American History

Oklahoma City Bombing

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href=" " imageanchor="1" rel="nofollow" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="blank"><img alt="Murrah" bombing="" border="0" building="" city="" federal="" in="" oklahoma="" on="" place="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgP8I6XG4VAZ8FpUTf_3LAXAj0lMGkH_e0a5PkRyWkqLRwhYMtDTo7S2fSzmMEgwc4Cy48_XXOC8kFPy6DxZtqo-8eZQRljDrihdHSPD0A_M1Ly7TBVNQfiy0hiquC5Vo5JtumBJ8E_fYA/s1600/oklahoma-bombing.jpg" title="Oklahoma" took="" /></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Oklahoma City Bombing</td></tr> </tbody></table> The bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City took place on 19 April 1995 and Timothy McVeigh was later convicted for the act. Conspiracy theories played a role in both the cause and the interpretation of the bombing. On the one hand, McVeigh had been active on the fringes of the militia movement and held conspiratorial views about the role of the government. On the other, a range of conspiracy theories have emerged, from the suggestion that the bombing was the work of the government seeking to justify a crackdown on militias and citizens’ rights in the guise of antiterrorism legislation, to the possibility that McVeigh was part of a larger conspiracy. The blast killed 168 people, including 19 children, and over 500 were injured. On 10 August 1995, a federal grand jury indicted <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="141405811X" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="0649ecf55af88e15cdebdc1512749e6d" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="Timothy James McVeigh" href="http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Worth-Dying-Timothy-Oklahoma/dp/141405811X/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=epichistory-20&linkId=0649ecf55af88e15cdebdc1512749e6d&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_2213758" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Timothy James McVeigh</a><img alt="Murrah" bombing="" border="0" building="" city="" federal="" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_2213758" in="" oklahoma="" on="" place="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=epichistory-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=0649ecf55af88e15cdebdc1512749e6d&_cb=1483200014642" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" took="" width="0" /> and Terry Lynn Nichols on several counts relating to the bombing, including conspiracy to use a “weapon of mass destruction, namely an explosive bomb placed in a truck ... to kill and injure innocent people and to damage property of the United States”. On 2 June 1997 McVeigh was found guilty of all the charges against him by a federal court jury in Denver and on 13 June he was sentenced to death. <table align="center" border="0"><tbody> <tr> <td align="center"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1517299314/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&linkCode=li3&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=e4f62e218ec5527de6b42525f6775d42" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=1517299314&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img alt="Murrah" bombing="" border="0" building="" city="" federal="" height="1" in="" oklahoma="" on="" place="" src="//ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=li3&o=1&a=1517299314" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" took="" width="1" /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1595552367/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&linkCode=li3&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=d43a46b402fae4ccd38b1abff3bc568f" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=1595552367&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img alt="Murrah" bombing="" border="0" building="" city="" federal="" height="1" in="" oklahoma="" on="" place="" src="//ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=li3&o=1&a=1595552367" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" took="" width="1" /></td> </tr> </tbody></table> On 23 December 1997 Terry Nichols was convicted in his trial of one count of conspiracy in the bombing and eight counts of involuntary manslaughter. He was not convicted of any of the murder charges against him, or of using a weapon of mass destruction. Nichols was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole. A third person, Michael Fortier, a former colleague of McVeigh’s from the <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="1602399409" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="ac91fd466bce95f3ef406220271a6906" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="U.S. Army" href="http://www.amazon.com/U-S-Army-Guide-Boobytraps/dp/1602399409/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=epichistory-20&linkId=ac91fd466bce95f3ef406220271a6906&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_6515514" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">U.S. Army</a><img alt="Murrah" bombing="" border="0" building="" city="" federal="" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_6515514" in="" oklahoma="" on="" place="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=epichistory-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=ac91fd466bce95f3ef406220271a6906&_cb=1483200080822" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" took="" width="0" />, admitted to having had advanced warning about the bombing and to having helped McVeigh and Nichols traffic in stolen firearms. He was given a reduced twelve-year sentence by agreeing to testify against both McVeigh and Nichols. This is what might be called the “official version” of the Oklahoma City bombing. It takes the position—one challenged by numerous conspiracy theories—that although McVeigh had assistance from both Nichols and Fortier, it was McVeigh who was principally responsible for the bombing of the Murrah Building; that essentially McVeigh carried out the bombing alone. This is the same version of events McVeigh described to his biographers, Dan Herbeck and Lou Michael, in their book American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing. According to McVeigh, it was he alone who drove a rented Ryder truck containing almost 7,000 pounds of explosive material to Oklahoma City from Kansas, he alone who parked the truck bomb in front of the Murrah Building just before 9:00 A.M. on 19 April, and he alone who lit the fuses to detonate the explosives. There was, say both McVeigh himself and the U.S. government, no wider conspiracy beyond McVeigh and Nichols (as many others have suggested). For this reason, the “official” version of the Oklahoma City bombing is also referred to as the “lone bomber theory.” McVeigh’s motivation for the bombing, according to this explanation, was his belief that the federal government was increasingly becoming a threat to the rights and liberties of U.S. citizens, especially with regard to their Second Amendment “right to keep and bear arms.” McVeigh was particularly concerned by the events at <a href=" " target="_blank">Waco</a>, Texas, in 1993. He was convinced that the FBI had deliberately set fire to the Branch Davidian’s complex and then tried to cover it up. By bombing the Murrah Federal Building, McVeigh hoped to prevent any more Wacos in the future. (The bombing took place on the second anniversary of the ending of the Waco “siege” on 19 April 1993.) McVeigh was also heavily influenced by The Turner Diaries, a racist novel written by William Pierce—under the pseudonym <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="B014S4MB2S" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="8367bcafc200f8f6666f35922ba39427" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="Andrew