Conspiracy Theory Reconsidered

Founding documents

In contrast to the derision and hostility that conspiratorial suspicions receive today, such suspicions were common sense for the generation that fought for independence and framed the U.S. Constitution. Indeed, the United States was founded on what today would be called a conspiracy theory. The Declaration of Independence claimed, “a history of repeated injuries and usurpations” by King George proved that the king was plotting to establish “an absolute tyranny over these states.” The bulk of the declaration was devoted to detailing the abuses evincing the king’s tyrannical design. Among the complaints were onerous taxation, fomenting slave rebellions and Indian uprisings, taxation without representation, and indifference to the colonies’ complaints. The document’s signers claimed that it was this “design to reduce them under absolute despotism,” not any or all of the abuses themselves, that gave them the right and the duty “to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.”

The conspiracy theory presented in the nation’s founding document reflected the thinking of many, if not most, colonists. In the decades leading up to the American Revolution, as Bailyn (1967/1992) shows, the colonists grew increasingly convinced that the British government was pursuing a “deliberate conspiracy to destroy the balance of the constitution and eliminate their freedom” (Bailyn, 1967/1992, p. 144; see also, Tackett, 2000). By the same token, British officials in the colonies and in England thought the colonists were conspiring to establish an independent empire despite their professions of loyalty to the King (Bailyn, 1967/1992). The Declaration of Independence reflected the culmination of mutual conspiratorial fears that had escalated in tandem over several decades.

As hostilities began in the 1760s, revolutionary-minded activists throughout the colonies organized “Committees of Safety,” which by the mid-1770s were demanding that the undecided either swear an oath to the revolutionary authorities or leave the country (Polk, 2006). Those colonists who were deemed to be Loyalists or even just inadequately committed to the Revolution were lashed, tarred, and feathered; had their houses and crops burned; and, in some instances, were hanged or lynched. By the end of the Revolutionary War, more than 100,000 colonists had fled (Polk, 2007).

After the war, when the colonists turned to strengthening their own national government, they brought with them their deep fear of conspiracies, treason, and constitutional corruption. The United States Constitution was designed with the expectation that public officials are likely to conspire to abuse their powers and undermine popular control of government. The Framers of the Constitution saw their central problem to be establishing a national government strong enough to protect national security and maintain domestic order, and yet sufficiently constrained to adhere to the spirit of popular government and the rule of law. In Madison’s words (Federalist 51), “you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” As he explained in Federalist 10, the greatest threat to the constitutional order comes from “factions,” that is,

A number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.

To the extent that a faction has a hidden agenda or an unannounced plan for gaining and exercising power, it is what the Framers called a “cabal.”

The Constitution was designed to deal with factions and cabals in a number of ways: separation of powers, checks and balances between branches, large Congressional districts, oaths of office, and provisions for impeachment for treason and other high crimes and misdemeanors. Freedom of speech was protected by the First Amendment as well as by limiting treason to “overt acts” in support of enemies (Article III, Section 3).

The Founders’ response to seditious speech and treason

Still, as the constitutional order took form in the first two decades after the U.S. Constitution became effective in 1789, questions remained about whether limits should be placed on antigovernment speech inciting sedition or rebellion against the new political system or its officials. British law designated “seditious libel”—statements critical of the government or its officials—as a crime subject to capital punishment, with the truth of such statements inadmissible as a defense (Levy, 1963). Trials for seditious libel were conducted in secret, defendants could be compelled to testify against themselves, and they could not confront and cross-examine their accusers. A number of rights codified in the U.S. Constitution were included precisely to prevent such practices in America: the right against self-incrimination, the guarantee of trial by jury, and the right to confront one’s accusers.

Nonetheless, the Washington and Adams Administrations, dominated by Federalists who saw themselves as the originators and authors of the new political order, feared sedition and civil disorder, and tried to impose a weaker version of the British law. After President Washington put down the Whisky Rebellion in Pennsylvania, he asked Congress to consider enacting a law against political clubs such as those that had fomented resistance to the federal tax on whisky. He viewed the right of assembly to allow only spontaneous and temporary protests, not enduring organizations of antigovernment agitators (Fisher, 2008). Congress demurred, and Washington let the matter drop. However, when John Adams took office and found himself and his administration at the brunt of popular ridicule and unsubstantiated rumors, he persuaded the Federalists in Congress to enact the Sedition Act of 1798. Although drawing on the British concept of seditious libel, the Act departed from British law in not making antigovernment speech a capital offense and in allowing truth as grounds for acquittal (Fisher, 2008).

