Steve Kangas Conspiracy Theories?

[Brainster]

Here's a late 1990s CT that popped up in an article on a 9-11 CT movie:

The film centers on the character of Steve Kangas (played by Bradley's brother, Steve) who is thrown into an intricate game of espionage when his girlfriend (played by Jehn Miller) receives a disk implicating Vice President Dick Cheney in the terrorist attacks. Kangas is forced to hide from mercenaries bent on recovering the disc while trying to find his missing girlfriend.

Now the odd thing is that Steve Kangas is (or was) a real person, in fact, the central character in one of the first major conspiracy theories spread by the Internet.

To set the stage, Kangas was a frequent liberal/leftist poster on Usenet back in the 1990s. He got the rather smart idea of putting together a web page with the best arguments he could come up with in favor of liberal ideas. The result was "Liberalism Resurgent" an influential website.

Like any collection of political arguments, it had its strong points, and its weak points. But it also had some pretty weird, paranoid stuff as well, like this example, from Kangas' argument in favor of group compensation for past wrongs (i.e., Affirmative Action):

Group compensation may be the most efficient way to correct mass injustice. For example, suppose the government intentionally detonated a nuclear bomb in Dallas, Texas. Over 90 percent of the surviving population in the outlying areas develops radiation sickness, and half of them will die premature deaths. In the ensuing scandal, the government agrees to pay the surviving victims. However, 10 percent of the survivors (probably in the outermost regions) neither fall sick, nor have to move, nor see their businesses fail, despite being exposed to potentially dangerous radiation fallout. In this case, it would be far simpler and cheaper just to compensate the entire group, because it would cost even more money, time and effort to investigate, medically examine and determine conclusive proof of harm for each surviving victim.

He is, of course saying "atomic bomb on Dallas" is like "governmental racism for centuries" and the argument can be made. But it's still a weird argument that if the government dropped a nuke on Dallas that same government would then turn around and try to compensate the survivors, and it marks Kangas as something of a paranoid lefty.

At the time, the paranoid left was pretty quiescent, but to the extent it existed, much of the antipathy centered on Richard Mellon Scaife. Scaife is an heir to the Mellon fortune, and a right-winger. During the 1990s he funded the Arkansas Project, an effort by the conservative American Spectator magazine to investigate the past of Bill and Hillary Clinton. The project was at least indirectly responsible for Clinton's impeachment, as it was an American Spectator article that convinced Paula Jones to pursue a sexual harassment lawsuit against Clinton.

The basic facts of what happened in early 1999 are undisputed:

Steve Kangas bought a gun in Las Vegas. He traveled by bus from Las Vegas to Pittsburgh. On February 8, 1999, Kangas was discovered by a janitor, hiding in a stall in the men's room of the floor of the building where Scaife's offices were located. The janitor went to find a security guard and when they returned, they found Kangas dead from a shot from his own pistol.

Of course it's not too hard to connect the dots here; guy buys pistol, takes the bus to avoid metal detectors at airports, waits in bathroom hoping for a chance to assassinate Scaife, but the opportunity does not arise. Guy is broke (and reportedly drinking), so he decides to sleep in the bathroom perhaps hoping to repeat his vigil the next day. Spotted by the janitor, he is despondent that he will be caught and turns the gun on himself.

But of course some of Kangas' admirers on Usenet and the Web didn't see it that way. They prefered to believe that Kangas was caught by Scaife's goons and executed, perhaps after being interrogated by the Forbes 400 member himself. Here's a long version of the conspiracy theory by Doug Bashford.

But the cover-up bought Scaife time. The police, unaware of the Scaife-Kangas connection never made a criminal investigation. The Pittsburg Police did not request the Las Vegas Police to search Kangas's home. During all this time Scaife had sent a private investigator traveling the country. Scaife's employee entered and searched Steve's home and smeared Steve's name to witnesses long in advance of any police investigation. If Steve had any material worth being killed for, the police have little chance of ever finding it now.

