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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection] | [TOKENS: 1790] |
Contents Psychological projection Influential figures applying psychoanalysis Influential works applying psychoanalysis In psychology, psychoanalysis, and psychotherapy, projection is the mental process in which an individual attributes their own internal thoughts, beliefs, emotions, experiences, and personality traits to another person or group. Definition The American Psychological Association Dictionary of Psychology defines projection as follows: [T]he process by which one attributes one’s own individual positive or negative characteristics, affects, and impulses to another person or group... often a defense mechanism in which unpleasant or unacceptable impulses, stressors, ideas, affects, or responsibilities are attributed to others. For example, the defense mechanism of projection enables a person conflicted over expressing anger to change “I hate them” to “They hate me.” Such defensive patterns are often used to justify prejudice or evade responsibility. History A prominent precursor in the formulation of the projection principle was Giambattista Vico.[how?] In 1841, Ludwig Feuerbach was the first enlightenment thinker to employ this concept as the basis for a systematic critique of religion.[how?] The Babylonian Talmud (500 AD) notes the human tendency toward projection and warns against it: "Do not taunt your neighbour with the blemish you yourself have."[attribution needed] In the parable of the Mote and the Beam in the New Testament, Jesus warned against projection:[attribution needed] Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. Projection (German: Projektion) was first conceptualised by Sigmund Freud in his letters to Wilhelm Fliess, and further refined by Karl Abraham and Anna Freud. Freud argued that in projection, thoughts, motivations, desires, and feelings that cannot be accepted as one's own are dealt with by being placed in the outside world and attributed to someone else. Freud would later argue that projection did not take place arbitrarily, but rather seized on and exaggerated an element that already existed on a small scale in the other person. According to Freud, projective identification occurs when the other person introjects, or unconsciously adopts, that which is projected onto them. In projective identification, the self[clarification needed] maintains a connection with what is projected, in contrast to the total repudiation of projection proper. Freud conceptualised projection within his broader theory of psychoanalysis and the id, ego, and superego. Later psychoanalysts have interpreted and developed Freud's theory of projection in varied ways. Otto Fenichel argued that projection involves that which the ego refuses to accept, which is thus split off and placed in another. Melanie Klein saw the projection of good parts of the self as leading potentially to over-idealisation of the object. Equally, it may be one's conscience that is projected, in an attempt to escape its control: a more benign version of this allows one to come to terms with outside authority. Carl Jung considered that the unacceptable parts of the personality represented by the Shadow archetype were particularly likely to give rise to projection, both small-scale and on a national/international basis. Marie-Louise Von Franz extended her view of projection, stating that "wherever known reality stops, where we touch the unknown, there we project an archetypal image". Erik Erikson argues that projection tends to come to the fore in normal people at times of personal or political crisis. Drawing on Gordon Allport's idea of the expression of self onto activities and objects, projective techniques have been devised to aid personality assessment, including the Rorschach ink-blots and the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT). Theoretical views According to some psychoanalysts, projection forms the basis of empathy by the projection of personal experiences to understand someone else's subjective world. In its malignant forms, projection is a defense mechanism in which the ego defends itself against disowned and highly negative parts of the self by denying their existence in themselves and attributing them to others, breeding misunderstanding and causing interpersonal damage. Projection incorporates blame shifting and can manifest as shame dumping. It has also been described as an early phase of introjection. Applications Projection is commonly found in borderline personality disorder and paranoid personalities. In psychoanalytical and psychodynamic terms, projection may help a fragile ego reduce anxiety, but at the cost of a certain dissociation, as in dissociative identity disorder. In extreme cases, an individual's personality may end up becoming critically depleted. In such cases, therapy may be required which would include the slow rebuilding of the personality through the "taking back" of such projections. Jung wrote, "All projections provoke counter-projection when the object is unconscious of the quality projected upon it by the subject." Jung argued that what is unconscious in the recipient will be projected back onto the projector, precipitating a form of mutual acting out. In a different usage, Harry Stack Sullivan saw counter-projection in the therapeutic context as a way of warding off the compulsive re-enactment of a psychological trauma, by emphasizing the difference between the current situation and the projected obsession with the perceived perpetrator of the original trauma. The method of managed projection is a projective technique. The basic principle of this method is that a subject is presented with their own verbal portrait named by the name of another person, as well as with a portrait of their fictional opposition. The technique may be suitable for application in psychological counseling and might provide valuable information about the form and nature of their self-esteem. Bodalev, A (2000). "General psychodiagnostics". Psychological projection is one of the medical explanations of bewitchment used to explain the behavior of the afflicted children at Salem in 1692. The historian John Demos wrote in 1970 that the symptoms of bewitchment displayed by the afflicted girls could have been due to the girls undergoing psychological projection of repressed aggression. Types In victim blaming, the victim of someone else's actions or bad luck may be offered criticism, the theory being that the victim may be at fault for having attracted the other person's hostility. According to some theorists, in such cases, the psyche projects the experiences of weakness or vulnerability with the aim of ridding itself of the feelings and, through its disdain for them or the act of blaming, their conflict with the ego.[full citation needed] Thoughts of infidelity to a partner may also be unconsciously projected in self-defence on to the partner in question, so that the guilt attached to the thoughts can be repudiated or turned to blame instead, in a process linked to denial. For example, a person who is having a sexual affair may fear that their spouse is planning an affair or may accuse the innocent spouse of adultery. A bully may project their own feelings of vulnerability onto the target(s) of the bullying activity. Despite the fact that a bully's typically denigrating activities are aimed at the bully's targets, the true source of such negativity is ultimately almost always found in the bully's own sense of personal insecurity or vulnerability.[better source needed] Such aggressive projections of displaced negative emotions can occur anywhere from the micro-level of interpersonal relationships, all the way up to the macro-level of international politics, or even international armed conflict. Projection of a severe conscience is another form of defense, one which may be linked to the making of false accusations, personal or political. In a more positive light, a patient may sometimes project their feelings of hope onto the therapist. People in love "reading" each other's mind involves a projection of the self into the other. Criticism Research on social projection supports the existence of a false-consensus effect whereby humans have a broad tendency to believe that others are similar to themselves, and thus "project" their personal traits onto others. This applies to both good and bad traits; it is not a defense mechanism for denying the existence of the trait within the self. A study of the empirical evidence for a range of defense mechanisms by Baumeister, Dale, and Sommer (1998) concluded, "The view that people defensively project specific bad traits of their own onto others as a means of denying that they have them is not well supported." However, Newman, Duff, and Baumeister (1997) proposed a new model of defensive projection in which the repressor's efforts to suppress thoughts of their undesirable traits make those trait categories highly accessible—so that they are then used all the more often when forming impressions of others. The projection is then only a byproduct of the real defensive mechanism. See also References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espionage] | [TOKENS: 5955] |
Contents Espionage Espionage, spying, or intelligence gathering, as a subfield of the intelligence field, is the act of obtaining secret, confidential, or in some way valuable information. Such information is also referred to as intelligence. A professional trained in conducting intelligence operations by their government may be employed as an intelligence officer. Espionage may be conducted in a foreign country, domestically or remotely. The practice is clandestine, as it is by definition unwelcome. In some circumstances, it may be a legal tool of law enforcement and in others, it may be illegal and punishable by law. Espionage is often part of an institutional effort by a government or commercial concern. The term is frequently associated with state spying on potential or actual enemies for military purposes. However, there are many types of espionage. Industrial espionage, for example, involves spying on civilians and their respective business or corporate interests. One way spies gather data and information about a targeted military organization is by infiltrating its ranks. They can then return information such as the size and strength of the enemy forces. They can also find collaborators and dissidents within the organization and influence them to provide further information or defect. Spies can steal technology and sabotage the enemy in various ways. Counterespionage, also known as counterintelligence or offensive countertintelligence, is the practice of thwarting enemy espionage and intelligence gathering. Almost all sovereign states have laws concerning espionage and the penalties for being caught spying are often severe. History Espionage has been recognized as of importance in military affairs since ancient times. The oldest known classified document was a report made by a spy disguised as a diplomatic envoy in the court of King Hammurabi, who died in around 1750 BC. The ancient Egyptians had a developed secret service, and espionage is mentioned in the Iliad, the Bible, and the Amarna letters. Espionage was also prevalent in the Greco-Roman world, when spies employed illiterate subjects in civil services. The thesis that espionage and intelligence has a central role in war as well as peace was first advanced in The Art of War and in the Arthashastra. "The Art of War," identifies five types of spies that are essential for gathering intelligence and achieving victory: local spies (citizen informants within the enemy's territory), inward spies (recruited double agents within the enemy ranks), converted spies (recruited defectors converted to serve your side), doomed spies (expendable fabricators used to spread disinformation; acts as decoy for counter-intelligence), and surviving spies (spies that provide accurate intelligence after gathering information from the enemy). In the Middle Ages, European states excelled at what has later been termed counter-subversion when Catholic inquisitions were staged to annihilate heresy. Inquisitions were marked by centrally organised mass interrogations and detailed record keeping. Western espionage changed fundamentally during the Renaissance when Italian city-states installed resident ambassadors in capital cities to collect intelligence. Renaissance Venice became so obsessed with espionage that the Council of Ten, which was nominally responsible for security, did not even allow the doge to consult government archives freely. In 1481 the Council of Ten barred all Venetian government officials from making contact with ambassadors or foreigners. Those revealing official secrets could face the death penalty. Venice became obsessed with espionage because successful international trade demanded that the city-state could protect its trade secrets. Under Queen Elizabeth I of England (r. 1558–1603), Francis Walsingham (c. 1532–1590) was appointed foreign secretary and intelligence chief. The novelist and journalist Daniel Defoe (died 1731) not only spied for the British government, but also developed a theory of espionage foreshadowing modern police-state methods. During the American Revolutionary War, Nathan Hale and Benedict Arnold achieved their fame as spies, and there was considerable use of spies on both sides during the American Civil War. Though not a spy himself, George Washington was America's first spymaster, utilizing espionage tactics against the British. In the 20th century, at the height of World War I, all great powers except the United States had elaborate civilian espionage systems, and all national military establishments had intelligence units. In order to protect the country against foreign agents, the U.S. Congress passed the Espionage Act of 1917. Mata Hari, who obtained information for Germany by seducing French officials, was the most noted espionage agent of World War I. Prior to World War II, Germany and Imperial Japan established elaborate espionage nets. In 1942 the Office of Strategic Services was founded by Gen. William J. Donovan. However, the British Special Operations Executive was the keystone of Allied intelligence. Numerous resistance groups such as the Austrian Maier-Messner Group, the French Resistance, the Witte Brigade, Milorg and the Polish Home Army worked against Nazi Germany and provided the Allied secret services with information that was very important for the war effort. Since the end of World War II, the activity of espionage has enlarged, much of it growing out of the Cold War between the United States and the former USSR. The Russian Empire and its successor, the Soviet Union, have had a long tradition of espionage ranging from the Okhrana to the KGB (Committee for State Security), which also acted as a secret police force. In the United States, the 1947 National Security Act created the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to coordinate intelligence and the National Security Agency for research into codes and electronic communication. In addition to these, the United States has 13 other intelligence gathering agencies; most of the U.S. expenditures for intelligence gathering are budgeted to various Defense Dept. agencies and their programs. Under the intelligence reorganization of 2004, the director of national intelligence is responsible for overseeing and coordinating the activities and budgets of the U.S. intelligence agencies. In the Cold War, espionage cases included Alger Hiss, Whittaker Chambers and the Rosenberg Case. In 1952 the Communist Chinese captured two CIA agents and in 1960 Francis Gary Powers, flying a U-2 reconnaissance mission over the Soviet Union for the CIA, was shot down and captured. During the Cold War, many Soviet intelligence officials defected to the West, including Gen. Walter Krivitsky, Victor Kravchenko, Vladimir Petrov, Peter Deriabin, Pawel Monat and Oleg Penkovsky of the GRU. Among Western officials who defected to the Soviet Union are Guy Burgess and Donald D. Maclean of Great Britain in 1951, Otto John of West Germany in 1954, William H. Martin and Bernon F. Mitchell, U.S. cryptographers, in 1960, and Harold (Kim) Philby of Great Britain in 1962. U.S. acknowledgment of its U-2 flights and the exchange of Francis Gary Powers for Rudolf Abel in 1962 implied the legitimacy of some espionage as an arm of foreign policy. China has a very cost-effective intelligence program that is especially effective in monitoring neighboring countries such as Mongolia, Russia and India. Smaller countries can also mount effective and focused espionage efforts. For instance, the Vietnamese communists had consistently superior intelligence during the Vietnam War. Some Islamic countries, including Libya, Iran and Syria, have highly developed operations as well. SAVAK, the secret police of the Pahlavi dynasty, was particularly feared by Iranian dissidents before the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Today, spy agencies target the illegal drug trade and terrorists as well as state actors. Intelligence services value certain intelligence collection techniques over others. The former Soviet Union, for example, preferred human sources over research in open sources, while the United States has tended to emphasize technological methods such as SIGINT and IMINT. In the Soviet Union, both political (KGB) and military intelligence (GRU) officers were judged by the number of agents they recruited. Targets of espionage Espionage agents are usually trained experts in a targeted field so they can differentiate mundane information from targets of value to their own organizational development. Correct identification of the target at its execution is the sole purpose of the espionage operation. Broad areas of espionage targeting expertise include:[citation needed] Methods and terminology Although the news media may speak of "spy satellites" and the like, espionage is not a synonym for all intelligence-gathering disciplines. It is a specific form of human source intelligence (HUMINT). Codebreaking (cryptanalysis or COMINT), aircraft or satellite photography (IMINT), and analysis of publicly available data sources (OSINT) are all intelligence gathering disciplines, but none of them is considered espionage. Many HUMINT activities, such as prisoner interrogation, reports from military reconnaissance patrols and from diplomats, etc., are not considered espionage. Espionage is the disclosure of sensitive information (classified) to people who are not cleared for that information or access to that sensitive information. Unlike other forms of intelligence collection disciplines, espionage usually involves accessing the place where the desired information is stored or accessing the people who know the information and will divulge it through some kind of subterfuge. There are exceptions to physical meetings, such as the Oslo Report, or the insistence of Robert Hanssen in never meeting the people who bought his information. The US defines espionage towards itself as "the act of obtaining, delivering, transmitting, communicating, or receiving information about the national defence with an intent, or reason to believe, that the information may be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation". Black's Law Dictionary (1990) defines espionage as: "... gathering, transmitting, or losing ... information related to the national defense". Espionage is a violation of United States law, 18 U.S.C. §§ 792–798 and Article 106a of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The United States, like most nations, conducts espionage against other nations, under the control of the National Clandestine Service. Britain's espionage activities are controlled by the Secret Intelligence Service. Source: Organization A spy is a person employed to seek out secret information from a source. Within the United States Intelligence Community, "asset" is more common usage. A case officer or Special Agent, who may have diplomatic status (i.e., official cover or non-official cover), supports and directs the human collector. Cut-outs are couriers who do not know the agent or case officer but transfer messages. A safe house is a refuge for spies. Spies often seek to obtain secret information from another source. In larger networks, the organization can be complex with many methods to avoid detection, including clandestine cell systems. Often the players have never met. Case officers are stationed in foreign countries to recruit and supervise intelligence agents, who in turn spy on targets in the countries where they are assigned. A spy need not be a citizen of the target country and hence does not automatically commit treason when operating within it. While the more common practice is to recruit a person already trusted with access to sensitive information, sometimes a person with a well-prepared synthetic identity (cover background), called a legend in tradecraft, may attempt to infiltrate a target organization. These agents can be moles (who are recruited before they get access to secrets), defectors (who are recruited after they get access to secrets and leave their country) or defectors in place (who get access but do not leave). A legend is also employed for an individual who is not an illegal agent, but is an ordinary citizen who is "relocated", for example, a "protected witness". Nevertheless, such a non-agent very likely will also have a case officer who will act as a controller. As in most, if not all synthetic identity schemes, for whatever purpose (illegal or legal), the assistance of a controller is required. Spies may also be used to spread disinformation in the organization in which they are planted, such as giving false reports about their country's military movements, or about a competing company's ability to bring a product to market. Spies may be given other roles that also require infiltration, such as sabotage. Many governments spy on their allies as well as their enemies, although they typically maintain a policy of not commenting on this. Governments also employ private companies to collect information on their behalf such as SCG International Risk, International Intelligence Limited and others. Many organizations, both national and non-national, conduct espionage operations. It should not be assumed that espionage is always directed at the most secret operations of a target country. National and terrorist organizations and other groups are also targeted. This is because governments want to retrieve information that they can use to be proactive in protecting their nation from potential terrorist attacks. Communications both are necessary to espionage and clandestine operations, and also a great vulnerability when the adversary has sophisticated SIGINT detection and interception capability. Spies rely on COVCOM or covert communication through technically advanced spy devices. Agents must also transfer money securely. Industrial espionage Industrial espionage, also known as economic espionage, corporate spying, or corporate espionage, is a form of espionage conducted for commercial purposes instead of purely national security. While political espionage is conducted or orchestrated by governments and is international in scope, industrial or corporate espionage is more often national and occurs between companies or corporations. It may include the acquisition of intellectual property, such as information on industrial manufacture, ideas, techniques and processes, recipes and formulas. Or it could include sequestration of proprietary or operational information, such as that on customer datasets, pricing, sales, marketing, research and development, policies, prospective bids, planning or marketing strategies or the changing compositions and locations of production. It may describe activities such as theft of trade secrets, bribery, blackmail, and technological surveillance. As well as orchestrating espionage on commercial organizations, governments can also be targets – for example, to determine the terms of a tender for a government contract. Reportedly Canada is losing $12 billion and German companies are estimated to be losing about €50 billion ($87 billion) and 30,000 jobs to industrial espionage every year. Types of agent In espionage jargon, an "agent" is the person who does the spying. They may be a citizen of a country recruited by that country to spy on another; a citizen of a country recruited by that country to carry out false flag assignments disrupting his own country; a citizen of one country who is recruited by a second country to spy on or work against his own country or a third country, and more. In popular usage, this term is sometimes confused with an intelligence officer, intelligence operative, or case officer who recruits and handles agents. Among the most common forms of agent are: Less common or lesser known forms of agent include: Private espionage Private espionage is a large-scale industry involving a vast array of different companies and individuals who provide a variety of services. These companies may be employed to act independently without any connection to a state agency or they may be hired to work in an integrated manner with a state agency, or agencies, in order to provide the specific services which are required. In terms of scale, the writer Frederic Lemieux states that 'In 2010. it was estimated that 1,931 private intelligence firms were working within the intelligence community in the United States, employing approximately 265, 000 contractors with top-secret clearances.' He goes on to state, however, that only about 110 of them represent 90% of the market. These include: AEGIS, BAE Systems, Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH), CACI International Inc., CSRA Inc., General Dynamics, Leidos, Northrop Grumman, and Science Applications International Corporation. Law Espionage against a nation is a crime under the legal code of many world states. In the United States, it is covered by the Espionage Act of 1917. The risks of espionage vary. A spy violating the host country's laws may be deported, imprisoned, or even executed. A spy violating its own country's laws can be imprisoned for espionage or/and treason (which in the United States and some other jurisdictions can only occur if they take up arms or aids the enemy against their own country during wartime), or even executed, as the Rosenbergs were. For example, when Aldrich Ames handed a stack of dossiers of U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agents in the Eastern Bloc to his KGB-officer "handler", the KGB "rolled up" several networks, and at least ten people were secretly shot. When Ames was arrested by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), he faced life in prison; his contact, who had diplomatic immunity, was declared persona non grata and taken to the airport. Ames' wife was threatened with life imprisonment if her husband did not cooperate; he did, and she was given a five-year sentence. Hugh Francis Redmond, a CIA officer in China, spent nineteen years in a Chinese prison for espionage—and died there—as he was operating without diplomatic cover and immunity. In United States law, treason, espionage, and spying are separate crimes. Treason and espionage have graduated punishment levels. The United States in World War I passed the Espionage Act of 1917. Over the years, many spies, such as the Soble spy ring, Robert Lee Johnson, the Rosenberg ring, Aldrich Hazen Ames, Robert Philip Hanssen, Jonathan Pollard, John Anthony Walker, James Hall III, and others have been prosecuted under this law. In modern times, many people convicted of espionage have been given penal sentences rather than execution. For example, Aldrich Hazen Ames was an American CIA analyst, turned KGB mole, who was convicted of espionage in 1994; he served a life sentence without the possibility of parole in the high-security Allenwood U.S. Penitentiary, before dying in 2026. Ames was formerly a 31-year CIA counterintelligence officer and analyst who committed espionage against his country by spying for the Soviet Union and Russia. So far as it is known, Ames compromised the second-largest number of CIA agents, second only to Robert Hanssen, who also served a prison sentence until his death in 2023. Espionage laws are also used to prosecute non-spies. In the United States, the Espionage Act of 1917 was used against socialist politician Eugene V. Debs (at that time the Act had much stricter guidelines and amongst other things banned speech against military recruiting). The law was later used to suppress publication of periodicals, for example of Father Coughlin in World War II. In the early 21st century, the act was used to prosecute whistleblowers such as Thomas Andrews Drake, John Kiriakou, and Edward Snowden, as well as officials who communicated with journalists for innocuous reasons, such as Stephen Jin-Woo Kim. As of 2012[update], India and Pakistan were holding several hundred prisoners of each other's country for minor violations like trespass or visa overstay, often with accusations of espionage attached. Some of these include cases where Pakistan and India both deny citizenship to these people, leaving them stateless.[citation needed] The BBC reported in 2012 on one such case, that of Mohammed Idrees, who was held under Indian police control for approximately 13 years for overstaying his 15-day visa by 2–3 days after seeing his ill parents in 1999. Much of the 13 years were spent in prison waiting for a hearing, and more time was spent homeless or living with generous families. The Indian People's Union for Civil Liberties and Human Rights Law Network both decried his treatment. The BBC attributed some of the problems to tensions caused by the Kashmir conflict. From ancient times, the penalty for espionage in many countries was execution. This was true right up until the era of World War II; for example, Josef Jakobs was a Nazi spy who parachuted into Great Britain in 1941 and was executed for espionage. Espionage is illegal in the UK under the National Security Act 2023, which repealed prior Official Secrets Acts and creates three separate offences for espionage. A person is liable to be imprisoned for life for committing an offence under Section 1 of the Act, or 14 years for an offence under Sections 2 and 3. Government intelligence is very much distinct from espionage, and is not illegal in the UK, providing that the organisations of individuals are registered, often with the ICO, and are acting within the restrictions of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA). 'Intelligence' is considered legally as "information of all sorts gathered by a government or organisation to guide its decisions. It includes information that may be both public and private, obtained from much different public or secret sources. It could consist entirely of information from either publicly available or secret sources, or be a combination of the two." However, espionage and intelligence can be linked. According to the MI5 website, "foreign intelligence officers acting in the UK under diplomatic cover may enjoy immunity from prosecution. Such persons can only be tried for spying (or, indeed, any criminal offence) if diplomatic immunity is waived beforehand. Those officers operating without diplomatic cover have no such immunity from prosecution". There are also laws surrounding government and organisational intelligence and surveillance. Generally, the body involved should be issued with some form of warrant or permission from the government and should be enacting their procedures in the interest of protecting national security or the safety of public citizens. Those carrying out intelligence missions should act within not only RIPA but also the Data Protection Act and Human Rights Act. However, there are spy equipment laws and legal requirements around intelligence methods that vary for each form of intelligence enacted. In war, espionage is considered permissible as many nations recognize the inevitability of opposing sides seeking intelligence each about the dispositions of the other. To make the mission easier and successful, combatants wear disguises to conceal their true identity from the enemy while penetrating enemy lines for intelligence gathering. However, if they are caught behind enemy lines in disguises, they are not entitled to prisoner-of-war status and subject to prosecution and punishment—including execution. The Hague Convention of 1907 addresses the status of wartime spies, specifically within "Laws and Customs of War on Land" (Hague IV); October 18, 1907: Chapter II Spies". Article 29 states that a person is considered a spy who, acts clandestinely or on false pretences, infiltrates enemy lines with the intention of acquiring intelligence about the enemy and communicate it to the belligerent during times of war. Soldiers who penetrate enemy lines in proper uniforms for the purpose of acquiring intelligence are not considered spies but are lawful combatants entitled to be treated as prisoners of war upon capture by the enemy. Article 30 states that a spy captured behind enemy lines may only be punished following a trial. However, Article 31 provides that if a spy successfully rejoined his own military and is then captured by the enemy as a lawful combatant, he cannot be punished for his previous acts of espionage and must be treated as a prisoner of war. This provision does not apply to citizens who committed treason against their own country or co-belligerents of that country and may be captured and prosecuted at any place or any time regardless whether he rejoined the military to which he belongs or not or during or after the war. The ones that are excluded from being treated as spies while behind enemy lines are escaping prisoners of war and downed airmen as international law distinguishes between a disguised spy and a disguised escaper. It is permissible for these groups to wear enemy uniforms or civilian clothes in order to facilitate their escape back to friendly lines so long as they do not attack enemy forces, collect military intelligence, or engage in similar military operations while so disguised. Soldiers who are wearing enemy uniforms or civilian clothes simply for the sake of warmth along with other purposes rather than engaging in espionage or similar military operations while so attired are also excluded from being treated as unlawful combatants. Saboteurs are treated as spies as they too wear disguises behind enemy lines for the purpose of waging destruction on an enemy's vital targets in addition to intelligence gathering. For example, during World War II, eight German agents entered the U.S. in June 1942 as part of Operation Pastorius, a sabotage mission against U.S. economic targets. Two weeks later, all were arrested in civilian clothes by the FBI thanks to two German agents betraying the mission to the U.S. Under the Hague Convention of 1907, these Germans were classified as spies and tried by a military tribunal in Washington D.C. On August 3, 1942, all eight were found guilty and sentenced to death. Five days later, six were executed by electric chair at the District of Columbia jail. Two who had given evidence against the others had their sentences reduced by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to prison terms. In 1948, they were released by President Harry S. Truman and deported to the American Zone of occupied Germany. Eighteen German soldiers were shot by the United States Army after being caught in American uniform as part of Operation Greif during the Battle of the Bulge in 1944. In June 1945, after Germany had been occupied by the allies, the US Army executed six individuals, including two German youths aged 16 and 17, for espionage committed against American forces during the final stages of World War II. The U.S. codification of enemy spies is Article 106 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. This provides a mandatory death sentence if a person captured in the act is proven to be "lurking as a spy or acting as a spy in or about any place, vessel, or aircraft, within the control or jurisdiction of any of the armed forces, or in or about any shipyard, any manufacturing or industrial plant, or any other place or institution engaged in work in aid of the prosecution of the war by the United States, or elsewhere". Spy fiction Spies have long been favorite topics for novelists and filmmakers. An early example of espionage literature is Kim by the English novelist Rudyard Kipling, with a description of the training of an intelligence agent in the Great Game between the UK and Russia in 19th century Central Asia. An even earlier work was James Fenimore Cooper's classic novel, The Spy, written in 1821, about an American spy in New York during the Revolutionary War. During the many 20th-century spy scandals, much information became publicly known about national spy agencies and dozens of real-life secret agents. These sensational stories piqued public interest in a profession largely off-limits to human interest news reporting, a natural consequence of the secrecy inherent in their work. To fill in the blanks, the popular conception of the secret agent has been formed largely by 20th and 21st-century fiction and film. Attractive and sociable real-life agents such as Valerie Plame find little employment in serious fiction, however. The fictional secret agent is more often a loner, sometimes amoral—an existential hero operating outside the everyday constraints of society. Loner spy personalities may have been a stereotype of convenience for authors who already knew how to write loner private investigator characters that sold well from the 1920s to the present. Johnny Fedora achieved popularity as a fictional agent of early Cold War espionage, but James Bond is the most commercially successful of the many spy characters created by intelligence insiders during that struggle. Other fictional agents include Le Carré's George Smiley, and Harry Palmer as played by Michael Caine. Jumping on the spy bandwagon, other writers also started writing about spy fiction featuring female spies as protagonists, such as The Baroness, which has more graphic action and sex, as compared to other novels featuring male protagonists. Spy fiction has permeated the video game world as well, in games such as Perfect Dark, GoldenEye 007, No One Lives Forever, Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell and the Metal Gear series. Espionage has also made its way into comedy depictions. The 1960s TV series Get Smart, the 1983 Finnish film Agent 000 and the Deadly Curves, and Johnny English film trilogy portrays an inept spy, while the 1985 movie Spies Like Us depicts a pair of none-too-bright men sent to the Soviet Union to investigate a missile. The historical novel The Emperor and the Spy highlights the adventurous life of U.S. Colonel Sidney Forrester Mashbir, who during the 1920s and 1930s attempted to prevent war with Japan, and when war did erupt, he became General MacArthur's top advisor in the Pacific Theater of World War Two. Black Widow is also a fictional agent who was introduced as a Russian spy, an antagonist of the superhero Iron Man. She later became an agent of the fictional spy agency S.H.I.E.L.D. and a member of the superhero team the Avengers. Unlike much of the spy fiction, real life espionage is described as routine and boring work. See also References This article incorporates text from this source, which is in the public domain: Department of Defense Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, 12 April 2001 (As Amended Through 31 October 2009) [aka Join Publication 1-02] Further reading External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_phenomenon] | [TOKENS: 10556] |
Contents 2012 phenomenon The 2012 phenomenon was a range of eschatological beliefs that cataclysmic or transformative events would occur on or around 21 December 2012. This date was regarded as the end-date of a 5,126-year-long cycle in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, and festivities took place on 21 December 2012 to commemorate the event in the countries that were part of the Maya civilization (Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador), with main events at Chichén Itzá in Mexico and Tikal in Guatemala. Various astronomical alignments and numerological formulae were proposed for this date. A New Age interpretation held that the date marked the start of a period during which Earth and its inhabitants would undergo a positive physical or spiritual transformation, and that 21 December 2012 would mark the beginning of a new era. Others suggested that the date marked the end of the world or a similar catastrophe. Scenarios suggested for the end of the world included the arrival of the next solar maximum; an interaction between Earth and Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy; the Nibiru cataclysm, in which Earth would collide with a mythical planet called Nibiru; or even the heating of Earth's core. Scholars from various disciplines quickly dismissed predictions of cataclysmic events as they arose. Mayan scholars stated that no classic Mayan accounts forecast impending doom, and the idea that the Long Count calendar ends in 2012 misrepresented Mayan history and culture. Astronomers rejected the various proposed doomsday scenarios as pseudoscience, having been refuted by elementary astronomical observations. Mesoamerican Long Count calendar December 2012 marked the conclusion of a bʼakʼtun—a time period in the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, used in Mesoamerica prior to the arrival of Europeans. Although the Long Count was most likely invented by the Olmec, it has become closely associated with the Maya civilization, whose classic period lasted from 250 to 900 AD. The writing system of the classic Maya has been substantially deciphered, meaning that a text corpus of their written and inscribed material has survived from before the Spanish conquest of Yucatán. Unlike the 260-day tzolkʼin still used today among the Maya, the Long Count was linear rather than cyclical, and kept time roughly in units of 20: 20 days made a uinal, 18 uinals (360 days) made a tun, 20 tuns made a kʼatun, and 20 kʼatuns (144,000 days or roughly 394 years) made up a bʼakʼtun. Thus, the Maya date of 8.3.2.10.15 represents 8 bʼakʼtuns, 3 kʼatuns, 2 tuns, 10 uinals and 15 days. There is a strong tradition of "world ages" in Maya literature, but the record has been distorted, leaving several possibilities open to interpretation. According to the Popol Vuh, a compilation of the creation accounts of the Kʼicheʼ Maya of the Colonial-era highlands, the current world is the fourth. The Popol Vuh describes the gods first creating three failed worlds, followed by a successful fourth world in which humanity was placed. In the Maya Long Count, the previous world ended after 13 bʼakʼtuns, or roughly 5,125 years.[a] The Long Count's "zero date"[b][c] was set at a point in the past marking the end of the third world and the beginning of the current one, which corresponds to 11 August 3114 BC in the proleptic Gregorian calendar. This means that the fourth world reached the end of its 13th bʼakʼtun, or Maya date 13.0.0.0.0, on 21 December 2012.[d] In 1957, Mayanist and astronomer Maud Worcester Makemson wrote that "the completion of a Great Period of 13 bʼakʼtuns would have been of the utmost significance to the Maya." In 1966, Michael D. Coe wrote in The Maya that "there is a suggestion ... that Armageddon would overtake the degenerate peoples of the world and all creation on the final day of the 13th [bʼakʼtun]. Thus ... our present universe [would] be annihilated ... when the Great Cycle of the Long Count reaches completion."[e] Coe's interpretation was repeated by other scholars through the early 1990s. In contrast, later researchers said that, while the end of the 13th bʼakʼtun would perhaps be a cause for celebration, it did not mark the end of the calendar. "There is nothing in the Maya or Aztec or ancient Mesoamerican prophecy to suggest that they prophesied a sudden or major change of any sort in 2012," said Mayanist scholar Mark Van Stone. "The notion of a 'Great Cycle' coming to an end is completely a modern invention." In 1990, Mayanist scholars Linda Schele and David Freidel argued that the Maya "did not conceive this to be the end of creation, as many have suggested". Susan Milbrath, curator of Latin American Art and Archaeology at the Florida Museum of Natural History, stated that, "We have no record or knowledge that [the Maya] would think the world would come to an end" in 2012. Sandra Noble, executive director of the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, said, "For the ancient Maya, it was a huge celebration to make it to the end of a whole cycle," and, "The 2012 phenomenon is a complete fabrication and a chance for a lot of people to cash in." "There will be another cycle," said E. Wyllys Andrews V, director of the Tulane University Middle American Research Institute. "We know the Maya thought there was one before this, and that implies they were comfortable with the idea of another one after this." Commenting on the new calendar found at Xultún, one archaeologist said "The ancient Maya predicted the world would continue—that 7,000 years from now, things would be exactly like this. We keep looking for endings. The Maya were looking for a guarantee that nothing would change. It's an entirely different mindset." Several prominent individuals representing Maya of Guatemala decried the suggestion that the world would end with the 13th bʼakʼtun. Ricardo Cajas, president of the Colectivo de Organizaciones Indígenas de Guatemala, said the date did not represent an end of humanity but that the new cycle "supposes changes in human consciousness". Martín Sacalxot, of the office of Guatemala's Human Rights Ombudsman (Procurador de los Derechos Humanos), said that the end of the calendar has nothing to do with the end of the world or the year 2012. The European association of the Maya with eschatology dates back to the time of Christopher Columbus, who was compiling a work called Libro de las profecías during the voyage in 1502 when he first heard about the "Maia" on Guanaja, an island off the north coast of Honduras. Influenced by the writings of Bishop Pierre d'Ailly, Columbus believed that his discovery of "most distant" lands (and, by extension, the Maya themselves) was prophesied and would bring about the Apocalypse. End-times fears were widespread during the early years of the Spanish Conquest as the result of popular astrological predictions in Europe of a second Great Flood for the year 1524. In the 1900s, German scholar Ernst Förstemann interpreted the last page of the Dresden Codex as a representation of the end of the world in a cataclysmic flood. He made reference to the destruction of the world and an apocalypse, though he made no reference to the 13th bʼakʼtun or 2012 and it was not clear that he was referring to a future event. His ideas were repeated by archaeologist Sylvanus Morley, who directly paraphrased Förstemann and added his own embellishments, writing, "Finally, on the last page of the manuscript, is depicted the Destruction of the World ... Here, indeed, is portrayed with a graphic touch the final all-engulfing cataclysm" in the form of a great flood. These comments were later repeated in Morley's book, The Ancient Maya, the first edition of which was published in 1946. Maya references to bʼakʼtun 13 It is not certain what significance the classic Maya gave to the 13th bʼakʼtun. Most classic Maya inscriptions are strictly historical and do not make any prophetic declarations. Two items in the Maya classical corpus do mention the end of the 13th bʼakʼtun: Tortuguero Monument 6 and La Corona Hieroglyphic Stairway 12. The Tortuguero site, which lies in southernmost Tabasco, Mexico, dates from the 7th century AD and consists of a series of inscriptions mostly in honor of the contemporary ruler Bahlam Ahau. One inscription, known as Tortuguero Monument 6, is the only inscription known to refer to bʼakʼtun 13 in any detail. It has been partially defaced; Sven Gronemeyer and Barbara MacLeod have given this translation: tzuhtzjo꞉m uy-u꞉xlaju꞉n pik chan ajaw u꞉x uni꞉w uhto꞉m il[?] yeʼni/ye꞉n bolon yokte' ta chak joyaj It will be completed the 13th bʼakʼtun. It is 4 Ajaw 3 Kʼankʼin and it will happen a 'seeingʼ[?]. It is the display of Bʼolon-Yokte' in a great "investiture". Very little is known about the god Bʼolon Yokteʼ. According to an article by Mayanists Markus Eberl and Christian Prager in British Anthropological Reports, his name is composed of the elements "nine", ʼOK-teʼ (the meaning of which is unknown), and "god". Confusion in classical period inscriptions suggests that the name was already ancient and unfamiliar to contemporary scribes. He also appears in inscriptions from Palenque, Usumacinta, and La Mar as a god of war, conflict, and the underworld. In one stele he is portrayed with a rope tied around his neck, and in another with an incense bag, together signifying a sacrifice to end a cycle of years. Based on observations of modern Maya rituals, Gronemeyer and MacLeod claim that the stela refers to a celebration in which a person portraying Bolon Yokteʼ Kʼuh was wrapped in ceremonial garments and paraded around the site. They note that the association of Bolon Yokteʼ Kʼuh with bʼakʼtun 13 appears to be so important on this inscription that it supersedes more typical celebrations such as "erection of stelae, scattering of incense" and so forth. Furthermore, they assert that this event was indeed planned for 2012 and not the 7th century. Mayanist scholar Stephen Houston contests this view by arguing that future dates on Maya inscriptions were simply meant to draw parallels with contemporary events, and that the words on the stela describe a contemporary rather than a future scene. In April–May 2012, a team of archaeologists unearthed a previously unknown inscription on a stairway at the La Corona site in Guatemala. The inscription, on what is known as Hieroglyphic Stairway 12, describes the establishment of a royal court in Calakmul in 635 AD, and compares the then-recent completion of 13 kʼatuns with the future completion of the 13th bʼakʼtun. It contains no speculation or prophecy as to what the scribes believed would happen at that time. Maya inscriptions occasionally mention predicted future events or commemorations that would occur on dates far beyond the completion of the 13th bʼakʼtun. Most of these are in the form of "distance dates"; Long Count dates together with an additional number, known as a Distance Number, which when added to them makes a future date. On the west panel at the Temple of Inscriptions in Palenque, a section of text projects forward to the 80th 52-year Calendar Round from the coronation of the ruler Kʼinich Janaabʼ Pakal. Pakal's accession occurred on 9.9.2.4.8, equivalent to 27 July 615 AD in the proleptic Gregorian calendar. The inscription begins with Pakal's birthdate of 9.8.9.13.0 (24 March, 603 AD Gregorian) and then adds the Distance Number 10.11.10.5.8 to it, arriving at a date of 21 October 4772 AD, more than 4,000 years after Pakal's time. Another example is Stela 1 at Coba which marks the date of creation as 13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.13.0.0.0.0, or nineteen units above the bʼakʼtun. According to Linda Schele, these 13s represent "the starting point of a huge odometer of time", with each acting as a zero and resetting to 1 as the numbers increase.[c] Thus this inscription anticipates the current universe lasting at least 2021×13×360 days, or roughly 2.687×1028 years; a time span equal to 2 quintillion times the age of the universe as determined by cosmologists. Others have suggested that this date marks creation as having occurred after that time span. In 2012, researchers announced the discovery of a series of Maya astronomical tables in Xultún, Guatemala which plot the movements of the Moon and other astronomical bodies over the course of 17 bʼakʼtuns. New Age beliefs Many assertions about the year 2012 form part of Mayanism, a non-codified collection of New Age beliefs about ancient Maya wisdom and spirituality. The term is distinct from "Mayanist," used to refer to an academic scholar of the Maya. Archaeoastronomer Anthony Aveni says that while the idea of "balancing the cosmos" was prominent in ancient Maya literature, the 2012 phenomenon did not draw from those traditions. Instead, it was bound up with American concepts such as the New Age movement, 2012 millenarianism, and the belief in secret knowledge from distant times and places. Themes found in 2012 literature included "suspicion towards mainstream Western culture", the idea of spiritual evolution, and the possibility of leading the world into the New Age by individual example or by a group's joined consciousness. The general intent of this literature was not to warn of impending doom but "to foster counter-cultural sympathies and eventually socio-political and 'spiritual' activism". Aveni, who has studied New Age and search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) communities, describes 2012 narratives as the product of a "disconnected" society: "Unable to find spiritual answers to life's big questions within ourselves, we turn outward to imagined entities that lie far off in space or time—entities that just might be in possession of superior knowledge." In 1975, the ending of bʼakʼtun 13 became the subject of speculation by several New Age authors, who asserted it would correspond with a global "transformation of consciousness". In Mexico Mystique: The Coming Sixth Age of Consciousness, Frank Waters tied Coe's original date of 24 December 2011[e] to astrology and the prophecies of the Hopi, while both José Argüelles (in The Transformative Vision) and Terence McKenna (in The Invisible Landscape) discussed the significance of the year 2012 without mentioning a specific day. Some research suggests that both Argüelles and McKenna were heavily influenced in this regard by the Mayanism of American author William S. Burroughs, who first portrayed the end of the Mayan Long Count as an apocalyptic shift of human consciousness in 1960's The Exterminator. In 1983, with the publication of Robert J. Sharer's revised table of date correlations in the 4th edition of Morley's The Ancient Maya,[e] each became convinced that 21 December 2012 had significant meaning. By 1987, the year in which he organized the Harmonic Convergence event, Argüelles was using the date 21 December 2012 in The Mayan Factor: Path Beyond Technology. He claimed that on 13 August 3113 BC the Earth began a passage through a "galactic synchronization beam" that emanated from the center of our galaxy, that it would pass through this beam during a period of 5200 tuns (Maya cycles of 360 days each), and that this beam would result in "total synchronization" and "galactic entrainment" of individuals "plugged into the Earth's electromagnetic battery" by 13.0.0.0.0 (21 December 2012). He believed that the Maya aligned their calendar to correspond to this phenomenon. Anthony Aveni has dismissed all of these ideas. In 2001, Robert Bast wrote the first online articles regarding the possibility of a doomsday in 2012. In 2006, author Daniel Pinchbeck popularized New Age concepts about this date in his book 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl, linking bʼakʼtun 13 to beliefs in crop circles, alien abduction, and personal revelations based on the use of hallucinogenic drugs and mediumship. Pinchbeck claims to discern a "growing realization that materialism and the rational, empirical worldview that comes with it has reached its expiration date ... [w]e're on the verge of transitioning to a dispensation of consciousness that's more intuitive, mystical and shamanic". There is no significant astronomical event tied to the Long Count's start date. Its supposed end date was tied to astronomical phenomena by esoteric, fringe, and New Age literature that placed great significance on astrology, especially astrological interpretations associated with the phenomenon of axial precession. Chief among these ideas is the astrological concept of a "galactic alignment". In the Solar System, the planets and the Sun lie roughly within the same flat plane, known as the plane of the ecliptic. From our perspective on Earth, the ecliptic is the path taken by the Sun across the sky over the course of the year. The twelve constellations that line the ecliptic are known as the zodiacal constellations, and, annually, the Sun passes through all of them in turn. Additionally, over time, the Sun's annual cycle appears to recede very slowly backward by one degree every 72 years, or by one constellation approximately every 2,160 years. This backward movement, called "precession", is due to a slight wobble in the Earth's axis as it spins, and can be compared to the way a spinning top wobbles as it slows down. Over the course of 25,800 years, a period often called a Great Year, the Sun's path completes a full, 360-degree backward rotation through the zodiac. In Western astrological traditions, precession is measured from the March equinox, one of the two annual points at which the Sun is exactly halfway between its lowest and highest points in the sky. At the end of the 20th century and beginning of the 21st, the Sun's March equinox position was in the constellation Pisces moving back into Aquarius. This signaled the end of one astrological age (the Age of Pisces) and the beginning of another (the Age of Aquarius). Similarly, the Sun's December solstice position (in the northern hemisphere, the lowest point on its annual path; in the southern hemisphere, the highest) was in the constellation of Sagittarius, one of two constellations in which the zodiac intersects with the Milky Way. Every year, on the December solstice, the Sun and the Milky Way, appear (from the surface of the Earth) to come into alignment, and every year precession caused a slight shift in the Sun's position in the Milky Way. Given that the Milky Way is between 10° and 20° wide, it takes between 700 and 1,400 years for the Sun's December solstice position to precess through it. In 2012 it was about halfway through the Milky Way, crossing the galactic equator. In 2012, the Sun's December solstice fell on 21 December. Mystical speculations about the precession of the equinoxes and the Sun's proximity to the center of the Milky Way appeared in Hamlet's Mill (1969) by Giorgio de Santillana and Hertha von Deschend. These were quoted and expanded upon by Terence and Dennis McKenna in The Invisible Landscape (1975). Adherents to the idea, following a theory first proposed by Munro Edmonson, alleged that the Maya based their calendar on observations of the Great Rift or Dark Rift, a band of dark dust clouds in the Milky Way, which, according to some scholars, the Maya called the Xibalba be or "Black Road". John Major Jenkins claims that the Maya were aware of where the ecliptic intersected the Black Road and gave this position in the sky a special significance in their cosmology. Jenkins said that precession would align the Sun precisely with the galactic equator at the 2012 winter solstice. Jenkins claimed that the classical Maya anticipated this conjunction and celebrated it as the harbinger of a profound spiritual transition for mankind. New Age proponents of the galactic alignment hypothesis argued that, just as astrology uses the positions of stars and planets to make claims of future events, the Maya plotted their calendars with the objective of preparing for significant world events. Jenkins attributed the insights of ancient Maya shamans about the Galactic Center to their use of psilocybin mushrooms, psychoactive toads, and other psychedelics. Jenkins also associated the Xibalba be with a "world tree", drawing on studies of contemporary (not ancient) Maya cosmology. Astronomers such as David Morrison argue that the galactic equator is an entirely arbitrary line and can never be precisely drawn, because it is impossible to determine the Milky Way's exact boundaries, which vary depending on clarity of view. Jenkins claimed he drew his conclusions about the location of the galactic equator from observations taken at above 11,000 feet (3,400 m), an altitude that gives a clearer image of the Milky Way than the Maya had access to. Furthermore, since the Sun is half a degree wide, its solstice position takes 36 years to precess its full width. Jenkins himself noted that even given his determined location for the line of the galactic equator, its most precise convergence with the center of the Sun already occurred in 1998, and so asserts that, rather than 2012, the galactic alignment instead focuses on a multi-year period centered in 1998. There is no clear evidence that the classic Maya were aware of precession. Some Maya scholars, such as Barbara MacLeod, Michael Grofe, Eva Hunt, Gordon Brotherston, and Anthony Aveni, have suggested that some Mayan holy dates were timed to precessional cycles, but scholarly opinion on the subject remains divided. There is also little evidence, archaeological or historical, that the Maya placed any importance on solstices or equinoxes. It is possible that only the earliest among Mesoamericans observed solstices, but this is also a disputed issue among Mayanists. There is also no evidence that the classic Maya attached any importance to the Milky Way; there is no glyph in their writing system to represent it, and no astronomical or chronological table tied to it. "Timewave zero" is a numerological formula that purports to calculate the ebb and flow of "novelty", defined as increase over time in the universe's interconnectedness, or organized complexity. Terence McKenna claimed that the universe has a teleological attractor at the end of time that increases interconnectedness. He believed this which would eventually reach a singularity of infinite complexity in 2012, at which point anything and everything imaginable would occur simultaneously. He conceived this idea over several years in the early to mid-1970s whilst using psilocybin mushrooms and DMT. The scientific community considers novelty theory to be pseudoscience. McKenna expressed "novelty" in a computer program which produces a waveform known as "timewave zero" or the "timewave". Based on McKenna's interpretation of the King Wen sequence of the I Ching, an ancient Chinese book on divination, the graph purports to show great periods of novelty corresponding with major shifts in humanity's biological and sociocultural evolution. He believed that the events of any given time are resonantly related to the events of other times, and chose the atomic bombing of Hiroshima as the basis for calculating his end date of November 2012. When he later discovered this date's proximity to the end of the 13th bʼakʼtun of the Maya calendar, he revised his hypothesis so that the two dates matched. The 1975 first edition of The Invisible Landscape referred to 2012 (but no specific day during the year) only twice. In the 1993 second edition, McKenna employed Sharer's date[e] of 21 December 2012 throughout. Novelty theory has been criticized for "rejecting countless ideas presumed as factual by the scientific community", depending "solely on numerous controversial deductions that contradict empirical logic", and encompassing "no suitable indication of truth", with the conclusion that novelty theory is a pseudoscience. Doomsday theories The idea that the year 2012 presaged a world cataclysm, the end of the world, or the end of human civilization, became a subject of popular media speculation as the date of 21 December 2012 approached. This idea was promulgated by many pages on the Internet, particularly on YouTube. The Discovery Channel was criticized for its "quasi-documentaries" about the subject that "sacrifice[d] accuracy for entertainment". Some people interpreted the galactic alignment apocalyptically, claiming that its occurrence would somehow create a combined gravitational effect between the Sun and the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy (known as Sagittarius A*), creating havoc on Earth. Apart from the "galactic alignment" already having happened in 1998, the Sun's apparent path through the zodiac as seen from Earth did not take it near the true galactic center, but rather several degrees above it. Even were this not the case, Sagittarius A* is 30,000 light years from Earth; it would have to have been more than 6 million times closer to cause any gravitational disruption to Earth's Solar System. This reading of the alignment was included on the History Channel documentary Decoding the Past. John Major Jenkins complained that a science fiction writer co-authored the documentary, and he went on to characterize it as "45 minutes of unabashed doomsday hype and the worst kind of inane sensationalism". Some believers in a 2012 doomsday used the term "galactic alignment" to describe a different phenomenon proposed by some scientists to explain a pattern in mass extinctions supposedly observed in the fossil record. According to the Shiva hypothesis, mass extinctions are not random, but recur every 26 million years. To account for this, it was suggested that vertical oscillations made by the Sun on its 250-million-year orbit of the galactic center cause it to regularly pass through the galactic plane. When the Sun's orbit takes it outside the galactic plane which bisects the galactic disc, the influence of the galactic tide is weaker. When re-entering the galactic disc—as it does every 20–25 million years—it comes under the influence of the far stronger "disc tides", which, according to mathematical models, increase the flux of Oort cloud comets into the inner Solar System by a factor of 4, thus leading to a massive increase in the likelihood of a devastating comet impact. This "alignment" takes place over tens of millions of years, and could never be timed to an exact date. Evidence shows that the Sun passed through the plane bisecting the galactic disc three million years ago and in 2012 was moving farther above it. A third suggested alignment was some sort of planetary conjunction occurring on 21 December 2012; there was no conjunction on that date. Multi-planet alignments did occur in both 2000 and 2010, each with no ill result for the Earth. Jupiter is the largest planet in the Solar System, being larger than all other planets combined. When Jupiter is near opposition, the difference in gravitational force that the Earth experiences is less than 1% of the force that the Earth feels daily from the Moon. Another idea tied to 2012 involved a geomagnetic reversal (often referred to as a pole shift by proponents), possibly triggered by a massive solar flare, that would release an energy equal to 100 billion atomic bombs. This belief was supposedly supported by observations that the Earth's magnetic field was weakening, which could precede a reversal of the north and south magnetic poles, and the arrival of the next solar maximum, which was expected sometime around 2012. Most scientific estimates say that geomagnetic reversals take between 1,000 and 10,000 years to complete, and do not start on any particular date. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration predicted that the solar maximum would peak in late 2013 or 2014, and that it would be fairly weak, with a below-average number of sunspots. There was no scientific evidence linking a solar maximum to a geomagnetic reversal, which is driven by forces entirely within the Earth. A solar maximum does affect satellite and cellular phone communications. David Morrison attributed the rise of the solar storm idea to physicist and science popularizer Michio Kaku, who claimed in an interview with Fox News that a solar peak in 2012 could be disastrous for orbiting satellites, and to NASA's headlining a 2006 webpage as "Solar Storm Warning", a term later repeated on several doomsday pages. On 23 July 2012, a massive, potentially damaging, solar storm came within nine days of striking Earth. Some believers in a 2012 doomsday claimed that a planet called Planet X, or Nibiru, would collide with or pass by the Earth. This idea, which had appeared in various forms since 1995, initially predicted Doomsday in May 2003, but proponents abandoned that date after it passed without incident. The idea originated from claims of channeling alien beings and is widely ridiculed. Astronomers calculated that such an object so close to Earth would be visible to anyone looking up at the night sky. Author Graham Hancock, in his book Fingerprints of the Gods, interpreted Coe's remarks in Breaking the Maya Code as evidence for the prophecy of a global cataclysm. Filmmaker Roland Emmerich later credited the book with inspiring his 2009 disaster film 2012. Other speculations regarding doomsday in 2012 included predictions by the Web Bot project, a computer program that purports to predict the future by analyzing Internet chatter. Commentators have rejected claims that the bot is able to predict natural disasters, as opposed to human-caused disasters like stock market crashes. The 2012 date was also loosely tied to the long-running concept of the photon belt, which predicted a form of interaction between Earth and Alcyone, the largest star of the Pleiades cluster. Critics argued that photons cannot form belts, that the Pleiades, located more than 400 light years away, could have no effect on Earth, and that the Solar System, rather than getting closer to the Pleiades, was in fact moving farther away from it. Some media outlets tied the fact that the red supergiant star Betelgeuse would undergo a supernova at some point in the future to the 2012 phenomenon. While Betelgeuse was certainly in the final stages of its life, and would die as a supernova, there was no way to predict the timing of the event to within 100,000 years. To be a threat to Earth, a supernova would need to be no further than 25 light years from the Solar System. Betelgeuse is roughly 600 light years away, and so its supernova would not affect Earth. In December 2011, NASA's Francis Reddy issued a press release debunking the possibility of a supernova occurring in 2012. Another claim involved alien invasion. In December 2010, an article, first published in examiner.com and later referenced in the English-language edition of Pravda claimed, citing a Second Digitized Sky Survey photograph as evidence, that SETI had detected three large spacecraft due to arrive at Earth in 2012. Astronomer and debunker Phil Plait noted that by using the small-angle formula, one could determine that if the object in the photo were as large as claimed, it would have had to be closer to Earth than the Moon, which would mean it would already have arrived. In January 2011, Seth Shostak, chief astronomer of SETI, issued a press release debunking the claims. Public reaction The phenomenon spread widely after coming to public notice, particularly on the Internet, and hundreds of thousands of websites made reference to it. "Ask an Astrobiologist", a NASA public outreach website, received over 5,000 questions from the public on the subject from 2007, some asking whether they should kill themselves, their children or their pets. In May 2012, an Ipsos poll of 16,000 adults in 21 countries found that 8 percent had experienced fear or anxiety over the possibility of the world ending in December 2012, while an average of 10 percent agreed with the statement "the Mayan calendar, which some say 'ends' in 2012, marks the end of the world", with responses as high as 20 percent in China, 13 percent in Russia, Turkey, Japan and Korea, and 12 percent in the United States. At least one suicide was directly linked to fear of a 2012 apocalypse, with others anecdotally reported. Jared Lee Loughner, the perpetrator of the 2011 Tucson shooting, followed 2012-related predictions. A panel of scientists questioned on the topic at a plenary session at the Astronomical Society of the Pacific contended that the Internet played a substantial role in allowing this doomsday date to gain more traction than previous similar panics. Beginning in 2000, the small French village of Bugarach, population 189, began receiving visits from "esoterics"—mystic believers who had concluded that the local mountain, Pic de Bugarach, was the ideal location to weather the transformative events of 2012. In 2011, the local mayor, Jean-Pierre Delord, began voicing fears to the international press that the small town would be overwhelmed by an influx of thousands of visitors in 2012, even suggesting he might call in the army. "We've seen a huge rise in visitors", Delord told The Independent in March 2012. "Already this year more than 20,000 people have climbed right to the top, and last year we had 10,000 hikers, which was a significant rise on the previous 12 months. They think Pic de Bugarach is 'un garage à ovnis' [a garage for UFOs]. The villagers are exasperated: the exaggerated importance of something which they see as completely removed from reality is bewildering. After 21 December, this will surely return to normal." In December 2012, the French government placed 100 police and firefighters around both Bugarach and Pic de Bugarach, limiting access to potential visitors. Ultimately, only about 1,000 visitors appeared at the height of the "event". Two raves were foiled, 12 people had to be turned away from the peak, and 5 people were arrested for carrying weapons. Jean-Pierre Delord was criticised by members of the community for failing to take advantage of the media attention and promote the region. The Turkish village of Şirince, near Ephesus, expected to receive over 60,000 visitors on 21 December 2012, as New Age mystics believed its "positive energy" would aid in weathering the catastrophe. Only a fraction of that number actually arrived, with a substantial component being police and journalists, and the expected windfall failed to materialise. Similarly, the pyramid-like mountain of Rtanj, in the Serbian Carpathians, attracted attention, due to rumors that it would emit a powerful force shield on the day, protecting those in the vicinity. Hotels around the base were full. In Russia, inmates of a women's prison experienced "a collective mass psychosis" in the weeks leading up to the supposed doomsday, while residents of a factory town near Moscow reportedly emptied a supermarket of matches, candles, food and other supplies. The Minister of Emergency Situations declared in response that according to "methods of monitoring what is occurring on the planet Earth", there would be no apocalypse in December. When asked when the world would end in a press conference, Russian President Vladimir Putin said, "In about 4.5 billion years." In December 2012, Vatican astronomer Rev. José Funes wrote in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano that apocalyptic theories around 2012 were "not even worth discussing". In May 2011, 5,000-7,000 Hmong ethnic people in Dien Bien province, Vietnam held a protest on the grounds that the end of the world was coming, and the Hmong people would be evacuated to their own Hmong country by "supernatural force". The Vietnamese media and government believe that this is a trick of the Hmong ethnic separatist forces. In China, up to a thousand members of the Christian cult Almighty God were arrested after claiming that the end of bʼakʼtun 13 marked the end of the world, and that it was time to overthrow Communism. Shoppers were reported to be hoarding supplies of candles in anticipation of coming darkness, while online retailer Taobao sold tickets to board Noah's Ark to customers. Bookings for wedding ceremonies on 21 December 2012 were saturated in several cities. On 14 December 2012, a man in Henan province attacked and wounded twenty-three children with a knife. Authorities suspected the man had been "influenced" by the prediction of the upcoming apocalypse. Academics in China attributed the widespread belief in the 2012 doomsday in their country to a lack of scientific literacy and a mistrust of the government-controlled media. On 6 December 2012, Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard delivered a hoax speech for the radio station triple J in which she declared "My dear remaining fellow Australians; the end of the world is coming. Whether the final blow comes from flesh-eating zombies, demonic hell-beasts or from the total triumph of K-Pop, if you know one thing about me it is this—I will always fight for you to the very end." Radio announcer Neil Mitchell described the hoax as "immature" and pondered whether it demeaned her office. Jasper Tsang, president of Hong Kong's Legislative Council, adjourned the legislature's sitting on 20 December 2012 by announcing that he "would not permit the world to end" as the legislature had to meet again in January 2013, to the laughter of MPs. Mesoamerican countries that once formed part of the Maya civilization—Mexico, Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador—all organized festivities to commemorate the end of bʼakʼtun 13 at the largest Maya sites. On 21 December 2011, the Maya town of Tapachula in Chiapas activated an eight-foot digital clock counting down the days until the end of bʼakʼtun 13. On 21 December 2012, major events took place at Chichén Itzá in Mexico and Tikal in Guatemala. In El Salvador, the largest event was held at Tazumal, and in Honduras, at Copán. In all of these archaeological sites, Maya rituals were held at dawn led by shamans and Maya priests. On the final day of bʼakʼtun 13, residents of Yucatán and other regions formerly dominated by the ancient Maya celebrated what they saw as the dawn of a new, better era. According to official figures from Mexico's National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH), about 50,000 people visited Mexican archaeological sites on 21 December 2012. Of those, 10,000 visited Chichén Itzá in Yucatán, 9,900 visited Tulum in Quintana Roo, and 8,000 visited Palenque in Chiapas. An additional 10,000 people visited Teotihuacan near Mexico City, which is not a Maya site. The main ceremony in Chichén Itzá was held at dawn in the plaza of the Temple of Kukulkán, one of the principal symbols of Maya culture. The archaeological site was opened two hours early to receive thousands of tourists, mostly foreigners who came to participate in events scheduled for the end of bʼakʼtun 13. The fire ceremony at Tikal was held at dawn in the main plaza of the Temple of the Great Jaguar. The ceremony was led by Guatemalan and foreign priests. The President of Guatemala, Otto Pérez, and of Costa Rica, Laura Chinchilla, participated in the event as special guests. During the ceremony the priests asked for unity, peace and the end of discrimination and racism, with the hope that the start of a new cycle will be a "new dawn". About 3,000 people participated in the event. Most of these events were organized by agencies of the Mexican and Central American governments, and their respective tourism industries expected to attract thousands of visitors. Mexico is visited by about 22 million foreigners in a typical year. In 2012, the national tourism agency expected to attract 52 million visitors just to the regions of Chiapas, Yucatán, Quintana Roo, Tabasco and Campeche. A Maya activist group in Guatemala, Oxlaljuj Ajpop, objected to the commercialization of the date. A spokesman from the Conference of Maya Ministers commented that for them the Tikal ceremony is not a show for tourists but something spiritual and personal. The secretary of the Great Council of Ancestral Authorities commented that living Maya felt they were excluded from the activities in Tikal. This group held a parallel ceremony, and complained that the date has been used for commercial gain. In addition, before the main Tikal ceremony, about 200 Maya protested the celebration because they felt excluded. Most modern Maya were indifferent to the ceremonies, and the small number of people still practising ancient rites held solemn, more private ceremonies. Osvaldo Gomez, a technical advisor to the Tikal site, complained that many visitors during the celebration had illegally climbed the stairs of the Temple of the Masks, causing "irreparable" damage. In Brazil, Décio Colla, the Mayor of the City of São Francisco de Paula, Rio Grande do Sul, mobilized the population to prepare for the end of the world by stocking up on food and supplies. In the city of Corguinho, in the Mato Grosso do Sul, a colony was built for survivors of the expected tragedy. In Alto Paraíso de Goiás, the hotels also made specific reservations for prophetic dates. In Bolivia, President Evo Morales participated in Quechua and Aymara rituals, organized with government support, to commemorate the Southern solstice that took place in Isla del Sol, in the southern part of Lake Titicaca. During the event, Morales proclaimed the beginning of "Pachakuti", meaning the world's wake up to a culture of life and the beginning of the end to world capitalism, and he proposed to dismantle the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. On 21 December 2012, the Uritorco mountain in Córdoba, Argentina was closed, as a mass suicide there had been proposed on Facebook. In the United States, sales of private underground blast shelters increased noticeably after 2009, with many construction companies' advertisements calling attention to the 2012 apocalypse. In Michigan, schools were closed for the Christmas holidays two days early, in part because rumours of the 2012 apocalypse were raising fears of repeat shootings similar to that at Sandy Hook. American reality TV stars Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt revealed that they had spent most of their $10 million of accumulated earnings by 2010 because they believed the world would end in 2012. Cultural influence The 2012 phenomenon was discussed or referenced by several media outlets. Several TV documentaries, as well as some contemporary fictional references to the year 2012, referred to 21 December as the day of a cataclysmic event. The TV series The X-Files cited 22 December 2012 as the date for an alien colonization of the Earth, and mentioned the Mayan calendar "stopping" on this date. The History Channel aired a handful of special series on doomsday that included analysis of 2012 theories, such as Decoding the Past (2005–2007), 2012, End of Days (2006), Last Days on Earth (2006), Seven Signs of the Apocalypse (2009), and Nostradamus 2012 (2008). The Discovery Channel also aired 2012 Apocalypse in 2009, suggesting that massive solar storms, magnetic pole reversal, earthquakes, supervolcanoes, and other drastic natural events could occur in 2012. In 2012, the National Geographic Channel launched a show called Doomsday Preppers, a documentary series about survivalists preparing for various cataclysms, including the 2012 doomsday. Hundreds of books were published on the topic. The bestselling book of 2009, Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol, featured a coded mock email number (2456282.5) that decoded to the Julian date for 21 December 2012. In the Ubisoft game franchise Assassin's Creed, the overarching plotline of the games starring the first protagonist, Desmond Miles, was also inspired by the phenomenon. After escaping capture by the Knights Templar, Desmond rejoins the Assassins Brotherhood to help them fight the Templars and prevent the predicted end of the world, in this case caused by a cyclical solar flare. In cinema, Roland Emmerich's 2009 science fiction disaster film 2012 was inspired by the phenomenon, and advance promotion prior to its release included a stealth marketing campaign in which television commercials and websites from the fictional "Institute for Human Continuity" called on people to prepare for the end of the world. As these promotions did not mention the film itself, many viewers believed them to be real and contacted astronomers in panic. Although the campaign was criticized, the film became one of the most successful of its year, grossing nearly $770 million worldwide. An article in The Daily Telegraph attributed the widespread fear of the phenomenon in China to the film, which was a hit in the country as it depicted the Chinese building "survival arks". Lars von Trier's 2011 film Melancholia featured a plot in which a planet emerges from behind the Sun on a collision course with Earth. The phenomenon also inspired several rock and pop music hits. As early as 1997, "A Certain Shade of Green" by Incubus referred to the mystical belief that a shift in perception would arrive in 2012 ("Are you gonna stand around till 2012 A.D.? / What are you waiting for, a certain shade of green?"). More recent hits include "Time for Miracles" (2009) performed by Adam Lambert, "2012 (It Ain't the End)" (2010) performed by Jay Sean featuring Nicki Minaj, "Till the World Ends" (2011) performed by Britney Spears and "2012 (If The World Would End)" (2012) performed by Mike Candys featuring Evelyn & Patrick Miller. Towards mid-December 2012, an internet hoax related to South Korean singer Psy being one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse was widely circulated around social media platforms. The hoax purported that once Psy's "Gangnam Style" YouTube video amassed a billion views, the world would end. Indian composer A. R. Rahman, known for Slumdog Millionaire, released his single "Infinite Love" to "instill faith and optimism in people" prior to the hypothesised doomsday. The artwork for All Time Low's 2012 album Don't Panic satirizes various cataclysmic events associated with the phenomenon. A number of brands ran commercials tied to the phenomenon in the days and months leading to the date. In February 2012, American automotive company General Motors aired an advertisement during the annual Super Bowl football game in which a group of friends drove Chevrolet Silverados through the ruins of human civilization following the 2012 apocalypse. On 17 December 2012, Jell-O ran an ad saying that offering Jell-O to the Mayan gods would appease them into sparing the world. John Verret, Professor of Advertising at Boston University, questioned the utility of tying large sums of money to such a unique and short-term event. See also Notes References Further reading External links California drought manipulation |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renny_Ottolina#Death_and_legacy] | [TOKENS: 1085] |
Contents Renny Ottolina Reinaldo José Ottolina Pinto (December 11, 1928 – March 16, 1978) was a Venezuelan producer and entertainer. Born in Valencia, Carabobo, he performed professionally under the name Renny Ottolina. Early life His mother Ana Mercedes Pinto died when he was two years old. At the age of six his father (an Italian immigrant) moved him to Caracas with his paternal grandmother. Renny went to different high schools and after he graduated it he knew what he want it and was a fast learner and he was mostly self-taught. At the age of seventeen, he started working in one of only a handful of radio stations that existed at the time in Caracas, as a broadcaster. With his perfect diction and harmonic voice, he quickly became a favorite among listeners. He learned English by working at the American embassy in Caracas. Television career Ottolina began his television career in 1952, serving as host of the opening of the now defunct Televisora Nacional. Then, he was hired by the private television station RCTV to host Lo de hoy (Today it), a morning variety show with music and interviews. In 1958 RCTV snatched Ottolina as an independent producer and gave him his own show, El Show de Renny, which became a cornerstone of RCTV's programming. In 1959 the ABC network took note of Ottolina and brought him to New York, to star in his own TV show. Even though he had a Latin accent, after a short time they moved him to compete with Jack Paar. After almost a year, ABC acquired 45% of the stocks in Televisa, the first privately owned television station in Venezuela, where they offered Ottolina the post of director general. But Ottolina resigned when he solicited stocks in exchange of his full attention. Then Ottolina returned to RCTV to host his own show. He would typically host it for two consecutive years and then take a year off, spending that time in another country. Due to this, there were interruptions to the show between the years 1959 and 1961, 1962 and 1964, and 1965 and 1967, because he decided "to take and give you a break" for a year. This became a common practice for him, while taking sabbaticals traveling around the World. While on one of his breaks in 1960, Ottolina hosted an English language program on the New York City television station WABC-TV. When he returned to Venezuela in 1961, he introduced the sketches format to his daily show. In 1965, Ottolina began hosting another show on RCTV called Renny Presenta... (Renny Presents...), aired at Sunday nights, in which he mostly featured music and would focus on Venezuela and its natural beauties. Over the years, Ottolina adopted a casual, conversational approach with extensive interaction with guests, which included Charles Aznavour, Ray Charles, Ella Fitzgerald, The Jackson 5, Tom Jones, La Lupe, Javier Solis, Miriam Makeba, Armando Manzanero, Raphael, Elis Regina, Sandro de América, Stevie Wonder and Zimbo Trio, among many significant performers. In the seventies Ottolina started to enter Venezuelan politics and made many criticisms of corruption to Carlos Andrés Pérez, then President of Venezuela. He lost his spot on RCTV, when management decided Renny was making more money in his time slot than the network was. From there he moved to CVTV, where after a few months the same thing happened; he was more popular than the stations who carried his shows. It was at this point the three major TV stations in Venezuela decided not to allow independent productions. Since they could not compete with, nor control, Ottolina's hypnotic charisma. An old friend working as a radio manager convinced him to come back to his roots in radio; Ottolina did. On the air again, he began to take a political stand. This served as a platform for the presidential campaign of 1978 when he ran for the President's office. Death and legacy Ottolina died in 1978 in a plane crash near the Pico Naiguatá, situated on the border of the states Miranda and Vargas, while continuing his campaign for the presidency, which was ultimately won by Luis Herrera Campins. His untimely death, at the age of 49, led to popular suspicion and numerous rumors, mainly based on a conspiracy theory. Today Renny Ottolina is remembered as one of the most important public figures in Venezuela. He is remembered as an entertainer for his charisma, creativity and quality as a producer. He was respected as an excellent citizen. His memorable quotes left a lasting impact on the Venezuelan audience and its contemporary culture. Many of his opinions about certain topics and the future stood the test of time. He is now remembered as someone who was ahead of his time. In honor of Renny Ottolina, in 1998 his birthday, December 11, was declared as National Broadcaster’s Day. The day serves to recognize those announcers who exemplify high ethics and veracity in radio and television broadcasting. See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Salvador_Allende] | [TOKENS: 1642] |
Contents Death of Salvador Allende On September 11, 1973, Salvador Allende, President of Chile, died by suicide during a coup d'état led by General Augusto Pinochet, commander-in-chief of the Chilean Army. In 2011, after decades of suspicions that Allende might have been assassinated by the Chilean Armed Forces, a Chilean court authorized the exhumation and autopsy of Allende's remains, which confirmed that the wounds were self-inflicted. Carlos Altamirano, who was close to Allende, recalls that prior to the coup, Allende had dismissed his suggestion to seek refuge in a loyalist regiment and fight back from there. Altamirano' also said that Allende had rejected the option "to do as so many dictators and presidents of Latin America, that is to grab a briefcase full of money and take a plane out the country." Allende was an admirer of José Manuel Balmaceda, a Chilean president who died by suicide in face of his defeat in the Chilean Civil War of 1891. According to Altamirano, Allende was "obsessed with the attitude of Balmaceda." In an interview with David Frost in 2013, Isabel Allende said that at a family lunch nine days before his death, Salvador Allende had said that he would either stay until the end of this term of presidency or he would be taken out feet first. Death On September 11, 1973, just prior to the capture of Palacio de La Moneda (the presidential palace) by military units loyal to Pinochet, President Salvador Allende made his farewell speech to Chileans on live radio (Radio Magallanes). He spoke of his love for Chile and of his deep faith in its future. He also stated that, as he was committed to the country, he would not take an easy way out or be used as a propaganda tool by those he called "traitors" (accepting an offer of safe passage, like Carlos Altamirano). The radio address was made while gunfire and explosions were audible in the background. Shortly afterwards, an official announcement declared that Allende had killed himself with an AK-47 rifle. His corpse was carried out of La Moneda Palace wrapped in a poncho by soldiers and fire fighters. Allende's body was sent to Hospital Militar arriving about 17:30. Among those present during the autopsy was one of his former classmates in university. The autopsy recorded his death as a suicide. Allende's weapon had been given to him as a gift by Fidel Castro. It bore a golden plate engraved: "To my friend and comrade-in-arms, Fidel Castro." Official version At approximately 1:50 p.m. local time, Allende ordered the defenders of La Moneda to surrender. The defenders then formed a line from the second floor, down the stairs and onto the Morande street door. Allende went along this queue, shaking hands and thanking everyone personally for their support. At the end of the queue, he turned toward the Independence salon, located in the north-east side of the Palace's second floor.[citation needed] At the same time, Patricio Guijón, a member of La Moneda's infirmary staff, decided to return upstairs to recover his gas-mask as a souvenir. He heard a noise, and opened the door of the Independence salon in time to see Allende shoot himself with his AK-47. From the other side of the salon and through an open door, José Quiroga, Arsenio Poupin, a member of the cabinet, Enrique Huerta, a palace functionary, two detectives from the presidential security detail, and some presidential security personnel also saw Allende's death, or arrived a few seconds afterwards, attracted by the noise.[citation needed] The following witnesses are believed to have been present: Of these witnesses, only Guijón spoke about the events immediately after they happened, and was criticised for doing so.[citation needed] Some sources attribute his declarations to "Allende's personal doctor", Enrique Paris Roa, who was at La Moneda as a member of Allende's cabinet. However, Paris was killed shortly after Allende's death. The other witnesses kept silent until after the restoration of democracy in Chile, as they believed that to corroborate the version of a suicide would in some measure downgrade Allende's sacrifice and lend support to the military regime.[citation needed] Of the two doctors from the Moneda Palace infirmary who witnessed the suicide, Guijón made a statement at the time. However, Quiroga only confirmed the details in 1999. Controversy During the subsequent years of the Pinochet regime, debate continued about whether plotters of the coup d'état had assassinated Allende. Fidel Castro had given Allende the AK-47 used as the suicide weapon. On 28 September 1973 (two weeks after Allende's death), Castro told a crowd in Havana's Plaza de la Revolución that Allende had died in La Moneda wrapped in a Chilean flag, firing at Pinochet troops with Castro's rifle. Over the coming decades, Castro continued to make public addresses relating this version of events. His public statements formed the basis of Robinson Rojas' 1975 book The murder of Allende and the end of the Chilean way to socialism. Rojas asserted that Allende had been killed by Pinochet's military forces while defending the palace. With the peaceful transition to democracy in Chile in 1990, the view that Allende died by suicide began to gain popular acceptance as different testimonies confirming the details of the suicide became available. Likewise, members of Allende's immediate family including his wife and his daughter, have never disputed that his death was a suicide. Chilean doctor Luis Ravanal's 2008 article published in the magazine El Periodista stated that Allende's wounds were "not compatible" with suicide. Asked to comment on Dr. Ravanal's hypothesis, Chilean congresswoman Isabel Allende, the President's daughter, said that the suicide version was the correct one. In late January 2011, a Chilean judge opened an investigation into Allende's death, along with hundreds of other human rights abuses committed during the 1973 coup. In May, Allende's remains were exhumed by order of a Chilean court as part of a criminal investigation into his death. On May 31, 2011, before the court-ordered autopsy had been completed, Televisión Nacional de Chile (TVN) reported that a top-secret military account of Allende's death had been discovered in the home of a former military justice official. The 300-page document was found when the house was destroyed in the 2010 Chilean earthquake. After reviewing the report, two forensic experts told TVN "that they are inclined to conclude that Allende was assassinated." Results of the autopsy were officially released in mid-July 2011. The team of Chilean medical experts conducting and reviewing the autopsy results confirmed that Allende had died from self-inflicted gunshot wounds. The autopsy results indicated that he had died after shooting himself with an AK-47 which had been set to automatic fire. The shots tore off the top of his head, killing him instantly. The Guardian, a leading UK newspaper, reported that the "scientific autopsy" had confirmed that "Salvador Allende committed suicide during the 1973 coup that toppled his socialist government." According to The Guardian: British ballistics expert David Prayer said Allende died of two shots fired from an assault rifle that was held between his legs and under his chin and was set to fire automatically. The bullets blew out the top of his head and killed him instantly. The forensics team's conclusion was unanimous. Spanish expert Francisco Etxeberria said: "We have absolutely no doubt" that Allende committed suicide. Notes References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%C5%82adys%C5%82aw_Sikorski%27s_death_controversy] | [TOKENS: 2373] |
