State Crimes Against Democracy - The Evolution of Conspiracy Theory

Picture taken by Hot Springs Wizard - seems to exemplify "fragile connections" to me.

Many thanks to our dear Spirit Across the Sea (AKA from Belgium) for this new posting..
from Belgium

Document Provenance:
This is a précis of a paper by Lance deHaven-Smith which first appeared in the February 2010 edition of American Behavioural Science and was reproduced in WikiSpooks December 2010. Owing to length restrictions this present offering has been reduced to about 20% of the original which has necessitated many omissions. For those interested in reading the original it can be found here:

http://wikispooks.com/wiki/Document:Beyond_Conspiracy_Theory#

This post seamlessly interweaves sections of the above article with personal comment.

NOTE: the terms Elite or Political Elites refers to those at the highest level of governance and the military and not to the highest strata of international bankers sometimes called TPTB.

The Problem with Conspiracy Theory

When major political events take place in which the involvement of high governance is suspected, such as 9/11; Watergate or the JFK assassination, then each event attracts its followers and researchers which try to analyse all available information but they limit their inquiry to that specific event.
Until recently, social scientists have focused, on graft, bribery, embezzlement, and other forms of government corruption where the aim is personal enrichment rather than social control, partisan advantage, or political power. Conspiracy theory, since the 1960s, has been associated with paranoia and harebrained speculation. Considered as a label, the phrase conspiracy theory does a poor job of characterizing speculations about political intrigue, yet the label remains popular because it functions normatively to protect political elites from mass doubts about their motives and tactics Although not immediately apparent, this function becomes evident when the label’s surface meaning is compared to its meaning in use. On the surface, the term conspiracy theory refers to a suspicion that some troubling event was the result of a secret plot, but the term’s usage implies something else.

Not every theory that alleges a secret plot qualifies as a conspiracy theory in the common sense of the term. The official account of 9/11 claims that the Twin Towers were brought down by a team of Muslims who conspired to highjack planes and fly them into buildings. The theory posits a conspiracy, but the theory is not what most people would call a “conspiracy theory.” Conspiracy theories of 9/11 claim more than that the attacks were secretly planned and executed by an organized team. Most conspiracy theories of 9/11 allege that the U.S. government itself carried out the attacks or that officials knew the attacks were coming and allowed them to succeed. Thus, the conspiracy theory label, as it is applied in public discourse, does not disparage conspiratorial thinking or analysis in general, even though this is what the term suggests. Rather, the broad-brush “conspiracy theory” disparages inquiry and questioning that challenge official accounts of troubling political events in which public officials themselves may have had a hand. Deployed in public discourse to discredit and silence those who express suspicions of elite criminality, the label functions, rhetorically, to shield political elites from public interrogation. Moreover, there is often dissatisfaction when public opinion is attempted to be assuaged by an official enquiry since sometimes members of the enquiry are seen to be compromised. For instance, The Warren Commission which investigated the JFK assassination was appointed by Lyndon Johnson who was one of the main beneficiaries. Allan Dulles, a former CIA Chief who was sacked by JFK and was a political enemy, sat on the enquiry. More or less the entire 9/11 enquiry was manned by Bush cronies or at least players who were not unsympathetic to Bush’s motives.

Conspiracy theorists have contributed to this disjunctive dispute because they have focused on each suspicious event in isolation. Amateur investigators have developed a large popular literature on the assassination of President Kennedy and a number of other political crimes in which state complicity is suspected or alleged. The research has discredited official accounts of many incidents, thus casting suspicion on the government. But such ad hoc research has failed to actually solve the crimes under analysis or even to identify the agencies and officials most likely to have been the perpetrators.
Clearly a new approach to assessing such events is necessary.