The Vice President Thomas Jefferson strongly opposed the Sedition Act mainly because in his view the power to regulate antigovernment speech was reserved to the states by the U.S. Constitution, which, in the First Amendment, prohibited Congress from enacting laws “abridging the freedom of expression, or of the press.” The historical record is unclear on Jefferson’s views at the time about the legitimacy of state laws against seditious libel, but his opposition to the Sedition Act became normative in American civic culture both federally and in the states. Jefferson was so hostile to the Sedition Act that he left the nation’s capital and spent the rest of his vice presidential term at his home in Virginia. While there, he wrote the Doctrine of Nullification, which argued that states were not bound by federal laws that obviously violated the U.S. Constitution.

Jefferson also formed a new political party and defeated Adams in the presidential election of 1800. In his first inaugural address, Jefferson articulated the principle, now widely cherished as a birthright, that Americans are allowed by the Constitution to “think freely and to speak and to write what they think.” He made it clear that in his view, this was true even for speech advocating the overthrow of the government. In Jefferson’s words,

If there be any among us who would wish to dissolve this Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

Congress let the Sedition Act expire in 1801.

Yet, Jefferson was also influential, however, in sanctioning suspicions of antidemocratic conspiracies by top leaders. As the President, he advocated the prosecution of Aaron Burr for treason in what came to be called the “Burr conspiracy.” Burr had been Jefferson’s running mate in the election of 1800. When Jefferson and Burr ended up with equal numbers of votes in the Electoral College, the election went to the House of Representatives for a decision. Burr remained silent as the House repeatedly cast a tie vote. Eventually, Jefferson won after Alexander Hamilton, not a member of Congress but influential in the Federalist Party, called on his fellow partisans in the House to support Jefferson over Burr. In subsequent years, Hamilton implied in a variety of statements that Burr had betrayed Jefferson by conspiring with members of the Federalist Party to secure the presidency for himself. When Jefferson made it clear that he was going to drop Burr from the Democratic–Republican ticket in the 1804 election, Burr ran for Governor of New York, and Hamilton campaigned against him. Burr lost the gubernatorial election, which was held in April. In July of 1804, Burr challenged Hamilton to a duel in which Hamilton was killed.

During his second term as president, Jefferson voiced his belief that Burr was leading a conspiracy to form a separate nation by breaking away western lands from U.S. control. Jefferson’s suspicion was based on reports from U.S. General James Wilkinson that Burr had approached him with a scheme to establish an independent nation in the west. Jefferson urged federal prosecutors to take action, and Burr was tried for treason. Although Burr was acquitted because he had not committed an overt act to aid America’s enemies—the test for treason in the Constitution—the trial vindicated Hamilton’s allegations that Burr was dangerously ambitious and untrustworthy, and Burr’s reputation was ruined.

For the next hundred years, American statesmen regularly voiced suspicions of antidemocratic conspiracies when circumstantial evidence suggested hidden intrigue. Nineteenth century conspiracy theories included, among others, Andrew Jackson’s allegations of a “corrupt bargain” between John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay to give the presidency to Adams in 1824; Abraham Lincoln’s charge that President Polk fabricated a reason to initiate the Mexican–American War; claims that the assassination of President Lincoln was organized and financed by top leaders of the Confederacy (Bingham, 1865); the theory that the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution had been intentionally drafted by railroad-connected Congressmen so as to precipitate court rulings granting the rights of individuals to corporations (Beard & Beard, 1927), and suspicions that the Maine, a U.S. battleship, was deliberately sunk by U.S. or Cuban operatives to precipitate the Spanish–American War (Rohter, 1998).

Conspiracy theory as delusion

An article in The New Yorker in 2006 typifies the prevailing attitudes of mainstream journalists. Written by Nicholas Lemann (2006), it draws its title from a famous essay by Richard Hofstadter (1965) on the “paranoid style” in American politics. In the 1960s, Hofstadter had argued that conspiracy theories were infecting the nation’s fringes on the right, but Lemann says the conspiratorial mind-set now “dwells as much, or more, on the left.” Another difference, Lemann argues, is that the paranoia of the earlier period was directed at threats (such as communism) coming from outside society, whereas the present fear focuses on the nation’s own leaders. Included among Lemann’s list of prevalent conspiracy theories are allegations that Bush partisans stole the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq were about oil rather than terrorism, and the terrorist attacks on 9/11 were allowed or facilitated by U.S. officials.

Like many other journalists, Lemann presupposes that these and similar theories about elite political criminality are unworthy of evaluation on their merits. After summarizing a long list of books and documentaries challenging official accounts of events related to the war on terror, he concludes, not by refuting any of the evidence for conspiracies, but instead by offering an explanation of why conspiracy theories are so popular to begin with.