Contents Władysław Sikorski's death controversy Władysław Sikorski's death controversy revolves around the death of the commander-in-chief of the Polish Army and Prime Minister of the Polish government in exile, General Władysław Sikorski, in the 1943 B-24 crash in Gibraltar. Sikorski's Liberator II crashed off Gibraltar almost immediately after takeoff, with the plane's pilot being the only survivor. The catastrophe, while officially classified as an accident, has led to several conspiracy theories that persist to this day, and often propose that the crash was an assassination, which has variously been blamed as a German, Soviet, British and even Polish conspiracy. The incident is still described by some historians as mysterious and was investigated by the Polish Institute of National Remembrance. They concluded that the injuries sustained were consistent with a plane crash and that there was not enough evidence to support or reject the theory that the plane was deliberately sabotaged. Air crash In late May 1943, Sikorski went to inspect Polish forces stationed in the Middle East. He was inspecting the forces and raising morale of the Polish troops there. He was also occupied with political matters; around that time, a conflict was growing between him and general Władysław Anders. The main reason for this was that Sikorski was still open to some normalization of Polish-Soviet relations, to which Anders vehemently objected. On 4 July 1943, while returning from the Middle East, Sikorski perished, together with his daughter Zofia, his Chief of Staff, Tadeusz Klimecki, and seven others, when his aircraft, a Consolidated Liberator II, serial number AL523, crashed into the sea 16 seconds after takeoff from Gibraltar Airport at 23:07 hours. The only survivor of the accident was the pilot Flight Lieutenant Eduard Prchal, one of six crew on the aircraft. The 11 passengers killed were: Official investigations A British Court of Inquiry convened on 7 July that year investigated the crash of Sikorski's Liberator II serial AL 523, but was unable to determine the cause, finding only that it was an accident and "due to jamming of elevator controls", noting that "it has not been possible to determine how the jamming occurred but it has been established that there was no sabotage." The Polish government refused to endorse the report, due to the contradiction about the cause not being determined but sabotage being ruled out, and pursued its own investigation, which suggested that the cause of the accident cannot be easily determined. The political context of the event, coupled with a variety of circumstances, immediately gave rise to much speculation that Sikorski's death had been no accident, and may have been the direct result of a German, Soviet, British, or even Polish conspiracy. In 2008, the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) began an official inquiry into the incident. Sikorski was exhumed and his remains were examined by Polish scientists, who in 2009 concluded that he died due to injuries consistent with an air crash and that there was no evidence that Sikorski was murdered, ruling out theories that he was shot or strangled before the incident; however, they did not rule out the possibility of sabotage. In 2013 one of the IPN historians, Maciej Korkuć [pl], has stated that "many facts suggest an assassination", although another, Andrzej Chwalba, notes that there is insufficient evidence to support this claim. He also complains that some British and Spanish documents still remain classified, hindering the investigation. The Polish investigation ended in 2013 with the conclusion that deliberate tampering to the aircraft could be neither confirmed nor ruled out. According to a popular belief in Poland, British documents concerning the accident will not be declassified until 2050. However, in 1998, the Public Record Office officially informed the Polish government that they had no knowledge of any classified British documents older than 30 years concerning Sikorski's death. According to information from Foreign Office in 2005, all documents concerning Sikorski's death are available in The National Archives. Additionally, in 2004, Special Intelligence Service archive was made available for research for Polish historians, which brought no new facts. Polish historian Jacek Tebinka [pl] claimed in 2023 that the amount of available documents from this case is very large and the British no longer classify documents related to the matter. As Roman Wapiński noted in his biographical entry on Sikorski in the Polish Biographical Dictionary in 1997, as no conclusive evidence of any wrongdoing has been found, Sikorski's death remains officially classified as an accident. The unresolved questions surrounding his death have led to a number of articles being published in the historical and mainstream press, both in Poland and abroad, questioning these findings. However, Polish historian Andrzej Garlicki [pl], building on a similar argument by historian Marian Kukiel, stated in 2009 that without any evidence all conspiracy theories about Sikorski's death are irresponsible fiction. Conspiracy theories The earliest suggestions of a conspiracy was popularized by Nazi propaganda which suggested that Sikorski's death was the result of a British–Soviet conspiracy. Some modern sources still note that the accident is not fully explained; for example, Jerzy Jan Lerski, in his Historical Dictionary of Poland (1996) entry on the "Gibraltar, Catastrophe of", notes that "there are several theories explaining the event, but the mystery was never fully solved." For example, there has been uncertainty since the day of the crash about who boarded the plane and about the exact cargo manifest—all leading to uncertainty as to the identity of the bodies recovered from the crash site; some bodies, including that of Sikorski's daughter, Zofia, were never recovered. Since several bodies were never found and the bodies of several members of Sikorski's entourage were never positively identified, some conspiracy theorists such as journalist and amateur historian Dariusz Baliszewski postulate that some might have been murdered on the ground while others might have been abducted to the Soviet Union. Baliszewski and Tadeusz Kisielewski [pl] are among those who focus on the opportunity the Soviets had at Gibraltar. At about the same time that Sikorski's plane was left unguarded at the Gibraltar airfield, a Soviet plane was parked nearby; it carried Soviet ambassador Ivan Maisky, giving the Soviets an officially confirmed presence at the site of the accident. The head of the British Secret Intelligence Service's counterintelligence for the Iberian Peninsula from 1941 to 1944 was Kim Philby, a Soviet double agent, who would eventually defect in 1963. Before 1941, Philby had served as an instructor with the Special Operations Executive, an organization specializing in sabotage and diversion behind enemy lines. Among the rumoured kidnap victims, a prominent role is given to Sikorski's daughter, Zofia Leśniowska, who was reported in 1945 to have been spotted in a Soviet Gulag by a member of the elite Polish commandos (Cichociemni), Tadeusz Kobyliński [pl]. Kobyliński attempted in 1945 or 1946 to gather Armia Krajowa personnel for a mission to rescue Leśniowska. Another controversy surrounds the sole survivor of the flight, a Czech officer, Eduard Prchal. Prchal, like many pilots who did not wish to tempt fate, was known for never wearing his Mae West life jacket—but on this occasion, when rescued from the sea, he was wearing one. During the inquiry, he denied this, and later blamed the inconsistency on post-crash shock affecting his actions and memory—essentially, on amnesia. Later, he explained that he must have instinctively put the vest on when he realised the plane was in trouble. Polish aviation expert Jerzy Maryniaki [pl] created a simulation of the crash, in which he concluded that the plane must have been under control up until the very moment of the crash. Kisielewski argues that the plane was likely under the control of the second pilot, who died in the crash. Other conspiracy theories point to the British, the German Abwehr intelligence agency or the Poles themselves, some of whom (especially under the command of Anders) had shown animosity toward Sikorski for, at least from their point of view, his policy of "colluding" with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, which reached new heights by the Germans' April 1943 discovery of mass graves filled with thousands of Polish prisoners of war murdered by the Soviets at Katyn Forest in 1940. In 1967, David Irving published a book dedicated to the crash, in which he suggested British complicity in the incident. Irving's book highlighted what he believed were two other suspicious occasions where assassination attempts may have been made on Silorski during aerial flight, including a crash-landing in Montreal in 1942, where sabotage was a suspected cause. Irving's method and selective use of sources have been the subject of significant criticism. In his book Disasters in the Air, former KLM pilot and one-time IFALPA president Jan Bartelski, of Polish origin, suggests that the crash of the Liberator that carried Sikorski was caused by a half-empty mail bag jammed between the horizontal stabilizer and the elevator, thus "freezing" the controls and preventing Prchal from gaining altitude after takeoff. The mail bag was in the cargo compartment and was blown out of the aircraft through the side hatch (which in normally configured Liberators would have served to protect the machine gun position) by a strong airflow rushing through the nose gear door. In popular culture The crash of Sikorski's Liberator is portrayed in the 1958 film The Silent Enemy, in which the team of Royal Navy divers charged with retrieving Sikorski's briefcase from the wrecked aircraft is led by Lionel "Buster" Crabb, himself later to disappear in 1956 in mysterious circumstances while diving in the vicinity of a visiting Soviet warship. In 1968, the play Soldiers: An Obituary for Geneva by German writer Rolf Hochhuth debuted in London. The play partially drew on the work of David Irving and contained the sensational allegation that Winston Churchill was involved in plotting Sikorski's death. In Hochhuth's play, the plane is internationally sabotaged and Sikorski and the other passengers are murdered by axe-wielding commandos. Hochhuth, unaware that the plane's pilot Eduard Prchal was still alive, accused him of participating in the plot. Prchal won a libel case that seriously affected the London theatre which staged the play. Hochhuth never paid the £50,000 damages which the court ordered him to pay and subsequently avoided returning to the UK. In 2011, he revealed his source for Churchill's involvement as Jane Ledig-Rowohlt, the British wife of his publisher Heinrich Maria Ledig-Rowohlt (née Jane Scatcherd). According to Hochhuth's biographer Birgit Lahann, these rumours relayed by Jane Ledig-Rowohlt had been the sole source for the allegations in the play. In 2009, a Polish film, Generał. Zamach na Gibraltarze was filmed; the film focused on a plot to assassinate Sikorski. See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theories_about_the_death_of_Diana,_Princess_of_Wales] | [TOKENS: 8228] |
Contents Conspiracy theories about the death of Diana, Princess of Wales There are many conspiracy theories surrounding the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, on 31 August 1997. Official investigations in both Britain and France found that Diana died in a manner consistent with media reports following the fatal car crash in Paris. In 1999, a French investigation concluded that Diana died as the result of a crash; French investigating judge Hervé Stéphan concluded that the paparazzi were some distance from the Mercedes S280 when it crashed and were not responsible for manslaughter. After hearing evidence at the British inquest, a jury in 2008 returned a verdict of "unlawful killing" by driver Henri Paul and the paparazzi pursuing the car. The jury's verdict also stated: "In addition, the death of the deceased was caused or contributed to by the fact that the deceased were not wearing a seat belt and by the fact that the Mercedes struck the pillar in the Pont de l'Alma tunnel rather than colliding with something else." Active in disputing the official version of events were the British tabloid newspaper the Daily Express and Egyptian businessman Mohamed Al-Fayed, whose son, Dodi, was Diana's partner at the time and also died in the crash. In 2003, Diana's butler, Paul Burrell, published a note that he claimed had been written by Diana in 1995, in which there were allegations that her husband was "planning 'an accident' in [Diana's] car, brake failure and serious head injury" so that he could marry again. She had allegedly expressed similar concerns to Lord Mishcon, her solicitor, that "reliable sources" had told her "that she and Camilla would be put aside" for Charles to marry Tiggy Legge-Bourke. Until a synod of 2002, the Anglican Church prohibited divorced people remarrying. The allegations were later revealed to have been among the smears spread by journalist Martin Bashir to secure an interview with Diana for the BBC. A special Metropolitan Police inquiry team was established in 2004, Operation Paget, headed by Commissioner John Stevens to investigate the various conspiracy theories which led to the British inquest. This investigation looked into 175 conspiracy claims that had been made by Fayed. In 2005, Charles, as a witness, told Stevens that he did not know about his former wife's note from 1995 and could not understand why she had these feelings. Fayed persistently propounded what were found to be conspiracy theories at the inquest, and repeatedly claimed that he believed his son was murdered with Diana. Henri Paul Theorists have alleged that the driver of the Mercedes-Benz W140, Henri Paul, was in the pay of a national security service, though different versions of the allegation name the country of the security service alternately as Britain, France or the United States. Evidence purported to support this arose mainly from money in his possession at the time of his death, and his personal wealth. These allegations are covered in chapter four of the Operation Paget criminal investigation report. Mohamed Al-Fayed claimed that Henri Paul was working for MI6 and that they set him up. The inquiry found no evidence Henri Paul was an agent for any security service. Another allegation concerns the reliability of blood tests carried out, which indicated Paul had been drinking before he took the controls of the car. The French investigators' conclusion that Paul was drunk was made on the basis of an analysis of blood samples, which were said to contain an alcohol level that was more than three times the French legal limit. This initial analysis was challenged by a British pathologist hired by Al-Fayed. In response, French authorities carried out a third test, this time using the more medically conclusive vitreous fluid from inside the eye, which matched the level of alcohol measured by blood and also revealed Paul had been taking antidepressants. It has been claimed that the level of alcohol reported to have been found in Paul's blood was inconsistent with his sober demeanor, as captured on the CCTV of the Ritz that evening. Robert Forrest, a forensic pathologist, said that an alcoholic like Paul, with a higher tolerance for alcohol, would be able to appear more sober than he actually was. The families of Dodi Fayed and Henri Paul did not accept the findings of the French investigation. It was disclosed in 2006 that Lord Stevens had met with Paul's elderly parents and told them that their son was not drunk. Just prior to Stevens's appearance at the inquest, a source close to Stevens stated that this inconsistency could be explained as him being "considerate" and "sensitive" towards the elderly couple, an assessment Scott Baker suggested might be credible in his opening comments to the jury. Under cross-examination at the British inquest in 2008, Stevens denied "deliberately misleading" Paul's parents and said that the chauffeur's condition at the time of the crash did not match the police's definition of being drunk, which he said relied upon someone's physical responses. Stevens said that the available evidence suggested Paul had consumed only two alcoholic drinks, but this was not necessarily all that Paul had consumed, and that he was "under the influence" of alcohol at the time of the crash. An expert cited in the report estimated that Paul had drunk the equivalent of five measures of Ricard, his favourite liquorice-flavoured French aperitif, before driving. Conspiracy theorists have also cited "rumours about the high levels of carbon monoxide found in Henri Paul's blood as indicating that something sinister happened, either to Henri Paul or to his blood samples", and claim that "had Paul really had such high levels of carbon monoxide in his blood, he could not have functioned at all, let alone driven a car." In two French TOXLAB tests which established the level of carbon monoxide in Paul's blood, one showed a level of 12.8% carboxyhaemoglobin saturation, which occurs when blood's iron-carrying pigment (haemoglobin) is bound with carbon monoxide (instead of oxygen). "A nonsmoker has about 1 per cent of carbon monoxide in his/her blood, whereas smokers will routinely have a level of 8-10 per cent or more if they have recently smoked." Paul had been smoking small cigarillo cigars in the hours before the crash. However, the second test, which has been cited by the opponents of the official findings, showed Paul's carboxyhaemoglobin saturation at a level of 20.7% at the time of his death. In the ITV documentary Diana - Secrets Behind the Crash, broadcast on 3 June 1998, "Dr. Alister Hay, introduced as a Carbon Monoxide Expert, told viewers that carbon monoxide disperses at the rate of 'about half every four or five hours.' So, in other words, the level of 20.7 per cent found during Paul's autopsy could have been 40 per cent several hours earlier when he died. Had Henri Paul really had 40 per cent carbon monoxide in his system, it would have been impossible for him to function at all, according to Dr. Hay, let alone drive a car. A level of 20-30 per cent produces strong headaches, and a level of 30-40 per cent would cause nausea, vertigo and vomiting." In 1999, investigators claimed that the high carbon monoxide level was likely "due to Paul inhaling gas from the car's air bags" after the crash, although according to Dr. Murray Mackay, "one of the world's leading crash investigators [...] the airbags used in the type of car in which Paul died do not contain any carbon-monoxide", and "it would not have been possible for Paul to have inhaled a sufficient quantity of gas, as the autopsy had established that he had died instantly." However, Dr. Murray nonetheless maintains "that both the levels of carbon monoxide found by the French scientists in Henri Paul's blood were 'perfectly explainable and unremarkable'", and that "mundane factors, such as Paul's intake of tobacco shortly before his death, were the most likely cause of the 20.7 per cent reading." Claims circulated in news media in November 2006 that the blood samples tested did not belong to Paul but were taken from a suicide victim. However, DNA testing ordered by French authorities in response appeared to confirm that the blood samples with high alcohol levels were from Paul. The tests compared the samples with DNA provided by Paul's parents. However, the DNA test results were challenged at Diana's 2008 British inquest. The coroner, Lord Justice Scott Baker, acknowledged that there were issues with the DNA tests and told the jury: No one can say to you 'there is a bottle of blood to have come from Henri Paul, half of it was tested for alcohol and gave a reading of X, the other half went for DNA testing and matched Henri Paul'. It was never done and it is not feasible to do any further tests. Nevertheless, the jury's verdict identified Paul's drunk driving as contributing to the crash. Tomlinson's allegation of MI6 involvement Richard Tomlinson, a former MI6 officer who was dismissed from the intelligence services and later served five months in prison for breaching the Official Secrets Act 1989, claimed in a sworn statement to the French inquiry in May 1999 that Britain's MI6 had been involved in the crash, suggesting that the security service had documentation which would assist Judge Stephan in his inquiry. The previous August, he had been reported by the BBC to have claimed that Paul was working for the security services and that one of Diana's bodyguards, either Trevor Rees-Jones (now known as Trevor Rees) or Kes Wingfield, was a contact for British intelligence. Tomlinson alleged that MI6 was monitoring Diana before her death, had told Mohamed Al-Fayed that Paul was an MI6 agent, and that her death mirrored plans he saw in 1992 for the assassination of then President of Serbia Slobodan Milošević, using a strobe light to blind his chauffeur. On 13 February 2008, Tomlinson told the inquest that he may have misremembered and that he had no evidence that Paul was an MI6 agent, but he had said in the previous day's court session that Paul was supplying MI6 with information. Speaking by video-link from France, Tomlinson conceded that, after the interval of 16 or 17 years, he "could not remember specifically" whether the document he had seen during 1992 had in fact proposed the use of a strobe light to cause a traffic crash as a means of assassinating Milošević, although use of lights for this purpose had been covered in his MI6 training. The Operation Paget Inquiry was given unprecedented access to the offices of both MI5 and MI6 to investigate Tomlinson's claims. It was later revealed that the mentioned memo was a proposal written in March 1993 to assassinate another Serbian figure if he gained power, not Milošević. Furthermore, the plan did not involve anything about using flashlights. Further evidence discrediting Tomlinson's claims was found in drafts of a book he was writing about his time in MI6 before he was jailed in 1998 for breaching the Official Secrets Act. The draft, dating from 1996, referred to the memo and contained none of the detail about a staged car crash with flashlights in a tunnel. The inquest was later told by an anonymous MI6 manager (referred to during proceedings as "Miss X") that MI6 were not keeping any file on either the Princess or Dodi, and that there was no plan involving them. The inquiry concluded by dismissing Tomlinson's claims as an embellishment. It went on to comment that this embellishment was largely responsible for giving rise to the theories Diana was murdered. Tomlinson was arrested by French authorities in July 2006 as part of their inquiry into the death of Diana. French police were also reported to have seized computer files and personal papers from his home in Cannes. Relationship with Dodi Fayed One of the main motives which has been advanced for alleged murder includes suggestions Diana was pregnant with Mohamed "Dodi" Fayed's child and the couple were about to get engaged. The alleged dislike of the idea of a non-Christian within the British royal family meant such a relationship between the mother of the future king and an Egyptian Muslim would not be tolerated. In Mohamed Al-Fayed's view, which he repeated in court at the inquest in February 2008, Prince Philip, Prince Charles (the future King Charles III), Diana's sister Lady Sarah McCorquodale and numerous others were all involved in a plot to kill the Princess and his son. Jeffrey Steinberg of the Executive Intelligence Review (EIR), a publication of the American Lyndon LaRouche movement, has also put forward theories that the Princess of Wales was murdered by the security services under the instructions of Prince Philip. An article in The Daily Telegraph in 1998 reporting the EIR conspiracy theories alleged earlier links between the EIR and Al-Fayed, while Francis Wheen reported the following year that Al-Fayed's spokesman had advised journalists to contact Steinberg. Al-Fayed made the assertion in television interviews that the couple were going to announce their engagement on the Monday after the crash, September 1, 1997. Operation Paget commented that an announcement of such magnitude from the Princess of Wales would have been a substantial media event of worldwide interest and would have required significant preparation. No evidence was found that any such preparation had been made. CCTV evidence shown at the inquest indicates that Dodi left Repossi jewellers on the 30 August with nothing more than a catalogue. Alberto Repossi said in 2003 that the ring had been placed on Diana's finger in a St Tropez hotel, and was being resized for future collection in Paris, but later admitted to writer Martyn Gregory that he had received "legal papers" from Al-Fayed, a client for more than 20 years. Al-Fayed said the couple chose the ring in Monte Carlo, and Dodi had picked it up in Paris the day before he died after it had been altered. This statement of Al-Fayed was contradicted by the statements of Claude Roulet, a shop assistant, and the CCTV footage. A CCTV recording demonstrated that a ring had been selected by a Ritz hotel official. It was bought by Mohammed Al-Fayed after the couple's death. A few hours before the crash, on the afternoon of August 30, Diana's journalist friend Richard Kay received a call on his mobile phone from Diana in which she asked about what was likely to appear in the following day's Sunday papers about her. During this call, she made no mention of any announcement she intended to make. More revealing was the statement given by Diana's eldest sister, Lady Sarah McCorquodale, who testified that in a phone conversation with Diana on Friday, August 29, Diana spoke about Dodi Fayed in a manner that gave her sister the impression the relationship was on "stony ground". Statements from other friends and confidantes Diana spoke to in the week before her death, including her butler Paul Burrell, her friend Lady Annabel Goldsmith, and her spiritual adviser Rita Rogers, were unanimous that she was firm about not wanting to get engaged or married to anyone at that point in her life. A week before she died, the princess had told Goldsmith: "I need marriage like a rash on my face." Diana's former private secretary, Patrick Jephson, said to the BBC in reaction to the publication of the Operation Paget Report in December 2006 that her facial expression in the CCTV footage of her at the Paris Ritz on her final evening with Dodi Fayed was one she would wear when she was disgruntled with a situation. However, CCTV images released on 6 October taken just minutes before their deaths, show a relaxed Diana and Dodi affectionately holding hands. An inquiry witness was Hasnat Khan, a Muslim heart surgeon of Pakistani origin based in London, who had a relationship with Diana for two years. Diana had explored the possibility of marriage with him. This had been met with no opposition from the royal family and then-Prince Charles had given his blessing. Khan stated that he had received some racist hate mail from members of the public because of the relationship but had no reason to take what was said in this hate mail seriously. He also stated that he felt the relationship was not opposed by the royal family or any other branch of the British Government including the security services. Paul Burrell stated that Diana was still not over her break-up with Khan at the time of her death. It was also pointed out that Dodi and Diana had only met just under seven weeks before the crash, at Al-Fayed's villa in St. Tropez on July 14, meaning there were only 47 days from their first meeting until the night of the crash. Of those days, their schedules permitted them to be together for an absolute maximum of 35 days. From analysis of Diana's actual movements, it is likely they had spent approximately 23 days together before the crash. John Macnamara, a former senior detective at Scotland Yard, headed Al-Fayed's own investigation for five years from 1997. Cross-examined at the inquest on February 14, he conceded that he had found no evidence of a criminal conspiracy to kill the Princess, or that she was engaged or pregnant at the time of her death, apart from the claims Al-Fayed had relayed to him. In January 2004, the former coroner of the Queen's Household, John Burton, said (in an interview with The Times) that he attended a post-mortem examination of the Princess's body at Fulham mortuary, where he personally examined her womb and found her not to be pregnant. Robert Chapman, who carried out the post-mortem examination, stated that Diana's womb and ovaries showed no sign of pregnancy. In an effort to examine the assertions made by Al-Fayed, Operation Paget had scientific tests carried out on pre-transfusion blood found in the footwell of the seat in the wrecked Mercedes the Princess of Wales occupied at the time of the crash. This blood was found to have no trace of the hCG hormone associated with pregnancy. The inquiry also extensively interviewed friends of Diana's who were in close contact with her in the weeks leading up to her death. The evidence obtained from these witnesses was of a very sensitive nature and most of it was not included in Operation Paget's criminal investigation report. However, it was reported that friends said she was in her normal menstrual cycle and there was evidence she was using contraception. Al-Fayed's persistence in asserting Diana was pregnant led him to get members of his staff to tell the media that on their final day together, Diana and his son had visited a villa he owned in Paris to choose a room "for the baby". While the couple had indeed visited the villa, the circumstances of the visit were exaggerated to say it had lasted two hours and that it was in the presence of a prominent Italian interior designer. A security guard at the villa, Reuben Murrell, felt uncomfortable lying about the matter and sold his story to The Sun stating that the visit lasted just under thirty minutes and was not in the company of any interior designer. He provided stills from CCTV to prove this and said he had been in the presence of Diana and Dodi for the entirety of their visit, with there having been no conversation about them coming to live at the villa. He later resigned from Al-Fayed's employment and initiated an employment tribunal for constructive dismissal after Al-Fayed successfully sued him for breach of contract because of the CCTV images he supplied to The Sun. Senior members of Al-Fayed's staff made derogatory comments about Murrell and Trevor Rees-Jones in their statements to Operation Paget. In 2004, a Channel 4 documentary, The Diana Conspiracy, claimed that the butler at the villa who, in a June 1998 interview with the ITV documentary Diana: Secrets Behind the Crash, claimed to have shown the couple around with their intent being to live there, was not even present at the villa on that day as he was on vacation. Al-Fayed first claimed that the Princess of Wales was pregnant at the time of her death to the Daily Express in May 2001. "If it is true, it is strange that he sat upon this important information for three and a half years," Scott Baker said at the inquest. Absence of CCTV images The absence of CCTV images showing the Mercedes's journey from the hotel to the crash site has been frequently cited as evidence of an organised conspiracy. According to The Independent newspaper in 2006, there were more than 14 CCTV cameras in the Pont de l'Alma underpass, though none recorded footage of the fatal collision. Judge Hervé Stéphan was appointed as Examining Magistrate in this case on September 2, 1997. On that day, by Judicial Order, he tasked the Brigade Criminelle with identifying all video and photographic images along the route taken by the Mercedes. Lieutenant Eric Gigou of the Brigade Criminelle led the team that carried out that work, initially by retracing the route several times and drawing up a list of possible locations. His report showed that the team identified ten locations of CCTV cameras. None of these had any images relevant to the inquiry, since they were principally security cameras facing the entrances to buildings. Most of the cameras were not maintained by the City of Paris; the owners of the buildings to which they were attached operated them privately. There was a traffic-monitoring camera above the underpass in the Place de l'Alma itself but this was under the control of la Compagnie de Circulation Urbaine de Paris (Paris Urban Traffic Unit). That department closed down at about 11 p.m., had no night duty staff and made no recordings. Officers in the Police Headquarters Information and Command Centre could continue to view the pictures shown by the traffic camera in real time but could not control it. The subject of the CCTV cameras is dealt with in Chapter 5 of the Operation Paget report. It was also found that a photograph that was published in a book by David Cohen Diana: Death of a Goddess and captioned as having been taken just before the car entered the tunnel was in fact taken by a photographer as the car left the back of the Paris Ritz. White Fiat Uno and James Andanson Analysis of the wreckage of the Mercedes revealed it had glancing contact with a white Fiat Uno car which left traces of paint on the Mercedes bodywork. Extensive attempts by the French police to find the vehicle involved were unsuccessful. Although no one had seen the Fiat in the tunnel, some witnesses reported seeing an Uno exiting the tunnel. Mohamed Al-Fayed alleged in his July 2005 statement to Operation Paget, and at other times, that the white Fiat Uno was being used by MI6 as a means of causing the Mercedes to swerve and thereby crash into the side of the tunnel. Al-Fayed further alleged that the Fiat Uno was owned by a French photojournalist named Jean-Paul James Andanson, a security services agent according to Al-Fayed, who had photographed Diana while she was at his villa in St. Tropez in July 1997. Andanson's death in May 2000, Al-Fayed claimed, was either due to guilt over what he had done or because he was assassinated by the French or British security services to silence him. Operation Paget found that the white Fiat Uno Andanson owned was in an unroadworthy condition, being nine years old at the time, with 325,000 kilometres (202,000 mi) on the odometer (suggesting that the car had been driven 27,000 miles per annum) and had not been maintained for several years prior. Andanson's neighbours confirmed the veracity of this evidence. Andanson had sold the car in October 1997. Operation Paget concluded it was extremely unlikely due to the car's condition and the fact Andanson had so openly disposed of it that it was the one at the scene of the crash in Paris. French police had examined Andanson's car as part of their effort to trace the one that had come into contact with the Mercedes with a view to prosecuting the driver for failing to render assistance and had reached the same conclusion. The French police spent a year after the crash searching for the vehicle and eliminated over 4,000 white Fiat Unos from their inquiry. Operation Paget decided it would be unlikely that renewed enquiries would identify the vehicle involved, as such a long period had elapsed since the crash. It concluded the threat of prosecution for a custodial offence probably deterred the driver from coming forward at the time. A retired major in the French Brigade Criminelle, Jean Claude Mules, gave evidence to the inquest in February 2008. Andanson had been interviewed by French police in February 1998, and had been able to provide documentary evidence about his movements on the previous 30th and 31st of August which had satisfied them that he could not have been the driver of the Fiat Uno involved. These demonstrated that Andanson could only have been at his home in Lignieres, 177 mi (285 km) from Paris, at the time of the crash. Elizabeth, his widow, said at the London inquest in February 2008 that her husband had been at home in bed with her at the time of the crash. Andanson died in May 2000. The official verdict was suicide. His body was found in a black, burnt-out BMW in a forest near the town of Nant, near Millau, in Southern France. Andanson's death was attributed to problems in his private life. The 2008 inquest into the death of the Princess of Wales heard that evidence was uncovered from his friends and associates that prior to his death he had talked of suicide by pouring petrol in a car and lighting a cigar, as noted by Richard Horwell QC, for the Metropolitan Commissioner. The Paget report states that when the car was found, Andanson's body was in the driver's seat of the car, and his head was detached and lay between the front seats. There was a hole in his left temple. The French pathologist concluded this hole was caused by the intense heat of the fire rather than, for example, a bullet wound. Operation Paget found no evidence Andanson was known to any security service and, contrary to Al-Fayed's claims, his death was thoroughly investigated by French police (although the whereabouts of the car keys has never been explained). A break-in at his former workplace in June 2000 alleged to have been carried out by security services was found to be unconnected to his death, as no items related to him were stolen. It has been reported by numerous publications that the white Fiat Uno belonged to Le Van Thanh, a taxi driver who was 22 years old at the time of the crash. Multiple witnesses recall seeing a man matching his description exit the tunnel seconds after the crash. Georges and Sabine Dauzonne identified Thanh as "the agitated man they may have seen driving the car". Thanh owned a white Fiat Uno identical to the one that struck the Princess of Wales' Mercedes. French investigators had narrowed it down from the original 4,000 registered (along with Andanson's) as having the Bianco Corfu 224 paint scheme and manufactured from 1983 to September 1987. Chemical analysis showed that the original paint was “compatible with the white traces seen on the Mercedes.” Following tests, it was concluded that the car "could have been involved in the accident". He was questioned only once on November 13, 1997, by French detectives at his apartment in Clichy, north of Paris and has always refused any further interview requests. Thanh told French investigators that he was on shift at the time of the crash as a night-shift security guard at a Renault factory in Gennevilliers. He said another man was working with him, but he “couldn't recall his name”, which led to him being ruled out as a suspect. Critics of the investigation claim that the French police never verified his alibi. It was later uncovered that he left work early that night and could have been visiting his father's home near the Alma tunnel. When investigators questioned Thanh about his car being re-sprayed red from the original white and having replacement bumpers, he claimed it was done a few hours prior to the crash. He refused to provide a reason for doing so. In 2006, Thanh's father said his son had re-sprayed his Uno red hours after the crash, allegedly waking up his mechanic brother in the night to help him. Bright flash An alternative explanation for the cause of the crash has been reports of a bright white flash just before the car entered the tunnel, blinding the driver. Richard Tomlinson made this allegation at the inquiry, but the veracity of his evidence was found wanting. It was found by the authorities that three eyewitnesses at the scene of the crash claimed to see a bright flash of light before the crash. François Levistre (originally François Levi) made a clear, specific claim that he saw a bright flash, but his three statements to the authorities were in conflict with each other. Both the French detectives investigating after the crash and later the officers who worked on Operation Paget rejected his evidence. With the Mercedes behind him, he claimed to have seen the flash in his rear-view mirror and recounted other elements of what he saw while he was negotiating the difficult bend out of the tunnel. Crucially, however, his testimony was directly contradicted by his then-wife, who was in the passenger seat next to him. However, eyewitness Brian Anderson, an American tourist, told detectives that he too saw a bright flash. French Police in 1997 were aware of Levistre's conviction in Rouen during 1989 for dishonesty and his subsequent prison sentence, and he was not thought by them to be a reliable witness. Television documentaries produced by Channel 4 in 2004 and the BBC in 2006 both raised this issue; he appeared as a witness at the British inquiry via a video link in October 2007. Diana: Secrets Behind the Crash (3 June 1998), an ITV programme presented by Nicholas Owen, then ITN's royal correspondent, gave enough weight to the claims of Levistre that 93% of viewers polled by the Mirror newspaper just after the broadcast believed there had been a bright flash of light at the time of the crash. The detail of eyewitness testimony was thoroughly reviewed and Operation Paget officers succeeded in uncovering two new witnesses. Other eyewitness testimony made little reference to the appearance of any inexplicable flashes at the crash site. Several witnesses who would be expected to have seen a blinding flash made no reference to one. In any event, the detailed crash reconstruction revealed that the chain of events that led to the car unavoidably colliding with the pillar started well before it was at the mouth of the tunnel where the flash is alleged to have occurred. Furthermore, a strobe light of the type that was alleged to have been used is so powerful that a flash emitted from it would have been bright enough to illuminate a very wide area. It would have likely blinded not only Paul, but also the driver of the white Fiat Uno, the pursuing paparazzi and witnesses standing at the road side. The Operation Paget report concluded that the alleged flash did not happen. Seat belt There was some media discussion in April 2006 suggesting that Diana was a faithful seat belt user and therefore the fact that both her and Dodi's seat belts either failed or were not used was sinister and might suggest sabotage. Her sister, Lady Sarah McCorquodale later said that Diana "was religious in putting on her seat belt". Other sources question if she did in fact use her seat belt all the time, as was suggested. "What is certain is that she was not wearing a seat belt and this made things worse. We would like to think that if she had been wearing a seat belt, we'd have been able to save her," said André Lienhart, who reviewed the emergency services' response for the French government investigation of the incident. CNN did an analysis of the crash in early September 1997 and concluded that injuries would have been minor had the occupants been wearing seat belts. The conclusions were provisional owing to limited data about the specific Mercedes model as the limousine was not sold in the US. The wreckage of the car was repatriated to England in 2005 by a forensic accident investigator from the Transport Research Laboratory of thirty-five years experience on behalf of Operation Paget; subsequent analysis found that all the seat belts were in good working order except for the right rear one which was attached to the seat Diana occupied. Follow up enquiries with French investigators found that they had declared all the seat belts operational at an examination in October 1997, suggesting the damage to this seat belt took place after the crash. The British inquest verdict explicitly stated that lack of seat belts had "caused or contributed to" the deaths of both Dodi and Diana. Transport to the hospital The first call to the emergency services' switchboard was logged at 12:26 a.m. The SAMU ambulance carrying the Princess arrived at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital at 2:06 a.m. The French system of emergency care adhered to the "stay and play" mantra, which meant that the patient needed to be stabilised first at a fully equipped medical ambulance before being directed to a specialised hospital that could treat his or her injuries, no matter how far away it was. Nevertheless, this length of time has prompted much conspiracy-related comment. The period between the crash and the arrival at the hospital takes into account the following: the time taken for emergency services to arrive; the time taken by the Sapeurs-Pompiers (fire service) of Paris to remove Diana from the damaged car; and the actual journey time from the crash site to the hospital. Police Officers Sébastien Dorzee and Lino Gagliadorne were the first emergency officials to arrive at the scene at around 12:30 a.m. Sergeants Xavier Gourmelom and Philippe Boyer of the Sapeurs-Pompiers arrived at around 12:32 a.m. Jean-Marc Martino, a specialist in anaesthetics and intensive care treatment and the doctor in charge of the SAMU ambulance, arrived at around 12:40 a.m. Diana was removed from the car at 1:00 a.m. She then went into cardiac arrest. Following external cardiopulmonary resuscitation, her heart started beating again. She was moved to the SAMU ambulance at 1:18 a.m. The ambulance departed from the crash scene at 1:41 a.m. and arrived at the hospital at 2:06 a.m.—a journey time of approximately 26 minutes. This included a stop at the Gare d'Austerlitz ordered by Martino because of the drop in the blood pressure of the Princess of Wales and the necessity of dealing with it. The ambulance was travelling slowly on his express instructions. The doctor was concerned about Diana's blood pressure and the effects on her medical condition of deceleration and acceleration. The SAMU ambulance carrying Diana passed the Hôtel-Dieu Hospital on the Ile de la Cité en route to the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital. The decision to transfer her to the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital was taken by Marc Lejay who was on despatch duty in SAMU Control on that night, in consultation with Dr Derossi, who was at the scene. The Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital was the main reception centre for multiple trauma patients in Paris. The Hôtel-Dieu was not equipped to deal with the injuries Diana had sustained. Lejay stated: "The Hôtel-Dieu hospital on the 'Ile de la Cité' is closer but not equipped with heart surgery teams or neurosurgical teams or teams trained to take patients with multiple injuries." Lejay was also aware that Bruno Riou was on duty at the Pitié-Salpêtrière that night and was particularly skilled to treat her injuries. Martino supported this view. Embalming of the body Mohamed Al-Fayed alleged that Diana's body was deliberately embalmed shortly after her death to ensure that any pregnancy test at the post-mortem would produce a false result. Robert Chapman, who carried out the post-mortem examination, stated that the embalming fluids would have had no effect on determining whether Diana was pregnant or not as the physical evidence would have been present in her womb and ovaries. Operation Paget found that 31 August 1997 was a very hot day in Paris. Diana's body had been stored in an empty room adjacent to the emergency room where she had been treated at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital, as the mortuary was on the other side of the hospital grounds and some distance away. Dry ice and air conditioning units were placed in the room to keep it cool but appeared to have had little success. Diana's two sisters and Prince Charles were scheduled to view the body later that afternoon before bringing it back to the United Kingdom. President Jacques Chirac and his wife also wished to pay their respects. This meant there was very little time to prepare the body for viewing, and it was deemed unacceptable to present Diana's body to her family and the President of France in the state it was in. Faced with this situation, the hospital staff decided to press ahead with embalming with only verbal authority from Martine Monteil, the local superintendent of police, who assured Jean Monceau "that everything would be in order". Under French law, paperwork must be completed before undertaking the embalming of any corpse likely to be subject to a post-mortem. This paperwork was completed, but only after the embalming had been carried out, giving rise to allegations of suspicious circumstances. The allegations were made despite there being no way the hospital staff could have known whether or not Diana was pregnant, as a pregnancy test would have been irrelevant to her post crash treatment and accordingly was not carried out. SAS The Court Martial of SAS Sniper Danny Nightingale led to a letter written by witness, Soldier N, and sent to his in-laws coming to wider attention. Soldier N, Nightingale's former roommate, was in prison for illegally hiding firearms and ammunition. On 17 August 2013, the Metropolitan Police announced they were reviewing evidence that Soldier N had boasted that the SAS were behind the death of Princess Diana. The parents of Soldier N's estranged wife reportedly wrote to the SAS's commanding officer, claiming Soldier N had told his wife the unit "arranged" Diana's death and it was "covered up". The information was reportedly passed onto Scotland Yard by the Royal Military Police. However, Scotland Yard stressed that this information would not lead to a re-investigation and that they were examining its "relevance and credibility". They also confirmed that Prince Charles and Mohamed Al-Fayed were being kept informed as preliminary examination progressed. At the end of November 2013, Scotland Yard ended its study of the SAS allegations and released a statement: "The Metropolitan Police Service has scoped the information and is in the process of drawing up conclusions, which will be communicated to the families and interested parties first, before any further comment can be made," On 16 December, it emerged from Sky News reports that there was "no credible evidence" that the SAS was involved in the death of the Princess and the others, and thus no reason to re-open the investigation. Popular culture See also Notes and references |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_Marilyn_Monroe#Conspiracy_theories] | [TOKENS: 7022] |
Contents Death of Marilyn Monroe On the evening of August 4, 1962, American actress Marilyn Monroe died at age 36 of a barbiturate overdose inside her home at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive in Brentwood, Los Angeles, California. Her body was discovered before dawn the following morning, on August 5. Monroe had been one of the most popular Hollywood stars during the 1950s and early 1960s, and was a top-billed actress for the preceding decade. Her films had grossed $200 million by the time of her death ($2.1 billion today). Monroe had suffered from mental illness and substance abuse, and she had not completed a film since The Misfits, released on February 1, 1961, which was a box-office disappointment. Monroe had spent 1961 preoccupied with her various health problems, and in April 1962 had begun filming Something's Got to Give for 20th Century Fox, but the studio fired her in early June. Fox publicly blamed Monroe for the production's problems, and in the weeks preceding her death she had attempted to repair her public image by giving several interviews to high-profile publications. She also began negotiations with Fox on being re-hired for Something's Got to Give and for starring roles in other productions. Monroe spent the day of her death, August 4, at her home in Brentwood. She was accompanied at various times by publicist Patricia Newcomb, housekeeper Eunice Murray, photographer Lawrence Schiller, and psychiatrist Ralph Greenson. At Greenson's request, Murray stayed overnight to keep Monroe company. At approximately 3 a.m. on Sunday, August 5, Murray noticed that Monroe had locked herself in her bedroom and appeared unresponsive when she looked inside through a window. Murray alerted Greenson, who arrived soon after, entered the room by breaking a window, and found Monroe dead. Her death was officially ruled a probable suicide by the Los Angeles County coroner's office, based on information about her overdosing and being prone to mood swings and suicidal thoughts. Despite the coroner's findings, several alternative theories suggesting murder or accidental overdose have been proposed since the mid-1960s. Many of these involve U.S. president John F. Kennedy and his brother Robert F. Kennedy, as well as union leader Jimmy Hoffa and mob boss Sam Giancana. Because of the prevalence of these theories in the media, the office of the Los Angeles County District Attorney reviewed the case in 1982 but found no evidence to support them and did not disagree with the findings of the original investigation. However, the report conceded that "factual discrepancies" and "unanswered questions" remained in the case. Background For several years heading into the early 1960s, Marilyn Monroe had been dependent on amphetamines, barbiturates and alcohol, and she experienced various mental health problems that included depression, anxiety, low self-esteem and chronic insomnia. Monroe had acquired a reputation for being difficult to work with, and she frequently delayed productions by being late to film sets in addition to having trouble remembering her lines. She also had an FBI file open since 1956 due to her "problematic" relationship with accused communist, author Arthur Miller. By 1960, Monroe's behavior was adversely affecting her career. For example, although she was the preferred choice of author Truman Capote to play Holly Golightly in the film adaptation of Breakfast at Tiffany's, Paramount Pictures declined to cast her due to fear that she would complicate the film's production. The last film Monroe completed, The Misfits (1961), was a commercial failure. During the filming she had had to spend a week detoxing in a hospital. Her third marriage, to Arthur Miller, also ended in divorce in January 1961. Instead of working, Monroe spent a large part of 1961 preoccupied with health problems and did not work on any new film projects. She underwent surgery for her endometriosis and a cholecystectomy, and spent four weeks in hospital care—including a brief stint in a mental ward—for depression.[a] Later in 1961, she moved back to Los Angeles after six years in Manhattan; she purchased a Spanish hacienda-style house at 12305 Fifth Helena Drive in Brentwood. In early 1962, she received a "World Film Favorite" Golden Globe award and began to shoot a new film, Something's Got to Give, a remake of My Favorite Wife (1940). Days before filming began, Monroe caught sinusitis; the studio, 20th Century Fox, was advised to postpone the production, but the advice was not heeded and filming began on schedule in late April. Monroe was too ill to work for the majority of the next six weeks, but despite confirmations by multiple doctors, Fox tried to pressure her by publicly alleging that she was faking her symptoms. On May 19, Monroe took a break from filming to sing "Happy Birthday" on stage at U.S. President John F. Kennedy's birthday celebration at Madison Square Garden ten days before his actual birthday. This caused a great amount of publicity for Monroe, but also significant speculation about an extramarital affair with the president and concerns from government agents. After Monroe returned to Los Angeles, she resumed filming and celebrated her 36th birthday on the set of Something's Got to Give on June 1. She was again absent for several days, which led Fox to fire her on June 7 and sue her for breach of contract, demanding $750,000 in damages. Monroe was replaced by Lee Remick, but after co-star Dean Martin refused to make the film with anyone other than Monroe, Fox sued him as well and shut down the production. Fox publicly blamed Monroe's drug dependency and alleged lack of professionalism for the demise of the film, even claiming that she was mentally disturbed.[b] To counter the negative publicity, Monroe gave interviews to several high-profile publications, such as Life, Cosmopolitan and Vogue, during the last weeks of her life. In 1961, the magazine Time wrote that "in seeking help, she may have done more than the psychiatrists to win popular acceptance of a more modern view of mental illness and treatment for it". After successfully renegotiating her contract with Fox, filming with Monroe was scheduled to resume in September on Something's Got to Give, and she made plans for starring in What a Way to Go! (1964) as well as a biopic about Jean Harlow. Timeline Monroe spent the last day of her life, Saturday, August 4, 1962, at her Brentwood home. In the morning, she met photographer Lawrence Schiller to discuss the possibility of Playboy publishing nude photos taken of her on the set of Something's Got to Give. She also received a massage from her personal massage therapist, talked with friends on the phone, and signed for deliveries. Also present at the house that morning were her housekeeper, Eunice Murray, and her publicist Patricia Newcomb, who had stayed overnight. According to Newcomb, they had an argument because Monroe had not slept well the night before. At 4:30 p.m. PDT, Monroe's psychiatrist Ralph Greenson arrived at the house to conduct a therapy session and asked Newcomb to leave. Before Greenson left at around 7:00 p.m., he asked Murray to stay overnight and keep Monroe company. At approximately 7:00-7:15 p.m., Monroe received a call from Joe DiMaggio Jr., with whom she had stayed close since her divorce from his father, the elder Joe DiMaggio. DiMaggio told Monroe that he had broken up with a girlfriend she did not like, and he detected nothing alarming in Monroe's behavior. At around 7:40–7:45, Monroe telephoned Greenson to tell him the news about the breakup of DiMaggio and his girlfriend. Monroe retired to her bedroom at around 8:00 p.m. She received a call from actor Peter Lawford, brother-in-law of President Kennedy, who was hoping to persuade her to attend his party that night. Lawford became alarmed because Monroe sounded like she was under the influence of drugs. She allegedly told him, "Say goodbye to Pat, say goodbye to the president, and say goodbye to yourself, because you're a nice guy", before drifting off. Unable to reach her again, Lawford called his agent Milton Ebbins, who unsuccessfully tried to reach Greenson and later called Monroe's lawyer, Milton A. "Mickey" Rudin. Rudin called Monroe's house and was assured by Murray that she was fine. At approximately 3:30 a.m. on Sunday, August 5, Murray woke up "sensing that something was wrong" and saw light from under Monroe's bedroom door, but she was not able to get a response and found the door locked. Murray telephoned Greenson, on whose advice she looked in through a window, and saw Monroe lying facedown on her bed, nude and covered by a sheet and clutching a telephone receiver. Greenson arrived shortly thereafter. He entered the room by breaking a window and found Monroe dead. He called her physician, Hyman Engelberg, who arrived at the house at around 3:50 a.m. and officially confirmed the death. At 4:25 a.m., they notified the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). Inquest and 1982 review Deputy coroner Thomas Noguchi conducted Monroe's autopsy on the same day that she was found dead, Sunday, August 5. The Los Angeles County coroner's office was assisted in the inquest by psychiatrists Norman Farberow, Robert Litman, and Norman Tabachnik from the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Center, who interviewed Monroe's doctors and psychiatrists on her mental state. Based on the advanced state of rigor mortis at the time her body was discovered, it was estimated that she had died between 8:30 and 10:30 p.m. on August 4. The toxicological analysis concluded that the cause of death was acute barbiturate poisoning; she had 8 mg% (mg/dl) of chloral hydrate and 4.5 mg% of pentobarbital (Nembutal) in her blood and a further 13 mg% of pentobarbital in her liver. The police found empty bottles of these medicines next to her bed. There were no signs of external wounds or bruises on the body. The findings of the inquest were published on August 17; Chief Coroner Theodore Curphey classified Monroe's death a "probable suicide." The possibility of an accidental overdose was ruled out because the dosages found in her body were several times over the lethal limit and had been taken "in one gulp or in a few gulps over a minute or so." At the time of her death, Monroe was reported to have been in a "depressed mood", and had been "unkempt" and uninterested in maintaining her appearance. No suicide note was found, but Litman stated that this was not unusual, because statistics showed that less than forty percent of suicide victims left notes. In their final report, Farberow, Litman, and Tabachnik stated: Miss Monroe had suffered from psychiatric disturbance for a long time. She experienced severe fears and frequent depressions. Mood changes were abrupt and unpredictable. Among symptoms of disorganization, sleep disturbance was prominent, for which she had been taking sedative drugs for many years. She was thus familiar with and experienced in the use of sedative drugs and well aware of their dangers ... In our investigation we have learned that Miss Monroe had often expressed wishes to give up, to withdraw, and even to die. On more than one occasion in the past, she had made a suicide attempt, using sedative drugs. On these occasions, she had called for help and had been rescued. It is our opinion that the same pattern was repeated on the evening of Aug. 3 except for the rescue. It has been our practice with similar information collected in other cases in the past to recommend a certification for such deaths as probable suicide. Additional clues for suicide provided by the physical evidence are the high level of barbiturates and chloral hydrate in the blood which, with other evidence from the autopsy, indicates the probable ingestion of a large amount of drugs within a short period of time: the completely empty bottle of Nembutal, the prescription for which (25 capsules) was filled the day before the ingestion, and the locked door to the bedroom, which was unusual. In the 1970s, claims surfaced that Monroe's death was a murder and not suicide. Due to these claims, Los Angeles County District Attorney John Van de Kamp assigned his colleague Ronald H. "Mike" Carroll to conduct a 1982 "threshold investigation" to see whether a criminal investigation should be opened. Carroll worked with Alan B. Tomich, an investigator for the district attorney's office, for over three months on an inquiry that resulted in a thirty-page report. They did not find any credible evidence to support the theory that Monroe was murdered. In 1983, Noguchi published his memoirs, in which he discussed Monroe's case and the allegations of discrepancies in the autopsy and the coroner's ruling of suicide. These included the claims that Monroe could not have ingested the pills because her stomach was empty; that Nembutal capsules should have left yellow residue; that she may have been administered an enema; and that the autopsy noted no needle marks despite the fact that she routinely received injections from her doctors. Noguchi explained that hemorrhaging of the stomach lining indicated that the medication had been administered orally, and that because Monroe had been an addict for several years the pills would have been absorbed more rapidly than in the case of non-addicts. Noguchi also denied that Nembutal leaves dye residue, and he noted that only very recent needle marks are visible on a body, and that the only bruise he noted on Monroe's body, on her lower back, was superficial and its placement indicated that it was accidental and not linked to foul play. Noguchi finally concluded that based on his observations, the most probable conclusion is that Monroe committed suicide. Public reactions and funeral Monroe's unexpected death was front-page news in the United States and Europe. According to biographer Lois Banner, "it's said that the suicide rate in Los Angeles doubled the month after she died; the circulation rate of most newspapers expanded that month." The Chicago Tribune reported that they had received hundreds of phone calls from members of the public requesting information about her death. French filmmaker Jean Cocteau commented that her death "should serve as a terrible lesson to all those, whose chief occupation consists of spying on and tormenting film stars", her former co-star Laurence Olivier deemed her "the complete victim of ballyhoo and sensation", and Bus Stop director Joshua Logan stated that she was "one of the most unappreciated people in the world". Monroe's funeral was held on August 8 at the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery, where her foster parents Ana Lower and Grace McKee Goddard had also been buried. The service was arranged by her former husband Joe DiMaggio, her half-sister Berniece Baker Miracle and her business manager Inez Melson, who decided to invite only around thirty of her closest family members and friends, excluding most of the entertainment industry people who had worked with Monroe. Police were present to keep away journalists and photographers and to control the several hundred spectators who crowded the streets around the cemetery. The funeral service, presided over by a local minister, was conducted at the cemetery's chapel. Monroe was laid out in a green Emilio Pucci dress and held a bouquet of small pink roses. Her longtime make-up artist and friend, Allan "Whitey" Snyder, had done her make-up. The eulogy was delivered by her acting coach Lee Strasberg, and a selection from Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony as well as a record of Judy Garland singing "Over the Rainbow" were played. Monroe was interred at crypt No. 24 at the Corridor of Memories. DiMaggio arranged for red roses to be placed in a vase attached to the crypt three times a week; twenty years later he canceled that arrangement. In 1992, Hugh Hefner paid $75,000 to be interred at Westwood Memorial Park, in the crypt beside Monroe's. In 2009, he said to the Los Angeles Times: "Spending eternity next to Marilyn is an opportunity too sweet to pass up." In 2022 The Independent referred to her death as a "global obsession". Administration of estate In her will, Monroe left several thousand dollars to her half-sister Berniece Baker Miracle and her secretary May Reis, a share for the education of her friend Norman Rosten's daughter, and established a $100,000 trust fund to cover the costs of the care of her birth mother, Gladys Pearl Baker, and the widow of her acting teacher Michael Chekhov. From the remaining estate she granted twenty-five percent to her former psychiatrist Marianne Kris "for the furtherance of the work of such psychiatric institutions or groups as she shall elect", and seventy-five percent, including her personal effects, film royalties and real estate, to Strasberg, whom she instructed to distribute her effects "among my friends, colleagues and those to whom I am devoted". Due to legal complications, the beneficiaries were not paid until 1971. When Strasberg died in 1982, his estate was willed to his widow Anna, who claimed Monroe's publicity rights and began to license her image to companies. In 1990, she unsuccessfully sued the Anna Freud Centre, to which Kris had bequeathed her Monroe rights, in an attempt to gain full rights to Monroe's estate. In 1996, Anna Strasberg hired CMG Worldwide, a celebrity-legacy licensing group, to manage the licensing rights. Anna Strasberg went on to prevent Odyssey Group, Inc. from auctioning effects that Monroe's business manager Inez Melson, who had also been named Monroe's special administrator of estate, handed down to her nephew, Millington Conroy. Between 1996 and 2001, CMG entered into 700 licensing agreements with merchandisers. Against Monroe's wishes, Lee Strasberg had never distributed her effects amongst her friends, and in 1999 Anna commissioned Christie's to auction them, netting $13.4 million. In 2000, she founded Marilyn Monroe LLC. Marilyn Monroe LLC's claim to exclusive ownership of Monroe's publicity rights became subject to a "landmark [legal] case" in 2006, when the heirs of three freelance photographers who had photographed her—Sam Shaw, Milton Greene, and Tom Kelley—successfully challenged the company in courts in California and New York State. In May 2007, the courts determined that Monroe could not have passed her publicity rights to her estate, as the first law granting such right, the California Celebrities Rights Act, was not passed until 1985.[c] Monroe's estate terminated their business relationship with CMG Worldwide in 2010, and sold the licensing rights to Authentic Brands Group the following year. Also in 2010, the estate sold Monroe's Brentwood home for $3.8 million, and published a selection of her private notes, diaries and correspondence as a book called Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters. Conspiracy theories During the 1960s, there were no widespread conspiracy theories about Monroe's death. The first allegations that she had been murdered originated in anti-communist activist Frank A. Capell's self-published pamphlet The Strange Death of Marilyn Monroe (1964), in which he claimed that her death was part of a communist conspiracy. Capell claimed that Monroe and U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy had an affair, and that Monroe had threatened to cause a scandal, leading Kennedy to order her to be assassinated. In addition to accusing Kennedy of being a communist sympathizer, Capell also claimed that many other people close to Monroe, such as her doctors and ex-husband Arthur Miller, were communists. Capell's credibility has been seriously questioned because his only source was columnist Walter Winchell, who in turn had received much of his information from Capell; Capell, therefore, was citing himself. Capell's friend, LAPD Sergeant Jack Clemmons, aided him in developing his pamphlet; Clemmons, who was the first police officer on the scene of Monroe's death, became a central source for conspiracy theorists. He later made claims that he had not mentioned in the official 1962 investigation: he alleged that when he arrived at Monroe's house, Murray was washing her sheets in the laundry, and he had "a sixth sense" that something was wrong. Capell and Clemmons' allegations have been linked to their political goals. Capell dedicated his life to revealing an "International Communist Conspiracy" and Clemmons was a member of the Police and Fire Research Organization (FiPo), which sought to expose "subversive activities which threaten our American way of life". FiPo and similar organizations were known for their stance against the Kennedys and for sending letters to the FBI incriminating them; a 1964 FBI file that speculated on an affair between Monroe and Robert F. Kennedy is likely to have come from them. Furthermore, Capell, Clemmons, and a third person were indicted in 1965 by a California grand jury for "conspiracy to libel by obtaining and distributing a false affidavit" claiming that U.S. Senator Thomas Kuchel had once been arrested for a homosexual act in retaliation for Kuchel's support of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Capell pleaded guilty, and charges against Clemmons were dropped after he resigned from the LAPD. In the 1960s, Monroe's death was also discussed in Charles Hamblett's Who Killed Marilyn Monroe? (1966) and in James A. Hudson's The Mysterious Death of Marilyn Monroe (1968). Neither Capell's, Hamblett's, or Hudson's accounts were widely disseminated. The allegations of murder first became part of mainstream discussion with the publication of Norman Mailer's Marilyn: A Biography in 1973. Despite not having any evidence, Mailer repeated the claim that Monroe and Robert F. Kennedy had an affair and speculated that she was killed by either the FBI or the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), who wished to use the murder as a "point of pressure ... against the Kennedys". The book was heavily criticized in reviews, and later that year Mailer recanted his allegations in an interview with Mike Wallace for 60 Minutes, stating that he had made them to ensure commercial success for his book, and that he believes Monroe's death was "ten to one" an "accidental suicide". Two years later, Robert F. Slatzer published The Life and Curious Death of Marilyn Monroe (1975), based on Capell's pamphlet. In addition to his assertion that Monroe was killed by Robert F. Kennedy, Slatzer also controversially claimed to have been married to Monroe in Mexico for three days in October 1952, and that they had remained close friends until her death. Although his account was not widely circulated at the time, it has remained central to conspiracy theories. In October 1975, music journalist Anthony Scaduto published an article about Monroe's death in soft porn magazine Oui, and the following year expanded his account into book form as Who Killed Marilyn Monroe? (1976), published under the pen name Tony Sciacca. His only sources were Slatzer and his private investigator, Milo Speriglio. In addition to repeating Slatzer's claims, Scaduto alleged that Monroe had kept a red diary in which she had written confidential political information she had heard from the Kennedys, and that her house had been wiretapped by surveillance expert Bernard Spindel on the orders of union leader Jimmy Hoffa, who was hoping to obtain incriminating information against the Kennedys. In 1982, Speriglio published Marilyn Monroe: Murder Cover-Up, in which he claimed that Monroe had been murdered by Hoffa and mob boss Sam Giancana. Basing his account on Slatzer and Scaduto's books, Speriglio added statements made by Lionel Grandison, who worked at the Los Angeles County coroner's office at the time of Monroe's death. Grandison claimed that Monroe's body had been extensively bruised but this had been omitted from the autopsy report, and that he had seen the "red diary", but it had mysteriously disappeared. Speriglio and Slatzer demanded that the investigation into Monroe's death be re-opened by authorities, and the Los Angeles District Attorney agreed to review the case. The new investigation could not find any evidence to support the murder claims. Grandison was found not to be a reliable witness as he had been fired from the coroner's office for stealing from corpses. The allegations that Monroe's home was wiretapped by Spindel were also found to be false. Spindel's apartment had been raided by the Manhattan District Attorney's office in 1966, during which his tapes were seized. Spindel later made a claim that he had wiretapped Monroe's house, but it was not supported by the contents of the tapes, to which the investigators had listened. The most prominent Monroe biographer in the 1980s was British journalist Anthony Summers, who wrote that Monroe's death was an accidental overdose enabled and covered up by Robert F. Kennedy. His investigation on Monroe began as an assignment for the British tabloid the Sunday Express to cover the Los Angeles District Attorney's 1982 review. Summers' book, Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe (1985), became one of the most commercially successful Monroe biographies. Prior to writing on Monroe, he authored a book on the assassination of John F. Kennedy. According to Summers, Monroe had severe substance abuse problems and was psychotic in the last months of her life. He alleges that Monroe had affairs with both John and Robert Kennedy, and that when Robert ended their affair she threatened to reveal their association. Kennedy and Lawford attempted to prevent this by enabling her addictions. According to Summers, Monroe became hysterical and accidentally overdosed, dying in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. Kennedy wanted to leave Los Angeles before Monroe's death became public to avoid being associated with it, and therefore her body was returned to her bedroom and the overdose staged as a suicide by Lawford, the Kennedys and J. Edgar Hoover. Summers based his account on interviews he had conducted with 650 people connected to Monroe, but his research has been criticized by biographers Donald Spoto and Sarah Churchwell. According to Spoto, Summers contradicts himself, presents false information as fact, and misrepresents what some of Monroe's friends said about her. Churchwell writes that while Summers accumulated a large collection of anecdotal material, most of the allegations are speculation; many of the people he interviewed could provide only second- or third-hand accounts, and they "relate what they believe, not what they demonstrably know". Summers was also the first major biographer to find Slatzer a credible witness, and relies heavily on testimonies by other controversial witnesses, including Jack Clemmons and Jeanne Carmen, a model-actress whose claim to have been Monroe's close friend has been disputed by Spoto and Lois Banner. Summers' allegations formed the basis for the BBC documentary Marilyn: Say Goodbye to the President (1985), and for a 26-minute segment produced for ABC's 20/20. The 20/20 segment was never aired, as ABC President Roone Arledge decided that the claims made in it required more evidence to back them up. Summers claimed that Arledge's decision was influenced by pressure from the Kennedy family. In the 1990s, two new books alleged that Monroe was murdered: Peter Brown and Patte Barham's Marilyn: The Last Take (1992) and Donald H. Wolfe's The Last Days of Marilyn Monroe (1998). Neither presented much new evidence but relied extensively on Capell and Summers as well as on discredited witnesses such as Grandison, Slatzer, Clemmons, and Carmen; Wolfe also did not provide any sources for many of his claims and disregarded many of the findings of the autopsy without explanation. In his 1993 biography of Monroe, Donald Spoto disputed the previous conspiracy theories but alleged that Monroe's death was an accidental overdose staged as a suicide. According to him, Monroe's doctors Greenson (psychiatrist) and Engelberg (personal physician) had been trying to stop her abuse of Nembutal. In order to monitor her drug use, they had agreed to never prescribe her anything without first consulting with each other. Monroe was able to persuade Engelberg to break his promise by lying to him that Greenson had agreed to it. She took several Nembutals on August 4 but did not tell this to Greenson, who prescribed her a chloral hydrate enema; the combination of these two drugs killed her. Afraid of the consequences, the doctors and Murray then staged the death as a suicide. Spoto argued that Monroe could not have been suicidal because she had reached a new agreement with Fox and because she was allegedly going to remarry DiMaggio. He based his theory of her death on alleged discrepancies in the police statements given by Monroe's housekeeper and doctors, a claim made by Monroe's publicist Arthur P. Jacobs's wife that he had been alerted of the death already at 10:30 p.m., as well as on claims made by prosecutor John Miner, who was involved in the official investigation. Miner had alleged that her autopsy revealed signs more consistent with an enema than oral ingestion. Miner's allegations that Monroe's death was not a suicide received more publicity in the 2000s, when he published transcripts that he claimed to have made from audiotapes that Monroe recorded shortly before her death. Miner claimed that Monroe gave the tapes to Greenson, who invited him to listen to them after her death. On the tapes, Monroe spoke of her plans for the future, which Miner argues is proof that she could not have killed herself. She also discussed her sex life and use of enemas; Miner alleged that Monroe was killed by an enema that was administered by Murray. Miner's allegations have received criticism. During the official review of the case by the district attorney in 1982, he told the investigators about the tapes, but did not mention that he had transcripts of them. Miner claimed that this was because Greenson had sworn him to silence. The tapes themselves have never been found, and Miner remains the only person to claim they existed. Greenson was already dead before Miner went public with them. Biographer Lois Banner knew Miner personally because they both worked at the University of Southern California; she further challenged the authenticity of the transcripts. Miner had once lost his license to practice law for several years, lied to Banner about having worked for the Kinsey Institute, and had gone bankrupt shortly before selling the alleged transcripts. He had first attempted to sell the transcripts to Vanity Fair, but when the magazine had asked him to show them to Summers in order to validate them, it had become apparent that he did not have them. The transcripts, which Miner sold to British author Matthew Smith, were therefore written several decades after he alleged to have listened to the tapes. Miner's claim that Monroe's housekeeper was in fact her nurse and administered her enemas on a regular basis is also not supported by evidence. Furthermore, Banner wrote that Miner had a personal obsession about enemas and practiced sadomasochism; she concluded that his theory about Monroe's death "represented his sexual interests" and was not based on evidence. Smith published the transcripts as part of his book Victim: The Secret Tapes of Marilyn Monroe (2003). He asserted that Monroe was murdered by the CIA due to her association with Robert F. Kennedy, as the agency wanted revenge for the Kennedys' handling of the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Smith had already written about the topic in his previous book, The Men Who Murdered Marilyn (1996). Noting that Smith included no footnotes in his 1996 book and only eight in Victim, Churchwell has called his account "a tissue of conjecture, speculation and pure fiction as documentary fact" and "arguably the least factual of all Marilyn lives". The Miner transcripts were also discussed in a 2005 Los Angeles Times article. In 2012, Monroe's niece, Mona Rae Miracle, disputed the conspiracy theories. She said Monroe had many appointments scheduled for August 5, 1962 including meetings with a 20th Century Fox producer and a lawyer to change her will. Miracle also said Monroe planned to remarry Joe DiMaggio, adding that her death was just an accident. Mike Rothmiller, who worked for 10 years in the LAPD including 5 years with the Organized Crime Intelligence Division (OCID), had direct personal access to hundreds of restricted LAPD files on exactly what happened at Marilyn Monroe's Californian home on August 5, 1962. Along with Douglas Thompson, he authored Bombshell: The Night Bobby Kennedy Killed Marilyn Monroe. He insists: "If I presented my evidence in any court of law, I'd get a conviction." Concerning the LAPD, by 1937, the LAPD was leading a vast intelligence operation wiretapping politicians, judges, and federal agents. This expanded to celebrities such that in the book L.A's Secret Police: Inside the Elite Spy Network, Rothmiller discusses how, during the 1970s and '80s, the OCID was more interested in celebrities and politicians than actual mobsters. For example, he was denied permission to meet a major mob informant in Las Vegas, while six officers were staked out at a politician's beach house because of possible homosexual activity.[better source needed] Notes References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nepalese_royal_massacre#Conspiracy_theories] | [TOKENS: 2319] |
Contents Nepalese royal massacre 2002 2003 2004 2005 The Nepalese royal massacre (also called Durbar Hatyakanda, दरबार हत्याकाण्ड) was a mass shooting which occurred on 1 June 2001 at the Narayanhiti Palace, the then-residence of the Nepali monarchy, resulting in the deaths of nine members of the royal family, including King Birendra and Queen Aishwarya. A government-appointed inquiry team named Crown Prince Dipendra as the perpetrator of the massacre. Dipendra was declared king following the death of his parents but was comatose after shooting himself at the scene; he died in a hospital three days later without regaining consciousness. Birendra's brother Gyanendra then became king. Background Birendra became king of Nepal in 1972 following the death of his father King Mahendra, inheriting an absolute monarchy known as the Panchayat system. After a referendum on restoring multi-party democracy was rejected in 1980, the 1990 People's Movement ended the Panchayat system and Birendra subsequently relinquished his executive powers. His role as a constitutional monarch made him very popular and well-respected by the Nepalese population. After Birendra's accession to the throne, the Shah dynasty began a custom of organising a private family dinner on the third Friday of each month in the Nepalese calendar, with different members exchanging hosting duties. The scheduled dinner event on 1 June 2001 was to be hosted by Dipendra at his residence, the Tribhuvan Sadan within the complex of the Narayanhiti Palace. All main members of the royal family were invited, except for Prince Gyanendra, who was in Chitwan. Dipendra's motive for the murders is unknown, and there are various theories. The most commonly cited theory links Dipendra's motive to his relationship with Devyani Rana, whom he had met in the United Kingdom and had been dating for several years. Some allege that the royal family had objected to their potential marriage due to her maternal family background and her father's political alliances. Devyani's mother was from the house of Scindia, the former ruling family of the Gwalior State whose members were lower-caste and allegedly far wealthier than the Nepalese monarchs. The prospective bride's mother warned her daughter that marrying the Nepalese crown prince might mean a drop in her standard of living. Another theory states that there was a higher possibility of Indian influence if Dipendra were to be married to Devyani, to which the palace objected. Other theories allege that Dipendra was unhappy with the country's shift from an absolute to a constitutional monarchy, and that too much power had been given away following the 1990 People's Movement. Events According to one recount of the events based on the official investigation and several eyewitness accounts, Dipendra arrived at the Tribhuvan Sadan in the evening and escorted guests to a billiard room within the palace. At the billiard room, Dipendra went under the influence of drugs and was removed and escorted to his apartment by relatives after "misbehaving" with one of the guests. Another version states that Birendra ordered him to be sent to the apartment after he failed to receive him at the venue. A testimony by Prince Paras, a cousin of Dipendra's, suggested that Dipendra had argued with his parents over his intention to marry Devyani. After being sent to his room, Dipendra conversed on the phone with Devyani, before returning to the billiard room wearing army fatigues and carrying a Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine gun. There, he opened fire, injuring Birendra in the neck and stomach, then returned with a Colt Commando carbine and ultimately shot him dead. Dipendra went on to kill eight other relatives, including his mother Queen Aishwarya; an uncle, Prince Dhirendra, who tried to persuade him to hand over his gun; and his brother Prince Nirajan, who was shielding Aishwarya in the garden. Dipendra slipped into a coma after shooting himself in the head. One of the eyewitness accounts said that the shooting took "no more than 15 minutes". The casualties were immediately taken to the Birendra military hospital in Chhauni, where Birendra, Aishwarya and Nirajan were pronounced dead on arrival. Dipendra's sister Princess Shruti died of blood loss resulting from her injuries shortly after arriving at the hospital. Prince Dhirendra succumbed to his injuries three days after the massacre. The deaths of King Birendra, Queen Aishwarya and Prince Nirajan were not officially announced until the following day at 13:30 (UTC+05:45). After confirming Birendra's death, the Raj Parishad (royal privy council) announced the proclamation of Dipendra, who was being treated at the military hospital, as king and the appointment of Gyanendra, the closest surviving relative in the line of succession, as his regent. The deceased members of the royal family were given a state funeral and were cremated in front of Pashupatinath Temple. Dipendra died in the early morning of 4 June and Gyanendra was subsequently proclaimed king. His coronation and Dipendra's cremation took place later that day. Aftermath On 12 June 2001, a Hindu katto ceremony was held to exorcise or banish the spirit of the dead king from Nepal. A Hindu priest, Durga Prasad Sapkota, dressed as Birendra to symbolise the late king, rode an elephant out of Kathmandu and into symbolic exile, taking many of the monarch's belongings with him. A second katto ceremony was held for Dipendra on 14 June. The massacre added to the political turmoil caused by the Maoist insurgency. Following the ascension of Gyanendra, the monarchy lost much of the approval of the Nepalese populace. Some[who?] say this massacre was the pivotal point that ended the monarchy in Nepal. Casualties Birendra, Aishwarya and their children were killed, as were three of Birendra's siblings (Princess Shanti, Princess Sharada and Prince Dhirendra), Birendra's cousin Princess Jayanti, and one of Birendra's brothers-in-law (Kumar Khadga, who was married to Princess Sharada). Princess Komal, the future queen consort, was also severely injured and was hospitalised for four weeks following the massacre. Reactions Members of the Nepali public reacted in shock and mourning to the killing of Birendra and his immediate family, with many demanding an explanation for the motive of the shooting. The funeral procession of the royal couple was attended by tens of thousands, and the government declared thirteen days of mourning, in accordance with Hindu custom, which also required men to shave their heads as a mark of respect. Flags in Nepal were also lowered to half-mast and access to radio and television media was restricted. Deputy Prime Minister Ram Chandra Poudel described the event as a "national disaster", after making a public statement about Dipendra's role in the massacre. Protests continued during Gyanendra's coronation ceremony on 4 June, resulting in six deaths from police gunfire and arrests of hundreds suspected to be Maoists. A curfew was subsequently declared in Kathmandu. Travel warnings were issued for British and American citizens intending to travel to Nepal due to the violence. Leaders and representatives of several countries expressed condolences in response to the deaths of King Birendra and Queen Aishwarya. Some media outlets described the massacre as the highest-profile murder of a royal family since the Russian Romanov family was executed in 1918. Investigation Gyanendra initially maintained that the deaths were the result of an "accidental discharge of an automatic weapon" within the royal palace. Later, he said that he made this claim due to "legal and constitutional hurdles" since under the constitution and by tradition, Dipendra could not have been charged with murder had he survived. A two-man committee comprising Chief Justice Keshav Prasad Upadhyaya and Speaker of the House Taranath Ranabhat carried out a week-long investigation concerning the massacre. The investigation concluded, after interviewing more than a hundred people including eyewitnesses and palace officials, guards, and staff, that Dipendra was the perpetrator of the shooting. Conspiracy theories Gyanendra's wife Komal and their children Prince Paras and Princess Prerana were present at the royal palace during the massacre. While the entire families of Birendra and Dipendra were killed, nobody in Gyanendra's family died—his son escaped with slight injuries, and his wife sustained a life-threatening bullet wound but survived. Much controversy surrounded the circumstances of the massacre, including the apparent lack of security at the dinner, the absence of Gyanendra, and Dipendra's self-inflicted head-wound located at his left temple, although he was right-handed. These factors, coupled with Birendra's and Dipendra's popularity, gave rise to conspiracy theories. Some eyewitness statements released since the massacre alleged that "multiple people with the mask of the Crown Prince Dipendra were present in the room at one point", that the bodies of some of the royal family members were found elsewhere in the palace and not the dining hall, or that Dipendra was one of the first ones to be shot. There is a book titled "Raktakunda" based on interviews of two palace maids which details these theories. Promoters of these ideas alleged Gyanendra had a hand in the massacre so that he could assume the throne himself. His ascent to the throne would have been possible only if both of his nephews, Dipendra and Nirajan, were removed from the line of succession. Moreover, Gyanendra and his son Prince Paras were very unpopular. An eyewitness of the royal massacre, Lal Bahadur Magar, who was one of Dipendra's bodyguards, claimed that Paras perpetrated the massacre. During a public gathering, Pushpa Kamal Dahal, the chairman of the Nepalese Maoist Party, alleged that the massacre was planned by the Indian Research and Analysis Wing or the American Central Intelligence Agency. Claims circulated in Nepalese media hypothesized that the perpetrator was not Dipendra but an individual who wore a mask to disguise himself as Dipendra; that Paras broke and threw away Dipendra's ventilator in hospital; that 900 were killed in the palace that night and the purpose of the curfews was to allow the disposal of their bodies; or that the public water supply and milk had been poisoned in Kathmandu. Conspiracy theories also blamed Ketaki Chester, Upendra Devkota, or the Nepalese army for the massacre. However, no reliable evidence have been found for these claims. Another theory, which alleged that Dipendra was not allowed to marry while under the age of 35 due to astrological reasons, was refuted by a royal astrologer. In popular culture See also References Bibliography External links California drought manipulation |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theories_about_the_kidnapping_and_murder_of_Aldo_Moro] | [TOKENS: 14173] |