Macdonald" href="http://www.amazon.com/Turner-Diaries-Macdonald-Andrew-Paperback/dp/B014S4MB2S/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=epichistory-20&linkId=8367bcafc200f8f6666f35922ba39427&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_9695689" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Andrew Macdonald</a><img alt="Murrah" bombing="" border="0" building="" city="" federal="" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_9695689" in="" oklahoma="" on="" place="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=epichistory-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=8367bcafc200f8f6666f35922ba39427&_cb=1483200132032" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" took="" width="0" />—a former officer in the American Nazi Party and leader of the extreme right National Alliance. The novel tells the story of Earl Turner’s part in a violent struggle against the Jewish rulers of the United States, and contains a detailed account of the explosion of a truck bomb placed outside the headquarters of the FBI in Washington, D.C. Despite the successful convictions of McVeigh and Nichols, and McVeigh’s own endorsement of the official “lone wolf” theory of the bombing, numerous conspiracy theories have developed around it. Many contend that the U.S. government itself was involved in the bombing of the Murrah Building. This idea is one that has been particularly pronounced within the far right of U.S. politics, especially within the Patriot and militia movements. A Government Plot? One of the most widespread of these conspiracy theories is that the bombing was planned and carried out by the government in order to secure the passage of counterterrorism legislation that would allow it to crack down on far-right activists. Referring to the burning of the German Parliament in 1933, which was used as a justification by the new Nazi government to move against its opponents, advocates of this theory commonly refer to the bombing as America’s own “<a amzn-ps-bm-asin="0750964871" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="b1b7d07e662c93f9f49b1f08dacd7518" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="Reichstag Fire" href="http://www.amazon.com/Reichstag-Fire-Case-Against-Conspiracy/dp/0750964871/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=epichistory-20&linkId=b1b7d07e662c93f9f49b1f08dacd7518&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_6418671" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Reichstag Fire</a><img alt="Murrah" bombing="" border="0" building="" city="" federal="" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_6418671" in="" oklahoma="" on="" place="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=epichistory-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=b1b7d07e662c93f9f49b1f08dacd7518&_cb=1483200168424" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" took="" width="0" />.” Counterterrorism legislation first proposed in the immediate aftermath of the bombing was eventually signed into law by President Clinton as the Terrorism Prevention and Effective Death Penalty Act in April 1996. At the time of the bombing many Patriots also expressed fears that it might have been carried out by the government as part of a plan to impose a “one-world government” on the United States under the control of the United Nations. Others took the view that the bombing was a deliberately manufactured crisis that might be used to inflict martial law upon the United States, thereby allowing the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to take over the running of the country. For the antigovernment activist Eustace Mullins, the bombing was “a deliberate conspiracy by corrupt and treasonous elements in the federal agencies in Washington as part of a plan to provoke martial law, confiscate legal guns from American citizens, and to wipe out the citizens militia of the several states”. Waco also features prominently in these conspiracy theories, with some in the Patriot and militia movements suggesting that the bombing was intended to destroy evidence of the government’s wrongdoing at Waco, which was being stored inside the Murrah Building. Another, often related, conspiracy theory in this regard is the “<a amzn-ps-bm-asin="B000IZ8E3M" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="ec350a6f70a52e3fab878fbbbef6c91e" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="Manchurian Candidate" href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Manchurian-Candidate-Jeffrey-Wright/dp/B000IZ8E3M/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=theconthist-20&linkId=ec350a6f70a52e3fab878fbbbef6c91e&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_7895214" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Manchurian Candidate</a><img alt="Murrah" bombing="" border="0" building="" city="" federal="" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_7895214" in="" oklahoma="" on="" place="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=theconthist-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=ec350a6f70a52e3fab878fbbbef6c91e&_cb=1457614606145" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" took="" width="0" />” theory. Named for the 1959 novel by Richard Condon (filmed in 1962 by John Frankenheimer) about the assassination of a presidential candidate by a brainwashed U.S. Army officer, this theory suggests that Timothy McVeigh was “programmed” by the government to do the bombing. “Evidence” to support this theory appeared to come from McVeigh’s claims that a computer chip had been implanted in his buttocks during his time in the army. Yet according to his biographers this was just a “tall tale” McVeigh liked to tell, rather than something he actually believed. However, if he wasn’t a “preprogrammed” government agent, other conspiracists nonetheless still see McVeigh as a “useful idiot” or a Lee Harvey Oswald–like “patsy” acting on the government’s behalf. Conspiracy theories concerning the Oklahoma City bombing also posit the possibility that more than one bomb was detonated on 19 April. Militia groups such as the Militia of Montana, for example, have circulated seismographic evidence showing two “blips” on a seismographic chart in the belief that this provides evidence that two bombs exploded on that day. The Oklahoma Geological Survey which recorded these “blips” refuted this suggestion, however, explaining that the second “blip” was caused by the Murrah Building falling down rather than by another bomb. J. Orlin Grabbe, though, has claimed that a secret Pentagon report describes how explosives were in fact placed on five columns inside the Murrah Building, and that it was these that caused the building to fall rather than the truck bomb placed outside. In contrast, the far-right publication the Spotlight suggested that it was a secret and sophisticated “A-neutronic” bomb that was used—a device too sophisticated and technically demanding for either McVeigh or Nichols to have created themselves. There is also the “government sting gone wrong” version of events. According to this theory, agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF) had advanced warning about the bombing, but failed to act upon it because they wanted to arrest the perpetrators in front of the Murrah Building itself, in order to generate “massive publicity” following the public relations problems the agency had suffered as a result of its handling of the confrontations at Ruby Ridge in Idaho in 1992 and Waco in 1993. Unfortunately, however, the agents tracking the truck lost it when a double agent the BATF had been working with “turned off the concealed beeper on the truck” (Skolnick). Advocates of this theory point to the absence of BATF agents from their offices inside the Murrah Building at the time the bomb went off to support their claims. Trying to reconcile this theory with the secret Pentagon report of the five demolition charges being placed inside the Murrah Building, J. Orlin Grabbe considers the possibility that someone was “using their knowledge” of the sting operation as “a cover for the actual bombing.” “Either way,” Grabbe