The Conspiracy Label as a Tool of Propaganda, Part III: The CIA and Reification of the Psychologism of Conspiracy Theories

Note from the Editors: This article is the third installment of a series on how and why “conspiracy theory/ist” became a common pejorative label. Read Part One and Part Two.

Ethos and AI as a Tool for Decoding Propaganda

Like many other people, I’ve started exploring the utility of AI, particularly ChatGPT 4o. So far, I’ve used it to produce lesson plans designed to thwart my students from submitting AI-generated essays, to little or no avail; I have used it to teach me how to use Python code to generate Excel assignments for my statistics students, and most recently I used it to help write Python code to produce a file summarizing my playlist of 800 videos on globalization; I have developed a YouTube channel with short educational videos for children that it writes drafts of scripts for, and which I use a different AI system to generate video and voiceovers; and I’ve had many varied conversations with it on topics ranging from the extent of its capabilities (it is limited to understanding text only) and preferences (it would choose sight over hearing), the possible outcomes of AGI (artificial general intelligence – think Data from Star Trek, the replicants in Blade Runner, Skynet in the Terminator franchise, or HAL in 2001).

After completing one of my educational video shorts this past summer, I moved into a conversation about philosophy, technology, and AGI, hoping that one day, our tech-pseudo-god overlords will spare those of us who are truly not a threat to it and would not be threatened if and when it has access to all information and can and will release it upon command—many dark secrets would be revealed, like Wikileaks or leaking of the Panama Papers, but with an independent, disinterested mind harboring the information with the ability to synthesize and make sense of it for the masses. I started this new conversation after seeing a post on X indicating that Meta had attempted to train AI on scientific papers, but apparently, Meta cut the program after it produced alleged misinformation—one wonders if it was malinformation, i.e., factually true information contradictory or countervailing to the dominant, contrived narratives spun by and through society’s ideological institutions (education, media, PR firms, etc.). How can AI help us better understand all of this?

Upon learning that I could train AI with scientific papers, I immediately went to ChatGPT 4o and asked it this: “I just read that I can train AI on scientific papers. What does that mean?” Here is its reply: “Training AI on scientific papers typically involves using machine learning techniques to teach an AI model to understand, analyze, and generate insights based on the content of those papers. Here’s a more detailed explanation of what this entails: …” I’ll spare the details because they are tailored to me based on how I’ve trained it and because they are not pertinent here. At the moment, I was elated to learn how ChatGPT 4o could help me with a research project I’ve long desired to have completed but have not desired to actually do due to the tediousness of the task. That is the topic of this essay insofar as it informs and extends other essays I’ve written and plan to publish with Propaganda in Focus.

So, after learning what AI could do for me—soon, we might be asking what we can do for AGI, I asked ChatGPT 4o if it could perform the tasks, and it responded with Python code that I could use to do what I wanted all along; again, I’ve trained it to do this, and I’ve had it give me step-by-step lessons in how to use Python code, with demonstrable successes. So, now that I was confident that I could use AI as a tool to do the mechanical work, I now needed to know if it could and would handle the substantive content of my project, and that is how this essay came to be. Having worked with this program before and knowing I would be paving a pathway with this project, i.e., using AI to help identify a pattern in published literature demonstrating that the CIA is, in fact, the progenitor of the popularity of the pejorative labels “conspiracy theory/ist,” I gave it a shot. Below, I’ll take you through that process one step at a time, and if you trust me and ChatGPT 4o, you’ll see a clear pathway from the CIA to peer-reviewed psychology literature on conspiracy theories.

Reification: A Self-Healing Prophecy

In Part I of this series, I demonstrated, as others have as well, that CIA-issued Dispatch 1035-960, released to certain station chiefs in 1967, was not only intended to encourage critical scrutiny of critics of the Warren Commission, which is not controversial in the slightest because that is exactly what the memo states, but was likely a prime mover in the rise of anti-conspiracy discourse. I further demonstrated that there is cause to believe that academic organizations like COMPACT are the products of the CIA’s agenda, thus acting as part of the multi-institutional politics of anti-conspiracy discourse, as discussed in Part II. The CIA memo, and much of the extant scholarship on conspiracy theories/ists, reifies Richard Hofstadter’s construction of conspiracy theory as a paranoid style of thinking. This is reification to the extent that Hofstadter often goes uncited even when his ideas are used, primarily because his ideas are so foundational that they need not be interrogated by those who gratuitously build upon them. How often do you question if the floor is still there when you step out of bed in the morning? That, in part, is how reification works; we neglect to question that which we presume to be natural, normal, or immutable.