The shock of September 11th, along with the enormity of the evident failure of the American invasion of Iraq, is simply incommensurate with what we are conditioned to expect as we watch the unspooling of American history. It feels as if a new factor had to be added-as if some additional, unofficial force must have been at work.

Lemann says conspiracy theory fills the gap between high expectations and official failures with a flawed but appealing logic: It “treats correlation as causation, and jumps across open evidentiary spaces to make things that aren’t demonstrably connected look as if they were.”

This is a common explanation for the popularity of conspiracy theories: When a hugely important event occurs, people expect the forces behind it to match the event’s significance. In the words of Frank Spotnitz, writer of the television series “The X Files,”

I think the most potent targets for conspiracy theories are events of disproportionate tragedy. For example, the president of the United States is assassinated by a lone gunman. It doesn’t seem fair, it doesn’t seem right, it can’t be. This one guy couldn’t have done it—there must be larger forces at work (BBC, 2007).

In short, the contemporary view of conspiracy theories is that they posit spurious connections to make sense of senseless tragedies.

Conspiracy theories are also alleged to impair the judgment of those who embrace them. This thesis was summarized and endorsed by Cass Sunstein and Adrian Vermeule in a 2009 law review article. Sunstein is a Harvard law professor appointed by President Obama to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. In their article, Sunstein and Vermeule (2009) argue that conspiracy theories are resistant to debunking because they are, in their words, “self-sealing.” That is, because conspiracy theories attribute extraordinary powers to elites to orchestrate events, keep secrets, and avoid detection, the theories encourage their adherents to dismiss countervailing evidence as fabricated or planted.

Elsewhere, Sunstein (2009) has argued that conspiracy-theory groups and networks are proliferating because the highly decentralized form of mass communication made possible by the Internet is altering the character of public discourse. Whereas television and radio provide platforms for debating competing viewpoints on matters of widely shared interest, the Internet tends to segment discussion into a multitude of small groups, each focusing on a separate and distinct topic. Sunstein argues that this splintering of discourse encourages extremism because it allows proponents of false or one-sided beliefs to locate others with similar views while avoiding interaction with competing perspectives. In Sunstein’s words, “the Internet produces a process of spontaneous creation of groups of like-minded types, fueling group polarization. People who would otherwise be loners, or isolated in their objections and concerns, congregate into social networks” (pp. 82-83). Sunstein acknowledges that this consequence of the Internet is unavoidable, but he says polarization can and should be mitigated by a combination of government action and voluntarily adopted norms. The objective, he says, should be to ensure that those who hold conspiracy theories “are exposed to credible counterarguments and are not living in an echo chamber of their own design” (Sunstein, 2009, pp. 158-159).

The view that conspiracy theories are appealing, impairing, and proliferating is the basis for recent proposals to suppress conspiracy theorizing. Whereas most authors advocate shunning, ridiculing, or in other ways normatively silencing conspiracy belief, Sunstein and Vermeule (2009) stand out for proposing covert government action reminiscent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) efforts against the civil rights and antiwar movements in the 1960s. They consider a number of options for countering the influence of conspiracy theories, including public information campaigns, censorship, and fines for Internet service providers hosting conspiracy-theory websites. Ultimately rejecting those options as impractical because they would attract attention and reinforce antigovernment suspicions, they call for a program of “cognitive infiltration” in which groups and networks popularizing conspiracy theories would be infiltrated and “disrupted.”

Problems with the conspiracy-theory label

Although many conspiracy theories are indeed as dubious as their critics suggest, the conventional account of conspiratorial theorizing as inherently irrational is problematic on at least four grounds. First, as previously stated, some conspiracy theories that were initially dismissed as outlandish have turned out to be true. For example, in June 1972, when burglars were caught breaking into the National Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate office building, few people took seriously the suggestion by Democratic Party Chairman Lawrence O’Brien that the crime was instigated by President Nixon’s reelection committee (Szulc, 1972). Two days after the crime, Nixon Press Secretary Ron Ziegler famously dismissed it as a “third-rate burglary attempt” (quoted in Ripley, 1973). Apparently, voters agreed; 5 months later, Nixon won a landslide victory in the presidential election.

