CIA Charged with Bank Heist; Attn conspiracy theory skeptics

[Gordon25]

Are there any conspiracy theory skeptics who would like to try to pin a tinfoil hat on this story?

http://www.americanfreepress.net/Bank_Heist.html

"The CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) are accused by International Currency Review, the London-based journal, of mounting a joint ultra-secret operation to electronically remove an estimated $10 billion out of the Iraqi Central Bank hours before the start of Persian Gulf War II. The whereabouts of the money is not known." <snip>

"The report is titled “The Great Robbery of the Central Bank of Iraq.” It has been sent to finance ministers of leading nations, the World Bank, the Bank of England and heads of all other major banks.

"The report is bound to cause huge embarrassment to President Bush after he signed an executive order on March 23, ordering a worldwide hunt for the hidden assets of Saddam Hussein and his family."

Two things you gotta remember about conspiracy theories.
1. If it's true, it's not a conspiracy theory. 2. At least fifty percent of today's conspiracy theories become tomorrow's history.

Gordon25

[Bolo Boffin]

1. More fun at American Free Press!

Darby was one of the Plymouth Brethren and when Scofield got hold of what Darby and others were teaching, he produced the Scofield Bible in 1909 and there have been many revisions of it since then. Although they never say “who” revised Scofield’s work.

Researchers have said that it was a powerful New York attorney, Samuel Untermyer, who was instrumental in arranging for the Oxford Press, which was controlled by the Rothschild banking family, patrons of the Zionist movement, to publish the Scofield “bible.”

Thanks to the influence of Scofield and his sponsors, Untermyer and the Rothschild family, many Christians today believe that God promised a certain tract of land in the Middle East to the people we know today as Israelis.


http://www.americanfreepress.net/End_of_Times/Promoting__End_Times__Myth/promoting__end_times__myth.html

:tinfoilhat:

[Gordon25]

5. Profoundly poor logic

By your logic, the fact that the New York Times reported the Gulf of Tonkin incident as an unprovoked attack on American naval forces means everything they have published since is suspect.

Or the fact that the LA Times reported the two University of Utah scientest's cold-fusion "demonstration" in the ninties as a major breakthrough in science, means everything they have published on science since is automatically discredited.

My post was about the story, not the source.
Gordon25

[Bolo Boffin]

11. Don't see any retractions at the site

And saw plenty of Tonkin/cold fusion retractions.

Consider the source.

[Adjoran]

2. Okay, how about this:

The International Currency Review was last published in 1992.

[greyl]

4. really?

I think you must have found the "holdings" listing at the Marshall Library at U of Cambridge?:)

"International Currency Review


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International Currency Review
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Journal of the world financial community.

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J. Michael Springmann, Esq, former Visa Chief at U.S. Saudi Embassy, revealed that State Department forced him to issue Visas to known terrorists -- then shredded his "unsafe" list after he left. Dr. Steve Camarota, Research Director for Center for Immigration Studies, offered analysis of how lax border control invites terrorists, researcher Richard Ochs proposed that there was a specific political agenda in the timing of the Anthrax attacks and Jennifer Van Bergen, contributing editor with Truthout.org addressed the Constitutional implications of the Patriot Act.

UPI, CNN, NHK: Japan TV, Philadelphia Inquirer, American Free Press, Financial Times, Vanity Fair, Intelligence Online (Paris), Accuracy In Media, International Currency Review, and numerous investigative journalists and researchers attended the press conference.

http://www.unansweredquestions.net/press_two.php


http://www.gwu.edu/gelman/guides/business/intfinance.html

[Bolo Boffin]

7. ICR published by World Reports Limited...

....which has a bug up its behind about the EU.

http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3902cd1a5f57.htm

[Gordon25]

6. What does that have to do with the story? n/t

[greyl]

15. If the current "accusers" haven't existed for 11 years...

that wouldn't be very credible, would it? ;)

[Cocoa]

3. Is this about Israel?

When I saw who the author was, I stopped reading, expecting some nonsense about Israel.

