The straight dope as the opium of the masses

 I posted  before on my little conspiracy theory with respect to the anthrax letters as a Bushevikii plot that was sidetracked and marginalized by the 9-11 attacks. Recent events have forced me, unfortunately, to see the whole florid thing as reinforced and more seductive than ever.

The reported suicide of Bruce E. Ivins, an anthrax researcher at AMRIID, the US Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, MD, happens six months before (as seems likely) a new Democratic administration,complete with new Attorney General, takes office--and nearly seven years since the incident. He dies right before the indictment is supposed to come through, taking many of the answers with him--assuming, of course, that he was acting alone.

Glenn Greenwald has been excellent on the fact that the media, particularly ABC News, was presenting the public with complete falsehoods on the letters, most notably the presence of bentonite in the anthrax that pointed a finger at Iraq--a point picked up by the Republicans with enthusiasm. There was never any bentonite in any tests--and the anthrax came from Fort Detrick. It's fine work by Glenn, as usual--and all without getting into whodunnit and any fun stuff.

Let me just point out some of the obvious points first: this guy was an obvious suspect. He's one of the  few people in the country who has access to weapons-grade anthrax, and an expert on the subject. And yet the investigation went nowhere for years--apparently grinding to a complete halt until FBI Director Mueller assigned a new team--in 2006--to get things going. This is kind of like a mysterious murder that has everybody stumped, until they call in the eccentric Belgian Detective who investigates  everything and announces that it was the jealous husband that killed the wife. 

This was not some obscure guy with tenuous connections to a biotech firm--this is one of the few people with the keys to the gun cabinet. And so we have Investigation One going nowhere for five years, and Investigation Two finding out that the butler did it just in time to have it become a closed case before the election. 

Yes indeedy, he could be a lone gunman, sending out anthrax in order to awaken the US to the dangers of anthrax in order to boost the sales of his patented anthrax vaccine. It can turn out that he's a dangerous sociopathic revenge killer. Perfectly reasonable scenario--except for the question where was the FBI with regard to it. The FBI wandering around bumping into walls and lampposts for all those years when your average Sue Grafton fan would have at least thought of it within the first weeks of the investigation is stupidity that you usually have to pay for, and pay generously.

Fine tuning the fillings in my teeth, though, it works all too well: if the Evil Cabal wanted to set up an anthrax scare, where else would they go but to a devout right-wing Catholic scientist, perhaps sell him with the 'make people aware of bioterror' story, have him send letters to Daschle and Leahy and the media. And he gets protected. Protected, that is, until the Permanent Republican Majority misses its first ship date, and its second. Bruce goes into panic mode, and sure enough, gets his cover blown by a social worker (what cover?) and commits suicide as the feds close in--or he goes into panic mode as he feels protection being withdrawn from him, the protection so vehemently and carefully assured by his ideological brothers--or he is visited in the dead of night by some solemn men who, having set up the cover story, help him into the next world by eliminating the need for the sin of suicide.

The case is closed, FBI agents go and lie on Capitol Hill for the honor of the bureau, and Oswald acted alone, and you're a nut case to believe differently. You probably believe that it was John Dillinger on the grassy knoll! Get outta here!

I have long felt that many conspiracy theories satisfy on the basis of the idea that the world is being run. While a dark vision, it's not as dark as a jumble of random disaster, muddled incompetence and ruinous venality. But there's another aspect to conspiracy theory which, if present, also makes them problematic.

The question is, does this spur you to action or to inaction? Too many conspiracy theories end up with the perception of a monstrous enormous powerful conspiracy against which one can do nothing. Taken at the full it raises the question of why you can even publish your tree-charts and appendices on your site--but you needn't go that far.

At the other end, you've got investigative reporters uncovering conspiracies that lead to grand jury indictments and jail terms--and others that change the minds of everybody except those who still believe that Dreyfus was guilty. Somewhere further down are the people who want to send the Bush Crime family to the Hague, but are not sanguine at the prospects . 

9-11-inside job theorists, while not essentially part of the placid end of the spectrum, have this unfortunate tendency to be satisfied with polishing the argument. Whether or not it's possible or feasible, it bothers me a bit that there's no CREW-like organization talking to the staff of the WTC, interviewing bridge & tunnel employees about truck traffic in the day or so before 911, and so on. 

There have to have been hundreds upon hundreds of drivers, explosives men, lookouts, electricians and so on to perpetrate this mass murder of Americans. Are there no operatives with a sense of remorse? Is there no one with nightmares? In view of the fact that the follow-ups to 911 have been less than triumphant, isn't there one person to say something? With the demise of the current Republican party, isn't there someone dropping even a hint somewhere? 

It's not a good argument as to truth or falsity, or meant as an indictment of the people who hold to those theories. It's sort of Reverse Polish Pragmatism: does it move people to action? Or does it lend itself too easily to saying 'The democrats are in on it too, and so there's no point'? Is a theory which gets the bastards put in jail truer than one which sits well with paralysis? No. Is it better?

My theory feels like a conspiracy theory to me because it feels like satisfying artistic symmetry, and allows me to gaze at it with dark pleasure. OTOH, it doesn't require a bigger or more powerful conspiracy than already exists--nor does it hold out the pleasure of utter Cassandra-like powerlessness. This death might actually, contrary to universal principle, lead somewhere,

And while I will not cease from wondering what the world is really shaped like, there's something invigorating about putting guys in jail without such knowledge.