When we talk the serious conspiracies, those that pass the schizoabsurd, lizardman-constant filter, so skepticism toward the official accounts of certain pivotal events, a common wisdom is quickly invoked: It would take too many people, and someone would talk.
Would they?
On March 8, 1971, Smokin' Joe Frazier fought Muhammad Ali in the Fight of the Century. Both were undefeated -- 26-0 with 23 knockouts for Frazier, 31-0 with 25 knockouts for Ali. Past the biggest fight, it was considered the biggest sporting event ever up to that point. Madison Square Garden made a million at the gate; 2.5 million tickets were sold for closed-circuit pay-per-view venues; in London where it was broadcast at midnight, 90,000 tickets were sold. They went 15 rounds and Smokin' Joe won by unanimous decision, though Ali would go on to the win their next two bouts. While everyone was watching that fight, less than 100 miles away 8 members of the Citizens' Commission to Investigate the FBI broke into a Bureau office in a Philadelphia suburb called Media. The documents they found revealed the existence of the FBI's Counter Intelligence Program: COINTELPRO.
COINTELPRO started in 1956, its stated goal was undermining communist activity in the United States and much can be said on that, but I think most relevant is socialism and communism already had a popularity in the States at the turn of the century and after World War 1 and the Russian Revolution they had a real presence in American academia. I doubt a man so circumspect as J. Edgar Hoover was unaware of decades of fomenting communist thought and the subsequent infiltration into power of white communists. I imagine his black book had quite a few names Joseph McCarthy would have been very interested in seeing. Nevertheless, it went on, COINTELPRO worked against the Communist Party of the US, the Socialist Workers Party, the Black Panthers, and also the KKK. "Tactics included anonymous phone calls, IRS audits, and the creation of documents that would divide the American communist organization internally." MLK arrived and Hoover quickly identified him and singled him out, bugging his home and hotel rooms, and then using the audio from the bugs to threaten King, saying he should kill himself. I have a singular hatred for communism and MLK was a socialist but he had committed no crime, there was no legal basis for the FBI's considerable efforts against him. RFK signed off on a month of watching MLK, Hoover just kept it running.
On the militant side, COINTELPRO efforts, if not wholly responsible for the schism in the Nation of Islam that saw Malcolm X break away, sharply accelerated the deterioration of the relationship between Malcolm and Elijah Muhammad that culminated in NOI members killing Malcolm.
As an aside, the FBI was apparently concerned with and dedicated to preventing the rise of a "Messiah-like figure" who would unify black militants. I find this curious. At the time the demographics of the US were 88% white, 10% black, 4% hispanics of any race, those are stark lines. Had there been black militancy and an actual armed conflict, they would have been put down hard and America of the 60s, certainly the South as popularly portrayed, surely had the racial animus to back mass expulsion or if not that, death squads. Right? Hoover was no integrationist. I notice I'm confused. Alas.
For these, for the buggings, for the creation of inflammatory documents, we have an FBI that had no problem serially and severely breaking the law, at stoking hostilities, overlooking murders they effectually encouraged, and with MLK, just outright telling the guy "kill yourself or else." They didn't bother with that for Fred Hampton, they just had him killed. Maybe this seems tame now, my how we've fallen.
The CIA had something of their own version of COINTELPRO established under LBJ and expanded by Nixon, Operation MHCHAOS. They also had something older and in the same window as COINTELPRO: Project MKUltra. "MK" from the internal staff rating, the CIA's version of military MOS, involved in the project, and "Ultra" likely from the extremely high secrecy around the project. I expect most here have the gist: starting in the 50s, the CIA dosed the unknowing with various psychoactive substances alongside research into brainwashing, psychological torture and general manipulation of thought. MKUltra was the successor to the CIA's Project Artichoke, which was itself likely a successor to Nazi research from scientists procured through Operation Paperclip. What we know is horrifying, and we don't know a lot, because amidst Watergate, CIA director Richard Helms ordered the destruction of all MKUltra files. A small number survived. What brought it to light wasn't even anything out of the project itself, it was Seymour Hersh reporting on MHCHAOS in the New York Times. His piece resulted in the Rockefeller Commission and the Church Committee, and it was under those the existence of MKUltra was revealed.
Ted Kennedy, on the Senate floor in 1977:
The Deputy Director of the CIA revealed that over thirty universities and institutions were involved in an "extensive testing and experimentation" program which included covert drug tests on unwitting citizens "at all social levels, high and low, native Americans and foreign." Several of these tests involved the administration of LSD to "unwitting subjects in social situations."
Hundreds at least, maybe thousands of people were involved in MKUltra, and with universities performing tests on unwitting citizens it seems like it wasn't particularly compartmentalized. What brought it to light? It wasn't people on the inside blowing the whistle in the 50s or 60s or at the start of the 70s, and I doubt Helms was the only one who thought the American people wouldn't like the truth.
There's Iran-Contra. Oliver North & co. selling guns to Iran to fund the Contras in Nicaragua: busted by an Iranian official leaking to Lebanese journalists. There's the CIA's involvement in drug trafficking, something they've covered their tracks on well, "They knew it was happening" is good enough. There's also Operation Fast and Furious, though I wouldn't group it with the rest, it had interesting goals that might have worked, and those cartel guys don't really have problems getting guns so I don't see FF guns being found at shootings as the biggest pie on their face. But it's worth including because there were people within who objected and blew the whistle.
Then there's PRISM. You know it, Edward Snowden saw the NSA's backdoor to all internet communications, got the files to prove it, now he's a Russian citizen. PRISM is still around, it hasn't been reduced. They can still surveil whomever FISA says they can. The USA FREEDOM Act, the only attempt to limit its reach, moved data holding to the phone carriers; US citizen data of which the NSA can still access with ex parte FISC warrants, an entirely separate incredibly troublesome practice of the US government. PRISM is COINTELPRO and MHCHAOS in one, supersized, a dossier at a click for just about anyone, anywhere. It ranks among the very worst things done by the American government and nobody involved has said a fucking word except Edward Snowden.
What's the common factor?
In each scandal we have large numbers of people involved in such operations. In each scandal, save the exception that proves the rule, none of them came forward. Discovery happened by a lucky break-in, or investigation into a different debacle, or adversarial geopolitical interest.
A CIA official who knows his history knows they don't get caught because someone on the inside spills the beans. They get caught by leaving breadcrumbs for outside eyes. No breadcrumbs, no scandal.
There are smaller scandals, in terms of scope or gravity, not necessarily the height of office of those involved, where whistleblowers did come forward. It's not unheard of. But this is an evidenced rejection of the common wisdom that there is a limited and small number of people who can be involved in highly illegal and evil projects before someone says something. So: "It'd take too many people, and they'd talk"? No, sometimes they don't. Sometimes hundreds or thousands of people can scrape the abyss and go to their graves saying nothing.
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Notes -
I think you may be overestimating the amount of people you would need. Even many of the loopier conspiracy theories about 9/11 could be executed with 100 people or less. JFK’s assassination could easily have been done with a working group of five people fully read-in and a few unwitting accomplices.
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