[CitizensTruth] ARTICLE-Dr J's Commentary -

[Walterb306 at cs.com]

All,

FYI.

Good summary and talking points.

Beverley

Dr. J’s Commentary: Conspiracy Theory Theory, Revisited

http://blog.buzzflash.com/jonas/159


Submitted by BuzzFlash on Wed, 06/03/2009 - 10:37am. 
Steven Jonas 
BuzzFlash is currently featuring the book Dead Silence: Fear and Terror on 
the Anthrax Trail by Bob Coen and Eric Nadler . The header notes: "If you 
think Al-Qaeda Had Anything to do with the Anthrax Attacks, Don't Read This 
Book. This Was Domestic Terrorism, And Most Likely at the Highest Levels." Of 
course there are and have been conspiracy theories galore in American 
history, from the one that the Confederate Secret Service was behind the 
assassination of Abraham Lincoln, through what really sunk the battleship Maine in 
Havana Harbor, to what had Churchill (in WW I the British First Lord of the 
Admiralty) arranged to have squirreled away in the forepeak of the Lusitania 
(the sinking of which was a major factor drawing the United States into that 
war), on to both Kennedy and the King assassinations, and so on and so 
forth. 

It happens that conspiracies in the Western world are more often linked to 
right-wing forces than they are to left-wing forces. (Actually, considering 
just the United States, since there have not been any militant left-wing 
forces other than the short-lived and ill-fated Weathermen for almost a 
century, that is hardly surprising.) So whenever a conspiracy theory is put 
forward, the Right jumps on it in full throat: "Conspiracy theory, conspiracy 
theory," as if just saying that would be the end of it. Well, that isn't the end 
of it. To illustrate the point let's just take an historical meander through 
just some of the more prominent conspiracies that the U.S. Right and on 
occasion the U.S. Center (as in a Democratic President), in power, have hatched 
and both successfully and on rare occasions unsuccessfully brought to a 
conclusion over the last half-century or so.Just so we know what we are talking 
about, let's use a definition of the term, which the Right never does when 
hurling the charge. Wikipedia defines "conspiracy theories" as "attempts to 
explain the cause of an event as a secret, and often deceptive, plot by a 
covert alliance." One can also note that from its Latin root the word 
"conspiracy" means literally (and simply) "with a secret." In English usage, it 
refers to a secret plan, developed and implemented by a secret group. Further, 
if and when the desired outcome is achieved, the secret plan always includes 
a basis for claiming that outcome is not the result of any conspiracy. 
Public deniability is an absolutely essential element of such efforts. In this 
light, let us consider some foreign policy actions undertaken by U.S. 
administrations (mainly but not exclusively Republican) since the 1950s.

In 1953, the government of the democratically elected Prime Minister of 
Iran, Dr. Mohammed Mossadegh, was overthrown in a coup secretly organized by 
Theodore Roosevelt's son Kermit, working for the CIA. The coup was claimed to 
be indigenous at the time. The formerly pro-Nazi Shah was re-installed on 
his throne and an essentially fascist regime was established. The secret U.S. 
involvement couldn't possibly be termed a conspiracy, could it? 

In 1954, the French Indo-Chinese War was brought to a peaceful end by the 
Geneva Agreement, guaranteed by Great Britain and the Soviet Union. The U.S. 
was not a party to it. Under the agreement, the nation was temporarily 
divided into two parts, North and South (President Reagan to the contrary 
notwithstanding, this was an entirely artificial creation that had no roots 
anywhere in Indo-Chinese history). A national election was to be held by 1956. It 
was widely assumed by all parties that the Vietnamese Communist leader, Ho 
Chi Minh, would be elected president. Secretly, the Eisenhower Administration, 
with the Dulles brothers, Allen at the CIA and John Foster at State, 
encouraged the supposedly temporary government in the South to cause the election 
plan to be aborted (the Republican Right likes that kind of abortion). That 
they were never held, lead directly to the U.S.-Vietnam War. The U.S. always 
officially denied that any such interference in Vietnamese domestic affairs 
ever took place. The U.S. role in all of this could not possibly be termed 
a conspiracy, could it? 