In retrospect, the Watergate break-in should have immediately aroused widespread suspicion of involvement by top officials (Summers, 2000). Among those arrested were a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent (Howard Hunt) and a former FBI agent (G. Gordon Liddy), both of whom had been recently employed by the White House. Also arrested was the head of security for the Committee to Reelect the President (James McCord), which was chaired by Nixon-confidant and former Attorney General John Mitchell. Hunt pleaded guilty to all charges in January 1973, and the other Watergate burglars followed suit shortly thereafter. Also in January 1973, John Mitchell was linked to payments received by the burglars. Nonetheless, articles of impeachment were not introduced until July 1973, and, even then, Congress showed no willingness to send the articles to the Senate for trial. It was not until audiotapes implicating Nixon and his inner circle were discovered and made public that calls for Nixon’s impeachment began to be seriously considered. Clearly, Watergate demonstrates that norms discouraging suspicions of crimes in high office can place American democracy at risk.

A second problem with the conspiracy-theory label is that it is overly broad. Conspiratorial suspicions usually have many variations, and yet the conspiracy-theory label makes no distinction between suspicions that are plausible and supported by evidence, and those that are ludicrous and entirely unsubstantiated. For example, conspiracy theories of 9/11 range from allegations that the attacks were orchestrated by the U.S. government to the theory that Bush Administration officials knew the attacks were coming and let them happen, to the suspicion that the attacks succeeded because of U.S. incompetence, which was subsequently covered up. The broad-brush “conspiracy theory” label dismisses all of these hypotheses as equally improbable.

However, the last suspicion in the list—that official failures occurred and were covered up—is credible and fairly well documented. The Bush Administration received many warnings that a terrorist attack was imminent and it might include hijackings (Clarke, 2004; CNN.com, 2004). Moreover, in addition to opposing an independent inquiry into the attacks, the Administration withheld evidence once the investigation was underway (Morgan & Henshall, 2005; Shenon, 2008). Nevertheless, the conspiracy-theory label treats suspicions that official failures in 9/11 were covered up as equivalent to less plausible allegations that 9/11 was an “inside job.” Conflating many different suspicions under a single concept attaches the implausibility of the least credible allegation to all the others.

Third, the conspiracy-theory label obscures and thereby blocks inquiry into the issues conspiracy theories raise about official accounts of suspicious events in which officials themselves may have been involved. The label implies that official accounts of contested events are something other than theories—as if they involve no interpretations of the evidence. In actuality, however, official narratives typically adhere to what might be called a “coincidence theory,” whereas troubling connections and circumstantial evidence are dismissed as chance concurrences.

Again, Watergate is instructive. After McCord was apprehended, John Mitchell claimed that his (McCord’s) connection to the Committee to Reelect the President was unrelated to the crime. In Mitchell’s words, McCord was

the proprietor of a private security agency who was employed by our Committee months ago to assist with the installation of our security system. He has, as we understand it, a number of business clients and interests, and we have no knowledge of those relationships. We want to emphasize that this man and the other people involved were not operating either on our behalf or with our consent. (quoted in Szulc, 1972)

This was only one of many connections between the burglars that had to be explained away as coincidences. Hunt was said to be no longer working at the White House and to be employed by a Washington public relations firm. Liddy was depicted as a free agent who became overzealous in his work for the reelection committee. In short, when many Americans rejected allegations that Watergate involved officials in the Nixon Administration, they were not simply being cautious about endorsing an unsubstantiated conspiracy theory; they were accepting rather dubious claims that various Administration connections to the crime were coincidental.

Lest Watergate be viewed as an unrepresentative example, consider Lemann’s treatment of 9/11. Lemann mentions the anthrax letter attacks that occurred in October 2001, but he ignores the conclusion reached early in the FBI investigation that the anthrax came from a strain developed by the U.S. military at the Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Maryland. Lemann adheres to the official account of 9/11 in treating 9/11 and the anthrax letter attacks as unrelated crimes and attaching no significance for 9/11 to the fact that the anthrax mailings appear to have been from a domestic microbiologist. Another 9/11–anthrax connection that is set aside as irrelevant by Lemann and the official account of 9/11 is the decision by medical officers at the White House to distribute a powerful antibiotic (Cipro) to the president and other officials in the evening on 9/11, weeks before the anthrax mailings were discovered (Sobieraj, 2001). Given that the anthrax had domestic origins, suspicious minds might wonder if officials knew the anthrax attacks were coming. The innocent explanation that Cipro was simply administered as a precaution is belied by the failure of anyone in the White House to tell Congress and the public that an anthrax attack was a concern. This is not to suggest any involvement by the Administration in 9/11 or the anthrax letter attacks, but rather to point out how theory laden are all accounts, official or otherwise, of complex events such as terrorist attacks and governmental responses to them. Lemann’s omission of findings in the investigation of the anthrax letter attacks from his analysis of 9/11 highlights the assumptions of innocence and coincidence that are cloaked by disparagement of suspicions about many things that emerge, which are not part of official findings and explanations of 9/11 and other events.