concludes, “it suggests an inside job.” All of these charges and claims have been strongly refuted by the BATF and others, and there is no convincing evidence to support any of the conspiracy theories that the U.S. government was involved in the Oklahoma City bombing. John Doe No. 2 and “Others Unknown” Members of the far right in the United States are not the only people to have suggested that more people than Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols might have been involved in the Oklahoma City bombing. Relatives of those who died in the explosion, journalists, academics, politicians, and lawyers have all raised doubts about the official “lone bomber” theory. One of the reasons for this is that on the day after the bombing, 20 April 1995, the FBI issued composite sketches of two unidentified suspects, known as “John Doe No. 1” and “John Doe No. 2,” whom several witnesses had connected with the rented Ryder truck containing the bomb. hn Doe No. 1 was quickly identified as McVeigh, but the identity and even the existence of John Doe No. 2 has remained a matter of great controversy. The original grand jury indictment against McVeigh and Nichols also encouraged speculation about a wider conspiracy because of its reference to McVeigh and Nichols having planned to carry out the bombing with “others unknown”. Glenn and Cathy Wilburn, who lost two grandsons in the bombing, were the most prominent relatives of those who died in Oklahoma City to call for an investigation into the possibility of a wider conspiracy. Drawing on the work of an Oklahoma journalist, J. D. Cash, they persuaded Republican state representative Charles Key to campaign for a grand jury to investigate not only the existence of other perpetrators behind the bombing, but also allegations that the government had had prior knowledge of the attack. One of Cash’s claims, for instance, was that he had evidence linking John Doe No. 2 to some of the inhabitants of Elohim City, a Christian Identity community in eastern Oklahoma. This theory was picked up by Stephen Jones, McVeigh’s chief defense counsel during his trial, and Cash’s work also appeared in an Internet newsletter, The John Doe Times, created by the First Alabama Cavalry Regiment (Constitutional Militia) in Birmingham in 1996, which was widely circulated by both Patriot and mainstream media sources. Stephen Jones simply didn’t believe that McVeigh could have acted largely alone, as the government maintained. Following Cash, he was particularly concerned that the government hadn’t properly investigated possible links between the Oklahoma City bombing and Elohim City, especially those involving Andeas Strassmeir—known as “Andy the German”—who was Elohim City’s chief of security and weapons training, and Dennis Mahon, a former grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan and leader of the White Aryan Resistance. Jones, for example, had uncovered reports from a BATF informant called Carol Howe from 1994 in which she claimed that Mahon and Strassmeir were planning a terrorist campaign that would include the blowing up of a federal building and that “the Oklahoma City Federal Building” was one of the possible targets. Further, Jones also arranged for McVeigh to undertake a polygraph test. The results of this revealed that McVeigh was being truthful when he described his own part in the bombing, but that he was being evasive when asked whether others, besides those already charged, had been involved. McVeigh provided an explanation for this discrepancy by explaining to his biographers that the polygraph “was thrown off by his anxieties over being asked the same questions again and again,” as well as by his concern that the federal authorities might be trying to implicate his sister Jennifer in the bombing. McVeigh consistently denied that anyone else other than Nichols and Fortier had any involvement in the Oklahoma City bombing. He claimed that he had met Strassmeir once, at a gun show in Tulsa, and said that he had never met Mahon. In a letter to the Houston Chronicle on 2 May 2001, he argued that Jones’s claims concerning a wider conspiracy—which the trial judge Richard G. Matsch had ruled to be inadmissible, and which, in addition to a link with the residents of Elohim City, had also raised the possibility of overseas involvement in the bombing by Islamic extremists such as Osama bin Laden, Iraq, and the Irish Republican Army—had been “thoroughly discredited.” “Does anyone honestly believe,” McVeigh asked, “that if there was a John Doe No. 2 (there is not), that Stephen Jones would still be alive? Think about it.” (Cobb). On 29 January 1997, the Justice Department announced that those witnesses who had claimed to have seen John Doe No. 2 had been mistaken. No John Doe No. 2 existed. On 31 December 1998 the Oklahoma grand jury petitioned for by Glenn and Cathy Wilburn, among others, also concluded that there was no John Doe No. 2. There were no additional perpetrators of the Oklahoma City bombing, it said, no evidence of any connection to Elohim City, and no evidence that the government had received any advanced warning of the bombing. Despite this, the belief that there was a wideranging conspiracy behind the Oklahoma City bombing refuses to disappear. It was given renewed emphasis as a result of the publication of Mark S. Hamm’s book In Bad Company: America’s Terrorist Underground in 2002. “Multiple John Doe No. 2s” and Some Continuing Questions Also building on the investigations of J. D. Cash, Hamm contends that there was a wider conspiracy behind the Oklahoma City bombing, and that this conspiracy was the work of a neo-Nazi influenced antigovernment paramilitary gang known as the Aryan Republican Army (ARA). According to Hamm’s “multiple John Doe 2 theory,” four cells of the ARA were involved in the bombing. The first cell contained “the bomb builders,” Steven Colbern, Dennis Malzac, and a third unidentified man whom Hamm refers to as the “phantom bomb builder.” The second cell was made up of McVeigh, Nichols, and Fortier, and according to Hamm their role was “to plan and develop a strategy for the bombing.” A third cell was to deal with “information, training, weapons, and logistical support,” and this, Hamm says, was led by Andreas Strassmier. It also included Denis Mahon and a Elohim City resident, Michael Brescia, whom many people, including the government informer Carol Howe, have identified as the infamous John Doe No. 2. The selesai cell handled financing—which came in part from the proceeds of bank robberies—and security. Led by Pete Langan, its members, says Hamm, included Brescia again, as well as four others, Richard Guthrie, Kevin McCarthy, Scott Stedeford, and a <a href=" " target="_blank">Ku Klux Klan</a> leader, Mark Thomas (Hamm, 195–196). According to this theory, the bombing is best understood as being part of a plot to set a racebased civil war into motion and to recruit others to the ARA’s antigovernment and revolutionary agenda. By denying the involvement of anyone else, McVeigh, in this scenario, was hoping to be seen as a martyr for the cause. As Denis Mahon explained to the journalist J. D. Cash, McVeigh was “a good soldier, who from the beginning wanted to be the fall guy in the bombing—securing his place in history as a patriot hero”. Concern that the full story of those involved in the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City has yet to be told was intensified in May 2001 when the FBI revealed, just six days before McVeigh was due to be executed, that it had withheld more than 3,000 documents from his defense team during his trial. McVeigh’s execution was postponed, and he was eventually put to death by lethal injection in the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, on 11 June 2001. A USA Today/CNN/Gallup Poll published the day after the execution revealed that “65 percent of American adults believe that McVeigh did not name everyone who helped him build and detonate the bomb”.

