Society Maybe the greatest conspiracy in US history keeps on giving

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HEATH VON DOOM

Remember the 5th of November
Oct 21, 2015
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I'm sorry, but this isn't accurate. Ollie's primary goal was to reditect the funds to Nicaragua. The Hezbollah/Iran deal was just a means to an end. Bob McFarlane was the one who masterminded the blundered arms for hostages deal. Ollie didn't come in until later and his primary role in the operation was the diversion of funds to the Contras, as he testified to Congress and as pretty much every account affirms.
Ollie North was O-4, no way was he making any decision of that magnitude on his own. He chose to keep his mouth shut so it leads me to believe that he agreed with what he was doing but the decisions came from much higher up than him.
 

kneeblock

Drapetomaniac
Apr 18, 2015
12,435
23,026
Ollie North was O-4, no way was he making any decision of that magnitude on his own. He chose to keep his mouth shut so it leads me to believe that he agreed with what he was doing but the decisions came from much higher up than him.
My point in that earlier exchange was that the Contra thing and the Iran thing were two separate projects that got put together. Ollie was involved on the Nicaragua side, getting the money to the Contras. He was definitely taking orders and not some mastermind as I think someone inferred above. That wasn't my contention. Just that he had a particular part that he played and has ever since been involved in similar money moving and hiding projects. He's out at the NRA though, so this post is already history.
 

HEATH VON DOOM

Remember the 5th of November
Oct 21, 2015
17,281
24,721
My point in that earlier exchange was that the Contra thing and the Iran thing were two separate projects that got put together. Ollie was involved on the Nicaragua side, getting the money to the Contras. He was definitely taking orders and not some mastermind as I think someone inferred above. That wasn't my contention. Just that he had a particular part that he played and has ever since been involved in similar money moving and hiding projects. He's out at the NRA though, so this post is already history.
I consider Ollie North to be a stand up guy. I dont think everything he did was rigjt but he is a Military man through and through. He fell on the sword to protect the Code, I also think thats what happened with him and the NRA except he didnt have a chain of command to protect so he was able to point out inconsitencies
 

kneeblock

Drapetomaniac
Apr 18, 2015
12,435
23,026
I consider Ollie North to be a stand up guy. I dont think everything he did was rigjt but he is a Military man through and through. He fell on the sword to protect the Code, I also think thats what happened with him and the NRA except he didnt have a chain of command to protect so he was able to point out inconsitencies
North has spent years fostering exactly this image of himself, including his testimony before Congress right at the height of the scandal. He always portrayed himself as being out there to save American lives and draped himself in the rhetoric of patriotism. When you read some of his actual exchanges related to the operation, it doesn't quite square with his loyal soldier trying to keep everyone safe narrative. Also, despite some mythologies of American intelligence and military operations, supporting butchers is never defensible. There has been considerable blowback from all of the moving parts in Iran/Contra and much of it is still being felt to this day.

I agree about him being kicked from the NRA though. LaPierre outflanked him and it seems like he was trying to keep the org solvent in a moment when it's under pressure.
 

HEATH VON DOOM

Remember the 5th of November
Oct 21, 2015
17,281
24,721
North has spent years fostering exactly this image of himself, including his testimony before Congress right at the height of the scandal. He always portrayed himself as being out there to save American lives and draped himself in the rhetoric of patriotism. When you read some of his actual exchanges related to the operation, it doesn't quite square with his loyal soldier trying to keep everyone safe narrative. Also, despite some mythologies of American intelligence and military operations, supporting butchers is never defensible. There has been considerable blowback from all of the moving parts in Iran/Contra and much of it is still being felt to this day.

I agree about him being kicked from the NRA though. LaPierre outflanked him and it seems like he was trying to keep the org solvent in a moment when it's under pressure.
This is why you are top 3 poster here.

I could debate you on his merits but to me Ollie is a great Marine and a great American. There are so many working parts to the Iran contra shit that its hard to decipher and understand all that was going on.
 
Jan 21, 2015
3,255
6,074
There have been plenty of real life conspiracies with really solid evidence trails, convictions and confessions. The CT community seems less interested in these, maybe because they have elements of falsifiability, but the fact is these already exposed conspiracies don't die. The players just move around.

