early 1930s, as Hitler was consolidating his power. I pray that more Americans wake up to this before it’s too late.

Why do you think this might be locked? I didn't break any rules, did I?

Generally, conspiracy theories as defined by the owners of this website posted in main are cast into that forum.

The Bush administration lying us into war in Iraq is a conspiracy theory, and there have been thousands of those articles that have been posted on DU without ending up in the dungeon.

Do you mean a conspiracy theory that isn't well documented? If so, what do you think is not well documented that I've talked about here?

what it means. If you will note, I specifically said, "...as defined by the owners of this website...." I inserted that in there precisely because I figured you'd ask me what is and isn't a conspiracy theory, and that's not my job here. I expressed surprise because of the same reason the previous poster expressed the belief that your thread would be "locked": Because of uncertainty over the website's definition of "conspiracy theory" is.

I didn't follow your links yet,.. but I'm bookmarking for a later, slow, perusal...great writing:toast:

There was no doubt in my mind back then that someone made a deal to make Reagan look good. I couldn't understand back then, and I don't understand now, the following:

1) how the hell could anyone vote for an actor for president;
2) how the hell could anyone think the release of hostages was a coincidence?

AFAIC, Reagan was a phony from the word go.

I have no problem telling people what I believe and why I believe it. If they want to call me a conspiracy theorist, they have the right to do so. And I have the right to tell them they're naive if they think their government actually has their best interests at heart. Ha!

ETA: Great post, TFC. Yours always are. :thumbsup:

I agree that Reagan was one of the least substantive, most phony presidents we've had. Probably # 2, right after our current one.

Yeah, the hostages were released the very minute that Reagan took office. I've never understood that. I would have thought that they would have rather waited a couple of weeks, in order to make it look a little less suspicious.

fade until it is accepted by the American people. Since this time when it became so apparent that there was a concerted effort to ignore what occurred without reviewing the evidence, I opened up my mind and reviewed the evidence on both the Kennedy assassination and 9/11. It is a difficult thing for anyone to swallow, but it seems the warnings were out there w/o a lot of attention.

did you see this? (Moyers from 1988-it was linked here the other night:

Must watch Bill Moyers "The Secret Government" (22 minutes):

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=2397496401234089687&q=The+Secret+Government&hl=en

I think a lot of people know what's going on, and a lot more suspect it, but not enough. A lot more people need to know about these kinds of things if we're going to hang on to our democracy.

That looks like a great film by Moyers. I must watch the whole thing later, but not right now.

free press in this country:

http://journals.democraticunderground.com/Time%20for%20change/6

Thomas and Dan Rather and the DU and others. These are the people who risk their careers to get some grains of truth out to the people of this country.

and indeed -- it's the notion that our government -- COULDN'T EVER -- commit the consiracies or work against the interests of the people they represent that drives me crazy.

you make a good case that people sould be much more introspective about our ''power elites''.

there is after all a fantastic nexus point when you step up the ladder -- greed and the lust for power.

those two incredible forces to resist --