Conspiracy Theory

Amway president and creationist Dick DeVos told a story about his high school football coach giving him an inspiring talk as he started him as quarterback. The football coach says it never happened, DeVos was never a starting quarterback on the varsity squad, and that he wasn’t a star on the field. Disclosure: It’s my opinion that Amway is a sleazy company run by dishonest and paranoid people. I was served with a subpoena in a lawsuit Amway filed against Proctor & Gamble which was trying to claim that P&G was involved in a conspiracy against Amway’s business by paying people to post Amway-critical information on the Internet. That subpoena was part of a fishing expedition and intimidation campaign; Amway tried to get access to the complete contents of my computer hard drives. The case was eventually thrown out of court. I spent a few thousand dollars to protect my rights; Amway spent a whole lot more. UPDATE (November 8, 2006): Incumbent Governor Jennifer Granholm defeated DeVos in yesterday’s election. ...

Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone has an excellent article on 9/11 conspiracy theorists, pointing out the absurdity of their claims in the form of a dialogue among the plotters: BUSH: So, what’s the plan again? CHENEY: Well, we need to invade Iraq and Afghanistan. So what we’ve decided to do is crash a whole bunch of remote-controlled planes into Wall Street and the Pentagon, say they’re real hijacked commercial planes, and blame it on the towelheads; then we’ll just blow up the buildings ourselves to make sure they actually fall down. ...

Rep. Tom Reynolds’ chief of staff (and Mark Foley’s former chief of staff) Kirk Fordham has resigned (or been fired). There are at least two stories–one says Fordham successfully kept the information about Foley from being provided to the full House Page Board (which has a Democratic Party member on it and has now resigned; another says that Fordham raised the issue repeatedly with Dennis Hastert to no avail and has now been fired and made into a scapegoat to protect Hastert. TPM Muckraker has more. Arizona Representative Trent Franks says he thinks it was the Democratic leadership that knew about the issue but has kept it quiet, and he supports Hastert. UPDATE: Fordham now says he told Hastert’s office about Foley’s problem in 2004, and is now ready to tell the FBI all about it. UPDATE: Make that 2003. Hastert chief of staff Scott Palmer denies Fordham’s statement. David Corn suggests that the Republicans will now place the blame for concealment of Foley’s issues on a conspiracy of gay Republican staff, including Fordham (who is openly gay). UPDATE (October 7, 2006): The Washington Post reports that another staffer has come forward to support Fordham’s account over Palmer’s–that Hastert’s office was informed of the Foley issue in 2003. UPDATE (October 8, 2006): In 2002 or 2003, House clerk Jeff Trandahl informed then-Foley chief of staff Fordham that Foley had showed up drunk at the page’s dorm and was refused admittance. This prompted Fordham to meet with Scott Palmer to discuss Foley’s issues, though Fordham did not mention that particular event.

Pharyngula summarizes and augments a list of characteristics from the Give Up Blog common to those who deny the existence of various things, whether that be the Holocaust, global warming, HIV causing AIDS, the actions of Islamic terrorists on September 11, 2001, or other well-established phenomena. Key features: 1. Conspiracy 2. Selectivity 3. The fake expert 4. Impossible expectations 5. The metaphor 6. The quote mine 7. Appeal to consequences I recommend reading both the Give Up Blog’s original list and descriptions and Pharyngula’s extended list. ...

Orac at Respectful Insolence recently commented on how he first got involved in responding to Holocaust deniers. In reading his commentary, I was reminded of my own limited involvement on GEnie and Usenet’s alt.revisionism in responding to the Holocaust deniers, at a time when Bradley Smith’s organization, Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH) was placing full-page ads in student newspapers at universities across the United States. I did a Google Groups search and found this posting that I made on alt.revisionism in response to some people who were attacking Holocaust deniers using namecalling and without offering facts or evidence to refute their claims. As it turns out, Orac was also a contributor to this thread, as were the Scientology-supported “random poetry” bots, which forged the names of major contributors to various newsgroups in an attempt to drown them out and make the groups unreadable. (Read Scientology defector Tory Bezazian’s account of the spamming of Usenet.) This posting led to a short debate with science writer Andrew Skolnick, who strongly disagreed with me–his opinion was that Holocaust deniers should get nothing but ridicule, and no one should bother trying to respond to them. I think this is the wrong approach to Holocaust denial, the wrong approach to creationism, the wrong approach to 9/11 conspiracy theories, and the wrong approach to Scientology, for reasons I give below. I do agree that it can be a bad idea to give advocates of crackpottery wider exposure or a respectable forum, but there are plenty of fora on the Internet and elsewhere where these bad ideas should be responded to with good and accurate information. From: James J. Lippard Date: Fri, Sep 24 1999 12:00 am Email: lipp…@discord.org (James J. Lippard) Groups: sci.skeptic, alt.revisionism ...