State Crimes Against Democracy (SCADs)

By delineating a specific form of political criminality, the SCAD concept allows inquiry to move beyond incident-specific theories of government plots and to examine, instead, the general phenomenon of elite political criminality. Similar to research on white-collar crime, domestic violence, serial murder, and other crime categories, SCAD research seeks to identify patterns in SCAD victims, tactics, timing, those who benefit, and other SCAD characteristics. These patterns offer clues about the motives, institutional location, skills, and resources of SCAD perpetrators. In turn, as SCAD research brings SCAD perpetrators into focus, it provides a basis for understanding and mitigating the criminogenic circumstances in which SCADs arise.

For research purposes, the universe of SCADs must include not only those that have been officially investigated and confirmed but also suspected SCADs corroborated by evidence that is credible but unofficial. Although including the latter brings some risk of error, excluding them would mean accepting the judgment of individuals and institutions whose rectitude and culpability are at issue. Public officials are usually quite reluctant to allow independent investigations into questions about their own actions or those of their close associates. For over a year after 9/11, the Bush–Cheney administration resisted and dodged demands for a 9/11 Commission before finally acceding to pressures from the victims’ families, at which point the administration gave the commission a very small budget and placed it under unrealistic deadlines.

Conflicts of interest also plague agencies that are typically charged with assisting investigations into suspected SCADs. Such agencies usually bear some blame or have some connection to the events in question. Hence, personnel in these agencies are inevitably tempted to conceal evidence that would implicate or embarrass the agencies or their top managers. Both the FBI and the CIA concealed evidence of their contacts with Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby. Likewise, the Department of Defence appears to have withheld from the 9/11 Commission evidence that military intelligence agents had uncovered the 9/11 hijackers’ activities well in advance of September 2001.

Now we are considering such activities as a criminal class instead of a group of isolated incidents, let us look at a number of major events which have occurred in recent history and see what conclusions can be drawn.

[editorial note: the graph didn't transfer to blogspot properly, so I made some changes to facilitate reading - apologies if I have mangled it, Belgium]

EVENT/YEAR/MO MOTIVE/SUSPECT/PERP °OF CULPABILITY

Event: McCarthayism Fabricating evidence of Soviet infiltration
Years: 1950-1955
False Info re Defence Purge of leftists from government and business
Political opportunism
High

Assassination of JFK LBJ’s escalation of Vietnam War
1963 Control of war policy
Assassination CIA/ FBI/ SS
Possibly LBJ RN
Medium

Assassination of Lee Harvey Oswald Connection between CIA & Oswald concealed Medium
1963 Trial Avoided
Assassination Conceal Crime

Gulf of Tonkin Incident
1964
Escalation of Vietnam conflict
Planned International Event Control War Policy
High

Assassination of Robert Kennedy
Election of Nixon stop JFK investigation Escalate Vietnam War
1968 Control War Policy
Assassination
Low

Burglary of Office Daniel Elsberg‘s Psychiatrist
1968
Discredit Elsberg Control War policy
Richard Nixon CIA Burglary
High

Attempted Assassination of George Wallace
1971
Wallace taken out of 1972 election, Nixon Re elected
Political Opportunism Assassination
Medium

Watergate Break in
1972
Re Election of Nixon
RN CIA Political Opportunism Burglary
High

Attempted Assassination Ronald Reagan
1981
VP WH Bush’s position strengthened
1981 Control War Policy Assassination
Low

Iran Contra Hostage release
/Civil war Nicaragua
1984 – 1986 Pres Reagan VP Bush CIA Military
False info re Defence Control War Policy
High

Disputed 2000 Election
Legally mandated recount blocked by US Supreme Court
Election Tampering Political Opportunism
High

9/11 2001 Terrorist Attacks
Bush popularity up Defence spending up Invasion of Afghanistan leading to invasion of Iraq
Planned International Event
Medium

Attempted Assassinations of Senators Daschle & Leahy 2001 by Anthrax spores If successful would have given Republicans control of Senate Medium
Assassination Control War policy

Assassination of Senator Wellstone
2002
Republicans regain Senate
Assassination Control War Policy
Low

Iraq-gate US gains control of Iraq oil
2003
Iran surrounded other Mid East nations intimidated Control War policy
False info re Defence
High

Disputed election
2004
Result Bush wins Ohio and US Presidency
Election Tampering Political Opportunism
High



In the list of SCADs above, several patterns stand out. First, many SCADs are associated with foreign policy and international conflict. Such SCADs include the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the burglary of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office, Iran-Contra, 9/11, Iraq-gate, the assassinations of John Kennedy and Robert Kennedy, and the attempted assassinations of Patrick Leahy and Tom Daschle. All of these SCADs contributed to the initiation or continuation of military conflicts.

