The Life, Death and Legacy of Deep Throat

Possibly the most famous informant since Judas, the man known until just three years ago only as "Deep Throat", has died, aged 95. There are a few reasons for mentioning this here.

Firstly, he is an interesting figure for sceptics - he contributed one of the greatest amounts of fuel to the fire of the conspiracy theory culture that any one person has managed. It finally proved, in the eyes of many, that the government cannot be trusted; that there really are conspiracies and cover-ups at the highest levels of government.

Despite this being a perfectly valid point, however, what is rarely if ever taken into account by conspiracy nuts theorists is that not only do conspiracies and cover-ups happen, but so does whistleblowing. Compared to some conspiracy theories, the Watergate scandal was relatively small in terms of how many people knew the truth; and yet someone spoke up. This is a perfect demonstration of one of the mainstays of arguing against conspiracies - the whistleblower argument. So not only did Deep Throat provide conspiracy theorists with the perfect proof, he also provided the perfect counter-argument.

The second thing I find interesting about Mark Felt is his expressed misgivings about what he did; apparently he felt guilty about "betraying his FBI badge". Some critics agree with this assessment and brand him a traitor for turning on the Commander in Chief - a strange assessment considering the FBI is not a military organisation but a civilian one. Either way, I disagree with his critics and argue rather that he upheld his oath as a federal employee; the oath he took bound him to uphold the constitution, not to defend the president.

Of course, it's not as simple as that. As associate director of the FBI, he was also supposed to protect the information relating to the investigation, and send it through the correct channels. This is the obligation he violated, and surely the source of his moral discomfort. What he did, though, fulfilled the spirit of his role rather than the by-the-letter procedure thereof.

Here comes the quick ethical philosophy section, because me being me I find it hard to resist. Mark Felt suffered a moral dilemma, which is what happens when one or more roles in which you sees yourself oblige you to take two conflicting courses of action. In this case, he was obliged to follow procedure, and also to see that justice was done. Normally these two obligations would not conflict - and indeed the theory is that they are more or less synonymous. However, with regards to the Watergate scandal, the procedure was blocked, hindered, and/or corrupt - giving rise to the dilemma.

I say he did the right thing. He chose principle over procedure, and in exposing the Nixon administration's misdeeds, he carried out the most important role of his position. It was, after all, an important founding tenet of the constitution that nobody would be above the law; his obligation to defend and enact this principle overrode his obligation to follow Bureau procedure. What's more interesting than the whole Watergate débacle is his later conviction (and pardon) for approving illegal raids. That has echoes in recent legislation, and involves arguments about the right to privacy and the measures necessary to combat terrorism.

That will have to wait for another day and another blog entry. For now, it is enough to remember the man known for over thirty years only as Deep Throat, and what he did. I only hope that his Alzheimer's provided him some degree of moral peace in his final years, and he died free of torment.

On motivations

Last night, I attended a Skeptics In The Pub meet-up in London chaired by the great Dr. Phil Plait, who gave a presentation on the "Moon Hoax Hoax" which systematically debunked some of the major claims of the conspiracy theorists. In the question and answer session that followed, the matter of motivation was raised - why do the conspiracy theorists adhere to these clearly irrational beliefs in the face of overwhelming evidence? While the discussion touched on interesting ideas, I felt it missed something quite fundamental in our modern Western society.

Ever since the Vietnam "War" (for those who don't know, the quotes are there because war was never declared), there has been a rise in popular anti-establishment sentiment. The wide media coverage of the violence brought home to America and the rest of the world just how horrific these conflicts could be, and that they were being carried out by our elected representatives. Watergate deepened this trend, and from that point on, conspiracies suddenly emerged everywhere you looked.

It is hardly surprising that the single greatest human achievement of the twentieth century became a target for this obsession. While it is certainly not universally the case for every "believer" (some, I strongly suspect, are in it for the lucrative book deals etc.), I think it applies at least partially to the majority. These are the guys who stand to gain nothing from these beliefs, except the satisfaction and sense of superiority that comes with knowing a "suppressed truth". It's a good feeling, and one of which these (often socially isolated) people are understandably loath to let go.

This isn't intended to be an exhaustive answer to the initial question. I don't want to paint all believers with the same motivational brush - far from it. This is just something I think plays a significant role in these matters, and the origins of which I happen to find interesting.

Add pinch of salt before swallowing whole...

OK so this has been a long while coming, and was in fact the event that sparked the creation of this blog. Basically the story here is that I happened across a post on a personal blog I occasionally read, which urged anyone planning to vote (particularly for Obama) in the next US election to watch this video. I clicked through, and found something that struck me as most likely part conspiracy theory, part political propaganda. But, being a good sceptic, I wouldn't want to condemn it as such without actually looking into it - it concerned a subject I'd not heard much about before. But the alarm bells were ringing right from the start, before I even watched the video, because of the blurb at the side. It asks "What Presidential Candidates are part of the CFR?" and lists Fred Thompson, Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Jim Gilmore, Newt Gingrich, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and Bill Richardson. Then it asks "Who opposes the CFR?", under which there is but one name: Ron Paul.

Suspicions are confirmed when you click through to the authors other uploaded videos - every one of them is regarding Ron Paul, and (on brief inspection of the titles, at least) appear to all be in support of him. Now is it just me, or does that suggest that this video might be a bit of campaign material designed to frighten people off of voting for anyone except Ron Paul?

Start the clip rolling, and this hypothesis is supported by its use of Rage Against The Machine's track Wake Up - the perfect music for creating a mood of anti-establishment fear and, well, rage. I can imagine some of the quotes used in the introduction having the opposite effect with the use of a more soothing, optimistic-sounding backing track.