Here's a shorter version, from the CT site exposing "the Bush Body Count" (and to be non-partisan about it, yes, the site that had the Clinton Body Count was also CT):

Steve Kangas: His web site, Liberalism Resurgent, was meticulously researched and presented such a problem to the "real boss" of George Bush, Richard Scaife, that he hired a private detective to look into Kangas' past. Steve Kangas was found in a 39th-floor bathroom outside of Scaife's offices at One Oxford Centre, in Pittsburgh, an apparent suicide. Mr. Kangas, a very prolific writer, left no note. He had brought a fully-packed suitcase of clothes with him to Pittsburgh. He bought a burglar alarm shortly before he left for Pittsburgh. Why did he need a burglar alarm if he was going to commit suicide? An avowed advocate of gun control, he nevertheless bought a gun. What was he afraid of? Why did he go to Pittsburgh? After his death, his computer was sold for $150 and its hard drive wiped clean. Everything in his apartment was thrown away.

Having looked into the matter briefly back in 1999, I can resolve some of the
"mystery" here. First, Scaife hired the detective to look into Kangas' past after the suicide. Second, it seems possible to me that Kangas did not originally plan to commit suicide; his goal was murder and escape. Hence the note and the suitcase and the burglar alarm are irrelevant.

The gun question is a red herring. Nobody disputes whether Kangas bought the gun, so it doesn't really matter "why" he bought it. Why did he go to Pittsburgh? I'd say that's pretty obvious. IIRC his roommate sold his computer because Kangas left him in the lurch for rent, and of course the hard drive was wiped clean; that's what most people do when they sell a computer.

The CTs eventually caught the eye of the press, including this Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article:

Since then, though, the Internet has churned with speculation about Kangas. Some Web theorists have drawn parallels to the 1993 death of White House Deputy Counsel Vincent Foster, whose apparent suicide Scaife has openly questioned, calling it "the Rosetta Stone" of the Clinton administration.

I don't think the story got any other mainstream media coverage, and the CTers have a good reason for discounting that story; the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is owned by Scaife.

Anyway, the CT itself is rather silly in this case, but it is interesting to note some comparisons with the 9-11 nuttery.

Kangas' full suitcase=Mohamed Atta's will in the bag that didn't make Flight 11.

Kangas buying a gun=Mohamed Atta eating pork.

 

[boloboffin]

"In the ensuing scandal"??????

That is definitely a clear indication of an off-track reasoning system, and that's a shame. Not just the calm assertion that the government might intentionally nuke Dallas, TX is out of whack, but also the idea that the people's reaction to this revelation would be an "ensuing scandal" that would allow the government to offer to pay off the ailing survivors. Something that heinous would certainly result in a nationwide march on Washington. The West Coast would bitterly denounce the East Coast for throwing every government official they could find into the North Atlantic before the West Coast could get a piece of them.

Jeez, Kangas must have heard of the Tuskegee Project - that wouldn't have served his purpose and made his point? That's too bad. When he was on, he was on. My favorite Steve Kangas quote: "There's more profit in a pound of cure than an ounce of prevention." Kangas might be my best reason to oppose conspiracy thinking - what a sad waste.

 

[Civilized Worm]

It actually reassures me somewhat that when one of these nuts tries to act on their believes they tend to completely **** it up. See also that loon who invaded Bohemian Grove.

 

[PhantomWolf]

I could see that the US Government might be willing to compensate survivors for an accidental nuclear detonation in Dallas (i.e. a bomb goes off despite its numbereous saveguards) but one that intentionally did it? Not likely, they'd not be all that worried about a march on Washington either, after all protestors tend to get a little shy when the blood on the pavement is their own.

 

[boloboffin]

I could see that the US Government might be willing to compensate survivors for an accidental nuclear detonation in Dallas (i.e. a bomb goes off despite its numbereous saveguards) but one that intentionally did it? Not likely, they'd not be all that worried about a march on Washington either, after all protestors tend to get a little shy when the blood on the pavement is their own.

It's hard to deal with this example because it's so outlandish. I can't come up with a plausible-sounding scenario as to how something like that could happen. I mean, I was going to say that most people in the military would probably join in with the protesters rather than defend such a government, and yet the military would have to be involved in the bombing of Dallas. This seriously does not compute in reality. And that Kangas could just blithely propose it is what's sad.