Contents Conspiracy theories about the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro On May 9, 1978, Aldo Moro, a Christian Democracy (DC) statesman who advocated for a Historic Compromise with the Italian Communist Party, (PCI), was murdered after 55 days of captivity by the Red Brigades (BR), a far-left terrorist organization. Although the courts established that the BR had acted alone, conspiracy theories related to the Moro case persist because it is an undeniable historical fact that the assassination of Aldo Moro ended the possibility of communism co-governing one of the main economies of the West, something that neither Washington nor Moscow wanted. Much of the conspiracy theories allege additional involvement, from the Italian government itself, its secret services being involved with the BR, and the Propaganda Due (P2) to the CIA and Henry Kissinger, and Mossad and the KGB. Because there remains several unclear aspects and it is widely acknowledged, including by the judges themselves, that there were failures on the part of the police, conspiracy theories are widely popular despite five trials in Rome's Court of Assizes that ended with many life sentences and two parliamentary commissions, among others inquiries. Conspiracy theorists hold that Moro, a progressive who wanted the PCI to be part of government, was ultimately sacrificed due to Cold War politics, that both sides welcomed his kidnapping, and that, by refusing to negotiate, they led to his death. The judges investigating the Moro affair dismissed these conspiracy theories, arguing that there is no evidence to support those interpretations of the Moro murder case, and while acknowledging that Moro had powerful political enemies, they insisted that conspiracy theorists had made too many assumptions. At the same time the judicial truth has changed several times and the last parliamentary commission, that concluded its works in 2018, established that the sentences were based mainly on the confession of Valerio Moretti and that the elements in open contradiction with his version, i.e. where the cars were left after the kidnapping, were downplayed. Twenty years after Moro's death, such conspiracy theories remained popular. Few Italians believed in the official version of the Moro affair, namely that only the Red Brigades bore responsibility for Moro's murder and that the Italian government did its best to save Moro. In August 2020, about sixty individuals from the world of historical research and political inquiry signed a document denouncing the growing weight that the conspiratorial view on the kidnapping and killing of Moro has in public discourse. Alleged involvement of the P2, Gladio, and the Italian intelligence services Several authorities have suggested that P2 was involved in the kidnapping of Moro, and that the actions of the P2 were already known before Moro's death, and before the public revelation of the P2's existence in March 1981. The name of Andreotti has been repeatedly associated with numerous members of the P2, notably with the Italian mafia banker Michele Sindona and its founder Licio Gelli, with whom he was well acquainted. The P2 was a secret Masonic lodge involved in numerous financial and political scandals in Italy in the 1970s and 1980s and that featured as its members entrepreneurs, journalists, numerous high exponents of right-wing parties, the Italian police and military forces. Among others, they included future prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, the Carabinieri general Carlo Alberto dalla Chiesa (who made an admission request whose result is unknown), Vito Miceli (chief of SIOS), Sindona, and Vittorio Emanuele di Savoia, the pretender to the throne of Italy. Many high-ranking secret services members were also members of the P2, as were members of the committee that had to coordinate the searches for Moro. Another theory supposes that the BR had been infiltrated by the CIA or by the Operation Gladio, a paramilitary clandestine network headed by NATO whose main task was to oppose Soviet influence in Western Europe, including the rise of the PCI and their road to government. All documents related to the P2 were published on 7 May 1981. The P2 was dissolved in 1982, with a law that also made the establishment of secret lodges with similar purposes illegal in Italy. Gelli, who since 2005 was no longer put on house arrest, said that the P2 was acquitted in the three levels of trial of the charges of conspiracy against the state, and Italian Freemasons cite the Strasbourg Court, which in 2001 condemned the Italian government for having violated the right of association guaranteed by the Article 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights with a law that required some public officials to declare their membership of a lodge. Most historians agree that the role of this deviant Freemasonry has not been completely clarified. During the days of Moro's imprisonment, journalist Carmine Pecorelli wrote in his magazine Osservatorio politico [it] an article entitled "Vergogna, buffoni!" ("Shame on you, clowns!"). In it, he wrote that Andreotti had met dalla Chiesa, who told him that he knew the location where Moro was kept but did not obtain the authorization to proceed to free him due to, in Pecorelli's words, a certain "Christ's lodge in Paradise", which analysts immediately identified with the P2. The likely allusion to the P2 became clear after the discovery of a list of the lodge members on 17 March 1981. Members of the lodge occupied important institutional positions and included Giuseppe Santovito [it], who was director of SISMI (Italy's military intelligence agency); prefect Walter Pelosi [it], who was director of CESIS; general Giulio Grassini [it] of SISDE; admiral Antonino Geraci, who was the commander of SIOS; Federico Umberto D'Amato, who was director of the Office of Reserved Affairs of the Ministry of the Interiors [it]; generals Raffaele Giudice [it] and Donato Lo Prete [it], who were respectively commander and chief-of-staff of the Guardia di Finanza; and the Carabinieri general Giuseppe Siracusano [it], who was responsible for road blocks in the capital during the investigations of the Moro affair. According to Vincenzo Cappelletti (a professor who took part in the crisis committees), Franco Ferracuti [it], who was later discovered to be a P2 member and declared that Moro was suffering of the Stockholm syndrome towards his kidnappers, was close to the lodge during the kidnapping days, having been introduced by Grassini. Gelli declared that the presence of numerous P2 members in the committees was casual, since numerous personalities were members at the time, and this was simply a statistic reflected by the composition of the committees. According to Gelli, some members of the committees did not know that some of their colleagues were also part of the P2. On 16 March 1978, the day of Moro's kidnapping, the most important members of the P2 met in the Hotel Excelsior in Rome, which was a few hundred meters from the U.S. Embassy in Rome. While exiting the hotel, Gelli declared "the most difficult part is done". It was supposed that his words referred to the abduction of Moro. Another debated case was regarding the presence of Camillo Guglielmi [it], a colonel of SISMI's 7th Division that controlled Operation Gladio and who was nicknamed "Papà", in via Stresa near the location of the ambush, and in those exact minutes when the BR kidnapped Moro. His presence was kept secret and was only disclosed in 1990 during the investigation of the Italian Parliament's commission on state massacres (the stragi di Stato as part of the strategy of tension in Italy). Guglielmi admitted that he was in via Stresa but only because he had been invited to lunch by a colleague. According to several sources, the colleague confirmed that Guglielmi came to his house but had not been invited. Furthermore, Italians normally have lunch at around 12:30 and Guglielmi's presence at around 09:00 would not be justified. Other sources list Guglielmi as a true member of Gladio; he always firmly denied this accusation. His direct superior, the general Pietro Musumeci, was a member of the P2 and was condemned for sidetracking the investigations on the 1980 Bologna station bombing. The discovery of the BR refuge in via Gradoli saw the participation of members of both P2 and the police forces of Italy. Lucia Mokbel [it], an informer of SISDE, had communicated that she had heard Morse code messages coming from the flat next to her. It turned out that those noises interpreted as Morse were in fact coming from the electric typewriter used by the terrorists to type their demand letters. She informed the police commissar Elio Coppa [it], who was enlisted in the P2. When police agents went to the flat and knocked on the door, they did not attempt to enter it and left the place. SISDE had been also informed that a lock-up garage in via Gradoli had an antenna, allegedly used by the terrorist to communicate with the area of Lago della Duchessa [it]. Grassini, the head of SISDE and member of the P2, did not take any investigative measures. Investigations made by DIGOS discovered that several machines used by the terrorists to print their communications from one year before the kidnapping of Moro, which was financed by Mario Moretti, had been previously owned by the Italian state. These included a printer owned by the Raggruppamento Unità Speciali dell'Esercito [it]. Despite its relatively young age and its high value, it had been sold out as scrap. A photocopier was previously owned by the Italy's Ministry of Transportation, and was acquired in 1969 and later sold to Enrico Triaca [it], a member of the BR. The apartment in via Gradoli, which had been rented by Moretti under the pseudonym of Mario Borghi since 1978, and its building housed several apartments owned by SISDE men and one inhabited by a police confidant. During the days of the kidnapping, the palace was inspected by Carabinieri under the colonel Antonio Varisco [it], with the exclusion of Moretti's apartment; the official justification was that the Carabinieri were not authorized to enter the apartments if no one was inside. Luciana Bozzi [it], the owner of the apartment, was later discovered to be a friend of Giuliana Conforto [it], whose father was named in the Mitrokhin list of the KGB. Valerio Morucci and Adriana Faranda were eventually arrested in her flat. Pecorelli wrote a postcard to Moretti in 1977 from Ascoli Piceno (Moretti was born in the province of Ascoli), addressing it to one "Borghi at via Gradoli", with the message "Greetings, brrrr". In June 2008, the Venezuelan terrorist Ilich Ramírez Sánchez, best known as "Carlos the Jackal", spoke in an interview released to the Italian press agency ANSA declaring that several men of the SISMI, led by the colonel Stefano Giovannone [it] (who was considered near to Moro), negotiated at the airport in Beirut for his liberation during the night of 8 to 9 May 1978; the agreement would have endorsed the liberation of several imprisoned members of the BR to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in the territory of an Arabic country. According to Ramírez Sánchez, the agreement, which found the opposition of the SISMI leading figures, failed because news about it leaked to other Western secret services who, in turn, informed SISMI. Moro was killed the following day. Ramírez Sánchez stated that the officers involved in the attempt were all expelled from the services, being forced to resign or to go into compulsory retirement on a pension. Involvement of foreign powers Into the 21st century, the Moro affair continued to be a focus of Italian politics. In 2003, Philip Willan wrote for The Guardian: "Both Moscow and Washington opposed Moro's policy as dangerously destabilising for the postwar European order which the great powers sanction at the Yalta conference in 1945. Suspicion continues to this day that the CIA or KGB, possibly both, may have played a role in his violent removal from the political scene. At the very least, they did nothing to secure his release." Conspiracy theories related to the involvement of foreign powers implicate the CIA, Mossad, and the KGB, including within the BR. Declassified documents showed that foreign powers, such as Britain, were concerned about the PCI being part of the Italian government and discussed the possibility of a coup to remove the PCI, which they feared would win the 1976 Italian general election. Although there was no coup, the fact that Moro died two years later fuelled conspiracy theories. In 2005, Giovanni Galloni, the former national vice-secretary of the DC, said that, during a discussion with Moro about the difficulty to find the BR's bases, Moro told him that he knew of the presence of United States and Israeli intelligence agents infiltrated within the BR. The information obtained was not given to the Italian investigators. He also declared that the reason of the assassination of Pecorelli was the same information, perhaps coming from the United States. During an interview in front of the Italian Parliament's commission on terrorism, Galloni also stated that during his trip to the United States in 1976 he had been told that a government like that envisaged by Moro, which would have included the PCI, would be opposed at any cost by the Republican Party in the United States. According to Moro's widow and his collaborators, Moro's trip to the United States as foreign minister in 1974 and his meeting with Kissinger upset him so much that he thought of leaving politics. According to some collaborators of Moro, he was "very shaken by the meeting he had with the Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. So much so that the following day in the Church of St. Patrick he felt ill and said he wanted to interrupt for a long time political activity." In general, the Historic Compromise of Moro with the PCI was not well seen by both the United States and the Soviet Union. During the 1983 trial against the BR, Moro's widow declared that her husband was unpopular in the United States due to the Historic Compromise, and that he had been repeatedly warned by American politicians to stop disrupting the political situation which had been established in the Yalta Conference, in reference to the possible executive role of the PCI. According to her, Kissinger was one of the American personalities who menaced Moro in 1974 and 1976. She said that the words to Moro that he repeated to her were that "you have to put an end to your political plan of mustering all the forces in your country to collaborate directly. Here, or you stop doing this thing, or you will be badly punished." Kissinger denied these accusations, and it was argued it was an issue of communication and language. Flamigni suggested the involvement of the Operation Gladio network directed by NATO. He asserted that Gladio had manipulated Moretti as a way to take over the Red Brigades to effect a strategy of tension aimed at creating popular demand for a new, right-wing law-and-order regime. In the updated edition of his book Un affare di Stato. Il delitto Moro e la fine della Prima repubblica (A State Affair: The Moro Murder and the End of the First Republic), the journalist Andrea Colombo [it] wrote that "the Moro kidnapping hides inscrutable plots involving practically all the actors involved in the Italian and world theatre: the CIA, the Stasi, the Czechoslovak secret services, Mossad, the P2, the diverted Italian [secret] services, Gladio, the Vatican IOR, a mysterious super-secret service known as the 'ring' [it], the Mafia, the 'Ndrangheta, the Magliana gang, and the Palestinians." Writing for Il Sussidiario in 2014, the journalist Luciano Garibaldi [it] cited Alberto Franceschini and Renzo Martinelli's 2003 film titled Five Moons Square, and concluded: "Reasonings that confirm Martinelli's hypothesis. Moro's kidnappers were manipulated unknowingly, but someone knew everything. Not for nothing, the numbers of the Moro case are as follows: 23 sentences, 127 convictions, 27 life sentences. But there is no longer anyone in jail. All free. Evidently, the CIA or the KGB (or both) have respected the pacts." The lawyer Giannino Guiso, a confidant of Bettino Craxi and defender of the historical leaders of the BR, declared that "the terrorists already convicted or awaiting conviction have done everything to save the life of Aldo Moro". The essence of his reasoning is that something prevented them from reaching an agreement. Guiso asked: "Could the CIA have played a decisive role?" He also stated: "Moro was not saved because he did not want to be saved. The BR went so far as to kill the president of the DC because they were forced to do so. So someone (internal or external) forced them to behave that way." The historian Agostini Giovagnoli [it] commented: "The responsibility for Moro's death lies with those who killed him, his companions and their supporters, as well as their national and international occult instigators." Franceschini, one of the founders of the BR, mentioned the possibility that the Red Brigades had been infiltrated by Israeli agents as early as 1974. He reported a confidence told to him by co-founder Renato Curcio, according to whom Moretti would be an infiltrated agent. Curcio always denied this reconstruction. Moretti took the reins of the Red Brigades after Franceschini and Curcio were arrested in the mid-1970s, introducing a far stronger militarization of the organization's activities. Prior to 1974, the BR had limited themselves to demonstrative acts that did not involve violence. In the Italian RAI TV programme La notte della Repubblica, Moretti denied these accusations, saying that he had never seen an Israeli in his life and that it was wrong to think that the change of the BR's strategy depended from the arrest of some militants. He also added: "The hypothesis that the Red Brigades have been manipulated by anyone is a thesis dear to the conspiracy, which would divide the BR into good and bad." In a 2012 interview with Ulisse Spinnato Vega of Agenzia Clorofilla, Franceschini and Curcio remembered Pecorelli. Franceschini stated: "Pecorelli, before dying, said that both the United States and the Soviet Union wanted Moro's death." Observers question why Moretti would suffer forty years of prison if the BR were infiltrated by the secret services. Brigate Rosse: un diario politico (Red Brigades: A Political Diary), edited by the researcher Silvia De Bernardinis, takes a critical and self-critical account of the group's history by some leaders and militants, and reiterates that there were only the Red Brigades behind the group, as did Marco Bellocchio's 2020 Exterior Night drama film about Moro's kidnapping and death. In January 2008, La Repubblica published documents obtained from Britain's National Archives, in which Foreign Office planners wrote in May 1976 that "a clean surgical coup" to remove the PCI from power "would be attractive in many ways" but concluded that the idea was not realistic since it could lead to what they described as a "prolonged and bloody" resistance by communists in Italy and a potential civil war that could have included an intervention by the Soviet Union. Guy Millard, the British ambassador to Rome, wrote in a memo quoted by La Repubblica that "(Berlinguer's) entry into government would create a serious problem for Nato and the European Community and could turn out to be an event with catastrophic consequences". A Foreign Office memo in April 1976 had listed options for tackling the PCI ascendancy, which ranged from financing rival parties to "subversive or military intervention against the Italian Communist party". While officials said that "in the right circumstances" they could encourage the Italian government to repress the PCI and suggested "it might be worth" arranging pretexts for this, they also advised they could "orchestrate a campaign" against Berlinguer and the PCI, recommending "increased action in the propaganda field, both overt and covert, to undermine the credibility of the PCI". Fears receded as the PCI did not become the largest party. Heulyn Dunlop, an official of the Information Research Department's Special Editorial Unit, which was a secret department, seconded to Rome for the campaign to disseminate disinformation against the PCI, identified the key development as "a largely spontaneous and effective campaign" by the Italian press, which alerted Italians "to the dangers of voting the PCI into power". Il golpe inglese. Da Matteotti a Moro: le prove della guerra segreta per il controllo del petrolio e dell'Italia (The English Coup: From Matteotti to Moro. Evidence of the Secret War for the Control of Oil and Italy), a 2011 book by Mario Cereghino and Giovanni Fasanella, who had access to declassified documents, showed that, apart from his accommodation to the PCI, Britain was also opposed to Moro for his pro-Arab policies. False Communication No. 7 and discovery of the base of via Gradoli Another controversial event occurred on 18 April 1978 when a false BR's Communication No. 7 announced the death of Moro and that he had been on the bottom of Lago della Duchessa, a very small mountain lake in the province of Rieti (north of Rome). In response, the Italian police looked in vain for Moro under the iced surface of the lake. The authors of the false communication included Antonio Chichiarelli [it], a notorious forger from Rome who was connected to the Banda della Magliana gang of the city. Chichiarelli later issued further false communications from the Red Brigades. He was killed in uncertain circumstances in September 1984 when his connection with the false communiqué had been yet entirely clarified. Chichiarelli spoke of the communication to several people, including Luciano Dal Bello [it], a confidant of the Carabinieri and of SISDE. Del Bello reported the facts but no investigation on Chichiarelli followed. On the same day, the police force found an apartment used as a base by the Red Brigades in Rome on via Gradoli 96. The discovery was allegedly due to a water leak, for which a neighbour had called the firemen. The leak was caused by a tap left open in the apartment's shower in an unusual fashion, i.e. with water directed against the wall. The base was normally used by Moretti but the Italian media reported the discovery immediately and he avoided returning there. The palace had been inspected by Carabinieri under Varisco, with the exclusion of Moretti's apartment; the official justification was that the Carabinieri were not authorized to enter the apartments if no one was inside. Bozzi was later discovered to be a friend of Conforto, in whose apartments Morucci and Faranda were later arrested. Elio Coppa [it], the commissar who had led Rome's police forces in the inspection of the building on via Gradoli, was eventually promoted to vice-director of SISDE; he later turned out to be a member of the P2. Mokbel was the neighbor whose call had led to the inspection; she was officially a university student of Egyptian descent and was later identified as a confidant of SISDE, or of the police. Furthermore, the report of the inspection, which was presented at the trial on the Moro affair, was written on a type of paper distributed to the Italian police only in 1981, three years after the events. Before and after 1978, numerous apartments in the street had been used by Italian secret agents, including a Carabinieri Nucleo Operativo Centrale di Sicurezza enrolled by SISMI who resided in the building facing that of Moretti and who was from the same birthplace. In the street, there were also firms used by SISMI for its affairs. Moretti's apartment itself had been under observation by UCIGOS for several years previously as it had been frequented also by members of the far-left organizations Potere Operaio and Autonomia Operaia. Later, it was revealed that the DC parliament member Benito Cazora [it], during the contact he had with the 'Ndrangheta (the Calabrian mafia) in the attempt to find Moro's prison, had been warned that the area of via Gradoli was a "hot zone". Cazora received in the formation while stopping in his car at a crossroad between via Cassia and via Gradoli. Cazora had reported this warning to the DC and to the police. On 20 April 1978, the Red Brigades issued the true Communication No. 7; they attached a photo of Moro holding a copy of La Repubblica, dated 19 April, showing that he was still alive. Pecorelli, who had likely knowledge of the presence of Moretti in via Gradoli, was one of the few journalists to immediately deny the authenticity of Communication No. 7, whereas most authorities had considered it true. Some thirty years after the events, Pieczenik declared in an interview that the decision to issue the false communication was taken during a meeting of the crisis committee, present at which were Francesco Cossiga, members of the Italian intelligence agencies, and Ferracuti. The alleged goal was to prepare the Italian and European audience for the likely death of Moro in the kidnapping. He stated that it would be ignored if the communication had been actually issued. Many years before its public revelation in 1990, it was also supposed that Moro had told his kidnappers of the existence of Operation Gladio. From this point of view, the false Communication No. 7 was a code message from sectors of the Italian secret agencies that Moro should not return alive from his imprisonment. Alleged séance Also connected to via Gradoli is an event which involved Romano Prodi, Mario Baldassarri, and Alberto Clò. During an alleged séance in which they participated on 2 April 1978, after asking the soul of Giorgio La Pira about the location of Moro, a Ouija table they were using registered the words Viterbo, Bolsena, and Gradoli, three towns north of Rome. The information was trusted and a police group made an armed blitz in the town of Gradoli, 80 km from Rome, on the following day, 6 April, although Moro was not found. The supernatural element was generally not overlooked during the investigations. For example, the Italian government had engaged a diviner, hoping that he would find Moro's location. The police made another fruitless blitz in Viterbo after an abbess declared that, during a vision, she had seen him there. Prodi spoke to the Italian Parliament's commission about the case in 1981. In the notes of the Italian Parliament's commission on terrorism, the séance is described as a fake, used to hide the true source of the information. In 1997, Andreotti declared that the information came from the Bologna section of Autonomia Operaia, a far-left organization with some ties with the BR, and that Cossiga also knew the true source. The judge Ferdinando Imposimato considered Andreotti's theory as possible but accused him of having kept information that could have been valuable in a trial about Moro's murder. Moro's widow later declared that she had repeatedly informed the police that a via Gradoli existed in Rome; the investigators did not consider it — some replied to her that the street did not appear in Rome's maps. This is confirmed by other Moro relatives but strongly denied by Cossiga. In the 1990s, the séance matter was reopened by the Italian Parliament's commission on terrorism. While Prodi (then prime minister) declared that he had no time for an interview, both Baldassarri (then senator and vice-minister in two Silvio Berlusconi's cabinets) and Clò (minister of industry in Lamberto Dini's cabinet and owner of the house where the séance was performed) responded to the call; they confirmed the circumstances of the séance, and that Gradoli had appeared in several sessions, even if the participants had changed. Involvement of organized crime In the years following Moro's murder, there have been numerous references to the presence of Calabrian 'Ndrangheta at via Fani. In an intercepted phone call between Sereno Freato [it], then Moro's personal secretary, and Benito Cazora [it], a DC parliament member who had been given the task to keep contacts with the Calabrian gangs, Freato asked for news about the prison of Moro. The 'Ndrangheta was in possession of several photos of the events in via Fani, some of which allegedly portrayed a "man known by them". According to what was reported by Cazora in 1991, some members of the 'Ndrangheta, who had been expelled from Calabria, had offered their assistance to the DC to discover the location of Moro, in exchange for the possibility to return to their homeland. This collaboration never materialized. According to Tommaso Buscetta, a Sicilian Mafia pentito, several Italian state organizations tried to obtain information about Moro's location from the Mafia but later Giuseppe Calò asked boss Stefano Bontade to stop the search, since the highest members of the DC party no longer desired the liberation of their fellow politician. The decision to abandon the search was taken between 9 and 10 April after Moro had revealed to his captors a series of very compromising information about the CIA and Andreotti. Other sources report that the Sicilian Mafia changed its mind due to Moro's will to let the PCI enter the government. In a deposition made at trial Raffaele Cutolo, then leader of the Camorra (Neapolitan mafia), declared that the Banda della Magliana asked him if he was interested in the liberation of Moro. Cutolo contacted the Italian secret service who replied to him to stay away from the matter, because had vetoed the intermediation for the salvation of the then president of the DC. Morucci dismissed this; he said that the Camorra's militants were apparently "normal people in suits", completely alien environment of the underworld and therefore difficult to identify from the Banda della Magliana. Morucci concluded: "We weren't a gang ... we didn't meet under the street lights ... we didn't do we trade strange ... I don't see how the Banda della Magliana or anyone could identify the Red Brigades." On 15 October 1993, 'Ndrangheta pentito Saverio Morabito [it] discussed the 'Ndrangheta relations with other criminal organizations [it]. He said that Antonio Nirta, another Calabrian gangster who had been infiltrated in the Red Brigades, took part in the via Fani assault. Sergio Flamigni, a former PCI member of Parliament and member of the Italian Parliament's commission on the Moro affair who questioned the official version, wrote that when he learnt about Morabito's words, he remembered about the testimony of Cazora, who had declared that he had been approached by a Calabrian asking him about photos shot in via Fani. According to the 'Ndrangheta pentito Francesco Fonti, his boss Sebastiano Romeo was involved in attempts to locate the place where Moro was held. Romeo had been asked by unnamed national and Calabrian members of the DC, such as Riccardo Misasi [it] and Vito Napoli [it], to help out. With the help of SISMI and the Banda della Magliana, Fonti was able to locate the house where Moro was kept. When he reported back, Romeo said that he had done a good job but that important politicians in Rome had changed their minds. Morabito's revelations were not considered supported by adequate evidence. Role of Carmine Pecorelli Pecorelli, who apparently had several informers in the Italian secret services, spoke repeatedly about the kidnapping of Moro in his magazine Osservatorio politico, which he founded in 1968 to tell "the background of that system of power that was stuck in the ganglia of Italy with limited sovereignty". Before the events of via Fani, Pecorelli had already written about the possibility that Moro would be blocked in his attempt to admit the PCI into the government. On 15 March 1978, one day before Moro was abducted, Osservatorio politico published an article written by Pecorelli, who cited the anniversary of the killing of Julius Caesar in relation with the upcoming formation of Andreotti's cabinet, and mentioned a possible new Marcus Junius Brutus, who was a member of his family and one of the assassins of Julius Caesar. The judges in Rome suspected that, before his assassination, Pecorelli was about to publish in full form many other documents from Moro, what became known as the Moro Memorial [it] (memoriale Moro) and that he attempted to find, and which in his view would have implicated Andreotti. According to the judge Francesco Monastero, the chief investigator of Chichiarelli's crimes, said: "The motive for the Pecorelli murder must be sought in the context of the Moro crime and, more precisely, in the context of the false BR communiqués." Critics argue that Moro could be saved. Although the Perugia magistrates wrote that "there [is] no supporting evidence", they argue that this evidence emerges from the articles by Pecorelli, the documents of the Moro affair's parliamentary commission, and from the documents of the trial on the Pecorelli murder. Articles written during the Moro's imprisonment show that he already knew of the existence of a memorial (the documents written by Moro in his detention) and of some of the unpublished letters. Pecorelli stated that there were two groups within the Red Brigades, one favourable to the negotiations, and one who wanted to kill Moro in any case. He hinted that the group that had captured Moro in via Fani was not the same that was detaining him, and which had planned the whole move. He wrote that the authors of the via Fani attack were "professionals trained in top-level war schools. The killers sent to assault the president's car, instead, could be only unskilled workers recruited on the road." When the terrorist base in via Gradoli was discovered, Pecorelli stressed how in the apartment, different from what could be expected, all the proofs of the BR's presence were clearly displayed. Regarding the kidnapping, he wrote that Moro's opening to the PCI was not welcomed by the United States, as it would change the political balance of southern Europe, and by the Soviet Union, since this would prove that communists could reach power democratically, and without being a direct offshoot of any Communist party. In an article written the same day of his assassination, Pecorelly hinted to the role of opera composer Igor Markevitch in the kidnapping. On 20 March 1979, Pecorelli was murdered in front of his house. In 1992, Buscetta revealed that the journalist had been eliminated as "a favour to Andreotti", who was preoccupied about some information about Moro's kidnapping in the possession of Pecorelli. The latter had allegedly received from general dalla Chiesa (they were both affiliated or near to P2) a copy of a letter by Moro that contained dangerous accusations against Andreotti; the journalist had hinted about them in some previous articles. The unabridged letters were published only in 1991 when, together with others, it was discovered during renovation works in via Nevoso; only a resume of them, the Memoriale Moro, had been previously issued. The fact that Moro's letters were circulating before 1991 is proven by a speech held by Craxi, the then PSI leader, in which he mentioned a letter that had not been officially published at the time. The fact was considered a subtle menace against Andreotti in the war for the supreme political power waged between the PSI and the DC at the time. In 1993, historian Giuseppe Tamburrano [it] expressed doubts about what was said by the Mafia pentiti because, comparing the two memorials (the amputee of 1978 and the complete of 1990), he said that Moro's allegations addressed to Andreotti were the same, so Andreotti had no interest to order the murder of Pecorelli, who could not threaten him to publish things already known and publicly available. Andreotti underwent a trial for his role in the assassination of Pecorelli. He was acquitted in the first instance trial (1999), convicted in the second (2002), and finally acquitted by Italy's Supreme Court of Cassation (2003). Role of Steve Pieczenik Steve Pieczenik was an American negotiatior and expert in terrorism who was sent by the State Department at the request of Cossiga and remained in Italy for three weeks during Moro's detention. He later collaborated with Tom Clancy as a novel and cinematic writer. His presence in Italy as a member of one of the crisis committees was revealed only in the early 1990s. Pieczenik had written a relation in which he spoke about the possible effects of Moro's abduction, the possibility that the Red Brigades had been infiltrated by Italian agents, and also gave advice about how to find the terrorists. Eventually, Pieczenik declared that this relation was false, since the ideas included were similar to those of Ferracuti, the P2-affiliated criminologist and member of the secret committee. Pieczenik also stated that he did not release any written document. According to what was revealed by Cossiga and by Pieczenik himself, his initial idea was to show the will to negotiate, with the goal of gaining time and in the hope that the terrorists would make some error from which they could be detected. During later interviews, Pieczenik declared that there were numerous leaks about the discussions made at the committee. He said: I found myself in a room with numerous generals and politicians, all people who knew [Moro] well, and... Well, I felt that no one of them liked Moro or appreciated him as a person, including Cossiga. It was clear that I was not speaking with his allies. ... After a while I recognized that what happened in the meeting room was leaking outside. I knew it because there were people who – including the BR themselves – were releasing declarations which could stem only from within our group. ... I thus decided to reduce the number of participants, but the leakage continued to grow, so that at the end there were only two. I and Cossiga. But the leakage did not stop. Pieczenik declared that, once returned to the United States, he met an alleged Argentinian secret agent who knew everything that had happened at the Italian crisis committee. Pieczenik explained the leak to Argentina with the presence in the committee of numerous members of the P2 lodge, which had strong ties with the South American country; Gelli, the P2's founder, had lived for a period there. In a later interview to French journalist Emmanuel Amara, Pieczenik declared: I soon understood the true intentions of the actors in the game: the [Italian] right wanted the death of Moro, the Red Brigades wanted him alive, while the Communist Party, due to its hardline political position, was not going to negotiate. Francesco Cossiga, from his side, wanted him alive and well, but numerous forces in the country had radically different programs ... . We had to pay attention to both the left and the right: it was necessary to avoid that the Communists entered the government and, at the same time, suppress any harmful capability of the reactionary and anti-democratic right forces. At the same time it was desirable that Moro's family did not start a parallel negotiation, averting the risk that he could be released too soon. But I recognized that, pushing my strategy to its extreme consequences, I perhaps would have to sacrify the hostage for the stability of Italy. At his arrival in Italy, Pieczenik had been informed by Cossiga and the Vatican City intelligence services that there had been a coup attempt in Italy in previous months, led by right-winged personalities of the intelligence services and othe P2. Pieczenik did not specify which coup he was referring to. Known coup attempts in Italy include the Piano Solo (1964), the Golpe Borghese (1970), the Rosa dei Venti [it] (early 1970s), and Edgardo Sogno's White Golpe of 1974. In a 1981 interview to L'Espresso, the former general Gianadelio Maletti [it] mentioned two further coup attempts in August and September 1974; they preceded Moro's capture by several years. Pieczenik was astonished by the presence of so many fascists in the Italian intelligence services. The Red Brigades had infiltrated the Italian institutions, and obtained information from the children of politicians who were members of left-wing and far-left organizations. With the help of the Vatican intelligence, which he considered superior to the Italian one, he investigated such infiltrations but no measures were taken. Pieczenik declared that he participated in the decision to issue the false Communication No. 7, stating that he pushed the BR to kill Moro in order to delegitimize them, once it was clear that the Italian politicians were not interested in his liberation. According to Pieczenik, the United States did not have a clear image of the situation in Italy, especially for the left-wing and right-wing terrorist groups; he also said that he received no help from the CIA or the U.S. Embassy in Rome. Pieczenik explained his premature return to the United States with the desire to avoid the accusations of American pressure behind the now likely death of Moro. Previously, he had instead declared that he had left in order to deprive the decisions taken by the Italian institutions, which he considered inefficient and corrupted, of any American legitimization. On 18 March 1998, Corriere della Sera reported: "Giovanni Pellegrino, president of the Massacre Commission, has no doubts: 'Pieczenik's statements are very harsh and deserve careful verification.'" According to Pieczenik, a lot of confidential information that could only be known to men attending the crisis committee's core group leaked out, including the BR. Without accusing anyone, he suspected everyone. He said: "The person responsible could have been the then Interior Minister Francesco Cossiga or Giulio Andreotti or even Bettino Craxi." For Pieczenik, one exception was Berlinguer, about whom he said: "The secretary of the PCI was the only one who had sincerely tried to save Aldo Moro's life." He also accused the Italian secret services, saying: "At the time Cossiga had just replaced the heads of SISDE and SISMI. The suspicion of P2's role came later. When a self-styled adviser from the Argentine embassy in Washington approached me proposing to work for the government of Buenos Aires and spoke to me in detail about some facts of the Moro case that had only been discussed in the Roman rooms of Cossiga." During a 2006 interview, Pieczenik said: I immediately understood what the will of the actors in the field were: the right wanted Aldo Moro dead, the Red Brigades wanted him alive, while the Communist Party, given its position of political firmness, did not wish to negotiate. Francesco Cossiga, for his part, wanted him safe and sound, but many forces within the country had clearly different programs, which created a disturbance, a very strong interference in the decisions taken at the highest levels. ... It was necessary to prevent Berlinguer's communists from entering the government and, at the same time, put an end to the ability to harm the reactionary and anti-democratic forces of the right. At the same time it was desirable that the Moro family not start a parallel negotiation, avoiding the risk of Moro being released before it was due. But I realized that, taking my strategy to its extreme consequences, i.e. keeping Moro alive as long as possible, this time perhaps I would have had to sacrifice the hostage for the stability of Italy ... I am sorry for the death of Aldo Moro; I apologize to his family and I feel sorry for him, I think we would have gotten along well, but we had to exploit the Red Brigades to get him killed. About his time in Italy and the Moro case, Peczenik recalled: "The order was not to have the hostage released, but to help them in the negotiations relating to Aldo Moro and stabilize Italy." He added: "In a situation where the country is totally destabilized and is falling apart, when there are attacks, prosecutors, and judges killed, there can be no negotiations with terrorist organizations... If you give in, the whole system will fall apart." He also said: "The decision to have Moro killed was not taken lightly. Cossiga held steady and thus we arrived at a solution. With his death we prevented Berlinguer from reaching power and avoiding the destabilization of Italy and Europe." In 2008, Abbiamo ucciso Aldo Moro. Dopo 30 anni un protagonista esce dall'ombra (We Killed Aldo Moro: After 30 Years a Protagonist Emerges from the Shadows), which has been described as a confession book, was published in Italy by Cooper. In it, Amara quoted Peczenik as saying: I implemented the strategic manipulation that led to the death of Aldo Moro in order to stabilize the situation in Italy. The members of the Red Brigades could have tried to influence me by saying that I satisfied their requests. But my strategy was that it didn't work that way, that I decided they had to kill him at their expense. I expected them to realize the mistake they were making and free Moro, which would have derailed my plan. Until the end I was afraid they would free Moro. And that was going to be a big win for them. Due to this admission, which Peczenik reiterated in another 2013 interview that was acquired by the public's prosecution office, Imposimato, one of the Moro case's judges, wrote an investigative book titled I 55 giorni che hanno cambiato l'Italia. Perché Aldo Moro doveva morire? La storia vera (The 55 Days that Changed Italy: Why Aldo Moro Had to Die? The True Story), and Luigi Ciampoli of Rome's public prosecutur's office, who said in 2014, referring to Peczenik, that "Cossiga's consultant must be investigated for complicity in the murder of Aldo Moro", accused him of accessory murder. Ciampoli, who conducted the investigation after the revelations of Pieczenik and a certain Enrico Rossi, said that there are "serious indications of his participation in the murder" of Moro. This depends on understanding what is meant by accessory (concorso), a legal concept widely used by the Italian judiciary but fiercely contested by magistrates throughout Europe. There is also a difference in accessory murder together with the members of the Red Brigades, and accessory murder with Cossiga and Ugo Pecchioli [it] because, while the result does not change, the political and criminal responsibilities do. Alleged presence of a marksman In the course of Moro's capture, the terrorists fired 93 bullets. These killed all the five members of the escort but left Moro with only a light wound in his thigh. Despite this apparent precision, members of the BR, such as Morucci, declared that they had only a rough shooting training, obtained by firing their weapons in grottoes at night. The position of the bodyguards (two sitting in the front seats of Moro's car, and three in the following one), who were separated from him, likely made it easier for the ambush squad to direct their fire against them and avoid hitting Moro. Several writers and observers suggested that the ambushers of via Fani included a marksman. The Italian news magazine L'Espresso argued that he could have been a member of the Italian intelligence service and identify him as Giustino De Vuono [it], a marksman once part of the French Foreign Legion; according to their reconstruction, the 49 bullets found in the bodies of the bodyguards would come from his weapon. A witness reporting on 19 April 1978 at Rome's Prefecture declared that he had recognized De Vuono driving a green Austin Mini or Autobianchi A112 on the location of the attack. De Vuono, who was affiliated with the 'Ndrangheta, on that day was not in his usual residence in southern Paraguay, which at the time was under the dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner. Several members of the Red Brigades declared that their weapons were acquired from the Calabrian gangland, amongst others; furthermore, it has been proved that members of the DC got in touch with Calabrian gangsters to obtain a help in the liberation of Moro. The identity of the alleged marksman has also been associated to the Red Army Faction. Another witness of the events in via Fani declared that some thirty minutes before the ambush, a foreigner with German accent had addressed him, ordering to go away from the area. Since some of the ammunition used for the assault had been treated with a special preserving paint, which was also found in some secret depots related to the Gladio undercover organization, it has been suggested that these would come from some Italian military or paramilitary corps. Theory of the alternative kidnapping Journalist Rita Di Giovacchino [it] suggested that Moro was not in via Fani during the assault but had been taken prisoner by another organization, and that the Red Brigades acted only as front men. This would explain their reticence and the incongruity of their declarations about the whole kidnapping, from the ambush to the presence of sand on Moro's body. According to her, this would also explain the prophetic remark pronounced by Sereno Freato [it], the first secretary of Moro, when Pecorelli was also found dead. Freato had said: "Investigate the instigators of Pecorelli's murder, and you will find the instigators of Moro's murder." She thus listed as part of the same plot the deaths of Pecorelli, Chichiarelli (who would have been punished for his blackmailing attempts), and Varisco. Allegedly killed by the Red Brigades in 1979, although in circumstances never clear, Varisco had been at the helm of the investigation on the BR base in via Gradoli; he was also a friend of dalla Chiesa, who was also murdered for never completely understood reasons, as well as of Pecorelli. According to Di Giovacchino, the use made by the BR of printing machines once owned by the Italian intelligence, showed that the latter were likely the organization behind all these bloody acts. Moretti declared that he was studying Moro's daily moves since 1976. Every morning, Moro went with his grandson to a church near his house, after which he had a short walk with only one member of the escort. This looked like a more favourable moment to kidnap him, since most of the bodyguards were not present, but he was not chosen by the terrorists. On the morning of his abduction, Moro did not bring his grandson with him. After the ambush in via Fani, the terrorists took only the most interesting for them of the five bags that Moro carried with him. Those containing his medicines and his reserved documents. Furthermore, the necessity of inflicting a coup de grâce to any of the bodyguards is in contrast with a hurried attack typical of such acts, and is motivated only by the necessity to eliminate any possible witness that would reveal that Moro was not there. In a letter to his wife, Moro wrote during captivity he asked her to take care of his bags. Since Moro was aware that if his bags had been found in the assault's location, they had been taken by the investigators. Additionally, the absence from his letter of any word about the victims of via Fani has been taken as an element in favour of the theory that Moro was captured while in his Gladio escort and not in via Fani, and so did not know anything about their assassination. Doubts about the via Fani assault Numerous unanswered questions surround Moro's kidnapping in via Fani. Eleonora Chiavarelli, Moro's widow, mentioned that in Moro's letters, which were delivered by the terrorists, there was no mention of the killing of his bodyguards. Given the character of Moro, she and others considered it improbable that he did not write a single word about these victims. On 1 October 1993, during the fourth trial on the Moro affair, ballistic experts released a report that disputed the version of Morucci. According to their new report, a second member of the ambush squad fired towards the Fiat 132. According to the ballistic report by Antonio Ugolini cited in the Acts of Moro's fourth trial (Processo Moro Quater), "in via Fani, on the morning of 16 March , at least seven weapons fired. The shots came from both the sides of the street and not only from the left, as stated by the terrorist Valerio Morucci in a memorial." The number of the participants in the ambush (the terrorists initially spoke of nine, later of eleven people) is considered small by other terrorists, such as Franceschini. He declared: "For the capture of Mario Sossi, in 1974, we were twelve. I think that managing a kidnapping such as that of via Fani with 11 is quite risky." Alessandro Marini [it], an engineer who passed by via Fani the day of the assault, declared that two people on a Honda motorbike shot at him with a firearm. The motorbike preceded Moretti's car. Members of the Red Brigades always denied the presence of the Honda and did not explain the origin of the shooting against Marini. The confession of a mysterious terminally ill former BR member in Five Moons Square would have anticipated some events that occurred a few years after the release of the 2003 film, namely the 2009 discovery of a letter, which was brought to light by a former police inspector. The letter, which was published by La Stampa in October 2009, references the mysterious men on board a Honda motorbike, who were linked to the secret services, and that allegedly shot against a witness to keep him away and protected the Red Brigades during and after the via Fani ambush. The sender claimed to have been a former secret agent involved in the Moro case in the service of Guglielmi. The presence of Guglielmi himself, which was declared as random, was in fact ascertained in the vicinity of the ambush in via Fani as early as 1991. Martinelli, the director of Five Moons Square, stated that the man could hardly have been influenced by his film and that, in his opinion, it was a truly possible lead. An unexplained element is how the terrorists could have planned an ambush in via Fani, since Moro's escort changed their routes daily. The terrorists for the occasion had taken measures, such as cutting the tyres of the van of a florist who worked in via Fani, in order to remove a dangerous witness during the ambush, which can be explained only by their having precise knowledge of Moro's route that morning. SIP, Italy's national telephone company that would become Telecom Italia, was exceedingly inefficient on numerous occasions linked to Moro's detention. In particular, after the assault in via Fani, all the phone communications in the area were inoperative. Other examples included when, on 14 April 1978, journalists of Rome's newspaper Il Messaggero were waiting for a phone call from the terrorists. The six phone lines in the newspaper's office had been connected to police central; when the call arrived, DIGOS reported that all of them had been cut, with the result that the caller could not be identified. On 15 March 1978, the day before the capture of Moro, SIP had been alerted. After Moro had been kidnapped, an inspection of the telephone lines in the area of via Fani showed that they were all out of order. This prevented any possible witness contact with the police before the ambush. The commander of DIGOS during the kidnapping days described SIP as "totally un-cooperative", and stated that "in no occasion did they find the origin of the kidnappers' calls". He added that Michele Principe [it], then general director of STET – Società Finanziaria Telefonica, the company that owned SIP, was a member of the P2. Other suspicions and controversies Despite several trials, numerous parliamentary commissions of inquiry, collateral judicial inquiries, and hundreds of books, controversies about the Moro affair remain into the 21st century. Chichiarelli, the author of the false Communication No. 7, was related to the Banda della Magliana. Aside from its purely criminal activities, this large gang in Rome was related to Sicilian Mafia and has been involved in numerous political and terrorist scandals since the 1970s. Judiciary acts proved that members of the gang had a role in the assassination of Pecorelli and in the case of Roberto Calvi, both of which saw the incrimination of Andreotti, in the financial affairs of the Vatican City including the kidnapping of Emanuela Orlandi, and in the sidetracking of the investigations on massacres, such as the Bologna massacre in 1980. Imposimato showed that the Banda della Magliana had strong ties with SISMI, and that the latter inspired the farce of the communication and of the Lago della Duchessa. The via Montalcini apartment, in which Moro was allegedly detained by the Red Brigades, was located in the Magliana quarter of southern Rome and a member of the gang owned the building facing that apartment. A document from the Antimafia Commission said that the via Fani assault was not a solitary action by the Red Brigades, and that organized crime in Italy, such as the Banda della Magliana and 'Ndrangheta, helped them; it also investigated the allegations that it was Giustino De Vuono, who left Italy to become a member of the French Foreign Legion, the one to kill Moro. In an initial reconstruction, there were only four killers. Later in the 2000s, after six trials, it was thought that at least twenty people were involved in the entire operation. Members of Moro's escort, who were not in service on the day of the kidnapping, declared in September 1978 that Moro was a habitual person, and that every day he got out from his house exactly at 09:00; according to journalist Simona Zecchi, author of La criminalità servente nel caso Moro (Crime Serving in the Moro Case), the foreman leader Rocco Gentiluomo was warned not to take service on 16 March by a 'Ndrangheta boss. Moro's widow denied this circumstance during her interview in front of the investigative judges on 23 September 1978. Additionally, that Moro was suffering from Stockholm syndrome was questioned by the two reports of the Italian Parliament's inquiry about the Moro affair. According to this view, Moro was at the height of his faculties, he was very recognizable, and at some point it was him who was leading the negotiation for his own liberation and salvation. This position was supported by Leonardo Sciascia, who discussed it in the minority report he signed as a member of the first parliamentary commission and in his book L'affaire Moro. The BR members stated that they chose Moro over Andreotti due to the latter's being too protected. This was denied by Andreotti, who during those years always went every morning to mass alone and on foot. Cossiga declared that Moro's confessor, Don Antonio Mennini (later papal nuncio to Great Britain), was allowed to enter in the cell just before his execution. In 2015, Don Mennini denied this reconstruction. Another controversy is related to the Vatican's attempt to save Moro. According to Mennini, Pope Paul VI had saved £10 billion to pay a ransom in order to save Moro. This is corroborated by the general Antonio Cornacchia, who discussed the pope's attempt to save Moro by paying a ransom; this was blocked after a call by what Cornacchia described as a member of the Christ in Paradise lodge, prompting him to recall years later that "presumably the U-turn came from the Vatican itself, which prohibited the Pope from saving Moro". Twenty years after Moro's death, The Independent and The New York Times reported on the popularity of such conspiracy theories, and that few Italians believe in the official version of the Moro affair, namely that only the BR bore responsibility for Moro's murder and that the Italian government did its best to save Moro. Alessandra Stanley wrote: "The only prominent dissenters are Mr. Andreotti and his closest aides, some former Red Brigades terrorists who still resist the notion that they were unwittingly manipulated by sinister right-wing forces, and an American scholar, Richard Drake, who wrote a 1995 book that concluded that there was no conspiracy. Mr. Drake's book was widely disparaged in Italy." Marco Baliani, who had a one-man show about the Moro case, said: "It has been 20 years, and still the deeper truth has not come out. How can we found a new republic if we cannot tell the truth to ourselves?" Many books have been written that question the Moro trials since the 1980s. They continued to be published well into the 2020s, one example being Aldo Moro. Una verità compromessa (Aldo Moro: A Compromised Truth). In the words of the journalist Luca Villoresi, the Moro affair "has produced nothing but lies and false leads. I don't think it is possible any more to find out what really happened. Certainly, there are people who know the truth, but we will never know if they are telling us the truth." In 2013, Imposimato, one of the judges of the Moro case, said that Moro was murdered by the Red Brigades with the complicity of Andreotti, Cossiga, and Nicola Lettieri [it]. He added that if some documents had not been hidden from him, he would have indicted them for complicity in association in the Moro case, including for the Piazza Fontana bombing (by far-right Ordine Nuovo) and the via D'Amelio bombing (by the Sicilian Mafia). Rome's public prosecutor office had opened an investigation file relating to the statements of two bomb squad members, Vitantonio Raso and Giovanni Circhetta, who were never questioned and said that they arrived to the location two hours before the call from the Red Brigades. Imposimato, by now honorary president of Italy's Supreme Court of Cassation, singled out Andreotti (who died in May 2013) and Cossiga (who died in 2010) when he told Affaritaliani: "The role [of the Italian political class] was one of absolute subordination to this foreign hegemony. In Italy the orders that came in from abroad were obeyed." Writing in La Repubblica, Miguel Gotor [it] condemned the "intellectual and civil sloth" that had led to the lingering mystery over the murder. He said that while a new judicial investigation was welcome, it risked being "the belated and rotten fruit of a sick country". He added: "Certainly, this new move by the magistrature could prove useful because it will gather together new documents and testimony, but we will be forgiven for doubting that it will be able to give qualitatively more justice than has hitherto been the case." In 2014, the first edition of Aldo Moro: Il Partito Democratico vuole la verità (Aldo Moro: The Democratic Party Wants the Truth), was published. Gero Grassi [it], a former DC member and by then a member of the Democratic Party, which was founded in 2007 as a merger of the PCI's legal successor parties and the DC's left wings, was a member of the Commission of Inquiry into the Moro Case and author of the parliamentary volume. He said that the reports of the Moro Commission, which was approved by the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate of the Republic, overturned the judicial and historical truth. According to this reconstruction, the via Fani attack saw at least 20 people engaged in the scene of the crime rather than the maximum of 9 people claimed by the Red Brigades, among the other cited inconsistencies. In November 2014, Rome's public prosecutor wrote that it was certain that in via Fani, apart from the Red Brigades, there were also elements of the Italian state's deviated secret services, men of Rome's mafia like the Banda della Magliana, and men of the European secret services. In August 2020, about sixty individuals from the world of historical research and political inquiry signed a document denouncing the growing weight that the conspiratorial view on the kidnapping and killing of the Moro has in public discourse. Historian Marco Clementi [it], who was one of the signatories, stated that this stance forces everyone "to measure themselves against the principle of reality". Paolo Persichetti [it], a writer and former Red Brigades member who signed the document, commented: "The trigger [for signing the document] was yet another fake that brought together the events related to the Bologna massacre of August 1980, which according to the sentences of the judiciary have a right-wing matrix, in any case opposite in motive, objectives, and operational practices to the making of groups of the armed revolutionary left and of the Red Brigades, genetically anti-stragista [e.g. they did not engage in massacres like that of 1980]." In January 2022, a note claiming responsibility for the abduction of Moro was auctioned despite widespread condemnation. See also References Bibliography Further reading |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cosmonauts] | [TOKENS: 2825] |
Contents Lost Cosmonauts The Lost Cosmonauts or Phantom Cosmonauts are subjects of a conspiracy theory, which alleges that Soviet and Russian space authorities have concealed the deaths of some cosmonauts in outer space. Proponents of the Lost Cosmonauts theory argue that the Soviet Union attempted to launch human spaceflights before Yuri Gagarin's first spaceflight (Vostok 1, 1961), and that cosmonauts onboard died in those attempts. Soviet military pilot Vladimir Ilyushin was alleged to have landed off course and been held by the Chinese government. The Government of the Soviet Union supposedly suppressed this information, to prevent bad publicity during the height of the Cold War. The evidence cited to support Lost Cosmonaut theories is generally regarded as inconclusive, and several cases have been confirmed as hoaxes. In the 1980s, American journalist James Oberg researched space-related disasters in the Soviet Union, but found no evidence of these Lost Cosmonauts. Since the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, much previously restricted information has been made available, including information on Valentin Bondarenko, a would-be cosmonaut, whose death during training on Earth was covered up by the Soviet government. Even with the availability of published Soviet archival material and memoirs of Russian space pioneers, no evidence has emerged to support the Lost Cosmonaut theories. Ilyushin, who died in 2010, also never gave any support to conspiracy theories. Allegations In December 1959, an alleged high-ranking Czechoslovakian Communist leaked information about many purported unofficial space shots. Alexei Ledovsky was mentioned as being launched inside a converted R-5A rocket. Three more names of alleged cosmonauts claimed to have perished under similar circumstances were Andrei Mitkov, Sergei Shiborin and Maria Gromova. In December 1959, the Italian news agency Continentale repeated the claims that a series of cosmonaut deaths on suborbital flights had been revealed by a high-ranking Czechoslovakian communist. Continentale identified the cosmonauts as Alexei Ledowsky, Serenty Schriborin, Andrei Mitkow, and Maria Gromova. No other evidence of Soviet sub-orbital crewed flights ever came to light. A 1959 edition of Ogoniok published an article and photos of three high-altitude parachutists: Colonel Pyotr Dolgov, Ivan Kachur, and Alexey Grachov. Official records state that Dolgov was killed on November 1, 1962, while carrying out a high-altitude parachute jump from a Volga balloon gondola. Dolgov jumped at an altitude of 28,640 metres (93,960 ft). The helmet visor of Dolgov's Sokol space suit hit part of the gondola as he exited, depressurizing the suit and killing him. Kachur is known to have disappeared around this time; his name has become linked to this equipment. Grachov is thought to have been involved, with Dolgov and Kachur, in testing the high-altitude equipment. Russian journalist Yaroslav Golovanov suggested that high-altitude testing was exaggerated into a story that those parachutists died on a space flight. In late 1959, Ogoniok carried pictures of a man identified as Gennady Zavadovsky testing high-altitude equipment (perhaps with Grachov and others). Zavadovsky would later appear on lists of dead cosmonauts, without a date of death or accident description. Yaroslav Golovanov, who researched the lost cosmonaut claims in his book, Cosmonaut #1, found and interviewed the real Alexey Timofeyevich Belokonov, a retired high-altitude parachutist. In this interview, Belokonov revealed more about his colleagues Dolgov, Kachur, Mikhailov,[specify] Grachov, Zavadovsky and Ilyushin, and confirmed they never flew to space. According to Belokonov, in 1963, after New York Journal American published an article on lost cosmonauts, listing the parachutists among them, Soviet newspapers Izvestia and Krasnaya Zvezda published a refutation that included testimonies and photographs of the actual parachutists Belokonov, Kachur, Grachov and Zavadovsky. The parachutists also wrote an angry letter to New York Journal American editor William Randolph Hearst, Jr., which he ignored. In 1960, the science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein wrote in his article Pravda means 'Truth' (reprinted in Expanded Universe) that on May 15, 1960, while traveling in Vilnius, in Soviet Lithuania, he was told by Red Army cadets that the Soviet Union had launched a human into orbit that day, but later the same day, it was denied by officials. Heinlein speculated that Korabl-Sputnik 1 was an orbital launch, later said to be uncrewed, and that the retro-rockets had fired in the wrong attitude, making recovery efforts unsuccessful. According to Gagarin's biography, these rumours were likely started as a result of two Vostok missions equipped with dummies (including a mannequin known as Ivan Ivanovich) and human voice tape recordings (to test if the radio worked) that were made just prior to Gagarin's flight. In a U.S. press conference on February 23, 1962, Colonel Barney Oldfield revealed that an uncrewed space capsule had indeed been orbiting the Earth since 1960, as it had become jammed into its booster rocket. According to the NASA NSSDC Master Catalog, Korabl Sputnik 1, designated at the time 1KP or Vostok 1P, did launch on May 15, 1960 (one year before Gagarin). It was a prototype of the later Zenit and Vostok launch vehicles. The onboard TDU (Braking Engine Unit) had ordered the retrorockets to fire to recover, but due to a malfunction of the attitude control system, the spacecraft was oriented upside-down, and the firing put the craft into a higher orbit. The re-entry capsule lacked a heat shield as there were no plans to recover it. Engineers had planned to use the vessel's telemetry data to determine if the guidance system had functioned correctly, so recovery was unnecessary. The Judica-Cordiglia brothers were two Italian amateur radio operators who made audio recordings which are often regarded as evidence by supporters of the conspiracy theory that the Soviet space program covered up cosmonaut deaths in the 1960s. The pair claimed to have recorded communications from several failed secret Soviet space missions. These recordings have been the center of public interest for more than 50 years. Vladimir Sergeyevich Ilyushin (Russian: Владимир Серге́евич Ильюшин; 31 March 1927 – 1 March 2010) was a Russian military officer and a test pilot in the former Soviet space program. Ilyushin was a son of the famous aviation designer Sergey Ilyushin, and whose career was mostly as a test pilot for the Sukhoi OKB (a rival of Ilyushin OKB). After retiring from the space program, Ilyushin became a sports administrator and was inducted into the World Rugby Hall of Fame (then known as the IRB Hall of Fame) in 2013. Two days before Gagarin's launch on 12 April 1961, Dennis Ogden wrote in the Western Communist newspaper the Daily Worker that the Soviet Union's announcement that Ilyushin had been involved in a serious car crash was really a cover story for a 7 April 1961 orbital spaceflight gone wrong. A similar story was told by French broadcaster Eduard Bobrovsky, but his version had the launch occurring in March, resulting in Ilyushin slipping into a coma. NORAD tracking stations, however, had no record of any such launch. Later that year, U.S. News & World Report transmitted the rumor by claiming that Gagarin had never flown, and was merely a stand-in for the sickened Ilyushin. The 1999 film The Cosmonaut Cover-Up takes the position that Ilyushin was the first man in space and discusses the alleged cover-up in detail. They claim, "According to recently declassified documents, Ilyushin was placed in a capsule named Rossiya, and the secret flight took place in the early hours of the morning, on Friday April 7th 1961". After a guidance malfunction, the cosmonaut is reported to have made an unguided crash landing in China, too critically injured to announce the mission a complete success. The 2009 film Fallen Idol: The Yuri Gagarin Conspiracy also takes the same position and further discusses US efforts to continue the allegation, even citing national security not to release information under the Freedom of Information Act. The data sought was from the CIA tracking station at Tern Island that supposedly covered and recorded Iluyshin's failed mission. According to Mark Wade, editor of the space history web site Encyclopedia Astronautica, "The entire early history of the Soviet manned space program has been declassified and we have piles of memoirs of cosmonauts, engineers, etc., who participated. We know who was in the original cosmonaut team, who never flew, was dismissed, or was killed in ground tests. Ilyushin is not one of them." The Soviet Union lost the crewed Moon-landing phase of the Space Race to the United States. However, some sources claim that just before the historic Apollo 11 flight to the Moon, the Soviets undertook a hasty attempt to beat the Americans. Despite the unsuccessful first test launch of the new Soviet N1 rocket on 21 February 1969, it is alleged that a decision was made to send a crewed Soyuz 7K-L3 craft to the Moon using an N1. This attempt is alleged to have occurred on 3 July 1969, when it ended in an explosion, destroying the launch pad and killing the cosmonauts on board.[citation needed] Official sources state that the L3 was not ready for crewed missions. Its lunar lander, the LK, had been tested a few times but its orbiter, the 7K-LOK, had not been successfully tested by the closing of the Moon-landing program at the end of 1974. The closing of the program was officially denied and maintained top secret until 1990 when the government allowed them to be published under the policy of glasnost. This claim correlates with the late hoax about the unsuccessful Moon-shot flight of Andrei Mikoyan. In reality, the second launch, like the first, was a test of the booster and was therefore uncrewed. Even if cosmonauts had been on board, they would have been rescued by its launch escape system, which carried the dummy payload to safety 2 km (1.2 mi) from the pad. In 1959, pioneering space theoretician Hermann Oberth claimed a pilot had been killed on a sub-orbital ballistic flight from Kapustin Yar in early 1958. He cited Italian media reports. Confirmed hoaxes Officially Soyuz 2 was an uncrewed spacecraft that was the docking target for Soyuz 3. However, Mike Arena, an American journalist, allegedly found in 1993 that an 'Ivan Istochnikov' and his dog 'Kloka', who were manning Soyuz 2, disappeared on October 26, 1968, with signs of having been hit by a meteorite. They had been "erased" from history by the Soviet authorities, who could not tolerate such a failure. The entire story was found to be a hoax perpetrated by Joan Fontcuberta as a 'modern art exercise' that included falsified mission artifacts, various digitally manipulated images, and immensely detailed feature-length biographies that turned out to be riddled with hundreds of historical as well as technical errors. The exhibit was shown in Madrid in 1997 and the National Museum of Catalan Art in 1998. Brown University later purchased several articles, and put them on display themselves. Mexico's Luna Cornea magazine however, failed to notice this, and ran issue number 14 (January/April 1998) with photos, and a story explaining the "truth". Several lines of evidence available since the first exhibition of "Sputnik" in 1997 in Madrid suggested that the story and artifacts form an elaborate hoax: Andrei Mikoyan was reportedly killed together with a second crew member in an attempt to reach the Moon ahead of the Americans in early 1969. Due to system malfunction, they failed to get into lunar orbit and shot past the Moon. This story, which circulated in 2000, may have been based on the plot of an episode of the television series The Cape. The episode "Buried in Peace" first aired on October 28, 1996. In it, a Space Shuttle crew on a mission to repair a communications satellite encounters a derelict Soviet spacecraft with a dead crew—the result of a secret attempt to beat the United States to the Moon in the 1960s. Tom Nowicki played Major Andrei Mikoyan, a Russian member of the Space Shuttle crew in the story. Later allusions See also References External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynmouth_Flood#Conspiracy_theory] | [TOKENS: 1058] |
Contents Lynmouth Flood The Lynmouth Flood occurred on the night of 15–16 August 1952, principally affecting the village of Lynmouth, in North Devon. A storm with heavy rainfall, combined with already saturated soil and flood debris, led to the flooding of the village and a total loss of 34 lives. Background On 15 and 16 August 1952, a storm of tropical intensity broke over south-west England, depositing 229 millimetres (9.0 in) of rain within 24 hours on the already saturated soil of Exmoor, Devon. It is thought that a cold front scooped up a thunderstorm, and the orographic effect worsened the storm. Debris-laden floodwaters cascaded down the northern escarpment of the moor, converging upon the village of Lynmouth; in particular, in the upper West Lyn valley, fallen trees and other debris formed a dam, which in due course gave way, sending a huge wave of water and debris down the river. A guest at the Lyndale Hotel described the night to the Sunday Express: From seven o'clock last night the waters rose rapidly and at nine o'clock it was just like an avalanche coming through our hotel, bringing down boulders from the hills and breaking down walls, doors and windows. Within half an hour the guests had evacuated the ground floor. In another ten minutes the second floor was covered, and then we made for the top floor where we spent the night. The River Lyn through the town had been culverted to gain land for business premises; this culvert soon choked with flood debris, and the river flowed through the town. Much of the debris was boulders and trees.[citation needed] Overnight, more than 100 buildings were destroyed or seriously damaged along with 28 of the 31 bridges, and 38 cars were washed out to sea. In total, 34 people died, with a further 420 made homeless. The seawall and Rhenish Tower survived the main flood, but were seriously undermined. The tower collapsed into the river the next day, causing a temporary flood.[citation needed] At the same time, the River Bray at Filleigh also flooded, costing the lives of three Scouts from Manchester who had been camping alongside the river overnight.[unreliable source?][self-published source] Over 50,000 tons of rock were moved by water during the disaster. Large rocks and boulders washed downstream can still be found today, alongside boulder field deposits in nearby locations such as the valleys of Watersmeet. Cause The root cause of the flood was heavy rainfall associated with a low-pressure area that had formed over the Atlantic Ocean some days earlier. As the low passed the British Isles, it manifested as a weather front which caused exceptionally heavy rainfall, the effect of which was intensified because the rain fell on already waterlogged land; the effect was further exacerbated over Exmoor by an orographic effect. The lack of satellite data in 1952 meant the weather could not be forecast as reliably as it can be today. Similar floods had been recorded at Lynmouth in 1607 and 1796. After the 1952 disaster, Lynmouth village was rebuilt, including diverting the river around the village. The small group of houses on the bank of the East Lyn River called Middleham between Lynmouth and Watersmeet was destroyed and never rebuilt. Today, there stands a memorial garden. On 16 August 2004 - exactly 52 years to the day of the Lynmouth Flood - a similar incident happened in Cornwall, when flash floods caused extensive damage to Boscastle, but without loss of life. The hydrological setting of these two villages is very similar. Conspiracy theory A conspiracy theory has spread that the flood was caused by secret cloud seeding experiments carried out by the Royal Air Force (RAF) between 1949 and 1952. The theory was fuelled by a 2001 BBC Radio 4 documentary, which suggested that the events of 1952 were connected to Project Cumulus. The programme alleged that "the infamous Lynmouth flood disaster came only days after RAF rain-making experiments over southern England", and that secret experiments were causing heavy rainfall. According to the programme, "classified documents on the trials that Project Cumulus contributed to the conditions that caused this flood have gone missing". A few days before the disaster a seeding experiment was carried out over southern England. Alan Yates, an aeronautical engineer and glider pilot who was working with the operation, sprayed salt in the air and was "elated" to learn of a heavy rainfall in Staines shortly after. "Survivors tell how the air smelled of sulphur on the afternoon of the floods, and the rain fell so hard it hurt people's faces." Meteorologist Philip Eden has said the experiments could not have caused the accident: "It is preposterous to blame the Lynmouth flood on such experiments". Eden also said "The storm which caused the 1952 disaster was not confined to the Lynmouth district." while in reality "The East and West Lyn rivers, which drop rapidly down from Exmoor, were swollen even before the fatal storm." References Further reading |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Benazir_Bhutto#United_Nations_inquiry] | [TOKENS: 5815] |
Contents Assassination of Benazir Bhutto The assassination of Benazir Bhutto (Urdu: بینظیر بھُٹو کا قتل, romanized: Benazīr Bhuṭṭo kā qatl) took place on 27 December 2007 in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Benazir Bhutto, the former Prime Minister of Pakistan and then-leader of the opposition Pakistan People's Party, had been campaigning ahead of elections scheduled for January 2008. Shots were fired at her after a political rally at Liaqat National Bagh, and a suicide bomb was detonated immediately following the shooting. She was declared dead at 18:16 local time (13:16 UTC), at Rawalpindi General Hospital. Twenty-three other people were killed by the bombing. Bhutto had previously survived a similar attempt on her life in Karachi (the 2007 Karsaz bombing) that killed at least 180 people, after her return from exile two months earlier. Following her assassination, the Election Commission of Pakistan postponed the general elections by a month, which Bhutto's party later won. Though early reports indicated that she had been hit by shrapnel or the gunshots, the Pakistani Interior Ministry initially stated that Bhutto died of a skull fracture sustained when the force of the explosion caused her head to strike the sunroof of the vehicle. Bhutto's aides rejected this version of the story, and argued instead that she suffered two gunshots before the bomb detonation. The Interior Ministry subsequently backtracked from its previous claim. In May 2007, Bhutto had asked for additional protection from private security contractors Blackwater and ArmorGroup. An investigation of the assassination by the United Nations stated that "Ms. Bhutto's assassination could have been prevented if adequate security measures had been taken." Background Bhutto had opted for self-exile while her court cases for corruption remained pending in foreign and Pakistani courts. After eight years in exile in Dubai and London, Bhutto returned to Karachi on 18 October 2007 to prepare for the 2008 national elections, allowed by a possible power-sharing deal with President Pervez Musharraf. Bhutto survived an assassination attempt in Karachi during this homecoming. En route to a rally in Karachi on 18 October 2007, two explosions occurred shortly after she had landed and left Jinnah International Airport returning from her exile. Bhutto was not injured, but the explosions, later found to be a suicide bomb attack, killed 139 people and injured at least 450. The dead included at least 50 of the security guards from her Pakistan Peoples Party, who had formed a human chain around her truck to keep potential bombers away, as well as six police officers. A number of senior officials were injured. Bhutto was escorted unharmed from the scene. After the bombing, Bhutto and her husband asked Musharraf for greater security, including tinted windows, jammers for bombs, private guards, and four police vehicles. These calls were echoed by three U.S. senators who wrote to Musharraf. Bhutto's supporters and the Pakistani government dispute whether or not she was provided adequate protection. The Israeli newspaper Maariv reported that Bhutto further asked the American Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Britain's Scotland Yard and Israel's Mossad several weeks before the assassination to help provide for her protection. Israeli officials had not yet decided whether or not to provide aid because they did not want to upset relations with Pakistan and India. Bhutto also tried to obtain private security personnel, approaching both the U.S.-based Blackwater and UK-based ArmorGroup. However, the Pakistani government refused to give visas to the foreign security contractors. Despite this, American diplomats provided Bhutto with confidential U.S. intelligence on threats against her. After the assassination, President Musharraf denied that Bhutto should have received more security, saying that her death was primarily her own fault because she took "unnecessary risks" and should have exited the rally more quickly. Assassination Benazir Bhutto had just addressed a rally of Pakistan Peoples Party supporters in the city of Rawalpindi when the rally was rocked by an explosion. Initial police reports stated that one or more assassins fired at Bhutto's bulletproof white Toyota Land Cruiser just as she was about to drive off after the rally. A suicide bomber detonating a bomb next to her vehicle followed. According to Getty Images photographer John Moore, Bhutto was standing through her vehicle's sunroof to wave at supporters, and fell back inside after three gunshots. The Times of India aired an amateur clip showing the assassin firing three gun shots at Bhutto before the blast. Following the incident, an unconscious Bhutto was taken to the Rawalpindi General Hospital at 17:35 local time, where doctors led by Rawalpindi Medical College Principal Mohammad Musaddiq Khan tried to resuscitate her, performing a "left anterolateral thoracotomy for open cardiac massage". Sadiq Khan, Mohammad Khan's father, had tried to save Liaquat Ali Khan when he was assassinated in the same park and rushed to the same hospital in 1951. Although Pakistan Peoples Party spokesman Farhatullah Babar initially said that Bhutto was safe, she was declared dead at 18:16 local time (13:16 UTC). Bhutto's cause of death has been much discussed and debated. Some commentators suggested that this debate was motivated by attempts to define Bhutto's legacy: perhaps Bhutto would be considered a martyr if she died by gunshot, but not if she died by hitting her head following a bomb blast. Others asserted that the arguments against a death by gunshot were intended to blunt criticism that she was not adequately protected. Initial reports based on Pakistani Interior Ministry information reported that Bhutto was killed by a gunshot wound to the neck. Rehman Malik, a security adviser for Pakistan Peoples Party, suggested that the killer opened fire as Bhutto left the rally and that he hit her in the neck and chest before he detonated the explosives he was wearing. Javed Cheema, an interior ministry, stated that her injuries were caused either by her having been shot or from pellets packed into the detonated bomb that acted as shrapnel. On 28 December, however, the cause of Bhutto's death became less clear. Pakistan's Interior Ministry announced that they now felt Bhutto's death was as a result of a neck fracture sustained when she ducked or fell into her vehicle and hit the sunroof catch immediately after the gunshots but later reported her cause of death as a skull fracture. According to an Associated Press report, the Ministry stated "Bhutto was killed when she tried to duck back into the vehicle, and the shock waves from the blast knocked her head into a lever attached to the sunroof, fracturing her skull." The Ministry further added, in contradiction of the official hospital account, that Bhutto suffered no gunshot or shrapnel injuries and that all gunshots missed her. Pakistan Peoples Party spokesman Farhatullah Babar rejected claims that Bhutto's death was caused by an accident. Bhutto's lawyer and a senior official in the Pakistan Peoples Party, Farooq Naik, said that the report was "baseless" and "a pack of lies". He went on to support the view that the cause of death was two bullets hitting Bhutto in the abdomen and the head. An anonymous Toyota official also rejected the notion that she could have even hit the lever based on its location in the car (a Toyota Land Cruiser). In statements made to Pakistan's The News, Mohammad Mussadiq Khan, one of the doctors who treated Bhutto at Rawalpindi General Hospital, described severe and depressed skull fractures, oval in overall shape, on the right side of Bhutto's head. He apparently saw no other injuries and downplayed the possibility of bullet wounds, although he had previously spoken of them. One anonymous doctor said that Pakistani authorities took Bhutto's medical records immediately after her death, and that they told doctors to stop talking. On 31 December, Athar Minallah of the Rawalpindi General Hospital released a statement (described as "clinical notes") signed by seven persons involved in Bhutto's treatment at the hospital. These persons were not pathologists and did not conduct a formal autopsy. The statement first narrates the course of treatment, from Bhutto's arrival at the hospital until she was declared dead. The second part of the statement details the head wound and notes that "Detailed external examination of the body did not reveal any other external injury". X-rays had been taken of the head wound and were interpreted in the statement. The cause of death was declared to be "Open head injury with depressed skull fracture, leading to cardiopulmonary arrest". According to The Washington Post, the crime scene was cleared before any forensic examination could be completed and no formal autopsy was performed before burial. Despite the ambiguity surrounding her death, Bhutto's husband Asif Zardari did not allow a formal autopsy to be conducted citing his fears regarding the procedure being carried out in Pakistan. On 1 January 2008, Pakistan's Interior Ministry backtracked on its statement that Benazir Bhutto had died from hitting her head on the sunroof latch. Ministry spokesman, Javed Iqbal Cheema said that the ministry would wait for forensic investigations before making a conclusion on Bhutto's cause of death. On 8 February 2008, investigators from Scotland Yard concluded that Benazir Bhutto died after hitting her head as she was tossed by the force of a suicide blast, not from an assassin's bullet. However, as quoted in an article in The New York Times: "It is unclear how the Scotland Yard investigators reached such conclusive findings absent autopsy results or other potentially important evidence that was washed away by cleanup crews in the immediate aftermath of the blast." In the report, UK Home Office pathologist Nathaniel Cary said that while a gunshot wound to her head or trunk could not be entirely excluded as a possibility, "the only tenable cause for the rapidly fatal head injury in this case is that it occurred as the result of impact due to the effects of the bomb-blast." The findings were consistent with the Pakistani government's explanation of Bhutto's assassination, an account that had been greeted with disbelief by Bhutto's supporters. Bhutto's funeral occurred on the afternoon of 28 December 2007. Her body was moved from Chaklala Airbase in Rawalpindi to Sukkur Airport on 28 December at 01:20. All of her children and her husband travelled with her body. Earlier they reached Chaklala Air Base by a special flight to get her so actually body. Mourners from all over Pakistan made their way to Larkana to take part in the funeral ceremony for the former Prime Minister. The family delivered the body to its site of burial via helicopter. Bhutto was laid to rest beside her father in the family tomb. Aftermath After Bhutto's death, supporters wept and broke the hospital's glass doors, threw stones at cars, and reportedly chanted "Dog, Musharraf, dog" outside the hospital, referring to President Musharraf. Others attacked police and burned election campaign posters and tyres. Some opposition groups said that the assassination could lead to civil war, and other commentators said that the upcoming elections would likely be postponed. Demonstrations were widespread in Pakistan with police using tear gas and batons to break up angry demonstrations in Peshawar. Some protesters torched the billboards of Musharraf, firing in the air and screaming. Protests in Multan also had protesters burning tires and blocking traffic. Similar scenes were witnessed in Karachi, Bhutto's home city. Police in Sindh were put on red alert. Two police officers were shot in Karachi during the riots following the assassination. Musharraf ordered a crackdown on rioters and looters to "ensure safety and security." The Pakistan Rangers announced shoot-on-sight orders against anyone inciting violence or arson, although attempts to avoid direct confrontation were maintained. On 28 December the riots escalated, especially in the Sindh Province, the homeground of Bhutto. Foreign outlets, trains, banks and vehicles were destroyed or burned and protesters took over the streets, chanting slogans and setting tires on fire in several cities. At least 47 people died in the riots. Rioters destroyed 176 banks, 34 gasoline stations and hundreds of cars and shops. 28 December was the first day of a general strike called by many groups, ranging from political parties to various professional groups. Banks were attacked and the buildings were burned in many cities of Sindh. Most of the ATMs were destroyed and some looted. Hundreds of private buses were burned in all parts of the country. There were also incidents of burning of trains in Sind. According to the Daily Jang: Twenty-eight railway stations, 13 railway engines and seven trains were burned resulting over three billion rupees' loss. The whole rail system had collapsed since the night of December 27. Thousands of passengers were on the railway stations waiting for restoration. There were no sign of restoration for some days. Thousands of private cars were also damaged all over Pakistan by the angry mobs, mainly youth. The houses and offices of politicians, local government mayors and administration were the other victims of the mass reaction. They were either burned or damaged. Over 100 people died in the incidents related to mass protest, either by police or in the crossfire of different groups. Bhutto's son, Bilawal Zardari, read her instructions on the future of the Pakistan Peoples Party on 30 December. In that will, she had designated her husband Asif Ali Zardari as her political successor but Zardari made their then nineteen-year-old son, Bilawal, the Chairman of the PPP as Zardari favoured their son to represent Bhutto's legacy, in part to avoid division within the party due to his own unpopularity and he serve as co-chairman of the PPP. Pakistan's election commission met on 31 December to decide whether or not to delay the January elections; two days before they hinted that they would need to because pre-election preparation had been "adversely affected". A senior election commission official subsequently announced that the election would be delayed until "the later part of February". Senator Latif Khosa, one of Bhutto's top aides, reported that she was planning to divulge evidence of fraud in the upcoming election following the event where the assassination took place. The pair co-wrote a 160-page dossier on the subject, with Bhutto outlining tactics she alleged would be put into play, including intimidation, excluding voters and fake ballots being planted in boxes. The report was titled Yet another stain on the face of democracy. In a statement he made on 1 January 2008, Khosa said: The state agencies are manipulating the whole process, there is rigging by the ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence), the Election Commission and the previous government, which is still continuing to hold influence. They were on the rampage. Khosa said that they had planned to give the dossier to two American lawmakers on the evening of her assassination and release it publicly soon after that. One of the claims in the dossier was that US financial aid had been secretly misappropriated for electoral fraud and another was that the ISI has a 'mega-computer' which could hack into any other computer and was connected to the Election Commission's system. A spokesman for President Musharraf called the claims "ridiculous". In the run up to the election, the 'sympathy vote' was considered crucial for the Pakistan Peoples Party, which was expected to win the National Assembly. The election results yielded a majority for the Pakistan Peoples Party in the National Assembly, and in the Provincial Assembly of Sindh. Following a three-day shut-down, the benchmark index, the KSE100 index, of the Karachi Stock Exchange fell 4.7%. The Pakistani rupee fell to its lowest level against the U.S. dollar since October 2001. The stock exchange has a history of recovering after political unrest. The Pakistan Railways suffered losses of PKR 12.3 billion as a direct result of riots following the assassination. Sixty-three railway stations, 149 bogies, and 29 locomotives were damaged within two days of Bhutto's death. In the first four days after the assassination, Karachi suffered losses of US$1 billion. By the fifth day, the cost of country-wide violence amounted to 8% of the GDP. Responsibility Adnkronos claimed that al-Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri ordered the killing in October 2007. U.S. intelligence officials said that they could not confirm this claim of responsibility. Nonetheless, U.S. analysts said that al-Qaeda was a likely, or even a prime suspect. For its part, the Pakistani Interior Ministry (of the previous Musharraf administration) stated that it had proof that al-Qaeda was behind the assassination, stating "that the suicide bomber belonged to Lashkar-e-Jhangvi—an al Qaeda-linked Sunni Muslim militant group that the government has blamed for hundreds of killings". The Interior Ministry also claimed to have intercepted a statement by militant leader Baitullah Mehsud, said to be linked to al-Qaeda, in which he congratulated his followers for carrying out the assassination. On 29 December a Mehsud spokesman told the Associated Press that Mehsud was not involved in the assassination: "I strongly deny it. Tribal people have their own customs. We don't strike women. It is a conspiracy by government, military and intelligence agencies." The Pakistan Peoples Party also called the government's blame of Mehsud a diversion: "The story that al-Qaida or Baitullah Mehsud did it appears to us to be a planted story, an incorrect story, because they want to divert the attention," said Farhatullah Babar, a spokesman for Bhutto's party. On 18 January 2008, CIA Director Michael Hayden claimed that Mehsud and his network was responsible. In a letter which she wrote to Musharraf on 16 October 2007, Bhutto named four persons who were involved in an alleged plot to kill her: current Intelligence Bureau (IB) Chief Ijaz Shah, former chief minister of Punjab Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, former chief minister of Sindh Arbab Ghulam Rahim, and the former ISI chief, Hamid Gul, as those who posed a threat to her life. British newspaper The Times suggested that elements within the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence with close ties to Islamists might have been behind the killing, and it also asserted that it is unlikely that Musharraf would have ordered the assassination. October 2007 emails from Bhutto in which she wrote that she would blame Musharraf for her death if she were killed, because the Musharraf government was not providing adequate security to her, were also published after Bhutto's death. Soon after the killing, many of Bhutto's supporters believed that the Musharraf government was involved in the assassination. On 30 December, Scotland on Sunday quoted MI5 sources stated that factions of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence may have been responsible for the assassination. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced on 5 February 2009 that at the Government of Pakistan's request, a commission would be sent to investigate Bhutto's assassination. Armed with a modest mandate and a limited timeframe, a three-member team arrived at Islamabad on 16 July 2009. The unit, headed by the Chilean diplomat Heraldo Muñoz, found themselves plunged into a murky world of conspiracy theories, power politics and conflicting agendas. Muñoz was supported by the Indonesian official Marzuki Darusman and Peter FitzGerald, a retired Irish police officer who headed the initial inquiry into the assassination of Lebanese Premier Rafik Hariri in 2005. The UN was asked to send a team to dispel a conspiracy theory that claimed that Zardari himself had orchestrated his wife's death, a notion most analysts dismissed because of absence of any concrete evidence. Basically the UN team's mandate was to "establish the facts and circumstances of the assassination" and not to undertake a criminal investigation, which remained responsibility of the Pakistani authorities. A formal investigation by the United Nations commenced. The report concluded that the security measures provided to Bhutto by the government were "fatally insufficient and ineffective". Furthermore, the report stated that the treatment of the crime scene after her death went "beyond mere incompetence". The report stated that "police actions and omissions, including the hosing down of the crime scene and failure to collect and preserve evidence, inflicted irreparable damage to the investigation". In its report, the UN Commission stated that: A range of government officials failed profoundly in their efforts first to protect Ms Bhutto and second to investigate with vigour all those responsible for her murder, not only in the execution of the attack, but also in its conception, planning and financing. ... Responsibility for Ms Bhutto's security on the day of her assassination rested with the Federal Government, the government of Punjab and the Rawalpindi District Police. None of these entities took necessary measures to respond to the extraordinary and urgent security risks that they knew she faced. Among other failings: the police co-ordinated poorly with the PPP's own security; police escort units did not protect Ms Bhutto's vehicle as tasked; parked police vehicles blocked the emergency route; and the police took grossly inadequate steps to clear the crowd so that Ms Bhutto's vehicle would have safe passage on leaving Liaquat Bagh. The performance of individual police officers and police leadership was poor in areas of forward planning, accountability and command and control. The heroism of individual PPP supporters, many of whom sacrificed themselves to protect Ms Bhutto should have been properly canalised by the Chief of PPP's security [Mr Rehman Malik]. More serious, Ms Bhutto was left vulnerable in a severely damaged vehicle by the irresponsible and hasty departure of the bullet-proof Mercedes-Benz which, as the back-up vehicle, was an essential part of her convoy [perhaps purposefully taken away by Rehman Malik, Babar Awan & Farhatullah Babar]. The collection of 23 pieces of evidence was manifestly inadequate in a case that should have resulted in thousands.... Hosing down the crime scene so soon after the blast goes beyond mere incompetence and needed fixing criminal responsibility on many. The deliberate prevention by CPO Saud Aziz of a post mortem examination of Ms Bhutto hindered a definitive determination of the cause of her death. It was patently unrealistic for the CPO to expect that Mr Zardari would allow an autopsy on his arrival in Pakistan while in the meantime her remains had been placed in a coffin and brought to the airport. The autopsy should have been carried out at RGH long before Mr Zardari arrived. The Commission was persuaded that the Rawalpindi police chief, CPO Saud Aziz, did not act independently of higher authorities, either in the decision to hose down the crime scene or to impede the post-mortem examination. On 5 November 2011, a Pakistani court indicted two police officers in connection with Bhutto's assassination, among them, the former police chief of Rawalpindi. The two men were in charge of the former prime minister's security and were previously arrested and charged with "conspiracy as well as abetment in the murder" and "changing the security plan". A further five men were also indicted, all of them believed to have been affiliated with Baitullah Mehsud, the Pakistani Taliban leader who the government blamed for the attack. On 20 August 2013, ex-President Pervez Musharraf was indicted on three charges of murder, conspiracy to murder, and facilitation of murder in connection with his alleged failure to provide adequate security to Bhutto—charges for which he reportedly denied his responsibility. On 31 August 2017, a Pakistani anti-terrorism court declared that Musharraf was a wanted fugitive due to the role which he played in connection with Bhutto's murder and acquitted five suspected Pakistani Taliban of conspiracy to commit murder due to lack of evidence, while sentencing two high-ranking police officers to 17 years in prison, one for mishandling security at the Bhutto rally and the other for mishandling evidence at the crime scene. On 16 December 2019, Musharraf, in exile for hospitalization in Dubai, was sentenced to death in Pakistan in absentia for high treason, for suspending the constitution and imposing a state of emergency a decade early, with right of appeal. The United Arab Emirates has no current extradition with Pakistan, though Musharraf's poor health prevented him from being moved even if there was. On 9 February 2023 a special division bench of two judges of the Lahore High Court heard eight appeals in Bhutto's murder case. Notices were issued to various individuals, including former President Zardari and accused parties, while the appeal against Musharraf was dismissed due to his death. Reactions According to state television, Musharraf held an emergency cabinet meeting after he received word of the blast. He then addressed the nation, saying that "We shall not rest till we tackle this problem and eliminate all the terrorists. This is the only way the nation will be able to move forward, otherwise this will be the biggest obstacle to our advancement." In a televised address, President Musharraf publicly condemned the killing of Bhutto, proclaiming a three-day mourning period with all national flags at half-mast. Mahmud Ali Durrani, the Pakistani ambassador to the United States, called Bhutto's death "a national tragedy" and stated that "... we have lost one of our important, very important and, I would stress, liberal leaders." Nawaz Sharif was the first mainstream political leader to reach the hospital and express his solidarity with Bhutto's family and political workers. He vowed to "fight your [Bhutto's] war from now on" and calling the day of her assassination the "darkest, gloomiest day in the history of this country". Despite extreme political enmity between the two leaders during the 1990s, both vowed to introduce politics of tolerance before returning from exile and had earlier signed the Charter of Democracy. After signing the charter, they said that they would work for an end to the rule of President Musharraf. Earlier in the day, Nawaz Sharif's political meeting had also been shot at, resulting in the death of four people. Chairman Imran Khan of the Tehreek-e-Insaf party strongly condemned the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. "It is a dastardly act designed to destabilise Pakistan with the government responsible for not providing her security though she was demanding it. We must fight this menace of terrorism. It is a black day in the history of Pakistan and an irreparable loss to this country," Khan said. Pakistan Peoples Party Washington, D.C. chapter president Javaid Manzoor said, "We [Bhutto's supporters] are shocked. We are stunned. Every single one of us is mourning the loss of our leader," also stating that he believed that the next election, scheduled for 8 January would be cancelled. Pakistan Peoples Party senior vice chairman Ameen Faheem later called for a 40-day period of mourning across Pakistan. Pakistan Peoples Party spokesman Farhatullah Babar said the Pakistan Peoples Party was unhappy with the government's declaration of the death coming as a result of an accident and said that the Pakistan Peoples Party wanted to see a change in the direction of the investigation. He called for an independent inquiry into the assassination by international experts. He also said that "had the government accepted our demand of conducting an inquiry into Karachi's 18 October blast by international experts, this incident would not have happened." Bhutto's assassination was met with widespread condemnation by members of the international community, including Pakistan's regional neighbours Afghanistan, China, India, Bangladesh and Iran. Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh praised Bhutto's efforts for the improvement of Indo-Pakistani relations. The United Nations Security Council held an emergency meeting and unanimously condemned the assassination, a call echoed by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. See also References External links |
