# Has a coverup conspiracy ever been a \*good\* thing? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 6, 2006, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-coverup-conspiracy-ever-been-a-good-thing/351584 "2006-04-06T15:19:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![tanstaafl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ba8739/32.png) [@tanstaafl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tanstaafl)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2006, 2:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-coverup-conspiracy-ever-been-a-good-thing/351584/21 "2006-04-07T02:37:37Z")
Thanks for the ideas. _Watchmen_ is probably the closest to what I was thinking of, though to be fair I think Doc Manhattan and company would have stopped Ozymandius if they had gotten to him sooner; I think they only went along with him because his plan was completed and letting it succeed was the lesser of two evils at that point. One other that I thought of after my OP is David Brin’s _Sundiver_ (and to a lesser extent the rest of his Uplift series). There, knowledge of mankind’s earlier environmental excesses is pretty much suppressed, as if word ever got out that we had extincted a few thousands of species ever got out to the rest of the galaxy our status would quickly drop to that of indentured genetic breeding stock. I had thought of _Men in Black_ and discounted it, but that is probably because I know the creator of the series and his vision of the MiB is a lot darker and a lot less benign than is presented in the movies. Of course we only see them from the inside in the movies too. I should have thought of _Threshold_ since when it first came out I commented that it was one of the few times we saw a coverup with the good guys from the inside. I’ll point out that there was some discussion there too as to if the coverup was a good idea or not. At any rate, it seems as if the idea of a coverup being a good idea is much more limited than the evil version. Of course, I guess from a story telling perspective it is much better to have your heroes struggle against the conspiracy and succeed, as opposed to ending with them all going “oops!”. Thanks for the feedback. ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2006, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-coverup-conspiracy-ever-been-a-good-thing/351584/22 "2006-04-07T04:43:48Z")
_The Man in the Iron Mask_, maybe? ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2006, 7:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-coverup-conspiracy-ever-been-a-good-thing/351584/23 "2006-04-07T07:01:12Z")
H. Beam Piper’s Paratime Police are basically portrayed as the “good guys”; their main task is to keep people in all the other timelines (e.g., us) from learning that the Paratimers travel amongst us all, trading goods and knowledge (in various small, unnoticeable ways) between the alternate universes for the benefit of their own civilization. ---
**Author:** ![enigmatic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@enigmatic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enigmatic)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2006, 9:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-coverup-conspiracy-ever-been-a-good-thing/351584/24 "2006-04-07T09:01:52Z")
I’ve just entered a short story into a writing competition which was pretty much following this whole theme, I’ll let you know if I win 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![enigmatic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/898d66/32.png) [@enigmatic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/enigmatic)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2006, 9:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-coverup-conspiracy-ever-been-a-good-thing/351584/25 "2006-04-07T09:03:34Z")
I was obviously not being quite as original as I’d hoped though ---
**Author:** ![C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b2d939/32.png) [@C\_K\_Dexter\_Haven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/C_K_Dexter_Haven)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2006, 11:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-coverup-conspiracy-ever-been-a-good-thing/351584/26 "2006-04-07T11:52:05Z")
::: Moderator coughs for attention ::: Please, folks, use spoiler tags. You’re most likely revealing a plot twist, so please have some respect for those who might want to read/see whatever you’re talking about. For information on spoiler tags, please see [Forum Rules](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=343601) and note Post #4. Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2006, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-coverup-conspiracy-ever-been-a-good-thing/351584/27 "2006-04-07T12:33:37Z")
> [@pizzabrat](#): > > A real life example is the editing or obscuring of old movies and TV shows that offend modern sensibilities. The existance of “Amos & Andy”, the FBI agents’ guns in _ET_, and the Big Bad Wolf’s Jewish salesman disguise in “The Three Little Pigs” can be considered “covered up”. Or Han firing before Greedo . . . But is any of those coverups a _good_ thing? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2006, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-coverup-conspiracy-ever-been-a-good-thing/351584/28 "2006-04-07T12:43:09Z")
