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Comment by zoogeny | Hacker News Reader

> Why does it have to be a conspiracy?

Some of his claims, if you believe them, point towards coordinated activities.

For example, he claims that an intelligence official, who he had known and worked with for a long time and who he trusted, pulled him aside and confided in him about this project. This intelligence official mentioned a particular project name. He then claims that later a totally different intelligence agent independently confided in him the same details as well as the same project name. He claims that ultimately he was furnished documentation evidence of this project which he refuses to provide to media (due to national security issues) but which he has provided to congress.

I'm relating what he said in the interview. He could be making that all up. However, if he is relating actual events then there is a coordinated group of intelligence agents working towards the same goal.

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I don't understand why someone would have the docs and choose to hold them back while still going public. It ultimately weakens the story and his credibility, and if it is true, there's not much stopping the powers that he crossed in the process from coming after him anyway. The government isn't gonna go light on this guy simply because he didn't go to the press. They send a message to anyone who might be thinking about doing the same thing.

Maybe he avoids getting charged under the Espionage Act this way, but history shows very clearly that the pre-Snowden whistleblowers all had their careers ruined and still faced criminal charges. Love him or hate him, but Snowden went for the jugular and brought receipts while preventing the most damaging intel to human life from being leaked.

I mean, I agree that he should have leaked it publicly because I'm "publicly" and I want to see it. But I think it's pretty unarguably true that if you feel it is incumbent on you to leak classified materials and are unwilling to go Snowden and flee the US, then your best bet for not being arrested is to give the documents to Congress so they can support your testimony and protect you from retaliation, then not go to the media so the Pentagon doesn't hate your guts.

> then your best bet for not being arrested is to give the documents to Congress so they can support your testimony and protect you from retaliation

Congress wouldn't protect him from retaliation anyway. Thomas Drake was raided by the FBI and indicted even though he didn't leak any intelligence. You're making yourself an enemy of the government the moment you open your mouth, regardless of whether or not you bring documentation.

A1: Man, that Jekins is so gullible, he'll believe anything. Wanna help wind him up some for the lols?

A2: Lol yeah, you're right. I'm in, that sounds like fun.

A1: Okay so I told him that we've got some alien spacecraft in the broom closet under a project named meatball. I'm pretty sure he believes me, but if you tell him the same thing, I bet he'll really go nuts!

A2: Ahahaha awesome. Okay I'll take him aside next Tuesday. This is gonna be great! I haven't had this much fun at work since the time Brett got his had stuck in the vending machine.

Well, A1 and A2 are clearly conspiring, co-ordinating their activities. So some of his claims, even if you _don't_ believe them, point towards coordinated activities.

That's still a conspiracy to wind up Jenkins.

It's the "rogue psy-op" form of conspiracy.

Or his colleagues are messing with him.

But believing the US has a classified alien spaceship that was recovered in-tact is way more fun so let's go with that.

It being so fun is reason enough not to believe it. When is the last time something this exciting ended up being true?

Well we all suspected the government spied on us and then Snowden brought it to light. That was pretty fun.

Remember that time Saddam was gonna terrorise everyone with weapons of mass destruction, but he didn’t actually have any. Man, what a fun twist!

> Or his colleagues are messing with him

As a co-ordinated activity, sure.

We need to stop using the term “conspiracy” alone. Instead a conspiracy probability should be associated with every such theory.

As a strawman, a conspiracy which requires 10K people or more to pull it off gets assigned 0.0, while a single person conspiracy is assigned 1.0.

So anytime someone tells you about a conspiracy theory, ask them to estimate the conspiracy factor.

Examples of high conspiracy factor theory’s would be sports with a single, extremely important player (a goalie) for example since only one person needs to be corrupted.

An example of a low conspiracy factor theory would be the Moon landing as 1000s of people would need to be corrupted.

> a single person conspiracy is assigned 1.0

By definition a conspiracy involves more than one person.

I'd argue that a 'conspiracy factor' of 1 is not a conspiracy, just like a road with an occupancy factor of 0 doesn't have any cars on it, and I presume this was exactly the point of the GP.

Fair, a conspiracy requiring just two people to pull it off is assigned a conspiracy factor of 1. 10K or more is assigned 0.0. Use it in conjunction with other factors to determine overall probability.

In other words a wacko got trolled or pranked.

Then the troller was embarrassed about how well it worked and told him to never talk about it.

> he claims that an intelligence official

One guy claims, might as well stop there.

I'm on the side of wanting to believe, it's just important to stay skeptical because if it were all true it would probably be one of the most important things to happen to humanity. We're not alone after all.

Why would two people sworn to protect national secrets disclose them to an unbriefed individual? It isn't a believable scenario.

That Intel official is in trouble then. I can't imagine this guy's IPsec was that good. They'll dump his whole digital life and find 'the leaker' in minutes. More likely the UFO is just a 6 or 7 the generation stealth aircraft 'they' are keeping secret because otherwise you would be asking why they government is spending money on this and not health care

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