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Contents Great Kantō Earthquake The Great Kantō Earthquake (Japanese: 関東大地震, Kantō daijishin, or 関東大震災, Kantō daishinsai) was a megathrust earthquake that struck the Kantō Plain on the main Japanese island of Honshu at 11:58:32 JST (02:58:32 UTC) on Saturday, 1 September 1923. It had an approximate magnitude of 8.0 on the moment magnitude scale (Mw), with its epicenter located some 100 km (62 mi) southwest of the capital Tokyo. The earthquake devastated Tokyo, the port city of Yokohama, and surrounding prefectures of Kanagawa, Chiba, and Shizuoka, and caused widespread damage throughout the Kantō region. The event was a complex disaster, with modern research indicating it consisted of three consecutive shocks in the span of several minutes. The initial megathrust event in Kanagawa Prefecture was followed three minutes later by a magnitude 7.2 earthquake centered beneath Tokyo Bay, and two minutes after that by a magnitude 7.3 shock in Yamanashi Prefecture. Fires, exacerbated by strong winds from a nearby typhoon, spread rapidly through the densely populated urban areas, accounting for the majority of the devastation and casualties. The death toll is estimated to have been between 105,000 and 140,000 people, including tens of thousands who went missing and were presumed dead. Over half of Tokyo and nearly all of Yokohama were destroyed, leaving approximately 2.5 million people homeless. The disaster triggered widespread social unrest, including the Kantō Massacre, in which ethnic Koreans and others mistaken for them were murdered by vigilante groups based on false rumors. In the aftermath, the Japanese government declared martial law and undertook extensive relief and restoration efforts. The earthquake prompted ambitious plans for the reconstruction of Tokyo, aiming to create a modern, resilient imperial capital under the leadership of Home Minister Gotō Shinpei. However, these plans were often met with political contestation, financial constraints, and local resistance, leading to a reconstruction that, while significantly improving infrastructure, fell short of the grandest visions. The disaster also fueled debates about national identity, modernity, and societal values, with many commentators interpreting the event as a divine punishment for perceived moral decline and advocating for spiritual and social regeneration. The Great Kantō Earthquake remains a pivotal event in modern Japanese history, profoundly impacting urban planning, disaster preparedness, and social consciousness. 1 September is commemorated annually in Japan as Disaster Prevention Day. Earthquake and immediate impact The Kantō region of eastern Japan is prone to major earthquakes due to its location near complex tectonic plate boundaries. The 1923 earthquake occurred when the Philippine Sea Plate subducted beneath the Okhotsk Plate (sometimes considered part of the North American Plate) along the Sagami Trough. The initial shock, occurring at 11:58:32 JST on 1 September 1923, was a complex event. Modern analysis indicates a dual rupture on a broad trench-type fault: the first rupture occurred near Odawara in Kanagawa Prefecture, some 100 km (62 mi) southwest of Tokyo, followed about ten seconds later by a second shock on the other side of Sagami Bay near the Miura Peninsula. This was followed minutes later by two major aftershocks: a magnitude 7.2 earthquake beneath northern Tokyo Bay at 12:01, and a magnitude 7.3 earthquake in Yamanashi Prefecture at 12:03. Survivor accounts consistently describe these three distinct seismic events. The earthquake immediately toppled structures, crushed people, and caused widespread panic. Survivor accounts describe an initial period of stunned silence followed by a frantic rush as people tried to reunite with family and salvage belongings. Engineer Mononobe Nagao recalled the earth shaking "back and forth for what seemed like 15 seconds", followed by violent vertical convulsions that knocked people to the ground. Writer Tanaka Kōtarō described the sound as akin to a giant "blackening whirlwind" churning up the earth from "deep underground". Within thirty minutes of the first tremor, more than 130 major fires broke out across Tokyo, particularly in the densely populated eastern and northeastern sections. These fires were fueled by overturned charcoal braziers used for midday meals, leaking gas from ruptured lines, and flammable debris from collapsed wooden buildings. Strong winds, associated with a typhoon passing off the coast, fanned the flames, creating massive firestorms that swept through the city. The air temperature in some areas reached 46 °C (115 °F). The combination of ongoing aftershocks and rapidly spreading fires led to pandemonium. Millions of residents attempted to flee, often carrying their possessions, which clogged the already damaged streets and bridges. Kawatake Shigetoshi described being trapped in a "wave of people" in eastern Tokyo, unable to move as fires approached from multiple directions. Many sought refuge in open spaces, such as parks and the grounds surrounding the Imperial Palace, but these areas quickly became overcrowded. Waterways like the Sumida River also became congested with boats as people tried to escape by water, only to face sparks and burning debris falling from the sky. The disaster quickly overwhelmed Tokyo's infrastructure and its capacity for an orderly evacuation. Damage and devastation The Great Kantō Earthquake was one of the most destructive natural disasters of the 20th century. Roughly half of Tokyo and virtually all of Yokohama were transformed into "blackened, corpse-strewn wastelands". The earthquake and subsequent fires destroyed an estimated 397,119 homes in Tokyo Prefecture alone, leaving about 1.38 million people homeless in Tokyo City. Across the seven affected prefectures (Tokyo, Kanagawa, Chiba, Saitama, Shizuoka, Yamanashi, and Ibaraki), a total of 2.5 million people were displaced. The physical destruction was immense. In addition to buildings, the earthquake buckled roads, collapsed bridges (362 destroyed and 70 heavily damaged in Tokyo), twisted train tracks, snapped water and sewer pipes, and severed telegraph lines. Tokyo's main aqueduct from Wadabori collapsed in two places and required extensive repairs. The sea floor in Sagami Bay dropped by over 400 meters (1,300 ft) at the epicenter, triggering tsunamis that inundated low-lying coastal communities. Fires were the primary cause of destruction, accounting for 90 percent of the fatalities. In Tokyo, districts like Asakusa, Kanda, Nihonbashi, Kyōbashi, Honjo, and Fukagawa were largely incinerated. The Honjo Clothing Depot, a large open area where tens of thousands sought refuge, became a death trap when a massive firestorm (a tatsumaki or whirlwind of fire) engulfed it, killing an estimated 40,000 people in minutes. Survivor Koizumi Tomi described the site as "hell on earth", surrounded by "endless rows of bodies: red, inflamed bodies; black, swollen bodies; bodies partially buried under ash and smoldering remains". Governmental administration was crippled. In Tokyo, 44 percent of the main buildings burned to the ground, including the police headquarters and the ministries of Home Affairs, Finance, Education, Communications, and Railways. The vast majority of police stations and municipal and ward offices crumbled or burned. Out of Tokyo's 196 primary schools, 117 were destroyed, along with numerous higher girls' schools, trade schools, colleges, and universities. Social welfare facilities, including public dining halls, cheap lodging homes, and crèches, were annihilated. Over 160 public and private hospitals in Tokyo were destroyed. The economic impact was also severe. The disaster exacerbated the economic downturn of the early 1920s and contributed to a genuine banking crisis in 1927. Roughly 7,000 factories were destroyed, including major spinning, dyeing, and tool manufacturing plants. Financial institutions suffered heavily, with 121 of 138 bank head offices and 222 of 310 branch offices in Tokyo City consumed by fire or reduced to rubble. Insurance policies offered little relief, as most contained clauses exempting companies from earthquake-related damage; eventually, the government intervened to facilitate partial payouts. Reconstruction brought a new surge of imports and, under these combined pressures, an early return to the gold standard was impossible. The disaster also led to significant unemployment. In September 1923, the unemployment rate in the wards of Tokyo reached 45% (59% for men, 28% for women). By 15 November, across Tokyo Prefecture, 178,887 people were registered as unemployed, with the commerce and industry sectors most affected. Casualties The human toll of the Great Kantō Earthquake was catastrophic. Early estimates put the death toll as high as 140,000, but modern research based on the 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake Disaster Report puts the total number of fatalities at 105,385. Of these, 91,781 deaths (87%) were attributed to fires, while 11,086 (10.5%) were due to being crushed by collapsing buildings. Other causes included drowning and landslides. Kanagawa Prefecture suffered 32,838 deaths, while Tokyo Prefecture had 70,387. An additional 13,275 people remained classified as missing twelve months after the earthquake. People died in numerous ways: crushed by collapsing buildings, trampled in panicked crowds, burned alive in the fires, or drowned in rivers and canals while attempting to escape the flames. Some victims suffocated as fires consumed oxygen, while others were boiled alive in ponds offering no protection from the intense heat. The smell of burning human flesh and decaying bodies permeated the air for weeks. Disposing of the dead became a major public health concern, leading to mass cremations, particularly at the Honjo Clothing Depot. Social unrest and breakdown of order In the immediate aftermath of the earthquake, law and order broke down in many parts of the affected region. This period was characterized by the spread of rumors, the formation of vigilante groups (jikeidan), and the massacre of ethnic Koreans and other mistaken for them, as well as the murder of political activists by the authorities. Widespread destruction of communication infrastructure contributed to an atmosphere of uncertainty and fear. Rumors spread rapidly, often relayed by refugees fleeing the disaster zone. Some stories suggested that Mount Fuji had erupted or that a large tsunami had washed away Yokohama. The most damaging rumors, however, concerned alleged activities by Koreans. Originating from looting by Japanese in Yokohama that was misattributed to Koreans, false reports circulated that Koreans were poisoning wells, committing arson, looting, and organizing attacks on Japanese. These rumors were given a degree of legitimacy when some government officials, including Gotō Fumio of the Home Ministry, broadcast messages warning of "organized groups of Korean extremists" attempting to "commit acts of sedition". On 2 September, the police headquarters, lacking manpower to confirm eyewitness reports, passed them on as factual and issued a statement that "unscrupulous Koreans are committing acts of arson and other forms of violence". Fueled by these rumors and a climate of fear and xenophobia, Japanese vigilante groups, known as jikeidan, formed across the Kantō region. By mid-September, an estimated 3,689 such groups were operating, ostensibly to prevent fires, stop looting, and maintain order. However, many of these groups, often armed with makeshift weapons like clubs, swords, and bamboo spears, targeted Koreans and, in some cases, Chinese, Okinawans, and Japanese from certain regions who were mistaken for Koreans due to their accents. Estimates of the death toll in what became known as the Kantō Massacre vary significantly. Police confirmed the deaths of 248 Koreans, while an investigation by the Governor-General of Korea determined 832 had been killed or were missing. A separate investigation by Korean students concluded that 2,613 Koreans had been killed; some modern estimates reach as high as 6,000. Victims were often subjected to brutal violence, including beatings, stabbings, and lynchings, sometimes after being "tested" for their Korean identity (e.g., by being asked to pronounce Japanese words that were difficult for Koreans). While some police and military personnel attempted to protect Koreans, others were complicit in the violence or turned a blind eye. Although police made belated corrections to the rumors on 3 and 4 September, few perpetrators were prosecuted; of 125 vigilante group members tried, only 32 received formal sentences, and 91 received suspended sentences. Contemporary commentators like Hoashi Ri'ichirō and Oku Hidesaburō condemned the massacres as "extremely disgusting and internationally shameful" and a "disgraceful act that exposed a moral flaw". The chaos also provided a cover for the murder of political dissidents. The most prominent case was the Amakasu Incident, in which the anarchist Sakae Ōsugi, his partner Noe Itō, and his six-year-old nephew were arrested and then brutally killed by a squad of military police led by Lieutenant Masahiko Amakasu. The earthquake struck at a time of political uncertainty in Japan. Prime Minister Katō Tomosaburō had died on 24 August, and Admiral Yamamoto Gonnohyōe, selected to form a new cabinet, had not yet succeeded when the disaster occurred. The disaster also forced the postponement of Crown Prince Hirohito's marriage and accession ceremonies. This elite-level political vacuum contributed to confusion over who had the authority to deploy police and military personnel. General Ishimitsu Maomi, deputy commander of the Imperial Guard Forces, acted first, deploying troops to protect imperial locations. Akaike Atsushi, inspector general of the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, faced an overwhelming task with outnumbered and unprepared forces. The new cabinet was formally appointed on the afternoon of 2 September, sworn in on the lawn of the Akasaka Detached Palace amid falling ash, as other ministerial buildings were deemed unsafe. One of the first decisions of the new cabinet was to declare martial law over what remained of the capital on 2 September. This ushered in the largest peacetime domestic mobilization and deployment of the army in Japan's pre–World War II history, with eventually over 52,000 troops deployed to Tokyo and Yokohama. The martial law headquarters was granted extensive powers, including administering relief and public safety, prosecuting lawbreakers, prohibiting public gatherings, censoring information, stopping and searching individuals, and entering private homes. Martial law remained in effect until 15 November. Initial military deployment was fraught with difficulties. Commanders arriving in Tokyo found a near total absence of reliable information and lines of communication were non-existent. The military had to rely on aerial reconnaissance and around 2,000 army-trained carrier pigeons for communication. The zone of martial law was progressively expanded to cover all of Tokyo and Kanagawa Prefectures by 3 September, and Chiba and Saitama Prefectures by 4 September. To counter rumors and vigilante violence, particularly against Koreans, military authorities were empowered to arrest individuals, disband suspicious groups, and confiscate weapons. From 4 September, military and police began to collect and transport Koreans to government-run detention centers for "protective custody"; by the end of September, 23,715 Koreans had been taken into these centers. Relief efforts The Yamamoto cabinet created the Emergency Earthquake Relief Bureau (Rinji shinsai kyūgo jimukyoku) to oversee all relief and recovery efforts. Providing emergency medical assistance was an immediate priority, but initial efforts were largely unsuccessful. Many organized rescue and first aid squads were unable to reach the worst-hit areas like Honjo, Asakusa, and Kanda until 4 or 5 September due to destroyed infrastructure and unofficial checkpoints by vigilante groups. A dearth of medical supplies, due to the destruction of numerous hospitals and dispensaries, further hampered efforts. The Relief Bureau concentrated its limited medical resources at large open areas like Hibiya Park and Ueno Park, where tens of thousands of refugees had congregated. Over the longer term, mobile clinics and dispensaries proved most effective. The Relief Bureau created 41 units, and other organizations like Tokyo Prefecture, the Japan Red Cross Society, and the Mitsubishi Corporation also operated mobile clinics. By 30 November, these public and private clinics had provided care to 447,111 sufferers. Temporary hospitals, some in tents donated by American and French governments, accommodated over 6,000 seriously wounded people. Securing food and water was a critical challenge. Mayor Hidejirō Nagata learned on 2 September that the army's main supply depot in Fukagawa, holding 8,000 koku of rice (enough to feed over 500,000 people for six days), had been completely destroyed by fire. The military managed to amass over 120,000 combat rations and 60,000 rations of rice from other stores. By 4 September, military units were distributing dried noodles. Eventually, 74,048 koku of rice were transported from military installations across Japan to distribution centers in Tokyo and Yokohama. The government also appealed to prefectural governors for rice donations, receiving pledges of 61,490 koku in the first week. An "Emergency Requisition Ordinance" allowed the government to requisition foodstuffs and other materials. Transporting these supplies was a major logistical challenge due to damaged rail lines and docks. Navy personnel spent a week repairing 86 piers at Shibaura and Ryōgoku, while army forces cleared railway lines and rebuilt track. Conservative estimates suggest that 1.25 million people received rice distributions between 6 and 10 September. Water supply was an even more significant problem. Tokyo's main water plant was not heavily damaged, but pipes and aquifers were severed in over two hundred locations. Warships tanked water from Yokosuka, Osaka, and Nagoya, and the army requisitioned water barrels to transport clean water. By the end of December, nearly 40 million gallons (151 million liters) of drinking water had been transported. Shelter options were bleak for Tokyo Prefecture's 1.55 million homeless. Nearly 800,000 people left Tokyo or Yokohama, first on foot and later via restricted rail service (from 11 September), to stay with relatives or friends elsewhere. About 250,000 people dispersed to other parts of Japan, including 17,704 to Kobe, 7,600 to Hokkaidō, and some even to Japan's colonies like Taiwan and Karafuto. Those remaining in Tokyo flooded large open spaces such as Hibiya Park, Ueno Park, and the Imperial Palace grounds. On 9 September, municipal authorities began constructing temporary barracks. The Meiji Shrine site housed nearly 6,000 refugees, Ueno Park over 9,500, and Hibiya Park 7,000. Many of these open spaces became shantytowns. Barracks were often cramped, with an average of 0.6 tsubo (about 2 square meters (22 sq ft)) of floor space per person. Sanitation was a major problem, with makeshift latrines overflowing. While a modest number of refugees left barrack housing by the end of 1923, many more returned to the disaster zone and erected private makeshift shacks. By October 1923, 539,450 people were living in 111,791 such temporary abodes. Interpretations and social impact Government officials and media outlets made concerted efforts to construct the Great Kantō Earthquake as an unprecedented national calamity, requiring a unified national response. Newspapers, the chief medium for disseminating news, played a lead role. Major papers like the Tokyo Nichi Nichi Shinbun, Osaka Asahi Shinbun, and Osaka Mainichi Shinbun used emotive headlines, harrowing survivor accounts, vivid photographs, and even documentary motion pictures to convey the disaster's horror and scale to a national audience. These portrayals often framed the disaster in terms of wartime analogies, emphasizing themes of sacrifice and national unity. The forty-ninth-day memorial service held on 19 October 1923, at the site of the Honjo Clothing Depot, attended by over 200,000 people and leading politicians, was a meticulously choreographed event. Speeches by figures like Gizō Kasuya and Shōzaburō Horie explicitly linked the victims' sacrifices to the future reconstruction of Tokyo and Japan, urging national unity and effort. Visual culture, including lithographic prints and postcards, also played a significant role in disseminating the image of a devastated but resilient capital, and of a concerned government responding to the crisis. Postcards depicting dead bodies, while sometimes classified as contraband, were widespread and brought the human cost of the disaster to a national audience in a stark manner. A widespread interpretation, embraced by numerous elites across various sectors of society, was that the earthquake was an act of divine punishment (tenken or tenbatsu) or heavenly warning. This view was not confined to religious leaders but was articulated by bureaucrats, politicians, academics, and social commentators. The disaster was seen as a response to Japan's perceived moral decline, materialism, luxury-mindedness, hedonism, and excessive individualism that had become prominent since World War I. The entertainment districts of Tokyo, such as Asakusa, and centers of consumer spending, like the Ginza, were often singled out as epicenters of this perceived degeneracy and thus seen as specifically targeted by the heavens. The destruction of icons of modern consumerism, such as the Mitsukoshi Department Store and the twelve-story Ryōunkaku tower in Asakusa, was imbued with symbolic meaning. This interpretation served as a cosmological bolster for critiques of contemporary society and legitimated calls for social, moral, and ideological reform. The earthquake was thus framed as a moral wake-up call, placing Japan at a crossroads between decline and renovation. The interpretation of the earthquake as divine admonishment fueled calls for national spiritual renewal (seishin fukkō) and economic moderation. An Imperial Rescript Regarding the Invigoration of the National Spirit, issued on 10 November 1923, became a foundational document for this movement. It urged Japanese people to reject frivolousness, extravagance, and extreme tendencies, and to embrace simplicity, sincerity, fortitude, diligence, thrift, moderation, loyalty, and filial piety. Government campaigns, such as the 1924 Campaign for the Encouragement of Diligence and Thrift (Kinken shōrei undō), employed the memory of the earthquake to promote austerity and national savings. Policies like the 1924 luxury tariff, which placed a 100 percent duty on a wide range of imported goods deemed luxuries, aimed to curb consumer spending and foster economic self-discipline. While these measures had mixed results in altering consumer behavior in the long term, they reflected a broader elite concern with reorienting Japanese society towards more traditional and disciplined values. The push for spiritual renewal also involved using schools, neighborhood associations, and new media like film and radio to inculcate desired moral values. Reconstruction The devastation of Tokyo unleashed a wave of optimism among many bureaucrats, urban planners, and social reformers, who saw an unparalleled opportunity to rebuild the city as a modern, rational, and resilient metropolis. Figures like Gotō Shinpei, Abe Isoo, and Fukuda Tokuzō argued that "old Tokyo" had been a breeding ground for social ills due to overcrowding, poor sanitation, poverty, and inadequate infrastructure. The earthquake, they believed, created a chance to rectify these problems and construct a capital that would reflect new social values and assist the state in managing its subjects. The disorientation and destruction offered a "free field" for new ideas, but reconstruction under Gotō's direction was swift. Many visions for the new Tokyo were influenced by "authoritarian high modernism," emphasizing state-led planning, technical and scientific progress, and intervention in many aspects of human life, from public health and housing to urban layout and transportation. Plans called for wider, paved streets, extensive green belts and parks, modern public housing, new sanitation systems, and improved transportation networks. Some, like Gotō Shinpei, envisioned a grand imperial capital that would project Japan's emerging power and prestige on the international stage, hoping to create a city that matched Paris and Berlin. On 12 September, Regent Hirohito issued an imperial rescript calling for "not only to restore the city to its previous state, but also to allow for future developments and to provide the city with a renewed appearance." Despite the initial optimism, reconstruction planning was fraught with political contestation. Gotō Shinpei, as Home Minister and head of the Reconstruction Institute (Teito fukkōin), championed ambitious and expensive plans, initially proposing a budget of ¥3 billion—more than twice the entire national budget at the time. This was met with immediate opposition from Finance Minister Inoue Junnosuke and other cabinet colleagues, who were concerned about the nation's financial stability and favored a more fiscally conservative approach. Debates raged over the scope of reconstruction, the extent of land readjustment, the design of new infrastructure, and, crucially, the budget. The Imperial Capital Reconstruction Deliberative Council (Teito fukkō shingikai), an advisory body of elder statesmen and party leaders, became the site of fierce opposition. Critics, led by Itō Miyoji, argued the plans were extravagant, could lead to financial collapse, and violated constitutional rights to ownership. The political infighting exposed deep divisions within Japan's elite and the structural weaknesses of its quasi-democratic, bureaucratic-oligarchic political system. Gotō's plans were progressively scaled back, with the budget reduced to ¥597 million by the council and further to ¥468 million by the Diet in December 1923. A key component of the physical reconstruction was land readjustment (kukaku seiri). The Special Urban Planning Law of December 1923 empowered the government to rationalize irregular land plots, widen streets, and create public spaces by confiscating up to 10 percent of private land without monetary compensation. Roughly 30,000,000 square meters (320,000,000 sq ft) of land in Tokyo were divided into 66 readjustment districts. While the process aimed to create a more rational and user-friendly urban environment, it was met with confusion, resistance, and numerous petitions from landowners and tenants. Concerns involved the constitutionality of uncompensated land confiscation, the impact on businesses, the rights of tenants, and the adequacy of compensation for relocated structures. Despite these local-level disputes, the program resulted in the rationalization of many neighborhoods, particularly in eastern Tokyo, and the creation of significant new public land for roads and other infrastructure. Overall, about 15.3 percent of residential land in readjustment areas was converted to public use, with landowners compensated for acquisitions beyond the 10 percent threshold. By the time reconstruction was officially celebrated in March 1930, Tokyo had undergone significant physical changes. The most notable successes were in transportation infrastructure. The total area of roads in Tokyo increased by 45 percent, and many were widened and paved, with modern sidewalks. Key arterial roads like Shōwa-dōri and Yasukuni-dōri were constructed, and new, modern steel bridges, such as the Eitai-bashi and Kiyosu-bashi spanning the Sumida River, became icons of the new city. The river and canal system was also improved. However, many of the more ambitious social and environmental goals were not fully realized. Spending on parks and green spaces, while resulting in three new large parks and 52 smaller ones, was limited. Social welfare facilities, while improved, also received a small fraction of the reconstruction budget. Many of the pre-earthquake urban vulnerabilities and social problems, including slum areas, persisted or re-emerged. The final reconstruction expenditure by national and city governments totaled roughly ¥744 million. The site of the Honjo Clothing Depot, where tens of thousands perished, became a focal point for mourning and remembrance. Plans for a memorial were initiated soon after the disaster. In June 1924, the Taishō Earthquake Disaster Memorial Project Association was formed to oversee the project. A national design competition for the memorial complex was launched in December 1924. The winning entry by engineer-architect Maeda Kenjirō, a 53-meter (174 ft) tower, proved controversial due to its perceived resemblance to a Prussian triumphal tower and its perceived insensitivity to Buddhist sensibilities. After sustained protest, particularly from Buddhist federations, the design was scrapped in December 1926. Engineer Itō Chūta was then appointed to create a new, more "Japanese" design, heavily influenced by Buddhist architecture, featuring a pagoda that would house a charnel house. The Earthquake Memorial Hall (later the Tokyo Metropolitan Memorial Hall) in Yokoamichō Park was completed on 1 September 1930. Legacy The Great Kantō Earthquake left an indelible mark on Japan. 1 September was designated as Disaster Prevention Day (防災の日, Bōsai no hi) in 1960, an annual commemoration involving nationwide disaster drills and awareness campaigns. The disaster highlighted urban vulnerabilities and influenced subsequent approaches to city planning and building codes, although the ideal of a truly disaster-proof city remained elusive. The memory of the earthquake, particularly the firestorms and the Honjo Clothing Depot tragedy, continued to haunt Tokyoites, influencing their behavior even during the World War II bombings. The events of 1923 also served as a catalyst for long-term government efforts to foster neighborhood associations (tonarigumi) and promote civil defense, trends that intensified in the 1930s and during the war. The disorientation and destruction caused by the disaster marked a "significant divide" in the "massification" of culture, consumption, and taste, accelerating social and cultural changes and providing a "free field" for new artistic and radical movements. The center of urban life in Tokyo also shifted, as the old merchant quarters of the shitamachi ("Low City") were particularly devastated, pushing development toward the more residential "High City" (yamanote). Despite the significant scaling-back of Gotō Shinpei's original vision, the reconstruction provided a fine example of creative recovery, rebuilding Tokyo as a modern city and serving as a model for urban development throughout Japan until the end of World War II. The earthquake and its aftermath remain a subject of historical study and public memory, serving as a stark reminder of Japan's seismic activity and the complex interplay of disaster, society, and national identity. See also References Further reading External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khamar-Daban_incident] | [TOKENS: 1837] |
Contents Khamar-Daban incident On 5 August 1993, six Kazakhstani hikers died in the Khamar-Daban mountain range under uncertain circumstances. The event has been likened to the Dyatlov Pass incident, earning it the name "Buryatia's Dyatlov Pass". The six hikers who died were members of a seven-person hiking group led by Lyudmila Korovina; Valentina Utochenko was the group's sole survivor. Despite the police receiving a report, no formal search was carried out until 24 August. It took two days for helicopters to locate the remains, because Utochenko had not yet been able to recount her version of what had happened. According to an autopsy report, all of the victims died of hypothermia, except Korovina, who died from a heart attack. Background Khamar-Daban, a mountain range in southern Siberia, in the Republic of Buryatia, Russia, was a popular tourist hiking spot. In the summer of 1993, Lyudmila Korovina of the Petropavl "Azimut" tourist club, an experienced hiking instructor and a Master of Sports in hiking, planned a hiking trip to the Khamar-Daban mountains. She was joined by six of her students: Aleksander "Sacha" Krysin, Tatyana Filipenko, Denis Shvachkin, Valentina "Valya" Utochenko, Viktoriya Zalesova and Timur Bapanov. Korovina had previous experience hiking in the Khamar-Daban area, and the students trained with her for the trip. The trip The group of seven hikers, led by Korovina, arrived in Irkutsk by train in August 1993. Korovina's hiking group was one of three in the area, one of which was being led by her daughter, Natalia. Starting on 2 August 1993, their trip led from the village of Murino [ru], along the Langutai river, through the Langutai Gates pass, along the Barun-Yunkatsuk river, up the Khanulu mountain and along its ridge, ending on the watershed plateau of the Anigta and Baiga rivers. Korovina's group was meant to cross paths with her daughter's on 5 August. The first two days of the hike turned out to have gone better than the group had planned, with them making good time up Retranslyator peak; however, on 4 August, as they were beginning their descent, they were hit with an unexpected rainstorm. Korovina decided to make camp in an exposed location, with the group failing at an attempt to build a fire that night. They managed to build a fire in the morning of 5 August and ate breakfast together before continuing their path. The deaths According to Valentina Utochenko, the sole survivor, while descending down the mountain, at the altitude of 2,396 metres (7,861 ft), Krysin, who was at the back of the group, started screaming. He was bleeding from his eyes and ears, frothing at the mouth. He fell to the ground convulsing and then went still. Korovina ran up to him, trying to get him to gain consciousness. A moment later, she cried out, having the same symptoms as Krysin. She convulsed and then collapsed on top of Krysin. Filipenko, who had gotten to Korovina first, was the next to collapse, grabbing at her throat as though she couldn't breathe. She crawled over to a nearby rock and bashed her head against it until she went limp. Zalesova and Bapanov started to run. While running, they collapsed and died throwing up blood and clawing at their own throats, tearing their clothes off. Utochenko and Shvachkin hurried away, but shortly after Shvachkin also collapsed convulsing. Utochenko ran down the mountain, set up a tent for the night under tree cover and fell asleep. On the next day, she returned to the site of her friends' death to retrieve supplies she needed from their bodies. For four days, she followed power lines down the mountain in hopes that someone would find her. She found a river and started following it. On 9 August, she was found by a group of Ukrainian kayakers, who took her to the nearest police station where a report was filed. Search and discovery Utochenko did not speak for several days. The official search was conducted on 24 August, led by Yuri Golius. Because Utochenko had not been able to recount her version of events yet, it took two days to find the bodies using helicopters. The hikers' bodies were noted to have been partially undressed. All of the dead hikers were found to have signs of bruised lungs. An autopsy, carried out in Ulan-Ude, concluded that Krysin, Filipenko, Bapanov, Zalesova and Shvachkin died of hypothermia, and Korovina had a heart attack. Protein deficiency due to malnutrition was listed as a contributing factor to their deaths. Theories Multiple theories have been proposed to explain what caused the hikers' deaths. Rescuers Valery Tatarnikov and Vladimir Zinov, who took part in the search operation for the bodies, claimed that it was impossible that the hikers had died of cold. Zinov suggested that they might have died of altitude sickness. Tourist Vladimir Borzenkov and member of the search operation Nikolai Fedorov suggested that the hikers went mad due to infrasounds. Yuri Golius, the leader of the search operation, blamed their deaths on Korovina's negligence, claiming she was starving her students, which caused them to have vitamin deficiency. In a 2018 interview for Komsomolskaya Pravda, Utochenko denied the theory that Korovina might have been responsible for the deaths. She believes that the cause of the hikers' deaths was pulmonary edema. The first explanation proposes that the hikers died in the exact way the autopsy report concluded they did: by succumbing to hypothermia after not being properly sheltered that night. In severe hypothermia, there may be hallucinations and paradoxical undressing, in which a person removes their clothing, which would explain why the hikers were found partially undressed. Certain parts of Utochenko's story could have been unintentionally exaggerated by her, due to the fact that people who undergo a traumatic experience often misremember details of it. One theory suggests that the hikers might have stumbled upon a Russian military experiment conducted in the mountains; as such, they were killed so that the experiment would remain a secret. This theory was deemed uncredible due to the Khamar-Daban mountain range being a public area with many people traveling through it during tourist season, making it an unlikely place and time for conducting secret experiments. Symptoms described by Utochenko bear resemblance to death by nerve agents. In particular, the frothing at the mouth and convulsing match death by a strong nerve agent. The bruising of the lungs could also be a sign of death by nerve gas, as contact may cause respiratory distress. It can also cause cardiac arrest, matching Korovina's cause of death. However, not all of the symptoms correspond to the use of nerve agents. Utochenko claimed that those who died were bleeding from their eyes. Although nerve agents can cause irritation of the eyes and excessive eye-watering, bleeding from the eyes is not a clinically recognised symptom of nerve agents. Novichok, a family of nerve agents developed by the Soviet Union and Russia up to 1993 and considered to be the deadliest nerve agents to exist, were reportedly tested in areas near Khamar-Daban. The nearby Lake Baikal is known to be a "toxic waste dumping ground". If the waste was washed downstream, the hikers might have drunk the toxins in their water. Some toxins might not have been visible in a standard toxicology report. Another theory suggests that the hikers might have hallucinated and gotten sick due to mushroom poisoning. Korovina was known to be a forager and she taught the art to her students. One of the hikers might have accidentally added poisonous mushrooms to their breakfast. They could also have been hallucinogenic mushrooms. In very rare cases, an overdose of muscarine and ibotenic acid, most common in Amanita mushrooms, might cause psychosis, convulsions, cardiac arrest, and send a person into a coma. Amanita phalloides, the destroying angel, and death cap mushrooms can look similar to other edible mushrooms when they are not fully matured, such as young paddy straw and button mushrooms. See also References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_Airways_Flight_295#Theories_regarding_the_cause_of_the_fire] | [TOKENS: 5174] |
Contents South African Airways Flight 295 South African Airways Flight 295 was a scheduled international passenger flight from Chiang Kai-shek International Airport, Taipei, Taiwan, to Jan Smuts International Airport, Johannesburg, South Africa, with a stopover in Plaisance Airport, Plaine Magnien, Mauritius. On 28 November 1987, the aircraft serving the flight, a Boeing 747-200 Combi named Helderberg, experienced a catastrophic in-flight fire in the cargo area, broke up in mid-air, and crashed into the Indian Ocean east of Mauritius, killing all 159 people on board. An extensive salvage operation was mounted to try to recover the aircraft's flight recorders, one of which was recovered from a depth of 16,100 feet (4,900 m). The plane crash is also known as the Helderberg disaster. The official inquiry, headed by Judge Cecil Margo, was unable to determine the cause of the fire. This lack of a conclusion led to theories, debates and speculation about the nature of Flight 295's cargo, as well as a subsequent post-apartheid investigation and calls from relatives of those on the flight to re-open the investigation in the years following the accident. Following the accident, SAA stopped using the Combi version of the Boeing 747 due to safety concerns regarding the main deck cargo compartment. Aircraft and crew The aircraft involved was a Boeing 747-244BM Combi registered ZS-SAS and named Helderberg. This was the 488th 747 built, made its first flight on 12 November 1980 and was delivered to South African Airways (SAA) on 24 November 1980. The Boeing 747-200B Combi model permits the mixing of passengers and cargo on the main deck according to load factors on any given route and Class B cargo compartment regulations. Flight 295 had 140 passengers and six pallets of cargo on the main deck. The master waybills stated that 47,000 kilograms (104,000 lb) of baggage and cargo were loaded on the aircraft. A Taiwanese customs official performed a surprise inspection of some of the cargo; he did not find anything that could be characterised as suspicious. According to Tinus Jacobs who was SAA's manager in Taiwan at the time of Flight 295, the flight crew appeared relaxed and "happy to fly" before takeoff and did not display any concerns about the cargo. The captain of Flight 295 was 49-year-old Dawid Jacobus Uys, a former South African Air Force pilot with 13,843 hours' experience of which 3,884 hours was on the Boeing 747 series airplanes. Uys was described by colleagues as having a professional, skilled and friendly personality, and at the time of the accident was considering retiring to take up a role with the South African Pilots' Association. The flight crew also consisted of 36-year-old first officer David Attwell and 37-year-old relief first officer Geoffrey Birchall, with 7,362 and 8,749 hours' experience (including 4,096 and 4,555 hours on the Boeing 747) respectively; and 45-year-old flight engineer, Giuseppe "Joe" Bellagarda and 34-year-old relief flight engineer, Alan Daniel, with 7,804 hours and 1,595 hours (4,254 and 227 of them on the Boeing 747) of experience respectively. Accident Flight 295 took off at 14:23 UTC (22:23 local time) on 27 November 1987 from Chiang Kai Shek International Airport near Taipei on a flight to Johannesburg via Mauritius. Thirty-four minutes after departure, the crew contacted Hong Kong air traffic control to obtain clearance from waypoint ELATO (22°19′N 117°30′E / 22.317°N 117.500°E / 22.317; 117.500) to ISBAN. A position report was made over ELATO at 15:03:25, followed by waypoints SUNEK at 15:53:52, ADMARK at 16:09:54 and SUKAR (12°22′N 110°54′E / 12.367°N 110.900°E / 12.367; 110.900) at 16:34:47. The aircraft made a routine report to the SAA base at Johannesburg at 15:55:18. At some point during the flight, believed to be during the beginning of its landing approach to Mauritius, a fire started in the cargo section on the main deck which was probably not extinguished before impact. The 'smoke evacuation' checklist calls for the aircraft to be depressurized, and for two of the cabin doors to be opened. No direct evidence exists that the checklist was followed or that the doors were opened; however, Air Traffic Control communications and the cockpit voice recording suggest either one or both actions may have taken place. A crew member may have also gone into the cargo hold to try to fight the fire. A charred fire extinguisher was later recovered from the wreckage on which investigators found molten metal and melted cargo netting. The following communication was recorded with Mauritius air traffic control, located at Plaisance Airport near Port Louis: The fire began to destroy the aircraft's important electrical systems, resulting in loss of communication and control of the aircraft. At exactly 00:07 UTC (4:07 local time), the aircraft broke apart mid-air, the tail section breaking off first when the fire began to burn the structure of the aircraft, and crashed into the Indian Ocean, about 134 nautical miles (154 mi; 248 km) from the airport. Other theories given for the ultimate demise of the aircraft were that the flight crew eventually became incapacitated by the smoke and fire or extensive damage to the 747's control systems rendered the plane uncontrollable before it hit the ocean. After communication with Flight 295 was lost for thirty-six minutes, at 00:44 (04:44 local time), air traffic control at Plaisance Airport formally declared an emergency. Search and salvage When Flight 295 last informed Plaisance air traffic control of its position, its report was incorrectly understood to be relative to the airport rather than its next waypoint, which caused the subsequent search to be concentrated too close to Mauritius. The United States Navy sent aircraft from Diego Garcia, which were used to conduct immediate search and rescue operations in conjunction with the French Navy. By the time the first surface debris was located twelve hours after impact, it had drifted considerably from the impact location. Oil slicks and eight bodies showing signs of extreme trauma appeared in the water. There were no survivors. After recovery of the wreckage from 4,500 m (14,800 ft) below the surface of the ocean, the aircraft's fuselage and cabin interior were partly reassembled in one of SAA's hangars at Jan Smuts Airport, where it was examined and finally opened for viewing to the airline's staff and selected members of the public. In November 2025, as part of the 38th anniversary commemoration of the disaster, these portions of the wreckage were handed over to the South African Airways Museum at Rand Airport. The material, which had previously been inaccessible to the public, was displayed during a memorial event attended by victims' families, and members of the public. Investigation Rennie Van Zyl, South Africa's head crash investigator, examined three wristwatches from baggage recovered from the surface; two of the watches were still running according to Taiwan time. Van Zyl deduced the approximate time of impact at 00:07:00, around three minutes after the last communication with air traffic control. Immediately after the crash, the press and public opinion suspected that terrorism brought down Flight 295. South Africa, then under the control of the apartheid government, was the target of terrorism both domestically and internationally, and offices for SAA, the country's flag carrier, had previously been attacked. Experts searched for indicators of an explosion on the initial pieces of wreckage discovered, such as surface pitting, impact cavities and spatter cavities caused by white-hot fragments from explosive devices that strike and melt metal alloys found in aircraft structures. Experts found none of this evidence. The investigators drew blood samples from two of the recovered bodies and found that the bodies had soot in their tracheae, indicating that at least two had died from smoke inhalation before the aircraft had crashed, and concluded that some of the passengers would have already lost their lives even if the pilots had successfully reached the airport. South Africa mounted an underwater search, named 'Operation Resolve', to try to locate the wreckage. The underwater locator beacons (ULBs) attached to the flight recorders were not designed for deep ocean use; nevertheless, a two-month-long sonar search for them was carried out before the effort was abandoned on 8 January 1988 when the ULBs were known to have stopped transmitting (at the time a ULB had to generate sonic pulses for thirty days). Steadfast Oceaneering, a specialist deep-ocean recovery company in the US, was contracted at great expense to find the site and recover the flight recorders. The search area is described as being comparable in size to that of the wreck of the Titanic, with the water at 4,900 metres (16,000 ft) being considerably deeper than any previously successful salvage operation. The wreckage was found on 28 January, within two days of Steadfast Oceaneering commencing its search. Download coordinates as: Three debris fields were found: 19°10′30″S 59°38′0″E / 19.17500°S 59.63333°E / -19.17500; 59.63333 (SA Helderberg Debris Site1), 19°9′53″S 59°38′32″E / 19.16472°S 59.64222°E / -19.16472; 59.64222 (SA Helderberg Debris Site2) and 19°9′15″S 59°37′25″E / 19.15417°S 59.62361°E / -19.15417; 59.62361 (SA Helderberg Debris Site3). These locations were spread 1.5 km (0.93 mi), 2.3 km (1.4 mi) and 2.5 km (1.6 mi) apart, indicating that the aircraft broke apart in mid-air (it was suggested that the tail separated first). On 6 January 1989, the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) was salvaged successfully from a record depth of 4,900 metres (16,100 ft) by the remotely operated vehicle (ROV) Gemini, but the flight data recorder was never found. Van Zyl took the voice recorder to the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) in Washington, DC, both to show his goodwill and to ensure neutral observers. Van Zyl believes that if he had kept the CVR in South Africa he could have been accused of covering up the truth. At the NTSB, Van Zyl felt frustration that the degraded (but still functional) CVR, which had been in the deep ocean for fourteen months, did not initially yield any useful information. Around twenty-eight minutes into the recording the CVR indicated that the fire alarm sounded. Fourteen seconds after the fire alarm, the circuit breakers began to pop. Investigators believe that around eighty circuit breakers failed. The CVR cable failed eighty-one seconds after the alarm. The recording revealed the extent of the fire. Van Zyl discovered that the front-right pallet located in the main deck's cargo hold was the origin of the fire. The flight manifest said that pallet mostly comprised computers in polystyrene packaging. The investigators said that the localised fire likely came in contact with the packaging and produced gases that accumulated near the ceiling. They also said that gases ignited into a flash fire that affected the entire cargo hold. The fire did not burn lower than one metre above the cargo floor. The walls and ceiling of the cargo hold received severe fire damage. Van Zyl ended his investigation without discovering why the fire started. The official report noted the presence of the computer equipment, and suggested that a possible cause could have been the batteries contained in the computers exploding or spontaneously combusting, although this was not given as a conclusive cause of the fire. An official commission of inquiry was chaired by South African Judge Cecil Margo, with co-operation from the NTSB and the aircraft's manufacturer, Boeing. The board of the "Margo Commission" consisted of Judge Cecil S. Margo, Judge Hurrylall Goburdhun (Mauritius), George N. Tompkins Jr (USA), G.C. Wilkinson (UK), Dr Y. Funatsu (Japan), J.J.S. Germisuys (South Africa), Dr J. Gilliland (South Africa), and Colonel Liang Lung (Taiwan). The official report determined that while Flight 295 was over the Indian Ocean, a fire had occurred in the cargo hold of the main deck, originating in the front right-hand cargo pallet. Aircraft parts recovered from the ocean floor showed fire damage with sustained temperatures over 300 °C (570 °F); tests showed that temperatures of 600 °C (1,100 °F) would have been required to melt a carbon-fibre tennis racket recovered from the crash site. The fire also damaged and destroyed the aircraft's electrical systems resulting in the loss of many of the instruments on the flight deck and rendering the crew unable to determine their position. The reason for the aircraft's loss was not identified beyond doubt, but there were two possibilities detailed in the official report: firstly, that the crew became incapacitated by smoke that penetrated into the cockpit; and secondly, that the fire weakened the structure so that the tail separated, leading to impact with the ocean. The commission concluded that it was not possible to apportion blame to any one individual for the fire, removing any terrorism concerns.[better source needed] Boeing is quoted in the report as having "contested" any scenario that involved a break-up of the aircraft, hence the commission went no further than simply mentioning the two possible scenarios in its final report, as incidental to the primary cause of the accident. The commission determined that inadequate fire detection and suppression facilities in the class B cargo bays (the type used aboard the 747-200 Combi) were the primary cause of the aircraft's loss. The accident alerted aviation authorities worldwide that the regulations regarding class B cargo bays had lagged far behind the growth in their capacity. The exact source of ignition was never determined, but the report concluded that there was sufficient evidence to confirm that the fire had burned for some considerable time and that it might have caused structural damage. The crash was the first fire incident on the 747 Combi and one of few fires on widebody aircraft. Fred Bereswill, the investigator from Boeing, characterised the Flight 295 fire as significant for this reason. Barry Strauch of the NTSB visited Boeing's headquarters to inquire about the Combi's design. Boeing's fire test in the Combi models did not accurately match the conditions of Flight 295's cargo hold; in accordance with federal US rules, the Boeing test involved setting a bale of tobacco leaves ablaze. The fire stayed within the cargo hold. The air in the passenger cabin was designed to have a marginally higher pressure than cargo area hold, so if a crew member opened the door to the cargo hold, the air from the passenger cabin would flow into the cargo hold, stopping any smoke or gases from exiting through the door. Investigators devised a new test involving a cargo hold with conditions similar to the conditions of Flight 295; the plastic covers and extra pallets provided fuel for the fire, which would spread quickly before generating enough smoke to activate smoke alarms. The hotter flame achieved in the new test heated the air in the cargo hold. This heated air had a higher pressure than normal, and overcame the pressure differential between the cargo hold and the passenger cabin. When the door between the passenger and cargo holds was open, smoke and gases therefore flowed into the passenger cabin. The test, as well as evidence from the accident site, proved to the investigators that the 747 Combi's use of a class B cargo hold did not provide enough fire protection to the passengers. The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) confirmed this finding in 1993 with its own series of tests. After the accident, SAA discontinued use of the Combi and the FAA introduced new regulations in 1993 specifying that manual firefighting must not be the primary means of fire suppression in the cargo compartment of the main deck. The new regulations banned larger cargo hold variants of the 747 Combi; the smaller variants also needed to comply with these new standards, which required weight increases that made the 747 Combi less efficient. Nevertheless, the Combi variants remained in the 747 product line up until 2002, when the last 747-400 Combi was delivered to KLM. Fire origin theories In January 1992, the journal of the Royal Aeronautical Society (RAeS) reported that the inquiry into the in-flight fire that destroyed Flight 295 might be reopened because SAA had allegedly confirmed that its passenger jets had carried cargo for Armscor, a South African arms manufacturer. The RAeS journal, Aerospace, asserted: "It is known that the crew and passengers were overcome by a main deck cargo fire, and the ignition of missile rocket fuel is one cause now under suspicion." A complaint against the newspaper that first published the allegations, Weekend Star, was lodged by Armscor.[better source needed] The inquiry was not reopened, which likely led to the proliferation of a number of conspiracy theories concerning the nature of the cargo that caused the fire, which subsequently increased public doubts about the outcome of the initial inquiry. Examples of such theories include: In 2000, the South African television program Carte Blanche dedicated an investigation to a number of these allegations. A South African government chemist examined a microscopic particle on the nylon netting next to the front-right pallet on Flight 295. The chemist found that the airflow patterns on the iron suggested that it travelled at a high velocity while in a molten state; therefore the fire on Flight 295 may have not been a flash fire triggered by packaging. Fred Bereswill, the investigator from Boeing, said that this would suggest that the source of the fire would have had properties like a sparkler, with the source including its own oxidising agent. A British fire and explosion analyst examined the exterior skin of the aircraft which had been located above the pallet; the analyst found that the skin became as hot as 300 degrees Celsius. Bereswill said that it would be difficult for a fire to burn through the skin of an aircraft in-flight because of the cool airflow outside the aircraft. David Klatzow, forensic scientist who worked on the case by Boeing's counsel theorized that the fire likely involved substances that would not normally be carried on a passenger aircraft such as wood, cardboard, or plastic, and instead ammonium perchlorate, a chemical compound used in missile propellant from a rocket system loaded on board. South Africa was under an arms embargo at the time and therefore had to buy arms clandestinely. Post-apartheid investigation In 1996, the Truth and Reconciliation Committee (TRC), established by the post-apartheid South African government, investigated apartheid-era atrocities. In particular, Flight 295 was investigated to determine if there was any truth behind conspiracy theories that asserted that the Margo Commission had covered up or missed any evidence that might implicate the previous government. Klatzow was invited by the TRC to explain his theories and cross-examine witnesses. Unlike most other hearings of the TRC, the hearing into Flight 295 was conducted in camera, and without any representation from the South African Civil Aviation Authority (CAA); Klatzow considered the CAA untrustworthy because it had participated in the official enquiry, which he considered flawed. A number of key aspects of Klatzow's theory hinged on his criticism of the actions of Judge Margo during the official enquiry, yet Judge Margo was not summoned to answer any of the allegations made against him. The TRC concluded that nothing listed in the flight manifest could have caused the fire, a conclusion that was met with controversy within the public. Following public pressure, the TRC records were released into the public domain in May 2000. Upon receiving the documents, Transport Minister Dullah Omar stated that the inquiry would be reopened if any fresh evidence was discovered. The South African Police Service were tasked to investigate whether there was any new evidence, and to make a recommendation to the minister. In October 2002, the minister announced that no new evidence had been found to justify re-opening the enquiry. On the 25th anniversary of the crash, Peter Otzen Jnr, the son of one of the victims, announced that he was approaching the Constitutional Court of South Africa in an attempt to have the commission of inquiry into the disaster reopened. In pursuit of this, he had obtained affidavits from former SAA employees who had never given any evidence before. An Australian national named Allan Dexter who had worked in public relations for SAA gave a sworn statement to Otzen claiming that he had been informed by the SAA manager at Taipei airport that Flight 295 was carrying rocket fuel which caused it to crash, and that the Captain had expressed concerns about the safety of the cargo but had been ordered from Johannesburg to fly the plane. In a 2014 interview, some of the accusations were disputed by Tinus Jacobs, SAA's manager in Taiwan who saw Flight 295 off. Jacobs claimed that due to Taiwan's status under martial law at the time, only one telephone at the airport (located in the office of China Airlines) could be used to make international calls and that none of Flight 295's crew had access to it. Jacobs furthermore claimed that Captain Uys and the other crew members appeared relaxed and routine both the previous day and on the evening of the flight's departure. Newer theories David Klatzow also contended that fire started above the South China Sea, shortly after takeoff based on the pilots' conversation of dinner. The captain did not immediately land and was instead ordered to continue on to Mauritius, many hours away, in hope of making it there before the aircraft's structural integrity gave in.[better source needed] These points have been refuted because the severity of the fire as recorded on the CVR was enough to destroy the wiring to many electrical systems including the recorder and also would have certainly damaged the windows in the cargo hold to the point where pressurization could not be maintained, precluding continuous flight at high altitude. In 2014, South African investigative journalist Mark D. Young presented a theory that a short circuit in the onboard electronics may have started the fire. The so-called wet arc tracking arises from the action of moisture when the insulation of live wires is damaged. A leakage current to another damaged wire with the respective potential difference may form. The resulting flashover may reach temperatures of up to 5,000 °C (9,000 °F). This temperature is sufficient to ignite the thermal-acoustic insulation blankets that were in use at the time until the late 1990s. Such a short circuit may have caused the fire on board Swissair Flight 111, resulting in the crash of the aircraft in 1998.: 253 According to the Austrian journalist and aviation expert Patrick Huber, however, a short circuit is unlikely to be the cause of the fire. According to experts consulted by the author, this problem only existed in the Boeing 747 with older cables. However, the "Helderberg" was only seven years old. Passengers and crew Passengers and crew nationalities on board SAA Flight 295: Taiwanese authorities stated that 58 passengers began flying in Taipei, including 30 Taiwanese citizens, 19 South Africans, 47 Japanese, two Mauritians, one Dane, one Dutch, one Briton, and one German. The other passengers transferred from other flights arriving in Taipei, and as such their nationalities were not known to Taiwanese authorities. At least two passengers died of smoke inhalation. The rest died from the extreme trauma sustained in the crash. Among the passengers was Kazuharu Sonoda, a Japanese professional wrestler also known as Haru Sonoda and Magic Dragon, and his wife, who were travelling as part of their honeymoon. They were offered and sent on the flight by All Japan Pro-Wrestling president Giant Baba to appear on a wrestling show in South Africa, promoted by fellow wrestler Tiger Jeet Singh. Dramatisation The crash was featured in Season 5 of the Canadian-made, internationally distributed documentary series Mayday, in the episode "Fanning the Flames." See also References Notes Bibliography Further reading External links |
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Contents John F. Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories The assassination of John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, on November 22, 1963, has spawned numerous conspiracy theories. These theories allege the involvement of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the Mafia, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, Cuban prime minister Fidel Castro, the KGB, or some combination of these individuals and entities. Some conspiracy theories have alleged a coverup by parts of the American federal government, such as the original investigators within the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Warren Commission, or the CIA. The lawyer and author Vincent Bugliosi estimated that a total of 42 groups, 82 assassins, and 214 individuals had been accused at one time or another in various conspiracy scenarios. Background On November 22, 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated while traveling in a motorcade in an open-top limousine in Dallas, Texas. Lee Harvey Oswald was arrested for the murder of a Dallas policeman named J. D. Tippit and arraigned for both murders. On November 24, a nightclub owner named Jack Ruby shot and killed Oswald. Immediately after Kennedy was shot, many people suspected that the assassination was part of a larger plot, and broadcasters speculated that Dallas right-wingers were involved. Ruby's murder of Oswald compounded initial suspicions. The author Mark Lane has been described as firing "the first literary shot" with his article "Defense Brief for Oswald" in the National Guardian's December 19, 1963, issue. Thomas Buchanan's book Who Killed Kennedy?, published in May 1964, has been credited as the first book to allege a conspiracy. In 1964, after being appointed by President Lyndon B. Johnson, the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald had acted alone and that no credible evidence supported the contention that he was involved in a conspiracy to assassinate the president. The Commission indicated that Secretary of State Dean Rusk, Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara, Treasury Secretary C. Douglas Dillon, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, CIA director John A. McCone, and Secret Service chief James J. Rowley each individually reached the same conclusion on the basis of information available to them. During the trial of Clay Shaw in 1969, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison challenged the single-bullet theory, claiming that the Zapruder film indicated that the fatal shot to Kennedy's head was fired from the "grassy knoll", a small hill that featured prominently in later conspiracy theories. In 1979, the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) agreed with the Warren Commission that Oswald killed Kennedy but concluded that the commission's report and the original FBI investigation were seriously flawed. The HSCA concluded that at least four shots were fired, with a "high probability" that two gunmen fired at Kennedy, and that a conspiracy was probable. The HSCA stated that the Warren Commission had "failed to investigate adequately the possibility of a conspiracy to assassinate the President". Documents under Section 5 of the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992 were required to be released within 25 years of October 26, 1992. Most of the documents were released on October 26, 2017. A provision of the 1992 act allows a President to extend the deadline, and President Donald Trump set a new deadline of October 26, 2021, for the remaining documents to be released. In October 2021, President Joe Biden further extended the deadline to December 15, 2022, citing delays related to the COVID-19 pandemic. On December 15, 2022, NARA released an additional 13,173 documents as ordered by President Biden. In June 2023, it was reported that NARA had completed the review of the documents with 99% of all documents having been made public. Following his return to office on January 23, 2025, President Trump issued an executive order directing the further release of documents related to the assassination, as well as the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy, with documents expected to be released later in 2025 and afterward. According to John C. McAdams, "The greatest and grandest of all conspiracy theories is the Kennedy assassination conspiracy theory." Others have referred to it as "the mother of all conspiracies". Author David Krajicek describes Kennedy assassination enthusiasts as people belonging to "conspiracy theorists" on one side and "debunkers" on the other. The great amount of controversy surrounding the event has resulted in bitter disputes between those who support the conclusion of the Warren Commission and those who reject it or are critical of the official explanation, with each side leveling accusations toward the other of "naivete, cynicism, and selective interpretation of the evidence". The number of books written about the assassination of Kennedy has been estimated to be between 1,000 and 2,000. According to Vincent Bugliosi, 95 percent of those books are "pro-conspiracy and anti-Warren Commission". Very few of the books and articles published about the assassination have been written by historians. Calvin Trillin's article, "The Buffs" in the June 1967 edition of The New Yorker, has been credited as the first addressing the "conspiracy phenomenon". Trillin described those who criticized the Warren Report: "They tend to refer to themselves (and the professionals) as 'investigators' or 'researchers' or, most often, 'critics'. They are also known as 'assassination buffs'." Professor of History Colin Kidd also described amateur historians of the assassination as "buffs". Kidd said: "The study of Kennedy's assassination is now best known to academics as a counterculture, which grossly caricatures the best practices of the academy and where extravagant theories tend to trump sound scholarship, plausibility, and common sense." Public opinion polls have consistently shown that most Americans believe that there was a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. These same polls show no agreement on who else may have been involved in the shooting. The National Opinion Research Center, conducted 1,384 in-person interviews between November 26, 1963, and December 3, 1963, and found that 62 percent believed that others were involved in the assassination, compared with 24 percent who believed that only one person was involved. In ten polls conducted from 1963 through 2023, Gallup found that the percentage of U.S. adults that did not believe that Oswald had acted alone increased from 52% in 1963 and 50% in 1966 to between 74% and 81% from 1976 through 2003 and then declined to 61% in 2013 and 65% in 2023. Arthur Lehman Goodhart dismissed the relevance of the polls in a 1968 article for the Alberta Law Review: "such a Gallup poll cannot prove anything except that the people often believe nonsense." In 2003, an ABC News poll found that 70 percent of respondents suspected that the assassination involved more than one person. In 2009, 76 percent of people polled for CBS News said that they believed that Kennedy had been killed as the result of a conspiracy. In 2023, a YouGov poll found that 54% of U.S. adults surveyed believed Oswald definitely or probably did not act alone in the assassination. Kennedy's youngest brother, Ted Kennedy, wrote that he had been fully briefed by Chief Justice Earl Warren during the initial investigation, and was "satisfied that the Warren Commission got it right". He stated that their middle brother Robert F. Kennedy was a "strong advocate for the accuracy of the report" and that it was his belief upon all of their discussions that he too accepted the Commission's findings. Kennedy's nephew Robert F. Kennedy Jr. believes that his uncle was killed in a conspiracy, and he endorsed the James W. Douglass book JFK and the Unspeakable whose central thesis is that Kennedy was a Cold Warrior who turned to peacemaking and that he was killed by his own security apparatus as a result. He said that his father publicly supported the Warren Commission but privately called it a "shoddy piece of craftsmanship", and was "fairly convinced" that others were involved in his brother's death besides Oswald. Circumstantial evidence of a cover-up After Oswald's death, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover wrote a memo detailing that the Dallas Police would not have had enough evidence against Oswald without the FBI's information. He then wrote: "The thing I am concerned about, and so is [Deputy Attorney General] Mr. Katzenbach, is having something issued so we can convince the public that Oswald is the real assassin." Top government and intelligence officials were also finding that, according to CIA intercepts, someone had impersonated Oswald in phone calls and visits made to the Soviet and Cuban embassies in Mexico City several weeks before the assassination. Over the next 40 years, this became one of the CIA's most closely guarded secrets on the Oswald case. A CIA career agency officer, Anne Goodpasture, admitted in sworn testimony that she had disseminated the tapes of these phone calls herself. She had earlier denied to congressional investigators in 1970 that she had any knowledge of recordings of Oswald's phone calls. On November 23, 1963, the day after the assassination, Hoover's preliminary analysis of the assassination included the following: The Central Intelligence Agency advised that on October 1st, 1963, an extremely sensitive source had reported that an individual identifying himself as Lee Oswald contacted the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City inquiring as to any messages. Special agents of this Bureau, who have conversed with Oswald in Dallas, Texas, have observed photographs of the individual referred to above and have listened to a recording of his voice. These special agents are of the opinion that the referred-to individual was not Lee Harvey Oswald. That same day, Hoover had this conversation with President Johnson: Johnson: "Have you established any more about the [Oswald] visit to the Soviet Embassy in Mexico in September?" Hoover: "No, there's one angle that's very confusing for this reason. We have up here the tape and the photograph of the man at the Soviet Embassy, using Oswald's name. That picture and the tape do not correspond to this man's voice, nor to his appearance. In other words, it appears that there was a second person who was at the Soviet Embassy." President Lyndon B. Johnson expressed concern that the public might come to believe that Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and/or Cuban leader Fidel Castro was implicated in the assassination—a situation that Johnson said might lead to "a war that [could] kill 40 million Americans in an hour". Johnson relayed his concern to both Chief Justice Earl Warren and Senator Richard Russell Jr., telling them that they could "serve America" by joining the commission Johnson had established to investigate the assassination, which would later become known unofficially as the Warren Commission. Katzenbach wrote a memorandum to Lyndon Johnson aide Bill Moyers that said, among other things, that the results of the FBI's investigation should be made public. Katzenbach suggested that a commission be formed, composed of people with "impeccable integrity", to conduct a complete investigation of the assassination. Katzenbach wrote: "Speculation about Oswald's motivation ought to be cut off, and we should have some basis for rebutting thought that this was a Communist conspiracy or (as the Iron Curtain press is saying) a right–wing conspiracy to blame it on the Communists. ... The public must be satisfied that Oswald was the assassin; that he did not have confederates who are still at large; and that the evidence was such that he would have been convicted at trial." Four days after Katzenbach's memo, Johnson formed the Warren Commission with Warren as chairman and Russell as a member. Numerous researchers, including author Mark Lane, Henry Hurt, Michael L. Kurtz, Gerald D. McKnight, Anthony Summers, and Harold Weisberg, have referred to what they see as inconsistencies, oversights, exclusions of evidence, errors, changing stories, or changes made to witness testimony in the official Warren Commission investigation, which they say could suggest a cover-up. Walter Cronkite, CBS News anchor, said, "Although the Warren Commission had full power to conduct its own independent investigation, it permitted the FBI and the CIA to investigate themselves—and so cast a permanent shadow on the answers." United States Senator and U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence member Richard Schweiker said, "The fatal mistake the Warren Commission made was to not use its own investigators, but instead to rely on the CIA and FBI personnel, which played directly into the hands of senior intelligence officials who directed the cover-up." Schweiker told author Anthony Summers in 1978 that he "believe[d] that the Warren Commission was set up at the time to feed pablum to the American public for reasons not yet known, and that one of the biggest cover-ups in the history of our country occurred at that time". In 1966, Roscoe Drummond voiced skepticism about a cover-up in his syndicated column, saying, "If there were a conspiracy to cover up the truth about the assassination, it would have to involve the Chief Justice, the Republican, Democratic, and non-party members of the commission, the FBI, the CIA, the Secret Service, the distinguished doctors of the armed services—and the White House—a conspiracy so multiple and complex that it would have fallen of its own weight." Allegations of witness tampering, intimidation, and foul play Richard Buyer wrote that many witnesses whose statements pointed to a conspiracy were either ignored or intimidated by the Warren Commission. In JFK: The Last Dissenting Witness, a 1992 biography of Jean Hill, Bill Sloan wrote that Warren Commission assistant counsel Arlen Specter attempted to humiliate, discredit, and intimidate Hill into changing her story. Hill also told Sloan that she was abused by Secret Service agents, harassed by the FBI, and received death threats. A later book by Sloan, entitled JFK: Breaking the Silence, quotes several assassination eyewitnesses as saying that Warren Commission interviewers repeatedly cut short or stifled any comments casting doubt on the conclusion that Oswald had acted alone. In his book Crossfire, Jim Marrs gives accounts of several people who said they were intimidated by either FBI agents or anonymous individuals into altering or suppressing what they knew regarding the assassination. Some of those individuals include Richard Carr, Acquilla Clemmons, Sandy Speaker, and A. J. Millican. Marrs wrote that Texas School Book Depository employee Joe Molina was "intimidated by authorities and lost his job soon after the assassination", and that witness Ed Hoffman was warned by an FBI agent that he "might get killed" if he revealed what he observed in Dealey Plaza on the day of the assassination. Warren Reynolds, who claimed that he saw and chased the man who shot Tippit, was himself shot in the head in January 1964, two days after first talking to the FBI. He survived, and later testified to the Warren Commission that in February 1964 someone attempted to kidnap his 10-year-old daughter.[a] The idea that witnesses to the Kennedy assassination met mysterious or suspicious deaths because they knew things that conspirators did not want to be revealed has been referred to by author Vincent Bugliosi as "one of the very most popular and durable myths". Allegations of mysterious or suspicious deaths of witnesses connected with the Kennedy assassination originated with journalist Penn Jones Jr. On the third anniversary of the assassination, Ramparts published an editorial by Jones, along with a handful of articles that he had written earlier for his newspaper, the Midlothian Mirror. Jones reported that there were six men who had met in Jack Ruby's apartment the night after Ruby shot Oswald. Of the six men, Jones noted that three of them had since died: reporter Jim Koethe, reporter Bill Hunter, and Ruby's first attorney, Tom Howard. Jones described these three deaths as "mysterious". In a second article in the same issue, Jones reported on the deaths of seven other individuals who died within three years of the assassination: Earlene Roberts, Nancy Jane Mooney, Hank Killam, William Whaley, Edward Benavides, Dorothy Kilgallen, and Lee Bowers. Jones also described these deaths as "mysterious". Jones' article in Ramparts was picked up by Reuters, as well as various other news outlets. Time stated "the Ramparts-Jones non-history is riddled with factual errors and perverse conclusions" and offered examples to support its assessment. In 1973, similar claims about suspicious deaths of witnesses were brought to national attention by the theatrically released movie Executive Action. In 1989, Jim Marrs published a list of 103 people he believed had died "convenient deaths" under suspicious circumstances. He observed that the deaths were grouped around investigations conducted by the Warren Commission, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, the Senate Intelligence Committee, and the House Select Committee on Assassinations. Marrs commented that "these deaths certainly would have been convenient for anyone not wishing the truth of the JFK assassination to become public." In 2013, Richard Belzer published Hit List: An In-Depth Investigation into the Mysterious Deaths of Witnesses to the JFK Assassination that examines the deaths of 50 people linked to the assassination and claims most of them were murdered as part of a cover-up. Journalist Dorothy Kilgallen was publicly skeptical of the official version of the assassination of President Kennedy and Ruby's shooting of Lee Oswald. During 1964 and 1965, she wrote several newspaper articles on the subject and many relevant short items in her daily column. On February 23, 1964, the New York City newspaper New York Journal-American, where Kilgallen had worked since its formation in 1937, published her article about a conversation she had had with Ruby, when he was seated at his defense table during a recess in his murder trial. Whether Kilgallen and Ruby had a second conversation in a private room in the Dallas County, Texas, courthouse several days later has been disputed. If they did, she never wrote about it for publication. One of Kilgallen's biographers, Mark Shaw, contends that even if Ruby did not reveal sensitive information to Kilgallen about the assassination, she still could have learned sensitive information during a trip she made to New Orleans several weeks before she died. Kilgallen's last brief item about the Kennedy assassination, published on September 3, 1965, ended with these words: "That story isn't going to die as long as there's a real reporter alive – and there are a lot of them alive." Two months later, on November 8, 1965, Kilgallen was found dead in her Manhattan townhouse. Her death was determined to have been caused by a combination of alcohol and barbiturates. In his book Reclaiming History, Vincent Bugliosi referred to Kilgallen's 1965 death as "perhaps the most prominent mysterious death" cited by assassination researchers. However, Bugliosi questioned many of the claims made by Kilgallen. He also insisted that the presence of Kilgallen's husband and son in their five-story townhouse throughout the night when she died proved that she could not have been murdered. Bugliosi said an intruder would have awakened her husband or her eleven-year-old son and then her husband would have called the police. According to author Jerome Kroth, Mafia figures Sam Giancana, John Roselli, Carlos Prio, Jimmy Hoffa, Charles Nicoletti, Leo Moceri, Richard Cain, Salvatore Granello, and Dave Yaras were likely murdered to prevent them from revealing their knowledge. According to author Matthew Smith, others with some tie to the case who have died suspicious deaths include Lee Bowers, Gary Underhill, William C. Sullivan, David Ferrie, Clay Shaw, George de Mohrenschildt, four showgirls who worked for Ruby, and Ruby himself. The House Select Committee on Assassinations investigated another alleged mysterious death – that of Rose Cheramie (sometimes spelled Cherami), whose real name was Melba Christine Marcades. The Committee reported that Louisiana State Police Lieutenant Francis Fruge traveled to Eunice, Louisiana, on November 20, 1963 – two days before the assassination – to pick up Cheramie, who had sustained minor injuries when she was hit by a car. Fruge drove Cheramie to the hospital, and said that on the way there she "related to [him] that she was coming from Florida to Dallas with two men who were Italians or resembled Italians". Fruge asked her what she planned to do in Dallas, to which she replied: "... [N]umber one, pick up some money, pick up [my] baby, and ... kill Kennedy." Cheramie was admitted and treated at the state hospital in Jackson, Louisiana, for alcoholism and heroin addiction. After the assassination, Lt. Fruge contacted Dallas Police Captain Will Fritz regarding what he had learned from Cheramie but Fritz told him he "wasn't interested". In the 1970s, state hospital physician Victor Weiss told a House Select Committee on Assassinations investigator that on November 25 – three days after the assassination – one of his fellow physicians told him that Cheramie had "stated before the assassination that President Kennedy was going to be killed". Weiss further reported that Cheramie told him after the assassination that she had worked for Ruby and that her knowledge of the assassination originated from "word in the underworld". Cheramie was found dead close to a highway near Big Sandy, Texas, on September 4, 1965; she had been run over by a car. Concerning the Tippit shooting, the Warren Commission named 12 witnesses to the shooting and its aftermath. One of these witnesses, Warren Reynolds, was shot in the head 2 months after the Tippit shooting, but survived. Another witness, Domingo Benavides, who was close to the shooting and saw Tippit fall after being shot, lost his brother 15 months after the Tippit shooting; Benavides' brother was shot in the head in a bar and died. The House Select Committee on Assassinations investigated the allegation "that a statistically improbable number of individuals with some direct or peripheral association with the Kennedy assassination died as a result of that assassination, thereby raising the specter of conspiracy". The committee's chief of research testified: "Our final conclusion on the issue is that the available evidence does not establish anything about the nature of these deaths which would indicate that the deaths were in some manner, either direct or peripheral, caused by the assassination of President Kennedy or by any aspect of the subsequent investigation." Author Gerald Posner said that Marrs's list was taken from the group of about 10,000 people connected even in the most tenuous way to the assassination, including people identified in the official investigations, as well as the research of conspiracy theorists. Posner also said that it would be surprising if a hundred people out of ten thousand did not die in "unnatural ways". He observed that over half of the people on Marrs's list did not die mysteriously but of natural causes, such as Secret Service agent Roy Kellerman, who died of heart failure at age 69 in 1984, long after the Kennedy assassination, but is on Marrs's list as someone whose cause of death is "unknown". Posner also cited the fact many prominent witnesses and conspiracy researchers continue to live long lives. Allegations of evidence suppression, tampering, and fabrication Many of those who believe in a JFK assassination conspiracy also believe that evidence against Oswald was either planted, forged, or tampered with. Some researchers assert that witness statements indicating a conspiracy were ignored by the Warren Commission. Josiah Thompson stated that the Commission ignored the testimony of seven eyewitnesses who said they saw smoke in the vicinity of the grassy knoll at the time of the assassination, as well as an eighth witness who said he smelled gunpowder. Jim Marrs wrote that the Commission did not seek the testimony of eyewitnesses on the triple underpass whose statements pointed to a shooter on the grassy knoll. In 1978, Gordon Arnold told the Dallas Morning News that he had filmed the assassination from the grassy knoll and that he gave the film to a policeman who was waving a shotgun. Arnold said that he had been afraid to report the incident due to claims of "peculiar" deaths of witnesses to the assassination. Ten years later, he told producers for Nigel Turner's The Men Who Killed Kennedy that the film was taken from him. Another witness, identified as Beverly Oliver, came forward in 1970 and said she was the "Babushka Lady" who is seen, in the Zapruder film, filming the motorcade. She also said that after the assassination, she was contacted at work by two men whom she thought "... were either FBI or Secret Service agents". According to Oliver, the men told her that they wanted to take her film, have it developed, and then return it to her within ten days. The agents took her film, but never returned it. Richard Buyer and others have complained that many documents pertaining to the assassination have been withheld over the years, including documents from investigations made by the Warren Commission, the House Select Committee on Assassinations, and the Church Committee. These documents individually included the President's autopsy records. Some documents still are not scheduled for release until 2029. Many documents were released during the mid-to-late 1990s by the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) under the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. Some of the material released contains redacted sections. Tax return information, which identified employers and sources of income, has not yet been released. The existence of several secret documents related to the assassination, as well as the long period of secrecy, suggests to some the possibility of a cover-up. One historian noted, "There exists widespread suspicion about the government's disposition of the Kennedy assassination records stemming from the beliefs that Federal officials (1) have not made available all Government assassination records (even to the Warren Commission, Church Committee, House Assassination Committee) and (2) have heavily redacted the records released under FOIA in order to cover up sinister conspiracies." According to the ARRB, "All Warren Commission records, except those records that contain tax return information, are (now) available to the public with only minor redactions." In response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed by journalist Jefferson Morley, the CIA stated in 2010 that it had over 1,100 documents in relation to the assassination, about 2,000 pages in total, that have not been released due to national security-related concerns. Some researchers have alleged that various items of physical evidence have been tampered with, including the "single bullet", also known as the "magic bullet" by some critics of official explanations, various bullet cartridges and fragments, the presidential limousine's windshield, the paper bag in which the Warren Commission said Oswald hid the rifle, the so-called "backyard" photos depicting Oswald holding the rifle, the Zapruder film, the photographs and radiographs obtained at Kennedy's autopsy, and the president's dead body itself. Among the evidence against Oswald are photographs of him holding a Carcano rifle in his back yard, the weapon identified by the Warren Commission as the assassination weapon. The House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that the Oswald photos are genuine and Oswald's wife Marina said that she took them. In 2009, the journal Perception published the findings of Hany Farid, a professor in the Department of Computer Science at Dartmouth College who used 3D modeling software to analyze one of the photographs. He demonstrated that a single light source could create seemingly incongruent shadows and concluded that the photograph revealed no evidence of tampering. Researcher Robert Groden asserts that these photos are fake. Groden said in 1979 that four autopsy photographs showing the back of Kennedy's head were forged to hide a wound fired from a second gunman. According to Groden, a photograph of a cadaver's head was inserted over another depicting a large exit wound in the back of the president's head. HSCA chief counsel G. Robert Blakey stated that the "suggestion that the committee would participate in a cover-up is absurd" and that Groden was "not competent to make a judgment on whether a photograph has been altered". Blakey stated that the photographic analysis panel for the Committee had examined the photographs and that they "considered everything" that Groden had to say "and rejected it." The House Select Committee on Assassinations described the Zapruder film as "the best available photographic evidence of the number and timing of the shots that struck the occupants of the presidential limousine". The Assassination Records Review Board said it "is perhaps the single most important assassination record." According to Vincent Bugliosi, the film was "originally touted by the vast majority of conspiracy theorists as incontrovertible proof" of a conspiracy, but is now believed by many conspiracy theorists to be a "sophisticated forgery".[b] Jack White, photographic consultant to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, claimed there were anomalies in the Zapruder film, including an "unnatural jerkiness of movement or change of focus… in certain frame sequences". In 1996, the Assassination Records Review Board asked Kodak product engineer Roland Zavada to undertake a thorough technical study of the Zapruder film. Zavada concluded that there was no detectable evidence of manipulation or image alteration on the film's original version. Former senior official at the CIA's National Photographic Interpretation Center, Dino Brugioni, said that he and his team examined the 8mm Zapruder film of the John F. Kennedy assassination on the evening of Saturday November 23, 1963, and into the morning of Sunday November 24, 1963. In a 2011 interview with Douglas Horne of the Assassination Record Review Board, Brugioni said the Zapruder film in the National Archives today, and available to the public, has been altered from the version of the film he saw and worked with on November 23–24. Brugioni recalls seeing a "white cloud" of brain matter, three or four feet above Kennedy's head, and says that this "spray" lasted for more than one frame of the film. The version of the Zapruder film available to the public depicts the fatal head shot on only one frame of the film, frame 313. Additionally, Brugioni is certain that the set of briefing boards available to the public in the National Archives is not the set that he and his team produced on November 23–24, 1963. In his 1980 book Best Evidence, author David Lifton presented the thesis that President Kennedy's dead body had been altered between the Dallas hospital and the autopsy site at Bethesda for the purpose of creating erroneous conclusions about the number and direction of the shots. The Warren Commission found that the shots that killed Kennedy and wounded Connally were fired from an Italian 6.5mm Manlicher Carcano rifle owned by Oswald. Deputy Sheriff Eugene Boone and Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman both initially identified the rifle found in the Texas School Book Depository as a 7.65 German Mauser. Weitzman signed an affidavit the following day describing the weapon as a "7.65 Mauser bolt action equipped with a 4/18 scope, a thick leather brownish-black sling on it". Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig claimed that he saw "7.65 Mauser" stamped on the barrel of the weapon. When interviewed in 1968 by researcher Barry Ernest, Craig said: "I felt then and I still feel now that the weapon was a 7.65 German Mauser .... I was there. I saw it when it was first pulled from its hiding place, and I am not alone in describing it as a Mauser." Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade told the press that the weapon found in the book depository was a 7.65 Mauser, and the media reported this. Investigators later identified the rifle as a 6.5mm Carcano. In Matrix for Assassination, author Richard Gilbride suggested that both weapons were involved in the assassination and that Dallas Police Captain Will Fritz and Lieutenant J. Carl Day both might have been conspirators. Addressing "speculation and rumors", the Warren Commission identified Weitzman as "the original source of the speculation that the rifle was a Mauser" and stated that "police laboratory technicians subsequently arrived and correctly identified the [murder] weapon as a 6.5 Italian rifle." The Warren Commission determined that three bullets were fired at the presidential motorcade. One of the three bullets missed the vehicle entirely; another bullet hit President Kennedy and passed through his body before striking Governor Connally; and the third bullet was the fatal head shot to the President. Some people claim that the bullet that passed through President Kennedy's body and hit Governor Connally – dubbed by some critics of the Commission as the "magic bullet" – was missing too little mass to account for the total weight of bullet fragments later found by the doctors who operated on Connally at Parkland Hospital. Those making this claim included the governor's chief surgeon, Dr. Robert Shaw, as well as two of Kennedy's autopsy surgeons, Commander James Humes and Lt. Colonel Pierre Finck. In his book Six Seconds in Dallas, author Josiah Thompson took issue with this claim. Thompson added up the weight of the bullet fragments listed in the doctor reports and concluded that their total weight "could" have been less than the mass missing from the bullet. With Connally's death in 1993, forensic pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht and the Assassination Archives and Research Center petitioned Attorney General Janet Reno to recover the remaining bullet fragments from Connally's body, contending that the fragments would disprove the Warren Commission's single-bullet, single-gunman conclusion. The Justice Department replied that it "... would have [had] no legal authority to recover the fragments unless Connally's family gave [it] permission [to do so]." Connally's family refused permission. Allegations of multiple gunmen The Warren Commission concluded that "three shots were fired from the Texas School Book Depository in a time period ranging from approximately 4.8 to in excess of 7 seconds." Some assassination researchers, including Josiah Thompson and Anthony Summers, dispute the Commission's findings. They point to evidence that brings into question the number of shots fired, the origin of the shots, and Oswald's ability to accurately fire three shots in such a short amount of time from such a rifle. These researchers suggest that multiple gunmen were involved. Based on the "consensus among the witnesses at the scene" and "in particular the three spent cartridges" found near an open window on the sixth-floor of the Book Depository, the Warren Commission determined that "the preponderance of the evidence indicated that three shots were fired". In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that there were four shots, one coming from the grassy knoll. The Warren Commission, and later the House Select Committee on Assassinations, concluded that one of the shots hit President Kennedy in "the back of his neck", exited his throat, and struck Governor Connally in the back, exited the Governor's chest, shattered his right wrist, and implanted itself in his left thigh. This conclusion became known as the "single-bullet theory". Mary Moorman said in a TV interview immediately after the assassination that there were either three or four shots close together, that shots were still being fired after the fatal shot, and that she was in the line of fire. In 1967, Josiah Thompson concluded from a close study of the Zapruder film and other forensic evidence, corroborated by the eyewitnesses, that four shots were fired in Dealey Plaza, with one wounding Connally and three hitting Kennedy. On the day of the assassination, Nellie Connally was seated in the presidential car next to her husband, Texas Governor John Connally. In her book From Love Field: Our Final Hours, she said she believed that her husband was wounded by a bullet separate from the two that hit Kennedy. The Warren Commission concluded that all of the shots fired at President Kennedy came from the sixth-floor window at the southeast corner of the Texas School Book Depository. The Commission based its conclusion on the "cumulative evidence of eyewitnesses, firearms and ballistic experts and medical authorities", including onsite testing, as well as analysis of films and photographs conducted by the FBI and the US Secret Service. In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations agreed to publish a report from Warren Commission critic Robert Groden, in which he named "nearly [two] dozen suspected firing points in Dealey Plaza". These sites included multiple locations in or on the roof of the Texas School Book Depository, the Dal-Tex Building, the Dallas County Records Building, the triple overpass, a storm drain located along the north curb of Elm Street, and the Grassy Knoll. Josiah Thompson concluded that the shots fired at the motorcade came from three locations: the Texas School Book Depository, the Grassy Knoll, and the Records Building. According to some researchers, the grassy knoll was identified by most witnesses as the area from where shots were fired. In March 1965, Harold Feldman wrote that there were 121 witnesses to the assassination listed in the Warren Report, 51 of whom indicated that the shots that killed Kennedy came from the grassy knoll, while 32 said the shots originated from the Texas School Book Depository. In 1967, Josiah Thompson examined the statements of 64 witnesses and concluded that 33 of them thought that the shots emanated from the grassy knoll. In 1966, Esquire magazine credited Feldman with "advanc[ing] the theory that there were two assassins: one on the grassy knoll and one in the Book Depository". According to a 2021 article in Frontiers in Psychology, discrepancies in earwitness testimony regarding the origin of the gunshots have "contributed to the breadth and persistence of the conspiracy theories that had emerged since the assassination." Dennis McFadden with Center of Perceptual Systems at the University of Texas at Austin summarized: "Localizing the origin of a supersonic gunshot is not easy under optimal conditions. On the day of the JFK assassination, the earwitnesses present were startled, surprised, confused, disbelieving, excited, and likely scared, so there is little wonder that their perceptions were inconsistent, and with the passage of time, fluid. Once the confusing acoustics of supersonic bullets and the vagaries of human sound localization are taken into account, the widespread uncertainty amongst the earwitnesses to the assassination becomes more understandable." Lee Bowers operated a railroad tower that overlooked the parking lot on the north side of the grassy knoll. When interviewed by the Warren Commission in 1964, he reported that he saw two men behind the grassy knoll's stockyard fence before the shooting took place. The men did not appear to be acting together or doing anything suspicious. After the shooting, Bowers said that one of the men remained behind the fence, but that he lost track of the second man whose clothing blended into the foliage. When interviewed by Mark Lane and Emile de Antonio in 1966 for their documentary film Rush to Judgment, Bowers noted that he saw something that attracted his attention, either a flash of light or smoke from the knoll, allowing him to believe "something out of the ordinary" had occurred there. Bowers told Lane that he heard three shots, the last two in quick succession. Several conspiracy theories posit that at least one shooter was located in the Dal-Tex Building, located across the street from the Texas School Book Depository. According to L. Fletcher Prouty, the physical location of James Tague when he was injured by a bullet fragment is not consistent with the trajectory of a missed shot from the Texas School Book Depository, leading Prouty to theorize that Tague was instead wounded by a missed shot from the second floor of the Dal-Tex Building. Some researchers claim that FBI photographs of the presidential limousine show a bullet hole in its windshield above the rear-view mirror, and a crack in the windshield itself. When Robert Groden, author of The Killing of a President, asked for an explanation, the FBI responded that what Groden thought was a bullet hole "occurred prior to Dallas". In 1993, George Whitaker, a manager at the Ford Motor Company's Rouge Plant in Detroit, told attorney and criminal justice professor Doug Weldon that after reporting to work on November 25, 1963, he discovered the presidential limousine in the Rouge Plant's B building with its windshield removed. Whitaker said that the limousine's removed windshield had a through-and-through bullet hole from the front. He said that he was directed by one of Ford's vice presidents to use the windshield as a template to fabricate a new windshield for installation in the limousine. Whitaker also said he was told to destroy the old one. Film and photographic evidence of the assassination have led viewers to different conclusions regarding the origin of the shots. When the fatal shot struck, the President's head and upper torso moved rapidly backwards – indicating, to many observers, a shot from the right front. Sherry Gutierrez, a certified crime scene and bloodstain pattern analyst, concluded "the head injury to President Kennedy was the result of a single gunshot fired from the right front of the President." Paul Chambers believes that the fatal head shot is consistent with a high velocity (approx. 1,200 m/s; 3,900 ft/s) rifle rather than the medium-velocity (600 m/s; 2,000 ft/s) Mannlicher–Carcano. Close inspection of the Zapruder film (frames 312 and 313) show Kennedy's head moves downward immediately before it moves rapidly backwards. Anthony Marsh suggests that this downward motion was caused by driver William Greer's deceleration of the car. Others, including Josiah Thompson, Robert Groden, and Cyril Wecht, suggest that this downward-and-then-backward motion was caused by two near-simultaneous bullets: one from the rear and the other from the right front. In 1975, the Rockefeller Commission appointed a panel of experts to review the movement of Kennedy's head and body following the fatal head shot. The panel concluded that "...the violent backward and leftward motion of the President's upper body following the head shot was not caused by the impact of a bullet coming from the front or right front [but was] caused by a violent straightening and stiffening of the entire body as a result of a seizure-like neuromuscular reaction to major damage inflicted to nerve centers in the brain". In 1979, the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) agreed with the Warren Commission that Oswald killed Kennedy, but concluded that the commission's report and the original FBI investigation were seriously flawed. The HSCA concluded that at least four shots were fired, with a "high probability" that two gunmen fired at Kennedy, and that a conspiracy was probable. The HSCA stated that the Warren Commission had "failed to investigate adequately the possibility of a conspiracy to assassinate the President". The acoustical analysis that the HSCA presented as evidence for two gunmen has since been disputed. The HSCA acoustic experts said the Dictabelt evidence came from police officer H. B. McLain's radio microphone stuck in the open position. McLain stated that he was not yet in Dealey Plaza when the assassination occurred. A skeptical McLain asked the Committee, "If it was my radio on my motorcycle, why did it not record the revving up at high speed plus my siren when we immediately took off for Parkland Hospital?" In 1982, a panel of 12 scientists appointed by the National Academy of Sciences, including Nobel laureates Norman Ramsey and Luis Alvarez, unanimously concluded that the HSCA's acoustic evidence was "seriously flawed". They concluded that the recording was made after the President had already been shot and that the recording did not indicate any additional gunshots. Their conclusions were later published in the journal Science. In a 2001 article in Science & Justice, a publication of Britain's Forensic Science Society, D. B. Thomas wrote that the NAS investigation was itself flawed. Thomas analyzed audio recordings made during the assassination and concluded with a 96% certainty that a shot was fired from the grassy knoll in front of and to the right of the President's limousine. In 2005, Thomas's conclusions were rebutted in the same journal. Ralph Linsker and several members of the original NAS team reanalyzed the recordings and reaffirmed the earlier conclusion of the NAS report that the alleged shot sounds were recorded approximately one minute after the assassination. In a 2010 book, D. B. Thomas challenged the 2005 Science & Justice article and restated his conclusion that there actually were two gunmen. Some researchers have pointed to the large number of doctors and nurses at Parkland Memorial Hospital who reported that a major part of the back of the President's head was blown out. In 1979, the HSCA noted: "The various accounts of the nature of the wounds to the President ... as described by the staff at Parkland Memorial Hospital, differed from those in the Bethesda autopsy report, as well as from what appears in the autopsy photographs and X-rays". The HSCA concluded that the most probable explanation for the discrepancy between the Parkland doctors' testimony and the Bethesda autopsy witnesses was "that the observations of the Parkland doctors [were] incorrect". Some critics skeptical of the official "single bullet theory" have stated that the bullet's trajectory, which hit Kennedy above the right shoulder blade and passed through his neck (according to the autopsy), would have had to change course to pass through Connally's rib cage and fracture his wrist. Kennedy's death certificate, which was signed by his personal physician George Burkley, locates the bullet at "about the level of the third thoracic vertebra" – which some claim was not high enough to exit his throat. Since the shooter was in a sixth floor window of the Book Depository building, the bullet traveled downward. The autopsy descriptive sheet displays a diagram of the President's body with the same low placement at the third thoracic vertebra. There is a conflicting testimony regarding the autopsy performed on Kennedy's body, particularly during the examination on his brain and whether or not the photos submitted as evidence are the same as those taken during the examination. At Bethesda Naval Hospital, Commander J. J. Humes, the chief autopsy pathologist noted that Kennedy's brain weighed 1,500 grams following formalin fixation. In August 1977, Paul O'Connor, a laboratory technologist who assisted in the President's autopsy, told investigators for the HSCA that there was "nothing left in the cranium but splattered brain matter" and "there was no use me opening the skull because there were no brains." Douglas Horne, the Assassination Record Review Board's chief analyst for military records, said he was "90 to 95% certain" that the photographs in the National Archives are not really of Kennedy's brain. Some conspiracy theorists have said that Kennedy's brain was stolen to cover up evidence that he was shot from the front. In his book JFK and the Unspeakable, James Douglass cites autopsy doctor Pierre Finck's testimony at the trial of Clay Shaw as evidence that Finck was "... a reluctant witness to the military control over the doctors' examination of the president's body". A bone fragment found in Dealey Plaza by William Harper the day following the assassination was reported by the HSCA's Forensic Pathology Panel to have been from Kennedy's skull, a part of his parietal bone. Some critics of the lone gunman theory, including James Douglass, David Lifton, and David Mantick, contend that the bone fragment that Harper found is not parietal bone, but is actually a piece of Kennedy's occipital bone ejected from an exit wound in the back of his head. They allege this finding is evidence of a cover-up, as it proves that the skull radiographs taken during the autopsy, which do not show significant bone loss in the occipital area, are not authentic. The Warren Commission examined the capabilities of the Carcano rifle and ammunition, as well as Oswald's military training and post-military experience, and determined that Oswald had the ability to fire three shots within a time span of 4.8 to 5.6 seconds. According to their report, an army specialist using Oswald's rifle was able to duplicate the feat and even improved on the time. The report also states that the Army Infantry Weapons Evaluation Branch test fired Oswald's rifle 47 times and found that it was "quite accurate", comparing it to the accuracy of an M14 rifle. Also contained in the Commission report is testimony by Marine Corps Major Eugene Anderson confirming that Oswald's military records show that he qualified as "sharpshooter" in 1956. According to official Marine Corps records, Oswald was tested in shooting in December 1956, scoring 212, slightly above the minimum for qualification as a sharpshooter – the intermediate category. In May 1959, he scored 191, earning the lower designation of marksman. The highest marksmanship category in the Marine Corps is 'Expert' (220). Despite Oswald's confirmed marksmanship in the USMC, conspiracy theorists like Walt Brown and authors such as Richard H. Popkin contend that Oswald was a notoriously poor shot, that his rifle was inaccurate, and that no reconstruction of the event has ever been able to duplicate his ability to fire three shots within the time frame given by the Warren Commission. The Warren Commission concluded that "there is no evidence that [Oswald] was involved in any conspiracy directed to the assassination of the President." The Commission came to this conclusion after examining Oswald's Marxist and pro-Communist background, including his defection to Russia, the New Orleans branch of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee he had organized, and the various public and private statements made by him espousing Marxism. Some conspiracy theorists have argued that Oswald's pro-Communist behavior was in fact a carefully planned ruse and part of an effort by U.S. intelligence agencies to infiltrate left-wing groups and conduct counterintelligence operations in communist countries. Others speculate that Oswald was either an agent or an informant of the U.S. government and that he may have been trying to expose the plot behind the assassination. Oswald denied shooting anyone and declared that he was "just a patsy". Dallas Police Department Chief Jesse Curry said, "I'm not sure about it. No one has ever been able to put [Oswald] in the Texas School Book Depository with a rifle in his hand." When asked to account for himself at the time of the assassination, Oswald claimed that he "went outside to watch P. Parade", referring to the presidential motorcade, and was "out with [William Shelley, a foreman at the depository] in front", and that he was at the "front entrance to the first floor". Initially, Texas School Book Depository superintendent Roy Truly and Occhus Campbell, the Depository vice president, said they saw Oswald in the first floor storage room after the shooting. Some researchers theorize that a man who was filmed by Dave Wiegman Jr. of NBC, and James Darnell of WBAP-TV, standing on the Depository front steps during the assassination, referred to as "prayer man", is Oswald. Oswald's role as FBI informant was investigated by Lee Rankin and others of the Warren Commission, but their findings were inconclusive. Several FBI employees had made statements indicating that Oswald was indeed a paid informant, but the Commission was nonetheless unable to verify the veracity of those claims. FBI agent James Hosty reported that his office's interactions with Oswald were limited to dealing with his complaints about being harassed by the Bureau for being a communist sympathizer. In the weeks before the assassination, Oswald made a personal visit to the FBI's Dallas branch office with a hand-delivered letter, which purportedly contained a threat of some sort but, controversially, Hosty destroyed the letter by order of J. Gordon Shanklin, his supervisor. Some researchers suggest that Oswald served as an active agent of the Central Intelligence Agency, often pointing to how he attempted to defect to Russia but was able to return without difficulty, even receiving a repatriation loan from the State Department, as evidence of such. A former roommate of Oswald, James Botelho, who later became a California judge, stated in an interview with Mark Lane that he believed Oswald was involved in an intelligence assignment in Russia, although Botelho did not mention this suspicion in his testimony to the Warren Commission years earlier. Oswald's mother Marguerite often insisted that her son was recruited by an agency of the U.S. Government and sent to Russia. New Orleans District Attorney, and later judge, Jim Garrison, who in 1967 brought Clay Shaw to trial for the assassination of President Kennedy, held the opinion that Oswald was most likely a CIA agent drawn into the plot to be used as a scapegoat, even going as far as to say that Oswald "genuinely was probably a hero". Senator Richard Schweiker, a member of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, remarked that "everywhere you look with [Oswald], there're fingerprints of intelligence". Schweiker told author David Talbot that Oswald "was the product of a fake defector program run by the CIA." Richard Sprague, interim staff director and chief counsel to the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations, stated that if he "had to do it over again", he would have investigated the Kennedy assassination by probing Oswald's ties to the Central Intelligence Agency. In 1978, James Wilcott, a former CIA finance officer, testified before the HSCA[d] that shortly after the assassination of President Kennedy he was advised by fellow employees at a CIA post abroad that Oswald was a CIA agent who had received financial disbursements under an assigned cryptonym. Wilcott was unable to identify the specific case officer who had initially informed him of Oswald's agency relationship, nor was he able to recall the name of the cryptonym, but he named several employees of the post abroad with whom he believed he had subsequently discussed the allegations. Later that year Wilcott and his wife, Elsie, also a former employee of the CIA, repeated those claims in an article in the San Francisco Chronicle. The HSCA investigated Wilcott's claims – an investigation that included interviews with the chief of station and officers in counterintelligence – and concluded that Wilcott's claims were "not worthy of belief". Despite its official policy of neither confirming nor denying the status of agents, both the CIA itself and many officers working in the region at the time (including David Atlee Phillips) have "unofficially" dismissed the plausibility of any possible ties of Oswald to the agency. Robert Blakey, staff director and chief counsel for the U.S. House Select Committee on Assassinations, supported that assessment in his conclusions as well. In addition to Oswald, Jerome Kroth has named 26 people as "Possible Assassins In Dealey Plaza". They include: Orlando Bosch, James Files, Desmond Fitzgerald, Charles Harrelson, Gerry Hemming, Chauncey Holt, Howard Hunt, Charles Nicoletti, Charles Rogers, Johnny Roselli, Lucien Sarti, and Frank Sturgis. Vincent Bugliosi provides a "partial list of assassins ... whom one or more conspiracy theorists have actually named and identified as having fired a weapon at Kennedy" in his book Reclaiming History. He mentions the three tramps, men photographed by several Dallas-area newspapers under police escort near the Texas School Book Depository shortly after the assassination. Since the mid-1960s, various allegations have been made about the identities of the men and their involvement in a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. Records released by the Dallas Police Department in 1989 identified the men as Gus Abrams, Harold Doyle, and John Gedney. Allegations of other conspirators The theory that the former CIA agent and Watergate burglar E. Howard Hunt was a participant in the assassination of Kennedy garnered much publicity from 1978 to 2000. In 1981, Hunt won a libel judgment against Liberty Lobby's paper The Spotlight, which in 1978 printed an allegation by Victor Marchetti stating that Hunt was in Dallas on the day of the assassination and suggesting Hunt's involvement in a conspiracy; the libel award was thrown out on appeal and the newspaper was successfully defended by Mark Lane in a second trial. After Hunt's death in 2007, an audio-taped "deathbed confession" in which Hunt claimed first-hand knowledge of a conspiracy, as a co-conspirator, was released by his son Saint John Hunt. In the confession, Hunt claimed to have been a "bench warmer" in Dallas during the events, and he named several high-level CIA operatives as those who likely carried out the logistics of the assassination. Hunt named Vice President Lyndon Johnson as the most likely figure behind the main impetus of the conspiracy. The authenticity of the confession was met with some skepticism. Dallas Police Officer J. D. Tippit has been named in some conspiracy theories as a renegade CIA operative sent to silence Oswald and as the "badge man" assassin on the grassy knoll. According to some Warren Commission critics, Oswald was set up to be killed by Tippit, and Tippit was killed by Oswald in self-defense. Other critics doubt that Tippit was killed by Oswald and assert he was shot by other conspirators. Some critics have alleged that Tippit was associated with organized crime or right-wing politics. According to the Warren Commission, the publication of a full-page, paid advertisement critical of Kennedy in the November 22, 1963, Dallas Morning News, which was signed by "The American Fact-Finding Committee" and noted Bernard Weissman as its chairman, was investigated to determine whether any members of the group claiming responsibility for it were connected to Oswald or to the assassination. The Commission stated that "The American Fact-Finding Committee" was a fictitious sponsoring organization and that there was no evidence linking the four men responsible for the genesis of the ad with either Oswald or Ruby, or to a conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy. Related to the advertisement, Mark Lane testified during the Warren Commission's hearings that an informant whom he refused to name told him that Weismann had met with Tippit and Ruby eight days before the assassination at Ruby's Carousel Club. The Commission reported that they "found no evidence that such a meeting took place anywhere at any time" and that there was no "credible evidence that any of the three men knew each other". Lane later stated that he initially learned of the meeting through reporter Thayer Waldo of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. According to Lane, a "prominent Dallas figure" who frequented Ruby's Carousel Club told Waldo, and later Lane, that he observed the meeting of the three men at the club. He said, "I had promised the man he would not be involved; he was a leading Dallas citizen; he was married, and the stripper he was going with had become pregnant." Despite not having revealed to the Warren Commission that Waldo was his original source of the alleged meeting, Lane disputed their findings and complained that they failed to ask Waldo about it. According to Hugh Aynesworth, the source of the allegation whose identity Lane promised not to reveal was Carroll Jarnagin, a Dallas attorney who had also claimed to have overheard a meeting between Oswald and Ruby. Aynesworth wrote: "Several people in Dallas were well aware of Jarnagin's tale, and that he later admitted making it all up." Fred Crisman (1919–1975) was a World War II fighter pilot who was subpoenaed to testify before a New Orleans grand jury in the 1968 prosecution of Clay Shaw by district attorney Jim Garrison. Garrison claimed that Shaw's first call after his arrest was to Crisman and Garrison's office publicly accused Crisman of being "engaged in undercover activity for a part of the industrial warfare complex". By January 9, 1969, Kennedy assassination conspiracy theorist Richard E. Sprague was privately accusing Crisman of being one of the three tramps. In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations reported that forensic anthropologists had again analyzed and compared the photographs of the "tramps" with those of Hunt and Sturgis, as well as with photographs of Thomas Vallee, Daniel Carswell, and Fred Lee Crisman. According to the Committee, only Crisman resembled any of the tramps; but the same Committee determined that he was not in Dealey Plaza on the day of the assassination. The Warren Commission concluded that Oswald killed President Kennedy and then "killed Dallas Police Officer J. D. Tippit in an apparent attempt to escape." Regarding the evidence against Oswald in the shooting of Tippit, the Commission cited: "(1) two eyewitnesses who heard the shots and saw the shooting of Dallas Police Patrolman J. D. Tippit and seven eyewitnesses who saw the flight of the gunman with revolver in hand positively identified Lee Harvey Oswald as the man they saw fire the shots or flee from the scene, (2) the cartridge cases found near the scene of the shooting were fired from the revolver in the possession of Oswald at the time of his arrest, to the exclusion of all other weapons, (3) the revolver in Oswald's possession at the time of his arrest was purchased by and belonged to Oswald, and (4) Oswald's jacket was found along the path of flight taken by the gunman as he fled from the scene of the killing." Some researchers have alleged that the murder of Officer Tippit was part of a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy. Jim Marrs hypothesized that "the slaying of Officer J. D. Tippit may have played some part in [a] scheme to have Oswald killed, perhaps to eliminate co-conspirator Tippit or simply to anger Dallas police and cause itchy trigger fingers." Researcher James Douglass said that "... the killing of [Tippit] helped motivate the Dallas police to kill an armed Oswald in the Texas Theater [where Oswald was arrested], which would have disposed of the scapegoat before he could protest his being framed." Harold Weisberg offered a simpler explanation: "Immediately, the [flimsy] police case [against Oswald] required a willingness to believe. This was proved by affixing to Oswald the opprobrious epithet of 'cop-killer.'" Jim Garrison alleged that evidence was altered to frame Oswald, stating: "If Oswald was innocent of the Tippit murder the foundation of the government's case against him collapsed." Some critics doubt that Tippit was killed by Oswald and assert he was shot by other conspirators. They allege discrepancies in witness testimony and physical evidence that they think call into question the Commission's conclusions regarding the murder of Tippit. According to Jim Marrs, Oswald's guilt in the assassination of Kennedy is placed in question by the presence of "a growing body of evidence to suggest that [he] did not kill Tippit". Others say that multiple men were directly involved in Tippit's killing. Conspiracy researcher Kenn Thomas has alleged that the Warren Commission omitted testimony and evidence that two men shot Tippit and that one left the scene in a car. William Alexander – the Dallas assistant district attorney who recommended that Oswald be charged with the Kennedy and Tippit murders – later became skeptical of the Warren Commission's version of the Tippit murder. He stated that the Commission's conclusions on Oswald's movements "don't add up", and that "certainly [Oswald] may have had accomplices." According to Brian McKenna's review of Henry Hurt's book, Reasonable Doubt, Hurt reported that "Tippit may have been killed because he impregnated the wife of another man" and that Dallas police officers lied and altered evidence to set up Oswald to save Tippit's reputation. In the documentary JFK to 9/11, Francis Conolly claims that Tippit was shot because his looks resembled Kennedy's. Conolly speculates that the assassination plot did not go as planned, and that the conspirators needed a second body. He further theorizes that Tippit's body and JFK's body were switched on Air Force Two. The Warren Commission identified Helen Markham and Domingo Benavides as two witnesses who actually saw the shooting of Officer Tippit. Conspiracy theorist Richard Belzer criticized the Commission for, in his description, "relying" on the testimony of Markham whom he described as "imaginative". Jim Marrs also took issue with Markham's testimony, stating that her "credibility ... was strained to the breaking point". Joseph Ball, senior counsel to the Commission, referred to Markham's testimony as "full of mistakes", characterizing her as an "utter screwball". The Warren Commission addressed concerns regarding Markham's reliability as a witness and concluded: "However, even in the absence of Mrs. Markham's testimony, there is ample evidence to identify Oswald as the killer of Tippit." Domingo Benavides initially said that he did not think he could identify Tippit's assailant and was never asked to view a police lineup, even though he was the person closest to the killing. Benavides later testified that the killer resembled pictures he had seen of Oswald. Other witnesses were taken to police lineups. However, critics have questioned these lineups as they consisted of people who looked very different from Oswald. Witnesses who did not appear before the Commission identified an assailant who was not Oswald. Acquilla Clemons said she saw two men near Tippit's car just before the shooting. She said that after the shooting, she ran outside of her house and saw a man with a gun whom she described as "kind of heavy". She said he waved to the second man, urging him to "go on". Frank Wright said he emerged from his home and observed the scene seconds after the shooting. He described a man standing by Tippit's body who had on a long coat and said the man ran to a parked car and drove away. Critics have questioned whether the cartridge cases recovered from the scene were the same as those that were subsequently entered into evidence. Two of the cases were recovered by witness Domingo Benavides and turned over to police officer J. M. Poe. Poe told the FBI that he marked the shells with his own initials, "J.M.P." to identify them. Sergeant Gerald Hill later testified to the Warren Commission that it was he who had ordered police officer Poe to mark the shells. However, Poe's initials were not found on the shells produced by the FBI six months later. Testifying before the Warren Commission, Poe said that although he recalled marking the cases, he "couldn't swear to it". The identification of the cases at the crime scene raises more questions. Sergeant Gerald Hill examined one of the shells and radioed the police dispatcher, saying: "The shell at the scene indicates that the suspect is armed with an automatic .38 rather than a pistol." However, Oswald was reportedly arrested carrying a non-automatic .38 Special revolver. The Warren Commission investigated Oswald's movements between the time of the assassination and the shooting of Tippit, to ascertain whether Oswald might have had an accomplice who helped him flee the Book Depository. The Commission concluded "... through the testimony of seven witnesses [that] Oswald was always alone." According to their final report, Oswald was seen by his housekeeper, Earlene Roberts, leaving his rooming house shortly after 1:00 pm and had enough time to travel nine-tenths of a mile (1.4 km) to the scene where Tippit was killed at 1:16 pm.[e] Witness Helen Markham stated in her affidavit to the Dallas Sheriff's department that Tippit was killed at "approximately 1:06 pm." She later affirmed the time in testimony before the Warren Commission, saying: "I wouldn't be afraid to bet it wasn't 6 or 7 minutes after 1." She initially told the FBI that the shooting occurred "possibly around 1:30 pm." In an unpublished manuscript titled When They Kill a President, Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig stated that when he heard the news that Tippit had been shot, he noted that the time was 1:06 pm. However, in a later statement to the press, Craig seemed confused about the time of the shooting. Warren Burroughs, who ran the concession stand at the Texas Theater where Oswald was arrested, said that Oswald came into the theater between 1:00 and 1:07 pm; he also claimed he sold Oswald popcorn at 1:15 pm – the "official" time of Officer Tippit's murder. A theater patron, Jack Davis, also corroborated Burroughs's time, claiming he observed Oswald in the theater prior to 1:20 pm. Unidentified witnesses The Babushka Lady was a woman who was seen to be holding a camera by eyewitnesses and was also seen in film accounts of the assassination. Her nickname arose from the headscarf she wore, which was similar to scarves worn by elderly Russian women. She was observed standing on the grass between Elm and Main streets, standing amongst onlookers in front of the Dallas County Building, and is visible in the Zapruder film as well as in the films of Orville Nix, Marie Muchmore, and Mark Bell. She is last seen in photographs walking east on Elm Street. Neither she, nor the film she may have taken, have ever been positively identified. The so-called "umbrella man" was one of the closest bystanders to the president when he was first struck by a bullet. The "umbrella man" has become the subject of conspiracy theories after footage of the assassination showed him holding an open umbrella as the Kennedy motorcade passed, despite the fact that it was not raining at the time. One conspiracy theory, proposed by assassination researcher Robert Cutler, suggests that a dart with a paralyzing agent could have been fired from the umbrella, disabling Kennedy and making him a "sitting duck" for an assassination. In 1975, CIA weapons developer Charles Senseney told the Senate Intelligence Committee that such an umbrella weapon was in the hands of the CIA in 1963. A more prevalent conspiracy theory holds that the umbrella could have been used to provide visual signals to hidden gunmen. In 1978, Louie Steven Witt came forward and identified himself as the "umbrella man". Testifying before the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations, Witt stated he brought the umbrella to heckle Kennedy and protest the appeasement policies of the president's father, Joseph Kennedy. He added: "I think if the Guinness Book of World Records had a category for people who were at the wrong place at the wrong time, doing the wrong thing, I would be No. 1 in that position, without even a close runner-up." Some researchers have noted a number of inconsistencies with Witt's story, however, and doubt him to be the "umbrella man". An unidentified individual who is referred to by some conspiracy theorists as the "dark complected man" can be seen in several photographs, taken seconds after the assassination, sitting on the sidewalk next to the "umbrella man" on the north side of Elm Street. Louie Steven Witt, who identified himself as the "umbrella man", said he was unable to identify the other individual, whose dark complexion has led some conspiracy theorists to speculate Cuban government involvement, or Cuban exile involvement, in the assassination of Kennedy. "Badge Man" and "tin hat man" are figures on the grassy knoll who it is alleged can be seen in the Mary Moorman photo, taken approximately one-sixth of a second after President Kennedy was struck with the fatal head wound. The figures were first discovered by researchers Jack White and Gary Mack and are discussed in a 1988 documentary The Men Who Killed Kennedy, where it is alleged a third figure can also be seen on the grassy knoll, possibly the eyewitness Gordon Arnold. The "badge man" figure – so called as he appears to be wearing a uniform similar to that worn by a policeman, with a badge prominent – helped fuel conspiracy theories linking Dallas Police officers, or someone impersonating a police officer, to the assassination. Another "figure" is the so-called "black dog man" figure who can be seen at the corner of a retaining wall in the Willis and Betzner photo of the assassination. In an interview, Marilyn Sitzman told Josiah Thompson that she saw a young black couple who were eating lunch and drinking Cokes on a bench behind the retaining wall and, therefore, it is possible that the "black dog man" figure is actually one of the pair. In The Killing of a President, Robert Groden argues that the "black dog man" figure can be seen in a pyracantha bush in frame 413 of the Zapruder film. The United States House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that a head of an individual could be seen but that this individual was situated in front of, rather than behind the bushes. Bill Miller argues that this individual is actually the eyewitness Emmett Hudson. Conspiracy theories Conspiracy theorists consider four or five groups, alone or in combination, to be the primary suspects in the assassination of Kennedy: the CIA, the military-industrial complex, organized crime, the government of Cuba led by Fidel Castro, and Cuban exiles. Other domestic individuals, groups, or organizations implicated in various conspiracy theories include Lyndon Johnson, George H. W. Bush, Sam Giancana, Carlos Marcello, J. Edgar Hoover, Earl Warren, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the United States Secret Service, the John Birch Society, and far-right wealthy Texans. Some other alleged foreign conspirators include the KGB and Nikita Khrushchev, Aristotle Onassis, the government of South Vietnam, and international drug lords, including a French heroin syndicate. New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison began an investigation into the Kennedy assassination in 1966. Garrison developed a theory of a plot that included a group of New Orleans residents in his jurisdiction. Garrison's 1988 book On the Trail of the Assassins discusses his prosecution of Clay Shaw for the assassination, and was partially adapted by Oliver Stone for his 1991 film JFK. The final report of the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) stated that the film "popularized a version of President Kennedy's assassination that featured U.S. government agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the military as conspirators." Journalist Rosemary James, whose article with Jack Dempsey and David Snyder in the New Orleans States-Item broke the news of the Garrison investigation, stated that because Garrison's theory evolved frequently, it was mockingly called the "theory du jour" by the media. Pamela Colloff and Michael Hall described the theory held by Garrison and Stone for Texas Monthly this way: "There is a secret government within our government, a cabal that in 1963 ordered the murder of a popular president, set up a patsy, installed its own puppet, and orchestrated an elaborate cover-up that included tampering with the corpse, destroying and suppressing evidence, and killing witnesses. Heading the cabal were some of the world's most powerful men: rich and corrupt industrialists, generals, and right-wing politicians. Down below was an eclectic group of mobsters, spooks, lowlifes, and anti-Castro extremists, many of whom were headquartered at 544 Camp Street in New Orleans, including Oswald, former FBI agent Guy Banister, soldier of fortune David Ferrie, and suspected CIA informant Clay Shaw. Together, in the summer of 1963, they plotted Kennedy's demise." Soon after the assassination of President Kennedy, Oswald's activities in New Orleans, Louisiana, during the spring and summer of 1963, came under scrutiny. Three days after the assassination, on November 25, 1963, New Orleans attorney Dean Andrews told the FBI that he received a telephone call from a man named Clay Bertrand, on the day of the assassination, asking him to defend Oswald. Andrews would later repeat this claim in testimony to the Warren Commission. Also, in late November 1963, an employee of the New Orleans private investigator Guy Banister named Jack Martin began making accusations that fellow Banister employee David Ferrie was involved in the JFK assassination. Martin told police that Ferrie "was supposed to have been the getaway pilot in the assassination." He said that Ferrie had outlined plans to kill Kennedy and that Ferrie might have taught Oswald how to use a rifle with a telescopic sight. Martin claimed that Ferrie had known Oswald from their days in the New Orleans Civil Air Patrol, and that he had seen a photograph, at Ferrie's home, of Oswald in a Civil Air Patrol group. Ferrie denied any association with Oswald. It was later discovered that Ferrie had attended Civil Air Patrol meetings in New Orleans in the 1950s that were attended by a teenage Lee Harvey Oswald. In 1993, the PBS television program Frontline obtained a photograph taken in 1955, eight years before the assassination, showing Oswald and Ferrie at a Civil Air Patrol cookout with other C.A.P. cadets. Whether Oswald's and Ferrie's association in the Civil Air Patrol in 1955 is relevant to their later possible association in 1963 is a subject of debate. According to several witnesses, in 1963, both Ferrie and Banister were working for lawyer G. Wray Gill on behalf of Gill's client, New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello, in an attempt to block Marcello's deportation to Guatemala. On the afternoon of November 22, 1963 – the day John F. Kennedy was assassinated and the day Marcello was acquitted in his deportation case – the New Orleans private investigator Guy Banister and his employee Jack Martin were drinking together at a local bar. On their return to Banister's office, the two men got into a heated argument. According to Martin, Banister said something to which Martin replied, "What are you going to do – kill me like you all did Kennedy?". Banister drew his .357 magnum revolver and pistol-whipped Martin several times. Martin, badly injured, went by ambulance to Charity Hospital. Earlier, in the spring of 1963, Oswald had written to the New York City headquarters of the pro-Castro Fair Play for Cuba Committee, proposing to rent "a small office at my own expense for the purpose of forming a FPCC branch here in New Orleans". As the sole member of the New Orleans chapter of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, Oswald ordered 1,000 leaflets with the heading, "Hands Off Cuba" from a local printer. On August 16, 1963, Oswald passed out Fair Play for Cuba leaflets in front of the International Trade Mart in New Orleans. One of Oswald's leaflets had the address "544 Camp Street" hand-stamped on it, apparently by Oswald himself. The address was in the "Newman Building", which from October 1961 to February 1962 housed the Cuban Revolutionary Council, a militant anti-Castro group. Around the corner but located in the same building, with a different entrance, was the address 531 Lafayette Street – the address of "Guy Banister Associates", the private detective agency run by Guy Banister. Banister's office was involved in anti-Castro and private investigative activities in the New Orleans area. A CIA file indicated that in September 1960, the CIA had considered "using Guy Banister Associates for the collection of foreign intelligence, but ultimately decided against it". In the late 1970s, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) investigated the possible relationship of Oswald to Banister's office. While the committee was unable to interview Guy Banister, who died in 1964, the committee interviewed his brother Ross Banister. Ross "told the committee that his brother had mentioned seeing Oswald hand out Fair Play for Cuba literature on one occasion. Ross theorized that Oswald had used the 544 Camp Street address on his literature to embarrass Guy." Guy Banister's secretary, Delphine Roberts, would later tell author Anthony Summers that she saw Oswald at Banister's office, and that he filled out one of Banister's "agent" application forms. She said, "Oswald came back a number of times. He seemed to be on familiar terms with Banister and with the office." The House Select Committee on Assassinations investigated Roberts's claims and said that "because of contradictions in Roberts' statements to the committee and lack of independent corroboration of many of her statements, the reliability of her statements could not be determined." In 1966, New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison began an investigation into the assassination of President Kennedy. Garrison's investigation led him to conclude that a group of right-wing extremists, including David Ferrie and Guy Banister, were involved with elements of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. Garrison later claimed that the motive for the assassination was anger over Kennedy's attempts to obtain a peace settlement in both Cuba and Vietnam. Garrison came to believe that New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw was part of the conspiracy and that Clay Shaw used the pseudonym "Clay Bertrand". Garrison further believed that Shaw, Banister, and Ferrie conspired to set up Oswald as a patsy in the JFK assassination. On March 1, 1967, Garrison arrested and charged Shaw with conspiring to assassinate President Kennedy. On January 29, 1969, Clay Shaw was brought to trial on these charges, and the jury found him not guilty. Addressing speculation that Oswald was a CIA agent or had some relationship with the Agency, the Warren Commission stated in 1964 that their investigation "revealed no evidence that Oswald was ever employed [by the] CIA in any capacity." The House Select Committee on Assassinations reported similarly in 1979 that "there was no indication in Oswald's CIA file that he had ever had contact with the Agency" and concluded that the CIA was not involved in the assassination of Kennedy. Gaeton Fonzi, an investigator for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, wrote that investigators were pressured not to look into the relationship between Lee Harvey Oswald and the CIA. He stated that CIA agent David Atlee Phillips, using the pseudonym "Maurice Bishop", was involved with Oswald prior to the Kennedy assassination in connection with anti-Castro Cuban groups. In 1995, former U.S. Army Intelligence officer and National Security Agency executive assistant John M. Newman published evidence that both the CIA and FBI deliberately tampered with their files on Lee Harvey Oswald both before and after the assassination. He found that both agencies withheld information that might have alerted authorities in Dallas that Oswald posed a potential threat to the President. Subsequently, Newman expressed the belief that CIA chief of counter-intelligence James Angleton was probably the key figure in the assassination. According to Newman, only Angleton "had the access, the authority, and the diabolically ingenious mind to manage this sophisticated plot." Newman surmised that the cover operation was not under James Angleton, but under Allen Dulles, the former CIA director, and a later Warren Commission member, who had been dismissed by Kennedy after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. In 1977, the FBI released 40,000 files pertaining to the assassination of Kennedy, including an April 3, 1967, memorandum from Deputy Director Cartha DeLoach to Associate Director Clyde Tolson that was written less than a month after President Johnson learned from J. Edgar Hoover about CIA plots to kill Fidel Castro. The memorandum reads: "Marvin Watson [adviser to President Johnson] called me late last night and stated that the president had told him, in an off moment, that he was now convinced that there was a plot in connection with the [JFK] assassination. Watson stated the president felt that [the] CIA had had something to do with plot." Later, Cartha DeLoach testified to the Church Committee that he "felt this to be sheer speculation". One conspiracy theory suggests that a secret or shadow government including wealthy industrialists and right-wing politicians ordered the assassination of Kennedy. Peter Dale Scott has indicated that Kennedy's death allowed for policy reversals desired by the secret government to escalate the United States' military involvement in Vietnam. In JFK vs Allen Dulles, the author Greg Poulgrain describes an attempt by America's Rockefeller family to gain control over West Irian gold mines in Indonesia, in particular the substantially gold-rich Grasberg mine. Poulgrain speculates that President Kennedy's close relationship with Indonesian President Sukarno and a planned 1964 US–Indonesian summit could have led to Indonesia granting independence to West Irian, making it difficult for Rockefeller-owned Freeport Sulphur to gain control of the mines. Poulgrain contends that Allen Dulles, who had ties to the Rockefellers through his employment at Sullivan & Cromwell, organized the assassination on the Rockefellers' behalf to eliminate Kennedy's interference by easing Lee Harvey Oswald's return to the United States and getting him a job at the Texas School Book Depository, before instigating a coup in Indonesia with the cooperation of military officer Suharto to discredit the Communist Party of Indonesia. The subsequent nationwide massacres and Suharto's assumption of the presidency, Poulgrain purports, led to Freeport securing the mines with the approval of Suharto's pro-Western government. In the biographical book, The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government, David Talbot examines Dulles' career. Talbot also posits that Allen Dulles orchestrated the assassination of President Kennedy at the behest of corporate leaders, though on the basis of their perceiving Kennedy as a threat to national security instead of to primarily secure any specific business interests. According to Talbot, Dulles lobbied the new president, Lyndon Johnson, to have himself appointed to the Warren Commission. Talbot says that Allen Dulles also arranged to make Lee Harvey Oswald the person responsible for the assassination. The book asserts that the conspirators behind John Kennedy's death also murdered his brother Robert Kennedy, whom the conspirators perceived to be "a wild card, an uncontrollable threat" that would reveal the plot. In the farewell speech given by U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower before he left office on January 17, 1961, he warned Americans about the power of the military establishment and the arms industry. "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist." Some conspiracy theorists have argued that Kennedy planned to end the involvement of the United States in Vietnam, and was therefore targeted by those who had an interest in sustained military conflict, including the Pentagon and defense contractors. The former United States Senator Ralph Yarborough in 1991 stated: "Had Kennedy lived, I think we would have had no Vietnam War, with all of its traumatic and divisive influences in America. I think we would have escaped that." According to the author James W. Douglass, Kennedy was assassinated because he was turning away from the Cold War and seeking a negotiated peace with the Soviet Union. Douglass argued that this "was not the kind of leadership the CIA, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the military-industrial complex wanted in the White House." Oliver Stone's film JFK explored the possibility that Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy involving the military-industrial complex. L. Fletcher Prouty, Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff under Kennedy, and the person who inspired the character "Mr. X" in Stone's film, wrote that Kennedy's assassination was actually a coup d'état. The House Select Committee on Assassinations reported that it investigated "alleged Secret Service complicity in the assassination" and concluded that the Secret Service was not involved. However, the HSCA declared that "the Secret Service was deficient in the performance of its duties." Among its findings, the HSCA noted: (1) that President Kennedy had not received adequate protection in Dallas, (2) that the Secret Service possessed information that was not properly analyzed, investigated, or used by the Secret Service in connection with the President's trip to Dallas, and (3) that the Secret Service agents in the motorcade were inadequately prepared to protect the President from a sniper. The HSCA specifically noted: No actions were taken by the agent in the right front seat of the presidential limousine Roy Kellerman to cover the President with his body, although it would have been consistent with Secret Service procedure for him to have done so. The primary function of the agent was to remain at all times in close proximity to the President in the event of such emergencies. Some argue that the lack of Secret Service protection occurred because Kennedy himself had asked that the Secret Service make itself discreet during the Dallas visit. However, Vince Palamara, who interviewed several Secret Service agents assigned to the Kennedy detail, disputes this. Palamara reports that Secret Service driver Sam Kinney told him that requests – such as removing the bubble top from the limousine in Dallas, not having agents positioned beside the limousine's rear bumper, and reducing the number of Dallas police motorcycle outriders near the limousine's rear bumper – were not made by Kennedy. In The Echo from Dealey Plaza, Abraham Bolden – the first African American on the White House Secret Service detail – claimed to have overheard agents say that they would not protect Kennedy from would-be assassins. Questions regarding the forthrightness of the Secret Service increased in the 1990s when the Assassination Records Review Board – which was created when Congress passed the JFK Records Act – requested access to Secret Service records. The Review Board was told by the Secret Service that in January 1995, in violation of the JFK Records Act, the Secret Service destroyed protective survey reports that covered JFK's trips from September 24 through November 8, 1963. The House Select Committee on Assassinations wrote: "The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that anti-Castro Cuban groups, as groups, were not involved in the assassination of President Kennedy, but that the available evidence does not preclude the possibility that individual members may have been involved". With the 1959 Cuban Revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power, many Cubans left Cuba to live in the United States. Many of these exiles hoped to overthrow Castro and return to Cuba. Their hopes were dashed with the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion in 1961, and many blamed President Kennedy for the failure. The House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that some militant Cuban exiles might have participated in Kennedy's murder. These exiles worked closely with CIA operatives in violent activities against Castro's Cuba. In 1979, the committee reported: President Kennedy's popularity among the Cuban exiles had plunged deeply by 1963. Their bitterness is illustrated in a tape recording of a meeting of anti-Castro Cubans and right-wing Americans in the Dallas suburb of Farmer's Branch on October 1, 1963. Author Joan Didion explored the Miami anti-Castro Cuban theory in her 1987 book Miami. She discussed Marita Lorenz's testimony regarding Guillermo Novo, a Cuban exile who, in 1964, was involved in shooting a bazooka at the headquarters of the United Nations building from the East River during a speech by Che Guevara. Allegedly, Novo was affiliated with Lee Harvey Oswald, and Frank Sturgis. Lorenz claimed that she, Oswald, and seven anti-Castro Cubans transported weapons from Miami to Dallas in two cars just prior to the assassination. These claims, though put forth to the House Assassinations Committee by Lorenz, have never been substantiated. Don DeLillo dramatized the Cuban theory in his 1988 novel Libra. In 1964, the Warren Commission found no evidence linking Ruby's killing of Oswald with any broader conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy. The Commission concluded: "Based on its evaluation of the record, the Commission believes that the evidence does not establish a significant link between Ruby and organized crime. Both State and Federal officials have indicated that Ruby was not affiliated with organized criminal activity." However, in 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations wrote: "The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that the national syndicate of organized crime, as a group, was not involved in the assassination of President Kennedy, but that the available evidence does not preclude the possibility that individual members may have been involved". Robert Blakey, who was chief counsel for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, would later conclude in his book, The Plot to Kill the President, that New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello was likely part of a Mafia conspiracy behind the assassination, and that the Mafia had the means and the opportunity required to carry it out. In a 1993 Washington Post article, Blakey added: "It is difficult to dispute the underworld pedigree of Jack Ruby, though the Warren Commission did it in 1964. Author Gerald Posner similarly ignores Ruby's ties to Joseph Civello, the organized crime boss in Dallas. His relationship with Joseph Campisi, the No. 2 man in the mob in Dallas, is even more difficult to ignore. In fact, Campisi and Ruby were close friends; they had dinner together at Campisi's restaurant, the Egyptian Lounge, on the night before the assassination. After Ruby was jailed for killing Oswald, Campisi regularly visited him. The select committee thought Campisi's connection to Marcello was telling; he told us, for example, that every year at Christmas he sent 260 pounds of Italian sausage to Marcello, a sort of Mafia tribute. We also learned that he called New Orleans up to 20 times a day." Government documents have revealed that some members of the Mafia worked with the Central Intelligence Agency on assassination attempts against Cuban leader Fidel Castro. In summer 1960, the CIA recruited ex-FBI agent Robert Maheu to approach the West Coast representative of the Chicago mob, Johnny Roselli. When Maheu contacted Roselli, Maheu hid the fact that he was sent by the CIA, instead portraying himself as an advocate for international corporations. He offered to pay $150,000 to have Castro killed, but Roselli declined any pay. Roselli introduced Maheu to two men he referred to as "Sam Gold" and "Joe". "Sam Gold" was Sam Giancana; "Joe" was Santo Trafficante Jr., the Tampa, Florida, boss and one of the most powerful mobsters in pre-revolution Cuba. Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post explained: "After Fidel Castro led a revolution that toppled a friendly government in 1959, the CIA was desperate to eliminate him. So the agency sought out a partner equally worried about Castro – the Mafia, which had lucrative investments in Cuban casinos." In his memoir, Bound by Honor, Bill Bonanno, son of New York Mafia boss Joseph Bonanno, disclosed that several Mafia families had long-standing ties with the anti-Castro Cubans through the Havana casinos operated by the Mafia before the Cuban Revolution. Many Cuban exiles and Mafia bosses disliked President Kennedy, blaming him for the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion. They also disliked his brother, then United States Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, who had conducted an unprecedented legal assault on organized crime. This was especially provocative because several Mafia "families" had allegedly worked with JFK's father, Joseph Kennedy, to get JFK elected. Both the Mafia and the anti-Castro Cubans were experts in assassination – the Cubans having been trained by the CIA. Bonanno reported that he recognized the high degree of involvement of other Mafia families when Jack Ruby killed Oswald, since Bonanno was aware that Ruby was an associate of Chicago mobster Sam Giancana. Some conspiracy researchers have alleged a plot involving elements of the Mafia, the CIA, and the anti-Castro Cubans, including Anthony Summers, who stated: "Sometimes people sort of glaze over about the notion that the Mafia and U.S. intelligence and the anti-Castro activists were involved together in the assassination of President Kennedy. In fact, there's no contradiction there. Those three groups were all in bed together at the time and had been for several years in the fight to topple Fidel Castro." News reporter Ruben Castaneda wrote in 2012: "Based on the evidence, it is likely that JFK was killed by a coalition of anti-Castro Cubans, the Mob, and elements of the CIA." In his book, They Killed Our President, former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura concluded: "John F. Kennedy was murdered by a conspiracy involving disgruntled CIA agents, anti-Castro Cubans, and members of the Mafia, all of whom were extremely angry at what they viewed as Kennedy's appeasement policies toward Communist Cuba and the Soviet Union." Carlos Marcello allegedly threatened to assassinate the President to short-circuit his younger brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, who was leading the administration's anti-Mafia crusade. Information released in 2006 by the FBI has led some to conclude that Carlos Marcello confessed to his cellmate in Texas, Jack Van Lanningham, an FBI informant, using a transistor radio that was bugged by the FBI, to having organized Kennedy's assassination, and that the FBI covered up this information that it had in its possession. In his book, Contract on America, David Scheim provided evidence that Mafia leaders Carlos Marcello, Santo Trafficante Jr., and Jimmy Hoffa ordered the assassination of President Kennedy. Scheim cited in particular a 25-fold increase in the number of out-of-state telephone calls from Jack Ruby to associates of these crime bosses in the months before the assassination, and to an attempted confession by Jack Ruby while in prison. David E. Kaiser has also suggested mob involvement in his book, The Road to Dallas. Investigative reporter Jack Anderson concluded that Fidel Castro worked with organized crime figures to arrange the JFK assassination. In his book Peace, War, and Politics, Anderson claimed that Mafia member Johnny Roselli gave him extensive details of the plot. Anderson said that although he was never able to independently confirm Roselli's entire story, many of Roselli's details checked out. Anderson said that Oswald may have played a role in the assassination, but that more than one gunman was involved. Johnny Roselli, as previously noted, had worked with the CIA on assassination attempts against Castro. The History Channel program The Men Who Killed Kennedy presented additional claims of organized crime involvement. Christian David was a Corsican Mafia member interviewed in prison. He said that he was offered the assassination contract on President Kennedy, but that he did not accept it. However, he said that he knew the men who did accept the contract. According to David, there were three shooters. He provided the name of one – Lucien Sarti. David said that since the other two shooters were still alive, it would break a code of conduct for him to identify them. When asked what the shooters were wearing, David noted their modus operandi was to dress in costumes such as official uniforms. Much of Christian David's testimony was confirmed by former Corsican member Michelle Nicole, who was part of the DEA witness protection program. The book Ultimate Sacrifice, by Lamar Waldron and Thom Hartmann, attempted to synthesize these theories with new evidence. The authors argued that government officials felt obliged to help the assassins cover up the truth because the assassination conspiracy had direct ties to American government plots to assassinate Castro. Outraged at Robert Kennedy's attack on organized crime, mob leaders had President Kennedy killed to remove Robert from power. A government investigation of the plot was thwarted, the authors allege, because it would have revealed embarrassing evidence of American government involvement with organized crime in plots to kill Castro. A 2003 Gallup poll indicated that nearly 20% of Americans suspected Lyndon B. Johnson of being involved in the assassination of Kennedy. Critics of the Warren Commission have accused Johnson of plotting the assassination because he "disliked" the Kennedys and feared that he would be dropped from the Democratic ticket for the 1964 election. According to journalist Max Holland, the first published allegation that Johnson perpetrated the assassination of Kennedy appeared in Penn Jones Jr.'s book Forgive My Grief, self-published in May 1966. In the book, Jones provided excerpts of a letter purported to have been authored by Jack Ruby charging LBJ with the murder of the President. With his 1968 book, The Dark Side of Lyndon Baines Johnson, Joachim Joesten is credited by Bugliosi as being the first conspiracy author to accuse Johnson of having a role in the assassination. According to Joesten, Johnson "played the leading part" in a conspiracy that involved "the Dallas oligarchy and ... local branches of the CIA, the FBI, and the Secret Service". Others who have indicated there was complicity on the part of Johnson include Jim Marrs, Ralph D. Thomas, J. Gary Shaw, Larry Harris, Walt Brown, Noel Twyman, Barr McClellan, Craig Zirbel, Phillip F. Nelson, and Madeleine Brown. The fact that JFK was seriously considering dropping Johnson from the ticket in favor of North Carolina Governor Terry Sanford should Kennedy run in 1964 has been cited as a possible motive for Johnson's complicity in the assassination. In 1968, Kennedy's personal secretary Evelyn Lincoln wrote in her book, Kennedy and Johnson, that President Kennedy had told her that Lyndon B. Johnson would be replaced as Vice President of the United States. That conversation took place on November 19, 1963, just three days before the assassination of President Kennedy and was recorded that evening in her diary and reads as follows: As Mr. Kennedy sat in the rocker in my office, his head resting on its back he placed his left leg across his right knee. He rocked slightly as he talked. In a slow pensive voice he said to me, 'You know if I am re-elected in sixty-four, I am going to spend more and more time toward making government service an honorable career. I would like to tailor the executive and legislative branches of government so that they can keep up with the tremendous strides and progress being made in other fields.' 'I am going to advocate changing some of the outmoded rules and regulations in the Congress, such as the seniority rule. To do this I will need as a running mate in sixty-four a man who believes as I do.' Mrs. Lincoln went on to write "I was fascinated by this conversation and wrote it down verbatim in my diary. Now I asked, 'Who is your choice as a running-mate?' 'He looked straight ahead, and without hesitating he replied, 'at this time I am thinking about Governor Terry Sanford of North Carolina. But it will not be Lyndon.' In 2003, researcher Barr McClellan published the book Blood, Money & Power. McClellan claims that Johnson, motivated by the fear of being dropped from the Kennedy ticket in 1964 and the need to cover up various scandals, masterminded Kennedy's assassination with the help of his friend, attorney Edward A. Clark. The book suggests that a smudged partial fingerprint from the sniper's nest likely belonged to Johnson's associate Malcolm "Mac" Wallace, and that Mac Wallace was, therefore, on the sixth floor of the Depository at the time of the shooting. The book further claims that the killing of Kennedy was paid for by oil magnates, including Clint Murchison and H. L. Hunt. McClellan states that the assassination of Kennedy allowed the oil depletion allowance to be kept at 27.5 percent. It remained unchanged during the Johnson presidency. According to McClellan, this resulted in a saving of over $100 million to the American oil industry. McClellan's book subsequently became the subject of an episode of Nigel Turner's ongoing documentary television series, The Men Who Killed Kennedy. The episode, "The Guilty Men", drew angry condemnation from the Johnson family, Johnson's former aides, and former Presidents Gerald Ford (who was a member of the Warren Commission) and Jimmy Carter following its airing on The History Channel. The History Channel assembled a committee of historians who concluded the accusations in the documentary were without merit, and The History Channel apologized to the Johnson family and agreed not to air the series in the future. Madeleine Brown, who alleged she was the mistress of Johnson, also implicated him in a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. In 1997, Brown said that Johnson, along with H. L. Hunt, had begun planning Kennedy's demise as early as 1960. Brown claimed that by its fruition in 1963, the conspiracy involved dozens of persons, including the leadership of the FBI and the Mafia, as well as prominent politicians and journalists. In the documentary The Men Who Killed Kennedy, Madeleine Brown and May Newman, an employee of Texas oilman Clint Murchison, both placed FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover at a social gathering at Murchison's mansion the night before the assassination. Also in attendance, according to Brown, were John McCloy, Richard Nixon, George Brown, R. L. Thornton, and H. L. Hunt. Madeleine Brown claimed that Johnson arrived at the gathering late in the evening and, in a "grating whisper", told her that the "... Kennedys will never embarrass me again – that's no threat – that's a promise." Brown said that on New Year's Eve 1963, she met Johnson at the Driskill Hotel in Austin, Texas, and that he confirmed the conspiracy to kill Kennedy, insisting that "the fat cats of Texas and [U.S.] intelligence" had been responsible. Brown reiterated her allegations against Johnson in the 2006 documentary Evidence of Revision. In the same documentary, several other Johnson associates also voiced their suspicions of Johnson. Dr. Charles Crenshaw authored the 1992 book JFK: Conspiracy of Silence, along with conspiracy theorists Jens Hansen and J. Gary Shaw. Crenshaw was a third-year surgical resident on the trauma team at Parkland Hospital that attended to President Kennedy. He also treated Oswald after he was shot by Jack Ruby. While attending to Oswald, Crenshaw said that he answered a telephone call from Lyndon Johnson. Crenshaw said that Johnson inquired about Oswald's status, and that Johnson demanded a "death-bed confession from the accused assassin [Oswald]". Crenshaw said that he relayed Johnson's message to Dr. Shires, but that Oswald was in no condition to give any statement. Critics of Crenshaw's allegation state that Johnson was in his limousine at the moment the call would have been made, that no one in his car corroborated that the call was made, and that there is no record of such a call being routed through the White House switchboard. Former CIA agent and Watergate figure E. Howard Hunt accused Johnson, along with several CIA agents whom he named, of complicity in the assassination in his posthumously released autobiography American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate, and Beyond. Referencing that section of the book, Tim Weiner of The New York Times called into question the sincerity of the charges, and William F. Buckley Jr., who wrote the foreword, said material "was clearly ghostwritten". Shortly afterwards, an audio-taped "deathbed confession" in which Hunt claimed first-hand knowledge of a conspiracy, as a co-conspirator, was released by his sons; the authenticity of the confession was also met with some skepticism. In 1984, convicted swindler Billie Sol Estes made statements to a Grand Jury in Texas indicating that he had "inside knowledge" that implicated Johnson in the death of Kennedy and others. Historian Michael L. Kurtz wrote that there is no evidence suggesting that Johnson ordered the assassination of Kennedy. According to Kurtz, Johnson believed Fidel Castro was responsible for the assassination and that Johnson covered up the truth because he feared the possibility that retaliatory measures against Cuba might escalate to nuclear war with the Soviet Union. In 2012, biographer Robert Caro published his fourth volume on Johnson's career, The Passage of Power, which chronicles Johnson's communications and actions as Vice President, and describes the events leading up to the assassination. Caro wrote that "nothing that I have found in my research" points to involvement by Johnson. Political consultant and convicted felon Roger Stone believes that Johnson orchestrated Kennedy's assassination. He also claims that Rafael Cruz, father of Texas Senator and Republican presidential candidate for the 2016 elections Ted Cruz, is tied to Lee Harvey Oswald. Some critics of the official findings theorize that George H. W. Bush was involved in the assassination as a CIA operative in Dealey Plaza. In the book Plausible Denial: Was the CIA Involved in the Assassination of JFK?, American attorney Mark Lane suggests that Bush worked out of a Houston office as a CIA agent at the time of the assassination. In the book Family of Secrets, Russ Baker contends that Bush became an intelligence agent in his teenage years and was later at the center of a plot to assassinate Kennedy that included his father, Prescott Bush, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, CIA Director Allen Dulles, Cuban and Russian exiles and emigrants, and various Texas oilmen. According to Baker, Bush was in Dallas on the night before and morning of the assassination. On November 29, 1963, exactly one week after the assassination, an employee of the FBI wrote in a memo that "Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency" was given a briefing on the reaction to the assassination by Cuban exiles living in Miami. Joseph McBride speculated that the "George Bush" cited in the memo was the future U.S. president, George H. W. Bush, who was appointed head of the CIA by president Gerald Ford in 1976, 13 years after the assassination. During Bush's presidential campaign in 1988, the memo resurfaced, prompting the CIA to claim that the memo was referring to an employee named George William Bush. George William Bush disputed this suggestion, declaring under oath that "I am not the George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency referred to in the memorandum." In 1998, the ARRB instructed the CIA to review its personnel files of former President Bush and to provide a definitive statement as to whether he was the person referred to in the memo. The CIA responded that it had no record of any association with former President Bush during the 1963 time period. On the website JFK Facts, author Jefferson Morley writes that any communication by Bush with the FBI or CIA in November 1963 does not necessarily demonstrate culpability in the assassination, and that it is unclear whether Bush had any affiliation with the CIA prior to his appointment to head the agency in 1976. In its report, the Warren Commission stated that it had investigated "dozens of allegations of a conspiratorial contact between Oswald and agents of the Cuban Government" and had found no evidence of Cuban involvement in the assassination of President Kennedy. The House Select Committee on Assassinations also wrote: "The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that the Cuban Government was not involved in the assassination of President Kennedy". Some conspiracy theorists continue to allege that Fidel Castro ordered the assassination of Kennedy in retaliation for the CIA's previous attempts to assassinate him. One of the first to push this theory was the Information Council of the Americas (INCA), whose founder Edward S. Butler had debated Oswald on New Orleans local radio prior to the assassination. In 1966 it produced a television program narrated by Butler entitled "Hitler in Havana", which suggested that Castro had culpability in the assassination of President Kennedy. The Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil (DRE), whose member Carlos Bringuier had taken part in that same radio debate, rushed out the next issue of their paper Trinchera in the assassination's aftermath, with the headline "The Presumed Assassins" next to photos of Oswald and Castro. In 1969 Bringuier published the book Red Friday, wherein he argued that Oswald was working for Castro. In the early 1960s, Clare Boothe Luce, wife of Time-Life publisher Henry Luce, was one of a number of prominent Americans who sponsored anti-Castro groups. This support included funding exiles in commando speedboat raids against Cuba. In 1975, Clare Luce said that on the night of the assassination, she received a call from a member of a commando group she had sponsored. According to Luce, the caller's name was "something like" Julio Fernandez and he claimed he was calling her from New Orleans. According to Luce, Fernandez told her that Oswald had approached his group with an offer to help assassinate Castro. Fernandez further claimed that he and his associates eventually found out that Oswald was a communist and supporter of Castro. He said that with this new-found knowledge, his group kept a close watch on Oswald until Oswald suddenly came into money and went to Mexico City and then Dallas. According to Luce, Fernandez told her, "There is a Cuban Communist assassination team at large and Oswald was their hired gun." Luce said that she told the caller to give his information to the FBI. Luce revealed the details of the incident to both the Church Committee and the HSCA. Both committees investigated the incident, but were unable to uncover any evidence to corroborate the allegations. In May 1967, CIA Director Richard Helms told President Lyndon Johnson that the CIA had tried to assassinate Castro. Helms further stated that the CIA had employed members of the Mafia in this effort, and "... that CIA plots to assassinate Fidel Castro dated back to August of 1960 – to the Eisenhower Administration." Helms said that the plots against Castro continued into the Kennedy Administration and that Attorney General Robert Kennedy had known about both the plots and the Mafia's involvement. On separate occasions, Johnson told two prominent television newsmen that he believed that JFK's assassination had been organized by Castro as retaliation for the CIA's efforts to kill Castro. In October 1968, Johnson told veteran newsman Howard K. Smith of ABC that "Kennedy was trying to get to Castro, but Castro got to him first." In September 1969, in an interview with Walter Cronkite of CBS, Johnson said in regard to the assassination, "[I could not] honestly say that I've ever been completely relieved of the fact that there might have been international connections", and referenced unnamed "others". Finally, in 1971, Johnson told his former speechwriter Leo Janos of Time magazine that he "never believed that Oswald acted alone". When the news that Kennedy had been shot reached Castro, he was being interviewed by the French journalist Jean Daniel. Daniel recalls that when Castro found out about the events in Dallas he said "this is bad news" because Kennedy was "a man you can talk with" and that "anyone else would be worse". In 1977, Castro was interviewed by newsman Bill Moyers. Castro denied any involvement in Kennedy's death, saying: It would have been absolute insanity by Cuba. ... It would have been a provocation. Needless to say, it would have been to run the risk that our country would have been destroyed by the United States. Nobody who's not insane could have thought about [killing Kennedy in retaliation]. When Castro was interviewed later in 2013 by Atlantic editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, Castro said: There were people in the American government who thought Kennedy was a traitor because he didn't invade Cuba when he had the chance, when they were asking him. He was never forgiven for that. The Warren Commission reported that they found no evidence that the Soviet Union was involved in the assassination of President Kennedy. The House Select Committee on Assassinations also wrote: "The committee believes, on the basis of the evidence available to it, that the Soviet Government was not involved in the assassination of President Kennedy". According to some conspiracy theorists, the Soviet Union, under the leadership of Nikita Khrushchev, was responsible for the assassination, motivated by the humiliation of having to back down during the Cuban Missile Crisis. According to a 1966 FBI document, Colonel Boris Ivanov – chief of the KGB Residency in New York City at the time of the assassination – stated that it was his personal opinion that the assassination had been planned by an organized group, rather than a lone individual. The same document stated, "... officials of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union believed there was some well-organized conspiracy on the part of the 'ultraright' in the United States to effect a 'coup.'" They also feared that some anti-communists would use Kennedy's assassination as an excuse to end negotiations with the Soviet Union. Much later, the high-ranking Soviet Bloc intelligence defector, Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa, said that he had a conversation with Nicolae Ceauşescu who told him about "ten international leaders the Kremlin killed or tried to kill", including Kennedy. He claimed that "among the leaders of Moscow's satellite intelligence services there was unanimous agreement that the KGB had been involved in the assassination of President Kennedy." Pacepa later released a book, Programmed to Kill: Lee Harvey Oswald, the Soviet KGB, and the Kennedy Assassination, in 2007. Similar views on the JFK assassination were expressed by Robert Holmes, former First Secretary at the British Embassy in Moscow, in his 2012 book Spy Like No Other. David Lifton presented a scenario in which conspirators on Air Force One removed Kennedy's body from its original bronze casket and placed it in a shipping casket, while en route from Dallas to Washington. Once the presidential plane arrived at Andrews Air Force Base, the shipping casket with the President's body in it was surreptitiously taken by helicopter from the side of the plane that was out of the television camera's view. Kennedy's body was then taken to an unknown location – most likely Walter Reed Army Medical Center – to surgically alter the body to make it appear that he was shot only from the rear. Part of Lifton's theory comes from a House Select Committee on Assassinations report of an interview of Lt. Richard Lipsey on January 18, 1978, by committee staff members Donald Purdy and Mark Flanagan. According to the report, Lt. Richard Lipsey said that he and General Wehle had met President Kennedy's body at Andrews Air Force Base. Lipsey "... placed [the casket] in a hearse to be transported to Bethesda Naval Hospital. Lipsey mentioned that he and Wehle then flew by helicopter to Bethesda and took [the body of] JFK into the back of Bethesda." Lipsey said that "a decoy hearse had been driven to the front [of Bethesda]". With Lipsey's mention of a "decoy hearse" at Bethesda, Lifton theorized that the casket removed by Lipsey from Air Force One – from the side of the plane exposed to television – was probably also a decoy and was likely empty. Laboratory technologist Paul O'Connor was one of the major witnesses supporting another part of David Lifton's theory that somewhere between Parkland and Bethesda the President's body was made to appear as if it had been shot only from the rear. O'Connor said that President Kennedy's body arrived at Bethesda inside a body bag in "a cheap, shipping-type of casket", which differed from the description of the ornamental bronze casket and sheet that the body had been wrapped in at Parkland Hospital. O'Connor said that the brain had already been removed by the time it got to Bethesda, and that there were "just little pieces" of brain matter left inside the skull. Researcher David R. Wrone dismissed the theory that Kennedy's body was surreptitiously removed from the presidential plane, stating that as is done with all cargo on airplanes for safety precautions, the coffin and lid were held by steel wrapping cables to prevent shifting during takeoff and landing and in case of air disturbances in flight. According to Wrone, the side of the plane away from the television camera "was bathed in klieg lights, and thousands of persons watched along the fence that bent backward along that side, providing, in effect, a well-lit and very public stage for any would-be body snatchers". Jim Marrs, in his book Crossfire, presented the theory that Kennedy was trying to rein in the power of the Federal Reserve, and that forces opposed to such action might have played at least some part in the assassination. According to Marrs, the issuance of Executive Order 11110 was an effort by Kennedy to transfer power from the Federal Reserve to the United States Department of the Treasury by replacing Federal Reserve Notes with silver certificates. Actor and author Richard Belzer named the responsible parties in this theory as American "billionaires, power brokers, and bankers ... working in tandem with the CIA and other sympathetic agents of the government". A 2010 article in Research magazine discussing various controversies surrounding the Federal Reserve stated that "the wildest accusation against the Fed is that it was involved in Kennedy's assassination." Critics of the theory note that Kennedy called for and signed legislation phasing out Silver Certificates in favor of Federal Reserve Notes, thereby enhancing the power of the Federal Reserve; and that Executive Order 11110 was a technicality that only delegated existing presidential powers to the Secretary of the Treasury for administrative convenience during a period of transition. Immediately following Kennedy's death, speculation that he was assassinated by a "Zionist conspiracy" was prevalent in much of the Muslim world. Among these views were that Zionists were motivated to kill Kennedy due to his opposition to an Israeli nuclear program, that Lyndon B. Johnson received orders from Zionists to have Kennedy killed, and that the assassin was a Zionist agent. According to Michael Collins Piper in Final Judgment: The Missing Link in the JFK Assassination Controversy, Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion orchestrated the assassination after learning that Kennedy planned to keep Israel from obtaining nuclear weapons. Piper said that the assassination "was a joint enterprise conducted on the highest levels of the American CIA, in collaboration with organized crime – and most specifically, with direct and profound involvement by the Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad." The theory alleges involvement of Meyer Lansky and the Anti-Defamation League. In 2004, Mordechai Vanunu stated that the assassination was Israel's response to "pressure [Kennedy] exerted on ... Ben-Gurion, to shed light on Dimona's nuclear reactor in Israel". In a speech before the United Nations General Assembly in 2009, Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi also alleged that Kennedy was killed for wanting to investigate Dimona. Notable supporters and critics of JFK assassination conspiracy theories See also Notes References External links California drought manipulation |
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Contents Agenda 21 Agenda 21 is a non-binding action plan of the United Nations with regard to sustainable development. It is a product of the Earth Summit (UN Conference on Environment and Development) held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in June 1992. It is an action agenda for the UN, other multilateral organizations, and individual governments around the world that can be executed at local, national, and global levels. One major objective of the Agenda 21 initiative is that every local government should draw its own local Agenda 21. Its aim initially was to achieve global sustainable development by 2000, with the "21" in Agenda 21 referring to the original target of the 21st century. Structure Agenda 21 is grouped into 4 sections: Development and evolution The full text of Agenda 21 was made public at the UN Conference on Environment and Development (Earth Summit), held in Rio de Janeiro on 13 June 1992, where 178 governments voted to adopt the program. The final text was the result of drafting, consultation, and negotiation, beginning in 1989 and culminating at the two-week conference.[citation needed] In 1997, the UN General Assembly held a special session to appraise the status of Agenda 21 (Rio +5). The Assembly recognized progress as "uneven" and identified key trends, including increasing globalization, widening inequalities in income, and continued deterioration of the global environment. A new General Assembly Resolution (S-19/2) promised further action.[citation needed] The Johannesburg Plan of Implementation, agreed to at the World Summit on Sustainable Development (Earth Summit 2002), affirmed UN commitment to "full implementation" of Agenda 21, alongside achievement of the Millennium Development Goals and other international agreements.[citation needed] The first World Public Meeting on Culture, held in Porto Alegre, Brazil, in 2002, came up with the idea to establish guidelines for local cultural policies, something comparable to what Agenda 21 was for the environment. They are to be included in various subsections of Agenda 21 and will be carried out through a wide range of sub-programs beginning with G8 countries.[citation needed] In 2012, at the United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development the attending members reaffirmed their commitment to Agenda 21 in their outcome document called "The Future We Want". Leaders from 180 nations participated.[citation needed] Agenda 2030, also known as the Sustainable Development Goals, was a set of goals decided upon at the UN Sustainable Development Summit in 2015. It takes all of the goals set by Agenda 21 and re-asserts them as the basis for sustainable development, saying, "We reaffirm all the principles of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development…" Adding onto those goals from the original Rio document, a total of 17 goals have been agreed on, revolving around the same concepts of Agenda 21; people, planet, prosperity, peace, and partnership. Implementation The Commission on Sustainable Development acts as a high-level forum on sustainable development and has acted as preparatory committee for summits and sessions on the implementation of Agenda 21. The UN Division for Sustainable Development acts as the secretariat to the Commission and works "within the context of" Agenda 21.[citation needed] Implementation by member states remains voluntary, and its adoption has varied.[citation needed] The implementation of Agenda 21 was intended to involve action at international, national, regional and local levels. Some national and state governments have legislated or advised that local authorities take steps to implement the plan locally, as recommended in Chapter 28 of the document. These programs are often known as "Local Agenda 21" or "LA21". For example, in the Philippines, the plan is "Philippines Agenda 21" (PA21). The group, ICLEI-Local Governments for Sustainability, formed in 1990; today its members come from over 1,000 cities, towns, and counties in 88 countries and is widely regarded as a paragon of Agenda 21 implementation. Europe turned out to be the continent where LA21 was best accepted and most implemented. In Sweden, for example, four small- to medium-sized municipalities in the south-east of Sweden were chosen for a 5-year study of their Local Agenda 21 (LA21) processes a Local Agenda 21 initiative. Regional levels The UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs' Division for Sustainable Development monitors and evaluates progress, nation by nation, towards the adoption of Agenda 21, and makes these reports available to the public on its website. The Rio+10 report identified over 6400 local governments in 113 countries worldwide that were engaged in Local Agenda 21 (LA21) activities, a more than three-fold increase over less than five years. 80% = 5120 of these local governments, were located in Europe. A significant increase has been noted in the number of countries in which one or more LA21 processes were underway. Australia is a signatory to Agenda 21 and 88 of its municipalities subscribe to ICLEI, an organization that promotes Agenda 21 globally. Australia's membership is second only to that of the United States. In Africa, national support for Agenda 21 is strong and most countries are signatories. But support is often closely tied to environmental challenges specific to each country; for example, in 2002 Sam Nujoma, who was then President of Namibia, spoke about the importance of adhering to Agenda 21 at the 2002 Earth Summit, noting that as a semi-arid country, Namibia sets a lot of store in the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). Furthermore, there is little mention of Agenda 21 at the local level in indigenous media. Only major municipalities in sub-Saharan African countries are members of ICLEI. Agenda 21 participation in North African countries mirrors that of Middle Eastern countries, with most countries being signatories but little to no adoption on the local-government level. Countries in sub-Saharan Africa and North Africa generally have poorly documented Agenda 21 status reports.[citation needed] By contrast, South Africa's participation in Agenda 21 mirrors that of modern Europe, with 21 city members of ICLEI and support of Agenda 21 by national-level government.[citation needed] The national focal point in the United States is the Division Chief for Sustainable Development and Multilateral Affairs, Office of Environmental Policy, Bureau of Oceans and International Environmental and Scientific Affairs, U.S. Department of State. A June 2012 poll of 1,300 United States voters by the American Planning Association found that 9% supported Agenda 21, 6% opposed it, and 85% thought they didn't have enough information to form an opinion. The United States is a signatory country to Agenda 21, but because Agenda 21 is a legally non-binding statement of intent and not a treaty, the United States Senate did not hold a formal debate or vote on it. It is therefore not considered to be law under Article Six of the United States Constitution. President George H. W. Bush was one of the 178 heads of government who signed the final text of the agreement at the Earth Summit in 1992, and in the same year Representatives Nancy Pelosi, Eliot Engel and William Broomfield spoke in support of United States House of Representatives Concurrent Resolution 353, supporting implementation of Agenda 21 in the United States. Created by Executive Order 12852 in 1993, the President's Council on Sustainable Development (PCSD) is explicitly charged with recommending a national action plan for sustainable development to the President. The PCSD is composed of leaders from government and industry, as well as from environmental, labor and civil rights organizations. The PCSD submitted its report, "Sustainable America: A New Consensus", to the President in early 1996. In the absence of a multi-sectoral consensus on how to achieve sustainable development in the United States, the PCSD was conceived to formulate recommendations for the implementation of Agenda 21. Executive Order 12852 was revoked by Executive Order 13138 in 1999. The PCSD set 10 common goals to support the Agenda 21 movement: In the United States, over 528 cities are members of ICLEI, an international sustainability organization that helps to implement the Agenda 21 and Local Agenda 21 concepts across the world. The United States has nearly half of the ICLEI's global membership of 1,200 cities promoting sustainable development at a local level. The United States also has one of the most comprehensively documented Agenda 21 status reports. In response to the opposition, Don Knapp, U.S. spokesman for the ICLEI, has said "Sustainable development is not a top-down conspiracy from the U.N., but a bottom-up push from local governments". Agenda 21 fears have played a role in opposition to local government's efforts to promote resource and land conservation, build bike lanes, and construct hubs for public transportation. The non-profit group ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability USA – was targeted by anti-Agenda 21 activists. In 2012, fears of Agenda 21 "went mainstream" when the Republican National Committee adopted a platform resolution stated that "We strongly reject the U.N. Agenda 21 as erosive of American sovereignty." Several state and local governments have considered or passed motions and legislation opposing Agenda 21. Most such bills failed, "either dying in committee, getting defeated on the statehouse floor or – in the case of Missouri's 2013 bill – getting vetoed by the governor." In Texas, for example, broadly worded legislation that would prohibit any governmental entity from accepting from or granting money to any "nongovernmental or intergovernmental organization accredited by the United Nations to implement a policy that originated in the Agenda 21 plan" was defeated because it could have cut off funding for groups such as 4-H, the Boy Scouts of America, and the Texas Wildlife Association. In Arizona, a similarly sweeping bill was introduced in the Arizona State Legislature seeking to mandate that the state could not "adopt or implement the creed, doctrine, or principles or any tenet" of Agenda 21 and to prohibit the state "implementing programs of, expending any sum of money for, being a member of, receiving funding from, contracting services from, or giving financial or other forms of aid to" an array of sustainability organizations. The bill, which was opposed by the state chamber of commerce and the mayor of Phoenix, was defeated in 2012. Alabama was one state that did adopt an anti-Agenda 21 law, unanimously passing in 2012 a measure to block "any future effort to 'deliberately or inadvertently infringe or restrict private property rights without due process, as may be required by policy recommendations originating in, or traceable to 'Agenda 21.'" In 2023, Tennessee enacted legislation to block the implementation of Agenda 21 and other programs "originating in, or traceable to, the United Nations or a subsidiary entity of the United Nations." The right-wing John Birch Society described Agenda 21 as a plot, disguised as an environmental movement, to end individual freedom and establish a one-world government. Activists believed that the non-binding UN resolution was "the linchpin in a plot to subjugate humanity under an eco-totalitarian regime." The conspiracy had its roots in anti-environmentalist ideology and opposition to land-use regulation. Anti-Agenda 21 theories have circulated in the U.S. Some Tea Party movement activists and others promoted the notion that Agenda 21 was part of a UN plot to deny property rights, undermine U.S. sovereignty, or force citizens to move to cities. Glenn Beck warned that Agenda 21 was a "seditious" conspiracy to cut the world population by 85%. He claimed it represents a move towards "government control on a global level" and the creation of a "police state" that would lead to "totalitarianism." Beck described the dystopia it would cause if the world followed the UN plan in a 2012 novel he co-authored called Agenda 21. The Rio+10 report identified 5120 of local governments in Europe having a "Local Agenda 21". As most Europeans live in about 800 cities of +50.000 inhabitants, it is fair to say that just about all EU cities, communes and villages have a local Agenda 21. For example: By 1997, 70% of UK local authorities had committed to Agenda 21. Many, such as the London Borough of Enfield, employed Agenda 21 officers to promote the programme. Sweden reported that 100% of the municipalities had adopted LA21 by 2002. France, whose national government, along with 14 cities, is a signatory, promotes nationwide programs in support of the goals of Agenda 21.[citation needed] Baltic nations formed the Baltic 21 coalition as a regional expression of Agenda 21. See also References Bibliography External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avril_Lavigne_replacement_conspiracy_theory] | [TOKENS: 1424] |
