Gary North on Conspiracy Theories

[Tom Bigg]

Today, Gary North posted this article on evaluating the credibility of conspiracies:July 2, 2011On July 2, 1776, the Continental Comgress declared independence from Great Britain. It did so on behalf of all Americans. But there were hundreds of thousands oif Americans who rtemasined loyal. So, the civil war began.We do not call it a civil war. That is because the rebels who committed treason won the war. The war was the outcome of a conspiracy. Sam Adams is most noted for his conspiratorial activities, but he was not alone. The Boston Tea Party was surely a conspiracy. Textbooks never mention that the Green Dragon Inn, where the Tea Party was hatched, was the meeting place of Boston Freemasons, of whom Paul Revere was most famous.But there were loyalist Freemasons. The Revolution can be seen as the outcome of rival Masonic orders: the ancients and the moderns. This is not how most historians discuss the American Revolution. A few do. I am one of them.As for the Constitution, it was clearly the work of a conspiracy. A group of unelected men gathered in the second floor of a building, so that no one on the street could hear the debates. They swore an oath not to reveal what went on. They all kept that oath. Only in 1838, two years after after the last attendee died (James Madison), did the first account of the debates appear in print: Robert Yates' version. Madison's notes, which he had revised on and off for decades, appeared in 1840. The meeting had been called to revise the Articles of Confederation. That was a self-conscious lie by Madison. Two versions of a revamped Constitution were submitted within days. The Articles demanded unanimity for amendment. The Constitution did an end run around it. I have written a book on this: Conspiracy in Philadelphia. You want footnotes? I have provided them.A conspiracy theory needs lots of footnotes. A lot of the footnotes have to be to primary source documents. But these can be misleading. There are forgeries. There are self-conscious attempts by participants to mislead future historians. There are rival views of what went on. Most important, there are events that leave no written records. This is especially true of conspiracies.Think of Abraham Zapruder's movie of Kennedy's assassination. No other event of this magnitude had a movie. Yet scholars debate its message. Conspiracy theorists see things in an Secret Service agent's hand that most people do not. (And how many people know that Zapruder pronounced his name ZAProoder?)As for digital versions of events, forget about it. Digital images can be tampered with.Then there are secondary sources written by specialists, who have spent years looking at primary source documents.I have written about JFK's assassination: http://www.garynorth.com/members/895.cfm. Consider this. It is virtually unknown in the literature. I have never seen a reference to it. Here is a recollection by a participant. The participant is a reliable source.Just before the plane was scheduled to leave Fort Worth for the short flight to Dallas, the rewrite man, Stan Weinberg, asked me if the bubble top was going to be on the presidential limousine. It would help to know now, he said, before he wrote the story later under pressure. It had been raining early that morning, and there was some uncertainty about it.I told Stan that I would find it. I put the phone down and walked over to a small ramp where the motorcade limousines were being held in waiting. I spotted Forrest Sorels, the agent in charge of the Dallas Secret Service office. I knew Mr. Sorrels fairly well, because I was then the regular federal beat reporter. . . .I looked down the ramp. The bubble top was on the president's car.Rewrite wants to know if the bubble top's going to stay on, I said to Mr. Sorrels, a man of fifty or so who wore dignified glasses and resembled a preacher or bank president.He looked at the sky and then hollered over at one of his agents holding a two-way radio in his hand. What about the weather downtown? he asked the agent.The agent talked into his radio for a few seconds, then listened. Clear, he hollered back.Mr. Sorrels yelled back at the agents standing by the car: "Take off the bubble top!"Just over twelve hours later, I was part of the bedlam at the Dallas police station along with hundreds of other reporters. I went into the police chief's outer office to await the breakup of a meeting in Chief Jesse Curry's main office. I had no idea who was in there.The door opened and out walked several men. One of them was Forrest Sorrels. He looked tired and sad. And bewildered. He saw me and I moved toward him. His eyes were wet. He paused briefly, shook his head slightly and whispered, "Take off the bubble top."I added these words in 2003:The history of mankind is filled with "what if" and "if only" events that surround every major event. In American history, this is one of the big what-ifs, yet it is still unknown to the public.A plastic bubble might not have stopped the bullets that hit the passengers in that limousine, but it would have given any sharpshooter concern. A bullet can be deflected. There is no guarantee that an undeflected bullet will hit its target, and a plastic bubble would have added greatly to the uncertainty. Would the assassin or assassins have pulled the trigger(s)?There is also no way to know if someone other than Forrest Sorrels might have decided after the plane landed to take off the bubble top. What we do know, and what Mr. Sorrels knew that day, is this: a seemingly peripheral question by a rewrite man, relayed through a