A RASH OF CONSPIRACY THEORIES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP99-00418R000100050009-8
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 2
• Document Creation Date: December 22, 2016
• Document Release Date: May 11, 2012
• Sequence Number: 9
• Publication Date: July 5, 1991
• Content Type: OPEN SOURCE

Sl Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/11: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100050009-8
STAT
Charles _ thammer
A Ras of
Conspiracy.
Theories
When do we dig
up Bill Casey?
Well, they dug up the bones of Za-
chary Taylor, 12th president of the
United States, to prove that he did not
die at the hand of God but at the hand of
conspirators. Some historical novelist
got it into her head that Oki Rough and
Ready was not the sort to die of gastro-
enteritis and that his death was just too
convenient for the pro-slavery forces of
the day. Finding arsenic in Taylor's
earthly remains, it was held, would
recast the Civil War as the product of a
few imlmown men who prevented the
liberal Taylor, a man heretofore not
known as a giant among presidents,
from coping with the underlying causes
of the Civil War.
Would that history were so neat. It
isn't. And Zachary Taylor wasn't mur-
dered. So the chief medical examiner
of Kentucky informs us, 141 years
after the fact. The trace amount at
arsenic found in him was not enough to
kill a mouse.
In fact, Taylor was likely killed byp.his
doctors. Before the 20th century. tars spent most of their time bleeding
blistering and feeding (what we now
know to be) poisons to their ahtlgdy
debilitated patient, a bizarre ritual that
for ceuti jes was known as medicine.
That is wdnt they did to Taylor when he
came down with gastroenteritis after
consuming iced cherries and milk on a
steamy Fourth of July.
But there is no romance in being
inadvertently Idled by your doctors. And
no satidyiig sense of injustice at discov-
ering death by natural causes. Hence the
eternal quest for the satisfaction that
comes from conspiracy uncovered. Tay-
lor's indecorous disinterment is only the
most bizarre example of the current
quest for conspiracy. We are in the midst
of a wave of conspiracy theorizing:
^ Former Carter aide Gary Sick claims
that in 1980 the Reagan campaign con-
spired with the ayatollah to keep the
hostages in Tehran past election day.
Many Democrats believe that if Sick is
right, the 1980 election was stolen.
^ A best-seller, "Silent Coup: The Re-
moval of a President," claims that Wa-
tergate was an elaborate conspiracy to
dethrone an innocent Richard Nixon in-
volving some of his own operatives (nota-
bly Alexander Haig and John Dean)
working hand in glove with such improb-
able allies as Bob Woodward of The Post.
^ Two princes of Hollywood, Oscar win-
ners Kevin Costner and Oliver Stone,
are working on a big-screen version of
the Kennedy assassination that report-
edly paints a vast conspiracy involving
the CIA, FBI, Pentagon, Dallas police,
Secret Service, big business and Lyndon
Johnson. They had to get Kennedy out
of power before he could-if this is
Stone, what else?-end the Vietnam
War. Not only did Oswald not do it
alone. He didn't do it at all. The movie
hero, played by Costner, is New Orleans
district attorney Jim Garrison, who once
did bring a conspiracy case to trial in
Louisiana. It was dismissed by the jury
in less than an hour.
What do all. these conspiracy theo-
ries have in common? They delegitim-
ize what appear to be constitutitinal
transitions of power. They implythat
Reagan, Johnson and even poor Millard
Fi lmore came to power, and Nixon
was deprived of it, not by normal
democratic process but by plot.
And now, as if to parody the trend,
comes news that Louisiana authorities
have decided to dig up the body of Huey
Long's assassin. By studying its 60 (!)
bullet holes (delivered, at the scene, by
Long's bodyguards), they expect to find
out if he really did it or if Long's body-
guards did. Remember, Long was vow-
ing to challenge FDR for the presidency.
Why is every man not a king? Forensic
medicine will solve the mystery.
What is so odd about this rash of
claims that various American presiden-
tial transitions were illegitimate is that
America has produced the most durable
and orderly system of transferring pow-
er in history. And yet ghosts keep
appearing warning of murder most foul.
Why is it that Americans are so ready to
believe we transfer power like the Bor-
gias, though with somewhat more guile?
CONTINUED
The Washington Post
The New York Times
The Washington Times
The Wall Street Journal
The Christian Science Monitor
New York Dairy News
USA Today
The Chicago Tribune
Date
/I.
Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/11: CIA-RDP99-00418R000100050009-8
 Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/11: CIA-RDP99-00418ROO0100050009-8
The most reasonable explanation for
this eruption of odd thinking is coinci=
dence. This is always the safest and most
likely explanation for.any conjunction of
curies circumstances, the periodic clus-
tering-of plane crashes, for example.
Not satisfied? If we are going to go
beyond coincidence, then we must speak
of underlying causes. In societies, as in
individuals, paranoia arises when a world
view has exploded and some new intel-
lectual structure-preferably conspirato-
rial-is needed to fill the void and explain
the world. Paranoia comes with disori=
enting cultural and ideological disintegra-
tion: Consider Germany at the collapse of
Weimar and Iran at the fall of the shah.
Or America in the 1960s and 1970s,
when, for example, Cambridge, Mass..
sported a fu i-time outfit called the As=
sassination Information Bureau. Social
convulsion would explain the rise "of
conspiracy theories then. But now? The:
'90s are hardly a time of cultural nevoiw
tion. Bush's America is quiescent to the
point of coma. Why the rash of conspira-.
cy theories?
Why, conspiracy, of course. There
are people who wish us ill. They must
know that the quickest way to debilitate'
a society is to turn it paranoid. Has
anyone checked the water? Was that
really benzene in the Perrier? . ,;
Who are these shadowy charpcte 2-1
We can never be sure about the
things. But my guess is the. Med&
cartel. In conjunction with the Jews; 'of'
cotcse. Ordtestrated 04. _ ,
Whendorve'dijfi f n ~"17"'
I.
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Declassified in Part - Sanitized Copy Approved for Release 2012/05/11: CIA-RDP99-00418ROO0100050009-8