In 1954, the democratically elected government of Guatemala's President 
Jacopo Arbenz was overthrown by a military coup secretly organized by the CIA 
(another Allen Dulles "triumph"), although it was claimed to be indigenous at 
the time. The secret U.S. involvement couldn't possibly be termed a 
conspiracy, could it?

In 1961, there was the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Secretly planned under 
Eisenhower, it was approved by John Kennedy. If it had not failed, we might 
never have known of the conspiracy. In the summer of 1962 there was the 
unannounced assemblage of an invasion fleet along the Southeast coast of the 
United States in the summer of 1962, presumably aimed at Cuba (although one 
cannot be sure; Grenada, perhaps?). The invasion plan (if there was one) 
subsequently aborted by the U.S.-Soviet agreement that ended the Cuban Missile 
Crisis, which included the hardly-ever-referred-to pledge by the U.S. to 
abandon all plans to invade Cuba. In this case, because the plan failed, its 
existence is hardly known of at all (but has been testified to by more than one 
member of the armed forces at the time). Conspiracies? Nah. 

In 1962, the Trujillo dictatorship in the Dominican Republic was 
overthrown, and replaced by democratically elected President Juan Bosch, a moderate 
left-winger. A military coup unseated Bosch in 1963. It was in turn 
over-turned in 1965. But a second military coup, in that year, was secretly supported 
by Lyndon Johnson and was successful. In 1964, Johnson secretly supported a 
military coup that overthrew the democratically elected Brazilian President 
Joao Goulart. It stayed in place for about 20 years. Conspiracies? Nah. 

In 1973, the democratically elected government of President Salvadore 
Allende of Chile was overthrown in a military coup secretly organized by the 
U.S., under the leadership of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and CIA 
Director Richard Helms. At the time, any and all U.S. participation was denied, 
even though Kissinger had started a secret anti-Allende campaign even before he 
took office in 1970. The secret U.S. involvement couldn't possibly be 
termed a conspiracy, could it? 

In 1984, the Reagan Administration secretly began organizing an armed 
opposition aimed at overthrowing the left-wing government of Nicaragua that had 
taken power following the overthrow of the widely detested dictator, 
Anastasio Somoza Debayle. Since any such support was prohibited by U.S. law, as is 
now well-known but by most conveniently forgotten, Reagan's boy Ollie North 
secretly arranged to sell arms to Iran (at the time on the State Department's 
own "any-contacts-prohibition" list). This was done in order to raise money 
"off-the-books" to support the so-called "Contras." The "Iran-Contra" deal 
and its spawn couldn't possibly be termed a conspiracy, could it? 

The Georgite invasion of Iraq cannot be properly called a conspiracy for it 
was based upon a not-so-secret plan for Middle East dominance and 
petroleum-supply security drawn up by Project for the New American Century in the 
mid-1990s. However, that plan was nevertheless not acknowledged as having 
anything to do with the Iraq invasion, and certainly the highly sophisticated 
plans that were developed to mislead the American people as to the true reasons 
for the U.S. do indeed constitute a conspiracy, by definition. 

Finally, there is the possibly grandest of them all, the posited 9-11 
conspiracy. We may never get to the bottom of this one, but the work ("Unanswered 
9/11 Miracles about to be Answered" 
http://blogs.salon.com/0002255/2009/01/23.html ) of my colleague Allen Rolland, who has the credibility to publish 
on Salon, is a good place to start. Welcome to the U.S. foreign policy 
conspiracy archive, folks. It is very well-stocked. This column is based in part 
on a column of mine that appeared on May 18, 2006 at The Political 
Junkies.net, which in turn was based on BF Commentary of mine that ran on May 9, 
2006.


Steven Jonas, MD, MPH is a Professor of Preventive Medicine at Stony Brook 
University (NY) and author/co-author/editor of 30 books. In addition to 
being a Columnist for BuzzFlash, Dr. Jonas is also a Contributing Author for 
TPJmagazine; a Featured Writer for Dandelion Salad; a Special Contributing 
Editor for Cyrano's Journal Online; a Contributing Columnist for the Project for 
the Old American Century (POAC); and a Contributor to The Planetary 
Movement.

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