reporter, led to a call downtown by a two-way radio. Assessment: "Clear." Events in Dallas on that fateful day were never clear again.This story would be known by almost no one, had it not been for the reporter's subsequent career, which justified a book publishing company's taking a risk by publishing his autobiography. The Dallas reporter subsequently became America's most prominent playwright-novelist-newscaster, Jim Lehrer, of the "Lehrer News Hour." His book is titled, "A Bus of My Own." It was published in 1992. It did not sell well. What if the bubble had been on top? The conspiracy, if any, would have ended for a time, and maybe forever.My friend Bill Marina, Ph.D., saw the assassination -- the only trained historian to see it. He studied it for decades after. He gave courses on it. He was a conspiracy historian, but he thought Oswald acted alone. He never wrote his book on i. A week before he died, I sent him an eletter begging him to finish it. And so it goes.There is no way to reconcile the versions. They will go on forever. The documentary evidence is insufficient.It is always insufficient. This is the fact of writing history. We are not omniscience. We are not God. We don't have all the pieces to the puzzle. In every field, there are what we might call irreducible complexities. The system fits, but we do not know how. How did the eye evolve. How did a cell evolve? The critics of Darwinian evolution have asked this ever since the 1860s, but only with microbiologist Michael Behe's book, Darwin's Black Box (1996), did the argument register with lots of people. He used the example of a mousetrap. Its parts are useless if not assembled. The parts convey no advantage when not assembled. That bit of rhetoric shot a hole in the side of H.M.S. Darwin. The average Joe can understand it. The Darwinist cannot refute it in language or images that the average Joe can understand. If I were to debate a Darwinist, I would hand every participant a baggie with the parts of a mousetrap in it. I would keep coming back to this. That is what 96% of the audience would remember, if anything.So it is with history. Most of it is made up of irreducibly complex parts. The only reason why we don't find this everywhere is that it's not worth investigating most events carefully or at all. When we come to assassinations, it is worth studying. And then we find irreducible complexity.There are always more loose ends to tie than a single explanation can deal with. Loose ends are the heart and soul of conspiracy theories.If you really know the history of any event, you will know the loose ends. He who does not know the loose ends is still an amateur.My suggestion: work through what is verified by everyone. Begin with the chronology. When did events take place? If a theorist gets this wrong, his explanation will have serious loose ends. If there are questions about timing, keep these events separate: a loose ends file.Then move to impossibilities. Decide what could not possibly have taken place. This shuts down rabbit trails. Then move to probabilities. Then move to possibilities.Then move to causes of events in the sequence of events that had to occur, but for which there are no logical explanations. That is where conspiracy theories are born.Here is my rule: the official explanation by the government is filled with lies and evidence-tampering. The story may be true, but it will be supported with bogus arguments. Look for anomalies here.If you want to study JFK, read a few conspiracy books. They will not agree. Then read the one-volume Warren Commission's summary. Then, if you are hard core, read the Committee's hearings. Then go read more conspiracy books. See how well they deal with the Warren Commission. If you see that an author is not playing straight, put his book aside.We do not have time to read all the official evidence. So, we must make judgments based on insufficient evidence. We must trust someone's version.The reason why I am not a conspiracy theorist about JFK is that I trust Marina. It's not worth my time to pursue this. If the mob did it, so what? If the CIA did it, that's interesting, but if I could prove it, I might wind up like JFK. If LBJ was involved, that would be worth investigating. But to what purpose? He was a disaster, with or without a conspiracy in Dallas.But what if Franklin Roosevelt deliberately provoked Japan all through 1941? That would be significant. What if he knew the attack was coming at Pearl Harbor? My friend Percy Greaves was the master on this issue. He directed the research of the Republicans at the Pearl Harbor inquest of 1947. He wrote the book on this, which his wife finished twenty years after he died. It's here for free. He did not think Roosevelt knew the attack was coming at Pearl Harbor, only that it was coming. He did not think the Japanese fleet ever broke silence. That was what the Japanese commanders said. Yet Robert Stinnett (Day of Deceit) does think the fleet broke silence, and therefore Roosevelt knew where the attack was coming. And so it goes.Why did Hitler declare war four days later? There is one of the most important unanswered questions in modern times? It changed the world. I have seen no conspiracy theory about this, or about his decision to invade the USSR the previous June, or his decision not to finish off the British at Dunkirk. Key events are often the result of someone's bad judgment or lack of information. Think "bubble on JFK's car." His friend Bill Egger subscribed to the "lone nut" theory. Gary North doesn't. With this forum inaccurate theories can be disproved by the experts. Thanks.