A final problem with the conspiracy-theory label is that it undermines the rule of law at its most basic level: criminal investigations and prosecutions. Norms against voicing suspicions of high crimes should not be equated with the principle in American jurisprudence that suspects are considered innocent until proven guilty. The presumption of innocence was never intended to outlaw suspicions. Rather, it calls for suspicions to be tested with thorough and fair investigations grounded by procedural rules for procuring and presenting evidence. In contrast, the conspiracy-theory label is applied not to categorize a position that will actually be considered but to shut off argumentation before it begins. As a practical matter, by condemning as hysterical and pernicious almost all speculations about possible complicity of political elites in suspicious events, the label hinders investigations of the types of crimes for which fearless inquiry is most needed.

Impediments to political crime detection and investigation

Taking the public’s suspicions seriously involves more than a change of attitude; it means reevaluating and acknowledging problems with past investigations and working to establish procedures for ensuring that future investigations will be more rigorous, thorough, transparent, and timely. Unfortunately, inquiries into these kinds of shocking events often aim more at absolving public officials and agencies of responsibility than at determining, to the extent possible, what actually happened.

Problems are evident, and reforms are needed in at least four areas: First, all too often, evidence has not been gathered, inventoried, and protected in a careful, responsible manner. It should go without saying that in these incredibly important cases, rigorous forensic protocols should be followed. In actual practice today, however, this happens sporadically at best. Instead, administrative procedures for controlling crime scenes, inventorying evidence, interviewing suspects, overseeing the investigative process, and reporting findings are often developed on the spot in the aftermath of the tragedies, when the nation is in shock and the perpetrators may be covering their trail. It is common in these types of events for crime scenes to be left unprotected, for witnesses to be overlooked, and for evidence to be lost. For example, a major question in the assassination of Robert Kennedy was how many shots had been fired, for there appeared to be more bullets altogether in Kennedy, in wounded bystanders, and in doors and walls than the alleged assassin’s pistol could hold. In an incredible slipup, the police failed to check the weapons of security guards to make sure none had been fired. Then, in yet another failure of protocol, a bullet-ridden doorframe from the room where the shooting occurred was lost after having been taken into police custody (Pease, 2003). In the face of such baffling errors, conspiracy theories naturally gain currency.

Several other examples of slipshod forensic procedures can be cited. Public officials or their agents misplaced, discarded, or destroyed critical evidence in the following:

Second, in these kinds of shocking events, investigators seldom identify suspects objectively, without regard to official status and rank, nor do they interview elite suspects immediately or place them or their associates under any kinds of notice about destroying evidence or communicating with others about the origins of the crime. For obvious reasons, most administrators who are present as well as most investigators who are called-in will treat high-ranking officials with great deference. Nevertheless, in situations involving assassinations, defense failures, election breakdowns, and other crimes and tragedies from which some leaders typically benefit, a more appropriate stance would be to maintain professional distance and recognize that top leaders are potential suspects and in any event will be tempted to tamper with evidence that might connect them or their agency with the events in question.

For an object lesson about the need for distance and also for another example of poor crime scene control, consider the actions of Vice President Lyndon Johnson, Secret Service agents, and presidential aides immediately after the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas. Vice President Johnson should have been considered a primary suspect as he benefited more than anyone else from the assassination, but, instead, Johnson was allowed to take charge of key evidence and to control the investigation, first in Dallas, and then in Washington when he handpicked the blue ribbon commission to investigate the crime. After President Kennedy was pronounced dead at Parkland Hospital, Johnson literally absconded with Kennedy’s corpse—taking it by force from local officials and preventing Dallas medical examiners from conducting an autopsy as required by Texas law. Johnson was adamant the autopsy would be conducted by military medical staff back in Washington, and yet assassinating a president was not a federal crime (it did not become one until 1965), and federal authorities had no jurisdiction.

The Warren Commission Report describes these events in a brief, one-paragraph section with the heading “The Removal of the President’s Body.” The fact that these actions are included in the report is a credit to the staff who assembled the chronology of events. That these actions are set off in a section of their own, and highlighted with a heading in large font and bold type, suggests a silent administrative outcry to direct attention to these events. The report says,

A casket was obtained and the President’s body was prepared for removal. Before the body could be taken from the hospital, two Dallas officials informed members of the President’s staff that the body could not be removed from the city until an autopsy was performed. Despite the protests of these [Dallas] officials, the casket was wheeled out of the hospital, placed in an ambulance, and transported to the airport shortly after 2 p.m. At approximately 2:15 p.m. the casket was loaded, with some difficulty because of the narrow airplane door, onto the rear of the presidential plane where seats had been removed to make room. Concerned that local officials might try to prevent the plane’s departure, [presidential aid Kenneth] O’Donnell asked the pilot to take off immediately. He was informed that takeoff would be delayed until Vice President Johnson was sworn in. (p. 58)

Later in filmed documentaries (e.g., A&E Television, 1995), Parkland doctors and staff, and the ambulance driver who was present, described the struggle over Kennedy’s body as violent and marked by threats, yelling, and profanity. If only the Parkland administrators had stood their ground, countless questions about discrepancies between the observations reported by Parkland doctors and those in the autopsy conducted by military doctors would have been avoided.