Regarding the two rules
1.If it's true, it's a conspiracy theory that turned out to be true.

2.Actual percentage is approx. 0.00000022. 50% is just absurd. So many of them contradict each other that wouldn't be mathematically possible.

[Gordon25]

9. No

If you'd bothered to read the story you would know. It is not about Israel. Whether or not it is nonsense, I suppose, is a matter of opinion.

If it's true, it's not a conspiracy theory. You're response: "If it's true, it's a conspiracy theory which turned out to be true," surely does nothing but restate mine. Unless you are going to equate truth and theory.

50% is absurd. Maybe, but let's list a few off the top of my grey head: Gulf of Tonkin; Sinking of the Battleship Maine; it was a conspiracy theory that the US gov't would knowingly send Navajo and Hopi miners into toxic uranium mines during the cold war; Irangate; the CIA's involvement in Allende's death and the death of Diem in South Vietnam; the CIA lsd experiments on an unsuspecting American public in the sixties; Agent Orange; the Teapot Dome scandal; the Bay of Pigs; the revelations in the recent release of the LBJ tapes of him in a phone conversation with a senator admitting the war in Vietnam was unwinnable and not worth the price we were paying, but that he couldn't affort the political cost of pulling out without winning, leading to thousands more American deaths; and my favorite, the consiracy theory that the CIA was running drugs in Vietnam. The reality is they tried to recruit the Montongard tribesment to fight for them interdicting NVA shipments down the HoChiMinh Trail. The Montongards were opium farmers. They said no way, who will tend our fields. The CIA emptied the Long Binh Jail in Saigon and put the prisoners to work in shackels under armed guard so the Montongards would fight. At the end of the season they bought the opium crop and sold it to heroin refiners in Saigon knowing the primary market would be American servicemen. The results: thousands of addicted American troops and morale trashed.

Fifty percent maybe a bit high, but "0.00000022" ain't even in the ball park friend.

Gordon25

[WoodrowFan]

12. The MAINE??

It was an accident, but the Government really did think it was a Spanish mine until cooler heads prevailed. Alas, that was about 1911!

Besides, your examples don't mean anything unless you compare them to all the conspiracy stories that are bogus. A quick trip through Snopes.com (just seach on "Clinton") will tell you how much coinspiracy garbage was touted by the rethugs.

[WoodrowFan]

13. AFP

"Whether or not it is nonsense, I suppose, is a matter of opinion." Well no, it's either true or it's not. I checked out the AFP site. I remembered reading them at a local magazine store before. :tinfoilhat: ALERT!

The Jews Killed JFK!
http://www.americanfreepress.net/store1/commerce.cgi?product=history&keywords=&next=10

AFP supports the racist America First Party.
http://www.americanfreepress.net/Patriot_News/patriot_news.html

The UN Wants your Guns!
http://www.americanfreepress.net/News_Missed/news_missed.html

Educators are teaching homnosexual child molestiation!
http://www.americanfreepress.net/Censored1/censored1.html

AFP is a right-wing anti-semetic rag that has zero reliability. You might as well believe everything Newsmax prints!

[WoodrowFan]

10. Grand Unified Theory

I once read a Grand Unified Conspiracy that one of the :tinfoilhat: types actually believed! It tied Barney (the PBS kids show) to Roswell and JFK!. Ok, ready? Aliens crashed at Roswell in 1947 then signed a treaty with Eisenhower (even though Truman was Prez in 1947 I guess) to trade technology for a secret base at Area 51. JFK was going to break the treaty and announce the Alien's presence so he was murdered, RFK was asssinated (5 years later!) becuase he also knew of the treaty. MLK was shot to cover up why the Kennedy's were shot. Watergate? Nixon wanted to know if McGovern knew about the aliens and that 18 minute gap in the tape was when Nixon was speaking to an alien leader! Vince Foster had to be killed because he learned of the treaty and as a warning to Clinton. And Barney? The aliens are big purple lizards and Barney is a CIA effort to brainwash our kids into thinking big purple lizards are our friends!! There you have it, 50% of all conspiracy theories are true!