In the Arizona Republic: “As GOP stalwarts try to distance themselves from former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, Arizona’s Rep. Trent Franks has remained by his side. “The embattled DeLay spoke at a Franks fund-raiser on Capitol Hill in December. Franks gave $4,200 to DeLay’s re-election committee in March, nearly six months after the then-Texas congressman was indicted by a grand jury on money-laundering and conspiracy charges. . . . ...

I’ve just come across the 9/11 Myths site, which debunks a lot of the bogus claims made on the Internet by conspiracy theorists. It’s well worth checking out along with the Popular Mechanics website and “Loose Change” debunking website referenced in this posting on the conspiracy-mongering Scholars for 9/11 Truth. Also check out the Nyctohylophobia blog debunking 9/11 conspiracy claims, run by a bright Catholic high school student. UPDATE September 1, 2006: The Debunking 9/11 Conspiracy Theories site is also a good resource.

The group “Scholars for 9/11 Truth” has just gotten considerable press via CNN’s website, which attempts to portray them as serious scholars with genuine academic credentials. But the list of their members shows a few that are well beyond the pale, such as: Paul Andrew Mitchell (AM) Federal witness; Criminal investigator; Private attorney generalThis associate member is known for filing absurd lawsuits over copyright infringement for his work “The Federal Zone: Cracking the Code of Internal Revenue,” which appears to be a crackpot tax evasion guide. He once named Primenet (my employer at the time) as defendant in one of these lawsuits, because we rebuffed his demand that we remove a link to a nonexistent document on the website of one of our users. Primenet was never properly served, and one of the other defendants got the entire case thrown out. Another website on Mitchell that includes the text of some of his lawsuit documents is www.paulandrewmitchell.com. You can see a page of one of his complaints that includes Primenet as a defendant here (line 50). This one is dated August 1, 2001–Primenet had ceased to exist as an independent entity in 1997. Among the full members are Jim Marrs (FM) Author, Researcher, 9/11, JFK, moreMarrs is a well-known JFK conspiracy theorist whose book Crossfire was used as part of the basis for Oliver Stone’s movie, JFK. One of his arguments for JFK conspiracy is a list of mysterious deaths, examined further here. James H. Fetzer (FM) Distinguished McKnight University Professor of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota, Duluth, a former Marine Corps officer, author or editor of more than 20 books, and co-chair of S9/11TFetzer is another JFK assassination conspiracy theorist, who claims that the Zapruder film was fabricated by the conspiracy. (Some critiques are here and here.) Fetzer has complained about Wikipedia reverting his changes to pages about September 11. Fetzer also thinks the Apollo moon landings may be fake. Robert M. Bowman (FM) Former Director of the U.S. “Star Wars” Space Defense Program in both Republican and Democratic administrations, and a former Air Force Lieutenant Colonel with 101 combat missionsBowman is also, according to Wikipedia, the “founder and Presiding Archbishop of the United Catholic Church, an “independent Catholic fellowship” created in 1996 and held to be connected through apostolic succession to the Old Catholic Church.” He attempted to gain the Reform Party nomination for president in 2000, but it went to Pat Buchanan [not John Hagelin, this has been corrected]. (I wonder if he is the father of Robert M. Bowman, Jr., of the Watchman Fellowship, an evangelical Christian apologist who is critical of cults?) On Bowman’s political campaign website, he gives this resume: Dr. Robert M. Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF, ret. is President of the Institute for Space and Security Studies, Executive Vice President of Millennium III Corporation, and retired Presiding Archbishop of the United Catholic Church. He flew 101 combat missions in Vietnam and directed all the “Star Wars” programs under Presidents Ford and Carter. He is the recipient of the Eisenhower Medal, the George F. Kennan Peace Prize, the President’s Medal of Veterans for Peace, the Society of Military Engineers’ ROTC Award of Merit (twice), six Air Medals, and dozens of other awards and honors. His Ph.D. is in Aeronautics and Nuclear Engineering from Caltech. He chaired 8 major international conferences, and is one of the country’s foremost experts on National Security. Dr. Bob was an independent candidate for President of the US in 2000, beating Pat Buchanan in Iowa, Illinois, and California. He has resided on the Space Coast for 16 years.“lechrus2” has commented on his findings about some of the claims on Bowman’s resume, and others have pointed out similar problems in comments at DailyKos. Apparently Bowman claimed to have twice won the Society of Military Engineers Gold Medal, but the list of all such winners since 1926 does not list his name; the list now says “ROTC Award of Merit” instead of “Gold Medal.” He claims to be a recipient of the Eisenhower Medal, but the list of recipients of the American Assembly’s Eisenhower Medal does not include him. There is a Milton Eisenhower Medal for Distinguished Service to Johns Hopkins University, but I haven’t found a list of recipients. He claims that he (secretly?) headed the “Star Wars” program during the Ford and Carter administrations, even though the program was initiated under Reagan in 1983. No one has yet been able to verify the existence of a “George F. Kennan Peace Prize.” The Millennium III Corporation has a website with a front page and a bunch of bad links. The domain is registered to a John Gantt, 1623 33rd St., Washington, D.C. 20007, with a hotmail.com contact address and a phone number which is listed to David H. Barron at that same address. The address is missing a “NW,” but is in Georgetown. (A David H. Barron was chairman of the Young Republicans from 1981-1983, but this David H. Barron appears to be involved with the World Wildlife Fund and/or the International Conservation Partnership.) If John Gantt is John B. Gantt, there are D.C. listings for him at two different addresses, one of which is an office building at 1919 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, and the other of which is an office building at 1401 H. St. NW. Anyone want to investigate Bowman’s claimed military rank and Vietnam missions, his Caltech degree, or Millennium III? The other co-chair of the group is Brigham Young University physicist, Steven Jones, who has argued that the World Trade Center building collapses must have involved controlled demolition. Former Scientific American columnist A.K. Dewdney is also a member; he has argued that it was impossible for cell phones to have been used from the hijacked planes, and therefore they must have been faked. UPDATE August 8, 2006: Maddox addresses some 9/11 conspiracy theories. Here’s a detailed critique of “Loose Change." Here’s the Popular Mechanics article on 9/11 conspiracy theories. UPDATE August 9, 2006: Correction to the above–Pat Buchanan was the Reform Party candidate, not former Natural Law Party candidate, physicist, and TM practitioner John Hagelin (though he also tried for the nomination). UPDATE August 16, 2006: By way of comparison to Scholars for 9/11 Truth, here’s a list of the individuals who consulted on the Popular Mechanics article referenced just above. UPDATE August 19, 2006: Also check out the 9/11 Myths website. ...