In addition to describing these events, the paragraph quoted above from the Warren Commission Report reveals two important facts by implication. First, those involved in “removing the body” were fully aware that they were violating the law, for they feared local officials might prevent their departure. Second, the person who was in charge of these decisions was Vice President Johnson, for it was Johnson who decided to wait to be sworn in before taking off for Washington. The delay was considerable; with Mrs. Kennedy sitting in the bedroom of the plane, Air Force One waited on the runway for 45 minutes until the federal judge arrived whom Johnson wanted to administer the oath of office.

At some point in the afternoon, Johnson also decided to have the Presidential limousine removed from Dallas, washed, and repaired (Weldon, 2000). Blood on the limo’s trunk area was washed off by a Secret Service agent while the car was still at Parkland Hospital. At 8:00 p.m. on the evening of the assassination, the limo was flown by cargo plane to Washington, DC. Although it was kept under guard, this security was not there to protect the evidence, for the interior of the car was washed sometime that night. The bullet marks and blood spatter on the limo were essential for determining the direction and number of shots fired when President Kennedy was killed. Destroying this evidence raises many questions about Johnson’s motives and about the willingness of administrators to skip normal procedures. Even setting these questions aside, the actions appear to be obstruction of justice and destruction of evidence in a capital crime. When actions like these are left unexplained and no inquiry into them is conducted, conspiratorial suspicions naturally follow.

Top officials also destroyed evidence as soon as the initial arrests were made in the Watergate break-in. Immediately after Howard Hunt was taken into custody, John Dean, General Counsel for the Nixon Administration, cleaned out Hunt’s safe and found forged documents that were intended to support false allegations that President Kennedy approved the assassination of South Vietnam’s President Diem. Dean and another senior official in the Administration summoned Acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray to the White House, gave him a sealed envelope containing the forged documents and other unspecified materials, and told Gray it should “never see the light of day.” Gray destroyed the evidence that evening.

Similarly, but on a larger scale, when news of the Iran–Contra operation began appearing in Nicaraguan newspapers, CIA Director William Casey suggested to Oliver North, a military officer managing the Iran–Contra operation, that he should get rid of records related to the crime. North set up multiple shredders in his office and destroyed thousands of documents over a period of several days. Sometimes, the shredding was done in front of investigators who did not realize what was going on. For obvious reasons, when people learn about these and other cases in which law enforcement officials have committed felonies to protect agency reputations, they inevitably begin to distrust the statements of agency leaders.

Third, the president’s pardon powers are increasingly being abused to protect political criminals and keep them from implicating the president in their crimes. The pardon powers need to be clarified statutorily to bring pardons back into line with the Framer’s intentions, the president’s oath of office, and other considerations. When guilt or culpability for crimes is traced to high-ranking public officials, the guilty party is frequently pardoned, or his or her sentence is commuted. Often, this is because the crimes were committed at the president’s direction or with his implied consent, as they were in Iran–Contra and Plame-gate. The Framers envisioned the pardon power as potentially useful in ending rebellions and seditions, as it would allow the president to pardon activists in return for their laying down their arms. Instead, pardons have been used in recent decades to prevent justice from being rendered when the individuals subject to punishment might be in a position to implicate the president in their crimes, which usually involve, either directly or indirectly, intrigue to gain or retain popular support for military actions of dubious legitimacy. The Watergate crime spree grew from a White House initiative that broke away national security resources from agency control and Congressional oversight to support the president’s personal political objectives (which included trying to discredit Daniel Ellsberg, uncovering embarrassing information about Senator Edward Kennedy, and wiretapping phones at the headquarters of the National Democratic Party). The crimes were swept under the rug in 1974 when Nixon resigned from office and was pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford. A similar presidential hijacking of foreign policy, the crimes of Iran–Contra, began in the mid-1980s, and George H. W. Bush pardoned everyone involved after he lost the 1992 presidential election but before he had left office. The Iran–Contra scandal involved U.S. support for a war in Nicaragua that Congress had expressly ruled out. Off-the-books funding for the war was derived from profits from armament sales to Iran, supposedly an enemy of the United States, and from facilitating the importation of cocaine into U.S. cities, where the drug produced a terrible epidemic that still continues (Webb, 1988). About a decade later, a different president and another groups of leaders misrepresented intelligence to fabricate a pretext for the invasion of Iraq, and when a former ambassador challenged their claims, they leaked to reporters that his wife was employed by the CIA. When the main leaker, Lewis “Scooter” Libby, was fined and sentenced to prison, President George W. Bush, rather than issuing a pardon, commuted his prison sentence (but not his fine). By commuting the sentence rather than issuing a pardon, President Bush prevented Congress from forcing Libby to testify against the President and Vice President about any role they may have played in the crime.

