Conspiracies: The Facts * the Theories * the Evidence (15 page)

The determination of all Americans to carry out our full

commitment to the people and to the government of South

Vietnam will be redoubled by this outrage.

Less than two hours after these words, the bombing had begun.

A reason to go to war had evidently been required, and so one

was found, distorted enough that the years it would take for the

details to emerge would dull any subsequent concerns into a

collective fog-of-war shrug. In the immediate aftermath, what

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had begun as a fiction soon became distorted into a full-blown

media fantasy, the ‘Gulf of Tonkin Incident’ luridly recounted as evidence of evil Communists launching pre-emptive attacks on

the high seas.

Given the very clear indications available even at the time, it

is hard to see the Gulf of Tonkin event as anything other than a

deception, if simply one of opportunism taken over a serendipitous military error. The conspiracy theories around it find their root as much in the decades of obvious cover-up since as in the claimed

events themselves, and provide one more important instance in

which public consent was programmed by information filtering –

and blatant lies.

Yet, interestingly, for all the deception foisted upon it by

authorities and a complicit media, popular opinion is not always

as easily swayed as might at first be thought. For there are other events in recent history that, despite endless official denials,

appear to make conspiracy theorists out of much of the general

population, as we shall explore next.

In Summary . . .

False-Flag Conspiracies: Arguments Against

The public struggles to believe that governments would place their
own people in peril for political advantage – Would such cherished
patriotic figures as Sir Winston Churchill or Franklin Roosevelt
real y wish to sacrifice their own shipping or military bases to enemy
action? – Surely only tyrants such as Hitler would consider false-flag
strategies – The USS
Liberty
incident was just a regrettable mistake
with coincidental anomalies – The misrepresentation of the Gulf of
Tonkin events may have been a necessary strategy in the face of the
threat from Communist forces.

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False-Flag Conspiracies: Arguments For

History shows that governments, or at least covert forces within
them, do have an unfortunate record of seeing lives as expendable
when political advantage is required – Many theorists consider
that the actions of high-profile politicians may often be determined
by wider New World Order agendas, al owing them to put aside

their personal scruples in the face of a perceived higher cause – The
Liberty
attack displays so many suspicious elements that it is almost
impossible to believe that it was purely accidental – The plain misuse
of the Gulf of Tonkin false alarm displays a cal ous disregard for
both the truth and life itself.

ConClusion

The grey areas that surround even some relatively recent historical events, often due to intentional concealment, give reasonable

grounds for believing that underhand scheming continues to

colour the geopolitical landscape and that false-flag tactics are considered fair game when strategies demand them. Absolute

proof for particular events may be elusive, but enough clues stand out to justify the contemplation of conspiracy theories around

them.

The Gulf of Tonkin deception by itself il ustrates something of

the essence of our elected leaders and what they are prepared to

do when power is at stake. The population is perhaps too trusting to think that people would never be sacrificed if circumstances

demanded it.

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CONSPIRACIES

Some conspiracy theories become so mainstream that the media

ceases to label them as such. Yet the 1970s Watergate scandal, for
instance, which saw Richard Nixon resigning the US presidency,
was by definition a conspiracy. Although a relatively minor one,
the subsequent public disil usionment it generated helped pave the
way to widespread doubt about the trustworthiness of authorities,
leading to even huge achievements such as the Moon landings

fal ing under doubt. Other events, including the Iraqi weapons of
mass destruction debacle, the WikiLeaks exposures, revelations over
Parliamentary expenses and the wider implications of the News
International phone-hacking cover-ups, have further eroded faith in
the political world, creating a climate in which conspiracy theories
are guaranteed to proliferate.

i) WaTergaTe

From Fringe to News

The authorities would have the public believe that everything they tell it is of impeccable reliability. Yet in their hearts most people 88

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know that the questionable personalities who have often clawed

their way to the top through brinkmanship and lobbying, if not

underhand dealings, rarely present them with the full truth of

anything. With livings to earn and families to raise, apathy or

a sheer lack of time among everyday folk are the main factors

that allow political and financial obfuscation to roll forward

unchallenged. Some argue that this situation is openly cultivated to further enable the New World Order agenda.

However, every now and then an indisputable event takes place

which cracks open the establishment façade, and the truth of what may well be its inherent nature leaks out to rounds of journalistic shock horror. These are the moments when conspiracy leaps

the divide, crossing briefly into the realms of mainstream

acceptability, although it is interesting to note how quickly the word ‘conspiracy’ vanishes from the lexicon in the process. The

offending event is general y reclassified as an exceptional outrage, one which could surely never happen twice, and is then relabelled as a mere ‘scandal’ – usual y with ‘-gate’ appended to its title to create a catchy media tag, in memory of one of the best-known, if at first comparatively slight, conspiracies of recent history.

Watergate Revealed

On 17 June 1972, five intruders were discovered and arrested

inside the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the

Watergate office complex, Washington, DC. The exact purpose for

the break-in has never been satisfactorily established (although one idea is discussed below), but it is clear that some kind of political espionage was intended as the burglars were attempting to instal

wiretapping facilities when they were apprehended. The subsequent investigation and trials of the men responsible quickly revealed that they had been working on behalf of key opposition Republicans

with close ties to the incumbent president, Richard Nixon.