Oklahoma City Bombing

Oklahoma City Bombing The bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City took place on 19 April 1995 and Timothy McV...

Oil Industry

<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href=" " imageanchor="1" rel="nofollow" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="blank"><img alt="Oil" an="" and="" border="0" commodity="" economic="" essential="" industry="" is="" oil="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ0gRhJzMaFGB3BoqQ26Wr9KZRjFy2P4oEpvizijO9ezsvsyOEHxuE4cAaLrvOfz-HZfDnsML2Xaor3bqzJhyphenhyphenHzzH_5SJW-zigmnh85zAaWRuLFhVd6ELn8tkXIG8lMXxDBuYesmWUn28/s1600/Oil-Industry.jpg" strategic="" title="Oil" /></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Oil Industry</td></tr> </tbody></table> Oil is an essential economic and strategic commodity. Oil power enabled the internal combustion engine to revolutionize industry, society, and the conduct of warfare in the twentieth century. Necessarily, the oil industry is one of the world’s largest industries, and plays a major political and economic role in many nations. Conspiracy theories, however, hold that the oil industry secretly controls U.S. politics and foreign policy from behind the scenes. These theories reject conventional explanations for wars, terrorist attacks, and assassinations, and assert instead that these events were “really about oil.” Actual Conspiracies The oil industry has often behaved in a conspiratorial fashion. In the early 1870s, <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="1400077303" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="c7da8428227cc1566e38d39b8698e8ae" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="John D. Rockefeller" href="http://www.amazon.com/Titan-Life-John-Rockefeller-Sr/dp/1400077303/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=epichistory-20&linkId=c7da8428227cc1566e38d39b8698e8ae&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_1293844" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">John D. Rockefeller</a><img alt="Oil" an="" and="" border="0" commodity="" economic="" essential="" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_1293844" industry="" is="" oil="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=epichistory-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=c7da8428227cc1566e38d39b8698e8ae&_cb=1483199784382" strategic="" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" width="0" /> resolved to monopolize the oil industry, and his <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="1507570104" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="5a533fb4c179c37c688ff0025f56b800" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="Standard Oil Company" href="http://www.amazon.com/History-Standard-Oil-Company/dp/1507570104/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=epichistory-20&linkId=5a533fb4c179c37c688ff0025f56b800&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_6329140" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Standard Oil Company</a><img alt="Oil" an="" and="" border="0" commodity="" economic="" essential="" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_6329140" industry="" is="" oil="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=epichistory-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=5a533fb4c179c37c688ff0025f56b800&_cb=1483199773465" strategic="" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" width="0" /> soon controlled 90–95 percent of U.S. production and refining. <table align="center" border="0"><tbody> <tr> <td align="center"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1439110123/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&linkCode=li3&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=408e3bc7539d761e35f3ce7ff9f9bd97" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=1439110123&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img alt="Oil" an="" and="" border="0" commodity="" economic="" essential="" height="1" industry="" is="" oil="" src="//ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=li3&o=1&a=1439110123" strategic="" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" /><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0982039204/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&linkCode=li3&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=2c65daec12ed160bfa3590bca5c7c924" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=0982039204&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img alt="Oil" an="" and="" border="0" commodity="" economic="" essential="" height="1" industry="" is="" oil="" src="//ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=li3&o=1&a=0982039204" strategic="" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" /></td> </tr> </tbody></table> Standard derived considerable advantage from large size and superior <a href=" " target="_blank">organization</a>, but also ruthlessly used espionage, price-cutting, intimidation, and bribery to destroy or absorb rivals. Standard negotiated secret agreements with the railroads to charge Standard lower transportation rates than rival companies, and to pay Standard a percentage of every dollar the railroads charged Standard’s rivals. Antitrust legislation, and the emergence of new sources of supply, ultimately prevented Standard from eliminating all competitors. However, the <a href=" " target="_blank">Rockefeller family</a> amassed a vast fortune and political influence that persists even today. In 1928, British, Dutch, and U.S. oil companies divided the Middle Eastern market and agreed to prevent overproduction, allocate quotas, fix prices, and deal jointly with outside producers. After <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">World War II</a>, the United States abrogated these agreements and secured an increased presence for U.S. companies in <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Saudi Arabia</a>, Kuwait, and Iran. The U.S. Congress, Justice Department, and Federal Trade Commission investigated these agreements. Consequently, in 1952 the Justice Department convened a grand jury to pursue civil and criminal antitrust charges against the oil companies. Ironically, even as the antitrust case progressed, the State Department was negotiating with Britain to create the cartel that controlled Iranian production and refining. <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="0671747584" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="dff6da19ef69ecacf6fe186e6c6fc520" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="President Eisenhower" href="http://www.amazon.com/Eisenhower-Soldier-President-Renowned-One-/dp/0671747584/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=epichistory-20&linkId=dff6da19ef69ecacf6fe186e6c6fc520&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_4928902" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">President Eisenhower</a><img alt="Oil" an="" and="" border="0" commodity="" economic="" essential="" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_4928902" industry="" is="" oil="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=epichistory-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=dff6da19ef69ecacf6fe186e6c6fc520&_cb=1483199810449" strategic="" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" width="0" /> wanted to use the oil industry to exclude Soviet influence from Iran, and this national security consideration trumped antitrust concerns. At length, the antitrust case petered out without significant result. The <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="1591846609" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="5c1039993ee14c8404b971f08f50ddaf" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="Enron case" href="http://www.amazon.com/Smartest-Guys-Room-Amazing-Scandalous/dp/1591846609/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=epichistory-20&linkId=5c1039993ee14c8404b971f08f50ddaf&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_9587150" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Enron case</a><img alt="Oil" an="" and="" border="0" commodity="" economic="" essential="" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_9587150" industry="" is="" oil="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=epichistory-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=5c1039993ee14c8404b971f08f50ddaf&_cb=1483199834152" strategic="" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" width="0" /> is a recent example of a criminal conspiracy in the oil industry. After Enron went bankrupt in 2001, company officials were indicted on charges of fraud and money laundering. Other allegations included improper accounting, falsification of