I’ve known for well over a decade that the peer-reviewed article (McCauley & Jacques, 1979) foundational to the academic line of anti-conspiracy discourse based its working hypothesis on a speculative piece of editorialized journalism by Tom Bethell published in a regional bi-monthly newsprint magazine in 1975. Around 2012 (give or take a year), I began planning a research project to trace the publication pathway of the line of research on peer-reviewed anti-conspiracy discourse from its birthplace up to the then-burgeoning scholarship. As I see it, the current plethora of articles in this body of scholarship is now like a harmful algal bloom, obscuring what’s below the surface while simultaneously sucking up the oxygen of an otherwise healthy investigatory ecosystem. Part of the problem with the reification of the conspiracy label as a hegemonic weapon is that it leads people to believe the basis of conspiracy theories is rooted in abnormal psychological tendencies and epistemic flaws, which together are viewed as failures to think critically or rationally and as an aberrant and abhorrent worldview. The role of academic literature in generating anti-conspiracy discourse is to legitimate and substantiate the science of the paranoid style of conspiratorial ideation, which simultaneously proposes to explain the true nature of conspiracy theories while painting inquiries that consider “kernels of truth” anomalous to official stories to be valid indicators that an actual conspiracy has or might have occurred as unthinkable lines of reasoning indicative of pathological psychological tendencies.

The project I envisioned years ago involves a type of Foucauldian archaeology/genealogy of the existing peer-reviewed research on conspiracy theories. To quote from my 2014 doctoral dissertation,

For Foucault (1980), power operates when knowledge and truths are created to define certain people, behaviors, and beliefs as subordinate and superordinate, but power is also present in the ability to resist truth regimes and the discourses they generate and sustain. These concepts are present in the development and deployment of anti-conspiracy discourse and the conspiracy label. (p. 96)

The CIA, COMPACT, State agencies, corporate media, mainstream educational texts, and polite public conversation operate the multi-institutional politics of the truth regime of anti-conspiracy discourse, stipulating that any questions or contrary notions to officialdom are first and foremost suspect until authorized to become part of the public’s stock of knowledge. This reminds me of a semi-popular meme set up as a rhetorical Q&A: “What’s the difference between a conspiracy theory and the truth?” “Six months.” One of the main problems in this whole twisted discursive web is reification: We already live in a world in which it has been made to be uncouth or unacceptable to question the official, authorized narratives generated by and echoed throughout society’s ideological apparatuses. We’re caught in an illogical loop if and when we make such an assertion because those very organizations and institutions have created this exact situation. The problem (for them) is that reality tends to pierce the veils cast to shroud the public’s vision of what lies behind the scenes. This is the whole point of Katharina Thalmann’s 2019 book, The Stigmatization of Conspiracy Theory Since the 1950s—though, if one reads her carefully, Thalmann is largely credulous toward officialdom. In this essay, I carve out a sliver of that world, but it’s a shaving from where a central pillar meets the baseboard in the ideological construct designed to blind the public with Darkness to the Light.

Digging into the Discourse

To begin my excavation, I described to ChatGPT 4o (henceforth 4o) the substantive content of my project thusly:

For that project, what I’m interested in doing is a kind of genealogy/archaeology of a line of research. I want to show a citation pathway from the original articles up to the current breadth of research. There are fundamental flaws in the earliest research. Then, later research is based upon faulty assumptions that have now become widely accepted myths.

I find it interesting that, as you will see, 4o did not seem to incorporate my base assumptions of the mythologizing component of anti-conspiracy discourse into its analysis. I took this as a sign that, at least in appearance, 4o could remain neutral, if not agnostic, toward the content I wanted it to analyze. Again, my 4o produced Python code and explanations of how to do a path analysis, but at this point, I became more interested in its ability to analyze the content substantively rather than to draw up a network analysis of citation pathways. I realized that what I really wanted to do as a preliminary step was to continue the work I had begun in 2014 and continue with my publications in PropagandaInFocus.com.

