Cynical, sophisticated and subtle

Sometimes nonsense is just nonsense. Sometimes, like when Marshall Applewhite hollered "All aboard!" for the Hale-Bopp Express, it's dangerous nonsense. Sometimes the nonsense is also disinformation. And sometimes, disinformation is not nonsense at all. And for the truth, that's the most dangerous.

First, some nonsense. I don't know what Phil Jayhan and letsroll911's story is, but I'll bet it doesn't have a happy ending. The two are responsible for the aggressive dissemination of the ludicrous pod-and-missile theory. (That is, a moment before impacting the towers, the aircraft fired missiles from pods on their bellies. Why would they? A good question. One which, as usual with such fantasies, is never really addressed.) I see Jayhan posted on Thursday a bizarre ramble about how letsroll911 has changed history, and even lapses into the third person to talk about himself. As a rule, not a good sign:

When I decided to then publish my findings, I thought I would end up within a week, with either a bullet in my head or CNN trucks in my driveway. It was kind of a hard decision, as I really desired neither. But I chose to publish. So on April 15th, 2004, I released a press release that literally changed the face of the world and its politics.

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Had Phil Jayhan never existed, and never taken out this website, all of you would be experiencing an alternate reality, quite different than the one which you now enjoy...Not sure what that would be, but am sure it wouldn't be better than what we now have.

I won't judge Jayhan's intentions. But I hope, for his sake, that he's insincere.

Staying with 9/11 for the moment, consider the Pentagon crash, and the confiscation of the video from the service station security camera. That the video has never been released is regarded by many as damning evidence that authorities are trying to hide the true nature of the crash: that the video must reveal that it wasn't Flight 77 but a missile, or a fighter jet. But think: perhaps the video remains hidden because some people are quite happy to mindfuck the conspiracists and perpetuate an erroneous line of inquiry. Would they want to lay to rest a mistaken hypothesis, when it misdirects the efforts of so many? It may be that the question is not What have they got to hide? but rather, Why do they want us to think that they're hiding something?

Yesterday's news regarding developments in the Johnny Gosch case was encouraging, but we need to keep our wits about us, about them. The story is that investigator James Rothstein has a former CIA agent on tape admitting the agency's hand in the abduction. Now sometimes, former CIA agents tell the truth. But quite often, particularly about such dark and sensitive subjects, they don't. Reasonable skepticism about whatever they tell us is a good idea, not least when they tell us what we want to hear. So while I hope Rothstein is onto a strong lead, I have to also ask, could there be a reason why the Agency would intend, at this time, to sow disinformation about this crime?

After all, the best disinformation is that which most closely resembles the truth as we know it. It may look just like what we're expecting to find. But within it, is a time bomb meant to blow up in our faces.

Jim Garrison knew the feeling. He had his case against Clay Shaw blow up because of the cross-examination of Charles Spiesel, a New York accountant he'd belatedly added to his witness list. Spiesel testified he had heard Shaw and David Ferrie discuss the possible assassination of John F Kennedy. When the Chief Defense Counsel rose, he "uncannily" knew to destroy Spiesel's credibility, and Garrison's, by probing him about mind control. Spiesel complained that "hypnosis and psychological warfare" had been used on him, and he had been mentally tortured by the NYPD. And who knows: Spiesel could have been a mind control subject, but it wouldn't have mattered. (This was still years before the declassification, such as it was, of MK-ULTRA.) In the eyes of the jury his testimony was rendered worthless.

In On the Trail of the Assassins, Garrison writes:

For one very long moment, while I am sure that my face revealed no concern, I was swept by a feeling of nausea. I realized that the clandestine operation of the opposition was so cynical, so sophisticated, and, at the same time, so subtle, that destroying an old-fashioned state jury trial was very much like shooting a fish in a barrel with a shotgun.

Most of us, I think, are good-hearted people who are alive to this material because we recognize injustice and mean for it to end. That can be our strength, but it can also find hobbling expression in naive thinking. I believe on this side we could do with some healthy cynicism, sophistication and subtly of our own. Maybe it could rescue some credibility. Save lives, even.

I think of Gary Caradori, Chief Investigator for the Nebraska Legislature's Franklin committee, calling Senator Loran Schmit and exclaiming "We've got them! There's no way they can get out of it now!" He was returning from Chicago with photographic evidence of Lawrence King's elite paedophile ring. Schmit took another phone call a short while later, which informed him that Caradori had died in the crash of his small plane. His evidence was never recovered.

We want to get them, but let's never again say "There's no way they can get out of it now." Let's think several steps ahead, because they do. And when the bad guys shoot fish in a barrel, usually we're the fish. So we'd better be thinking outside the barrel.