Americans love mysteries on television, in movies and in politics. Seven of the top 10 hard cover books on the March 2004 New York Times best-sellers list are about secret crimes and conspiracies. Our televisions and movies are full of secret agents, undercover agents, double agents, unmarked cars, cover stories, code names classified documents, disguises and plausible deniability. An entire secrecy language has developed to describe the world of things that are undercover.
The wildly popular television show “The Sopranos” is about the very real infiltration of drug gangs and the mafia, where information is only shared on a “need to know basis.” The dozens of movies about “James Bond, Secret Agent 007” and likeminded television shows are not entirely based on fantasy. And in “Hogan’s Heroes,” American POWs hatched a secret scheme each week to outsmart their German captors. Meanwhile, secret grand juries are investigating conspiracies using “secret wiretaps” by the FBI and local police forces. Our whole society might be under “deep cover.”
Webster’s Online Dictionary defines the verb “conspire” firstly as, “to join in a secret agreement to do an unlawful or wrongful act” and secondly, as “to act in harmony toward a common end.”
So why is it so hard to believe governments or leaders would conspire? Do governments engage in conspiracies? Of course groups of politicians get together to plan, and do not always announce their plans. In politics, this is known as “campaigning.” In fact, if leaders failed to do this, they would have to be lazy or incompetent. If leaders “act in harmony toward a common end,” then by at least one dictionary definition they clearly do engage in conspiracies.
Whether or not we agree with the goals of secret government programs, it would be silly to deny such programs exist. The very purpose of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and all national intelligence agencies is the development and implementation of secret plans. And for every secret agency, there is a rival agency seeking to discover secrets. “Espionage,” according to Webster’s Dictionary, is “the practice of spying or using spies to obtain information about the plans and activities [eg.] of a foreign government or competing company. ”
Why would Great Britain have an “Official Secrets Act” if not for the purpose of protecting official plans and secrets, such as the recent wiretapping of telephones in the offices of the United Nations chief Kofi Annan? If all of government action were announced, there would be no need for espionage or the U.S.’ “Espionage Act of 1917” which prohibits obtaining any “document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, photographic negative, blue print, plan, map … ” for the purpose of aiding enemies. Unless the government was engaging in secret planning, there would be no need for a law to keep plans secret, with violations punishable by fines, imprisonment and the death penalty.
Many “top secret” government actions have subsequently become public knowledge. The top secret D-Day landing of U.S. troops on French soil, the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba and the U.S. funding of Contras in Nicaragua quickly come to mind. If they didn’t conspire (secretly carry out their missions) then they wouldn’t be fulfilling the roles that they were invented to fulfill.
Having demonstrated secret plans do exist, the real question is whether we are curious enough to wonder what they are? Because it is illegal to divulge them publicly, we can only speculate as to the plans based on the information we have, until the governments decide to divulge secrets themselves.
Electoral campaigns, such as those of Sen. John F. Kerry and President George W. Bush, are simply groups of people united by a common goal who agree to follow a common strategy. As in the game of chess, secrecy and surprise are essential to achieving strategic objectives, because the opponent would obviously not cooperate were he to understand. The only difference in definition between electoral campaigns and conspiracies is electoral campaigns are supposed to engage only in legal activities. But both employ secret strategies that cannot succeed unless secrecy is maintained. Trying to understand politics or international diplomacy without seeing conspiracies is like trying to follow a tennis game while denying the existence of the tennis ball!
I suspect that some people call others “conspiracy theorists” for one simple reason: to discredit their allegations without addressing the truth that might be behind them. Like the word “liberal,” the name “conspiracy theorist” alone can discredit someone even if his/her ideas are otherwise worthy of consideration.
People who “can’t keep a secret” aren’t good friends or collaborators. Let’s face it: at least some part of every good plan is probably a secret. Since we know governments often act in secret, the truly intelligent question is whether we agree with the methods and goals that are employed. If we are uninterested in this inquiry, we can have little interest in the good functioning of our governments.
So, with the CIA, the FBI and the Secret Service at his disposal, is our current president probably engaging in some unannounced conspiracies? The only real question is what those conspiracies are.
— Francis L. Holland, Esq., is a 1995 graduate of the NU school of Law.