In another infamous example, President Ford’s pardon for Richard Nixon was widely viewed as a payoff that Ford had promised in a deal to persuade Nixon to resign so that Ford could ascend to the presidency with 2 years still left in the term of office. This would give Ford a chance of winning election in 1976. There was strong circumstantial evidence that a deal had been struck. A few days before Nixon resigned, Vice President Ford met with Nixon’s new chief of staff, Alexander Haig, who broached the issue of a possible pardon for Nixon if the president stepped down. A few hours after the meeting, Ford called Haig on the phone and said that he should interpret nothing in their conversation to suggest Ford was offering a pardon in return for Nixon’s resignation. Ford must have felt uncomfortable about something he had said, or maybe, it was something he should have said but did not. In any event, Nixon did resign, and 6 days later, Ford did issue a pardon. Worse, it was a blanket pardon. It was not for any specified crimes, for Nixon had not been impeached, much less convicted in the Senate, removed from office, and subjected to trial in criminal court. Instead, Ford pardoned Nixon for any and all crimes he might have committed since becoming president in January 1969. Again, it is only natural for the citizenry to be suspicious and cynical when presidents repeatedly issue pardons from which they themselves benefit and which make a mockery of the rule of law.

Fourth, another barrier to dealing effectively with events that seem suspicious to the citizenry is the reluctance of public officials to allow independent investigations into questions about their own actions or those of their close associates. The Warren Commission is an exception, but its membership, charge, staffing, and deadlines were controlled entirely by President Johnson who appears to have been trying to head off public suspicion. Johnson signed an Executive Order establishing the Warren Commission exactly 7 days after the assassination of President Kennedy. In contrast, for over a year after 9/11, the Bush–Cheney Administration resisted demands for a 9/11 Commission before finally acceding to pressures from the victims’ families, at which point the Administration gave the commission a very small budget and placed it under unrealistic deadlines (Shenon, 2008). Richard Nixon is also relevant here as an example of resistance to inquiries. The crimes for which Nixon was forced from office were not the Watergate break-in and wiretapping but his efforts to obstruct the FBI’s investigation later. Nixon also tried to preempt Congressional inquiries by issuing a superficial study from the White House (Kutler, 1990), as did Ronald Reagan when the Iran–Contra scandal first surfaced in the media.

Even when purportedly independent investigations are undertaken, they are almost invariably compromised by conflicts of interest. Investigating officers and commissions of inquiry usually include, or are appointed by the very officials who are likely to be considered primary suspects by a skeptical public. The Warren Commission was appointed by Lyndon Johnson, who, as previously suggested, was one of the primary beneficiaries of President Kennedy’s assassination. Also, a key member of the Warren Commission was Allen Dulles, the former head of the CIA whom Kennedy had fired after the Bay of Pigs. The 9/11 Commission was similarly compromised (Griffin, 2005; Shenon, 2008). All of its members were government insiders, and none was a vocal critic of the Bush Administration. Moreover, the Commission’s Executive Director, Philip Zelikow, had previously served on George W. Bush’s presidential transition team, had been appointed by Bush to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, and had drafted America’s national security strategy following the events of 9/11 (Shenon, 2008, pp. 43-44). Both the Commission’s Chair and its Executive Director had to exclude themselves from parts of the inquiry because of conflicts of interest (Shenon, 2008, p. 171).

National Systematic Investigations (NSIs)

These examples suggest that, for a variety of reasons, America’s national political class is generally unable, or at least unlikely, to respond credibly to the kinds of major political crimes, tragedies, and shocking events that have visited American democracy since the end of World War II. U.S. political leaders and public officials appear to be somewhat insensitive to suspicions that arise when they coincidentally benefit from these events, or when the events play into elite agendas. The vast majority of America’s public officials are no doubt honest and trustworthy, but their defensive and sometimes self-serving responses to assassinations, defense failures, false-flag anthrax attacks, election breakdowns, and other history-altering events pose a serious threat to American democracy. Doubts about the integrity of America’s political institutions and leaders fuel frustration and cynicism and are corrosive to the tolerance and civility essential to democratic dialogue and deliberation.

