# How are conspiracies possible? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [October 7, 2011, 4:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-conspiracies-possible/598870 "2011-10-07T04:35:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 17\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Zoe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/z/a4c791/32.png) [@Zoe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Zoe)\ **Post date:** [October 8, 2011, 10:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-conspiracies-possible/598870/21 "2011-10-08T22:06:34Z")
> [@](#): > > **kunilou** : Another example of a real-life conspiracy is Watergate – or to be exact, the burglary itself. I’m always amazed that so many younger people are unaware that the President of the United States was designated “an unindicted co-conspirator” in the Watergate case. I think it was for the coverup rather than the burglary itself. When the Watergate tapes from the Oval Office were first available for the public to hear at the National Archives, people had to sign up hours ahead of time to get to listen to segments of the tapes. They would allow maybe forty people at a time in to listen and at certain times we would just stare at each other open-mouthed as we listened on headphones. Those were amazing days. ---
**Author:** ![blindboyard](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blindboyard/32/2833_2.png) [@blindboyard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blindboyard)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2011, 11:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-conspiracies-possible/598870/22 "2011-10-09T11:20:03Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Keep in mind that Oliver Stone admits he created the character of Mr X in the movie. But Stone paradoxically believes Mr X is real despite the fact that he invented him. Stone started from the premise that a conspiracy existed. And for a conspiracy to exist there must be somebody controlling it. So when Stone couldn’t identify this controller, he didn’t decide that his premise was wrong and no conspiracy existed. He invented the person he assumed must exist and put him into the story. X was a composite character, and if you think back to the movie he was more in the way of a whistleblower than a covert controller, lamenting the growth of military industrialism. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2011, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-conspiracies-possible/598870/23 "2011-10-09T14:41:37Z")
> [@blindboyard](#): > > X was a composite character, and if you think back to the movie he was more in the way of a whistleblower than a covert controller, lamenting the growth of military industrialism. There was no military or government official who ever met with Garrison and told him that the conspiracy was real. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2011, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-conspiracies-possible/598870/24 "2011-10-09T16:25:31Z")
> [@Kozmik](#): > > I believe paradoxically that Mr. X is describing 9/11 despite the fact that the film was made ten years before 9/11. I’m starting from the premise that conspiracies, _tabula rasa_, are possible. Look, there WAS a conspiracy to commit the 9/11 crimes. There were more than 20 people involved, the hijackers themselves and several other handlers, planners, and money-guys. Or is it only a consipiracy if American government officials are involved? ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2011, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-conspiracies-possible/598870/25 "2011-10-09T16:30:51Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > There was no military or government official who ever met with Garrison and told him that the conspiracy was real. And some of what “X” said just wouldn’t make any goddam sense. Why the fuck would the conspiracy have newspapers reporting the assassination ready to go in New Zealand prior to the actual assassination? I mean, I understand you wanna assassinate Kennedy for your nefarious purposes. Why can’t you let the normal news channels handle getting the information to New Zealand? What rational conspirators would do all the things X talked about, involving hundreds of people around the globe? This ain’t like a conspiracy to put a man on the moon. You need one guy with a rifle for this operation. Yeah, sure, you might want safe houses and fake IDs and so on for your shooter, and you’d need a few people to take care of those. But all the other stuff is just nonsensical. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2011, 4:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-conspiracies-possible/598870/26 "2011-10-09T16:45:36Z")
> [@Lemur866](#): > > Or is it only a consipiracy if American government officials are involved? There are conspiracies, and then there’s _Conspiracy_. No one doubts that a handful of motivated men can scheme things. Grand mysteries involving vague groups with sinister intentions are what’s in question. The Al-Quaeda bunch is a case in point. There’s no great story there - just a pack of angry Arabs, pointlessly blaming others, given a bunch of money to go kill themselves in a dramatic fashion. What’s interesting is that they were a (lower-case) conspiracy… but they believed in _The Conspiracy_. They believed The West was out to get the true faith and subvert it. The only way they could striek back was by attacking weirdly symbolic points. They weren’t attacking The World Trade Center. They were attacking a mythical idea which they thought lay behind the Twin Towers. The ultimate delicious irony is that they completely failed. They died for a completely false idea in service to a false God of their own invention. The only things real were the lives they took. ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2011, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-conspiracies-possible/598870/27 "2011-10-09T18:01:44Z")