financial statements, and conspiracy to manipulate energy prices in California. The full extent of Enron’s political influence remains unknown, although several senior Bush administration officials have Enron connections. Oil and U.S. Foreign Policy Most historians agree that the U.S. government uses the oil companies as instruments of foreign policy. Conspiracy theorists, however, cite the above examples from the sordid history of the oil industry to support the argument that the U.S. government is an instrument of the oil companies. Such theorists insist that government policy (especially foreign policy) usually benefits the oil industry. The theory that the oil industry exerts undue influence on U.S. politics and foreign policy emerges partly from the large number of government officials drawn from the so-called Eastern Establishment. The Eastern Establishment includes northeastern (especially New York) law firms, financial institutions, foundations, media corporations, Ivy League schools, and think tanks such as the <a amzn-ps-bm-asin="0896081036" class="amzn_ps_bm_tl" data-amzn-link-id="77b88218dc992c080e3f130891735dbe" data-amzn-ps-bm-keyword="Trilateral Commission" href="http://www.amazon.com/Trilateralism-Trilateral-Commission-Planning-Management/dp/0896081036/ref=as_li_bk_tl/?tag=epichistory-20&linkId=77b88218dc992c080e3f130891735dbe&linkCode=ktl" id="amznPsBmLink_9870462" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Trilateral Commission</a><img alt="Oil" an="" and="" border="0" commodity="" economic="" essential="" height="0" id="amznPsBmPixel_9870462" industry="" is="" oil="" src="https://ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?source=bk&t=epichistory-20&bm-id=default&l=ktl&linkId=77b88218dc992c080e3f130891735dbe&_cb=1483199900881" strategic="" style="border: none !important; height: 0px !important; margin: 0px !important; padding: 0px !important; width: 0px !important;" width="0" /> and Council on Foreign Relations. Conspiracy theorists contend that “the Rockefellers” (a term synonymous with the oil industry) control the Eastern Establishment, and thereby control the government. The secretary of state, in particular, has always been a member of the Rockefeller faction since <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">World War II</a>, as have many CIA directors. Conspiracy theories maintain that Middle Eastern coups and wars are manufactured in Washington to increase U.S. hegemony over the region’s oil. Daniel Pipes shows that such theories are strongly held in Middle Eastern countries themselves. Even responsible national leaders fear that the CIA will overthrow them at the behest of the oil industry, or that Israel and western countries will conspire to attack them for reasons related to oil. (Of course, such a coup actually occurred in Iran in 1953, and Britain, France, and Israel indeed conspired to attack Egypt in 1956.) Conspiracy theorists contend that the Yom Kippur War, the <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Iran-Iraq War</a>, the Gulf War, and the current “War on Terrorism” all resulted from U.S. manipulation and were intended to benefit the U.S. oil industry. In 1967, Israel inflicted a crushing defeat on Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. The Arabs rearmed, and attempted to recapture their lost territories on Yom Kippur in 1973. Arab armies made initial progress until Israel counterattacked. <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">OPEC</a> oil producers embargoed the United States, Portugal, the Netherlands, and South Africa for their support of Israel, and oil prices skyrocketed. Conspiracy theorists argue that then-Secretary of State <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Henry Kissinger</a> (the Rockefellers’ principal pawn) engineered this war in order to raise oil prices as part of his strategy of détente. The price increase rewarded the Soviet Union (an oil producer) and punished America’s principal economic competitors (Europe and Japan), who were more dependent on Middle Eastern oil than the United States. Supposedly, Kissinger told the Arabs that the United States could not induce Israel to begin the “peace process” until the Arabs scored a victory on the battlefield. Moreover, Kissinger restrained Israel from launching a preemptive strike before the Arabs attacked. In 1979, growing unrest in Iran led to the overthrow of the shah and the rise of an Islamic fundamentalist regime, which seized the U.S. embassy in Tehran. The humiliating hostage crisis, and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, triggered a spike in oil prices, and contributed to <a href=" " target="_blank">Ronald Reagan</a>’s electoral victory in 1980. Just before the election, <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Saddam Hussein</a>’s Iraq tried to seize Iran’s oilfields, leading to eight years of bloody, indecisive warfare. These events provoked many conspiracy theories. The shah himself believed that foreign conspirators overthrew him, at times naming the oil companies as his nemesis. Many Iranians still believe the CIA ousted the shah. Some contend that the Reagan campaign conspired with <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Khomeini</a> to ensure that the embassy hostages were not released before the 1980 election (known as “the <a href=" " target="_blank">October Surprise</a>”). Other theories insist that Washington wanted high oil prices in 1979 in order to slow European and Japanese economic growth vis-à-vis the United States. Part of this reprise of the 1973 strategy was President Carter’s “green light” for Saddam to attack Iran. Carter and the oil industry hoped that Saddam’s attack would bring Iranian oil under the control of a de facto ally, and would force Iran to cooperate with Washington, since the Iranian military depended on U.S. equipment. Carter also hoped this pressure would lead to the overthrow of Khomeini and the release of U.S. hostages before the 1980 elections. Proponents of this alternative “October Surprise” theory observe that the United States “tilted” toward Iraq from early 1980 until early 1990. Some authors argue that Washington manipulated oil prices downward in the 1980s in order to bankrupt the Soviet Union. To reward cooperative Soviet policies after 1989, however, Washington decided to use Iraq to raise the price of oil. In July 1990, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq told Saddam Hussein that the United States had “no opinion” on Iraq’s border dispute with Kuwait. Conspiracy theorists consider this a U.S. “green light” for Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait in August 1990. The “green light” was a deliberate trap—the U.S. never intended to permit Saddam to keep Kuwait. Instead, the U.S. intended to use the resulting crisis and war to increase the price of oil and to introduce major military forces into <a href=" " target="_blank">Saudi Arabia</a> and neighboring oil-rich states, where they remain to this day. The oil industry further profited from the rebuilding of Kuwait after the war. Conspiracy theorists cite the connections between President Bush, administration officials such as then Defense Secretary Cheney, and the oil industry to support the claim that the 1991 <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Gulf War</a> was “really” about oil. Such theorists again cite the connections between President George W. Bush, Vice-President Cheney, other administration officials, and the oil industry to support their views of the September 11 terrorist attacks and their aftermath. The conspiracy view of September 11 is that the Bush administration knew the attacks were coming, but deliberately let them happen to provide a pretext for military aggression. The “War on Terrorism” is thus a fig leaf to cover the “real” U.S. agenda—to control Central Asian oil resources and the potential pipeline routes through Afghanistan and Pakistan. Allegedly, the United States initially backed the vicious Taliban regime in Afghanistan because the <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Taliban</a> were receptive to pipeline construction. However, pipeline negotiations failed in 1998, and the United States then began to subvert the Taliban. After <a href=" " target="_blank">September 11</a>, the United States simply executed a long-prepared plan for an invasion of Afghanistan. The increased U.S. military presence in Central Asia and the Saudi peninsula allowed the U.S. to tighten its grip on the region’s oil, and to prepare for an invasion of Iraq. Conspiracy theorists believed that if the U.S. invaded Iraq, the “real” objective would have been to allow U.S. oil companies to exploit idle Iraqi oilfields.