Second, SCADs are fairly limited in their modus operandi (MO). The most common SCAD MOs are assassinations (six) and mass deceptions related to foreign policy (three). Other MOs include election tampering (two), planned international conflict events (two), and burglaries (two). With the possible exception of election tampering, all of these MOs are indicative of groups with expertise in the skills of espionage and covert, paramilitary operations.

Third, many SCADs in the post-WWII era indicate direct and nested connections to two presidents: Richard Nixon and George W. Bush. Not only was Nixon responsible for Watergate and the illegal surveillance of Daniel Ellsberg, he also alone benefited from all three of the suspicious attacks on political candidates in the 1960s and 1970s: the assassinations of John Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy and the attempted assassination of George Wallace. If JFK and RFK had not been killed, Nixon would not have been elected president in 1968, and if Wallace had not been shot, Nixon would probably not have been re-elected in 1972. The SCADs that benefited Bush include the election-administration problems in 2000, the defence failures on 9/11, the (U.S. defence grade) anthrax attacks on top Senate Democrats in October 2001, Iraqgate, and the multiple and specious terror alerts that rallied support for Bush before the 2004 presidential election.

Since assassinations form the largest category of MO’s let us consider these as typical in order to see the benefit that the SCAD analysis brings over conventional conspiracy theory.

Several patterns contradict the conclusion from official inquiries that political assassinations in the United States have been random, with no connections to one another and no involvement of political elites. First, the range of officials targeted for assassination is limited to those most directly associated with foreign policy: presidents and senators. Most other high-ranking officials in the federal government have seldom been murdered, even though many have attracted widespread hostility and opposition. No vice presidents have been assassinated, nor have any members of the U.S. House of Representatives or the U.S. Supreme Court. If lone gunmen have been roaming the country in search of political victims, it is difficult to understand why they have not struck more widely, especially given that most officials receive no Secret Service protection. Why did no assassins go after Joe McCarthy when he became notorious for his accusations about communists, or Earle Warren after the Supreme Court’s decisions requiring school desegregation, or Spiro Agnew after he attacked the motives of antiwar protestors, or Janet Reno after she authorized the FBI’s raid on the Branch Davidians in Waco?

A second pattern has to do with the particular presidents and senators who have been targeted for elimination, as opposed to the many who have not. Presidents and senators have been targeted only when their elimination would benefit military and pro-war interests. Because a president who is killed or dies in office is automatically succeeded by the vice president, a presidential assassination would benefit military interests only if the vice president’s background or policy positions were dramatically better for the military than the president’s. This situation has existed only twice since 1960—during the presidencies of John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. Unlike Kennedy, who was trying to end the cold war, Lyndon Johnson was a well-known hawk and pentagon supporter. Similarly, although Reagan and George H. W. Bush had similar positions on the cold war, Bush’s background as former director of the CIA gave him much closer ties than Reagan to the military establishment. This type of analysis could benefit potential Presidents in their choice of Vice Presidents and could have influenced GH Bush in his own choice of VP.

These patterns in assassinations, as well as the patterns across SCADs in general, point to likely suspects and criminogenic circumstances. SCADs frequently involve presidents as either victims or principals, benefit military and military-industrial elites, and employ the skills of intelligence and paramilitary operatives. Conditions conducive to SCADs include periods of warfare or heightened international tensions, administrations with prowar vice presidents, and Senates closely divided along partisan lines. SCADs often appear where presidential politics and foreign policy intersect. This policy locus could mean that the nation’s civilian leadership is being targeted by military and intelligence elites or that military and intelligence assets and capabilities are being politicized by the civilian leadership, or both.