Watergate was amateur stuff. [COINTELPRO](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO) was the real deal, being maintained across multiple administrations and involving thousands of people. The thing is though, whether we’re talking Iran-Contra, MKULTRA, Tuskegee syphilis experiments, the School of the Americas, or whatever the CIA just did there’s actual evidence. Someone talks, someone steals something, a journalist investigates, something is leaked, or the official story is ripped apart (see: leadup to Iraq or the torture black site stuff, all of which could be dismissed as CTs). And if not, then we never know about it. Wankers on the internet making stuff up about grainy footage have unveiled zero conspiracies. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [October 9, 2011, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-conspiracies-possible/598870/28 "2011-10-09T23:10:14Z")
> [@marshmallow](#): > > The thing is though, whether we’re talking Iran-Contra, MKULTRA, Tuskegee syphilis experiments, the School of the Americas, or whatever the CIA just did there’s actual evidence. Someone talks, someone steals something, a journalist investigates, something is leaked, or the official story is ripped apart (see: leadup to Iraq or the torture black site stuff, all of which could be dismissed as CTs). And if not, then we never know about it. Wankers on the internet making stuff up about grainy footage have unveiled zero conspiracies. While I agree with the conclusion about Internet Wankers never uncovering the sort of plots they always cite as evidence for the existence of conspiracies, I have to note (as has been pointed out mucho times on this board) that the Tuskegee syphilis experiments lacked an essential element of a conspiracy - _they were not kept secret_. In fact data from them was published in at least one medical journal. The fact that they were not widely publicized does not mean that they were kept hush-hush - the organizers didn’t seem to comprehend (or care) how unethical their behavior was. ---
**Author:** ![Shalmanese](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/45deac/32.png) [@Shalmanese](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shalmanese)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2011, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-conspiracies-possible/598870/29 "2011-10-10T01:40:23Z")
IMHO, a good way of studying conspiracies would be to look at Apple product launches. They regularly engage in in secret, co-ordinated activities involving hundreds of people, some of which fail (like when an engineer loses a prototype in a bar) but most of which succeed but which are always eventually revealed before they ramp up to do it all over again. Apple shows you what is required organizationally to successfully maintain a large scale conspiracy. ---
**Author:** ![Kozmik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/8dc957/32.png) [@Kozmik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kozmik)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2011, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-conspiracies-possible/598870/30 "2011-10-10T21:17:27Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > There are conspiracies, and then there’s _Conspiracy_. No one doubts that a handful of motivated men can scheme things. Grand mysteries involving vague groups with sinister intentions are what’s in question. > > The Al-Quaeda bunch is a case in point. There’s no great story there - just a pack of angry Arabs, pointlessly blaming others, given a bunch of money to go kill themselves in a dramatic fashion. What’s interesting is that they were a (lower-case) conspiracy… but they believed in _The Conspiracy_. They believed The West was out to get the true faith and subvert it. The only way they could striek back was by attacking weirdly symbolic points. They weren’t attacking The World Trade Center. They were attacking a mythical idea which they thought lay behind the Twin Towers. > > The ultimate delicious irony is that they completely failed. They died for a completely false idea in service to a false God of their own invention. The only things real were the lives they took. Look at the 2001 anthrax attacks. Either the “secret plot” was made before 9/11 or the “secret plot” was made after 9/11. After 9/11: Someone watched the events of September 11, 2001 and decided to mail the letters that week, knowing that this would create confusion in the chaos of 9/11. Before 9/11: Whoever planned 9/11, also planned to mail the letters, knowing that this would be the second wave attack. > [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > The nuttiness begins at the point when you see all the evidence that indicates a crime was a non-conspiracy and conclude from that that it was a conspiracy disguised to look like a non-conspiracy. Why? Just look at \*The New York Times \* [reporting](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/10/science/10anthrax.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper)that the FBI might have “brushed aside important clues”. ---
**Author:** ![NDP](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ndp/32/55_2.png) [@NDP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NDP)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2011, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-conspiracies-possible/598870/31 "2011-10-10T21:28:35Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > Real conspiracies generally involve very few, very dedicated people because people like to blab. A lot. Unless someone has very, _very_ good reason not to talk, they will. Plus, once the conspiracy strikes, it’s usually over with and it becomes a case of every man for himself. Few conspiracies survive the intial crime, if they even get that far. True. Basically, the chances a conspiracy will fail increase exponentially with each person that’s added to it. ---
**Author:** ![Kozmik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/8dc957/32.png) [@Kozmik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kozmik)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2011, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-conspiracies-possible/598870/32 "2011-10-14T01:23:37Z")
> [@kunilou](#): > > So the lesson is this. If you’re going to hire someone to do your dirty work, pay them in cash, make sure they don’t know your real name, and don’t use a middleman with whom you can be directly connected. Lesson [not](http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/13/us/odd-turn-for-mansour-arbabsiar-suspect-in-iranian-plot.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper) learned. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2011, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-conspiracies-possible/598870/33 "2011-10-14T19:32:02Z")