> [@MEBuckner](#): > > H. Beam Piper’s Paratime Police are basically portrayed as the “good guys”; their main task is to keep people in all the other timelines (e.g., us) from learning that the Paratimers travel amongst us all, trading goods and knowledge (in various small, unnoticeable ways) between the alternate universes for the benefit of their own civilization. :dubious: Yeh. Those stories, presented from the POV of the Paratime civilization, the coverup of the “Paratime Secret” was always presented as a _good_ thing. I never bought it. This is a civilization and economy based entirely on surreptitiously extracting the natural resources of other versions of Earth, right under their inhabitants’ noses. They’re the “good guys” only in that they do not conquer or enslave other cultures’ peoples outright. You wouldn’t mind, would you, if **our** planet’s coal and oil and plutonium were quietly vanishing into an intertemporal transport gate? :mad: I’ve read most of what Piper wrote. When the setting is an interstellar situation analogous to European colonial-imperialism, as it often is, the story is always sympathetic to the benevolent imperialists, and any anti-imperialists are portrayed as deluded idealists (or irresponsible rabble-rousers) who just need to be set straight. See _Uller Uprising_ and the short story “Oomphel in the Sky.” ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2006, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-coverup-conspiracy-ever-been-a-good-thing/351584/29 "2006-04-07T13:07:25Z")
> [@Ranchoth](#): > > _The Man in the Iron Mask_, maybe? Never read the book, but in all the movie versions I’ve seen, Louis XIV is portrayed as a cowardly villain for choosing such a heartless means to keep his brother’s existence a secret. ---
**Author:** ![pizzabrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e9c0ed/32.png) [@pizzabrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pizzabrat)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2006, 1:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-coverup-conspiracy-ever-been-a-good-thing/351584/30 "2006-04-07T13:45:49Z")
> [@BrainGlutton](#): > > Or Han firing before Greedo . . . > > But is any of those coverups a _good_ thing? Ostensibly they were done out of good intentions for society. That’s why I didn’t include the Greedo thing, since that was done for purely selfish reasons… ---
**Author:** ![muldoonthief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muldoonthief/32/3188_2.png) [@muldoonthief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/muldoonthief)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2006, 1:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-coverup-conspiracy-ever-been-a-good-thing/351584/31 "2006-04-07T13:51:57Z")
> [@Happy Clam](#): > > I always thought it was ultimately clear that this was a _bad_ thing. No matter how terrible the inventions they wish to restrain (one is mentioned that would have forced them to “legalize murder”), in Man-Kzin Wars 4 or 5, > > ARM is revealed as being the face of the all-powerful Freemasons (yeah, really), who have been supressing all technological advances for the past 300 years to keep mankind controllable. The upbeat ending of the story- the discovery of hyperdrive means they are doomed to fail, as humankind will spread too far and fast through the universe for the rate of tech-change to be controlled. > > Similarly, in “The Colonel’s Tiger” (Man-Kzin 6 or 7) > > ARM is presented as having gone so P.C.-crazy that they now claim that war ended in the 6th or 7th century, and that all the conflicts since then have actually been carefully planned intra-national sports events to release tensions. The result is that mankind is totally unprepared for the vicious, alien Kzin, and, again, a “the truth will out” upbeat theme is at the end of the story. Well, none of those stories were actually written by Niven (the first was by S.M. Stirling IIRC), though he probably had to approve them before publishing. Also, the were written much later than the original Known Space stories & novels. There definitely were some stories where the ARM was a good thing, like “World of Ptavvs”, where A slaver in a stasis suit is revived, an interplanetary chase for his mental control amplifier helmet occurs, with the ARMs and the Belters each adamant that the other can’t get their hands on such a dangerous device. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2006, 2:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-coverup-conspiracy-ever-been-a-good-thing/351584/32 "2006-04-07T14:31:58Z")
> [@muldoonthief](#): > > Larry Niven’s Known Space stories and novels have the ARM, (Amalgamated Regional Militias?) a powerful department of the UN. One of their purposes is to cover up new technologies that will have too large a disruptive influence on society - like a perfect untraceable murder weapon, or mind control technology. The stories go back and forth between whether this is a good thing or bad thing. In Jerry Pournelle’s CoDominium stories, the CoDominium (a world government based on an alliance of the U.S. and the USSR) tries to prevent social disruption by holding back the pace of original technical and scientific research in general. IIRC, this is done mainly by corrupting the online data available to scientists. But I can’t recall an instance of the CoDominium suppressing or covering-up any specific technology. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CoDominium#A\_History\_of\_the\_CoDominium\_Universe](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CoDominium#A_History_of_the_CoDominium_Universe) ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2006, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-coverup-conspiracy-ever-been-a-good-thing/351584/33 "2006-04-07T14:41:29Z")
In David Wingrove’s _Chung Kuo_ novels, the Chinese-dominated government of future Earth has a general Edict against new technological research not expressly approved by the state. Same reasoning as above – they’re trying to keep things stable. And they’re very hostile to space exploration. At one point, Li Yuan, the T’ang (king) of City Europe, reflects that this is necessary because “there are no _controls_ out there” in space – anything might happen if people have a free hand. So from their POV, it’s a well-intentioned coverup. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chung\_Kuo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chung_Kuo) Of course, IRL, this kind of thinking is exactly what prevented China from becoming a world-power. They could have followed up on the explorations of Zheng He but they missed their chance. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng\_he#Connection\_to\_the\_history\_of\_Late\_Imperial\_China](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zheng_he#Connection_to_the_history_of_Late_Imperial_China) By the time the Europeans started arriving on their shores in significant numbers, the rest of the world was something the Chinese just didn’t want to know about. ---