Although I have concentrated on assassinations which are the largest group, similar type of conclusions can be drawn for other SCAD MO’s.

The first step toward SCAD detection and prevention is facing up to the nature and magnitude of the threat. Recently, many mainstream scholars and journalists have concluded that American democracy is becoming increasingly corporatist, imperialistic, and undemocratic. However, mainstream authors have seldom considered the possibility that authoritarian tendencies in American politics are being systemically engineered by top-ranking civilian and military officials. Rather than thinking in terms of high crimes, their diagnoses have blamed abstract institutional weaknesses or isolated failures of leadership.


In contrast, the upshot of the foregoing analysis is that SCADs are surface indications of a deeper, invisible level of politics in which officials at the highest levels of government use deception, conspiracy, and violence to shape national policies and priorities. This sub-rosa manipulation of domestic politics is an extension of America’s duplicity in foreign affairs and draws on the nation’s well-developed skills in covert operations. Through its experience with covert actions, the National Security Apparatus has developed a wide range of skills and tactics for subverting and overthrowing regimes, manipulating international tensions, and disrupting ideological movements. The United States, or more specifically presidential administrations, uses these skills in combination with visible foreign policies to maximize the impact of both the visible and invisible sides of their efforts.

U.S. capabilities for covert operations enter the nation’s domestic politics as SCADs in at least two ways. Sometimes, the process is rather haphazard. In Watergate, for example, the Nixon administration was using covert-action skills domestically in legitimate matters of national security when it diverted these skills, first, to attack Daniel Ellsberg and perhaps other political enemies and, subsequently, to gain advantage in the 1972 presidential election. Generalizing from this example, covert-action capabilities can end up being exploited for SCADs because the officials who control these capabilities are operating in an intensely political environment, and they occasionally succumb to temptations to use their national security powers for personal or partisan advantage. The idea that SCADs are opportunistic gambits in presidential politics was the conclusion reached in the official investigations of both Watergate and Iran-Contra.

On the other hand, several SCADs for which evidence of government involvement is unofficial but nevertheless credible point to elaborate planning by enduring networks of strategically placed insiders pursuing a combination of bureaucratic, ideological, and economic objectives. The assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy, and the attempted assassination of George Wallace, all benefited Richard Nixon and served the interests of military and military-industrial elites. Furthermore, arranging these shootings and pinning them on patsies would have required many operatives, extensive resources, and a variety of skills. Similarly, if the attacks of 9/11 were executed or somehow facilitated by U.S. public officials—as much evidence suggests—a number of agencies would have had to have been involved, including elements of the Department of Defence, the CIA, and the FBI

As it stands, events with profound implications for the nation and the world are left to be investigated on an ad hoc basis; procedures for controlling crime scenes, inventorying evidence, interviewing suspects, interpreting evidence, overseeing the investigative process, and reporting findings are developed on the spot in the aftermath of the tragedies, when the nation is in shock and the perpetrators may be covering their trail. Public officials or their agents lost, discarded, or destroyed critical evidence in the World Trade Centre destruction, the anthrax mailings in October 2001, the disputed presidential elections of 2000 and 2004, the assassinations of JFK, RFK, Martin Luther King, and the attempted assassination of George Wallace.

SCADs can become an important tool for political analysts to link and categorise seemingly isolated or random politically or military motivated events. However with Representatives and Senators becoming increasingly linked to corporate and military interests there could well be apathy towards them outing higher level wrong doing. The fact that the top political and military personnel are having their seemingly unrelated actions coordinated could make them wary of being so cavalier in their contempt for those below them. At least it could make them tread more carefully so that not too many pieces of the jigsaw are connected together. Let us hope that this method of analysis can shine enough light into the dark corners of history that the crimes against democracy can be redressed and democracy can once again be restored to its former pride.