> [@Kozmik](#): > > Look at the 2001 anthrax attacks. Sorry. I don’t quite comprehend your point. Can you explain what you mean? ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2011, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-conspiracies-possible/598870/34 "2011-10-14T20:07:06Z")
For a conspiracy to work, there’s got to be a few ground rules. The easiest are those that involve very few people. As **smiling bandit** pointed out, the more people involved in a conspiracy, the more you increase the odds that someone will brag about it in the wrong place, or have a change of conscience, or simply fuck up and spill the beans. It also makes it harder for the conspirators to enforce silence through fear. If a conspiracy involves five mob guys, there’s a strong incentive for everyone to stay silent, because each guy only has to keep tabs on four other dudes to make sure they’re not talking. Most capital letter Conspiracy Theories require the involvement of dozens, if not hundreds or thousands, of conspirators, any one of whom could provide enough information to blow the lid off the conspiracy. However, you can have a large conspiracy involving hundreds or thousands of people, if you don’t expect the conspiracy to last. The Pazzi conspiracy mentioned upthread only had to be kept quiet long enough to succeed. The Al Qaeda conspirators behind the WTC attack certainly had no concern about their plans being secret after 9/11. The last major factor is homogenity of conspirators. A secret is easier kept among members of a single organization (such as the Mafia), or bonded by a single ideology (fundamentalist Islam) are more apt to keep a secret better than competing, often opposed organizations. Which is another place that a lot of CTs fall apart. The Apollo hoax would require the active complicity of the Soviet Union to pull off. 9/11 theories usually need Osama bin Laden to act as a willing fall guy for the United States government. While there have been conspiracies that involved disparate, often competing, organizations working together, they tend to be short term conspiracy theories, as described above. The majority of Kennedy CTs fail all three axis. They require large numbers of people, often drawn from organizations that are not normally friendly with each other, and which has been kept under wraps for almost fifty years. Leaving aside the quality of the evidence for these theories (which is usually crap, anyway), it’s extraordinarily unlikely that a conspiracy of that magnitude, with that many competing interests involved, would succeed for this long. ---
**Author:** ![Kozmik](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/8dc957/32.png) [@Kozmik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kozmik)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2011, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-conspiracies-possible/598870/35 "2011-10-14T21:09:39Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > Sorry. I don’t quite comprehend your point. Can you explain what you mean? In 2001, 9/11 happened, then the [anthrax attacks](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks) happened. As the Wikipedia article noted, “White House officials repeatedly pressured FBI Director Robert Mueller to prove that they were a second-wave assault by Al Qaeda following the September 11 attacks.” Let’s assume that the anthrax attacks were, in fact, a “second-wave assault” by Al Qaeda. That means that the 9/11 plot and the anthrax attacks plot were made at or near the same time. In other words, 9/11 and the anthrax attacks are both part of the _Conspiracy_. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [October 14, 2011, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-conspiracies-possible/598870/36 "2011-10-14T22:07:45Z")
> [@Kozmik](#): > > In 2001, 9/11 happened… If that were true. But it hasn’t been proven, and even then, all you need would be one person with the Anthrax, some stationary, and stamps. Virtually anyone with access to anthrax could have done it. Moreover, it was hardly secret even at the time. No great conspiracy needed, simply a suggestion to do some damage once something big occurred. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [October 15, 2011, 1:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-conspiracies-possible/598870/37 "2011-10-15T13:43:51Z")
> [@Kozmik](#): > > In 2001, 9/11 happened, then the [anthrax attacks](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_anthrax_attacks) happened. As the Wikipedia article noted, “White House officials repeatedly pressured FBI Director Robert Mueller to prove that they were a second-wave assault by Al Qaeda following the September 11 attacks.” Let’s assume that the anthrax attacks were, in fact, a “second-wave assault” by Al Qaeda. That means that the 9/11 plot and the anthrax attacks plot were made at or near the same time. In other words, 9/11 and the anthrax attacks are both part of the _Conspiracy_. Yes, but it seems that assumption turns out to be false. It wasn’t a second-wave attack by Al Qaeda, it was a “me-too” attack by a person who had no affiliation with Al Qaeda. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-are-conspiracies-possible/598870.md?page=1)