Oil Industry

Oil Industry Oil is an essential economic and strategic commodity. Oil power enabled the internal combustion engine to revolutionize in...

Octopus

Octopus

Octopus “The Octopus” was researcher Danny Casolaro’s term for the vast series of interlocking conspiracies he believed he had uncovered...

October Surprise

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href=" " imageanchor="1" rel="nofollow" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="blank"><img alt="The" border="0" conspiracy="" holds="" in="" october="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI0mXiG-MVBxei24eNclTokZzYUwNAtKm4suKoac1NN53NMi6WNx2hDYMghrdV5oxwYQrQEz7LBXCsL_7DNb-4H5U9issNu5KQP0Avoeox12FRO3dt3L3A3VyABTuVZ_Hun-U8IDhNUYA/s1600/October-Surprise.jpg" surprise="" that="" theory="" title="October" /></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">October Surprise</td></tr> </tbody></table> The October Surprise conspiracy theory holds that in October 1980, <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Ronald Reagan</a> conspired with the Islamic Republic of Iran to beat Jimmy Carter in the U.S. presidential elections on 4 November. The deal: in return for the Khomeini government keeping its U.S. hostages at the U.S. Embassy in Tehran until after the election, damaging Carter’s candidacy, Reagan would reward it with armaments. The conspiracy theory endured for over a decade, from 1980–1993, but has since disappeared. The idea originated with <a href=" " target="_blank">Lyndon LaRouche</a>, one of the most prolific, original, and bizarre of U.S. conspiracy theorists. Just after the 1980 election, one LaRouche magazine first laid out the conspiracy theory, then another one repeated it three years later. The idea attracted minimal attention, however, until the <a href=" " target="_blank">Iran-Contra</a> scandal of late 1986 seemed to fulfill the terms of the alleged deal. The former president of Iran, Abol Hassan Bani Sadr, tentatively tried out this theory in an article on 12 April 1987 in the Miami Herald. When commentators in the United States endorsed the idea, Bani Sadr felt emboldened to make ever-larger and more elaborate claims. <table align="center" style="width: 450px;"><tbody> <tr> <td align="center" width="225"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812919890/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&linkCode=li3&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=2da3b2f70e464c0245b106b897fff376" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=0812919890&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img alt="The" border="0" conspiracy="" height="1" holds="" in="" october="" src="//ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=li3&o=1&a=0812919890" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" surprise="" that="" theory="" width="1" /></td> <td align="center" width="225"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1594741565/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&linkCode=li3&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=e8470d64704554d9f3b90cc49368ad1c" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=1594741565&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img alt="The" border="0" conspiracy="" height="1" holds="" in="" october="" src="//ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=li3&o=1&a=1594741565" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" surprise="" that="" theory="" width="1" /></td> </tr> </tbody></table> A handful of conspiracy theorists in the United States (Barbara Honegger, Martin Kilian, David Marks, Robert Parry, Jurgen Roth, and Craig Unger) began researching Bani Sadr’s allegations and stumbled upon an array of self-promoters, con men, and criminals from several countries. The cast included Israelis (Ari Ben-Menashe, Ahran Moshell, and Will Northrop), Frenchmen (Robert Benes and Nicholas Ignatiew), Iranians (Jamshid Hashemi, Ahmed Heidari, Houshang Lavi, and Hamid Naqashan), Americans (Richard Babayan, Richard Brenneke, William Herrmann, Oswald LeWinter, Heinrich Rupp, and Gunther Russbacher), and even a South African (Dirk Stoffberg). Not only did they confirm the story and add their own elaborations, but the researchers carelessly contaminated their sources by informing them of others’ statements, further stimulating them to grandiose claims. After a year, Bani Sadr returned to the topic and found his conspiracy outline fully fleshed out; he was especially impressed by Brenneke’s allegations at a 1988 trial in Denver, which in his eyes offered official documentation of the plot. Encouraged by this new information, the former Iranian president now hypothesized a much larger and longer-lasting conspiracy between Reagan and <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Khomeini</a> (Playboy, September 1988; and the interviews he granted to Jean-Charles Deniau in September and October 1988, forming the basis of their joint book). Although the October Surprise theory had now ripened, it remained the guilty pleasure of die-hard conspiracy theorists. Only when the New York Times on 15 April 1991 devoted an exceptional two-thirds of its opinion page to this thesis did it become a public issue. The author of this article, Gary Sick, brought to the issue an establishment pedigree (navy captain, Columbia University Ph.D., Ford Foundation jadwal officer, Human Rights Watch board member) as well as the credibility of having served as principal White House aide for Iran during the Iranian Revolution and the hostage crisis. Sick alleged that “individuals associated with the Reagan-Bush campaign of 1980 met secretly with Iranian officials to delay the release of the U.S. hostages until after the U.S. election. For