Actually, 99% of conspiracy theories are believed by folks who don't know as much history as they think they do....

[Gordon25]

14. The heart of the matter

"Actually, 99% of conspiracy theories are believed by folks who don't know as much history as they think they do...."

And this is, afterall, the heart of the matter. One does not "believe" in theories of any kind, one analytically considers them. One who would reject any conspiracy theory out of hand without consideration is as guilty of a logical fallacy as is one who would believe in a conspiracy theory.

Quite admittedly, some theories (especially conspiracy theories) can be quickly considered and dismissed on basis of lack of merit. Others might require considerable study before being dismissed. Had I visited the website which was the source of the article, I might have dismissed the story out of hand, because the other content of the site was so outlandish (if it is indeed so, as some have implied), but only if I encountered something to impeach their veracity about this story -- because, as you point out in your following post, everything else about this story rang "true".

My point ultimately is simply this. Since at least the 50's, when someone or some group starts digging around, asking questions and drawing attention to things the government wants kept hidden, calling into question the "official government version" of some event, standard operating procedure in intelligence agency psycological operations (psyops) has been to immediately attempt to pin the label "conspiracy theorist" on them. The fact that some paranoid personality types have fantasies of elaborate conspiracy theories, is used in a logical fallacy to imply that all conspiracy theorists are paranoids and thus to be dismissed.

In times as troubled as these, let us not let our healthy skepticism deafen and blind us to evidence of wrong doing and/or collusion simply because it might imply a conspiracy theory. And let us not do the spooks work for them by gratuitously putting tinfoil hats on people who are, in truth, our allies, simply because they speculate on possible ways to put the pieces of the puzzle together with which we disagree.

Admittedly, as I said earlier, 50% is probably high in terms of what conspiracy theories turn out to be history. Probably ten percent is closer. Consider, out of my list, come up with off the top of my head in ten minutes or so, you could take issue only with one, the Maine. I admit I might be wrong on the one. Do you admit the rest could be valid examples of what once were considered "conspiracy theories" turning out to have solid foundations in fact?

In closing, it seems to me it behooves us to remember that theories of all kinds are tools, used to align observations and data and to predict future discoveries or events. They are never "true" in and of themselves in any sense other than a wrench or hammer might be seen as "true". Ultimately a theory is as valuable as it aligns observations and known data, and predicts both the existence of unknown but discoverable data and the occurance of future events.

Thanks to all for the discussion.

Gordon25

[Minstrel Boy]

16. "Not all conspiracies are created equal"

Sound advice from conspiracy researcher John Judge:

"Until we know, we cannot act. And if we act on rumor and impulse then we are no less a slave than those who live in the denial that the propaganda machines promote. So, be cynical and question things, but be analytical and scientific so you can approach the truth when you speak. Three truths don't make a fourth just by mentioning them. All lies, in fact, depend on having elements of the truth in them for verismilitude as its called. Read, don't repeat what you last heard. And if you are going to be more than a theorist, then give conspiracy the respect it deserves, and prove it. Good hunting, and always come clean."

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/JohnJudge/notAllCequal.html

[WoodrowFan]

8. So What?

Right before we started a war, the US tried to grab the other countries money? DUH. So what? Who would be surprised or shocked by this?? The crime is what would happen to the money afterwards? Given to the UN to return to a new Iraqi Government? In Bush's Swiss Bank Account? Spent by the Marines at a strip bar?

[TomNickell]

17. HUH????? WHAT??????

The US tried to grab Saddam's money through electronic transfers? Good idea! Beats dropping bombs and killing babies.

What has this to do with theories about the CIA hiring suicide bombers to kill thousands of -Americans-?

NOTHING! ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

HORSEMANURE.