The Threshold of Belief

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"Ignorance . . . brought about anguish and terror. And the anguish grew solid like a fog and no one was able to see."

Conspiracies, Cover-ups and Crimes is a journey through the blood-red and midnight-blue netherworld where governments mingle with gangsters, and democracies enter secret partnerships with Nazis; where presidents deal drugs, respectable businessmen run billion dollar rackets, and shadowy secret societies pull the strings of public officials. It is about the dark area usually covered by the term, "conspiracy theory." Conspiracies, Cover-ups and Crimes is the first comprehensive and objective exploration of "conspiracy theory," the last real political heresy. Who really killed J.F.K.? Were we told the truth about the "mass suicide" at Jonestown? Did the CIA have a hand in bombing Pan Am flight 103? Did the Nazis ever really surrender? Is the government manufacturing human robots to carry out assassinations? Is there a secret, evil force - manipulating our everyday lives?

Crazy questions, perhaps. But in writing this book, IÌve interviewed a variety of Americans who have devoted their lives to answering those questions nonetheless. Are they crazy people? The answers may surprise you. After profiling a number of " conspiracy theorists," I'll explain the conspiracies themselves, presenting the evidence gathered by conspiracy researchers, and letting the reader decide where fact becomes fiction and fiction all too factual. While the book tries to present no final answers, I came away from this project asking questions about America and my own place in it that I'd never dared ask before.

Between 1963 and 1981, there were six attempts on the lives of presidents or presidential candidates. When that happens in other countries, we shake our heads at the primitive ways of "banana republics." Here, every recent assassination attempt has been attributed to madmen (or madwomen) acting alone. Get rid of the crazy people, and the system still works. Perhaps we should change a law or two, make it tougher for them to get guns, but otherwise the country is stable.

To maintain this belief, we must also place faith in the institutions that comprise the amorphous entity called "the system" -government, business, media, academia. Those institutions provide us with our way of life and all the information we need to live it, but lately an unshakeable faith in their benevolence and stability has been hard to justify.

There is something about America that makes conspiracy theories inevitable. Something that makes them necessary. The word conspiracy derives from Latin roots which translate roughly as "breathing together." Sounds healthy, but the idea is heresy. In America, the word used to describe conspiracy theories is "paranoid." Conspiracies are delusions. Believe in them and you are mentally ill.

But is there value to these ideas after all? Would we be shutting ourselves off to a fuller understanding of America by understanding conspiracy theory as a symptom of mental illness?

Stalinist as it sounds, treating unorthodox ideas as psychiatric ailments, this diagnosis of conspiracy theories is distinctly American. We like to believe that our American system is unique, that unlike most countries around the world we have a system that works. Things may go wrong, sometimes terrible things, but they are caused by minor malfunctions, not by flaws in the system itself. That is why, when we face awesome crises like the savings and loan robbery, the defense-contracting scam, or even constitutional collapses like Iran-Contra or Watergate, we never ask the obvious question: How in our democracy could these things happen? Instead, we change a few laws, prosecute a few villains, then declare that the system is repairing itself. Nevertheless, participation in politics has never been lower, because, I believe, people have a gut-level feeling of helplessness.

I've heard it said that the most dangerous thing about conspiracy theories is that they create a feeling of helplessness. If everything that goes wrong is caused by a conspiracy, then there is nothing anyone can do about it. The people in this book are evidence to the contrary. They are activists, constantly working on, thinking about, and searching for the real causes of helplessness gripping America.

In the past century, we have experienced an overwhelming social transformation. We are moving toward what one scholar, Bertram Gross, calls "friendly fascism." We may already be there. When the difference between lies and truth no longer means anything, we become easy to manipulate-fair game for "mass media, world spanning corporations, armies and intelligence agencies," he wrote. "Meanwhile, the majority of people have little part In the decisions that affect their families, workplaces, schools, neighborhoods, towns, cities, country, and the world."

In the first part of this book I've profiled a variety of Americans who reject the illusion of "friendliness," what appears to be a new insidious form of control. In the second part, I explore the ideas of these Americans. My intention is not to endorse-and certainly not to discredit -anyone conspiracy theory or the broad conspiracy that seems to emerge throughout Part Two.

This book is an attempt to delve into a way of seeing the world that is far different from the one we're all used to. In this strange and not very comforting view, fantasy and fact shift positions with disconcerting, but delightful, regularity. I've attempted here a kind of mental new journalism of total immersion into the subject. I've steeped my mind in conspiracy theories, figuring the only way to truly understand them is to see the world from their point of view. Despite the pervasive paranoia that can result from these explorations, I'm fairly confident that I've emerged with my sanity intact.

So consider this a voyage, like Darwin on the Beagle, through environments rarely explored, stopping to take samples along the way and coming back to port with a new understanding of our environment, our history, and ourselves.

In a scolding editorial about a congressional committee's finding in 1979 that President John F. Kennedy was assassinated by a conspiracy, the New York Times declared that the problem was not the committee's finding but its choice of vocabulary. "The problem," said the paper of record, "is the word. The word is freighted with dark connotations of malevolence."

The Times' attitude toward conspiracy, though typical, is disheartening. As scary as some of this stuff is, I also find it exhilarating. As important as I believe it is to explore dangerous ideas, I also find it fascinating. The word "conspiracy" may be a "problem" for some, but only because it represents the unknown, mystery, and risk. Those are the things that grip the human mind and bring it to life. These ideas can only be a problem for those who wish to keep our minds under control. 
 
 

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