this favor, Iran was rewarded with a substantial supply of arms from Israel.” Sick also raised the possibility that <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">George Bush</a> was one of those Americans, thereby impugning the legitimacy of at least one subsequent Republican president. The October Surprise instantly vaulted to national importance. Leading television shows devoted hours to the subject, weeklies made it the subject of cover stories, and <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Jimmy Carter</a> called for an investigation. A January 1992 poll showed 55 percent of Americans believing these allegations to be true and just 34 percent finding them false. As part of his preparations to run for the presidency, H. Ross Perot sent his associates to talk with Gunther Russbacher in his Missouri jail cell. In February 1992, the House of Representatives voted in favor of an investigation of the charges and the Senate followed suit soon after. Sick himself expanded his op-ed into a 278-page book, October Surprise: America’s Hostages in Iran and the Election of Ronald Reagan. Here, Sick characterized the 1980 election as a “covert political coup.” To give his story the feel of authenticity so important to a conspiracy theory, he chronicled in loving detail events that (it turned out) never took place. Thus, discussing a phantom meeting in Madrid on 27 July 1980, for example, he provided this little touch: “The conversation was interrupted twice, when hotel waiters arrived to serve coffee”. So much attention to the October Surprise theory meant it had to be checked in sober and exhaustive detail, and under such scrutiny it promptly collapsed. Several journalistic investigations started the process, especially Frank Snepp, “Brenneke Exposed,” Village Voice, 10 September 1991; John Barry, “Making of a Myth,” Newsweek, 11 November 1991; Steve Emerson and Jesse Furman, “The Conspiracy That Wasn’t,” New Republic, 18 November 1991; and Frank Snepp, “October Surmise,” Village Voice, 25 February 1992. Two congressional inquiries then confirmed these conclusions. The Senate stated that “by any standard, the credible evidence now known falls far short of supporting the allegation of an agreement between the Reagan campaign and Iran to delay the release of the hostages”. The House report went further, declaring that “There was no October Surprise agreement ever reached.” It found “wholly insufficient credible evidence” that <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">communication</a> took place between the Reagan campaign and the Iranian government and “no credible evidence” of an attempt by the campaign to delay the hostages’ release. The report also expressed concern that “certain witnesses may have committed perjury during sworn testimony”. Surprisingly, given that once started, conspiracy theories tend to live on indefinitely, this one did not. For once, research successfully discredited a conspiracy theory. Symbolic of this was that <a href=" " target="_blank">Oliver Stone</a> decided not to make a movie on this topic. But a devout conspiracy theorist sticks to his guns and Sick continued to forward the October Surprise thesis, writing that the House report “does not lay ... to rest” his claims of campaign contacts with Iranians; and that it “leaves open the possibility” of Republican interference with the Carter administration’s foreign policy negotiations. The October Surprise belahan holds much interest as a conspiracy theory case study. In particular, two features stand out: Gary Sick’s having single-handedly transformed it from a story only taken seriously on the left-wing fringe into a credible mainstream claim; and the clarity with which it confirmed the conspiracy theorists’ tendency to accuse others of what they themselves are doing. On this latter point: again and again, one finds that whereas the conspiracy theorists’ accusations of collusion and illegal behavior were unsubstantiated, they themselves engaged in precisely such behavior. Examples include: <ul> <li>They claimed Casey and Bush pretended to be in the United States when they were in Paris and Madrid. Richard Brenneke, perhaps the single most important informant for the October Surprise thesis, claimed to be in Paris and Madrid when credit card receipts proved he was in Portland, Oregon.</li> <li>They accused Reagan campaign officials of plotting to save their necks, when this is what the conspiracy theorists were doing; at least seven of them (Robert Benes, Richard Brenneke, Ahmed Heidari, Nicholas Ignatiew, Oswald LeWinter, Hamid Naqashan, and Will Northrop) were implicated in a 1986 sting operation and the October Surprise offered a way to rehabilitate their reputations.</li> <li>Sick, a former Carter administration official, accused the Reagan campaign of secretly working out an arms deal with the Iranians. In fact, as Sick himself already disclosed in 1985, Jimmy Carter initiated such a deal.</li> <li>Sick accused others of withholding <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">information</a>, yet this is precisely what he did, keeping quiet about the hundreds of thousands of dollars he received from Oliver Stone for the movie rights to the October Surprise story.</li> <li>Sick accused U.S. government officials of lying, yet he was less than honest himself. He wrote in his New York Times article that he had heard rumors of a Reagan-Khomeini deal during the 1988 election campaign but he “refused to believe them.” Not so: on 30 October, 1988, at the very peak of the 1988 election campaign, he told the Rocky Mountain News, “At first I dismissed this, but not any more. I’m convinced on the basis of what I heard that there were some meetings in Paris.”</li> </ul>