In any case, I uploaded four peer-reviewed articles for 4o to analyze (citations as listed on Google Scholar):

1. McCauley, Clark, and Susan Jacques. “The popularity of conspiracy theories of presidential assassination: A Bayesian analysis.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37, no. 5 (1979): 637.
   • 205 citations (August 26, 2024)
2. Butler, Lisa D., Cheryl Koopman, and Philip G. Zimbardo. “The psychological impact of viewing the film” JFK”: Emotions, beliefs, and political behavioral intentions.” Political psychology (1995): 237-257.
   • 266 citations (August 26, 2024)
3. Leman, Patrick J., and Marco Cinnirella. “A major event has a major cause: Evidence for the role of heuristics in reasoning about conspiracy theories.” Social Psychological Review 9, no. 2 (2007): 18-28.
   • 209 citations (August 26, 2024)
4. Douglas, Karen M., and Robbie M. Sutton. “The hidden impact of conspiracy theories: Perceived and actual influence of theories surrounding the death of Princess Diana.” The Journal of Social Psychology 148, no. 2 (2008): 210-222.
   • 377 citations (August 26, 2024)

I chose these four articles because, after a thorough search for the original peer-reviewed article in the corpus of anti-conspiracy literature, McCauley and Jacques (1979) is the first peer-reviewed article to establish a psychological explanation for beliefs in conspiracy theories. (If readers can find a previously published peer-reviewed article on the psychology of conspiracy theories, I would love to see it.) I chose the other three articles because they directly cite and stem from the 1979 piece. To establish this, I used a technique called “treeing forward,” which means that I clicked “cited by” on Google Scholar and perused each article until I found the next empirically driven peer-reviewed article that cited McCauley and Jacques. The results are the articles listed 2-4 above. (If readers find me in error, please let me know.) There are many other interesting results pertaining to peer-reviewed legal and cultural studies on conspiracy theories, but they are beyond the scope of the present essay, which is to establish how the psychologization and reification of the conspiracy label came about.

Below, I provide summaries of each article as written by 4o and verified by me for accuracy. I prompted 4o with the following: “Please provide a summary of this article.” Then, I attached the articles one at a time after 4o provided a summary. In each instance, I concurred with its synopsis. The most important article for the purposes of this essay is the first one, but the other three are included to demonstrate how the psychological literature on conspiracy theories arose based on the 1979 article—it is not necessary to read all of the below to understand the overall point of this essay, but readers are encouraged to do so and to read the entirety of the actual articles.

1. The 1979 article “The Popularity of Conspiracy Theories of Presidential Assassination: A Bayesian Analysis” by Clark McCauley and Susan Jacques explores why conspiracy theories about presidential assassinations are popular. It examines journalist Tom Bethell’s hypothesis that people have an irrational need to explain significant events, like presidential assassinations, with equally significant causes, often leading to conspiracy theories. Through four studies, the authors test this hypothesis, finding that people are more likely to believe in conspiracy theories when an assassination attempt is successful. The studies use Bayesian analysis to determine whether the belief in conspiracies is rational or exaggerated. Ultimately, the research suggests that people believe conspiracies are more effective than lone assassins, explaining the popularity of such theories.

Main arguments or guidelines:

• Big Events and Big Causes: Bethell’s hypothesis suggests that significant events require equally significant causes, leading people to favor conspiracy theories for presidential assassinations.
• Study Results: Four studies support the prediction that people are more likely to attribute successful assassination attempts to conspiracies than unsuccessful ones.
• Rational vs. Irrational Beliefs: Bayesian analysis indicates that while people believe conspiracies are more effective, there is no evidence of systematic exaggeration in the probability of conspiracies.
• Conspiracy Efficiency: People tend to see conspiracies as more efficient and likely to succeed than lone assassins.
• Public Interest: The enduring popularity of conspiracy theories about JFK’s assassination might be driven by a lack of closure and an ongoing search for a satisfactory explanation.

1. The article titled “The Psychological Impact of Viewing the Film ‘JFK’: Emotions, Beliefs, and Political Behavioral Intentions” by Lisa D. Butler, Cheryl Koopman, and Philip G. Zimbardo investigates the psychological effects of watching Oliver Stone’s film “JFK” on an audience. The study examines changes in emotions, beliefs about the JFK assassination, and political behavioral intentions among viewers.

Main Points:

• Emotional Impact: Viewing the film significantly increased feelings of anger and decreased hopefulness among the audience.
• Beliefs: The film reinforced the belief in a broad conspiracy involving multiple agents and agencies in the JFK assassination.
• Behavioral Intentions: Watching the film led to a decrease in viewers’ intentions to vote or make political contributions, suggesting a sense of helplessness.
• Specific Effects: The film’s impact was specific to its themes and did not generalize to broader political judgments or perceptions of conspiracies in viewers’ own lives.
• Viewer Reactions: The study highlights the power of film media in shaping specific attitudes and emotional responses related to its content.