Vanity Fair’s website has published “United 93” producer Michael Bronner’s article, “9/11 Live: The NORAD Tapes," including audio excerpts. Bronner was given three CDs containing the Northeast Air Defense Sector audio files for September 11, which he summarizes in his very interesting article. It turns out that there was some inaccurate and misleading testimony to the 9/11 Commission: In the chronology presented to the 9/11 commission, Colonel Scott put the time NORAD was first notified about United 93 at 9:16 a.m., from which time, he said, commanders tracked the flight closely. (It crashed at 10:03 a.m.) If it had indeed been necessary to “take lives in the air” with United 93, or any incoming flight to Washington, the two armed fighters from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia would have been the ones called upon to carry out the shootdown. In Colonel Scott’s account, those jets were given the order to launch at 9:24, within seconds of NEADS’s receiving the F.A.A.’s report of the possible hijacking of American 77, the plane that would ultimately hit the Pentagon. This time line suggests the system was starting to work: the F.A.A. reports a hijacking, and the military reacts instantaneously. Launching after the report of American 77 would, in theory, have put the fighters in the air and in position over Washington in plenty of time to react to United 93. ...

A new study published in the Journal of Research Into Personality by a UC Berkeley professor, Jack Block, who followed 95 children for 20 years. Those who were whiny, paranoid, and complaining as children turned out to be conservatives. Those who were confident and self-reliant turned out to be liberals. This is supporting evidence for similar work by John T. Jost at Stanford, but Block’s work is labeled as “biased, shoddy work” by Jeff Greenberg of the University of Arizona. (Link is to coverage in the Toronto Star.) UPDATE: There are some good criticisms of the Block study by Jim Lindgren at the Volokh Conspiracy (here and here). ...