As is well known, in the middle 1980s, as the Cold War was tapering off, the US found itself dealing with new adversaries in the middle east, specifically in Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon. Simultaneously, the government was trying to suppress any vestiges of communism left in the Western hemisphere. Trying to solve both of these problems neatly led to the Iran/Contra affair where the Reagan administration sold weapons to Israel as a conduit to sell them to supposed "moderates" in Iran. Because Iran was sanctioned by the US at the time following the rise of Khomeini and the taking of hostages in 1979, a direct sale was illegal. Reagan's stated aim was to use the arms deal to get Iran to influence Hezbollah in Lebanon to release American hostages.

Of course, money from the sale was diverted into a few side projects, one being supplying the Mujahadeen in their fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan and the other being to topple the regime in Nicaragua by arming the paramilitary band of terrorists known as the Contras. This was also illegal due to an amendment to a bill passed in Congress saying the administration couldn't provide support to the Contras without Congressional approval. The scheme was exposed due to a series of blunders. Ollie North and about a dozen others were convicted, including an Assistant Secretary of State who will appear later in this story.

When George HW Bush took office, he pardoned everyone who had been convicted who hadn't already gotten off. Both he and Reagan had been insulated from the scandal though North had destroyed hundreds of pages of documents, so it's anyone's guess what was in them. Interestingly, one of North's big ideas was the removal of Saddam Hussein, which HW Bush would stop short of during the Persian Gulf War, but did welcome. He believed the advice of other nations in the region which assured him Saddam would fall on his own, but he of course didn't.

To return to Iran/Contra and its many tentacles, one of the go betweens to the deal was a wealthy businessman and arms dealer named Adnan. He was the son of the personal physician of Abdul Aziz al Saud, the first king of the modern state of Saudi Arabia. As such, he wielded a great deal of influence and was well connected to be part of the complex plot. A couple years later, he was brought up on charges for laundering alongside Imelda Marcos who had absconded from the Philippines with hundreds of millions of dollars she and her husband had purloined. Adnan had helped move the money around. At one time, he owned the world's biggest yacht, but sold it to the Sultan of Brunei (who also played a brief role in the Iran/Contra affair when money was accidentally wired to someone and it was transferred to him). The Sultan sold it to a real estate tycoon by the name of Donald J. Trump, who held onto it for a bit before selling it to a member of the Saudi royal family to pay off debts.

Adnan had two nephews who now enter our story. One was a young socialite who died tragically while purportedly fleeing the paparazzi in a car accident with his girlfriend, Princess Diana. His name was Dodi al Fayed. The other nephew had been a friend of a young Osama bin Laden before he joined the Salafists and left to fight alongside the Mujahadeen as they used US supplied arms to fight the flagging Soviet empire. He would go on to become a dissident journalist who was deeply critical of the Saudi regime, of Salafists, and of autocrats throughout the region. His name was Jamal Khashoggi and he was murdered in the Saudi embassy in his family's ancestral homeland of Turkey just over a year after his uncle Adnan had died of Parkinson's in England.

Meanwhile, back in the US, we return to that Assistant Secretary of State who was pardoned and discover he's none other than Elliot Abrams, who has of course lately been named the Trump Administration's special representative for Venezuela which is in the midst of an attempted regime change project. Ollie North is of course head of the NRA, which controls a lot of lobbying dollars that influence congress members. And who pray tell was the Attorney General who prepped and vigorously endorsed the pardons of North, Abrams and the rest? None other than our new Attorney General, William Barr.
Great post!

When it comes to US using Israel as a conduit for US interests however, in my opinion you paint the tail as wagging the dog. I don't think the prime motivations for Middle East agendas came from US via Israel, I think it may be the other way around.

As Enock-O-Lypse Now! @ENOCK said it becomes a game of dot connecting, seeing patterns in timelines. From the point of view of US being Israel's bitch, I found a helluva lot of dots starting connecting and lighting up like a christmas tree. Or Hannukah Tree.

Do they have Trees in Hannukah?

keep it coming man, there are so many truths out in plain sight it is no longer embarrassing imo to shine light on conspiracies anymore. In fact the opposite, pretending they still don't exist is looking dumber and more ignorant by the year
 
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HEATH VON DOOM

Remember the 5th of November
Oct 21, 2015
17,281
24,721
I was hip to Oliver North already way back in 1990.

Though, I thought he was some sort of snowboarder.

