As George Monbiot, writing in the Guardian newspaper a few years ago about 9/11 Truth, put it:
"The great virtue of a fake conspiracy is that it calls on you to do nothing".
You've really hit on something there. Some of you know I was a conspiracy theorist re the US government in general back in the 80s. There was something dark and impenetrable about the kinds of antiwar movements I was involved in. Very different from the traditional peace movement, where there was all kind of action and organizing to try to get the US military out of Central America. I was kind of straddling both worlds.
There was this dark intimation being fomented by the Christic Institute that somehow the CIA was involved with pushing Iraq into invading Kuwait. They found a quote from an Iraqi diplomat who had said, "We have papers proving the the US met secretly with the Kuwaitis to plot our destruction." The Kuwaiti diplomat, who was also in the room when the Iraqis made this claim, passed out. The Christic Institute speaker squinted his eyes and whispered darkly, "What was in those papers that prove CIA complicity with the Kuwaitis?"
Now the thing about dark conspiracies is that they leave you feeling incredibly helpless. Their intelligence and power is infinite, and you can't even find out what they are doing. But here I saw an opportunity to break through and get the truth! As the leader of the Colorado Peace Mission, a volunteer lobbying group for peace-related causes, I was flying to Washington DC to try to convince congresspeople not to go to war with Iraq. While there, I thought that first I would try to find that secret paper.
I walked into the Iraqi foreign embassy and asked them why they invaded Kuwait. They said Kuwait lowered their oil prices and Iraq was mad at them so they invaded. Was the CIA involved, I asked? No, not really. Do you know about the secret paper re Kuwait and the US conspiring against you? Yes, I have it right here. The paper was a transcript of a meeting between an American and a Kuwaiti diplomat that went something like this:
American diplomat: It would sure be great for the American economy if you lowered your oil prices.
Kuwaiti diplomat: I think we can arrange that.
American: Great!
I see a similar dynamic in 9/11 Truth circles, people complaining and harping about needing an independent investigation. They could have done what I did and organize an independent investigation of the WTC dust. No need to wait for a rich person to do it either. Generally I try to avoid these kinds of statements, but I do think that bringing things into the light does not happen in a conspiracy theory because it threatens the theory. In the late 1980s I set out to prove a conspiracy theory right and actually proved it wrong.