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To general disbelief, Nixon denied to his death that he had

any knowledge of the original crime, but was undone as much by

the cover-up instigated by him and his immediate staff as by the

original action. Despite several public addresses protesting his

innocence (‘I’m not a crook’), the revelation in 1973 that Nixon

had ordered several important White House cabinet rooms and

private offices to be fitted with secret tape-recording equipment dealt the final blow. When the investigating Senate Committee

final y subpoenaed the tapes (after much legal blocking by the

Nixon camp), the recordings included a number of blatant

conversations which implicated many named individuals, but

moreover proved Nixon’s role in attempting to withhold the

details of the original break-in. The matter of whether his cabinet set up the burglary remained unresolved, but enough damage

had been done.

Day by day, the tortuous legal and media investigation into

the plot revealed evidence of ever-wider corruption among not

only political players but also lawyers, who had been persuaded

to perjure themselves to protect the President. This had a

profound effect on both the collective psyche of US citizens

and, to a degree, the entire Western world’s as, for the first time on such a scale, the extent to which elected leaders could run

amok when left unchecked was exposed. Even more injurious,

perhaps, the profane language and callousness displayed by the

President and his colleagues in the widely published transcripts

of the Washington tapes dismayed decent folk, as the everyday

attitudes of power-mongers were laid bare. Any lingering

il usions about a cosily caring and upright patriarchal authority, which were already wobbling due to the extensive public doubts

over the morals of the ruinous war in Vietnam (which in itself

began with a huge deception, as we saw in the previous chapter),

were soon dissipated.

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Wider Implications

Beyond the depressing but essential y mundane aspects of

corruption revealed through the Watergate conspiracy, layers

of darker scheming were also hinted at. Nixon’s use of the term

‘Bay of Pigs’ in several of the taped conversations, for instance, may have referred to the infamously botched attempt by John F

Kennedy to deploy a CIA-trained force of Cuban exiles against

Cuba itself (with a view to unseating the rule of Fidel Castro) in 1961, but it also seemed to be applied as a mysterious catch-all

reference to either other assassination plots against Castro, or to the assassination of Kennedy himself, which some conspiracy

theorists have long linked to Nixon (
see
p. 136).

The most vocal of the convicted Watergate burglars was one

Frank Sturgis, a man with a long history of espionage and gun-

running. Initial y a supporter of Castro’s revolutionaries, he

turned against them before becoming, according to some, a CIA

double agent. Sturgis has often been implicated as one of the

alleged additional gunmen who killed JFK. This was something

he official y denied before his own death in 1993, but he did claim inside knowledge of the assassination, stating that Castro ordered it, later adding that the KGB were also involved. Sturgis was

adamant that what were real y being sought by him and his fellow

Watergate intruders were potential y incriminating photos taken

around Dealey Plaza in Dal as on the day of JFK’s 1963 shooting.

In 1977, Sturgis told the
San Francisco Chronicle
:

The reason we burglarised the Watergate was because Nixon

was interested in stopping news leaking related to the photos
of our role in the assassination of President John Kennedy.

This plainly implicates Nixon as being one of the hands behind

the murder of JFK and, if true, might make more sense of Nixon’s

obvious desperation to cover up his knowledge of the Watergate

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break-in, while Sturgis’s testimony has become important to some

views of the Kennedy plot (
see
chapter 5). Others have inevitably attacked his version of events.

It seems, then, that there may have been more to Watergate than

the simple attempt at political point-scoring which mainstream

accounts have plumped for. Other apparent code names heard

on the White House tapes, such as ‘the Texans’, used by Nixon to

refer to a conglomerate of Texas-based Republican fundraisers,

which included George Bush Senior (president from 1989, and

father of George W Bush), have been used by some to pull yet

more threads together on the wider New World Order plot. It is

possible that more damning evidence might have come from the

recordings, but, rather conveniently, 18.5 minutes of one of the

crucial tapes had apparently been ‘accidental y’ erased by Nixon’s personal secretary. Later analysis suggested that a somewhat more systematic method of deletion had been employed.

Many other revelations might have come from deeper

investigation into Watergate and Nixon’s role in it, but the paths of inquiry were stopped in their tracks when Gerald Ford (who, as vice-president, stepped into the top position when Nixon resigned in 1974) official y pardoned his predecessor – thus ‘immunizing’

Nixon from any criminal proceedings against him, which might

have turned up vital details in a number of dangerous areas. Ford was heavily criticized for the pardon (some say it may have cost

him the next election), showing that the population at large was

far from convinced that there was no more to be known, but

the act had seemingly served its function of putting a lid on any further meaningful scrutiny.

So was born the classic ‘-gate’ suffix, which has come to

mean anything that appears to be corrupt or covered up – often

helpful y replacing the need to apply the term ‘conspiracy’. For all the obvious attempts to limit the damage, Watergate nonetheless