As it stands, leaders and citizens appear to be locked into a destructive downward spiral of growing anger and mutual distrust. The sudden appearance and rapid popularization of the conspiracy-theory label reflect this intensifying tension between America’s political class and its citizenry. Attacking this tension by trying to suppress conspiracy theories simply exacerbates citizen disaffection while also undermining the traditional, healthy distrust Americans harbor toward unchecked political power. Exhorting public officials to be more sensitive and responsive when tragedies and crimes occur is unlikely to have any effect other than further alienating the political class from its accountability to the electorate in a political system laboring under many other, more powerful pressures.

Some scholars have been calling for the pejorative term “conspiracy theory” to be pushed aside by the term “State Crimes Against Democracy” (SCAD). The idea is that the conspiracy-theory label has become an epithet and put-down that discourages awareness of elite political intrigue. Conversely, the SCAD concept is recommended as essentially the name for the type of crime about which the conspiracy-theory label discourages discussion. SCADs are concerted actions or inactions by political insiders to manipulate democratic processes (deHaven-Smith, 2006). In the terms used by the Founders, SCAD networks correspond roughly to factions that have captured part of a given government and are using the captive assets to advance personal or ideological interests by twisting the decision-making process of the government as a whole. The conceptual complexity the SCAD construct is intended to manage is that Watergate, Iran–Contra, and other recognized faction-based political crimes involve state officials at the highest levels (in these cases, presidents) and draw on state resources and yet are not exactly state crimes in the way understood when people speak of, for example, “state terrorism,” because they do not represent the will of the state as a unity. The notion of a “state crime” that violates the government’s own democratic principles corresponds roughly to a “partial” or faction-based crime that splits off a part of the state and turns the state against itself.

SCAD networks have also been compared with the Nazi organization described in the first charge in the indictment of Nazi war criminals in the Nuremberg war crime trials (deHaven-Smith, 2010b). The defendants were charged with, among other crimes, conspiring to wage aggressive war. However, the alleged conspiracy involved much more than secret plans for unprovoked military aggression. According to the indictment presented to the IMT, the defendants intended, first, to transform democratic Germany into a police state by contriving and exploiting threats to the nation’s stability and security (Conot, 1983, Harris, 1954, Marrus, 1997, Persico, 1994, Tusa & Tusa, 1983). Again, the criminal act involves splitting the state and using one part against another to change the whole system.

Another reason the SCAD construct has found some favor in the literature is that it has proven to be useful as a criminological concept for detecting and studying antidemocratic conspiracies such as Watergate, Iran–Contra, Plame-gate, and other recognized scandals (deHaven-Smith, 2010a). The SCAD construct delineates a general category of elite political crime that can be used for comparative studies identifying similarities in timing, tactics, victims, and policy consequences of elite political intrigues. These factors point to SCAD perpetrators.

Nevertheless, the SCAD construct appears ill suited for trying to unify political leaders and their constituents around a common understanding of what constitutes a faction-based threat to popular control of government. On its face, the concept could be interpreted as suggesting that U.S. political leaders participate in antidemocratic conspiracies and that the only question is which leaders are the criminals.

A better approach may be to avoid trying to find an acceptable name and definition for illegitimate or criminal forms of political intrigue, and instead develop criteria and procedures for identifying specific events that are so shocking, important, or sensitive that the public interest requires their investigation to be shifted from governments of regular jurisdiction to a separate agency established specifically for taking independent control of crime scenes, and ensuring that the events in question are thoroughly and credibly investigated, that findings are made public to the extent allowable by national security laws, and that recommendations for further action go directly to prosecutorial authorities (compare deHaven-Smith & Witt, 2009). The agency responsible for national systematic investigations (NSIs) would need a governance framework addressing at least four considerations: Triggers, that is, criteria and procedures for designating events requiring NSIs (NSI Events); Administrative Overrides, that is, policies governing the jurisdiction of the NSI agency and procedures for resolving any jurisdictional issues that may arise between, for example, the NSI agency and the CIA, FBI, Secret Service, White House staff, and so on; Investigative Scope and Methods, that is, investigative techniques, security protections, and study components required or authorized for NSIs; and Reporting Requirements, that is, the range of reports to be compiled and the types of or limits on the range of recommendations to be made and to which agencies. The key is to require a comprehensive, thorough, objective, and timely investigation; typically, in U.S. assassinations, defense failures, anthrax attacks, and so on, this is what has been missing.