So now that we've established (to my own satisfaction at least) that the video is most likely an attempt to scare people into voting for anyone other than Ron Paul, we must consider the case that the video puts forward - it may be propaganda, but that doesn't mean it's entirely false. In fact, if it were entirely false it would fail as propaganda - its effectiveness lies in it being a subtle misrepresentation of the facts.

So what is the CFR? The Council on Foreign Relations is "an independent and nonpartisan foreign policy membership organization", apparently. But what does that mean? Well, it accepts both Democrats and Republicans as members and seeks to inform policymakers of the important facts in any given foreign policy situation. It is undoubtedly an important player in policy formation due to the large number of its members who have key roles in government, but its official position is that it does not take an active role.

It's naturally been the subject of many controversies (read - conspiracy theories), probably due to its secret and elite nature. Anywhere you get top dogs from both major parties, especially behind closed doors, there are going to be a lot of people who think the worst; this is probably due to the common perception, encouraged by the politicians themselves to a substantial degree, that the parties are in 100% opposition to each other - diametrically opposed in every way. Of course this is a gross oversimplification, and often you'll find members of one party who have more things in common with some from the other than with many from their own party. It's the inevitable product of having two huge umbrella parties supposedly representing the vast majority of a country of around 300 million people.

The message that this video is pushing is that the CFR is trying to undermine the sovereignty of the United States by creating a North American body like that of the European Union, encompassing the US, Canada and Mexico. The article they link to (right here) mentions nothing of such plans, but is clearly intended to be read in light of the video. What it actually argues is that, given the increasing power of non-national entities (corporations, terrorists, crime syndicates) in the increasingly globalised world, some of the older ideas about sovereignty are becoming outdated and in fact stand in the way of tackling global problems. It makes sense to me, but then I've studied this in a fair degree of detail. The quotes from Richard Haass in the video are perfectly reasonable, and are not arguing for the creation of a one-world government. He may believe that such a thing is necessary, but that is not what he is arguing there. (But wait, the music - he must be up to something!)

I'm sorry, but the speech by Stan Jones at around the 4-minute mark started well (he admitted it sounded like a conspiracy theory, something which conspiracy theorists don't often do in my admittedly limited experience), but as soon as he uttered the word "communist", it was over for me. He lost all credibility. Not only is it a lie (even those in the CFR who do wish to create a supreme world government have never to my knowledge said that it would be a communist one, and the very idea is preposterous given the clear impracticality of such a system [anyone remember the Soviet Union?]), but it's also one of those buzzwords you will often hear in predominantly right-wing US political speeches, designed to tap into the fear and hate that they so painstakingly created after the second world war.

The second point from that speech is the comparison with the European Union - particularly the constitution. Probably banking on the fact that his audience know little or nothing about the EU (why would they? It's a whole other continent), he claims that they implemented the constitution after it was "rejected by a few". Not true. It was rejected, and yes they have attempted to implement it via a treaty that does basically the same things as the constitution would have done, but with important opt-out clauses for member states. After this point, Jones' speech becomes even less believable - a single North-American currency, "the Amero", and a new constitution "modelled on the Soviet Union's Constitution". Even if the other charges are true, this last one is simply impossible - no constitutional adviser is going to draft a new constitution based on the Soviet model. It would be career suicide, because nobody would take them seriously ever again. I'd love to see where they're getting this stuff, as it's now supposedly "out in the open".

Basically, the CFR seems to be a forum for discussion of the big issues in foreign affairs. The reason it operates partly in secret is because if the big names are to be involved in hypotheticals, they need to be able to do it without press attention. What I think this conspiracy theory has done is say that because there are people in a room talking about something (some will be advocating, some putting the case against), and not letting anyone else know what exactly is being discussed, everyone in that room (4,300 life members at the moment apparently) are all in league together, bent on implementing this plan.

While there are certainly those in the CFR who would like to see a world government realised, it is a fallacious generalisation to infer that every member is an advocate of the same policy.

And never trust a video that ends with 30 seconds of a politician grinning.

0 points to Brand.

I never wanted to like Russell Brand; the first time I saw him was in an advert for his show Big Brother's Big Mouth, the sort of televisual offering that makes me switch off the Box of Blight in disgust even at an advert for it. Then I saw him with Noel Fielding on The Big Fat Quiz Of The Year at the end of 2006, and grudgingly admitted that he was both amusing and frighteningly quick-minded. So when searching for interesting new podcasts to sample, his show from BBC Radio 2 was one of those I selected.

It started much as I expected: Brand talking in his accustomed manner, with one of the first conversational tangents being in regard to Monkey World in Dorset. Later, he attempted to break the world record for speed-talking (which, despite a valiant and amusing effort, he failed to achieve). Then a certain David Icke made an appearance.

For those who don't know (and I certainly didn't), Icke is one of Britain's more colourful characters: a conspiracy theorist who has declared himself to be the "son of God"[via], and has been seeking the true rulers of the world - lizards, apparently. Oh, and he finds the basic principles of Raelism perfectly acceptable. Apparently the idea that life on Earth had extra-terrestrial help will one day become scientific fact, in the same way that the world was once thought to be flat, and now it goes without saying that it's (more or less) spherical. Yeah, ok. You know what changed our minds about the flat-world thing? Evidence.

My point here is that Russell Brand, through all of this nonsense, basically nodded (verbally, it's radio after all), and said something along the lines of "I don't think we'd dispute anything you've said". Granted it's primarily a variety/entertainment show, and isn't out to promote rationality. I just wish visible people like Brand would use their position to urge the public against this kind of credulity, not make it seem to be the norm.