Contents Avril Lavigne replacement conspiracy theory A conspiracy theory that originated in 2011 states that Canadian singer Avril Lavigne died by suicide in 2003, shortly after the release of her debut album, Let Go (2002), and was replaced by a body double named Melissa Vandella. Evidence used to support the theory include changes in Lavigne's appearance between 2003 and the present, supposed subliminal messaging in her follow-up album, Under My Skin (2004), and a photoshoot in which Lavigne has the name "Melissa" written on her hand. The theory is the subject of the BBC Sounds podcast Who Replaced Avril Lavigne? The origins of the theory can be traced back to the 2011 Brazilian blog Avril Está Morta (transl. Avril Is Dead), which led to conversations on Internet forums sharing supposed evidence of Lavigne's replacement. The theory gained more traction in May 2017, when a Twitter user posted a thread recounting the theory. Lavigne herself has denied the theory on multiple occasions. Origins The origins of the replacement theory can be dated back to 2011, with a Brazilian blog named Avril Está Morta, or Avril Is Dead, although some sources say that the rumour dates back as far as 2005. The theory alleges that the pressures of fame, combined with the death of Lavigne's grandfather, sent her into a deep depression after the release of her 2002 debut album, Let Go, and that the singer died by suicide shortly after. According to the conspiracy theory, a look-alike named "Melissa" was originally hired to distract paparazzi, protecting a reclusive Lavigne. It alleges that Lavigne befriended "Melissa", that shortly before the singer's supposed death her body double was taught how to sing and perform like the musician, that after Lavigne's death her record company buried the news and replaced her with "Melissa Vandella" for a continued profit, and that "Melissa" recorded all of Lavigne's future work. Much of the evidence cited in support of the conspiracy theory is the purported appearance and disappearance of various moles and other skin blemishes in pictures of Lavigne over time, as well as a promotional photoshoot in which she has the name "Melissa" written on her hand. The conspiracy theory soon gained traction on Internet forums such as ATRL and Godlike Productions, where self-proclaimed "Avril Rangers" shared evidence. One ATRL post in 2012 suggested that the original Avril may actually be alive, using a picture of what appeared to be the singer buying cheese at a time when "new Avril" was supposedly battling Lyme disease. In addition to the changes in her appearance, the theory alleges that the title and artwork for her second album, Under My Skin, and the lyrics of songs like "My Happy Ending", "Together", and "The Best Years of Our Lives" by Evan Taubenfeld are subliminal messaging. The original blog further suggests that Melissa feels guilt over "participating in this farce", leading to the subliminal messaging. Rise in popularity The theory began to gain traction in the United States in October 2015, when BuzzFeed reporter Ryan Broderick tweeted about Avril Está Morta. In a BuzzFeed post, Broderick cleared up his tweet on the matter, mentioning that the opening line of the original blog post admits that the theory is a hoax, and that "This blog was created to show how conspiracy theories can look true." The death hoax saw increased prevalence in May 2017, when a high school student posted a Twitter thread alleging that Lavigne had died and been replaced in late 2003. The thread, which was retweeted over 250,000 times, cited discrepancies in the singer's face, fashion style, and handwriting as evidence of her death and replacement. The Twitter thread largely corresponds with the earlier Avril Está Morta conspiracy, except that it asserts that Under My Skin was created using pre-existing recordings of the real Lavigne. The Twitter thread inspired an Internet meme in which users would say that a celebrity or fictional character died and was replaced, showing two pictures of the figure in question and titling it "a conspiracy theory thread". Response The first time Lavigne was asked about the rumours was in 2014 during an interview for the Brazilian TV show Pânico na Band, during The Avril Lavigne Tour. Lavigne was asked if she had heard about online rumours claiming she "had died and was replaced by a clone", to which she replied by saying that the first time she was hearing about it was in this interview, and later added, "Well, I'm here, and I'm here in Brazil". In a video of the interview uploaded to the official YouTube channel of the TV show, it's possible to see images of the blog page Avril Está Morta responsible for starting the rumours. After the theory resurfaced globally in 2017, Lavigne addressed the rumours in a November 2017 Facebook live stream Q&A, when a fan asked whether she was dead, to which Lavigne responded, "No, I'm not dead. I'm here." She went on to say that the theory was spawned because "people are just bored and need something to talk about". The question was broached again in a November 2018 interview with Australia's KIIS 106.5. When asked about the theory, the singer responded, "Some people think that I'm not the real me, which is so weird! Like, why would they even think that?" Radio hosts Kyle and Jackie O said that Lavigne "never actually flat out denied" that she had been replaced, and suggested that technological difficulties during the interview were a suspicious coincidence. In a 2019 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Lavigne addressed the theory directly, calling it a "dumb internet rumor" and saying that she was "flabbergasted that people bought into it". Lavigne addressed the rumour once again in a 2022 interview for Galore Magazine, stating "So it's funny because everyone says I look the same, but then there's that. That doesn't make any sense. Also, how random? When people bring it up, and it's been brought up to me for like, years, that there's this conspiracy theory that I'm not me or something? I'm a clone? How did something like that get so—I don't know, it's just the weirdest rumour." The creator of the blog that originated the Avril Está Morta conspiracy has apologized and changed the whole blog post to state that Avril has not died yet, and that the blog was a way of showing how conspiracy theories may seem true. In 2013, a separate death hoax alleged that Lavigne died in a snowboarding accident at the Whistler Blackcomb ski resort. See also References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melania_Trump_replacement_conspiracy_theory] | [TOKENS: 992] |
Contents Melania Trump replacement conspiracy theory In 2017, a theory began that Melania Trump, the first lady of the United States, was replaced, or was sometimes replaced, by a body double, and that the "real" Melania was refusing to attend occasional events, or had exited from public life entirely. Supporters of the theory allege physical differences in facial features, bodily dimensions, or behavior between the original and supposed "replacement" Melania, and changes in President Donald Trump's language in referring to Melania. Theories arose at several periods during Trump's presidency, particularly in October 2017, May–June 2018, March 2019, and October 2020. Trump himself addressed the theory through tweets and in comments to reporters, denouncing it as false and "fake news". Some mainstream media sources labelled the theory false, with some labelling it "a ridiculous conspiracy theory" and "a non-story". Vox described the theory as conforming to various narratives surrounding the First Lady, which "[paint] Melania as either unwilling to be part of the administration or as someone who hates her husband so much that she’s found a body double to stand in". Origins In 2017, The Guardian columnist Marina Hyde claimed to have inadvertently launched the theory, tweeting "Absolutely convinced Melania is being played by an impersonator. Theory: she left him weeks ago" on October 13. However, Business Insider referenced tweets speculating about a body double from the month before Hyde tweeted. A Facebook post by actress Andrea Wagner Barton, also published on October 13 in support of the theory, was shared nearly 100,000 times. Social media posts discussing the theory noted a photograph in which Melania looked very similar to a woman pictured next to her, apparently a Secret Service agent, while other posts highlighted that Trump referred aloud to "my wife, Melania, who happens to be right here". On May 14, 2018, Melania reportedly underwent an embolization, a minimally invasive procedure that deliberately blocks a blood vessel in order to treat a benign kidney condition. The procedure was reportedly successful and performed without complications. During this period, Melania was not seen in public for five weeks, with the White House also refusing to comment on her absence for most of this period, generating further theories. In one instance, when asked about Melania, Trump told pool reporters that she was watching them from a window, pointing to the window in question, which was clearly empty. Following Melania's reported return to the White House following surgery, Trump tweeted a welcome which misspelled her name as "Melanie". An alternative theory regarding Melania's public appearances, posited following her time spent recovering from surgery, was that Melania had had plastic surgery, possibly a facelift or breast enlargement, resulting in her appearing different. Resurgences The body double theory arose again in July 2018, stemming from images of Melania exiting Air Force One in Brussels. The theory was raised again in 2019 following a Trump visit to an Alabama tornado site. The TV show The View had a segment on "a surge of internet chatter about the former fashion model’s Alabama appearance under the #fakeMelania hashtag." The theory resurfaced again in October 2020, with observers finding differences between Melania and the woman who accompanied Trump to the final presidential debate. Director Zack Bornstein tweeted: "The only thing I'll miss from this administration is them swapping in new Melanias and just pretending we won't notice like a 4-year-old with a guppy." Former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci seemed to confirm the rumor while a guest on Have You Been Paying Attention?, stating "You know Michael Cohen, the President’s lawyer, insists that there is a body double and insists that actually her sister sometimes replaces her on the campaign trail... Usually when you see somebody more affectionate with Mr. Trump." The theory again arose on election night in 2024, when many reported believing that the woman Trump showed up to vote with, who wore sunglasses to the voting booth, was not Melania. Response Following his trip to Alabama in March 2018, Donald Trump tweeted that "the Fake News photoshopped pictures of Melania propelled conspiracy theories that it’s actually not her by my side in Alabama and other places." Trump gave no evidence of any photoshopped pictures. Melania's spokeswoman called the segment on The View "shameful" and "beyond petty". One scholar, University of Pennsylvania history professor Sophia Rosenfeld, noted that the conspiracy theory of Melania's replacement follows a long line of similar claims of noted figures: "Pornographic libelles featuring a sex-obsessed Marie-Antoinette in the years before the French Revolution are simply the ancestors of today's 'news stories' claiming Michelle Obama or Melania Trump is actually a man, or a body double, or a lesbian, or anything else salacious." See also References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy_theory_about_Vladimir_Putin%27s_body_doubles] | [TOKENS: 2487] |
Contents Alleged doubles of Vladimir Putin Conspiracy theories about body doubles used by Russian president Vladimir Putin are based on alleged instabilities in his appearance. Proponents believe that the "body doubles" have had surgery to resemble the "original" and point to facial features such as the chin, earlobes and wrinkles on his forehead as evidence, and claim that the body doubles were used because of Putin's allegedly declining health or that they were sent to areas deemed too dangerous for him. The theory has been a deployed as a tool by opponents of Putin, including by Ukrainian media and officials, as well as British tabloids. Russia has denied these allegations, and no credible evidence has emerged of this theory. History In December 2004, the Komsomolskaya Pravda reported on an offer to purchase Putin's "ancestral home" from an alleged body double from the village of Pominovo in Tver Oblast, where his parents were from. Over time, the topic of Putin's body doubles has remained a hot topic in the media environment, also sparking discussion on social media, for example, when pre-prepared news stories were published on Kremlin.ru at times of the president's temporary disappearance. Some Internet users speculated that Putin was relying on body doubles to hide his deteriorating health. Others believed that they were being sent to locations deemed too dangerous and risky for the "original". A third version says that Putin had supposedly already died, with his body doubles running the country. In the 2010s, a meme with a table of the "original" Putin and six of his "body doubles" ("Babbler", "Udmurt", "Banquet", "Kuchma", "Bruise" and "Diplomat") with photos and descriptions of each became popular. According to the meme, each of the "body doubles" performs certain duties or has a distinguishing feature; for example, "Babbler" is deployed for Direct Line shows, "Diplomat" participates in negotiations, "Banquet" is used "for interviews, handshakes, and photos with the public", "Kuchma" is characterized by a "record-breaking chubby chin", and "Udmurt" is "basically the worst double ever", used when "Babbler" "needs a vacation". On 5 September 2016, Russian journalist Oleg Kashin posted the meme on his Facebook page, making it more popular. In 2018, International Business Times called the allegations "one of the more unusual conspiracy theories" when a Twitter user quoted three photos of Putin taken on different dates and suggested that the politician was actually three different people. In 2020, due to fears of COVID-19 contamination, Putin began taking precautions in meetings, which further intensified rumors of his alleged doubles. Conspiracy rumors about Putin's use of body doubles have increased during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Unsubstantiated rumors about Putin's doppelgangers are regularly published by Ukrainian media and discussed by high-ranking Ukrainian politicians. In August 2022, Ukrainian military intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov suggested on Ukrainian TV channel 1+1 that Putin's ears looked different in several of his public appearances: "The image of each person's ear is unique. It cannot be repeated." Ukrainian Major General Vadym Skibitsky also said Putin had been using body doubles to hide his allegedly deteriorating health. A photo of Putin taken during his visit to Moscow State University on Russian Students Day in January 2023 intensified the spread of conspiracy theories. Jason J. Smart, a correspondent for the Ukrainian newspaper Kyiv Post, shared a photo from the visit, claiming that he "wears high heels" and that "most public events feature a lookalike - not the real Putin. The changes in his height, ears and weight are otherwise inexplicable." For more than a year and a half, the president has mostly remained in Russia. However, since February 2023, Putin has become more active in close encounters (e.g., a rally in Luzhniki in February, a trip to occupied Mariupol in March, a meeting in Derbent in July 2023 shortly after the Prigozhin rebellion). Some of Putin's unusual engagements in 2023 have sparked public attention and raised questions about the possible use of double bodies. As Business Insider notes, a trip to occupied Mariupol, where Putin interacted with locals, renewed rumors that Putin used doubles for public appearances. The version of The Washington Post article about Putin's trip to Mariupol removed the mention of Putin using a double from the original article. In March 2023, Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to Ukraine's interior minister, tried to find evidence of Putin's body doubles by publishing three photos of Putin's chin and questioning whether the images showed the same person. Andriy Yusov, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Defense Ministry's GUR press service, also claimed that Putin didn't visit Mariupol and sent a body double there; this can allegedly be seen by the different chin in the photos. Fact-checking by Reuters, Snopes and Italian openFactChecking subsequently noted that the first image offered for comparison was published in 2020, not 2023; the second photo, like the third, was taken in Mariupol, not Sevastopol. Snopes concluded that the allegations were false. In May 2023, Kyrylo Budanov noted: "There are at least three people [body doubles] who periodically appear." In June 2023, the Security Service of Ukraine compiled a guide on how to distinguish "body doubles" from each other. In the spring of 2023, on the channel "Visiting Gordon," former KGB officer Sergei Zhirnov spoke about Putin's doubles who allegedly "live in a bunker" and "no one lets them out anywhere." Rumors again intensified amid Putin's trip to Dagestan in June 2023. Experts say that while it's impossible to confirm the use of a doppelganger during that trip, the Russian president likely used a different approach to bolster his public image and demonstrate his willingness to relax his caution. Putin's appearance in Dagestan was also meant to demonstrate his popularity after Yevgeny Prigozhin's rebellion. The conspiracy theory was again spread against the backdrop of the Russian president's visit to China in October 2023. The Telegram channel "General SVR", allegedly closely linked to Russian political scientist and conspiracy theorist Valery Solovei, has actively promoted this conspiracy theory. According to it, the real Putin spends most of his time in a bunker and receives guests at a long table, while meetings with the public are supposedly attended by body doubles. In March 2023, "General SVR" noted that Putin had allegedly not been to Crimea or Mariupol and that a presidential body double had gone there "for a short visit and only for a video photo shoot." Another unsubstantiated claim has also received widespread international publicity. It was published in October 2023, claiming that Putin's heart allegedly stopped on October 26 at 20:42 Moscow time, after which his corpse was placed in a "freezer" at his residence in Valdai Discussion Club, with Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev actually running the country, using Putin's "double" as a puppet. Solovei claimed that Putin's double, nicknamed "Vasilich," had visited China that same month. Solovei has discussed Putin's serious illness since 2016, when he predicted Putin's imminent resignation due to "force majeure circumstances." The story about Putin's corpse in the refrigerator caused mostly only ridicule on the Internet. In August 2000, Yevgeny Murov, head of the Russian Federal Security Service, said that Putin had no doubles. In 2001, Vladimir Putin denied rumors about his doubles. In 2015, after a press conference, a journalist showed Putin a photo of a very similar person to him, to which he replied, "What double? I don't have doubles. Why do I need them?" In an interview with TASS published in February 2020, Putin admitted that he had been asked to use doppelgangers in the early 2000s "in the most difficult times of the fight against terrorism." However, he allegedly refused such a practice. Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov has repeatedly refuted this conspiracy theory, claiming that Putin doesn't have any body doubles. In December 2021, he noted that Putin "smiles and laughs" when he is told about body doubles. On 20 April 2023, Peskov called the claims of a "Putin body double" traveling to Putin's headquarters "strange", and on 24 April, the issue of doubles "another lie." In October 2023, he called the rumors "information hoaxes" which evoked "nothing but a smile." On 4 November, he said that information about Putin's body doubles sometimes appears in Telegram channels and that "experts" are even interested in their number. He also noted: "We have only one Putin." On 14 December 2023, during the year's edition of Direct Line with Vladimir Putin, when asked about the body doubles, Putin said that he "thought about it and decided that only one person should resemble myself and speak in my voice, and that person will be me." Analysis The analysis of Russian-Latvian independent media Meduza using Amazon Rekognition, a neural network for face recognition and comparison, showed that the similarity of "body doubles" is from 99.6 to 99.9%, which contradicts the conspiracy theory itself. Clinical psychologist Matvey Sokolovskiy notes that the peculiarity of the literary image of the double is its ability to reflect the dark aspects of the hero's personality, thus suggesting evil intentions, cruel and unjust actions. Thus, adherents of the conspiracy theory about Putin's doppelgangers may view the "real Russian president" as a kind and caring grandpa who refuses repression and military conflicts with neighboring states. In such a case, decision-making by the "fake" president signals that everything around him is also "fake," which Sokolovskiy believes may have a calming effect. In June 2023, Japanese researchers in the field of facial recognition and voice identification concluded that Putin probably had at least one body double. Putin's participation at the 2023 Moscow Victory Day Parade was chosen as a baseline comparison. When analyzing facial features, the researchers found that the president who drove a Mercedes car across the Crimean Bridge in December 2022 matched Putin at the parade by only 53%, while the latter's resemblance to Putin who visited Mariupol in March 2023 was 40%. An analysis of the word "thank you" from Putin's speech at the Eurasian Economic Forum in May 2023 revealed "strong differences" in the pronunciation of some sounds, highlighting potential differences in the president's voice at different events. Russian independent media Proekt examined Putin's participation in public events between November 2022 and November 2023. In December 2023, Proekt concluded that Putin's unexpected periodic violations of his strictly enforced coronavirus-related restrictions, which had led a number of "Kremlin pool" journalists interviewed on condition of anonymity to believe in the doppelganger theory, could be explained by the presidential campaign. People who look like Putin A number of Russian and Russian-language media mentioned people who look like Vladimir Putin. They participate in various events, such as weddings and corporate parties, movies, humorous programs, and offer to take pictures with them for money. Anatoliy Gorbunov, Vasiliy Khorokhordin, Vladimir Belousov, Dmitriy Grachyov were mentioned among them. According to The Washington Post, Polish Sławomir Sobala was also globally known as a "fake Putin" for "being one of the most famous, if not the most famous, professional look-alike of the Russian president". See also References |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinking_of_the_RMS_Lusitania#Controversies] | [TOKENS: 20166] |
Contents Sinking of the RMS Lusitania RMS Lusitania was a British-registered ocean liner that was torpedoed by an Imperial German Navy U-boat during the First World War on 7 May 1915, about 11 nautical miles (20 km; 13 mi) off the Old Head of Kinsale, Ireland (then part of the United Kingdom). The attack took place in the declared maritime war-zone around the United Kingdom, three months after unrestricted submarine warfare against the ships of the United Kingdom had been announced by Germany following the Allied powers' implementation of a naval blockade against it and the other Central Powers. The passengers had been notified before departing New York of the general danger of voyaging into the area in a British ship, but the attack itself came without warning. From a submerged position 700 m (2,300 ft) to starboard, U-20 commanded by Kapitänleutnant Walther Schwieger launched a single torpedo at the Cunard liner. After the torpedo struck, a second explosion occurred inside the ship, which then sank in only 18 minutes.: 429 U-20's mission was to torpedo warships and liners in Lusitania's area of operation. In the end, there were only 763 survivors (39%) out of the 1,960 passengers, crew and stowaways aboard, and about 128 of the dead were American citizens. The sinking turned public opinion in many countries against Germany. It also contributed to the American entry into the war almost two years later, on 6 April 1917; images of the stricken liner were used heavily in US propaganda and military recruiting campaigns.: 497–503 The contemporary investigations in both the United Kingdom and the United States into the precise causes of the ship's loss were obstructed by the needs of wartime secrecy and a propaganda campaign to ensure all blame fell upon Germany. At the time of her sinking, the primarily passenger-carrying vessel had in her hold around 173 tons of war supplies, comprising 4.2 million rounds of rifle ammunition, almost 5,000 shrapnel-filled artillery shell casings and 3,240 brass percussion fuses. Debates on the legitimacy of the way she was sunk raged back and forth throughout the war and beyond. Some writers argue that the British government, with Winston Churchill’s involvement, deliberately put the Lusitania at risk to provoke a German attack and draw the United States into the war. This theory is generally rejected by mainstream historians, who characterise the sinking as mainly a combination of British mistakes and misfortune, with claims to the contrary characterized by implausible theories, lack of evidence, and in some cases fabricated sources. Background When Lusitania was built, her construction and operating expenses were subsidized by the British government, with the provision that she could be converted to an armed merchant cruiser (AMC) if need be. Pillars and supports were included in her design to allow the emplacement of 12 6-inch guns, and she was listed as a "Royal Naval Reserve Merchant Vessel". In the 1914 edition of Jane's All the World's Fighting Ships, its silhouette was listed for identification reasons as a civilian liner, together with Mauretania and all liners of all nations capable of over 18 knots. Brassley's 1914 The Naval Annual categorised her as a "Royal Naval Reserved Merchant Cruiser". At the outbreak of the First World War, the British Admiralty considered her for requisition as an AMC. However the Admiralty then cancelled their decision and decided not to use her as an AMC after all; large liners such as Lusitania consumed enormous quantities of coal (910 tons/day, or 37.6 tons/hour) and became a serious drain on the Admiralty's fuel reserves, so express liners were deemed inappropriate for the role when smaller cruisers would do. They were also very distinctive, so smaller liners were used as transports instead. At the outbreak of hostilities, fears for the safety of Lusitania and other great liners ran high. During the ship's first wartime eastbound crossing, she was painted a flat grey to mask her identity and make her more difficult to detect visually. When it turned out that the German Navy was kept in check by the Royal Navy, and their commerce threat almost entirely evaporated, it very soon appeared that the Atlantic was safe for large passenger liners like Lusitania, if the bookings justified the expense of keeping them in service. Many of the large liners were laid up over the autumn and winter of 1914–1915, in part due to falling demand for passenger travel across the Atlantic, and in part to protect them from naval mines or other dangers. Among the most recognizable of these liners, some were eventually used as troop transports or hospital ships. Although bookings were by no means strong during that autumn and winter of 1914-15, demand was sufficient to keep her in civilian service. Economizing measures were taken, however. One of these was the shutting down of her No. 4 boiler room to conserve coal and crew costs; this reduced her maximum speed from over 25 to 21 knots (46 to 39 km/h; 29 to 24 mph). Even so, she was the fastest first-class passenger liner left in commercial service. With apparent dangers evaporating, the ship's disguised paint scheme was also dropped and she was returned to her civilian colours. Her name was picked out in gilt, her funnels repainted in their usual Cunard livery, and her superstructure painted white again. One alteration was the addition of a bronze/gold coloured band around the base of the superstructure just above the black paint. The British established a naval blockade of Germany on the outbreak of war in August 1914, issuing a comprehensive list of contraband that grew to include even foodstuffs. In early November 1914 Britain declared the North Sea to be a "military area", with any ships entering the North Sea doing so at their own risk unless they obeyed specific Royal Navy instructions. By early 1915, a new threat to British shipping began to materialise: U-boats (submarines). At first, the Germans used them only to attack naval vessels, achieving only occasional—but sometimes spectacular—success. U-boats then began to attack merchant vessels at times, although almost always in accordance with the old cruiser rules. Desperate to gain an advantage on the Atlantic and define a role for the Navy, and heavily overestimating the effectiveness of the new weapon, the Admiralty under Hugo von Pohl decided to step up its submarine campaign. On 4 February 1915, he declared the seas around the British Isles a war zone: from 18 February, Allied ships in the area could be sunk without warning. This was not wholly unrestricted submarine warfare, since efforts would be taken to avoid sinking neutral ships. However, the German Imperial Admiralty Staff secretly directed captains to target passenger craft, as it was thought that this would deter other shipping. As Germany started the campaign with only 21 submarines, many of which were not operational, many did not take the threat seriously. The US government warned the Germans that they would face "strict accountability" for any American deaths as a result of the campaign. The reaction to the announcement by those on the Lusitania was characterised by confusion. At sea en route to Liverpool at the time of the announcement, American passengers urged Captain Daniel Dow to fly the US flag to dissuade attack. This led to a storm of controversy from the American authorities and Germany. On her next voyage, Lusitania was scheduled to arrive in Liverpool on 6 March 1915. The Admiralty issued her specific instructions on how to avoid submarines. Despite a severe shortage of destroyers, Admiral Henry Oliver ordered HMS Louis and Laverock to escort Lusitania, and took the further precaution of sending the Q ship Lyons to patrol Liverpool Bay. One of the destroyers' commanders attempted to discover the whereabouts of Lusitania by telephoning Cunard, who refused to give out any information and referred him to the Admiralty. At sea, the ships contacted Lusitania by radio, but did not have the codes used to communicate with merchant ships and thus communicated in the clear; as doing this would put his ship under substantial risk, Captain Dow gave a false position, significantly far away from his actual position, leaving the warships unable to locate him. The Lusitania continued to Liverpool unescorted.: 91–2 : 76–7 Some alterations were made to Lusitania and her operation in view of the threat. She was ordered not to fly any flags in the war zone; a number of warnings, plus advice, were sent to the ship's commander to help him decide how to best protect his ship against the new threat and it also seems that her funnels were most likely painted a dark grey to help make her less visible to enemy submarines. There was no hope of disguising her actual identity, since her profile was so well known, and no attempt was made to paint out the ship's name at the prow. Unknown to all, the submarine war was about to get more dangerous. On 28 March, during the Thrasher incident, a German submarine stopped the British passenger ship Falaba on the surface. Eyewitnesses reported the submarine gave the ship only around ten minutes to evacuate before torpedoing the vessel, resulting in the first American death of the war. On 1 April, Admiral Gustav Bachmann, head of the German Admiralty Staff, sent a memo to Kaiser Wilhelm II. This detailed the woefully small number of ships sunk so far, and Bachmann argued this showed that the submarine war can only really be effective if U-boats were completely unrestricted, and so could attack without determining the identity and nationality of ships. With the encouragement of Tirpitz, the Kaiser sent out secret instructions on 2 April to discourage the common tactic of surfacing to attack vessels and emphasized the danger of doing so. This created what historian Arthur Link terms "an operational twilight zone" in which mistakes would be more easily made. There was no improvement in the number of ships sunk following this instruction, but 6 out of the 17 vessels sunk in April were neutral. The Germans convinced themselves that Americans were toothless. "The policy of the American Government is dominated by the one thought of not becoming involved in any complications whatsoever. 'We want to stay out of everything' is the single rule." In late April/early May there were German attacks on two additional American vessels, Cushing and Gulflight, the former (29 April) an air attack that caused no loss of life, and the latter (1 May) a submarine attack on a tanker where three died. President Woodrow Wilson had not made a formal response to any of these incidents before events overtook him. Captain Dow, apparently stressed by operating in the war zone, left the ship; Cunard later explained that he was "tired and really ill." He was replaced with a new commander, Captain William Thomas Turner, who had commanded Lusitania, Mauretania, and Aquitania before the war. On 17 April 1915, Lusitania left Liverpool on her 201st transatlantic voyage, arriving at New York on 24 April. In mid-April, German ambassador Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff, who had long had concerns about the legality of the February submarine campaign, and believing the Americans to be underestimating the dangers, consulted a group of representatives of other German administrative departments. He decided to issue a general warning to the American press. This notice was to appear in 50 American newspapers, including those in New York: Notice! Travellers intending to embark on the Atlantic voyage are reminded that a state of war exists between Germany and her allies and Great Britain and her allies; that the zone of war includes the waters adjacent to the British Isles; that, in accordance with formal notice given by the Imperial German Government, vessels flying the flag of Great Britain, or any of her allies, are liable to destruction in those waters and that travellers sailing in the war zone on the ships of Great Britain or her allies do so at their own risk. Imperial German Embassy Washington, D.C. 22 April 1915 The notice was intended to appear on the Saturdays of 24 April, 1 May, and 8 May, but due to technical difficulties did not appear until 30 April, the day before Lusitania sailed, appearing in some cases adjacent to an advertisement for the return voyage. The juxtaposition was a coincidence, but the warning led to some agitation in the press, annoyance from the American government, and worried the ship's passengers and crew. Final voyage While many British passenger ships had been called into duty for the war effort, Lusitania remained on her regular route between Liverpool and New York City. Captain Turner, known as "Bowler Bill" for his favourite shoreside headgear, tried to calm the passengers by explaining that the ship's speed made her safe from attack by submarine. Even at her reduced speed, the ship far exceeded the speed of a U-boat (16 knots, 30 km/h, 18 mph on the surface, 9 knots, 17 km/h, 10 mph submerged), requiring the ship to pass extremely near a waiting submarine to be attacked. Departure out of New York on the return voyage to Liverpool was at noon on 1 May, two hours behind schedule, because of a last-minute transfer of forty-one passengers and crew from the recently requisitioned Cameronia.: 132–133 Shortly after departure three German-speaking men were found on board hiding in a steward's pantry. Detective Inspector William Pierpoint of the Liverpool police, who was travelling in the guise of a first-class passenger, interrogated them before locking them in the cells for further questioning when the ship reached Liverpool.: 156, 445–446 Also among the crew was an Englishman, Neal Leach, who had been working as a tutor in Germany before the war. Leach had been interned but later released by Germany. The German embassy in Washington was notified about Leach's arrival in the United States, where he met known German agents. Leach and the three German stowaways went down with the ship. They were found with photographic equipment and thus probably had been tasked with spying on the ship. Most probably, Pierpoint, who survived the sinking, would already have been informed about Leach.: 131–132, 445 Thus, when Lusitania left Pier 54, she had 1,960 people aboard. In addition to her crew of 693 and 3 stowaways, she carried 1,264 passengers, mostly British nationals as well as a large number of Canadians, along with 159 Americans. 124 of the passengers were children. Her First Class accommodations, for which she was well regarded on the North Atlantic run, were booked at just over half capacity at 290. Second Class was severely overbooked with 601 passengers, far exceeding the maximum capacity of 460. While a large number of small children and infants helped reduce the squeeze into the limited number of two- and four-berth cabins, the situation was rectified by allowing some Second Class passengers to occupy empty First Class cabins. In Third Class, the situation was considered to be the norm for an eastbound crossing, with only 370 travelling in accommodations designed for 1,186. As the liner steamed across the ocean, the British Admiralty had been tracking the movements of U-20, commanded by Kapitänleutnant Walther Schwieger, through wireless intercepts and radio direction finding. The submarine left Borkum on 30 April, heading north-west across the North Sea. On 2 May, she had reached Peterhead and proceeded around the north of Scotland and Ireland, and then along the western and southern coasts of Ireland, to enter the Irish Sea from the south. Although the submarine's departure, destination, and expected arrival time were known to Room 40 in the Admiralty, the activities of the decoding department were considered so secret that they were unknown even to the normal intelligence division which tracked enemy ships or to the trade division responsible for warning merchant vessels. Only the very highest officers in the Admiralty saw the information and passed on warnings only when they felt it essential. On 27 March, Room 40 had intercepted a message which clearly demonstrated that the Germans had broken the code used to pass messages to British merchant ships. Cruisers protecting merchant ships were warned not to use the code to give directions to shipping because it could just as easily attract enemy submarines as steering ships away from them. However, Queenstown was not given this warning and continued to give directions in the compromised code, which was not changed until after Lusitania's sinking. At this time, the Royal Navy was significantly involved with operations leading up to the landings at Gallipoli, and the intelligence department had been undertaking a programme of misinformation to convince Germany to expect an attack on her northern coast. As part of this, ordinary cross-channel traffic to the Netherlands was halted from 19 April and false reports were leaked about troopship movements from ports on Britain's western and southern coasts. This led to a demand from the German Army for offensive action against the expected troop movements and consequently, a surge in German submarine activity on the British west coast. The fleet was warned to expect additional submarines, but this warning was not passed on to those sections of the navy dealing with merchant vessels. The return of the battleship Orion from HMNB Devonport to Scotland was delayed until 4 May and she was given orders to stay 100 nautical miles (190 km; 120 mi) from the Irish coast. On 5 May, U-20 stopped a merchant schooner, Earl of Lathom, off the Old Head of Kinsale, examined her papers, then ordered her crew to leave before sinking the schooner with gunfire. On 6 May, U-20 fired a torpedo at Cayo Romano, a British steamer originating from Cuba flying a neutral flag, off Fastnet Rock, narrowly missing by a few feet. At 22:30 on 5 May, the Royal Navy sent an uncoded warning to all ships – "Submarines active off the south coast of Ireland" – and at midnight an addition was made to the regular nightly warnings, "submarine off Fastnet". On 6 May U-20 sank the 6,000-ton steamer Candidate. It then failed to get off a shot at the 16,000-ton liner Arabic, because although she kept a straight course the liner was too fast, but then sank another 6,000-ton British cargo ship flying no flag, Centurion, all in the region of the Coningbeg light ship, around 70 miles (110 km) east of the eventual attack. According to Room 40 archives, the sinking of Centurion in the early afternoon of the 6th would be the last reported position of the submarine until the attack on Lusitania. The specific mention of a submarine was dropped from the midnight broadcast on 6–7 May as news of the new sinkings had not yet reached the navy at Queenstown, and it was correctly assumed that there was no longer a submarine at Fastnet. On the morning of 6 May, Lusitania was still 750 nautical miles (1,390 km; 860 mi) west of southern Ireland. However, Captain Turner was given two warning messages that evening. One at 7:52 pm repeated the information that submarines were active off the south coast of Ireland (in the mistaken belief that multiple submarines were in the area). The other, sent out at noon but only received at 8:05 pm gave instructions: "... Avoid headlands; pass harbours at full speed; steer mid-channel course. Submarines off Fastnet." Lusitania was now 370 miles west of Fastnet. Turner would subsequently be accused of disregarding these instructions. That evening a Seamen's Charities fund concert took place throughout the ship and the captain was obliged to attend the event in the first-class lounge.: 197 By 05:00 on 7 May, Lusitania reached a point 120 nautical miles (220 km; 140 mi) west-southwest of Fastnet Rock (off the southern tip of Ireland), where she met the patrolling boarding vessel Partridge. By 06:00, heavy fog had arrived and extra lookouts were posted. Upon entering the war zone, Captain Turner had 22 lifeboats swung out as a precaution so they could be launched more quickly if needed. As the ship came closer to Ireland, Captain Turner ordered depth soundings to be made and at 08:00 for speed to be reduced to 18 knots (33 km/h; 21 mph), then to 15 knots (28 km/h; 17 mph) and for the foghorn to be sounded. Some of the passengers were disturbed that the ship appeared to be advertising her presence. By 10:00, the fog began to lift, by noon it had been replaced by bright sunshine over a clear smooth sea and speed increased again to 18 knots.: 200–202 At 11:02 Lusitania was given the message "Questor", which she replied "Westrona". This exchange has been interpreted by some theorists to be a coded message to divert to Queenstown. However, according to the Merchant Vessel codebook, this was a simply a query to confirm that Lusitania had the correct edition of the codebook. Turner subsequently stated he had no such intention for a diversion. At about 11:52 on 7 May, the ship received another warning from the Admiralty, probably as a result of a request by Alfred Booth, who was concerned about Lusitania: "U-boats active in southern part of Irish Channel. Last heard of twenty miles south of Coningbeg Light Vessel." Booth and all of Liverpool had received news of the sinkings, which the Admiralty had known about by at least 3:00 that morning. Turner adjusted his heading northeast, not knowing that this report related to events of the previous day and apparently thinking submarines would be more likely to keep to the open sea,: 184 or that a sinking would be safer in shallower water. At 13:00 another message was received, "Submarine five miles south of Cape Clear proceeding west when sighted at 10:00 am". This report was inaccurate as no submarine had been at that location, but gave the impression that at least one submarine had been safely passed. Believing he was in a "safe zone", Turner focused on planning a course to Liverpool through what he understood to be dangerous waters further ahead.Shortly before the attack, John Crank, the baggage master, was specifically ordered to move luggage from the holds to the deck. Some have theorised this meant the ship was ordered to Queenstown, but there is no evidence to confirm this, and Crank's behaviour is consistent with other explanations,, especially as Turner also ordered the ship's clocks be adjusted to GMT, not Irish time. U-20 was low on fuel and had only three torpedoes left. That morning, visibility was poor and Schwieger decided to head for home. He submerged at 11:00 after sighting a fishing boat which he believed might be a British patrol and shortly after was passed while still submerged by a ship at high speed. This was the cruiser HMS Juno returning to Queenstown, zig-zagging at her fastest sustainable speed of 16 knots having received warning of submarine activity off Queenstown at 07:45. The Admiralty considered these old cruisers highly vulnerable to submarines, and indeed Schwieger attempted to target the ship.: 216 U-20 surfaced again at 12:45 as visibility was now excellent. At 13:20, something was sighted and Schwieger was summoned to the conning tower: at first it appeared to be several ships because of the number of funnels and masts, but this resolved into one large steamer appearing over the horizon. At 13:25, the submarine submerged to periscope depth of 11 metres (36 ft) and set a course to intercept the liner at her maximum submerged speed of 9 knots. When the ships had closed to two nautical miles (3.7 km; 2.3 mi) Lusitania turned away, Schwieger feared he had lost his target, but she turned again, this time onto a near ideal course to bring her into position for an attack. At 14:10, with the target at 700 metres (2,300 ft) range he ordered one gyroscopic torpedo to be fired, set to run at a depth of three metres (10 ft).: 216–217 According to Schwieger, he did not know the identity of the ship before he attacked, only that it was a large passenger ship. In his career, he launched several attacks without identifying his target, including a later attack on RMS Hesperian where he broke orders prohibiting attacking passenger vessels. Schwieger also misjudged the ship's speed to be 20 knots, but unfortunately for Lusitania, this offset another error he had made in the angle of attack. The torpedo was now on course to strike the ship in around a minute. On board Lusitania, Leslie Morton, an eighteen-year-old lookout at the bow, who survived the sinking, had spotted thin lines of foam racing toward the ship. He shouted, "Torpedoes coming on the starboard side!" through a megaphone, thinking the bubbles came from two projectiles, not one. Schwieger's log entries attest that he launched only one torpedo. Some doubt the validity of this claim, contending that the German government subsequently altered the published fair copy of Schwieger's log,: 416–419 but accounts from other U-20 crew members corroborate it. The entries were also consistent with intercepted radio reports sent to Germany by U-20 once she had returned to the North Sea, before any possibility of an official cover-up. Upon impact, he describes: “I saw the torpedo coming, a white streak about two feet below the surface. It struck just below the bridge. There was a muffled explosion, and a cloud of coal dust and steam shot up. Then, almost instantly, there came a second explosion—far greater, more shattering. The ship trembled like a living thing.” Next, in Schwieger's own words, recorded in the log of U-20: Torpedo hits starboard side right behind the bridge. An unusually heavy detonation takes place with a very strong explosive cloud. The explosion of the torpedo must have been followed by a second one [boiler or coal or powder?]... The ship stops immediately and heels over to starboard very quickly, immersing simultaneously at the bow... the name Lusitania becomes visible in golden letters. Though Schwieger states the torpedo hit behind the bridge, and thus in the vicinity of the first funnel, survivor testimony, including that of Captain Turner, gave a number of different locations: some stated it was between the first and second funnels, others between the third and fourth. Most were in approximate agreement, as witnesses reported a plume of water which knocked Lifeboat No. 5 off its davits and a geyser of steel plating, coal smoke, cinders, and debris high above the deck, and crew working in the boilers claimed they were inundated immediately. This would accord with Schwieger's description. "It sounded like a million-ton hammer hitting a steam boiler a hundred feet high", one passenger said. In many accounts, a second explosion followed, ringing throughout the ship, and thick grey smoke began to pour out of the funnels and ventilator cowls that led deep into the boiler rooms. U-20's torpedo officer, Raimund Weisbach, viewed the destruction through the vessel's periscope and would recall only that the explosion of the torpedo was unusually severe. At 14:12, Captain Turner had Quartermaster Johnston stationed at the ship's wheel to steer "hard-a-starboard" towards the Irish coast, which Johnston confirmed, but the ship could not be steadied and rapidly ceased to respond to the wheel. Turner signalled for the engines to be reversed to halt the ship, but although the signal was received in the engine room, nothing could be done. Steam pressure had collapsed from 195 psi before the explosion, to 50 psi and falling afterwards, meaning Lusitania could not be steered or stopped to counteract the list or to beach herself.: 227 Lusitania's wireless operator sent out an immediate SOS, which was acknowledged by a coastal wireless station. Shortly afterward he transmitted the ship's position, ten nautical miles (19 km; 12 mi) south of the Old Head of Kinsale.: 228 At 14:14, electrical power failed, plunging the cavernous interior of the ship into darkness. Radio signals continued on emergency batteries, but electric lifts failed, trapping crew members in the forward cargo hold who had been preparing luggage to go ashore at Liverpool later that evening; it was these seamen precisely who were to report to muster stations to launch lifeboats in the event of a sinking; bulkhead doors, that were closed as a precaution before the attack, could not be reopened to release trapped men.: 238–240 Few testimonies report passengers trapped in the two central elevators, though one saloon passenger claimed to have seen the lifts stuck between the boat deck and the deck below while passing through the First Class entrance. About one minute after the electrical power failed, Captain Turner gave the order to abandon ship. Water had flooded the ship's starboard longitudinal compartments, causing a 15-degree list to starboard. Within six minutes of the attack, Lusitania's forecastle had begun to submerge. Lusitania's severe starboard list complicated the launch of her lifeboats. Ten minutes after the torpedo struck, when she had slowed enough to start putting boats in the water, the lifeboats on the starboard side swung out too far to step aboard safely. While it was still possible to board the lifeboats on the port side, lowering them presented a different problem. As was typical for the period, the hull plates of Lusitania were riveted, and as the lifeboats were lowered they dragged on the inch-high rivets, which threatened to seriously damage or capsize the boats before they landed in the water. Many lifeboats overturned while loading or lowering, spilling passengers into the sea; others were overturned by the ship's motion when they hit the water. It has been claimed that some boats, because of the negligence of some officers, crashed down onto the deck, crushing passengers and sliding down towards the bridge. This has been disputed by passenger and crew testimony. Some untrained crewmen lost their grip on handheld ropes used to lower the lifeboats into the ocean, spilling the occupants into the sea. Other lifeboats tipped on launch as panicked passengers jumped into them. Lusitania had 48 lifeboats, more than enough for the crew and passengers, but only six were successfully lowered, all from the starboard side. Lifeboat 1 overturned as it was being lowered, spilling its original occupants into the sea, but righted itself shortly afterwards and was later filled with people from in the water. Lifeboats 9 (5 people on board) and 11 (7 people on board) managed to reach the water safely with a few people, but both later picked up many swimmers. Lifeboats 13 and 15 also safely reached the water, overloaded with around 150 people. Finally, Lifeboat 21 (52 people on board) reached the water safely and cleared the ship moments before her final plunge. A few collapsible lifeboats washed off her decks as she sank, providing flotation for some survivors. Two lifeboats on the port side cleared the ship as well. Lifeboat 14 (11 people on board) was lowered and launched safely, but because the boat plug was not in place, filled with seawater and sank almost immediately. Later, Lifeboat 2 floated away from the ship with new occupants (its previous ones having been spilled into the sea when they upset the boat) after they removed a rope and one of the ship's "tentacle-like" funnel stays. They rowed away shortly before the ship sank. According to Schwieger, he observed panic and disorder on the starboard side of the deck through U-20's periscope, and by 14:25 dropped the periscope and headed out to sea. Later that day, he fired a torpedo at American tanker Narragansett, but missed. Subsequently, the submarine traveled north up the west coast of Ireland, and proceeded to Wilhelmshaven. Surviving passengers on the port side of the deck, however, paint a calmer picture. Many, including author Charles Lauriat, who published his account of the disaster, stated that a few passengers climbed into the early portside lifeboats before being ordered out by Staff Captain James Anderson, who proclaimed, "This ship will not sink" and reassured those nearby that the liner had "touched bottom" and would stay afloat. In reality, he had ordered the crew to wait and fill Lusitania's portside ballast tanks with seawater to even the ship's trim so the lifeboats could be lowered safely. As a result, few boats on the port side were launched, none under Anderson's supervision. Captain Turner was on the deck near the bridge clutching the ship's logbook and charts when a wave swept upward towards the bridge and the rest of the ship's forward superstructure, knocking him overboard into the sea. He managed to swim and find a chair floating in the water which he clung to. He survived, having been pulled unconscious from the water after spending three hours there. Lusitania's bow slammed into the bottom about 100 metres (330 ft) below at a shallow angle because of her forward momentum as she sank. Along the way, some boilers exploded and the ship returned briefly to an even keel. Turner's last navigational fix had been only two minutes before the torpedoing, and he was able to remember the ship's speed and bearing at the moment of the sinking. This was accurate enough to locate the wreck after the war. The ship travelled about two nautical miles (4 km; 2 mi) from the time of the torpedoing to her final resting place, leaving a trail of debris and people behind. After her bow sank completely, Lusitania's stern rose out of the water, enough for her propellers to be seen, and went under. As the tips of Lusitania's four, 70-foot (21 m)-tall funnels dipped beneath the surface, they formed whirlpools which dragged nearby swimmers down with the ship. Her masts and rigging were the last to disappear. Lusitania sank in only 18 minutes, at a distance of 11.5 nautical miles (21 km; 13 mi) off the Old Head of Kinsale. Despite being relatively close to shore, it took several hours for help to arrive from the Irish coast. By the time help arrived, however, many in the 52 °F (11 °C) water had succumbed to the cold. By the days' end, 767 passengers and crew from Lusitania had been rescued and landed at Queenstown, though 4 died shortly after. The final death toll for the disaster came to a catastrophic number. Of the 1,960 aboard Lusitania at the time of her sinking, 1,197 (61%) had been lost, including 94 children and about 128 Americans (though the official toll at the time gave slightly different numbers). In the days following the disaster, the Cunard line offered local fishermen and sea merchants a cash reward for the bodies floating all throughout the Irish Sea, some floating as far away as the Welsh coast. Only 289 bodies were recovered, 65 of which were never identified. The bodies of many of the victims were buried at either Queenstown, where 148 bodies were interred in the Old Church Cemetery, or the Church of St Multose in Kinsale, but the bodies of the remaining 885 victims were never recovered. One story—an urban legend—states that when Lieutenant Schwieger of U-20 gave the order to fire, his quartermaster, Charles Voegele, would not take part in an attack on women and children, and refused to pass on the order to the torpedo room – a decision for which he was court-martialed and imprisoned at Kiel until the end of the war. This rumour persisted from 1972, when the French daily paper Le Monde published a letter to the editor. However, Voegele was the U-20's electrician at the time of the torpedoing, not the quartermaster. Despite seemingly putting an end to this rumor, Voegele's alleged hesitation was depicted in the torpedoing scene of the 2007 docudrama Sinking of the Lusitania: Terror at Sea. Official inquiries On 8 May, the local county coroner John Hogan opened an inquest in Kinsale into the deaths of two males and three females whose bodies had been brought ashore by a local boat, Heron. Most of the survivors (and dead) had been taken to Queenstown instead of Kinsale, which was closer. On 10 May Captain Turner gave evidence as to the events of the sinking where he described that the ship had been struck by one torpedo between the third and fourth funnels. This had been followed immediately by a second explosion. He acknowledged receiving general warnings about submarines, but had not been informed of the sinking of Earl of Lathom. He stated that he had received other instructions from the Admiralty which he had carried out but was not permitted to discuss. The coroner brought in a verdict that the deceased had drowned following an attack on an unarmed non-combatant vessel contrary to international law. Half an hour after the inquest had concluded and its results given to the press, the Crown Solicitor for Cork, Harry Wynne, arrived with instructions to halt it. Captain Turner was not to give evidence and no statements should be made about any instructions given to shipping about avoiding submarines.: 330–332 The formal Board of Trade investigation into the sinking was presided over by Wreck Commissioner Lord Mersey and took place in the Westminster Central Hall from 15 to 18 June 1915 with further sessions at the Westminster Palace Hotel on 1 July and Caxton Hall on 17 July. Lord Mersey had a background in commercial rather than maritime law but had presided over a number of important maritime investigations, including that into the loss of Titanic. He was assisted by four assessors, Admiral Sir Frederick Inglefield, Lieutenant Commander Hearn and two merchant navy captains, D. Davies and J. Spedding. The Attorney General, Sir Edward Carson, represented the Board of Trade, assisted by the Solicitor General, F. E. Smith. Butler Aspinall, who had represented the Board of Trade at the Titanic inquiry, was retained to represent Cunard. A total of 36 witnesses were called, Lord Mersey querying why more of the survivors would not be giving evidence. Most of the sessions were public but two on 15 and 18 June were held in camera when evidence regarding navigation of the ship was presented. Statements were collected from all the crew. These were all written out for presentation to the inquiry on standard forms in identical handwriting with similar phrasing. Quartermaster Johnston later described that pressure had been placed upon him to be loyal to the company, and that it had been suggested to him it would help the case if two torpedoes had struck the ship, rather than the one which he described. Giving evidence to the tribunal he was not asked about torpedoes. Other witnesses who claimed that only one torpedo had been involved were refused permission to testify. In contrast to his statement at the inquest, Captain Turner stated that two torpedoes had struck the ship, not one.: 363 In an interview in 1933, Turner reverted to his original statement that there had been only one torpedo.: 457 Most witnesses said there had been two, but a couple said three, possibly involving a second submarine. Clement Edwards, representing the seamen's union, attempted to introduce evidence about which watertight compartments had been involved but was prevented from doing so by Lord Mersey.: 367 It was during the closed hearings that the Admiralty tried to lay the blame on Captain Turner, their intended line being that Turner had been negligent. The roots of this view began in the first reports about the sinking from Vice-Admiral Coke commanding the Navy at Queenstown. He reported that "ship was especially warned that submarines were active on south coast and to keep mid-channel course avoiding headlands also position of submarine off Cape Clear at 10:00 was communicated by W/T to her". Captain Richard Webb, Director of the Trade Division, began to prepare a dossier of signals sent to Lusitania which Turner may have failed to observe. First Sea Lord Fisher noted on one document submitted by Webb for review: "As the Cunard company would not have employed an incompetent man its a certainty that Captain Turner is not a fool but a knave. I hope that Turner will be arrested immediately after the enquiry whatever the verdict". First Lord Winston Churchill noted: "I consider the Admiralty's case against Turner should be pressed by a skilful counsel and that Captain Webb should attend as a witness, if not employed as an assessor. We will pursue the captain without check". In the event, both Churchill and Fisher were replaced in their positions before the enquiry because of the failures of the Gallipoli campaign. Part of the proceedings turned on the question of proper evasive tactics against submarines. It was put to Captain Turner that he had failed to comply with Admiralty instructions to travel at high speed, maintain a zig-zag course and keep away from shore. Lusitania had slowed to 15 knots at one point because of fog, but had otherwise maintained 18 knots passing Ireland. 18 knots was faster than all but nine other ships in the British merchant fleet could achieve and was comfortably faster than the submarine. At the time, no ship had been torpedoed travelling at more than 15 knots. Although he might have achieved 21 knots and had given orders to raise steam ready to do so, he was also under orders to time his arrival at Liverpool for high tide so that the ship would not have to wait to enter port. Thus, he chose to travel more slowly. However, Turner could have also accomplished his desired arrival time at high speed by zig-zagging, albeit at a higher cost in fuel. Naval instructions about zig-zagging were read to the captain, who confirmed that he had received them, though later added that they did not appear to be as he recollected. This was unsurprising, since the general regulations quoted had been approved only on 25 April, after Lusitania's last arrival in New York, and started distribution on 13 May, after she sank, though Turner's response indicated that he had received some earlier specific instructions on 16 April. Turner expressed that his interpretation of the advice he did receive was to zig-zag once submarines were sighted, which would be useless in the case of a surprise submerged attack. Although the Admiralty instructed ships to keep well offshore, it was also not clear how far this meant. The Admiralty claimed that Turner had only been 8 nautical miles (15 km) away, while his actual distance when hit was thirteen nautical miles (24 km). Both were still substantially more distant than the 2 nautical miles (3.7 km) distant course ships would have taken during peacetime, which ironically also would have caused Lusitania to miss the submarine. However, Turner had been intent on bringing the ship far closer. Turner stated that he had discussed the matter of what course the ship should take with his two most senior officers, Captain Anderson and Chief Officer Piper, neither of whom survived. The three had agreed that the Admiralty warning of "submarine activity 20 miles [37 km] south of Coningbeg" effectively overrode other Admiralty advice to keep to 'mid channel', which was where he believed the submarines to be. He had, therefore, approached the Head of Kinsale to obtain a bearing, intending to bring the ship closer to land and then take a course north of the reported submarine a mere half mile away from shore. It was while steering a straight course to obtain this bearing that the attack came. At one point in the proceedings, Smith attempted to press a point he was making, by quoting from a signal sent to British ships. Lord Mersey queried which message this was, and it transpired that the message in question existed in the version of evidence given to Smith by the Board of Trade Solicitor, Sir Ellis Cunliffe, but not in versions given to others. Cunliffe explained the discrepancy by saying that different versions of the papers had been prepared for use, depending whether the enquiry had been in camera or not, but the message quoted appeared never to have existed. Lord Mersey observed that it was his job to get at the truth, and thereafter became more critical of Admiralty evidence. An additional hearing took place on 1 July, at the insistence of Joseph Marichal, who was threatening to sue Cunard for their poor handling of the disaster. He testified that the second explosion had sounded to him like the rattling of machine gun fire and appeared to be below the second class dining room at the rear of the ship where he had been seated. Information about Marichal's background was sought out by the British government and then distorted and leaked to the press so as to discredit him.: 367–369 The rifle cartridges Marichal alluded to were mentioned during the case, with Lord Mersey stating that "the 5,000 cases of ammunition on board were 50 yards away from where the torpedo struck the ship, there were no other explosives on board". All had agreed they could not have caused the second explosion. In the end, Captain Turner, the Cunard Company, and the Royal Navy were absolved of any negligence, and all blame was placed on the German government. Lord Mersey found that Turner did deviate from Admiralty instructions which may have saved the ship, but such instructions were suggestions more than orders. Thus, the captain had "exercised his judgment for the best" and that the blame for the disaster "must rest solely with those who plotted and with those who committed the crime". According to Simpson, Lord Mersey later told his children: "The Lusitania case was a damned, dirty business!" While a public report was presented to Parliament and reported on by the British press, Simpson suggests the existence of a fuller, secret report, which might exist amongst Lord Mersey's private papers after his death, but has since proved untraceable. Bailey and Ryan are of the opinion that Mersey decided to "whitewash" Turner, having indicated suspicion of mismanagement from Turner and Cunard in his questioning. Admiral Inglefield had suggested he blame Turner for disobeying Admiralty orders, but Mersey had responded that this may help strengthen Germany's case. When the verdict came, it was met with anger and surprise from Lusitania survivors. In the United States, 67 claims for compensation were lodged against Cunard, which were all heard together in 1918 before the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. Judge Julius Mayer, presided over the case: he had previously presided over the case brought following the loss of Titanic, where he had ruled in favour of the shipping company. Mayer was a conservative who was considered a safe pair of hands with matters of national interest, and whose favourite remark to lawyers was to "come to the point". The case was to be heard without a jury. The two sides agreed beforehand that no question would be raised regarding whether Lusitania had been armed or carrying troops or ammunition. Thirty-three witnesses who could not travel to the US gave statements in England to Commissioner R. V. Wynne. Evidence produced in open court for the Mersey investigation was considered, but evidence from the British closed sessions was not. The Defence of the Realm Act was invoked so that British witnesses could not give evidence on any subject it covered. Statements had been collected in Queenstown after the sinking by the American Consul, Wesley Frost, but these were not produced.: 413–414 Captain Turner gave evidence in Britain and now gave a more spirited defence of his actions. He argued that up until the time of the sinking he had no reason to think that zig-zagging in a fast ship would help. Indeed, that he had since commanded another ship which was sunk while zig-zagging. His position was supported by evidence from other captains, who said that prior to the sinking of Lusitania no merchant ships zig-zagged. Turner had argued that maintaining a steady course for 30 minutes was necessary to take a four-point bearing and precisely confirm the ship's position, but on this point he received less support, with other captains arguing a two-point bearing could have been taken in five minutes and would have been sufficiently accurate. Many witnesses testified that portholes across the ship had been open at the time of the sinking, and an expert witness confirmed that such a porthole three feet under water would let in four tons of water per minute. Testimony varied on how many torpedoes there had been, and whether the strike occurred between the first and second funnel, or third and fourth. The nature of the official cargo was considered, but experts considered that under no conditions could the cargo have exploded. A record exists that Crewman Jack Roper wrote to Cunard in 1919 requesting expenses for his testimony in accord with the line indicated by Cunard.: 415–416 The decision was rendered on 23 August 1918. Mayer's judgement was that "the cause of the sinking was the illegal act of the Imperial German Government", that two torpedoes had been involved, that the captain had acted properly and emergency procedures had been up to the standard then expected. He ruled that further claims for compensation should be addressed to the German government (which eventually paid $2.5 million in 1925). International reaction On 8 May Dr. Bernhard Dernburg, the former German Colonial Secretary and representative of the German Red Cross, made a statement in Cleveland, Ohio, in which he attempted to justify the sinking of Lusitania. Described by The New York Times as "the Kaiser's official mouthpiece", Dernburg was in fact acting as a private citizen with no official role in the German Foreign office, but had organised a New York "Press Bureau" to spread German propaganda since 1914. Dernburg said that because Lusitania "carried contraband of war" and also because she "was classed as an auxiliary cruiser" Germany had had a right to destroy her regardless of any passengers aboard. Dernburg further said that the warnings given by the German Embassy before her sailing, plus the 18 February note declaring the existence of "war zones" relieved Germany of any responsibility for the deaths of the American citizens aboard. He referred to the ammunition and military goods declared on Lusitania's manifest and said that "vessels of that kind" could be seized and destroyed under the Hague rules without any respect to a war zone. The following day the German government issued an official communication regarding the sinking in which it said that the Cunard liner Lusitania "was yesterday torpedoed by a German submarine and sank", that Lusitania "was naturally armed with guns, as were recently most of the English mercantile steamers" and that "as is well known here, she had large quantities of war material in her cargo". This would be the official German line for the immediate aftermath. The sinking was severely criticised by and met with disapproval in Turkey and Austria-Hungary, while in the German press, the sinking was deplored by Vorwärts, the daily newspaper of the Social Democratic Party of Germany, and also by Captain Persius, an outspoken naval critic who wrote for the Berliner Tageblatt. However much of the rest of the press approved of the sinking. One Catholic Centre Party newspaper, the Kölnische Volkszeitung [de], stated: "The sinking of the giant English steamship is a success of moral significance which is still greater than material success. With joyful pride we contemplate this latest deed of our Navy. It will not be the last. The English wish to abandon the German people to death by starvation. We are more humane. We simply sank an English ship with passengers who, at their own risk and responsibility, entered the zone of operations." The Frankfurter Zeitung wrote: "For the Germany Navy the sinking of the Lusitania means an extraordinary success. Its destruction demolished the last fable with which the people of England consoled themselves." In a 13 July report on conditions in Germany, US Ambassador James W. Gerard reported that due to the highly effective propaganda efforts of the Admiralty press bureau: As to Germany’s war methods, they have the full approval of the people; the sinking of the Lusitania was universally approved, and even men like Von Gwinner, head of the German Bank, say they will treat the Mauretania in the same way if she comes out. — James W. Gerard, 13 July 1915 Propaganda medals were made by a number of artists, including Ludwig Gies and in August 1915, the Munich medallist and sculptor Karl Goetz (Medailleur) [de] (1875–1950). The latter privately struck a small run of medals as a limited-circulation satirical attack (fewer than 500 were struck) on the Cunard Line for trying to continue business as usual during wartime. Goetz blamed both the British government and the Cunard Line for allowing Lusitania to sail despite the German embassy's warnings. Popular demand led to many unauthorised copies being made. One side of the popular medal showed Lusitania sinking laden with guns (incorrectly depicted sinking stern first) with the motto "KEINE BANNWARE!" ("NO CONTRABAND!"), while the reverse showed a skeleton selling Cunard tickets with the motto "Geschäft Über Alles" ("Business Above All"). Goetz had put an incorrect date for the sinking on the medal, an error he later blamed on a mistake in a newspaper story about the sinking: instead of 7 May, he had put "5. Mai", two days before the actual sinking. Not realising his error, Goetz made copies of the medal and sold them in Munich and also to some numismatic dealers with whom he conducted business. This led to conspiracy theories. Realising his mistake, Goetz issued a corrected medal with the date of "7. Mai". Of the 159 US citizens aboard Lusitania, over a hundred lost their lives, and there was massive outrage in the United States, The Nation calling it "a deed for which a Hun would blush, a Turk be ashamed, and a Barbary pirate apologize". Dernburg's comments heightened public indignation, leading to German ambassador Bernstorff to advise him to leave. US President Woodrow Wilson urged restraint. He said at Philadelphia on 10 May 1915: There is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight. There is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right. The phrase "too proud to fight" then became mocked by pro-war and pro-Entente groups, as well as factions in Germany who believed there was no real threat of America going to war. US authorities rebutted German claims. While it was true that Lusitania had been structurally designed for emplacing guns as part of government loan requirements during her construction, enabling rapid conversion into an armed merchant cruiser (AMC), and was listed as a "Royal Naval Reserve Merchant Vessel", the guns themselves were never fitted and the ships were not formally commissioned into the Navy. The great majority of British merchant ships were not armed, and indeed ships that were called up as Auxiliary Cruisers such as the SS Orduña had to at times be fitted with fake weaponry due to a shortage of guns. Thus, Dudley Field Malone, Collector of the Port of New York, issued an official denial to the German charges, saying that he alongside other inspectors had personally inspected Lusitania before her departure and no guns were found, mounted or unmounted. He reported that he had seen no marked spaces or blocks on which guns might be mounted. Malone stated that no merchant ship would have been allowed to arm itself in the Port and leave the harbour. Assistant Manager of the Cunard Line, Herman Winter, denied the charge that she carried munitions: She had aboard 4,200 cases of cartridges, but they were cartridges for small arms, packed in separate cases... they certainly do not come under the classification of ammunition. The United States authorities would not permit us to carry ammunition, classified as such by the military authorities, on a passenger liner. For years we have been sending small-arms cartridges abroad on the Lusitania. In addition to the rifle cartridges, Lusitania carried also 1,250 cases of empty shells, and 18 cases of non-explosive fuses, all of which were listed in her manifest. However, US law revolved around the safety cargo posed to passengers and not Germany's strategic needs. Thus Winter's statement was in the context of US testing of small arms ammunition that found them to be "non-explosive in bulk", leading to a 1911 ruling that such ammunition can be transported without restriction on passenger ships, unlike explosives "likely to endanger the health or lives of the passengers or the safety of the vessel." Malone similarly stated that the ship did not contain explosives "within the interpretation of our statutes and regulations" by the US Department of Commerce and Labor. When Germany began its submarine campaign against Britain, Wilson had warned that the US would hold the German government strictly accountable for any violations of American rights. On 1 May, in response to Bernstorff's advert, he had stated that "no warning that an unlawful and inhumane act will be committed" could be accepted as a legitimate excuse for that act. During the weeks after the sinking, the issue was hotly debated within the administration. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan urged compromise and restraint. The US, he believed, should try to persuade the British to abandon their interdiction of foodstuffs and limit their mine-laying operations at the same time as the Germans were persuaded to curtail their submarine campaign. He also suggested that the US government issue an explicit warning against US citizens travelling on any belligerent ships, and ban contraband from being carried on passenger vessels. In contrast, Counselor Robert Lansing advised Wilson to adhere to the "strict accountability" line. He first doubted that information about the cargo of Lusitania had actually been communicated to the submarine making the attack. But to Lansing, who had helped found the American Society of International Law, the issue was about principle, not facts. All that mattered was the German responsibility for the safety of the unresisting crew and passengers of the ship. Once it was confirmed that the ship was not armed and was attacked by surprise, no warning or strategic justification can allow the violation of "the principles of law and humanity". The US was already committed to this approach, had never previously warned passengers to not travel on British ships and saying so now would be an abandonment of the government's responsibility to protect its citizens. Despite being sympathetic to Bryan's antiwar feelings, Wilson found Lansing's arguments "unanswerable". Thus he resolved to insist that the German government must apologise for the sinking, compensate US victims, and promise to avoid any similar occurrence in the future. Wilson made his position clear in three notes to the German government issued on 13 May, 9 June, and 21 July. The first note, (citing attacks on 3 other ships: Falaba, Cushing, and Gulflight) affirmed the right of Americans to travel as passengers on merchant ships of any nationality, reaffirmed the doctrine of strict accountability. As the Germans were claiming that it was impossible to conduct submarine warfare against merchant vessels "without disregarding those rules of fairness, reason, justice, and humanity which all modern opinion regards as imperative", "manifestly, submarines cannot be used against merchantmen". Bryan discredited himself when he told Austro-Hungarian ambassador Konstantin Dumba that the American protest was only for the benefit of US public opinion and its sharp tone should be disregarded. A defensive German response came on 28 May. In the second note, in a reply to the German response, Wilson flatly rejected the German defenses. The vessel was not armed, the cargo was legal under American law, and all these questions were immaterial as to the core issue – the means of the ship's destruction. Whatever be the other facts regarding the Lusitania, the principle fact is that a great steamer, primarily and chiefly a conveyance for passengers, and carrying more than a thousand souls who had no part or lot in the conduct of the war, was torpedoed and sunk without so much as a challenge or warning, and that men, women and children were sent to their death in circumstances unparalleled in modern warfare. The fact that more than one hundred American citizens were among those who perished made it the duty of the Government of the United States to speak of these things and once more, with solemn emphasis, to call the attention of the Imperial German Government to the grave responsibility which the Government of the United States conceives that it has incurred in this tragic occurrence, and to the indisputable principle upon which that responsibility rests. The Government of the United States is contending for something much greater than mere rights of property or privileges of commerce. It is contending for nothing less high and sacred than the rights of humanity, which every Government honors itself in respecting and which no Government is justified in resigning on behalf of those under its care and authority. Only her actual resistance to capture or refusal to stop when ordered to do so for the purpose of visit could have afforded the commander of the submarine any justification for so much as putting the lives of those on board the ship in jeopardy. This principle the Government of the United States understands the explicit instructions issued on August 3, 1914, by the Imperial German Admiralty to its commanders at sea to have recognized and embodied, as do the naval codes of all other nations, and upon it every traveler and seaman had a right to depend. It is upon this principle of humanity as well as upon the law founded upon this principle that the United States must stand. — President Wilson Bryan considered the second note too provocative and refused to sign, and so resigned as Secretary of State. He was replaced by Lansing. Lansing later said in his memoirs that due to the tragedy he always had the "conviction that we [the United States] would ultimately become the ally of Britain". In the third note, of 21 July, in reply to a more conciliatory German note on 12 July, Wilson (advised by Lansing) made clear that the US considered British transgressions of neutral rights to be more minor in degree, and issued an ultimatum to the effect that the US would regard any subsequent sinkings as "deliberately unfriendly". The note however indicated that Wilson would accept submarine warfare if it followed the "accepted practice of regulated warfare", observing that much of German submarine attacks had been conducted under the established cruiser rules anyway. Thus, while the American public and leadership were not ready for war, a line in the sand had been drawn as a result of the sinking of Lusitania. Later key crises related to the sinking of Arabic and the Sussex incident. While outwardly Germany conducted a propaganda skirmish, internally there had long been a faction opposed to the new submarine war. Ambassador Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff himself had privately concluded that the campaign was of questionable legality and against Germany's best interests. Contrary to Germany's official defenses, Bernstorff believed that Lusitania could not have been targeted specifically, and that it was "obviously sound policy to refrain as far as possible from any attack on passenger ships". Bernstorff saw his role as preserving diplomatic relations with the US "under all circumstances", and frequently acted without instruction from Berlin. Within Germany there was a fierce debate between German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, and pro-submarine naval officials like Tirpitz and Gustav Bachmann. Tirpitz, who saw the Americans as no threat, had pushed for the official German line on the munitions issue, focusing on inciting German public opinion at the expense of the relationship with the US. The Chancellor enlisted the help of Army Chief of Staff Erich von Falkenhayn, who advised the Kaiser on the danger a break with the Americans would pose. The Kaiser thus ordered on 6 June that secret directives be sent that rescinded Bachmann's order to deliberately target enemy passenger vessels and stated that deliberate attacks on large ocean liners would cease. The admirals had also counted on "accidentally" sinking a few neutral ships to deter the others, but now, if the nationality of a ship is in doubt, attacks should be aborted. Tirpitz and Bachmann offered their resignations, but they were rejected by the Kaiser. To preserve the prestige of the German military, not even Ambassador Bernstorff was told. Nevertheless, passenger ships continued to be attacked. The liner Arabic was sunk on 19 August. The ship was sailing outward from Britain, and so clearly not transporting contraband of any sort, further angering the Americans. With increasing evidence of the ineffectiveness of the U-boat campaign, which was originally promised to force the British to the negotiating table in six weeks, Bethmann Hollweg petitioned the Kaiser to publicly forbid attacks without warning against all passenger ships. He said the Germans should work with the Americans, pledging to limit submarines to cruiser rules if the British adopt the Declaration of London and thus loosen the blockade. There was once again disagreement over this move from the navy's admirals (headed by Alfred von Tirpitz), who had no interest in the Declaration if it would prevent them from using submarines fully. On 27 August, Falkenhayn and anxious messages from Bernstorff persuaded Kaiser Wilhelm II to endorse the Chancellor's solution. Bachmann was forced to resign, Tirpitz lost direct access to the Kaiser, and the end of unrestricted submarine warfare against passenger ships was made public to the Americans on 1 September. As the German government was pondering other orders, on 18 September the new head of the Admiralty Staff, Henning von Holtzendorff, rendered these arrangements moot by giving an order on his own authority: all U-boats operating in the English Channel and off the west coast of the United Kingdom were recalled, and the U-boat war would continue only in the North sea, where it would be conducted under the Prize Law rules. Thus, Pohl's U-boat experiment was called off entirely. This would be the situation until the end of the following February, where a brief intensification of U-boat commerce attacks would lead to the attack on SS Sussex on 24 March 1916, and the Sussex Pledge to adhere only to cruiser rules. At the end of January 1917 the German Government announced it would now conduct full unrestricted submarine warfare, deliberately breaking its prior promises. Once again, Woodrow Wilson was furious and on 6 April 1917 the United States Congress followed Wilson's request to declare war on Germany. US buildup of participation was at first slow, but during the German spring offensive in March 1918, which at first went well for the Germans with the Allies barely holding the lines, was reversed with the arrival by April 1918 of two million American troops. The British press highlighted the savagery of the Germans, condemning Schwieger as a war criminal. Thanks to the Defence of the Realm Act, matters relating to the ship's cargo were censored. References to Lusitania appeared heavily in propaganda, and helped motivate the later Baralong incidents. According to Kurt Hahn, the sinking was a decisive turning point in the collective English attitude towards Germany. British Ambassador Sir Cecil Spring-Rice was concerned about the tone of the British press and that the US should best be kept out of the war. Writing on May 9, he expressed that "our main interest is to preserve the US as a base of supplies. I hope language of our press will be very guarded." According to US Ambassador Walter Hines Page, the British did not want US military help, but they felt America "falls short morally" in insufficiently condemning German methods and character. America thus should at least break relations with German temporarily. British propaganda was thus also aimed at America, with the sinking concurrent with the Bryce report on German atrocities. One over-enthusiastic propagandist's fabricated story was circulated that in some regions of Germany, schoolchildren were given a holiday to celebrate the sinking of Lusitania. This story was so effective that James W. Gerard, the US ambassador to Germany, recounted it being told in his memoir of his time in Germany, Face to Face with Kaiserism (1918), though without vouching for its validity. Another ploy was the reproduction of the Goetz medal, which was done by department store entrepreneur Harry Gordon Selfridge at the behest of Lord Newton, in charge of Propaganda at the Foreign Office in 1916. The replica medals were produced in an attractive case and were sold for a shilling apiece. On the cases it was stated that the medals had been distributed in Germany "to commemorate the sinking of Lusitania" and they came with a propaganda leaflet which denounced the Germans and used the medal's incorrect date (5 May) to incorrectly claim that the sinking of Lusitania was premeditated, rather than just being incident to Germany's larger plan to sink any ship in a combat zone without warning. The head of the Lusitania Souvenir Medal Committee later estimated that 250,000 were sold, proceeds being given to the Red Cross and St Dunstan's Blinded Soldiers and Sailors Hostel. Many popular magazines and newspapers ran photographs of the replica or the original, and it was falsely claimed that it had been awarded to the crew of the U-boat. The Bavarian government, alarmed at the strong worldwide reaction to Goetz's work, suppressed further production of the original medal and ordered confiscation in April 1917. After the war Goetz expressed his regret that his work had been the cause of increasing anti-German feelings, but it remains a celebrated propaganda act. After the war, in around 1920, the French medallist René Baudichon created a counterblast to the Goetz medal. The Baudichon medal is in bronze, 54 millimetres (2.1 in) diameter and weighs 79.51 grams (2.805 oz). The obverse shows Liberty as depicted on the Statue of Liberty but holding a raised sword and rising from a stormy sea. Behind her the sun is breaking through clouds and six ships are steaming. Signed R Baudichon. Legend: Ultrix America Juris, 1917 U.S.A 1918 (America avenger of right). The reverse shows a view of the starboard quarter of Lusitania correctly depicted sinking bow first. In the foreground there is a capsized lifeboat. The upper field shows a child drowning, head, hands and feet above the water; RB monogram. Legend: Lusitania May 7, 1915. Last survivor The last survivor was Audrey Warren Lawson-Johnston (née Pearl), who was born in New York City on 15 February 1915. She was the fourth of seven children (the youngest three born after the disaster) born to Major Frederic "Frank" Warren Pearl (1869–1952) and Amy Lea (née Duncan; 1880–1964). She was only three months old when she boarded Lusitania in New York with her parents, three siblings, and two nurses – and due to her age had no first hand recollection of the disaster. She and her brother Stuart (age 5) were saved by their British nursemaid Alice Maud Lines, then 18 years old, who jumped off the boat deck and escaped in a lifeboat. Her parents also survived, but her sisters Amy (age 3) and Susan (age 14 months) died. Pearl married Hugh de Beauchamp Lawson-Johnston, second son of George Lawson Johnston, 1st Baron Luke, on 18 July 1946. They had three children and lived in Melchbourne, Bedfordshire. Hugh was Sheriff of Bedfordshire in 1961. Johnston gifted an inshore lifeboat, Amy Lea, to New Quay Lifeboat Station in 2004 in memory of her mother. Audrey Johnston died on 11 January 2011, at age 95. Cultural legacy There is no footage of the sinking. Controversies The "prize rules" or "cruiser rules", based in customary law and influenced by the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 and the 1909 London Declaration concerning the Laws of Naval War, governed the seizure of vessels at sea during wartime. Although changes in technology such as radio and the submarine would eventually make parts of them irrelevant, they were generally acknowledged at the start of the war. Merchant ships were to be warned by warships, and their passengers and crew allowed to abandon ship before they were sunk, unless the ship resisted or tried to escape, or was in a convoy protected by warships. Limited armament on a merchant ship, such as one or two guns, did not necessarily affect the ship's immunity to attack without warning, and neither did a cargo of munitions or materiel. Debates between the German Admiralty and the German government over unrestricted submarine warfare had been ongoing since 1914, with senior naval figures proposing that it would swiftly and easily win the war. In November 1914 the British announced that due to German placement of mines, the entire North Sea was now a "military area", and issued orders restricting the passage of neutral shipping into and through the North Sea to special channels where supervision would be possible (the other approaches having been mined). Taking advantage of this and the British Admiralty's order of 31 January 1915 that British merchant ships should fly neutral colours as a ruse de guerre, Admiral Hugo von Pohl, commander of the German High Seas Fleet and outgoing Chief of the Admiralty, acted outside of the normal protocols and declared an abandonment of cruiser rules, publishing a warning in the Deutscher Reichsanzeiger (Imperial German Gazette) on 4 February 1915: (1) The waters around Great Britain and Ireland, including the whole of the English