October Surprise

October Surprise The October Surprise conspiracy theory holds that in October 1980, Ronald Reagan conspired with the Islamic Republic o...

Nullification

Nullification

Nullification Nullification is the assertion of power or constitutional authority by a state or subnational government that negates or ...

Nuclear Freeze Movement

Nuclear Freeze Movement

Nuclear Freeze Movement After Watergate , Vietnam , and the economic/cultural malaise of the 1970s, the election of Ronald Reagan to t...

Richard Nixon

<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody> <tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href=" " imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" target="_blank"><img alt="The" border="0" career="" milhous="" nixon="" of="" political="" richard="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIMBsmIgHQ5-upHPdSKfZi87dypy_zZv2BAJJ-z5Lt2zQpIBldX6-Ky5Q_rJkeFgN-dRKQEp3l-l_5Px1SYlhPazGKwCm2TZ-HMrC-2BtqvCk26xLDCUIcbtuEah9jMwAjgJvrg9OQONI/s1600/Richard-Nixon.jpg" title="Richard" /></a></td></tr> <tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Richard Nixon</td></tr> </tbody></table> The political career of Richard Milhous Nixon (1913–1994), thirty-seventh president of the United States, was framed by suggestions of conspiracy, from his rapid rise to prominence as a result of his involvement with the Hiss case to <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Watergate</a>, which ended his career. Furthermore, the frequent diagnosis of Nixon as “paranoid” placed him as both subject and object of numerous conspiracy theories. Nixon’s connection to the conspiratorial even predates the Hiss case, beginning with his response to the advertisement by the “Committee of 100” for a candidate to oppose Congressman Jerry Voorhis. The Committee was a group of local businessmen, sometimes considered to have sinister motives, who met at an elitist rural retreat, Bohemian Grove in <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">California</a>, itself connected to a set of conspiracy theories through groups such as the Bilderbergers. Mae Brussell insists that “That ad was typical, a covert method of pretending this was an open contest for office”. Brussell’s argument invokes an article of faith that frequently exceeds the “conspiracy research community”: that Nixon’s entire career constituted a form of conspiracy. <table align="center" style="width: 450px;"><tbody> <tr> <td align="center" width="225"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1627790837/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&linkCode=li3&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=9f37b749896c17c8244cfdb90ef1069b" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=1627790837&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img alt="The" border="0" career="" height="1" milhous="" nixon="" of="" political="" richard="" src="//ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=li3&o=1&a=1627790837" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" /></td> <td align="center" width="225"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0812995368/ref=as_li_ss_il?ie=UTF8&linkCode=li3&tag=inamerican-20&linkId=8d12332829fe1c4806d51ba40fabeb7a" target="_blank"><img border="0" src="//ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com/widgets/q?_encoding=UTF8&ASIN=0812995368&Format=_SL250_&ID=AsinImage&MarketPlace=US&ServiceVersion=20070822&WS=1&tag=inamerican-20" /></a><img alt="The" border="0" career="" height="1" milhous="" nixon="" of="" political="" richard="" src="//ir-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/ir?t=inamerican-20&l=li3&o=1&a=0812995368" style="border: none !important; margin: 0px !important;" width="1" /></td> </tr> </tbody></table> Nixon’s early political success was largely dependent on public recognition of his preeminent position on the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), most notably in his investigation of espionage charges against Alger Hiss. Nixon coauthored the first piece of legislation produced by the HUAC, the Mundt-Nixon Bill, which was anticonspiracy legislation in that it would have forced “Communist front” organizations to reveal themselves by declaring Communist Party affiliation. While Nixon’s ensuing prominence can only be credited in a period in which the “international Communist conspiracy” or “red scare” was a widespread belief, his status as perceived conspirator and object of conspiracy exceeded the zeitgeist. Nixon not only responded to, but also contributed to, conspiratorial beliefs, intending, for example, to investigate “communistic art” in federal buildings and insisting that filmmakers make films that warn the American people about the dangers of communism. Throughout his career, Nixon was linked to financial corruption and to organized crime. As the journalist Jeff Gerth argued during Nixon’s presidency, Nixon was located at the center of a tangled web of conspiracy: “Somewhere within the classic alliance of money, power, and politics lies this particular sharp-edged triangle: the Teamsters Union ... ; the shadowy empire of organized crime and its power; and the political fiefdom of Richard Nixon”. This interconnection of a “shadow government” and organized crime, termed “deep politics” by Peter Dale Scott, is frequently aligned with Nixon in conspiracy theories. In the document “A Skeleton Key to the Gemstone Files,” for example, Nixon first appears in 1956, having been “bought” by Howard Hughes in his conspiratorial attempt to control the U.S. electoral process. Nixon’s significant financial dealings with Hughes inspired a number of conspiracy theories, including a purported Hughes involvement with Watergate. This contributed to a model for the perceived power structure of the Nixon <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">administration</a>, which “replaced public politics with the politics of secrecy”. Watergate and Beyond While many of Nixon’s political actions have been considered to be conspiratorial, such as the secret bombing of Cambodia or his obstruction of the Paris peace talks to end the <a href=" " rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Vietnam War</a> before the 1968 presidential election (detailed by Anthony Summers), the latter part of Nixon’s political career coincided with shifting models of power, which tended to identify his power as overt and, therefore, largely symbolic. Some conspiracy theories correspondingly place Nixon as the victim of the covert “invisible government.” Some critics have argued that Watergate was a constitutional coup d’état against Nixon; Robert Altman’s Secret Honor (1984) presents it as an operation designed to finally remove him from the control of the “deep politics”—of the “Committee of 100.” But it was after the investigations into Watergate revealed the power operations of the Nixon administration that Nixon became linked, through conspiracy theory, to the assassination of John F. Kennedy. On the White House audiotape of 23 June 1972, known as the “Smoking Gun” tape, Nixon instructs Chief of Staff Bob Haldeman to have the CIA pressure the FBI into dropping its Watergate investigation, because it would “open up the whole Bay of Pigs thing again.” Haldeman would later write, “It seems that in all those references to the Bay of Pigs, he was actually referring to the Kennedy assassination”. Some conspiracy researchers would specifically link the assassination to Watergate, arguing that White House burglar Frank Sturgis and fellow “Plumbers” unit member E. Howard Hunt were the assassins, a claim investigated by the U.S. President’s Commission on CIA Activities within the United States, also known as the <a href=" " target="_blank">Rockefeller</a> Commission. While there is no substantial evidence to verify these theories, the perception of the conspiring Nixon revealed by Watergate was transposed onto many of his actions. For example, Nixon, who was revealed to have been in Dallas on the day of Kennedy’s assassination, told the Warren Commission that he had only been in Dallas on 20 and 21 November. Nixon gave varying explanations for this mistake, giving rise to jokes that Nixon was the only member of his generation who did not remember where he was when Kennedy was shot. Of the many reasons proffered for why Watergate occurred, one of the most enduring is that it was an extension of Nixon’s personal <a href=" " target="_blank">paranoia</a>. Both opponents and some administration members referred to this, either indirectly, by alluding to Nixon’s “isolation” or “bunker mentality,” or directly, by claiming he suffered from a form of persecutory paranoia. But whether or not Watergate was initiated as an attempt to preempt Nixon’s “enemies,” Nixon could never escape Watergate. The verified criminality and conspiracy of Watergate would forever conjoin Nixon, the “unindicted coconspirator” (in the legal jargon), to the realm of conspiracy theory, with the revelation of his actions and motivation projected onto his entire life and career. After Watergate forced the end of his official political career, Nixon spent the remainder of his life writing books on foreign policy and attempting to rehabilitate his public image. For many critics, the laudatory eulogies at his funeral—Senator Bob Dole said that the latter twentieth century would be known as the “age of Nixon”—testified to the <a href=" " target="_blank">success</a> of this, Nixon’s greatest conspiracy.

Richard Nixon

Richard Nixon The political career of Richard Milhous Nixon (1913–1994), thirty-seventh president of the United States, was framed by su...