**Author:** ![Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Tapioca\_Dextrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tapioca_Dextrin)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2006, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-coverup-conspiracy-ever-been-a-good-thing/351584/34 "2006-04-07T14:55:26Z")
In the 1970s SF series UFO. the SHADO organisation was kept secret to prevent regular folks knowing about the ongoing Alien invasion. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2006, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-coverup-conspiracy-ever-been-a-good-thing/351584/35 "2006-04-07T15:34:55Z")
Spider Robinson wrote a series of novels, including _Mindkiller_ and _Time Pressure_ in which there are 2 major benevolent coverups. [spoiler]In Mindkiller, the coverup is of a highly effective form of memory erasure and mind control; the inventor fears it’s misuse. He uses it to cover up the existence of the device, when he has no other option; at one point saying ( paraphrase ) “I only used it when I couldn’t keep the secret by killing them instead”. He eventually develops it to the point it can _write_ memories ( his goal all along ) so it can be used to copy minds into cloned brains or computers, as a form of immortality. In the related _Time Pressure_ ( and one or two others IIRC ), a time traveller from the future ( who is a mental composite of several of the characters in _Mindkiller_ ) is beginning the implementation of a plan to “eliminate death” by implanting people with undetectable microscopic brain implants that send copies of the implantees minds into the future, where they can be given new life. The eventual goal is to preserve every mind that ever lived. However, if noticable changes are made to history are made, such as the public awareness of time travel, then history ( and the universe ) will unravel. Therefore, she and other such time travellers must do whatever is necessary, no matter how ruthless, to protect the secret. Time travel in the Callahan’s Place stories has the same limitation.[/spoiler] ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2006, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-coverup-conspiracy-ever-been-a-good-thing/351584/36 "2006-04-07T15:57:46Z")
> [@muldoonthief](#): > > And **Fabulous Creature** and **kaylasdad99**? I think the OP beat you both to it. I think that clicking on the link in my post will demonstrate that you have been whooshed. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2006, 5:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-coverup-conspiracy-ever-been-a-good-thing/351584/37 "2006-04-07T17:38:26Z")
> [@kaylasdad99](#): > > I think that clicking on the link in my post will demonstrate that you have been whooshed. Everyone knows that Manticores don’t read the entire original post. That would violate our policy of being stupid. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2006, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-coverup-conspiracy-ever-been-a-good-thing/351584/38 "2006-04-07T18:04:46Z")
In one of Pournelle’s early CoDominium novels (the name of which escapes me), The world is teetering on the brink of nuclear war between the US and USSR. The incumbent American President (who is no great shakes himself) steals the election, because his opponent - who was well ahead in the polls - would surely push the button once he came to power and end the human race. The theft of the election is hushed up and the fragile peace is maintained, at least for the moment. Somewhat similarly, in Joe Haldeman’s excellent Cold War/SF espionage thriller _Tool of the Trade_, A Soviet sleeper agent devises a technological form of mind control, insinuates his way into the President’s inner circle, and helps bring about a comprehensive nuclear disarmament plan that both the American and Soviet leaders agree to. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2006, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-coverup-conspiracy-ever-been-a-good-thing/351584/39 "2006-04-07T22:12:32Z")
> [@Elendil's Heir](#): > > In one of Pournelle’s early CoDominium novels (the name of which escapes me), > > The world is teetering on the brink of nuclear war between the US and USSR. The incumbent American President (who is no great shakes himself) steals the election, because his opponent - who was well ahead in the polls - would surely push the button once he came to power and end the human race. The theft of the election is hushed up and the fragile peace is maintained, at least for the moment. Sounds like the first section of _The Mercenary_. ---
**Author:** ![YPOD](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/e99b99/32.png) [@YPOD](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/YPOD)\ **Post date:** [April 7, 2006, 11:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-coverup-conspiracy-ever-been-a-good-thing/351584/40 "2006-04-07T23:55:52Z")
wow - how can everyone miss the greatest example of all? In The Man from Uncle, they had an episode where there was a secret base somewhere in the US where Russians (complete with Soviet uniforms) and Americans and others working together on an ultimate secret weapon to defend the world from an alien invasion. Naturally, this had to be kept sotto voce. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-coverup-conspiracy-ever-been-a-good-thing/351584.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/has-a-coverup-conspiracy-ever-been-a-good-thing/351584.md?page=3)