Ollie North was nothing but a fall guy. He just embraced it because he is a honorable Marine and followed orders. No one at a O4 position has the authority to do what he did.
 

kneeblock

Drapetomaniac
Apr 18, 2015
12,435
23,026
Great post!

When it comes to US using Israel as a conduit for US interests, in my opinion you paint the tail as wagging the dog. I don't think the prime motivations for Middle East agendas came from US via Israel, I think it may be the other way around.

As Enock-O-Lypse Now! @ENOCK said it becomes a game of dot connecting, seeing patterns in timelines. From the point of view of US being Israel's bitch, I found a helluva lot of dots starting connecting and lighting up like a christmas tree. Or Hannukah Tree.

Do they have Trees in Hannukah?

keep it coming man, there are so many truths out in plain sight it is no longer embarrassing imo to shine light on conspiracies anymore. In fact the opposite, pretending they still don't exist is looking dumber and more ignorant by the year
To me, what distinguishes conspiracy theory from say social scientific research is simply methodology. I feel a lot of CTers make methodological innovations that are incredibly useful to thinking through complex situations where there are a lot of moving parts. The main difference is believing you're wrong the entire time and working to prove yourself wrong until you've uncovered facts and linkages that are inexplicable through other means. Journalists and researchers do this work every day, but many of the genuine conspiracies are either very banal or outright boring. This example I provided is one of the most, if not the most, sensational in my lifetime only because at this point we know most of the facts and a lot of the consequences.

Conspiracism has sometimes been a useful methodology for me when trying to figure out where to look when things are concealed, but in the end sometimes the conspiracy is a lot shabbier and more pathetic than you hope. That's where it becomes less fun and more work, but that work is usually worth doing.
 

Lamont Cranston

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?
First 100
Jan 15, 2015
4,122
4,405
Why is it that the vast majority of CT people are in the USA?
 
Jan 21, 2015
3,255
6,074
Funny you mention Elliot Abrams for example...

I'm astonished how many times when researching 'old' conspiracy theories that feel like from a different era, I discover names and faces that are totally active players in conspiracies of the day.

Its not really that long of a timeline, many mofos have been at work for decades, their bloody fingerprints keep showing up
 

Lamont Cranston

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?
First 100
Jan 15, 2015
4,122
4,405
what makes you think that?

Maybe 911. That opened a big can o worms

I watched the powers that be try to stuff em all back in the can.
Well, I could be wrong but it seems that the vast majority of people talking CT are from the USA so I was wondering why?
 
Jan 21, 2015
3,255
6,074
Well, I could be wrong but it seems that the vast majority of people talking CT are from the USA so I was wondering why?
well #1 just simple demographic size. A bigger pool than say the UK or Netherlands etc...

Also I'm guessing we get most of our feeds and media from the culture we are embedded in. Lotsa tinfoilers in Australia for example we'd probably see more of if we were there.

Good question though, I would wonder the % of CTers in Europe, or even S AMerica or Asia.

I've been to Brasil many times I always get the impression that there is a miniscule community there who is informed or even gives a shit.

911 hit home for me, was so close its what got me down the rabbit holes. If the same shit had gone down in Sudan or something I might not have caught the bug. There really was an explosion of such ideas after 911, I witnessed from Day 1, it caught like wildfire.
 

Enock-O-Lypse Now!

Underneath Denver International Airport
Jun 19, 2016
11,737
19,619
slave name?

did you lose a bet or something?
Not sure if you’re aware or not Masato my friend but Kneeblock is a huge fan of Nigel Farge and has even done some intern work for Nigel during his college tenure- Kneeblock please correct me if I’m wrong on this but I believe Nigel mentioned in a previous post that his name change was a bit of a tribute to one of his idols growing up.
 
Jan 21, 2015
3,255
6,074
Not sure if you’re aware or not Masato my friend but Kneeblock is a huge fan of Nigel Farge and has even done some intern work for Nigel during his college tenure- Kneeblock please correct me if I’m wrong on this but I believe Nigel mentioned in a previous post that his name change was a bit of a tribute to one of his idols growing up.
Interesting

I've seen Farage around but not enough to really understand what he's all about. If you are a fan I will look deeper
 

kneeblock

Drapetomaniac
Apr 18, 2015
12,435
23,026
Interesting

I've seen Farage around but not enough to really understand what he's all about. If you are a fan I will look deeper
The only thing I know about Farage is that he survived a Helicopter crash, which basically means reptilian confirmed.