Name a successful conspiracy that was ever kept secret.

[Vinnie From Indy]

In a sense this is an unanswerable question because any example given could be described as an unsuccessfully kept conspiracy.

It is like the "if God is all powerful, can he make a rock so big even he can't lift it" question.

The reason I posted this is because I know a lifelong Democrat that spent his career as a prosecutor and judge and he refuses to believe that a conspiracy to "hack the vote" or manipulate vote totals over a wide area could be accomplished without detection. He feels it would be doomed because someone would talk. I told him that with today's technology, it would only take a very few people. He is unconvinced. The only conspiracy I could come up with that worked was the "Deep Throat" secret.

[baldguy]

1. I'd tell you

But then I'd have to kill you.

:evilgrin:

[Vinnie From Indy]

2. LOL! Good one!

Very funny!

[johnnie]

3. Enron

Additives to cigarettes. There are many except the people got busted. If it was kept a secret forever we would never know about it.

[jbnow]

10. That additive to cigarettes was something!

I smoked back then and my son told me about this and suggested if I smoke to get American Spirits. I mocked him saying those things aren't even allowed in food, they'd never allow them in something people smoke where it would be even more dangerous. I guess I accused him of tin foil hattery.

A couple years later when it broke into the news I humbly asked him about those additive free cigs he had mentioned.

Just unreal!

[lala_rawraw]

4. manhattan project

[The Magistrate]

8. That Was Not Kept Secret, Ma'am

Several Soviet spies were in it, and if information is being fed directly to an unfriendly government from its midst, a thing can hardly be called secret....

[lala_rawraw]

18. when you say secret, do you mean from the

entire public or from other nations (this would include the public as well)?

[SongOfTheRayne]

5. The Liar Sentence Paradox

The following sentence is true.

The following sentence is true.

The following sentence is true.

The first sentence in this series is false.

So, therefore, the first sentence is true if and only if it is false.

[wakeme2008]

6. I unlike some ppl believe it is in the Touchscreen/Opt Scanner software

and they record the bad votes. If so one or two "softheads" at each company is all that is needed.

[fed-up]

7. It took a good 3 or 4 years before an FOIA uncovered the truth about DeUr-

I forget how long it was used before Gulf War I, but the Pentagon denied it and denied it until some clever person filed an FOIA and the truth finally came out.

[Catchawave]

9. Speaking of Deep Throat....

In Bush World, Woodward and Bernstein would have be sent to prison for not revealing that source.

Then again, there are no ballsy reporters in Bush World :(

[OneBlueSky]

11. there are two other conspiracies that have "worked" . . .

the JFK assassination, and 9/11 . . . both of which have had an immense impact on the nation and the planet . . .

[MazeRat7]

12. The Ryon Experiment....(n/t)

[Neil Lisst]

13. it's not possible to answer because they're unknown by definition

But let me further address the underlying issue. Of course there are conspiracies that are never known, probably most of them.

[Art_from_Ark]

14. The Lincoln Assassination

Here's how it works:
1) Use Lincoln's platform (maintaining the union, ending slavery) to advance your own agenda (subjugating the South, which had been a pain ever since the Constitution was ratified)
2) Once Lincoln achieves his goals, have him bumped off.
3)Convince a Southern sympathizer of questionable sanity that Lincoln is a bad man. Even offer to pay him money to bump Lincoln off.
4) Once the dirty deed is done, go on an extensive manhunt for the triggerman. Conveniently track him (or someone reported to be him) down to a barn and burn it to remove all evidence.
5) Track down all people associated with triggerman as quickly as possible.
6) Take the unprecedented step of holding a military trial overseen by kangaroos approved by the likely mastermind, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton.
7) Just to make sure none of the accused can spill the beans on the mastermind, keep them hooded during the trial, and make sure to find all of them guilty.
8) Execute them as soon as possible, and Joe Whiskeyglass will be satisfied that justice was served.
9) Make life miserable for Lincoln's successor, who tries to be conciliatory toward a defeated South.
10) Install your own man, a war hero, in the White House after Lincoln's successor is too crippled to even consider running again.
11) Subjugate the South and start the Gilded Age.

[Freedom_Aflaim]

15. The Stargate Program

They've kept a lid on that one for about a decade now.

oh wait, in real life :)

I don't think there are any.

on edit: (wouldn't that be cool if the series was just a cover for the real thing, and it really IS a conspiracy)

[Douglas Carpenter]

16. I tend to agree

I've tried to look at the prominent conspiracy theories surrounding the more extreme end of voter fraud, 911 and even the Kennedy assassination and I agree that there are indeed many puzzling questions. But real live conspiracies like Watergate or Abramhoff scandal are left with lots and lots of traces and can be empirically confirmed. Monkey business done in Florida during the 2000 election such as the removal of names from voter roles was confirmed by documentation. People talk. There are events like the CIA funded wars in Central America. But again these can be verified by neutral sources. So, they are not conspiracies like the ones mentioned. To pull off major conspiracies like nationwide hacking of votes or 911 would require thousands of people keeping quiet. This I find implausible.

Your prosecutor/judge friend is not simply representing an establishment point of view. Even the most prominent leftist-perhaps far leftist-intellectuals like Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn or Alexander Cockburn do not except these conspiracies as plausible either.

Most importantly conspiracy theory diverts attention from any real institutional analysis of what is going on and why. If events can be explained as the action of secret cabals of evil men plotting evil analysis of event is frozen and in some cases action is is immobilized.

for a left-wing argument against conspiracy theory thinking I would like to recommend the article below from Z Magazine:

http://www.zmag.org/content/Instructionals/shalalbcon.cfm

[dipsydoodle]

17. Kept under wraps for a very long time

Guatemala 1954. Communism - no just a convenient excuse. Dulles brother's shareholdings in United Fruit Co - yes. Not too different from Halliburton today.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/US_Guat.html