[Dealey Joe]

This is an interesting article.I am not sure I want to call the formation of our country a modern day Conspiracy.If you mean two or more planning together to do something then I might be able to handle it.I also do not see it as secret.There was a Declaration of Independence that spelled out their intentions and actions.------------------------------------------Declaration of Independence Here is the complete text of the Declaration of Independence.The original spelling and capitalization have been retained. (Adopted by Congress on July 4, 1776) The Unanimous Declarationof the Thirteen United States of America When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. --Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world. He has refused his assent to laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.He has forbidden his governors to pass laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has refused to pass other laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of representation in the legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved representative houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the legislative powers, incapable of annihilation, have returned to the people at large for their exercise; the state remaining in the meantime exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within. He has endeavored to prevent the population of these states; for that purpose obstructing the laws for naturalization of foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migration hither, and raising the conditions of new appropriations of lands. He has obstructed the administration of justice, by refusing his assent to laws for establishing judiciary powers. He has made judges dependent on his will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance. He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislature. He has affected to render the military independent of and superior to civil power. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his assent to their acts of pretended legislation: For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: For protecting them, by mock trial, from punishment for any murders which they should commit on the inhabitants of these states: For cutting off our trade with all parts of the world: For imposing taxes on us without our consent: For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of trial by jury: For transporting us beyond seas to be tried for pretended offenses: For abolishing the free system of English laws in a neighboring province, establishing therein an arbitrary government, and enlarging its boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule in these colonies: For taking away our charters, abolishing our most valuable laws, and altering fundamentally the forms of our governments: For suspending our own legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. He has abdicated government here, by declaring us out of his protection and waging war against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burned our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large armies of foreign mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the head of a civilized nation. He has constrained our fellow citizens taken captive on the high seas to bear arms against their country, to become the executioners of their friends and brethren, or to fall themselves by their hands. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare, is undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions. In every stage of these oppressions we have petitioned for redress in the most humble terms: our repeated petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. Nor have we been wanting in attention to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, enemies in war, in peace friends. We, therefore, the representatives of the United States of America, in General Congress, assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the name, and by the authority of the good people of these colonies, solemnly publish and declare, that these united colonies are, and of right ought to be free and independent states; that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the state of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independent states, they have full power to levy war, conclude peace, contract alliances, establish commerce, and to do all other acts and things which independent states may of right do. And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor. New Hampshire: Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton Massachusetts: John Hancock, Samual Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry Rhode Island: Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery Connecticut: Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott New York: William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris New Jersey: Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark Pennsylvania: Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross Delaware: Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean Maryland: Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton Virginia: George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton North Carolina: William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn South Carolina: Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton Georgia: Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton Source: The Pennsylvania Packet, July 8, 1776

[JDThomas]