Channel, are hereby declared to be a War Zone. From February 18 onwards every enemy merchant vessel encountered in this zone will be destroyed, nor will it always be possible to avert the danger thereby threatened to the crew and passengers. (2) Neutral vessels also will run a risk in the War Zone, because in view of the hazards of sea warfare and the British authorization of January 31 of the misuse of neutral flags, it may not always be possible to prevent attacks on enemy ships from harming neutral ships. Despite wrangling in the German government to limit the scope of the navy's proposed strategy, privately, directives went further, with Admiral Gustav Bachmann directing submarine captains to attack passenger vessels, so as to obtain a shock effect and deter shipping. International reaction was negative, with many considering the announcement a bluff. Most considered cruiser rules to be still valid, even beyond the end of the war. Nevertheless, in response, the British Admiralty issued orders on 10 February 1915 which directed merchant ships to escape from hostile U-boats when possible, but "if a submarine comes up suddenly close ahead of you with obvious hostile intention, steer straight for her at your utmost speed... [...] she will probably dive, in which case you will have ensured your safety..." Further instructions ten days later advised armed steamers to open fire on a submarine that is "obviously pursuing with hostile intentions", even if it had not yet fired. Private individuals offered bounties for submarines sunk. Given the vulnerability of a submarine to ramming or even small-calibre shellfire, a U-boat that surfaced and gave warning against a merchantman which had been given such instructions was putting itself in significant danger. The Germans knew of these, even though they were intended to be secret, copies having been obtained from captured ships and from wireless intercepts. Bailey and Ryan in their book The Lusitania Disaster put much emphasis on these orders, pointing out that though the directives were "definitely designed to save shipping", attempting to ram or even merely to evade could be argued to make attacking the ship legitimate. In their opinion, this, rather than the munitions, the nonexistent armament, or any other suggested reason, is the best legal justification for the Germans' actions, though Berlin never made an "emphatic" point of it. Gerhard Ritter notes though that even by 1916, the majority of sinkings were still conducted with warning by U-boat deck guns, for they were far more effective than limited and inaccurate torpedoes. Days before, U-20 herself had sunk Earl of Lathom and Candidate while first allowing the crew to escape in boats. Lusitania was a much larger and faster ship, with a better chance of evading or ramming, though commercial vessels only successfully sunk a submarine through ramming once during the war (in 1918 the White Star Liner HMT Olympic, sister ship to Titanic and Britannic, rammed SM U-103 in the English Channel). In his communications with Germany, President Wilson adhered strictly to cruiser rules, claiming that only 'actual resistance' by the ship would in his view make the attack legitimate, and that if a ship cannot be attacked safely and legally, then she should simply not be attacked. In argument with German political leaders during the Arabic crisis, Admiral Bachmann argued that they did not want Britain to adhere to the Declaration of London, as it was more important to be able to continue the submarine attacks and British actions helped justify that. Many survivors from Lusitania reported that a second explosion took place either immediately or a few seconds afterwards, some suggesting it felt more severe. This explosion has been used to explain the speed of Lusitania's sinking, and has been the subject of debate since the disaster, with the situation of the wreck (lying on top of the site of the torpedo hit) making obtaining definitive answers difficult. At the time, official inquiries attributed it to a second torpedo attack from the U-boat, as was recalled by multiple witnesses. However, testimony and radio communications from U-20 makes clear that only one torpedo was fired towards the Lusitania, Schwieger even commenting in his war diary that firing a second torpedo was impossible due to the crowd of frenzied passengers who dived into the ocean in panic. It is possible that a second torpedo, or even a second submarine was present and was covered up, though this is unlikely. A debated theory assigns the blame for the second blast on Lusitania's cargo. This included tons of .303 rifle/machine-gun cartridges, shell casings and fuses, all of which were listed on the ship's two-page manifest, filed with US Customs after she departed. The small arms ammunition were known to be non-explosive in bulk, and were clearly marked as such. It was perfectly legal under American shipping regulations for the liner to carry these; experts agreed they were not to blame for the second explosion. The inquiry at the time of the sinking found that there were no other explosives on board, though there has been a long history (starting from German propagandists) of people claiming otherwise. Patrick O'Sullivan agrees that the shells were empty (to be filled with explosives on arrival) and the fuses non-explosive, using sworn testimony from the manufacturer in a later case and an analysis of the shells' listed weight. He asserts that a consignment of fine aluminium powder, possibly disturbed during the first explosion, may be responsible. In experiments though, the explosion of aluminum powder or guncotton (pyroxylene) (a suggested hidden explosive) did not appear to match the properties observed at the time. The presence of other secret explosives has never been proven. Eyewitness reports, including accounts by the U-boat captain and onlookers who saw a specific lifeboat destroyed, also tend to place the position of the initial torpedo strike far back from the cargo hold. In the 1960s, American diver John Light dived repeatedly to the site of the shipwreck in efforts to prove the existence of contraband explosives aboard Lusitania's cargo hold, which had been ignited by the torpedo. In 1993, Dr. Robert Ballard, the famous explorer who discovered Titanic and the German battleship Bismarck, conducted an in-depth exploration of the wreck of Lusitania. Ballard, believing initially that the explosion was due to contraband, tried to confirm John Light's findings of a large hole on the port side of the wreck. Instead he found no hole, and when he inspected the whole exposed area of the cargo hold he found it "clearly undamaged". He thus concluded no cargo explosion took place. During his investigation, Ballard noted a large quantity of coal on the sea bed near the wreck, and after consulting an explosives expert advanced the theory of a coal dust explosion. He believed dust in depleted coal bunkers would have been thrown into the air by the torpedo detonation; the resulting cloud would have been ignited by a spark, causing the second explosion. Critics of the theory say coal dust would have been too damp to have been stirred into the air by the torpedo impact in explosive concentrations, or that the coal bunker where the torpedo struck would have been flooded almost immediately by seawater flowing through the damaged hull plates. In 2007, marine forensic investigators considered that an explosion in the ship's steam-generating plant could be a plausible explanation for the second explosion. Though accounts from the few survivors who managed to escape from the forward two boiler rooms reported that the ship's boilers did not explode, Leading Fireman Albert Martin later testified he thought the torpedo entered the boiler room and exploded between a group of boilers. Though this account was a physical impossibility, many others did place the torpedo strike in the general vicinity of the boiler rooms. It is also known the forward boiler room filled with steam, and steam pressure feeding the turbines dropped dramatically following the second explosion. These point toward a failure, of one sort or another, in the ship's steam-generating plant. It is possible the failure came, not directly from one of the boilers, but rather in the high-pressure steam lines to the turbines. Witnesses reported explosions many minutes after the attack from the flooded parts of the ship, which suggests at least some of the boilers did explode. Another theory is that in fact only one explosion took place, with the "first explosion" merely the physical impact of the torpedo on the hull, though this faces the problem that torpedoes of the time were fused to explode immediately on impact. In any case, explanations like this and the steam lines theory propose that torpedo damage alone, striking near the boiler rooms, sunk Lusitania quickly without a second substantial explosion, and are strengthened by recent research that found that this blast would be enough to cause, on its own, serious off-centre flooding. The deficiencies of the ship's original watertight bulkhead design would then exacerbate the situation, as did the many portholes which had been left open for ventilation. In 1997, naval architects at JMS argued this point, noting that once the ship lost steam pressure, systems like automatic watertight doors would no longer function, allowing the ship in their simulations to sink as fast as it did without any additional damage. In 2012, explosives researchers at Lawrence Livermore Laboratory agreed, arguing that their experiments and evidence from the wreck showed that the torpedo itself caused the catastrophic sinking, with the second explosion having little impact. Historian J. Kent Layton reviewed 86 survivor accounts in 2016, and believed that these, together with the immediate 15 degree list of the ship, indicate that the torpedo struck in between boiler rooms 1 and 2. This was an especially vulnerable location, allowing immediate flooding from both boiler rooms' bunkers, and led to a secondary explosion from the boilers or steam apparatus within that likely did not cause much additional critical damage. The speed of the sinking was thus due to the poor ability of Lusitania to contain flooding. There has long been a theory, expressed by historian and former British naval intelligence officer Patrick Beesly and authors Colin Simpson and Donald E. Schmidt among others, that Lusitania was deliberately placed in danger by the British authorities, so as to entice a U-boat attack and thereby drag the US into the war on the side of Britain. Simpson and later authors point to a letter Winston Churchill wrote to Walter Runciman, the President of the Board of Trade, on 12 February shortly after the German announcement, focusing on a line where he states it's "most important to attract neutral shipping to our shores, in the hope especially of embroiling the United States with Germany." Beesly concludes: "unless and until fresh information comes to light, I am reluctantly driven to the conclusion that there was a conspiracy deliberately to put Lusitania at risk in the hope that even an abortive attack on her would bring the United States into the war. Such a conspiracy could not have been put into effect without Winston Churchill's express permission and approval." At the post-sinking inquiry, Captain Turner refused to answer certain questions on the grounds of war-time secrecy imperatives. The British government continues to keep secret certain documents relating to the final days of the voyage, including certain of the signals passed between the Admiralty and Lusitania. Some authors also claim that the records that are available are often missing critical pages, and assert a number of other disputed claims: Most historians conclude that such a conspiracy is unlikely. The flow of Room 40 intelligence to merchant shipping, even if it could have been useful, had always been hampered by the overriding goal of protecting the secrecy of the source. Nevertheless, the ship had been repeatedly warned about the general presence of submarines in the area, and informed about U-20's previous sinkings. Indeed, Turner claimed later in life that he felt overwhelmed by the number of warnings he got, imagining that there were perhaps six submarines waiting for him. Escorts were also limited in availability and Lusitania was faster and less vulnerable than those that were available. There would be very little guarantee of a successful attack even with perfect information, as the slow speed of a submerged submarine would require the ship to pass within a few hundred yards of the attacker and torpedo attacks were unreliable at this time anyway. Churchill was speaking to Runciman in the context of offering insurance to neutral merchant shipping that Germany hoped to deter from trading with Britain. His statements did not apply to a British liner – indeed, his "embroilment" was meant to create "safety" for Allied ships like Lusitania. Any secrecy could also be explained in terms of avoiding embarrassment at ineffectual and disorganised British anti-submarine warfare measures. There was also little advantage to the US joining the war at this time, nor was American reaction certain – German submarine captains had, after all, been given deliberate orders to target passenger vessels believing this would produce a useful deterrent effect on shipping, and the anti-interventionalist Secretary of State Bryan reacted to the sinking by advising President Wilson to instead simply prohibit passenger ships from carrying ammunition. In 1923, Churchill discussed the letter, writing of his belief that offense to neutrals due to "inevitable accidents" would lead to a "sensible abatement" of pressure against the British blockade, which would appear less illegal in contrast. In 1916, after the Germans were pressured into restricting their submarine campaign, relations between the US and Germany actually improved even as tonnage of ships sunk grew. Meanwhile, relations with the British became markedly worse, with some even suggesting that America join the war against the Allies. Lusitania was officially carrying among her cargo 4,200 cases of rifle/machine-gun ammunition, 1,250 cases of empty shrapnel artillery shells, and the artillery fuzes for those shells stored separately. This comprised a total of 173 tons. In September 2008, .303 cartridges were recovered from the wreck by a diver. Additional declared material could be used for military purposes. The cargo included 50 barrels and 94 cases of aluminium (making 46 tons), an unknown quantity of which was in the powdered form used to produce explosives at Woolwich Arsenal, as well as other metals, leather and rubber. Overall, these supplies represented around a third to a half (depending on what is counted) of the declared financial value of the cargo aboard the ship, but a relatively small volume of cargo on the ship. The passenger ship was also not an efficient cargo carrier, as much smaller dedicated vessels could carry far more cargo. For example, SS Mont-Blanc, involved in the Halifax explosion, could carry almost 3,000 tons of materials despite being a tenth the size. It also may be noted that the British War Office considered the majority of US-manufactured ammunition in this period to be of poor quality and so "suitable for emergency use only", and in any case incapable of supplying consumption of over 5 million rounds per day. American ammunition contracts were cancelled in 1916. Some authors speculate on the presence of undeclared explosive munitions. Author Steven L. Danver alleges that Lusitania was also secretly carrying a large quantity of nitrocellulose (gun cotton). Another theory suggests 90 tons of butter and lard (un-refrigerated due to a lack of space and allegedly destined to a "Royal Navy Weapons Testing Facility" in Shoeburyness) may have been something else. Additional speculation centered on a consignment of furs, sent from Dupont de Nemours, a company that also manufactured explosives, though such furs were reported to have washed ashore in Ireland. Other authors have suggested that the shells were in fact live, which would mean that around 5 tonnes of cordite was on board, a notion that contradicts the fact that the declared weight of the shells corresponds to ones empty of explosive fill. No evidence of additional secret explosives has so far been found. Many authors have suggested some sort of cover-up from the British or American authorities regarding the presence of the munitions. Yet the presence of the materiel was well known at the time, being made public in newspapers, raised in the official British inquiry, and presented to President Wilson. When Senator Robert M. La Follette suggested in 1917 a conspiracy where Wilson was warned that the ship carried 6 million rounds of ammunition, the New York authorities responded by providing him with the correct number. It is true that due to wartime censorship, issues of war materials were not to be freely discussed in the British press, though Germany's communications with the US were printed in British newspapers. However, official denial of the presence of "munitions" or "special ammunition" at the time really related to a denial of the possibility that the ship was carrying cargo dangerous to the passengers (hence statements like "she had on board 4200 cases of cartridges [...] they certainly do not come under the classification of ammunition"), or a denial that the ship was an armed warship ("equipped with masked guns, supplied with trained gunners and special ammunition"). The position taken by the British and Americans was not that there was no war materiel, but rather that what was present aboard the ship did not remove the passengers' right to safety, which is inherently endangered when attacked the way the ship was. Bailey and Ryan discuss this in detail, noting that it was common knowledge that "dozens of ships" left New York with similar or larger cargoes of small arms ammunition and other military supplies. Earlier that year, Turner captained another Cunard liner that transported 15 inch naval artillery, despite public protests from Germany. They conclude that sending secret, illegal explosives in a passenger ship is unlikely given the availability of other dedicated cargo ships. They and other authors also note the contradiction of some authors suggesting that the ship was carrying essential war cargo, and yet simultaneously arguing the British were conspiring to get her sunk. The presence or absence of munitions being carried by Lusitania, while raised by early German propaganda, would not have affected the Germans' intention to target her, or the arguments both in favour and against the legitimacy of her sinking. It was in fact initially concocted as a measure by German Admiral von Tirpitz to "incite public opinion at home". The wreck was depth-charged or attacked with Hedgehog mortars. A Dublin-based technical diver, Des Quigley, who dived on the wreck in the 1990s, reported that the wreck is "like Swiss cheese" and the seabed around her "is littered with unexploded hedgehog mines". Similar observations were made by other explorers, such as the 1993 Ballard expedition. Conspiracy theorists have suggested this was part of a plot to destroy evidence of British deception, such as the presence of undeclared explosives. Instead, historians suggest this was due to NATO anti-submarine warfare exercises in 1948, which used the wreck as a target at a time when its historical value was not considered important. Layton notes that the wreck was sold for a mere £1000, and that despite the bombardment, the state of the wreck was such that expeditions in 1993 and 2011 could verify the intact state of the cargo hold, including "neatly stacked" ammunition. Another debated topic is the degree of blame that can be placed on Captain Turner. This was the centre of the wartime inquiries, which raised the issue of whether he had disobeyed Admiralty instructions. While he was exonerated at the time, modern historians disagree as to whether this was appropriate. In addition Turner is blamed for the poor preparedness of the ship, including the poor quality of lifeboat drilling, and allowing many portholes to be open. While most would agree that running into the submarine was ultimately a matter of bad luck, with the more modern understanding that the ship may have sunk from torpedo damage alone, the degree to which Turner may have exacerbated the loss of life gains greater significance. It is also suggested that there may have been some cover-up on the German end. This centers around the typewritten and unsigned nature of Schwieger's logs for that day, which implies a lost version more in line with his style for other logs. One suggestion is that Schwieger's log was edited to "humanise" his account, the commander being otherwise not noted for expressing much sympathy for his victims. Preston describes a number of inconsistencies in Schwieger's account, suggesting the diary demonstrated "institutional afterthoughts", aimed to demonstrate German conscience and British incompetence. A few survivor accounts also noted that they saw the submarine surfacing as the ship was sinking, some offering the criticism that the sub did not offer aid. While this is an unrealistic demand, it has been suggested that this surfacing did genuinely happen. Wreck site The wreck of Lusitania lies on her starboard side at an approximately 30-degree angle in 305 feet (93 metres) of sea water. She is severely collapsed onto her starboard side as a result of the force with which she slammed into the sea floor, and over decades, Lusitania has deteriorated significantly faster than Titanic because of the corrosion in the winter tides. The keel has an "unusual curvature", in a boomerang shape, which may be related to a lack of strength from the loss of her superstructure. The beam is reduced with the funnels missing, presumably due to deterioration. The bow is the most prominent portion of the wreck with the stern damaged from the removal of three of the four propellers by Oceaneering International in 1982 for display. Some of the prominent features on Lusitania include her still-legible name, some bollards with the ropes still intact, pieces of the ruined promenade deck, some portholes, the prow and the remaining propeller. Recent expeditions to the wreck have revealed that Lusitania is in surprisingly poor condition compared to Titanic, as her hull has already started to collapse. See also References Further reading External links California drought manipulation |
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Contents Pearl Harbor advance-knowledge conspiracy theory The Pearl Harbor advance-knowledge conspiracy theory is an unproven conspiracy theory alleging that U.S. government officials had advance knowledge of Japan's 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. Starting from shortly after the attack, there has been debate as to what extent the United States was caught off guard, and how much and when American officials knew of Japanese plans for an attack. Several writers, including journalist Robert Stinnett, retired U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Robert Alfred Theobald, and Harry Elmer Barnes, have argued that various parties high in the governments of the United States and the United Kingdom knew of the attack in advance and may even have let it happen or encouraged it in order to ensure America’s entry into the European theater of World War II via a Japanese–American war started at "the back door". The Pearl Harbor advance-knowledge conspiracy theory is rejected by most historians as a fringe theory, citing several key discrepancies and reliance on dubious sources. Ten official U.S. inquiries In September 1944, John T. Flynn, a co-founder of the non-interventionist America First Committee, launched a Pearl Harbor counter-narrative when he published a 46-page booklet entitled The Truth about Pearl Harbor, arguing that Roosevelt and his inner circle had been plotting to provoke the Japanese into an attack on the U.S. and thus provide a reason to enter the war since January 1941. Flynn was a political opponent of Roosevelt, and had strongly criticized him for both his domestic and foreign policies. In 1944, a congressional investigation conducted by both major political parties provided little by way of vindication for his assertions, despite Flynn being chief investigator. The U.S. government made nine official inquiries into the attack between 1941 and 1946, and a tenth in 1995. They included an inquiry by Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox (1941); the Roberts Commission (1941–42); the Hart Inquiry (1944); the Army Pearl Harbor Board (1944); the Naval Court of Inquiry (1944); the Hewitt investigation; the Clarke investigation; the Congressional Inquiry[note 1] (Pearl Harbor Committee; 1945–46); a top-secret inquiry by Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, authorized by Congress and carried out by Henry Clausen (the Clausen Inquiry; 1946); and the Thurmond-Spence hearing, in April 1995, which produced the Dorn Report. The inquiries reported incompetence, underestimation, and misapprehension of Japanese capabilities and intentions; problems resulting from excessive secrecy about cryptography; division of responsibility between Army and Navy (and lack of consultation between them); and lack of adequate manpower for intelligence (analysis, collection, processing).[page needed] Investigators prior to Clausen did not have the security clearance necessary to receive the most sensitive information, as Brigadier General Henry D. Russell had been appointed guardian of the pre-war decrypts, and he alone held the combination to the storage safe. Clausen claimed, in spite of Secretary Stimson having given him a letter informing witnesses he had the necessary clearances to require their cooperation, he was repeatedly lied to until he produced copies of top secret decrypts, thus proving he indeed had the proper clearance.[citation needed] Stimson's report to Congress, based on Clausen's work, was limited due to secrecy concerns, largely about cryptography. A more complete account was not made publicly available until the mid-1980s, and not published until 1992 as Pearl Harbor: Final Judgement. Reaction to the 1992 publication has varied. Some regard it as a valuable addition to understanding the events, while one historian noted Clausen did not speak to General Walter Short, Army commander at Pearl Harbor during the attack, and called Clausen's investigation "notoriously unreliable" in several respects. Diplomatic situation Some authors argue that President Roosevelt was actively provoking Japan in the weeks prior to the Pearl Harbor attack. These authors assert that Roosevelt was imminently expecting and seeking war, but wanted Japan to take the first overtly aggressive action. One perspective is given by Rear Admiral Frank Edmund Beatty Jr., who at the time of the Pearl Harbor attack was an aide to the Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox and was very close to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's inner circle, remarked that: Prior to December 7, it was evident even to me... that we were pushing Japan into a corner. I believed that it was the desire of President Roosevelt, and Prime Minister Churchill that we get into the war, as they felt the Allies could not win without us and all our efforts to cause the Germans to declare war on us failed; the conditions we imposed upon Japan—to get out of China, for example—were so severe that we knew that nation could not accept them. We were forcing her so severely that we could have known that she would react toward the United States. All her preparations in a military way — and we knew their over-all import — pointed that way. Another "eyewitness viewpoint" akin to Beatty's is provided by Roosevelt's administrative assistant at the time of Pearl Harbor, Jonathan Daniels; it was a comment about FDR's reaction to the attack – "The blow was heavier than he had hoped it would necessarily be. ... But the risks paid off; even the loss was worth the price. ..." "Ten days before the attack on Pearl Harbor", Henry L. Stimson, United States Secretary of War at the time, "entered in his diary the famous and much-argued statement – that he had met with President Roosevelt to discuss the evidence of impending hostilities with Japan, and the question was 'how we should maneuver them [the Japanese] into the position of firing the first shot without allowing too much danger to ourselves.'" However Stimson, in reviewing his diary after the war, recalled that the commanders at Pearl Harbor had been warned of the possibility of attack, and that the poor state of readiness that the attack had revealed was a surprise to him: [Yet] General Short had been told the two essential facts: 1) a war with Japan is threatening, 2) hostile action by Japan is possible at any moment. Given these two facts, both of which were stated without equivocation in the message of Nov. 27, the outpost commander should be on the alert to make his fight ... To cluster his airplanes in such groups and positions that in an emergency they could not take the air for several hours, and to keep his antiaircraft ammunition so stored that it could not be promptly and immediately available, and to use his best reconnaissance system, radar, only for a very small fraction of the day and night, in my opinion betrayed a misconception of his real duty which was almost beyond belief. ... Robert Stinnett's Day of Deceit suggests a memorandum prepared by Commander McCollum was central to U.S. policy in the immediate pre-war period. Stinnett claims the memo suggests only a direct attack on U.S. interests would sway the American public (or Congress) to favor direct involvement in the European war, specifically in support of the British. An attack by Japan would not, could not, aid Britain. Although the memo was passed to Captains Walter Anderson and Dudley Knox, two of Roosevelt's military advisors, on October 7, 1940, there is no evidence to suggest Roosevelt ever saw it, while Stinnett's claims of evidence he did is nonexistent. Moreover, although Anderson and Knox offered eight specific plans to aggrieve the Japanese Empire and added, "If by these means Japan could be led to commit an overt act of war, so much the better," of the eight "plans" (actions to be taken) offered in the memo, many if not all were implemented, but there is considerable doubt the McCollum memo was the inspiration.[citation needed] Nonetheless, in Day of Deceit Stinnett claims all action items were implemented. Yet there were numerous instances of members of the Roosevelt Administration insisting on not provoking Japan. Mark Parillo, in his essay The United States in the Pacific, wrote, "[t]hese theories tend to founder on the logic of the situation. Had Roosevelt and other members of his administration known of the attack in advance, they would have been foolish to sacrifice one of the major instruments needed to win the war just to get the United States into it." Furthermore, on November 5, 1941, in a joint memo, Stark, CNO, and Marshall, Army Chief of Staff, warned, "if Japan be defeated and Germany remain undefeated, decision will still not have been reached.... War between the United States and Japan should be avoided...." Additionally, in a November 21, 1941, memo, Brigadier Leonard T. Gerow, head of Army War Plans, stated, "one of our present major objectives [is] the avoidance of war with Japan...[and to] insure continuance of material assistance to the British." He concluded, "[I]t is of grave importance to our war effort in Europe..." Furthermore, Churchill himself, in a May 15, 1940, telegram, said he hoped a U.S. commitment to aid Britain would "quiet" Japan, following with a October 4 message requesting a USN courtesy visit to Singapore aimed at "preventing the spreading of the war" And Stark's own Plan Dog expressly stated, "Any strength that we might send to the Far East would...reduce the force of our blows against Germany..." Roosevelt could scarcely have been ignorant of Stark's views, and war with Japan was clearly contrary to Roosevelt's express wish to aid Britain. Oliver Lyttelton, the British Minister of War Production, said, "... Japan was provoked into attacking the Americans at Pearl Harbor. It is a travesty of history ever to say that America was forced into the war. Everyone knows where American sympathies were. It is incorrect to say that America was truly neutral even before America came into the war on an all-out basis." How this demonstrates anything with regard to Japan is unclear. Rather, it refers to other aid to Britain. Lend-Lease, enacted in March 1941, informally declared the end of American neutrality in favor of the Allies by agreeing to supply Allied nations with war materials. In addition, Roosevelt authorized a so-called Neutrality Patrol, which would protect the merchantmen of one nation, namely Britain, from attack by another, Germany. This made shipping legitimate target of attack by submarine. Furthermore, Roosevelt ordered U.S. destroyers to report U-boats, then later authorized them to "shoot on sight". This made the U.S. a de facto belligerent. None was the act of a disinterested neutral, while all are unquestionably of assistance to Britain. When considering information like this as a point for or against, the reader must keep in mind questions such as: was this official privy to information about the U.S. government? Did he have communications with high-level administration figures such as President Roosevelt or Ambassador Joseph Grew? Is this just a strongly held personal opinion? Or were there measures justifying this view? If Britain, did, indeed know and chose to conceal, "withholding this vital intelligence only ran the risk of losing American trust", and with it any further American aid, which would be reduced after the attack in any event. There is also a claim, first asserted in John Toland's Infamy, that ONI knew about Japanese carrier movements. Toland cited entries from the diary of Rear Admiral J. E. Meijer Ranneft of the Dutch Navy for December 2 and 6. Ranneft attended briefings at ONI on these dates. According to Toland, Ranneft wrote that he was told by ONI that two Japanese carriers were northwest of Honolulu. However, the diary uses the Dutch abbreviation beW, meaning "westerly", contradicting Toland's claim. Nor did any other persons present at the briefings report hearing Toland's version. In their reviews of Infamy, David Kahn and John C. Zimmerman suggested Ranneft's reference was to carriers near the Marshall Islands. Toland has made other conflicting and incorrect claims about the diary during lectures at the Holocaust denial organization the Institute for Historical Review.[citation needed] The diary states at 02:00 (6-12-41) Turner fears a sudden Japanese attack on Manila. At 14:00 the diary states "Everyone present on O.N.I. I speak to Director Admiral Wilkinson, Captain MacCollum, Lt. Cdr. Kramer ... They show me – on my request – the place of the 2 carriers (see 2–12–41) West of Honolulu. I ask what the idea is of these carriers on that place. The answer was: 'perhaps in connection with Japanese rapports [sic] on eventual American actions'. There is not one of ours who speaks about a possible air attack on Honolulu. I myself did not think of it because I believed everyone on Honolulu to be 100% on the alert, as everyone here on O.N.I. There prevails a tense state of mind at O.N.I." These diary entries are provided (in Dutch) in the photo section in George Victor's The Pearl Harbor Myth: Rethinking the Unthinkable. CBS correspondent Edward R. Murrow had a dinner appointment at the White House on December 7. Because of the attack he and his wife only ate with Mrs. Roosevelt, but the president asked Murrow to stay afterwards. As he waited outside the Oval Office, Murrow observed government and military officials entering and leaving. He wrote after the war: There was ample opportunity to observe at close range the bearing and expression of Mr. Stimson, Colonel Knox, and Secretary Hull. If they were not surprised by the news from Pearl Harbor, then that group of elderly men were putting on a performance which would have excited the admiration of any experienced actor. … It may be that the degree of the disaster had appalled them and that they had known for some time…. But I could not believe it then and I cannot do so now. There was amazement and anger written large on most of the faces. One historian has written, however, that when Murrow met Roosevelt with William J. Donovan of the OSS that night, while the magnitude of the destruction at Pearl Harbor horrified the president, Roosevelt seemed slightly less surprised by the attack than the other men. According to Murrow, the president told him, "Maybe you think [the attack] didn't surprise us!" He said later, "I believed him", and thought that he might have been asked to stay as a witness. When allegations of Roosevelt's foreknowledge appeared after the war, John Gunther asked Murrow about the meeting. Murrow reportedly responded the full story would pay for his son's college education and "if you think I'm going to give it to you, you're out of your mind". Murrow did not write the story, however, before his death. British-Australian author Jesse Fink asserts in his 2023 biography of MI6 intelligence officer Dick Ellis that Roosevelt knew an attack would be forthcoming. Ellis helped William Donovan set up the Office of Strategic Services and was deputy to William Stephenson at British Security Co-ordination. In Fink's book, The Eagle in the Mirror, Ellis is quoted as saying: ‘[Stephenson] was convinced from the information that was reaching him that this attack was imminent, and through Jimmy Roosevelt, President Roosevelt’s son, he passed this information to the President. Now whether the President at that time had other information which corroborated this... it’s impossible to say.' On October 7, 1940, Lieutenant Commander Arthur H. McCollum of the Office of Naval Intelligence submitted a memo to Navy Captains Walter S. Anderson and Dudley Knox, which details eight actions which might have the effect of provoking Japan into attacking the United States. The memo remained classified until 1994 and contains the notable line, "If by these means Japan could be led to commit an overt act of war, so much the better." Sections 9 and 10 of the memo are said by Gore Vidal [citation needed] to be the "smoking gun" revealed in Stinnett's book, suggesting it was central to the high-level plan to lure the Japanese into an attack. Evidence the memo or derivative works actually reached President Roosevelt, senior administration officials, or the highest levels of U.S. Navy command, is circumstantial, at best. Theorists challenging the traditional view that Pearl Harbor was a surprise repeatedly note that Roosevelt wanted the U.S. to intervene in the war against Germany, though he did not say so officially. A basic understanding of the political situation of 1941 precludes any possibility the public wanted war. Thomas Fleming argued President Roosevelt wished for Germany or Japan to strike the first blow, but did not expect the United States to be hit as severely as it was in the attack on Pearl Harbor. An attack by Japan on the U.S. could not guarantee the U.S. would declare war on Germany.[page needed] After such an attack, American public anger would be directed at Japan, not Germany, just as happened. The Tripartite Pact (Germany, Italy, Japan) called for each to aid another in defense; Japan could not reasonably claim America had attacked Japan if she struck first. For instance, Germany had been at war with the UK since 1939, and with the USSR since June 1941, without Japanese assistance. There had been a serious, if low-level, naval war going on in the Atlantic between Germany and the U.S. since summer of 1941, as well. On October 17 a U-boat torpedoed a U.S. destroyer, USS Kearny, inflicting severe damage and killing eleven crewmen. Two weeks after the attack on the Kearny, a submarine sank an American destroyer, USS Reuben James, killing 115 sailors. Nevertheless, it was only Hitler's declaration of war on December 11, unforced by treaty, that brought the U.S. into the European war. Clausen and Lee's Pearl Harbor: Final Judgement reproduces a Purple message, dated November 29, 1941, from the Japanese Ambassador in Berlin to Tokyo. A closing paragraph reads, "... He (Ribbentrop) also said that if Japan were to go to war with America, Germany would, of course, join in immediately, and Hitler's intention was that there should be absolutely no question of Germany making a separate peace with England. ..." Assertions that Japanese codes had already been broken U.S. signals intelligence in 1941 was both impressively advanced and uneven. In 1929, the U.S. MI-8 cryptographic operation in New York City was shut down by Henry Stimson (Hoover's newly appointed Secretary of State), citing "ethical considerations", which inspired its former director, Herbert Yardley, to write a 1931 book, The American Black Chamber, about its successes in breaking other nations' crypto traffic. Most countries responded promptly by changing (and generally improving) their ciphers and codes, forcing other nations to start over in reading their signals. The Japanese were no exception. Nevertheless, U.S. cryptanalytic work continued after Stimson's action in two separate efforts: the Army's Signal Intelligence Service (SIS) and the Navy's Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) crypto group, OP-20-G. Cryptanalytic work was kept secret to such an extent, however, that major commands such as the 14th Naval District at Pearl Harbor were prohibited from working on codebreaking by Admiral Kelly Turner. By late 1941, those organizations had broken several Japanese ciphers, such as J19 and PA-K2, called Tsu and Oite respectively by the Japanese. The highest security diplomatic code, dubbed Purple by the U.S., had been broken, but American cryptanalysts had made little progress against the IJN's current Kaigun Ango Sho D (Naval Code D, called AN-1 by the U.S.; JN-25 after March 1942). In addition, there was a perennial shortage of manpower, thanks to penury on one hand and the perception of intelligence as a low-value career path on the other. Translators were over-worked, cryptanalysts were in short supply, and staffs were generally stressed. In 1942, "Not every cryptogram was decoded. Japanese traffic was too heavy for the undermanned Combat Intelligence Unit." Furthermore, there were difficulties retaining good intelligence officers and trained linguists; most did not remain on the job for the extended periods necessary to become truly professional. For career reasons, nearly all wanted to return to more standard assignments. However, concerning the manning levels, "... just prior to World War II, [the US] had some 700 people engaged in the effort and [was], in fact, obviously having some successes." Of these, 85% were tasked to decryption and 50% to translation efforts against IJN codes. The nature and degree of these successes has led to great confusion among non-specialists. Furthermore, OP-20-GY "analysts relied as much on summary reports as on the actual intercepted messages." The U.S. was also given decrypted messages by Dutch (NEI) intelligence, who like the others in the British–Dutch–U.S. agreement to share the cryptographic load, shared information with allies. However, the U.S. refused to do likewise. This was, at least in part, due to fears of compromise; sharing even between the US Navy and Army was restricted (e.g see Central Bureau).[citation needed] The eventual flow of intercepted and decrypted information was tightly and capriciously controlled. At times, even President Roosevelt did not receive all information from code-breaking activities.[citation needed] There were fears of compromise as a result of poor security after a memo dealing with Magic was found in the desk of Brigadier General Edwin M. (Pa) Watson, the President's military aide. The Japanese code dubbed "Purple", which was used by the Japanese Foreign Office and only for diplomatic (but not for military) messages, was broken by Army cryptographers in 1940. A 14-part message using this code, sent from Japan to its embassy in Washington, was decoded in Washington on December 6 and 7. The message, which made plain the Japanese intention to break off diplomatic relations with the United States, was to be delivered by the Japanese ambassador at 1 p.m. Washington time (dawn in the Pacific). The SIS decoded the first 13 parts of the message, but did not decode the 14th part of the message until it was too late. Colonel Rufus S. Bratton, then serving as Chief of the Far Eastern Section of G-2 (intelligence), was responsible for receiving and distributing Magic intercepts to senior military and government officials. In Bratton's view, the 14-part message by itself merely signaled a break in diplomatic relations, which appeared to be inevitable anyway. Others saw it differently: Roosevelt, upon reviewing just the first 13-parts (and without part 14 or the 1 p.m. delivery requirement) declared "this means war", and when Marshall was given the intercept on the morning of December 7, ordered a warning message sent to American bases in the area, including Hawaii. Due to atmospheric transmission conditions the message was sent out via Western Union over its undersea cable rather than over the military radio channels; the message was not received until the attack was already underway. The claim no pre-attack IJN message expressly mentioned Pearl Harbor is perhaps true. The claims that no Purple traffic pointed to Pearl Harbor may also be true, as the Japanese Foreign Office was not well thought of by the military and during this period was routinely excluded from sensitive or secret material, including war planning. It is also possible any such intercepts were not translated until after the attack, or indeed, after the war ended; some messages were not. In both instances, all traffic from these pre-attack intercepts has not yet been declassified and released to the public domain. Hence, any such claims are now indeterminate, pending a fuller accounting. Additionally, no decrypts have come to light of JN-25B traffic with any intelligence value prior to Pearl Harbor, and certainly no such has been identified. Such breaks as recorded by authors W. J. Holmes and Clay Blair Jr., were into the additive tables, which was a required second step of three (see above). The first 100 JN-25 decrypts from all sources in date/time order of translation have been released, and are available in the National Archives. The first JN-25B decrypt was in fact by HYPO (Hawaii) on January 8, 1942 (numbered #1 up JN-25B RG38 CNSG Library, Box 22, 3222/82 NA CP). The first 25 decrypts were very short messages or partial decrypts of marginal intelligence value. As Whitlock stated, "The reason that not one single JN-25 decrypt made prior to Pearl Harbor has ever been found or declassified is not due to any insidious cover-up... it is due quite simply to the fact that no such decrypt ever existed. It simply was not within the realm of our combined cryptologic capability to produce a usable decrypt at that particular juncture." The JN-25 superencrypted code, and its cryptanalysis by the US, is one of the most debated portions of Pearl Harbor lore. JN-25 is the U.S. Navy's last of several names for the cryptosystem of the Imperial Japanese Navy, sometimes referred to as Naval Code D. Other names used for it include five-numeral, 5Num, five-digit, five-figure, AN (JN-25 Able), and AN-1 (JN-25 Baker), and so on. Superenciphered codes of this sort were widely used and were the state of the art in practical cryptography at the time. JN-25 was very similar in principle to the British "Naval Cypher No. 3", known to have been broken by Germany during World War II. Once it was realized what sort of cryptosystem JN-25 was, how to attempt breaking into it was known. Stinnett notes the existence of a USN handbook for attacks on such a system, produced by OP-20-G.[citation needed] Even so, breaking any such code was not easy in actual practice. It took much effort and time, not least in accumulating sufficient 'cryptanalytic depth' in intercepted messages prior to the outbreak of hostilities when IJN radio traffic increased abruptly and substantially; prior to December 7, 1941, IJN radio traffic was limited, since the IJN played only a minor role in the war against China and therefore was only rarely required to send unencrypted radio messages whatever the highest level crypto system might have been; thus, most Japanese encrypted broadcast military radio traffic was Army traffic associated with the land operations in China, none of which used IJN cryptography (also, interception of IJN traffic off China would have been spotty at best). Rather oddly however, the official history of GYP-1 shows nearly 45,000 IJN messages intercepted during the period from June 1, 1941, until December 4, 1941.[citation needed] Breaking a superencrypted cipher like JN-25 was a three-step process: (a) determining the "indicator" method to establish the starting point within the additive cipher, (b) stripping away the superencryption to expose the bare code, and then (c) breaking the code itself. When JN-25 was first detected and recognized, such intercepted messages as were interceptable were collected (at assorted intercept stations around the Pacific by the Navy) in an attempt to accumulate sufficient depth to attempt to strip away the superencryption. Success at doing so was termed by the cryptographers a 'break' into the system. Such a break did not always produce a cleartext version of the intercepted message; only a break in the third phase could do so. Only after breaking the underlying code (another difficult process) would the message be available, and even then its meaning—in an intelligence sense—might be less than fully clear. When a new edition was released, the cryptographers were forced to start again. The original JN-25A system replaced the 'Blue' code (as Americans called it), and used five-digit numbers, each divisible by three (and so usable as a quick, and somewhat reliable, error check, as well as something of a 'crib' to cryptanalysts), giving a total of 33,334 legal code values. To make it harder to crack a code value, meaningless additives (from a large table or book of five-digit numbers) were added arithmetically to each five-digit cipher element. JN-25B superseded the first release of JN-25 at the start of December 1940. JN-25B had 55,000 valid words, and while it initially used the same additive list, this was soon changed and the cryptanalysts found themselves entirely locked out again. Over the years, various claims have been made as to the progress made decrypting this system, and arguments made over when it was readable (in whole or part). Lt. "Honest John" Leitwiler, Commander of Station CAST, the Philippines, stated in November 1941 that his staff could "walk right across" the number columns of the coded messages.[citation needed] He is frequently quoted in support of claims JN-25 was then mostly readable. This comment, however, refers not to the message itself but to the superenciphering additives and referred to the ease of attacking the code using a new method for discovery of additive values. The November 16, 1941, letter to L.W. Parks (OP-20-GY) sent by Leitwiler states, "We have stopped work on the period 1 February to 31 July as we have all we can do to keep up with the current period. We are reading enough current traffic to keep two translators very busy." Another document, Exhibit No. 151 (Memoranda from Captain L. F. Safford) from the Hewitt Inquiry has a copy of the U.S. Navy message OPNAV-242239 'Evaluation of Messages of November 26, 1941' which has in part: '1. Reference (a) advised that Com 16 intercepts were considered most reliable and requested Com 16 to evaluate reports on Japanese naval movements and send dispatch to OPNAV, info CINCPAC. Com 16's estimates were more reliable than Com 14's, not only because of better radio interception, but because Com 16 was currently reading messages in the Japanese Fleet Cryptographic System ("5-number code" or "JN25") and was exchanging technical information and Japanese-to-English translations with the British unit (the Far East Combined Bureau) then at Singapore. Lt. Cdr. Arthur H. McCollum was aware of this, and it may have been part of his thinking when he drafted the McCollum memo. Duane L. Whitlock, traffic analyst at CAST, was not aware before the attack IJN movement traffic code was being read. "Reading" in this context means being able to see the underlying code groups, not breaking out the messages into usable plaintext. The Hewitt Inquiry document also states, "The "5 numeral system" (JN-25B) yielded no information which would arouse even a suspicion of the Pearl Harbor raid, either before or afterward." Detailed month by month progress reports have shown no reason to believe any JN-25B messages were fully decrypted before the start of the war. Tallied results for September, October, and November reveal roughly 3,800 code groups (out of 55,000, about 7%) had been recovered by the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor. In all, the U.S. intercepted 26,581 messages in naval or related systems, not counting PURPLE, between September and December 1941 alone. So convinced were U.S. Navy planners Japan could only stage a single operation at a time, after intercepts indicated a Japanese buildup for operations in the Dutch East Indies, for more than two weeks (between November 1 and 17), no JN-25 message not relating to that expected operation was even examined for intelligence value. Japanese intelligence Japanese espionage against Pearl Harbor involved at least two Abwehr agents. One of them, Otto Kuhn, was a sleeper agent living in Hawaii with his family. Kuhn was incompetent and there is no evidence he provided information of value. The other, Yugoslavian businessman Duško Popov, was a double agent, working for the XX Committee of MI5. In August 1941, he was sent by the Abwehr to the U.S., with an assignment list that included specific questions about military facilities in Oahu, including Pearl Harbor. Although British Security Coordination introduced Popov to the FBI, the Americans seem to have paid little attention. It is possible that previous propaganda and forged or unreliable intelligence contributed to J. Edgar Hoover's dismissing Popov's interest in Pearl Harbor as unimportant. There is nothing to show his assignment list was passed on to military intelligence, nor was he allowed to visit Hawaii. Popov later asserted his list was a clear warning of the attack, ignored by the bungling FBI. The questions in his list were rambling and general, and in no way pointed to air attack on Pearl Harbor. Prange considered Popov's claim overblown, and argued the notorious questionnaire was a product of Abwehr thoroughness. The Japanese navy realized that Kuhn was incompetent, but the issues were greater than that, and they concluded using non-Japanese for this kind of role was not a good idea to start with. In the two years before the attack, the FBI had caught an effort by Itaru Tachibana to send a ex-sailor named Alva Blake to Pearl Harbor to gather information, and they also had had their longer term agent Frederick Rutland spend two weeks looking around Hawaii. The net was someone Japanese was needed, so at the comparatively late date of March 1941, IJN intelligence sent an undercover officer, Takeo Yoshikawa. The consulate had reported to IJN Intelligence for years, and Yoshikawa increased the rate of reports after his arrival. (Sometimes called a "master spy", he was in fact quite young, and his reports not infrequently contained errors.) Pearl Harbor base security was so lax Yoshikawa had no difficulty obtaining access, even taking the Navy's own harbor tourboat. (Even had he not, hills overlooking the Harbor were perfect for observation or photography, and were freely accessible.) Some of his information, and presumably other material from the Consulate, was hand-delivered to IJN intelligence officers aboard Japanese commercial vessels calling at Hawaii prior to the War; at least one is known to have been deliberately routed to Hawaii for this purpose during the summer. Most, however, seem to have been transmitted to Tokyo, almost certainly via cable (the usual communication method with Tokyo). Many of those messages were intercepted and decrypted by the U.S.; most were evaluated as routine intelligence gathering all nations do about potential opponents, rather than evidence of an active attack plan. None of those currently known, including those decrypted after the attack when there was finally time to return to those remaining undecrypted, explicitly stated anything about an attack on Pearl Harbor. In November 1941, advertisements for a new board game called The Deadly Double appeared in American magazines. These ads later drew suspicion for possibly containing coded messages, for unknown agents, giving advance notice of the Pearl Harbor attack. The ads were headlined "Achtung, Warning, Alerte!" and showed an air raid shelter and a pair of white and black dice which, despite being six-sided, carried the figures 12, 24, and XX, and 5, 7, and 0, respectively. It was suggested that these could possibly be interpreted as giving warning of an air raid on day "7" of month "12" at approximate latitude coordinate "20" (Roman numeral "XX"). The board game was an actual product with sets sold during this time. Detection of Japanese radio transmissions en route There are claims that, as the Kido Butai (the Striking Force) steamed toward Hawaii, radio signals were detected that alerted U.S. intelligence to the imminent attack. For instance, the Matson liner SS Lurline, heading from San Francisco to Hawaii on its regular route, is said to have heard and plotted, via "relative bearings", unusual radio traffic in a telegraphic code very different from International Morse which persisted for several days, and came from signal source(s) moving in an easterly direction, not from shore stations—possibly the approaching Japanese fleet. There are numerous Morse Code standards including those for Japanese, Korean, Arabic, Hebrew, Russian, and Greek. To the experienced radio operator, each has a unique and identifiable pattern. For example, kana, International Morse, and "Continental" Morse all have a specific rhythmic sound to the "dit" and "dah" combinations. This is how Lurline's radiomen, Leslie Grogan, a U.S. Navy reserve officer in naval communications, and with decades of maritime service in the Pacific identified the mooted signal source as Japanese and not, say, Russian. There are several problems with this analysis. Surviving officers from the Japanese ships state there was no radio traffic to have been overheard by anyone: their radio operators had been left in Japan to send fake traffic, and all radio transmitters aboard the ships (even those in the airplanes)[citation needed] were physically disabled to prevent any inadvertent or unauthorized broadcast. The Kido Butai was constantly receiving intelligence and diplomatic updates. Regardless of whether the Kido Butai broke radio silence and transmitted, there was a great deal of radio traffic picked up by its antennas. In that time period, it was known for a radio signal to reflect from the ionosphere (an atmospheric layer); ionospheric skip could result in its reception hundreds or even thousands of miles away. Receiving antennas were sometimes detected passively 'rebroadcasting' signals that reached them at much lower amplitudes, sufficiently low that the phenomenon was not of practical importance, nor even of much significance. Some have argued that, since the Kido Butai contained a large number of possible receiving antennas, it is conceivable the task force did not break radio silence but was detected anyway.[citation needed] Such detection would not have helped the Americans track the Japanese fleet. A radio direction finder (DF or RDF) from that time period reported compass direction without reference to distance. (Moreover, it was common for the receiving stations to report erroneous reciprocal bearings.)[page needed] To locate the source, a plotter needed two such detections taken from two separate stations to triangulate and find the target. If the target was moving, the detections must be close to one another in time. To plot the task force's course with certainty, at least four such detections must have been made in proper time-pairs, and the information analyzed in light of further information received by other means. This complex set of requirements did not occur; if the Kido Butai was detected, it was not tracked.[citation needed] The original records of Lurline surrendered to Lt. Cmdr. George W. Pease, 14th Naval District in Honolulu, have disappeared. Neither Lurline's log, nor the reports to the Navy or Coast Guard by Grogan in Hawaii have been found. Thus no contemporaneously written evidence of what was recorded aboard Lurline is now available. Grogan commented on a signal source "moving" eastward in the North Pacific over several days as shown via "relative bearings" which then "bunched up" and stopped moving. However, the directions given by Grogan in a recreation of the logbook for the Matson Line were 18 and 44° off from known strike force positions and instead pointed towards Japan. According to author Jacobsen, Japanese commercial shipping vessels are the likely source. A re-discovered personal report written by Grogan after the radio log had been passed to the 13th Naval District, dated December 10, 1941, and titled "Record for Posterity", also does not support claims of Kido Butai broadcasting. The contention that "low-powered" radio (such as VHF or what the U.S. Navy called TBS, or talk between ships), might have been used, and detected, is contradicted as impossible due to the tremendous distances involved and when contact was lost, it was routinely presumed it was because low-powered radio and land line were being used. Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for specific RDF reports remain wanting. "A more critical analysis of the source documentation shows that not one single radio direction finder bearing, much less any locating "fix," was obtained on any Kido Butai unit or command during its transit from Saeki Bay, Kyushu to Hitokappu Bay and thence on to Hawaii. By removing this fallacious lynchpin propping up such claims of Kido Butai radio transmissions, the attendant suspected conspiracy tumbles down like a house of cards." One suggested example of a Kido Butai transmission is the November 30, 1941, COMSUM14 report in which Rochefort mentioned a "tactical" circuit heard calling "marus". (a term often used for commercial vessels or non-combat units). Further, the perspective of U.S. naval intelligence at the time was, "... The significance of the term, 'tactical circuit' is that the vessel itself, that is Akagi, was using its own radio to call up the other vessels directly rather than work them through shore stations via the broadcast method which was the common practice in Japanese communications. The working of the Akagi with the Marus, indicated that she was making arrangements for fuel or some administrative function, since a carrier would rarely address a maru." According to a 1942 Japanese after action report, "In order to keep strict radio silence, steps such as taking off fuses in the circuit, and holding and sealing the keys were taken. During the operation, the strict radio silence was perfectly carried out... The Kido Butai used the radio instruments for the first time on the day of the attack since they had been fixed at the base approximately twenty days before and proved they worked well. Paper flaps had been inserted between key points of some transmitters on board Akagi to keep the strictest radio silence..." Commander Genda, who helped plan the attack, stated, "We kept absolute radio silence." For two weeks before the attack, the ships of Kido Butai used flag and light signals (semaphore and blinker), which were sufficient since task force members remained in line of sight for the entire transit time. Kazuyoshi Kochi, the communications officer for Hiei, dismantled vital transmitter parts and kept them in a box that he used as a pillow to prevent Hiei from making any radio transmissions until the attack commenced. Lieutenant Commander Chuichi Yoshioka, communications officer of the flagship, Akagi, said he did not recall any ship sending a radio message before the attack. Furthermore, Captain Kijiro, in charge of the Kido Butai's three screening submarines, stated nothing of interest happened on the way to Hawaii, presumably including signals received from the supposedly radio silent Kido Butai. Vice Admiral Ryūnosuke Kusaka stated, "It is needless to say that the strictest radio silence was ordered to be maintained in every ship of the Task Force. To keep radio silence was easy to say, but not so easy to maintain." There is nothing in the Japanese logs or after action report indicating that radio silence was broken until after the attack. Kusaka worried about this when it was briefly broken on the way home. The appendix to the war-initiating operational order is also often debated. The message of November 25, 1941, from CinC Combined Fleet (Yamamoto) to All Flagships stated, "Ships of the Combined Fleet will observe radio communications procedure as follows: 1. Except in extreme emergency the Main Force and its attached force will cease communicating. 2. Other forces are at the discretion of their respective commanders. 3. Supply ships, repair ships, hospital ships, etc., will report directly to parties concerned." Furthermore, "In accordance with this Imperial Operational Order, the CinC of the Combined Fleet issued his operational order ... The Task Force then drew up its own operational order, which was given for the first time to the whole force at Hitokappu Bay... In paragraph four of the appendix to that document, the especially secret Strike Force was specifically directed to 'maintain strict radio silence from the time of their departure from the Inland Sea. Their communications will be handled entirely on the general broadcast communications net.'" In addition, Genda recalled, in a 1947 interview, Kido Butai's communications officer issuing this order, with the task force to rely (as might be expected) on flag and blinker. Radio deception measures The Japanese practiced radio deception. Susumu Ishiguru, intelligence and communications officer for Carrier Division Two, stated, "Every day false communications emanated from Kyushu at the same time and same wavelength as during the training period." Because of this, Commander Joseph Rochefort of Hawaii Signals Intelligence concluded that the First Air Fleet remained in home waters for routine training. The ships left their own regular wireless operators behind to carry on "routine" radio traffic. Captain Sadatoshi Tomioka stated, "The main force in the Inland Sea and the land-based air units carried out deceptive communications to indicate the carriers were training in the Kyushu area." The main Japanese naval bases (Yokosuka, Kure, and Sasebo) all engaged in considerable radio deception. Analysis of the bearings from Navy DF stations account for claimed breaks of radio silence, and when plotted, the bearings point to Japanese naval bases, not where the Kido Butai actually was. On November 26, CAST reported all Japan's aircraft carriers were at their home bases. Rochefort, with Huckins and Williams, states there were no dummy messages used at any time throughout 1941 and no effort by the Japanese to use serious deception. When asked after the attack just how he knew where Akagi was, Rochefort (who commanded HYPO at the time) said he recognized her "same ham-fisted" radio operators. (The Japanese contend that radio operators were left behind as part of the deception operation.) The critical DF-tracked radio transmissions show bearings that could have not come from the strike force. Emissions monitored from CAST, or CAST's report Akagi was off Okinawa on December 8, 1941, are examples, though some transmissions continue to be debated. To deceive radio eavesdroppers, IJN Settsu commanded by Captain Chiaki Matsuda sailed from Taiwan to the Philippines simulating radio traffic for all six fleet carriers of the 1st Air Fleet and two other light carriers. U.S. contact with Japanese submarines A Japanese two-man "midget" submarine, one of five eventually discovered, was detected at 0342 in the sea lanes leading to Pearl Harbor, and sunk by the destroyer Ward outside the harbor entrance at 0645, just over an hour before the main Japanese air attack commenced. The detection of the submarine might have provided enough notice for the Americans to disperse aircraft and launch reconnaissance aircraft, however, the process of encoding the message and sending it from Ward's radio shack took valuable time, and the decoding process at CINCPACFLT would have added to the delay. It has been argued that the failure to investigate more thoroughly the threat of more midget subs saved Enterprise. If she had been correctly directed, she might have run into the six-carrier Japanese strike force. After the attack, the search for the attack force was concentrated south of Pearl Harbor, continuing the confusion and ineffectiveness of the American response. Allied intelligence Locally, Naval Intelligence in Hawaii had been tapping telephones at the Japanese Consulate before the 7th. Among much routine traffic was overheard a most peculiar discussion of flowers in a call to Tokyo (the significance of which is still publicly opaque and which was discounted in Hawaii at the time), but the Navy's tap was discovered and removed in the first week of December. The local FBI field office was informed of neither the tap nor its removal; the local FBI Agent in charge later claimed he would have had installed one of his own had he known the Navy's had been disconnected. Throughout 1941, the U.S., Britain, and the Netherlands collected considerable evidence suggesting Japan was planning some new military venture. The Japanese attack on the U.S. in December was essentially a side operation to the main Japanese thrust to the South against Malaya and the Philippines—many more resources, especially Imperial Army resources, were devoted to these attacks as compared to Pearl Harbor. Many in the Japanese military (both Army and Navy) had disagreed with Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto's idea of attacking the U.S. Fleet at Pearl Harbor when it was first proposed in early 1941, and remained reluctant after the Navy approved planning and training for an attack beginning in spring 1941, and through the highest level Imperial Conferences in September and November which first approved it as policy (allocation of resources, preparation for execution), and then authorized the attack. The Japanese focus on Southeast Asia was quite accurately reflected in U.S. intelligence assessments; there were warnings of attacks against Thailand (the Kra Peninsula), Malaya, French Indochina, the Dutch East Indies (Davao-Weigo Line), the Philippines, even Russia. Pearl Harbor was not mentioned. In fact, when the final part of the "14-Part Message" (also called the "one o'clock message") crossed Kramer's desk, he cross-referenced the time (per usual practice, not the brainwave often portrayed) and tried to connect the timing to a Japanese convoy (the Thai invasion force) recently detected by Admiral Hart in the Philippines. The U.S. Navy was aware of the traditional planning of the Imperial Japanese Navy for war with the U.S., as maintained throughout the 1930s and into the 1940s. The Japanese made no secret of it, and in the 1930s American radio intelligence gave U.S. war planners considerable insight in Japanese naval exercises. These plans presumed there would be a large decisive battle between Japanese and U.S. battleships, but this would be fought near Japan, after the numerical superiority of the U.S. Pacific Fleet (assured by the Washington Naval Treaty, and still taken as given) was whittled down by primarily night attacks by light forces, such as destroyers and submarines. This strategy expected the Japanese fleet to take a defensive posture, awaiting U.S. attack, and it was confirmed by the Japanese Navy staff only three weeks before Pearl Harbor. In the 1920s, the decisive battle was supposed to happen near the Ryukyu islands; in 1940 it was expected to occur in the central Pacific, near the Marshall islands. War Plan Orange reflected this in its own planning for an advance across the Pacific. Yamamoto's decision to shift the focus of the confrontation with the U.S. as far east as Pearl Harbor, and to use his aircraft carriers to cripple the American battleships, was a radical enough departure from previous doctrine to leave analysts in the dark. There had been a specific claim of a plan for an attack on Pearl Harbor from the Peruvian Ambassador to Japan in early 1941. (The source of this intelligence was traced to the Ambassador's Japanese cook.[self-published source?] It was treated with skepticism, and properly so, given the nascent state of planning for the attack at the time and the unreliability of the source.) Since Yamamoto had not yet decided to even argue for an attack on Pearl Harbor, discounting Ambassador Grew's report to Washington in early 1941 was quite sensible. Later reports from a Korean labor organization also seem to have been regarded as unlikely, though they may have had better grounding in actual IJN actions. In August 1941, British Intelligence, MI6, dispatched its agent Duško Popov, code name Tricycle, to Washington to alert the FBI about German requests for detailed intelligence about defenses at Pearl Harbor, indicating that the request had come from Japan. Popov further revealed that the Japanese had requested detailed information about the British attack on the Italian fleet at Taranto. For whatever reason, the FBI took no action. Several authors have controversially claimed that Winston Churchill had significant advance knowledge of the attack on Pearl Harbor but intentionally chose not to share this information with the Americans in order to secure their participation in the war. These authors allege that Churchill knew that the Japanese were planning an imminent attack against the United States by mid-November 1941. They furthermore claim that Churchill knew that the Japanese fleet was leaving port on November 26, 1941, to an unknown destination. Finally, they claim that on December 2, British intelligence intercepted Admiral Yamamoto's signal indicating December 7 as the day of an attack. One story from author Constantine Fitzgibbon claimed that a letter received from Victor Cavendish-Bentinck stated that Britain's JIC met and discussed at length the impending Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. From a Joint Intelligence Sub-Committee session of December 5, 1941 it was stated "We knew that they changed course. I remember presiding over a J.I.C. meeting and being told that a Japanese fleet was sailing in the direction of Hawaii, asking 'Have we informed our transatlantic brethren?' and receiving an affirmative reply." However the author was incorrect. There was no session on December 5 nor was Pearl Harbor discussed when they did meet on December 3. Official U.S. war warnings In late November 1941, both the U.S. Navy and Army sent explicit warnings of war with Japan to all Pacific commands. On November 27 Washington sent a final alert to Pacific American military commanders, such as the message sent to Admiral Kimmel at Pearl Harbor, which read in part: "This dispatch is to be considered a war warning...an aggression move by Japan is expected within the next days." Although these plainly stated the high probability of imminent war with Japan, and instructed recipients to be accordingly on alert for war, they did not mention the likelihood of an attack on Pearl Harbor itself, instead focusing on the Far East. Washington forwarded none of the raw intelligence it had, and little of its intelligence estimates (after analysis), to commanders in Hawaii, Admiral Husband E. Kimmel and General Walter C. Short. Washington did not solicit their views about likelihood of war or Hawaiian special concerns. Washington's war warning messages have also been criticized by some (e.g., the U.S. Army Pearl Harbor Board – "Do/Don't Messages") as containing "conflicting and imprecise" language. Since the Army was officially responsible for the security of the Pearl Harbor facilities and Hawaiian defense generally, and so of the Navy's ships while in port, Army actions are of particular interest. Short reported to Washington he had increased his alert level (but his earlier change in meaning for those levels was not understood in Washington and led to misunderstanding there about what he was really doing). In addition, Short's main concern was sabotage from fifth columnists (expected to precede the outbreak of war for decades preceding the attack), which accounts for his orders that Army Air Corps planes be parked close together near the center of the airfields. There seems to have been no increased Army urgency about getting its existing radar equipment properly integrated with the local command and control in the year it had been available and operational in Hawaii before the attack. Leisurely radar training continued and the recently organized early warning center was left minimally staffed. Anti-aircraft guns remained in a state of low readiness, with ammunition in secured lockers. Neither Army long-range bombers nor Navy PBYs were used effectively, remaining on a peacetime maintenance and use schedule. Short evidently failed to understand he had the responsibility to defend the fleet. In Short's defense, it should be noted he had training responsibilities to meet, and the best patrol aircraft, B-17s and B-24s, were in demand in the Philippines and Britain, both of which had higher priority (he wanted at least 180 heavy bombers, but already had 35 B-17s, and was getting 12 more). Little was done to prepare for air attack. Inter-service rivalries between Kimmel and Short did not improve the situation. In particular, most intelligence information was sent to Kimmel, assuming he would relay it to Short, and vice versa; this assumption was honored mostly in the breach. Hawaii did not have a Purple cipher machine (although, by agreement at the highest levels between U.S. and UK cryptographic establishments, four had been delivered to the British by October 1941), so Hawaii remained dependent on Washington for intelligence from that (militarily limited) source. However, since Short had no liaison with Kimmel's intelligence staff, he was usually left out of the loop. Henry Clausen reported the war warnings could not be more precise because Washington could not risk Japan guessing the U.S. was reading important parts of their traffic (most importantly Purple), as well as because neither was cleared to receive Purple. One major point often omitted from the debate (though Costello covers it thoroughly) is the Philippines, where MacArthur, unlike Kimmel or Short, had complete access to all decrypted Purple and JN-25 traffic CAST could provide (indeed, Stinnet quotes Whitlock to that effect), and was nevertheless caught unprepared and with all planes on the ground, nine hours after the Pearl Harbor attack. Caidin and Blair also raise the issue. Although it has been argued that there was sufficient intelligence at the time to give commanders at Pearl Harbor a greater level of alert, some factors may take on unambiguous meaning not clear at the time, lost in what Roberta Wohlstetter in her masterful examination of the situation called "noise", "scattered amid the dross of many thousands of other intelligence bits, some of which just as convincingly pointed to a Japanese attack on the Panama Canal." Role of American carriers None of the three U.S. Pacific Fleet aircraft carriers were in Pearl Harbor when the attack came. This has been alleged by some to suggest potential advance knowledge of the attack by those in charge of their disposition; with the carriers away so as to save them (the most valuable ships) from attack. In fact, the two carriers then operating with the Pacific Fleet, Enterprise and Lexington, were on missions to deliver fighters to Wake and Midway Islands, which were intended in part to protect the route used by planes (including B-17s) bound for the Philippines (the third, Saratoga, was in routine refit in Puget Sound, at the Bremerton shipyard). At the time of the attack, Enterprise was about 200 mi (170 nmi; 320 km) west of Pearl Harbor, heading back. In fact, Enterprise had been scheduled to be back on December 6, but was delayed by weather. A new arrival estimate put her arrival at Pearl around 07:00, almost an hour before the attack, but she was, for unspecified reasons, also unable to make that schedule. Furthermore, at the time, aircraft carriers were classified as fleet scouting elements, and hence relatively expendable. They were not capital ships. The most important vessels in naval planning even as late as Pearl Harbor were battleships (per the Mahan doctrine followed by both the U.S. and Japanese navies at the time). Carriers became the Navy's most important ships only following the attack. At the time, naval establishments all over the world regarded battleships, not carriers, as the most powerful and significant elements of naval power. Had the U.S. wanted to preserve its key assets from attack, it would almost certainly have focused on protecting battleships. It was the attack on Pearl Harbor itself that first helped vault the carrier ahead of the battleship in importance. The attack demonstrated the carrier's unprecedented ability to attack the enemy at a great distance, with great force and surprise. The U.S. would turn this ability against Japan. Elimination of battleships from the Pacific Fleet forced the Americans to rely on carriers for offensive operations. Lack of court-martial Another issue in the debate is the fact neither Admiral Kimmel nor General Short ever faced court martial. It is alleged this was to avoid disclosing information showing the U.S. had advanced knowledge of the attack. When asked, "Will historians know more later?", Kimmel replied, "' ... I'll tell you what I believe. I think that most of the incriminating records have been destroyed. ... I doubt if the truth will ever emerge.' ..." From Vice Admiral Libby, "I will go to my grave convinced that FDR ordered Pearl Harbor to let happen. He must have known." It could also be the case that this was done to avoid disclosing the fact that Japanese codes were being read, given that there was a war on. [citation needed] Unreleased classified information Part of the controversy of the debate centers on the state of documents pertaining to the attack. There are some related to Pearl Harbor which have not yet [when?] been made public. Some may no longer exist, as many documents were destroyed early during the war due to fears of an impending Japanese invasion of Hawaii. Still others are partial and mutilated. Conflicting stories regarding FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) requests for the source materials used, e.g., Sheet Number 94644, or materials available at the National Archives are also common among the debate. However, much information has been said to have been automatically destroyed under a destruction of classified information policy during the war itself. Various authors have nevertheless continued to bring classified Pearl Harbor materials to light via FOIA. For instance, Sheet No. 94644 derives from its reference in the FOIA-released Japanese Navy Movement Reports of Station H in November 1941. Entries for November 28, 1941, have several more items of interest, each being a "movement code" message (indicating ship movements or movement orders), with specific details given by associated Sheet Numbers. Examples are: Sheet No. 94069 has information on "KASUGA MARU" – this being hand-written (Kasuga Maru was later converted to CVE Taiyo); Sheet No. 94630 is associated with IJN oiler Shiriya (detailed to the Midway Neutralization Force, with destroyers Ushio and Sazanami, not the Kido Butai); and finally for Sheet No. 94644 there is another hand-written remark "FAF using Akagi xtmr" (First Air Fleet using Akagi's transmitter). It is known that the movement reports were largely readable at the time. These three documents (Sheet Numbers 94069, 94630, and 94644) are examples of materials which yet, even after decades and numerous specific FOIA requests, have not been declassified fully and made available to the public. Sheet Number 94644, for example, noted as coming from Akagi's transmitter and as being a "movement code" report, would have likely contained a reported position. A purported transcript of a conversation between Roosevelt and Churchill in late November 1941 was analyzed and determined to be fake. There are claims about these conversations; much of this is based on fictional documents, often cited as "Roll T-175" at the National Archives. There is no Roll T-175; NARA does not use that terminology. See also Notes References Sources Further reading External links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1986_Mozambican_Tupolev_Tu-134_crash] | [TOKENS: 6816] |
