The older I get, the more I realize: pretty much every organization everywhere is highly flawed in some (usually many) ways. This has been an extremely useful observation in my career and life, and I have found exactly zero exceptions.
It is very possible that epic conspiracies were easier to complete in the past as the ability to leak and disseminate information to a wide audience was far more difficult.
i think to reach the level of a conspiracy theory, you need a lot of people doing something outrageous. for instance, if you have the army, the navy and fbi and the russian kgb (or whatever they're called nowadays) in cahoots without a single leak for twenty-five years, that's improbable.
i tend not to buy conspiracy theories because they usually need a leak which doesn't exist. for instance, my brother is a 911 truther. in his opinion, a civil engineer saying "that's impossible" establishes it as a conspiracy. in mine, the fact that no-one from the pentagon has said "haha, and we cut up that plane and put it in the building, it was amazing, look come here check out my emails" when he was drunk establishes it as the real deal.
First of all, "conspiracy theory" is often taken to mean one of the tinfoil variety ("government and gay aliens experiment with mind control beams" style, or "immortality treatment hidden by pharma for the last 100 years in attempt to increase profits and for eugenic purposes"). But a "conspiracy" simply means an act of collusion done secretly which contrasts with public statements or the law (or is generally harmful). Thousands of these happen every day in various scales. Assuming that you can trust government statements is, based on history, naive. So, do you have a different term for "small conspiracy I accept happens all the time"? Because your rhetoric seems to exclude these from existing.
With respect to the (missing) 9/11 leak, there are countless stories that came out decades after happening. "Establishing it as the real deal" based on the lack of a leak makes to me about as much sense as a statement from a fellow truther (however well informed in his subject matter) establishing it as a lie.
Like a faked moon landing, a large false flag operation like 9/11, or a hillary clinton/democratic party death squad murdering leakers.
Has anything like this ever happened in all of history? The whole snowden thing is the best example I can think of but I don't remember actually being surprised when that came out. Maybe if hitler burned down the reichstag? I don't think that was ever proved though and I'm not sure how many people would really need to be involved in something like that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods
But of course, this will be dismissed, as will any other example.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
Want some more?
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=noam+chomsky
Spend a few hours there and then come back and tell me the image the US government portrays is highly consistent with its actual reality.
> ... death squad murdering leakers.
Two people are enough to conspire. And to claim (as you did, if I understand correctly) that you need a "large group of people" to hire an assassin to take out one person is irrational, and I believe contradicts a lot of well documented court cases involving organized crime.
> Has anything like this ever happened in all of history? The whole snowden thing is the best example I can think of but I don't remember actually being surprised when that came out.
I wasn't surprised either; but I do remember tens of people I interact with changing, practically overnight, from telling me "you are paranoid, they only listen to bad guys" to "of course, we've always known that". Most people remember always being on the right side of history, even when they demonstrably weren't.
It has happened countless times. The Enigma code breaking story involved tens, perhaps hundreds, deceiving hundreds of millions, for over 30 years; When the secret did get out (officially; no leaks involved), it was a huge surprise.
Also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers
There are tens of others if you care (I don't have time to list), but ... do you really believe that whatever Snowden informed the world of ONLY started with the things documented in his leaks, and that it ONLY concerned the NSA? That would be the irrational position. (Stated another way: the snowden leak might be unprecedented in depth and breath. But the operations it exposes aren't)
No this coverup would have to include the DC police with his laptop and many others to bury all the other connections that would exist with wikileaks.
If by "<>", you mean "does not equal", then that statement is false.
>Conspiracy: a secret plan by a group to do something unlawful