Rewrite wants to know if the bubble top's going to stay on, I said to Mr. Sorrels, a man of fifty or so who wore dignified glasses and resembled a preacher or bank president.He looked at the sky and then hollered over at one of his agents holding a two-way radio in his hand. What about the weather downtown? he asked the agent.The agent talked into his radio for a few seconds, then listened. Clear, he hollered back.Mr. Sorrels yelled back at the agents standing by the car: "Take off the bubble top!"Just over twelve hours later, I was part of the bedlam at the Dallas police station along with hundreds of other reporters. I went into the police chief's outer office to await the breakup of a meeting in Chief Jesse Curry's main office. I had no idea who was in there.The door opened and out walked several men. One of them was Forrest Sorrels. He looked tired and sad. And bewildered. He saw me and I moved toward him. His eyes were wet. He paused briefly, shook his head slightly and whispered, "Take off the bubble top."I distinctly remember Harold Weisberg stating in a radio interview that the bubbletop was not bullet-proof and was a red herring - what do you think? or else is there good information to the contrary?

[Dealey Joe]

JD, I well remember in the early 60's the Limo with the bubble top was a big deal and a topic of discussion in the news. JFK made it very clear he did not like the Bubble and did not want to use it.I don't know how to prove it but I would say the top was hardly ever used.I also believe the Bubble was originally designed to be protective and JFK only agreed to use it when it was raining.I would also say the bubble was more for impression than anything else.

[Phil Dragoo]

Poly methyl methacrylate is Plexiglas developed by German chemist Otto Rohm in 1933. It is not bulletproof.The limousine SS-X-100 was modified by its builder Hess & Eisenhart, Pittsburgh Plate Glass and Ford Motor Company following the assassination.Its new and permanent metal top was designed to hold the new bulletproof glass.The "Quick Fix" was completed on May 11, 1964 at a cost of over $500,000, shared by Ford Motor Company, some of their suppliers, and the federal government. A major factor in the cost was the production of the bullet-resistant high-grade "water white" glass by Pittsburgh Plate Glass, estimated at $125,000. The 13 glass panels ranged in thickness from one-inch to 1 13/16-inches -- the rear roof section was the largest piece of bullet-resistant cast glass produced to date, weighing in at around 1,500 pounds. The bullet-resisting process involved sandwiching polycarbonate vinyl between each of five layers of plate glass.The “bubble top” of Plexiglas would not have stopped bullets. Its non-use is a non-issue.The only issue which plays is the security stripping by the Secret Service, the provision by Angleton and others at CIA of the patsy, the crossfire which blew the president's brains out, and the complicity of Johnson and Hoover in the cover-up.

[JDThomas]

Thanks Phil,just the sort of info that I was looking for - leaves no doubt and no room for apologists.

[Shane]

Great info, Phil. But according to Files, the bubble top would have canceled the attempt in Dallas. Anything but a sure thing was not good enough to pull the trigger. The bubble top would have affected the shots in some way, even in a very minor way

[Phil Dragoo]

ShaneConsider the profundity of your statement:The bubble top would have affected the shots in some way, even in a very minor wayWhen the spider crack splatted to the president's right front, how could Cotton Mather blame the witch perched behind?The top would not have stopped the shot--it would have demystified the old wive's tale of the dweeb in the sniper's nest.Be that as it may, the abort order was not enough to stop Nicoletti, though Jimmy said it stopped Rosselli.If nothing else, the drive-by in Dealey showed the president is protected by myth.Those who own the language fill the throne.

[Michael Calder]

Dealey Joe,Thanks for providing the "loose ends" as Gary North requires, in giving us the "Declaration of Independence" and the men who signed it. One wonders if, "A Republic - if you can keep it." per Ben Franklin would satisfy Mr. North. www.jfkcia.com

[Shane]

"The top would not have stopped the shot--it would have demystified the old wive's tale of the dweeb in the sniper's nest." -- Good point"Be that as it may, the abort order was not enough to stop Nicoletti, though Jimmy said it stopped Rosselli." -- I was referring not to the abort team that was flown in by Tosh, which Nicoletti promptly ignored, but to Files statement that if the bubble top would have been on the car, "We would have packed up, gone home, and tried another day."