Contents 1986 Mozambican Tupolev Tu-134 crash On 19 October 1986, a Tupolev Tu-134 jetliner with a Soviet crew carrying President Samora Machel and 43 others from Mbala, Zambia to the Mozambican capital Maputo crashed at Mbuzini, South Africa. Nine passengers and one crew member survived the crash, but President Machel and 33 others died, including several ministers and senior officials of the Mozambican government. A board of inquiry blamed the captain for failing to react to the ground proximity warning system. Another theory was that the crew had set the aircraft's VOR receivers to the wrong frequency, causing them to receive signals from a different airport, or even that a false beacon had been used to lure the crew off course. While there was widespread suspicion in other nations that South Africa, which was hostile towards Machel's government at the time, was involved in the incident, no conclusive evidence was ever presented to support that allegation. Accident The aircraft involved, manufactured by Tupolev in 19 August 1980, was a Tupolev Tu-134A-3, registered as C9-CAA, with serial number 63457. It had accumulated about 1,105 flying hours since the first flight, and had undergone its last major inspection in August 1984 in the Soviet Union. Service records indicated that it had been properly maintained, and data recovered from the Digital Flight Data Recorder (DFDR) showed the aircraft and all its systems were operating normally.: 32–33 In command was 48-year-old Captain Yuri Viktorovich Novodran. In total, he had logged 13,056 hours of flying time, 7,523 of which were logged on the Tu-134. His co-pilot was 29-year-old First Officer Igor Petrovich Kartamyshev. In total, he had logged 3,790 hours of flying time, 2,380 of which were logged on the Tu-134. The flight engineer was 37-year-old Vladimir B. Novoselov, logging 6,203 of his total flight hours all on the Tu-134. The navigator was 48-year-old Oleg Nikolaevich Kudryashov with 12,942 hours of flying time, 6,074 of which on the Tu-134 and the radio operator was 39-year-old Anatoly Shulipov, having logged 14,370 hours of flying time, of which 1,450 logged on the Tu-134. All of the mentioned were Soviet state employees operating the aircraft for the Mozambican government. They were well experienced in both day and night flying in Mozambique and in landings at Maputo airport.: 28–31 On the morning of 19 October, Machel boarded the flight at Maputo, and, after a refuelling stop in Lusaka, Zambia, arrived at Mbala, Zambia at 11:00. After the meeting with Kaunda and Dos Santos, Machel and his party re-boarded the aircraft and departed Mbala at 18:38 for a non-stop return to Maputo. The weather forecast for the flight was favourable, with an estimated time of arrival of 21:25.: 20 At 20:46, the flight made its first radio contact with Maputo air traffic control (ATC), reporting its position and that it was continuing towards the Maputo VHF Omnidirectional Range (VOR) navigation beacon while maintaining an altitude of 35,000 feet (11,000 m). At 21:02, the crew radioed that they were ready to begin descent, and were instructed by Maputo air traffic control to report reaching 3,000 feet (910 m) or when the runway lights were in sight, they began their descent for an ILS approach to runway 23.: 21 Over the next eight minutes, the aircraft maintained its required track toward Maputo with minor lateral deviations. Then, at 21:10, the aircraft turned away from Maputo to the right, lasting almost one minute in duration resulting in a heading change from 184° to 221°. At this time, the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) recorded the navigator stating the distance remaining to Maputo as 100 kilometres (62 mi; 54 nmi), then a comment from the captain about the turn, and the navigator's response that the "VOR indicates that way".: 22 At around 21:15, the navigator stated that the distance to Maputo was 60 kilometres (37 mi; 32 nmi). Over the next few minutes, there were several comments from the crew indicating that they believed the navigational aids at Maputo were unavailable. The captain then stated that "there is no Maputo" and "electrical power is off, chaps!", while the navigator reported that the instrument landing system (ILS) and distance measuring equipment (DME) were switched off and that the non-directional beacons (NDBs) were not working.: 23 Shortly after 21:18, the aircraft reached 910 metres (3,000 ft) in its descent, and the crew informed the Maputo controller that they were maintaining that altitude. However, the flight continued to descend.[citation needed] The Maputo controller granted clearance for an ILS approach to runway 23,: 23 but after the flight crew reported the ILS out of service, the controller changed the clearance to a visual approach to runway 05. During this time, the navigator stated the distance to Maputo as 25–30 km (16–19 mi; 13–16 nmi); the captain remarked that something was wrong and the co-pilot said that the runway was not lit.: 23–24 The crew radioed the Maputo controller and asked him to "check your runway lights". Around 21:21, the navigator stated the range to Maputo as 18–20 km (11–12 mi; 9.7–10.8 nmi), and the flight repeated its request to Maputo to check runway lights. Upon reaching an altitude of 796 metres (2,611 ft) AGL, the ground proximity warning system (GPWS) sounded and remained on and, although the captain cursed, the descent continued.: 24–25 During the last 22 seconds of the flight, the crew twice more radioed Maputo about the runway lights, affirming that they were not in sight, which was eventually acknowledged by the Maputo controller. Meanwhile, the captain stated "cloudy, cloudy, cloudy" and the navigator exclaimed "no, no, there's nowhere to go, there's no NDBs, nothing!". The captain then added "Neither NDBs, nor ILS!", which were the last words recorded on the CVR. The aircraft first impacted terrain at 21:21:39,: 24–25 approximately 65 kilometres (40 mi; 35 nmi) west of Maputo in a hilly region at an elevation of 666 metres (2,185 ft).: 26 At the time of the accident, it was a very dark night, a few minutes before moonrise.: 41 The last weather report passed to the aircraft indicated 10 kilometres (5.4 nmi; 6.2 mi) of visibility with 3/8 cloud cover at 550 metres (1,800 ft).: 39 After being unable to contact the flight on the radio, the Maputo controller alerted authorities and the Mozambican military units prepared for search and rescue. Since the last radio communication with the aircraft had been four minutes before its estimated time of arrival, the initial search area was defined around Maputo. Throughout the rest of the night and early morning, many helictopers were out to search for the missing flight, and, in addition, a marine search of Maputo Bay was carried out, all without success.: 66–67 The actual accident site was in a remote, inaccessible corner of South Africa,: 67–68 approximately 150 metres (500 ft) from the Mozambican border.: 18 The left wing hit a tree and the aircraft broke up before sliding down a hill, distributing the wreckage over a debris field 846 metres (2,776 ft) in length.: 52 A police officer was alerted at approximately 23:00 by a villager from Mbuzini, and the first responder to the scene was a member of the Komatipoort police station who arrived at 23:40. The first medical personnel reached the site at 01:00. Shortly after 04:00, a helicopter and medical crew from the South African Air Force Base Hoedspruit arrived and evacuated the survivors to Nelspruit hospital.: 67–68 Of the five members of the flight crew, only the flight engineer survived. All four Mozambican cabin crew were killed, as were 26 of the 35 passengers.: 27–28 According to the autopsy conducted by a South African pathologist, Machel died instantly. Besides Machel, the dead included Marxist scholar and diplomat Aquino de Bragança, Machel's possible successor Fernando Honwana, press secretary Muradali Mamadhussein, photo-journalist Daniel Maquinasse, and transport minister Alcantara Santos. One survivor died 2+1⁄2 months after the crash from his injuries.: 27–28 Reactions Pik Botha was alerted to the crash at 04:30 by a phone call from Minister Louis le Grange, who stated that Machel and 30-40 passengers on board had been killed. Pik Botha reported that he telephoned and informed State President P. W. Botha. Both of them agreed that, considering the sensitivity of the situation, Pik Botha should accompany officials investigating the crash site. At 06:50, South Africa first notified the Mozambican Government that a plane headed to Maputo had crashed in South African territory near the border. The first public indication of the tragedy was when Radio Mozambique switched to funeral music at 08:30 and Marcelino dos Santos, a member of the ruling FRELIMO Party announced President Machel's aircraft had not returned to Maputo as scheduled the previous evening. Dos Santos said authorities were analyzing the situation and appealed for calm and vigilance. Mozambican security minister, Sérgio Vieira, traveled to Mbuzini with Pik Botha, and proceeded to the crash site and personally identified Machel's body. FRELIMO issued a second communique that evening confirming Machel's death. It did not accuse South Africa directly, however it did suggest that the crash had been criminal in origin. While over the following days and weeks, Mozambican government officials would continue to refrain from overt statements of South African complicity, many other leaders in Africa stated outright that the apartheid government was responsible. Violence erupted in Harare, Zimbabwe, when cars driven by whites were attacked by angry demonstrators, prompting an editorial rebuke in Mozambique that declared that Machel had been committed to a non-racial Africa. After lying in state at Maputo City Hall, Machel's funeral on 28 October was attended by more than 100 foreign delegations. Eulogized as a fighter who died in the struggle against apartheid, banners in the crowd made reference to South African involvement in the crash. Investigation On scene the South African police located and took custody of the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) and flight data recorder (FDR) (the aircraft was equipped with both digital and magnetic FDRs). According to Pik Botha, this was due to suspicions that they could be tampered with. Media access to the site was limited to a team from SABC-TV. Autopsies were conducted on only the four dead flight crew and three others: 62 and the bodies returned to Mozambique without the approval of the SACAA. On arrival, Mozambican minister Sérgio Vieira asked for the documents that were taken from the aircraft to be handed to him. The SA commissioner of police, Johann Coetzee, had already made copies of these, and the documents were transferred to Vieira. In accordance with the South African Air Control Act, aircraft accidents are required to be investigated by the SA Department of Transport. Thus, Pik Botha consulted Hendrik Schoeman of the Department of Transport, once Machel's death was confirmed. After Botha and Schoeman had visited the crash site, Botha cited special circumstances and other international protocols as reasons to become involved. In a press conference on 6 November, Botha announced that a document retrieved from the plane revealed a Mozambican-Zimbabwean plot to topple the Malawian government. The three international teams signed a protocol of secrecy on 14 November 1986 as Botha's selective announcements were straining relations between the teams and governments. Nevertheless, Botha reported to Beeld newspaper on 24 November 1986 that he had listened to Maputo air traffic control's recordings and studied their transcription. He had acquired them from a foreign affairs representative in the South African team. Director Renee van Zyl of the South African Civil Aviation Bureau served a writ on Botha and the SAP, and received the two recorders at 15:45 on 11 November 1986. On 24 October 1986, a 26-member Soviet and Mozambican delegation travelled from Maputo to Komatipoort to join the South African team investigating the crash. Eventually, agreement was reached for representatives of South Africa, Mozambique and the Soviet Union to jointly examine the CVR tapes under Swiss auspices in Zürich. According to South Africa, approaches were made to both the United States National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) and the British Air Accidents Investigation Branch (AAIB) requesting official assistance in the investigation; however, both agencies were not willing to become involved on an individual basis.: 14 Pik Botha would later state that on his recommendation, due to the mounting suspicions of South African culpability in the crash, the services of three foreign individuals were obtained, and these persons became three of the six members of the Board of Inquiry. These individuals were: Frank Borman, an aeronautical engineer, former United States test pilot, astronaut and CEO of Eastern Air Lines, Geoffrey Wilkinson, former head of the British Department for Transport's Air Accidents Investigation Branch, and Sir Edward Eveleigh, former Lord Justice of Appeal and member of the British Privy Council.: 3 The three South African board members included J.J.S. Germishuys, former South African Commissioner for Civil Aviation, and Pieter van Hoven, chairman of the Airlines Association of South Africa.: 3 The inquiry was chaired by Cecil Margo, a member of the South African Supreme Court who had participated in several other high-profile aircraft accident investigations previously.[specify] Board members participated in the earlier fact-finding portion of the investigation, and conducted public hearings at the Supreme Court in Johannesburg from 20 January until 26 January 1987. The board then adjourned to analyze the evidence and reach conclusions as to cause.: 4 The board concluded that the 37° turn was executed by the navigator using the autopilot's Doppler navigation mode,: 80 which when set maintained the desired heading while making corrections for wind drift. The navigator performed this turn after he saw the VOR signal indicating that the aircraft had intercepted the Maputo VOR 45° radial, the compass direction from Maputo on which the crew intended to turn and approach for a landing on runway 23. However, the turn actually put the aircraft on a path following a 45° radial from the VOR beacon at Matsapa Airport, Swaziland.: 81 Discounting the possibility of a false VOR beacon, an analysis of which was included in an appendix, the board considered it probable that the flight crew had inadvertently set the first of two VOR receivers on board to the Matsapa VOR frequency.: 82 This error was made more likely by the poor design of the instruments, the absence of back lighting of the selected frequencies, the fact the two frequencies were unusually close, 112.7 MHz for Maputo and 112.3 MHz for Matsapa, and the similarity between the figures '7' and '3' on the Soviet instrumentation.: 83 The board considered it "quite likely" that after the turn the captain re-tuned first VOR receiver to the ILS frequency, as the instrument was found in this state after the crash. For the final stages of flight, the aircraft was not following any VOR signal; instead the autopilot was tracking the 221° heading the navigator had set earlier during the turn.[clarification needed] The post-accident settings of the second VOR receiver showed that it was displaying the aircraft's position relative to Maputo and was correctly set to the Maputo VOR frequency, but was apparently not being used to guide the autopilot nor was it being monitored by the crew.: 85–86 The captain's initial erroneous assumption that Maputo had had an electrical blackout was never reconsidered by the crew, despite evidence to the contrary. Throughout the descent, the crew were in radio contact with the Maputo controller, who therefore had electrical power, and backup power generators were standard equipment for airport navigational aids.: 103 All the navigation aids at Maputo were determined by the board to be working at the time of the accident, although the aircraft was flying too far away and too low to receive the ILS and NDB signals.: 97–98 When announcing the distance remaining to Maputo, the navigator was apparently referring to the Doppler navigation system, which was not accurate, rather than the DME equipment available on board which correctly displayed the distance to the Maputo DME beacon.: 87–88 The crew were criticised for failing to perform any checklist items or navigational aid identification,: 93 as well as for the distractions and non-essential conversations in the cockpit during the descent into Maputo.: 87 As a consequence of not announcing to the other crew members which navigational aids were being used, or the frequencies being set, mistakes could not be corrected by others through "cross-checking".: 101 Regarding it essential that the relatively large crew in the cockpit work as a well-integrated team, the board concluded that "demonstrably they had not".: 93 The board found that use of non-standard phraseology between the Maputo controller and the crew led to confusion about the status of the ILS signal and whether the runway lights were on.: 95–96 The flight crew's repeated requests to "check runway lights" were interpreted by the controller, based on the use of the word 'check' in civil aviation, as confirmation by the crew that they had the runway lights in sight.: 43–44 The aircraft had not refueled at Mbala before departing and did not have enough fuel remaining to reach the intended alternative airport in Beira, Mozambique by the time it reached Maputo.: 92–93 This may have greatly increased the pressure on the crew to continue with the landing approach to Maputo despite the difficulties encountered.: 101 Although the Maputo controller had specifically cleared the aircraft only to 910 metres (3,000 ft) and no lower until the runway lights were in sight, the descent continued below that height at a rate of 150 metres per minute (500 ft/min), without the runway lights visible, in darkness and partially cloudy conditions.: 89 The only reaction to the warning by the GPWS, which sounded for 32 seconds, was the captain exclaiming "Damn it!" and a very slight nose-up pitch of the aircraft. The board concluded that even just seconds before the impact, had the crew performed the required procedures for a GPWS alert when flying over hilly or unknown terrain, quickly raising the nose and increasing power, this would have prevented the crash.: 90–91 The captain was singled out for criticism by the board for the decision to continue the descent without any ground references and with the belief that all navigation aids at Maputo were not working, instead of climbing to the published minimum safe altitude for the Maputo area of 1,100 metres (3,600 ft) and verifying his position through other aids available, including his radar.: 104 The board of inquiry determined that: The cause of the accident was that the flight crew failed to follow procedural requirements for an instrument let-down approach, but continued to descend under visual flight rules in darkness and some cloud, i.e. without having some contact with the ground, below minimum safe altitude and minimum assigned altitude, and in addition ignored the GPWS alarm.: 109 In addition, the board issued five safety recommendations which covered the use of and recurrent training in approved terminology in ATC communications for both ground and flight crews, monitoring of crew compliance with established procedures, a proposal that CVRs retain a record of the last hour of flight, rather than the standard of 30 minutes, and the importance of maintaining navigational aids to international standards.: 110–111 The report was endorsed unanimously by the six members of the board and submitted to the South African Minister of Transport Affairs on 2 July 1987.: 1–2 The Mozambican delegation, representing the State of registry of the aircraft, had a right by international treaty to review a draft of the report and submit their comments for consideration. The Mozambican team provided 11 pages of suggested corrections to the draft, some of which were adopted by the Board. In their submission, the Mozambican delegation stated that according to the survivors the South African Police searched the aircraft for documents rather than tending to the injured passengers. Mozambique also provided a technical report prepared by Ron Chippindale of the New Zealand Office of Air Accidents Investigations examining the possibility of tampering with or replacing the genuine Maputo VOR signal with a decoy. His conclusions were that it would be "simple" to set up a mobile VOR. However, in order to effectively replace the genuine signal, the Maputo VOR would have to be turned off. The Mozambican analysis of and findings from the evidence led them to conclude: The Soviet Union, the state of manufacture of the aircraft, was given a draft of the final report and a chance to review and submit comments in accordance with ICAO convention. In their remarks, the Soviet Union reiterated their endorsement of the previously agreed upon factual information contained in the draft. However, regarding the analysis, conclusions and recommendations that followed, the Soviets stated the basic task of the investigation should be to determine the reasons for the 37° turn, which "remained unsolved in the report", and that conclusions of the draft based on the crew's errors were "totally ungrounded". They ended their remarks with a full rejection of the draft, calling it "worthless", and instead offering their own analysis and conclusions. The Soviet delegation stated the theory that the crew had mistakenly selected the Matsapa VOR was contradicted by the known settings of the onboard navigation equipment and the timing of the turn. They said that the data recovered from the magnetic flight data recorder did not correspond to the path of an aircraft following the signal from the Matsapa VOR. The Soviet team submitted a technical report to support their belief the Matsapa VOR's signal was not strong enough at the point of the turn for the navigation equipment on board the aircraft to receive it effectively, and further that the flight was below the coverage of the VOR, meaning that the signal from the Matsapa VOR could not have been the cause of the deviation. According to the Soviets, the other navigational aids at Maputo were not strong enough to reach the aircraft and were of no help to the flight crew. A LAM Airlines Boeing 737 flying at around the same time as the accident aircraft reported receiving the Maputo VOR signal unusually early, at a distance of about 350 kilometres (220 mi; 190 nmi). The Soviets stated that this was actually the false decoy beacon that was working with a higher signal level that the actual Maputo VOR. The Soviets stated that there was an earlier ground proximity warning system (GPWS) alert about 4+1⁄2 minutes before impact which was triggered by the signal from the decoy VOR beacon, and this false alert was interpreted by the flight crew as a systems fault in the GPWS. Receipt by the flight crew of the visual landing clearance from the Maputo controller implied permission to descend below 910 metres (3,000 ft) according to ICAO procedures. When the GPWS sounded shortly before impact the crew, doubting its reliability, disregarded it as false, and believing they were over the low terrain continued their descent. The Soviets concluded that: Conspiracy theories and subsequent investigations Suspicion of a false beacon in the Lebombos mountains was first expressed by South African helicopter pilots on the morning following the crash,[citation needed] followed by a similar suggestion in an anonymous call to UPI by a supposed SAAF officer, a day later. The pilots' speculative remark was revealed to Sérgio Vieira, Mozambique's minister of security, in a rash comment by South African police commissioner Johann Coetzee. Neither the Mozambican or Russian teams however, nor any witness testimony given, supplied any evidence or direct allegation concerning a secondary beacon to the Margo commission. The Margo commission's draft report then proposed Matsapa airfield's VOR, combined with pilot error, as playing a likely role in the trajectory followed by the aircraft. The USSR delegation disputed this, saying the signal was obscured by mountains. A breakdown in communications followed, causing General Earp of the South African Air Force to authorise military pilots to penetrate Mozambique airspace to test the Matsapa theory. They returned with confirmation, though the final report relied on additional testimonies of commercial pilots who flew on C9-CAA's track. They likewise confirmed clear VOR signals from Matsapa. Mozambican pilot Dias, who supported the Matsapa theory, illustrated his interpretation of events to Mozambican officials on a flight from Lisbon to Maputo. However, Mozambican authorities remained unconvinced and suspended air controller de Jesus on 5 May 1998, for allegedly having been bribed to tamper with Maputo airport's beacon on the night of the crash. A special investigation into Machel's death was carried out by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). The report, published in 2001, is available on the T&RC website volume 2-page 494. It was found that "The investigations conducted by the Commission raised a number of questions, including the possibility of a false beacon and the absence of a warning from the South African authorities. The matter requires further investigation by an appropriate structure." The TRC investigation took place in camera and without any aviation specialist being present. The testimony was further led by a prominent radio journalist rather than a judge. The TRC's investigation did not find conclusive evidence to support or refute either of the earlier reports. Nonetheless, some pieces of circumstantial evidence collected by the TRC contradicted a number of the Margo Commission's findings: The TRC report concluded that the questions of a false beacon and the absence of a warning from the South African authorities require "further investigation by an appropriate structure". A police video in the TRC's possession shows South African foreign minister Pik Botha telling journalists at the crash site that President Samora Machel and others killed in the crash were his and President P.W. Botha's "very good friends", and that their deaths were a tragedy for South Africa. In January 2003, the Sowetan Sunday World reported that an apartheid era killer and former CCB member, Hans Louw, serving a 28-year term at Baviaanspoort Prison near Pretoria, South Africa, had confessed to participating in a plot to kill Machel. A false radio navigational beacon would have been used to lure the aircraft off course, with Louw forming part of an alleged backup team to shoot the aircraft down if it did not crash. The newspaper also alleged that another of the plotters, former Rhodesian Selous Scout, Edwin Mudingi, supported Louw's claim. However, after an investigation by the Scorpions, a South African special police unit, it was reported in July 2003 and in October 2008 that they could find no evidence for South African complicity. In a television documentary written and produced by South African TV journalist Johann Abrahams, Louw says: "So, when the plane reached that hill it was already lower than 1,000 feet [300 m]. And the wheels to prepare to land was (sic) already out. So the pilots that night 22 years ago, thought they were landing in Mozambique." ("The Death of Samora Machel" in SABC "Special Assignment" program broadcast on 7 October 2008.) However, based on the agreed Aircraft Accident Factual Report, signed by South Africa, Mozambique and the USSR on 16 January 1987, the Report of the official Board of inquiry notes that "...the aircraft struck the ground in the flight configuration, with landing gear and flaps retracted and the stabilizer in the cruise position".: 55 The final words of the captain and navigator spoken three seconds before impact contradict Louw’s assumption that the pilots “thought they were landing in Mozambique": “NAVIGATOR: NO, NO, THERE’S NOWHERE TO GO, NO NDBs, THERE IS NOTHING. CAPTAIN: NEITHER NDBs, NOR ILS.” : 130 South African Minister of Safety and Security, Charles Nqakula announced on 2 February 2006 that the Machel death crash inquiry would be reopened. He told reporters in Parliament that all of South Africa's law enforcement agencies were expected to be involved in the probe, in co-operation with their Mozambican counterparts. In October 2006, the enquiry was expected to "be wrapped up before the end of the year" but there seems to be no further information available.[citation needed] Aftermath A Mbuzini wreath laying ceremony on 17 October 1986 was attended by Graça Machel and addressed by Nelson Mandela. Mandela declared the initial simple memorial a South African national monument and hailed Machel as a universal hero whose life exemplified the highest ideals of internationalism and universality. Mandela cautiously claimed that the precise chain of events leading to Machel's death were uncertain and elusive, and repeated an earlier promise that no stone would be left unturned to establish the full truth. A Samora Machel Monument was erected at the crash site. Designed by Mozambican architect, Jose Forjaz, at a cost to the South African government of 1.5 million Rand (US$300,000), the monument comprises 35 whistling wind pipes to symbolise each of the lives lost in the accident. It was inaugurated on 19 January 1999 by Nelson Mandela, his wife Graça, and by President Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique. At the 20th anniversary of the crash, on 19 October 2006, South African president Thabo Mbeki declared the memorial a national heritage site. Leading up to the event, Mozambican president Armando Guebuza, who chaired the Mozambican inquiry in 1986, repeated a commitment to discover the truth about the incident, while President Mbeki, in his state of the nation address of 3 February 2006, mentioned that a satisfactory explanation was still lacking. In November 2006, Jacob Zuma, then ANC deputy president, said that Machel's death was unusual. At the Mandela-Machel wedding ceremony on 18 July 1998, Mandela was reported to have announced that Samora Machel was murdered, without reference to the South African board of enquiry's findings. Graça Machel believes this crash was no accident and attempted to track down her late husband's alleged killers. In May 1999, Graça Machel said in an interview on SABC TV's News Maker programme that she remained convinced the apartheid government was responsible, and challenged former foreign minister Pik Botha to "come clean" about Samora Machel's death. Botha responded in a public interview on 16 May 1999 that although he had been one of the first people on the scene and was called on to identify Machel's body, the only facts he knew about the crash were the findings of the Margo Commission: "I totally reject any suggestion that I could have been a party to a decision of that nature. It is an extremely sad moment for me. - Pik Botha A study in the Quarterly Journal of Economics reached the conclusions that the crash had immediate wider repercussions for Mozambique's economy. An annual 7.7% decline in GDP under Machel's communist nationalisation policies, reverted to growth averaging 2.4% per annum under the freer, multi-party democracy in the tenure of his successor, Joaquim Chissano. Notes References Further reading and external links |
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[SOURCE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_conspiracy_theory] | [TOKENS: 16079] |
Contents Climate change denial Climate change denial (also global warming denial) is a form of science denial characterized by rejecting, refusing to acknowledge, disputing, or fighting the extensive evidence for anthropogenic global warming that has led to a scientific consensus on climate change. Those promoting denial commonly use rhetorical tactics to give the appearance of a scientific controversy where none exists. Climate change denial includes raising unreasonable doubts about the extent to which climate change is caused by humans, its effects on nature and human society, and understating the costs of climate change adaptation while overstating the costs of mitigating it.: 170–173 To a lesser extent, climate change denial can also be implicit when people accept the science but fail to reconcile it with their belief or action. Several studies have analyzed these positions as forms of denialism,: 691–698 pseudoscience, or propaganda.: 351 Many issues that are settled in the scientific community, such as human responsibility for climate change, remain the subject of politically or economically motivated attempts to downplay, dismiss or deny them—an ideological phenomenon academics and scientists call climate change denial. Climate scientists, especially in the United States, have reported government and oil-industry pressure to censor or suppress their work and hide scientific data, with directives not to discuss the subject publicly. The fossil fuels lobby has been identified as overtly or covertly supporting efforts to undermine or discredit the scientific consensus on climate change. Industrial, political and ideological interests organize activity to undermine public trust in climate science.: 691–698 Climate change denial has been associated with the fossil fuels lobby, the Koch brothers, industry advocates, ultraconservative think tanks, and ultraconservative alternative media, often in the U.S.: 351 More than 90% of papers that are skeptical of climate change originate from right-wing think tanks. Climate change denial is undermining efforts to act on or adapt to climate change, and exerts a powerful influence on the politics of climate change.: 691–698 In the 1970s, oil companies published research that broadly concurred with the scientific community's view on climate change. Since then, for several decades, oil companies have been organizing a widespread and systematic climate change denial campaign to seed public disinformation, a strategy that has been compared to the tobacco industry's organized denial of the hazards of tobacco smoking. Some of the campaigns are carried out by the same people who previously spread the tobacco industry's denialist propaganda. Terminology Climate change denial refers to denial, dismissal, or doubt of the scientific consensus on the rate and extent of climate change, its significance, or its connection to human behavior, in whole or in part. Climate denial is a form of science denial. It can also take pseudoscientific forms. The terms climate skeptics or contrarians are nowadays used with the same meaning as climate change deniers even though deniers usually prefer not to, in order to sow confusion as to their intentions. The terminology is debated: most of those actively rejecting the scientific consensus use the terms skeptic and climate change skepticism, and only a few have expressed preference for being described as deniers.: 2 But the word "skepticism" is incorrectly used, as scientific skepticism is an intrinsic part of scientific methodology. In fact, all scientists adhere to scientific skepticism as part of the scientific process that demands continuing questioning. Both options are problematic, but climate change denial has become more widely used than skepticism. The term contrarian is more specific but less frequently used. In academic literature and journalism, the terms climate change denial and climate change deniers have well-established usage as descriptive terms without any pejorative connotation. The terminology evolved and emerged in the 1990s. By 1995 the word "skeptic" was being used specifically for the minority who publicized views contrary to the scientific consensus. This small group of scientists presented their views in public statements and the media rather than to the scientific community.: 9, 11 : 69–70, 246 Journalist Ross Gelbspan said in 1995 that industry had engaged "a small band of skeptics" to confuse public opinion in a "persistent and well-funded campaign of denial". His 1997 book The Heat is On may have been the first to concentrate specifically on the topic. In it, Gelbspan discusses a "pervasive denial of global warming" in a "persistent campaign of denial and suppression" involving "undisclosed funding of these 'greenhouse skeptics'" with "the climate skeptics" confusing the public and influencing decision makers.: 3, 33–35, 173 In December 2014, an open letter from the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry called on the media to stop using the term skepticism when referring to climate change denial. It contrasted scientific skepticism—which is "foundational to the scientific method"—with denial—"the a priori rejection of ideas without objective consideration"—and the behavior of those involved in political attempts to undermine climate science. It said: "Not all individuals who call themselves climate change skeptics are deniers. But virtually all deniers have falsely branded themselves as skeptics. By perpetrating this misnomer, journalists have granted undeserved credibility to those who reject science and scientific inquiry." In 2015, The New York Times's public editor said that the Times was increasingly using denier when "someone is challenging established science", but assessing this on an individual basis with no fixed policy, and would not use the term when someone was "kind of wishy-washy on the subject or in the middle". The executive director of the Society of Environmental Journalists said that while there was reasonable skepticism about specific issues, she felt that "denier" was "the most accurate term when someone claims there is no such thing as global warming, or agrees that it exists but denies that it has any cause we could understand or any impact that could be measured". A petition by climatetruth.org asked signers to "Tell the Associated Press: Establish a rule in the AP Stylebook ruling out the use of 'skeptic' to describe those who deny scientific facts". In September 2015, the Associated Press announced "an addition to AP Stylebook entry on global warming" that advised "to describe those who don't accept climate science or dispute the world is warming from human-made forces, use 'climate change doubters' or 'those who reject mainstream climate science'. Avoid use of 'skeptics' or 'deniers'". In May 2019, The Guardian also rejected use of the term "climate skeptic" in favor of "climate science denier". In addition to explicit denial, people have also shown implicit denial by accepting the scientific consensus but failing to "translate their acceptance into action". This type of denial is also called soft climate change denial. Categories and tactics In 2004, German climate scientist Stefan Rahmstorf described how the media give the misleading impression that climate change is still disputed within the scientific community, attributing this impression to climate change skeptics' PR efforts. He identified different positions that climate skeptics argue, which he used as a taxonomy of climate change skepticism. Later the model was also applied to denial: The National Center for Science Education describes climate change denial as disputing differing points in the scientific consensus, a sequential range of arguments from denying the occurrence of climate change, accepting that but denying any significant human contribution, accepting these but denying scientific findings on how this would affect nature and human society, to accepting all these but denying that humans can mitigate or reduce the problems. James L. Powell provides a more extended list,: 170–173 as does climatologist Michael E. Mann in "six stages of denial", a ladder model whereby deniers have over time conceded acceptance of points, while retreating to a position that still rejects the mainstream consensus: Climate change denial is a form of denialism. Chris and Mark Hoofnagle have defined denialism in this context as the use of rhetorical devices "to give the appearance of legitimate debate where there is none, an approach that has the ultimate goal of rejecting a proposition on which a scientific consensus exists." This process characteristically uses one or more of the following tactics: Some politicians and climate change denial groups say that because CO2 is only a trace gas in the atmosphere (0.04%), it cannot cause climate change. But scientists have known for over a century that even this small proportion has a significant warming effect, and doubling the proportion leads to a large temperature increase. Some groups allege that water vapor is a more significant greenhouse gas, and is left out of many climate models. But while water vapor is a greenhouse gas, its very short atmospheric lifetime (about 10 days) compared to that of CO2 (hundreds of years) means that CO2 is the primary driver of increasing temperatures; water vapor acts as a feedback, not a forcing, mechanism. Climate denial groups may also argue that global warming has stopped, that a global warming hiatus is in effect, or that global temperatures are actually decreasing, leading to global cooling. These arguments are based on short-term fluctuations and ignore the long-term pattern. Some groups and prominent deniers such as William Happer argue that there is a greenhouse gas saturation effect that significantly decreases the warming potential of further gases released into the atmosphere. Such an effect does exist in some form, as Happer's research demonstrates, but is likely negligible with respect to net global warming. Climate change denial literature often features the suggestion that we should wait for better technologies before addressing climate change, when they will be more affordable and effective. The belief that technological innovation rather than widespread social change will offer solutions is sometime called techno-optimism. Climate denial groups often point to natural variability, such as sunspots and cosmic rays, to explain the warming trend. According to these groups, there is natural variability that will abate over time, and human influence has little to do with it. But climate models already take these factors into account. The scientific consensus is that they cannot explain the observed warming trend. In 2007, the Heartland Institute published an article titled "500 Scientists Whose Research Contradicts Man-Made Global Warming Scares" by Dennis T. Avery, a food policy analyst at the Hudson Institute. Avery's list was immediately called into question for misunderstanding and distorting the conclusions of many of the named studies and citing outdated, flawed studies that had long been abandoned. Many of the scientists on the list demanded their names be removed. At least 45 of them had no idea they were included as "co-authors" and disagreed with the article's conclusions. The Heartland Institute refused these requests, saying that the scientists "have no right—legally or ethically—to demand that their names be removed from a bibliography composed by researchers with whom they disagree". Deniers have generally attacked either the IPCC's processes, scientist or the synthesis and executive summaries; the full reports attract less attention. In 1996, climate change denier Frederick Seitz criticized the 1995 IPCC Second Assessment Report, alleging corruption in the peer-review process. Scientists rejected his assertions; the presidents of the American Meteorological Society and University Corporation for Atmospheric Research described his claims as part of a "systematic effort by some individuals to undermine and discredit the scientific process". In 2005, the House of Lords Economics Committee wrote, "We have some concerns about the objectivity of the IPCC process, with some of its emissions scenarios and summary documentation apparently influenced by political considerations." It doubted the high emission scenarios and said that the IPCC had "played-down" what the committee called "some positive aspects of global warming". The main statements of the House of Lords Economics Committee were rejected in the response made by the United Kingdom government. On 10 December 2008, the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works minority members released a report under the leadership of the Senate's most vocal global warming denier, Jim Inhofe. It says it summarizes scientific dissent from the IPCC. Many of its statements about the numbers of people listed in the report, whether they are actually scientists, and whether they support the positions attributed to them, have been disputed. Inhofe also said that "some parts of the IPCC process resembled a Soviet-style trial, in which the facts are predetermined, and ideological purity trumps technical and scientific rigor." Some climate change deniers promote conspiracy theories alleging that the scientific consensus is illusory, or that climatologists are acting out of their own financial interests by causing undue alarm about a changing climate. Some climate change deniers claim that there is no scientific consensus on climate change, that any evidence for a scientific consensus is faked, or that the peer-review process for climate science papers has become corrupted by scientists seeking to suppress dissent. No evidence of such conspiracies has been presented. In fact, much of the data used in climate science is publicly available, contradicting allegations that scientists are hiding data or stonewalling requests. Some climate change deniers assert that the scientific consensus on climate change is based on conspiracies to produce manipulated data or suppress dissent. It is one of a number of tactics used in climate change denial to attempt to manufacture political and public controversy disputing this consensus. These people typically allege that, through worldwide acts of professional and criminal misconduct, the science behind climate change has been invented or distorted for ideological or financial reasons. The Great Global Warming Swindle is a 2007 British polemical documentary film directed by Martin Durkin that denies the scientific consensus about the reality and causes of climate change, justifying this by suggesting that climatology is influenced by funding and political factors. The film strongly opposes the scientific consensus on climate change. It argues that the consensus on climate change is the product of "a multibillion-dollar worldwide industry: created by fanatically anti-industrial environmentalists; supported by scientists peddling scare stories to chase funding; and propped up by complicit politicians and the media". The programme's publicity materials claim that man-made global warming is "a lie" and "the biggest scam of modern times." The film received strong criticism from many scientists and others. Journalist George Monbiot called it "the same old conspiracy theory that we've been hearing from the denial industry for the past ten years". The climate deniers involved in the Climatic Research Unit email controversy ("Climategate") in 2009 claimed that researchers faked the data in their research publications and suppressed their critics in order to receive more funding (i.e. taxpayer money). Eight committees investigated these allegations and published reports, each finding no evidence of fraud or scientific misconduct. According to the Muir Russell report, the scientists' "rigor and honesty as scientists are not in doubt", the investigators "did not find any evidence of behavior that might undermine the conclusions of the IPCC assessments", but there had been "a consistent pattern of failing to display the proper degree of openness." The scientific consensus that climate change is occurring as a result of human activity remained unchanged at the end of the investigations. In 2012, Clive Hamilton published the essay "Climate change and the soothing message of luke-warmism". He defined luke-warmists as "those who appear to accept the body of climate science but interpret it in a way that is least threatening: emphasising uncertainties, playing down dangers, and advocating a slow and cautious response. They are politically conservative and anxious about the threat to the social structure posed by the implications of climate science. Their 'pragmatic' approach is therefore alluring to political leaders looking for a justification for policy minimalism." He cited Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger of the Breakthrough Institute, and also Roger A. Pielke Jr., Daniel Sarewitz, Steve Rayner, Mike Hulme and "the pre-eminent luke-warmist" Danish economist Bjørn Lomborg. Climate change skepticism, while in some cases professing to do research on climate change, has focused instead on influencing the opinion of the public, legislators and the media, in contrast to legitimate science.: 28 Pope Francis groups together four types of respondents rejecting climate change: those who "deny, conceal, gloss over or relativize the issue". The conservative National Center for Policy Analysis, whose "Environmental Task Force" contains a number of climate change deniers, including Sherwood Idso and S. Fred Singer, has said, "The growing consensus on climate change policies is that adaptation will protect present and future generations from climate-sensitive risks far more than efforts to restrict CO2 emissions." The adaptation-only plan is also endorsed by oil companies like ExxonMobil. According to a Ceres report, "ExxonMobil's plan appears to be to stay the course and try to adjust when changes occur. The company's plan is one that involves adaptation, as opposed to leadership." The George W. Bush administration also voiced support for an adaptation-only policy in 2002. "In a stark shift for the Bush administration, the United States has sent a climate report [U.S. Climate Action Report 2002] to the United Nations detailing specific and far-reaching effects it says global warming will inflict on the American environment. In the report, the administration also for the first time places most of the blame for recent global warming on human actions—mainly the burning of fossil fuels that send heat-trapping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere." The report "does not propose any major shift in the administration's policy on greenhouse gases. Instead it recommends adapting to inevitable changes instead of making rapid and drastic reductions in greenhouse gases to limit warming." This position apparently precipitated a similar shift in emphasis at the COP 8 climate talks in New Delhi several months later; "The shift satisfies the Bush administration, which has fought to avoid mandatory cuts in emissions for fear it would harm the economy. 'We're welcoming a focus on more of a balance on adaptation versus mitigation', said a senior American negotiator in New Delhi. 'You don't have enough money to do everything.'" Some find this shift and attitude disingenuous and indicative of a bias against prevention (i.e. reducing emissions/consumption) and toward prolonging the oil industry's profits at the environment's expense. In an article addressing the supposed economic hazards of addressing climate change, writer and environmental activist George Monbiot wrote: "Now that the dismissal of climate change is no longer fashionable, the professional deniers are trying another means of stopping us from taking action. It would be cheaper, they say, to wait for the impacts of climate change and then adapt to them". Climate change deniers often debate whether action (such as the restrictions on the use of fossil fuels to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions) should be taken now or in the near future. They fear the economic ramifications of such restrictions. For example, in a 1998 speech, a staff member of the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, argued that emission controls' negative economic effects outweighed their environmental benefits. Climate change deniers tend to argue that even if global warming is caused solely by the burning of fossil fuels, restricting their use would damage the world economy more than the increases in global temperature. Conversely, the general consensus is that early action to reduce emissions would help avoid much greater economic costs later, and reduce the risk of catastrophic, irreversible change. Earlier, climate change deniers' online YouTube content focused on denying global warming, or saying such warming is not caused by humans burning fossil fuel. As such denials became untenable, content shifted to asserting that climate solutions are unworkable, that global warming is harmless or even beneficial, and that the environmental movement is unreliable. A 2016 article in Science made the case that opposition to climate policy was beginning to take a "rhetorical shift away from outright skepticism" and called this neoskepticism. Rather than denying the existence of global warming, neoskeptics instead "question the magnitude of the risks and assert that reducing them has more costs than benefits." According to the authors, the emergence of neoskepticism "heightens the need for science to inform decision making under uncertainty and to improve communication and education." There is a range of possible mitigation policies. Disagreement over the sufficiency, viability, or desirability of a given policy is not necessarily neoskepticism. But neoskepticism is marked by failure to appreciate the increased risks associated with delayed action. Gavin Schmidt has called neoskepticism a form of confirmation bias and the tendency to always take "as gospel the lowest estimate of a plausible range". Neoskeptics err on the side of the least disruptive projections and least active policies and, as such, neglect or misapprehend the full spectrum of risks associated with global warming. In political terms, soft climate denial can stem from concerns about the economics and economic impacts of climate change, particularly the concern that strong measures to combat global warming or mitigate its impacts will seriously inhibit economic growth.: 10 Climate change denial is commonly rooted in a phenomenon known as conspiracy theory, in which people misattribute events to a powerful group's secret plot or plan. People with certain cognitive tendencies are also more drawn than others to conspiracy theories about climate change. Conspiratorial beliefs are more predominantly found in narcissistic people and those who consistently look for meanings or patterns in their world, including believers in paranormal activity. Climate change conspiracy disbelief is also linked to lower levels of education and analytic thinking. Scientists are investigating which factors associated with conspiracy belief can be influenced and changed. They have identified "uncertainty, feelings of powerlessness, political cynicism, magical thinking, and errors in logical and probabilistic reasoning". In 2012, researchers found that belief in other conspiracy theories was associated with being more likely to endorse climate change denial. Examples of science-related conspiracy theories that some people believe include that aliens exist, childhood vaccines are linked to autism, Bigfoot is real, the government "adds fluoride to drinking water for 'sinister' purposes", and the moon landing was faked. Examples of alleged climate change conspiracies include: Psychology The psychology of climate change denial is the study of why people deny climate change, despite the scientific consensus on climate change. A study assessed public perception and action on climate change on grounds of belief systems, and identified seven psychological barriers affecting behavior that otherwise would facilitate mitigation, adaptation, and environmental stewardship: cognition, ideological worldviews, comparisons to key people, costs and momentum, disbelief in experts and authorities, perceived risks of change, and inadequate behavioral changes. Other factors include distance in time, space, and influence. Reactions to climate change may include anxiety, depression, despair, dissonance, uncertainty, insecurity, and distress, with one psychologist suggesting that "despair about our changing climate may get in the way of fixing it." The American Psychological Association has urged psychologists and other social scientists to work on psychological barriers to taking action on climate change. The immediacy of a growing number of extreme weather events are thought to motivate people to deal with climate change. A study published in PLOS One in 2024 found that even a single repetition of a claim was sufficient to increase the perceived truth of both climate science-aligned claims and climate change skeptic/denial claims—"highlighting the insidious effect of repetition". This effect was found even among climate science endorsers. Connections to other debates Many of the climate change deniers have disagreed, in whole or part, with the scientific consensus regarding other issues, particularly those relating to environmental risks, such as ozone depletion, DDT, and passive smoking. In the 1990s, the Marshall Institute began campaigning against increased regulations on environmental issues such as acid rain, ozone depletion, second-hand smoke, and the dangers of DDT.: 170 In each case their argument was that the science was too uncertain to justify any government intervention, a strategy it borrowed from earlier efforts to downplay the health effects of tobacco in the 1980s.: 170 This campaign would continue for the next two decades.: 105 In 2023, an increase in climate change denial was noted, particularly among supporters of the far right. It has been suggested that climate change can conflict with a nationalistic view because it is "unsolvable" at the national level and requires collective action between nations or between local communities, and that therefore populist nationalism tends to reject the science of climate change. The UK Independence Party's policy on climate change has been influenced by climate change denier Christopher Monckton and by its energy spokesman Roger Helmer, who has said, "It is not clear that the rise in atmospheric carbon dioxide is anthropogenic." Jerry Taylor of the Niskanen Center posits that climate change denial is an important component of Trumpian historical consciousness, and "plays a significant role in the architecture of Trumpism as a developing philosophical system". Though climate change denial was apparently waning circa 2021, some right-wing nationalist organizations have adopted a theory of "environmental populism" advocating that natural resources be preserved for a nation's existing residents, to the exclusion of immigrants. Other such right-wing organizations have contrived new "green wings" that falsely assert that refugees from poor nations cause environmental pollution and climate change, and should therefore be excluded. A study published in PLOS Climate studied two forms of national identity—defensive or "national narcissism" and "secure national identification"—for their correlation to support for policies to mitigate climate change and transition to renewable energy. The authors defined national narcissism as "a belief that one's national group is exceptional and deserves external recognition underlain by unsatisfied psychological needs". They defined secure national identification as "reflect[ing] feelings of strong bonds and solidarity with one's ingroup members, and sense of satisfaction in group membership". The researchers concluded that secure national identification tends to support policies promoting renewable energy, while national narcissism is inversely correlated with support for such policies—except to the extent that such policies, as well as greenwashing, enhance the national image. Right-wing political orientation, which may indicate susceptibility to climate conspiracy beliefs, was also found to be negatively correlated with support for genuine climate mitigation policies. One worldview that often leads to climate change denial is belief in free enterprise capitalism. The "freedom of the commons" (tragedy of the commons), or the freedom to use natural resources as a public good as it is practiced in free enterprise capitalism, destroys important ecosystems and their functions, and so having a stake in this worldview does not correlate with climate change mitigation behavior. Political worldview plays an important role in environmental policy and action. Liberals tend to focus on environmental risks, while conservatives focus on the benefits of economic development. Because of this difference, conflicting opinions on the acceptance of climate change arise. A study of climate change denial indicators in public opinion data from ten Gallup surveys from 2001 to 2010 shows that conservative white men in the U.S. are significantly more likely to deny climate change than other Americans. Conservative white men who report understanding climate change very well are even more likely to deny climate change. Another reason for the discrepancy in climate change denial between liberals and conservatives is that "contemporary environmental discourse is based largely on moral concerns related to harm and care, which are more deeply held by liberals than by conservatives"; if the discourse is instead framed using moral concerns related to purity that are more deeply held by conservatives, the discrepancy is resolved. In the U.S., climate change denial largely correlates with political affiliation. This is partially because Democrats focus more on tighter government regulations and taxation, which are the basis for most environmental policy. Political affiliation also affects how different people interpret the same facts. More highly educated people are less likely to rely on their own interpretation and political ideology rather than on scientists' opinions. Therefore, political worldviews override expert opinion on the interpretation of climate facts and evidence of anthropogenic climate change. Affiliation with a political group, especially in the U.S., is an important personal and social identity for many. Because of this, many people hold the popular values of their political affiliation, regardless of their personal beliefs, so as not to be ostracized by the group. History Since the late 1980s, this well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change. Through advertisements, op-eds, lobbying and media attention, greenhouse doubters (they hate being called deniers) argued first that the world is not warming; measurements indicating otherwise are flawed, they said. Then they claimed that any warming is natural, not caused by human activities. Now they contend that the looming warming will be minuscule and harmless. U.S. fossil fuel companies have known about global warming since at least the 1960s. In 1966, a coal industry research organization, Bituminous Coal Research Inc., published its finding that if then prevailing trends of coal consumption continued, "the temperature of the earth's atmosphere will increase" and "vast changes in the climates of the earth will result. [...] Such changes in temperature will cause melting of the polar icecaps, which, in turn, would result in the inundation of many coastal cities, including New York and London." In a discussion following this paper in the same publication, a combustion engineer for Peabody Coal, now Peabody Energy, the world's largest coal supplier, added that the coal industry was merely "buying time" before additional government air pollution regulations would be promulgated to clean the air. Nevertheless, the coal industry publicly advocated for decades thereafter the position that increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is beneficial for the planet. Contrary to certain popular literature articles published in the 1970s, there was no scientific consensus of an imminent ice age: the possibility of anthropogenic warming dominated the peer-reviewed literature at the time. In response to increasing public awareness of the greenhouse effect in the 1970s, conservative reaction built up, denying environmental concerns that could lead to government regulation. In 1977, the first Secretary of Energy, James Schlesinger, suggested President Jimmy Carter take no action regarding a climate change memo, citing uncertainty. During the presidency of Ronald Reagan, global warming became a political issue, with immediate plans to cut spending on environmental research, particularly climate-related, and stop funding for CO2 monitoring. Congressman Al Gore was aware of the developing science: he joined others in arranging congressional hearings from 1981 onward, with testimony from scientists including Revelle, Stephen Schneider, and Wallace Smith Broecker. An Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report in 1983 said global warming was "not a theoretical problem but a threat whose effects will be felt within a few years", with potentially "catastrophic" consequences. The Reagan administration called the report "alarmist" and the dispute was widely covered. Public attention turned to other issues, then the 1985 finding of a polar ozone hole brought a swift international response. To the public, this was related to climate change and the possibility of effective action, but news interest faded. Public attention was renewed amid summer droughts and heat waves when James Hansen testified to a Congressional hearing on 23 June 1988, saying with high confidence that long-term warming was underway with severe warming likely within the next 50 years, and warning of likely storms and floods. There was increasing media attention: the scientific community had reached a broad consensus that the climate was warming, human activity was very likely the primary cause, and there would be significant consequences if the trend was not curbed. These facts encouraged discussion about new environmental regulations, which the fossil fuel industry opposed. From 1989 onward, industry-funded organizations, including the Global Climate Coalition and the George C. Marshall Institute, sought to spread doubt, in a strategy already developed by the tobacco industry. A small group of scientists opposed to the consensus on global warming became politically involved, and with support from conservative political interests, began publishing in books and the press rather than in scientific journals. Historian Spencer Weart identifies this period as the point where skepticism about basic aspects of climate science was no longer justified, and those spreading mistrust about these issues became deniers.: 46 As the scientific community and new data increasingly refuted their arguments, deniers turned to political arguments, making personal attacks on scientists' reputations, and promoting ideas of global warming conspiracies.: 47 With the 1989 fall of communism, the attention of U.S. conservative think tanks, which had been organized in the 1970s as an intellectual counter-movement to socialism, turned from the "red scare" to the "green scare" tactic, which they saw as a threat to their aims of private property, free trade market economies, and global capitalism. They used environmental skepticism to promote denial of environmental problems such as loss of biodiversity and climate change. The campaign to spread doubt continued into the 1990s, including an advertising campaign funded by coal industry advocates intended to "reposition global warming as theory rather than fact". There was also a 1998 proposal by the American Petroleum Institute to recruit scientists to convince politicians, the media, and the public that climate science was too uncertain to warrant environmental regulation. In 1998, journalists Ross Gelbspan noted that his fellow journalists accepted that global warming was occurring, but were in "'stage-two' denial of the climate crisis", unable to accept the feasibility of solutions to the problem.: 3, 35, 46, 197 His book, Boiling Point, published in 2004, detailed the fossil-fuel industry's campaign to deny climate change and undermine public confidence in climate science. In Newsweek's August 2007 cover story "The Truth About Denial", Sharon Begley reported that "the denial machine is running at full throttle", and that this "well-coordinated, well-funded campaign" by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks, and industry had "created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change." In 2006, George Monbiot published an article about similarities between the methods of groups funded by Exxon and those of the tobacco giant Philip Morris, including direct attacks on peer-reviewed science and attempts to create public controversy and doubt. The approach to downplay climate change's significance was copied from tobacco lobbyists, who attempted to prevent or delay the introduction of regulation in the face of scientific evidence linking tobacco to lung cancer. They attempted to discredit the research by creating doubt, manipulating debate, discrediting the scientists involved, disputing their findings, and creating and maintaining an apparent controversy by promoting claims that contradicted scientific research. Doubt shielded the tobacco industry from litigation and regulation for decades. For example, in 1992 an EPA report linked secondhand smoke with lung cancer. In response, the tobacco industry engaged the APCO Worldwide public relations company, which set out a strategy of astroturfing campaigns to cast doubt on the science by linking smoking anxieties with other issues, including global warming, in order to turn public opinion against calls for government intervention. The campaign depicted public concerns as "unfounded fears" supposedly based only on "junk science" in contrast to their "sound science", and operated through front groups, primarily the Advancement of Sound Science Center (TASSC) and its Junk Science website, run by Steven Milloy. A tobacco company memo read, "Doubt is our product since it is the best means of competing with the 'body of fact' that exists in the mind of the general public. It is also the means of establishing a controversy." During the 1990s, the tobacco campaign died away, and TASSC began taking funding from oil companies, including Exxon. Its website became central in distributing "almost every kind of climate-change denial that has found its way into the popular press.": 104–106 Monbiot wrote that TASSC "has done more damage to the campaign to halt [climate change] than any other body" by trying to manufacture the appearance of a grassroots movement against "unfounded fear" and "over-regulation". It'll start getting cooler, you just watch. [...] I don't think science knows, actually. The Republican Party in the United States is unique in denying anthropogenic climate change among conservative political parties in the Western world. In 1994, according to a leaked memo, the Republican strategist Frank Luntz advised members of the Republican Party, with regard to climate change, that "you need to continue to make the lack of scientific certainty a primary issue" and "challenge the science" by "recruiting experts who are sympathetic to your view". (In 2006, Luntz said he still believes "back [in] '97, '98, the science was uncertain", but now agreed with the scientific consensus.) From 2008 to 2017, the Republican Party went from "debating how to combat human-caused climate change to arguing that it does not exist". In 2011, "more than half of the Republicans in the House and three-quarters of Republican senators" said "that the threat of global warming, as a human-made and highly threatening phenomenon, is at best an exaggeration and at worst an utter 'hoax'". In 2014, more than 55% of congressional Republicans were reported to be climate change deniers. According to PolitiFact in May 2014, Jerry Brown's statement that "virtually no Republican" in Washington accepts climate change science was "mostly true"; PolitiFact counted "eight out of 278, or about 3 percent" of Republican members of Congress who "accept the prevailing scientific conclusion that global warming is both real and man-made." In 2005, The New York Times reported that Philip Cooney, a former fossil fuel lobbyist and "climate team leader" at the American Petroleum Institute and President George W. Bush's chief of staff of the Council on Environmental Quality, had "repeatedly edited government climate reports in ways that play down links between such emissions and global warming, according to internal documents". Sharon Begley reported in Newsweek that Cooney "edited a 2002 report on climate science by sprinkling it with phrases such as 'lack of understanding' and 'considerable uncertainty'." Cooney reportedly removed an entire section on climate in one report, whereupon another lobbyist sent him a fax saying "You are doing a great job." In the 2016 U.S. election cycle, every Republican presidential candidate, and the Republican leader in the U.S. Senate, questioned or denied climate change, and opposed U.S. government steps to address it. In 2016, Aaron McCright argued that anti-environmentalism—and climate change denial specifically—had expanded in the U.S. to become "a central tenet of the current conservative and Republican identity". In a 2017 interview, United States Secretary of Energy Rick Perry acknowledged the existence of climate change and impact from humans, but said that he did not agree that carbon dioxide was its primary driver, pointing instead to "the ocean waters and this environment that we live in". The American Meteorological Society responded in a letter to Perry that it is "critically important that you understand that emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are the primary cause", pointing to conclusions of scientists worldwide. Climate denial has started to decrease among the Republican Party leadership toward acknowledgment that "the climate is changing"; a 2019 study by several major think tanks called the climate right "fragmented and underfunded". Florida Republican Tom Lee described people's emotional impact and reactions to climate change, saying: "I mean, you have to be the Grim Reaper of reality in a world that isn't real fond of the Grim Reaper. That's why I use the term 'emotionally shut down', because I think I think you lose people at hello a lot times in the Republican conversation over this." When a moderator at the August 23, 2023, Republican presidential debate asked the candidates to raise their hands if they believed human behavior is causing climate change, none did. Entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy said, "the climate change agenda is a hoax" and that "more people are dying of climate change policies than they actually are of climate change"; none of his competitors challenged him directly on climate. After investigating Ramaswamy's latter claim, fact-checking websites found no supporting evidence. Denial networks The Paid Lobbyist (the coal industry, among others, is fighting emission reductions), the Don Quixote (emotionally committed laypeople, frequently pensioners, but also including a few journalists – many of them literally fighting windmills), and the Eccentric Scientist (they are few and far between). All three groups act like lobbyists: from a thousand research results, they cherry-pick and present the three that happen to support their own position – albeit only with a liberal interpretation." A 2000 article explored the connection between conservative think tanks and climate change denial. Research found that specific groups were marshaling skepticism against climate change; a 2008 University of Central Florida study found that 92% of "environmentally skeptical" literature published in the U.S. was partly or wholly affiliated with self-proclaimed conservative think tanks. In 2013, the Center for Media and Democracy reported that the State Policy Network (SPN), an umbrella group of 64 U.S. think tanks, had been lobbying on behalf of major corporations and conservative donors to oppose climate change regulation. Conservative and libertarian think tanks in the U.S., such as The Heritage Foundation, Marshall Institute, Cato Institute, and the American Enterprise Institute, were significant participants in lobbying attempts seeking to halt or eliminate environmental regulations. Between 2002 and 2010, the combined annual income of 91 climate change counter-movement organizations—think tanks, advocacy groups and industry associations—was roughly $900 million. During the same period, billionaires secretively donated nearly $120 million (£77 million) via the Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund to more than 100 organizations seeking to undermine the public perception of the science on climate change. In November 2021, a study by the Center for Countering Digital Hate identified "ten fringe publishers" that together were responsible for nearly 70 percent of Facebook user interactions with content that denied climate change. Facebook said the percentage was overstated and called the study misleading. The "toxic ten" publishers: Breitbart News, The Western Journal, Newsmax, Townhall, Media Research Center, The Washington Times, The Federalist, The Daily Wire, RT (TV network), and The Patriot Post. The Rebel Media and its director, Ezra Levant, have promoted climate change denial and oil sands extraction in Alberta. Willard Anthony Watts is an American blogger who runs Watts Up With That?, a climate change denial blog. A piece of research from 2015 identified 4,556 people with overlapping network ties to 164 organizations that were responsible for most efforts to downplay the threat of climate change in the U.S. According to documents leaked in February 2012, The Heartland Institute is developing a curriculum for use in schools that frames climate change as a scientific controversy. In 2017, deputy director of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) Glenn Branch wrote, "the Heartland Institute is continuing to inflict its climate change denial literature on science teachers across the country". Each significant claim was rated for accuracy by scientists who were experts on that topic. It was found that "the 'Key Findings' section are incorrect, misleading, based on flawed logic, or simply factually inaccurate". The NCSE has prepared Classroom Resources in response to Heartland and other anti-science threats. In 2023, Republican politician and Baptist minister Mike Huckabee published Kids Guide to the Truth About Climate Change, which acknowledges global warming but minimizes the influence of human emissions. Marketed as an alternative to mainstream education, the publication does not attribute authorship or cite scientific credentials. The NCSE's deputy director called the publication "propaganda" and "very unreliable as a guide to climate change for kids", saying it represented "present-day" atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide as 280 parts per million (ppm), which was true in 391 BC but short of 2023's actual concentration of 420 ppm. In 2023, the state of Florida approved a public school curriculum including videos produced by conservative advocacy group PragerU that liken climate change skeptics to those who fought Communism and Nazism, imply renewable energy harms the environment, and say current global warming occurs naturally. Texas, which has a large influence on school textbooks published nationwide, proposed textbooks in 2023 that included more information about the climate crisis than editions a decade earlier. But some books clouded the human causes of climate change and downplayed the role of fossil fuels, with Texas U.S. Representative August Pfluger emphasizing the importance of "secure, reliable energy" (oil and natural gas) produced in the Permian Basin. In September 2023, Pfluger's Congressional website said, "we cannot allow the radical climate lobby to infiltrate Texas middle schools and brainwash our children", claiming that liquefied natural gas is "not only...good for our economy, but it's good for the environment". Notable people who deny climate change When they say that the seas will rise over the next 400 years — one-eighth of an inch, you know. Which means, basically you have a little more beachfront property, OK. [Climate change] is the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world, in my opinion. ... All of these predictions...were made by stupid people that of course their country's fortunes and given those same countries, no chance for success. If you don't get away from this green scam, your country is going to fail. Acknowledgment of climate change by politicians, while expressing uncertainty as to how much of it is due to human activity, has been described as a new form of climate denial, and "a reliable tool to manipulate public perception of climate change and stall political action". In 2010, Donald Trump said, "With the coldest winter ever recorded, with snow setting record levels up and down the coast, the Nobel committee should take the Nobel Prize back from Al Gore....Gore wants us to clean up our factories and plants in order to protect us from global warming, when China and other countries couldn't care less. It would make us totally noncompetitive in the manufacturing world, and China, Japan and India are laughing at America's stupidity." In 2012, Trump tweeted, "The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make U.S. manufacturing non-competitive." By the early 2020s, Trump's administration generally changed the framing of the issue from denial to dismissal: diminishing, ridiculing or rejecting the idea that climate change should be mitigated or even studied. On September 23, 2025, in his first address to the United Nations General Assembly during his second term in office, Trump called the UN's predictions about climate change exaggerated, incorrect, and "the greatest con job perpetrated by the world". He falsely said that renewable energy sources such as solar and wind power "don't work", are unreliable, and more expensive than fossil fuels. On January 21, 2015, Jim Inhofe returned to chairing the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works as part of a new Republican majority in the Senate. In response to NOAA and NASA reports that 2014 had been the warmest year globally in the temperature record, he said, "we had the coldest in the western hemisphere in the same time frame", and attributed changes to a 30-year cycle, not human activity. In a debate the same day about a bill for the Keystone XL pipeline, Inhofe endorsed an amendment proposed by Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, "Climate change is real and not a hoax", which passed 98–1. Inhofe clarified his view, saying, "Climate is changing and climate has always changed and always will. There is archaeological evidence of that, there is biblical evidence of that, there is historical evidence of that", but added, "there are some people who are so arrogant to think they are so powerful they can change climate." On February 26, 2015, Inhofe brought a snowball to the Senate floor and tossed it before delivering remarks in which he said that environmentalists keep talking about global warming even though it keeps getting cold. In 2017, former U.S. Senator Tom Coburn discussed the Paris Agreement and denied the scientific consensus on human-caused global warming. He claimed that sea level rise had been no more than 5 mm in 25 years, and asserted there was now global cooling. In 2013, he said, "I am a global warming denier. I don't deny that." Republican Jim Bridenstine, the first elected politician to serve as NASA administrator, had previously said that global temperatures were not rising. But a month after the Senate confirmed his NASA position in April 2018, he acknowledged that human emissions of greenhouse gases are raising global temperatures. During a May 2018 meeting of the United States House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology, Representative Mo Brooks claimed that sea level rise is caused not by melting glaciers but rather by coastal erosion and silt that flows from rivers into the ocean. In 2019, Ernesto Araújo, the minister of foreign affairs appointed by Brazil's newly elected president Jair Bolsonaro, called global warming a plot by "cultural Marxists" and eliminated the ministry's climate change division. Apr 15, 2023 An April 15, 2023, tweet by Republican U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said climate change was a "scam", that "fossil fuels are natural and amazing", and that "there are some very powerful people that are getting rich beyond their wildest dreams convincing many that carbon is the enemy". Her tweet included a chart that omitted carbon dioxide and methane—the two most dominant greenhouse gas emissions. A 2024 analysis found 100 U.S. representatives and 23 U.S. senators—23% of the 535 members of Congress—to be climate change deniers, all the deniers being Republicans. On 29 July 2025, the chief administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency announced that the Trump administration would rescind the 2009 endangerment finding, which concluded that planet-warming greenhouse gases pose a threat to public health. (The endangerment finding is the scientific determination that underpins the U.S. government's legal authority to combat climate change.) A 13 August Carbon Brief fact-check concluded that there were at least 100 false or misleading statements in the Trump administration's A Critical Review of Impacts of Greenhouse Gas Emissions on the U.S. Climate, published on 23 July to support rescinding of the endangerment finding. On 30 August, Climate Experts' Review of the DOE Climate Working Group Report was published as a compendium of comments from 85 climate experts to counter the government's Critical Review. The government's five-member Climate Working Group that authored the Critical Review was dissolved by 5 September in response to a lawsuit filed by the Environmental Defense Fund and Union of Concerned Scientists. On 17 September, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) published a 137-page paper stating that "the evidence for current and future harm to human health and welfare created by human-caused GHGs is beyond scientific dispute". American and New Zealand climate scientist Kevin Trenberth has published widely on climate change science and fought back against climate change misinformation for decades. He describes in his memoirs his "close encounters with deniers and skeptics"—with fellow meteorologists or climate change scientists. These included Richard Lindzen ("he is quite beguiling but is criticized as "intellectually dishonest" by his peers"; Lindzen was a professor of meteorology at MIT and has been called a contrarian in relation to climate change and other issues.), Roy Spencer (who has "repeatedly made errors that always resulted in lower temperature trends than were really present"), John Christy ("his decisions on climate work and statements appear to be heavily colored by his religion"), Roger Pielke Jr, Christopher Landsea, Pat Michaels ("long associated with the Cato Institute, he changed his bombastic tune gradually over time as climate change became more evident").: 95 Sherwood B. Idso is a natural scientist and is the president of the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, which rejects the scientific consensus on climate change. In 1982 he published his book Carbon Dioxide: Friend or Foe?, which said increases in CO2 would not warm the planet, but would fertilize crops and were "something to be encouraged and not suppressed". William M. Gray was a climate scientist (emeritus professor of atmospheric science at Colorado State University) who supported climate change denial: he agreed that global warming was taking place, but argued that humans were responsible for only a tiny portion of it and it was largely part of the Earth's natural cycle. In 1998, Frederick Seitz, an American physicist and former National Academy of Sciences president, wrote the Oregon Petition, a controversial document in opposition to the Kyoto Protocol. The petition and accompanying "Research Review of Global Warming Evidence" claimed that "We are living in an increasingly lush environment of plants and animals as a result of the carbon dioxide increase. [...] This is a wonderful and unexpected gift from the Industrial Revolution". In their book Merchants of Doubt, the authors write that Seitz and a group of other scientists fought the scientific evidence and spread confusion on many of the most important issues of our time, like the harmfulness of tobacco smoke, acid rains, CFCs, pesticides, and global warming.: 25–29 Lobbying and related activities Efforts to lobby against environmental regulation have included campaigns to manufacture doubt about the science behind climate change and to obscure the scientific consensus and data.: 352 These have undermined public confidence in climate science.: 351 As of 2015, the climate change denial industry was most powerful in the U.S. Efforts by climate change denial groups played a significant role in the United States' rejection of the Kyoto Protocol in 1997. In what The Guardian said "seems to be the latest incident in a crackdown on discussing the climate crisis", the Trump administration in 2025 instructed employees of the US Department of Energy to avoid using terms such as "climate change", "decarbonization", "sustainable", "emissions", "green", "energy transition", "'clean' or 'dirty' energy" and "carbon/CO2 'footprint'". In January 2025, Trump stripped mentions of climate change and global heating from government websites and ended many climate-focused government programs. The fossil fuel industry has been waging a decades-long, multi-billion-dollar disinformation campaign denying climate change and spreading doubt on climate science, aimed at blocking climate action and phasing out fossil fuels. Research conducted at an Exxon archival collection at the University of Texas and interviews with former Exxon employees indicate that the company's scientific opinion and its public posture toward climate change were contradictory. A systematic review of Exxon's climate modeling projections concluded that in private and academic circles since the late 1970s and early 1980s, ExxonMobil predicted global warming correctly and skillfully, correctly dismissed the possibility of a coming ice age in favor of a "carbon dioxide induced super-interglacial", and reasonably estimated how much CO2 would lead to dangerous warming. Between 1989 and 2002, the Global Climate Coalition, a group of mainly U.S. businesses, used aggressive lobbying and public relations tactics to oppose action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and fight the Kyoto Protocol. Large corporations and trade groups from the oil, coal and auto industries financed the coalition. The New York Times reported, "even as the coalition worked to sway opinion [toward skepticism], its own scientific and technical experts were advising that the science backing the role of greenhouse gases in global warming could not be refuted". In 2000, the Ford Motor Company was the first company to leave the coalition as a result of pressure from environmentalists. Daimler-Chrysler, Texaco, the Southern Company and General Motors subsequently left the GCC. It closed in 2002. From January 2009 through June 2010, the oil, coal and utility industries spent $500 million in lobby expenditures in opposition to legislation to address climate change. A study in 2022 traced the history of an influential group of economic consultants hired by the petroleum industry from the 1990s to the 2010s to estimate the costs of various proposed climate policies. The economists used models that inflated predicted costs while ignoring policy benefits, and their results were often portrayed to the public as independent rather than industry-sponsored. Their work played a key role in undermining numerous major climate policy initiatives in the US over a span of decades. This study illustrates how the fossil fuel industry has funded biased economic analyses to oppose climate policy. From the 1980s to the mid 2000s, the American multinational oil and gas corporation ExxonMobil was a leader in climate change denial, opposing regulations to curtail global warming. For example, ExxonMobil was a significant influence in preventing ratification of the Kyoto Protocol by the United States. ExxonMobil funded organizations critical of the Kyoto Protocol and seeking to undermine public opinion about the scientific consensus that global warming is caused by the burning of fossil fuels. Of the major oil corporations, ExxonMobil has been the most active in the debate surrounding climate change. According to a 2007 analysis by the Union of Concerned Scientists, the company used many of the same strategies, tactics, organizations, and personnel the tobacco industry used in its denials of the link between lung cancer and smoking. ExxonMobil has funded, among other groups, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, George C. Marshall Institute, Heartland Institute, the American Legislative Exchange Council and the International Policy Network.: 67 Between 1998 and 2004, ExxonMobil granted $16 million to advocacy organizations which disputed the impact of global warming. From 1989 until April 2010, ExxonMobil and its predecessor Mobil purchased regular Thursday advertorials in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal claiming that the science of climate change was unsettled. An analysis conducted by The Carbon Brief in 2011 found that 9 out of 10 of the most prolific authors who cast doubt on climate change or speak against it had ties to ExxonMobil. Greenpeace have said that Koch industries invested more than US$50 million in the past 50 years on spreading doubts about climate change. Climate change deniers attacked the work of climate scientist Michael E. Mann for years. On 8 February 2024, Mann won a $1 million judgment for punitive damages in a defamation lawsuit filed in 2012 against bloggers who attacked his hockey stick graph of the Northern Hemisphere temperature rise. One of the bloggers had called Mann's work "fraudulent", contrary to numerous investigations that had already cleared Mann of any misconduct and supported the validity of his research. After Elon Musk's 2022 takeover of Twitter (now X), key figures at the company who ensured trusted content was prioritized were removed, and climate scientists received a large increase in hostile, threatening, harassing, and personally abusive tweets from deniers. In 2023, increases in climate change denial were reported, particularly on the far right. Climate change deniers threatened meteorologists, accusing them of causing a drought, falsifying thermometer readings, and cherry-picking warmer weather stations to misrepresent global warming. Also in 2023, CNN reported that meteorologists and climate communicators worldwide were receiving increased harassment and false accusations that they were lying about or controlling the weather, inflating temperature records to make climate change seem worse, and changing color palettes of weather maps to make them look more dramatic. The German television news service Tagesschau called this a global phenomenon. Journalists reported in 2015 that oil companies had known since the 1970s that burning oil and gas could cause climate change but nonetheless funded deniers for years. Several large fossil fuel corporations provide significant funding for attempts to mislead the public about climate science's trustworthiness. ExxonMobil and the Koch family foundations have been identified as especially influential funders of climate change contrarianism. The bankruptcy of the coal company Cloud Peak Energy revealed it funded the Institute for Energy Research, a climate denial think tank, as well as several other policy influencers. After the IPCC released its Fourth Assessment Report in 2007, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) offered British, American, and other scientists $10,000 plus travel expenses to publish articles critical of the assessment. The institute had received more than $1.6 million from Exxon, and its vice-chairman of trustees was former Exxon head Lee Raymond. Raymond sent letters that alleged the IPCC report was not "supported by the analytical work". More than 20 AEI employees worked as consultants to the George W. Bush administration. The authors of the 2010 book Merchants of Doubt provide documentation for the assertion that professional deniers have tried to sow seeds of doubt in public opinion in order to halt any meaningful social or political action to reduce the impact of human carbon emissions. That only half of the American population believes global warming is caused by human activity could be seen as a victory for these deniers. One of the authors' main arguments is that most prominent scientists who have opposed the near-universal consensus are funded by industries, such as automotive and oil, that stand to lose money by government actions to regulate greenhouse gases. The Global Climate Coalition was an industry coalition that funded several scientists who expressed skepticism about global warming. In 2000, several members left the coalition when they became the target of a national divestiture campaign run by John Passacantando and Phil Radford at Ozone Action. When Ford Motor Company left the coalition, it was regarded as "the latest sign of divisions within heavy industry over how to respond to global warming". After that, between December 1999 and early March 2000, the GCC was deserted by Daimler-Chrysler, Texaco, energy firm the Southern Company and General Motors. The Global Climate Coalition closed in 2002. In early 2015, several media reports emerged saying that Willie Soon, a popular scientist among climate change deniers, had failed to disclose conflicts of interest in at least 11 scientific papers published since 2008. They reported that he received a total of $1.25 million from ExxonMobil, Southern Company, the American Petroleum Institute, and a foundation run by the Koch brothers. Documents obtained by Greenpeace under the Freedom of Information Act show that the Charles G. Koch Foundation gave Soon two grants totaling $175,000 in 2005/6 and again in 2010. Grants to Soon between 2001 and 2007 from the American Petroleum Institute totaled $274,000, and between 2005 and 2010 from ExxonMobil totaled $335,000. The Mobil Foundation, the Texaco Foundation, and the Electric Power Research Institute also funded Soon. Acknowledging that he received this money, Soon said that he had "never been motivated by financial reward in any of my scientific research". In 2015, Greenpeace disclosed papers documenting that Soon failed to disclose to academic journals funding including more than $1.2 million from fossil fuel industry-related interests, including ExxonMobil, the American Petroleum Institute, the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, and the Southern Company. Science editor-in-chief Donald Kennedy has said that deniers such as Michaels are lobbyists more than researchers, and "I don't think it's unethical any more than most lobbying is unethical". He said donations to deniers amount to "trying to get a political message across". Robert Brulle analyzed the funding of 91 organizations opposed to restrictions on carbon emissions, which he called the "climate change counter-movement". Between 2003 and 2013, the donor-advised funds Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund, combined, were the largest funders, accounting for about a quarter of the funds, and the American Enterprise Institute was the largest recipient, with 16% of the total funds. The study also found that the amount of money donated to these organizations by means of foundations whose funding sources cannot be traced had risen. Climate change denial is considered the world's most studied science denial. Energy industry structure plays a significant role in countries' denial rates. Countries with state-managed energy sectors show much lower rates of climate change denial than those with privatized systems, where private lobbying can filter skeptical coverage into media and policy. Brazil had the lowest rate of skeptical mentions in media coverage, at around 1-3%. 80% of its power is hydroelectric, and the state-owned Petrobras monopolizes the energy industry. France generates 80% of its energy through nuclear power, leaving little room for oil and gas lobbying. Countries with the highest rates of denial are English-speaking. A review of 161 academic studies on climate denial found that 42% focused on the US, 20% on the UK, and 8% on Australia. Developing countries do not have the same level of research into such topics and generally have direr economic issues to contend with. In the UK, the second-largest source of climate change denial after the US, high denial rates follow recognizable patterns. High levels of lobbying filter skeptical coverage into local news, with 2,340 lobbyists earning $90 million in fees and another $259 million from think tanks. The UK also has a strong tabloid culture, particularly the Daily Mail and Daily Express, with political agendas. In 2009, Lord Nigel Lawson, former Chancellor of the Exchequer, founded the Global Warming Policy Foundation to counter the climate change movement. One of its offshoots, Net Zero Watch, has focused on promoting the idea that renewable energy is too expensive for the UK public. As of 2015, two out of five UK residents believed that climate change is still contested by scientists, with skepticism overrepresented among the elderly, those from poor socioeconomic backgrounds, conservatives, and men. Research has characterized the UK as a "pivotal outlier" in European Union climate negotiations, sometimes pushing for higher ambition while also blocking specific measures like binding national renewable energy targets for 2030. Nor is the rest of Europe is in full agreement on climate change. French politician Claude Allègre published L'imposture climatique (The Climate Fraud) in 2010. In Russia, climate action is portrayed as a Western agenda aimed at keeping the rest of the world poor. In Germany, the car industry lobbies heavily against EU emission policy. Even Sweden, a country known for progressive policy, has significant lobbying efforts aimed at maintaining its forestry industry. Tactics have shifted from outright denial to "manufacturing doubt", attempting to create uncertainty to establish that any policy action would be premature and costly. This involves consensus denial, claiming scientists do not collectively agree; impact denial, saying human-caused warming is very minor; and trend denial, claiming warming is a natural progression of the earth's atmosphere. Companies greenwash, claiming to be environmentally friendly while actually engaging in harmful practices. There is also technological optimism, claiming future technology will combat climate change quickly and cheaply, so no action need be taken now. Finally, nations engage in "whataboutism", pointing to other nations that might not be at the same level of environmental awareness and would therefore be at an economic advantage. Effects on public opinion Public opinion on climate change is significantly affected by media coverage of climate change and the effects of climate change denial campaigns. Campaigns to undermine public confidence in climate science have decreased public belief in climate change, which in turn has affected legislative efforts to curb CO2 emissions. Climate change conspiracy theories and denial have resulted in poor action or no action at all to effectively mitigate the damage done by global warming. 40% of Americans believed (ca. 2017) that climate change is a hoax even though 100% of climate scientists (as of 2019) believe it is real. A study in 2015 stated: "Exposure to conspiracy theories reduced people's intentions to reduce their carbon footprint, relative to people who were given refuting information." Manufactured uncertainty over climate change, the fundamental strategy of climate change denial, has been very effective, particularly in the U.S. It has contributed to low levels of public concern and to government inaction worldwide.: 255 A 2010 Angus Reid poll found that global warming skepticism in the U.S., Canada, and the United Kingdom has been rising. There may be multiple causes of this trend, including a focus on economic rather than environmental issues, and a negative perception of the United Nations and its role in discussing climate change. According to Tim Wirth, "They patterned what they did after the tobacco industry. ... Both figured, sow enough doubt, call the science uncertain and in dispute. That's had a huge impact on both the public and Congress." American media has propagated this approach, presenting a false balance between climate science and climate skeptics. In 2006 Newsweek reported that most Europeans and Japanese accepted the consensus on scientific climate change, but only one third of Americans thought human activity plays a major role in climate change; 64% believed that scientists disagreed about it "a lot". Deliberate attempts by the Western Fuels Association "to confuse the public" have succeeded. This has been "exacerbated by media treatment of the climate issue". According to a 2012 Pew poll, 57% of Americans are unaware of, or outright reject, the scientific consensus on climate change. Some organizations promoting climate change denial have asserted that scientists are increasingly rejecting climate change, but this is contradicted by research showing that 97% of published papers endorse the scientific consensus, and that percentage is increasing with time. On the other hand, global oil companies have begun to acknowledge the existence of climate change and its risks. Still, top oil firms are spending millions lobbying to delay, weaken, or block policies to tackle climate change. Manufactured climate change denial is also influencing how scientific knowledge is communicated to the public. According to climate scientist Michael E. Mann, "universities and scientific societies and organizations, publishers, etc.—are too often risk averse when it comes to defending and communicating science that is perceived as threatening by powerful interests". A study found that public climate change policy support and behavior are significantly influenced by public beliefs, attitudes and risk perceptions. As of March 2018 the rate of acceptance among U.S. TV forecasters that the climate is changing has increased to 95 percent. The number of local TV stories about global warming has also increased, by a factor of 15. Climate Central has received some credit for this, because it provides classes for meteorologists and graphics for TV stations. Popular media in the U.S. gives greater attention[needs update] to climate change skeptics than the scientific community as a whole, and the level of agreement within the scientific community has not been accurately communicated. In some cases, news outlets have let climate change skeptics instead of experts in climatology explain the science of climate change. US and UK media coverage differ from that in other countries, where reporting is more consistent with the scientific literature. Some journalists attribute the difference to climate change denial being propagated, mainly in the U.S., by business-centered organizations employing tactics worked out previously by the U.S. tobacco lobby. Denial of climate change is most prevalent among white, politically conservative men in the U.S. In France, the U.S., and the U.K., climate change skeptics' opinions appear much more frequently in conservative news outlets than others, and in many cases those opinions are left uncontested. In 2018, the National Science Teachers Association urged teachers to "emphasize to students that no scientific controversy exists regarding the basic facts of climate change". Climate change denial has been promoted by several far-right European parties, including Spain's Vox, Finland's far-right Finns Party, Austria's far-right Freedom Party, and Germany's anti-immigration Alternative for Deutschland (AfD). Russia also spreads climate disinformation with the aim of blaming the Western Bloc. In April 2023, French political scientist Jean-Yves Dormagen said that the modest and conservative classes were the most skeptical about climate change. In a study by the Jean-Jaurès Foundation published the same month, climate skepticism was compared to a new populism whose representative and spokesman is Steven E. Koonin. Responses to denialism Climate denial "is not simply overcome by reasoned argument", because it is not a rational response. Attempting to overcome denial using techniques of persuasive argument, such as supplying a missing piece of information, or providing general scientific education may be ineffective. A person who is in denial about climate is most likely taking a position based on their feelings, especially their feelings about things they fear. Academics have stated that "It is pretty clear that fear of the solutions drives much opposition to the science." It can be useful to respond to emotions, including with the statement "It can be painful to realise that our own lifestyles are responsible", in order to help move "from denial to acceptance to constructive action." Some climate change skeptics have changed their positions regarding global warming. Ronald Bailey, author of Global Warming and Other Eco-Myths (published in 2002), stated in 2005, "Anyone still holding onto the idea that there is no global warming ought to hang it up." By 2007, he wrote "Details like sea level rise will continue to be debated by researchers, but if the debate over whether or not humanity is contributing to global warming wasn't over before, it is now.... as the new IPCC Summary makes clear, climate change Pollyannaism is no longer looking very tenable." Jerry Taylor promoted climate denialism for 20 years as former staff director for the energy and environment task force at the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and former vice president of the Cato Institute. Taylor began to change his mind after climate scientist James Hansen challenged him to reread some Senate testimony. He became President of the Niskanen Center in 2014, where he is involved in turning climate skeptics into climate activists, and making the business case for climate action. Michael Shermer, the publisher of Skeptic magazine, reached a tipping point in 2006 as a result of his increasing familiarity with scientific evidence, and decided there was "overwhelming evidence for anthropogenic global warming". Journalist Gregg Easterbrook, an early skeptic of climate change who authored the influential book A Moment on the Earth, also changed his mind in 2006, and wrote an essay titled "Case Closed: The Debate About Global Warming is Over". In 2006, he stated, "based on the data I'm now switching sides regarding global warming, from skeptic to convert." In 2009, Russian president Dmitri Medvedev expressed his opinion that climate change was "some kind of tricky campaign made up by some commercial structures to promote their business projects". After the devastating 2010 Russian wildfires damaged agriculture and left Moscow choking in smoke, Medvedev commented, "Unfortunately, what is happening now in our central regions is evidence of this global climate change." Bob Inglis, a former US representative for South Carolina, changed his mind in around 2010 after appeals from his son on his environmental positions, and after spending time with climate scientist Scott Heron studying coral bleaching in the Great Barrier Reef. Richard A. Muller, professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and the co-founder of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, funded by Charles Koch Charitable Foundation, had been a prominent critic of prevailing climate science. In 2011, he stated that "following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I'm now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause." "I used to be a climate-change skeptic", conservative columnist Max Boot admitted in 2018, one who believed that "the science was inconclusive" and that worry was "overblown". Now, he says, referencing the Fourth National Climate Assessment, "the scientific consensus is so clear and convincing." Explaining the techniques of science denial and misinformation, by presenting "examples of people using cherrypicking or fake experts or false balance to mislead the public", has been shown to inoculate people somewhat against misinformation. Dialogue focused on the question of how belief differs from scientific theory may provide useful insights into how the scientific method works, and how beliefs may have strong or minimal supporting evidence. Wong-Parodi's survey of the literature shows four effective approaches to dialogue, including "[encouraging] people to openly share their values and stance on climate change before introducing actual scientific climate information into the discussion." One study of climate change denial among farmers in Australia found that farmers were less likely to take a position of climate denial if they had experienced improved production from climate-friendly practices, or identified a younger person as a successor for their farm. Therefore, seeing positive economic results from efforts at climate-friendly agricultural practices, or becoming involved in intergenerational stewardship of a farm may play a role in turning farmers away from denial. In the United States, rural climate dialogues sponsored by the Sierra Club have helped neighbors overcome their fears of political polarization and exclusion, and come together to address shared concerns about climate impacts in their communities. Some participants who start out with attitudes of anthropogenic climate change denial have shifted to identifying concerns which they would like to see addressed by local officials. In May 2013 Charles, Prince of Wales took a strong stance criticising both climate change deniers and corporate lobbyists by likening the Earth to a dying patient. "A scientific hypothesis is tested to absolute destruction, but medicine can't wait. If a doctor sees a child with a fever, he can't wait for [endless] tests. He has to act on what is there." As of February 2024, there are at least 32 ongoing lawsuits in the United States seeking damages against the fossil fuel industry on the grounds that it spread climate change denialism despite knowing the risks. In June 2025, UN Special Rapporteur Elisa Morgera released a report that cites climate disinformation as a major obstacle to action and, among other actions, calls for criminalization of climate disinformation and a ban on fossil-fuel lobbying and advertising. See also References Further reading |
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