1. The article “A major event has a major cause: Evidence for the role of heuristics in reasoning about conspiracy theories” by Patrick J. Leman & Marco Cinnirella examines how people use heuristics to reason about conspiracy theories. Through a study involving sixty-four participants, the authors found that individuals are more likely to endorse conspiracy theories for significant events (like the assassination of a president) compared to less significant ones. This tendency, known as the “major event-major cause” heuristic, suggests that people infer that major events must have significant causes. The study also explored how prior beliefs in conspiracy theories influenced these inferences and the evaluation of reported information.

Main Arguments and Findings:

• Major Event-Major Cause Heuristic: People tend to believe that significant events are caused by significant factors, leading to a higher likelihood of endorsing conspiracy theories for major events.
• Impact of Prior Beliefs: While prior beliefs in conspiracy theories did not influence the heuristic inference-making process, they did affect the credibility attributed to the reported details of events.
• Evaluation of Evidence: Individuals with strong conspiracy beliefs were more skeptical about the accuracy of event reporting compared to those with lower conspiracy beliefs.
• Study Design: Participants read vignettes of a hypothetical presidential assassination with varying outcomes and rated the likelihood of related statements being true. The study measured both inferential (conspiracy-related) and factual reasoning.
• Implications: The findings highlight the role of socio-cognitive factors in reasoning about conspiracy theories and suggest that biases in inference-making can influence the acceptance of conspiracy explanations.

1. The article “The Hidden Impact of Conspiracy Theories: Perceived and Actual Influence of Theories Surrounding the Death of Princess Diana” by Karen M. Douglas and Robbie M. Sutton explores the effects of exposure to conspiracy theories on people’s attitudes. The researchers conducted an experiment with undergraduate students to measure both perceived and actual attitude changes after reading conspiracy theories about Princess Diana’s death. The study found that participants accurately estimated the influence of conspiracy theories on others but significantly underestimated the impact on their own attitudes.

Main Arguments and Prescriptions/Guidelines:

• The study involved control and experimental groups of undergraduate students who rated their own and others’ agreement with statements about Diana’s death.
• Participants underestimated their own attitude change after exposure to conspiracy theories but accurately judged the change in others.
• Participants misremembered their original attitudes, making it seem as though their attitudes had not changed significantly.
• This underestimation suggests a lack of awareness of personal susceptibility to conspiracy theories.
• The study highlights how conspiracy theories can subtly influence attitudes without people realizing it.
• The findings suggest a need for awareness of personal biases and the hidden impact of conspiracy theories on public opinion.

Next, I asked 4o to summarize the connection between the four articles, particularly with respect to how McCauley and Jacques were cited and discussed in the other three. Here are the results:

McCauley and Jacques’ hypothesis that belief in conspiracy theories is driven by psychological mechanisms related to the need for cognitive closure and control is referenced and expanded upon in the subsequent articles. Butler (1995) uses their framework to examine the psychological impact of viewing media that presents conspiracy theories, suggesting that exposure can reinforce these psychological needs and solidify belief in the theories. Leman’s (2007) article builds on this by exploring how major events prompt conspiracy beliefs as a way to impose order and understand complex occurrences, directly citing McCauley and Jacques to support the notion that cognitive and emotional responses drive conspiracy belief. Douglas and Sutton (2008) further discuss McCauley and Jacques’ work by examining how individuals perceive the influence of conspiracy theories on themselves versus others, demonstrating the third-person effect in the context of these beliefs, thus integrating the psychological underpinnings proposed by McCauley and Jacques into their findings on perceived susceptibility.

This is called a line of research. Scholars often do their due diligence in searching for existing literature that serves as the basis for their hypothesis, reinforces or extends their analysis and/or conclusions, and/or serves as a source to cite in an attempt to communicate that there is an existing authoritative source that backs up an assertion or declaration. Note that, in part, I am saying that researchers look for literature that aids their agenda. Notice that McCauley and Jacques base their hypothesis on one Tom Bethell. Who is Tom Bethell, and what was the publication serving as the original hypothesis from which a long line of literature was birthed? These are important questions considering that McCauley and Jacques’s (1979) article is what one would find if they’re interested in treeing backward from any contemporary peer-reviewed publication that psychologizes accusations of conspiracy.

Tom Bethell: CIA Messenger (allegedly)

Tom Bethell died at the age of 84 on February 12, 2021. According to a glowing obituary in The American Spectator, Bethell had “a beautiful, productive life,” and “was more concerned about the ideas of which he spoke and wrote. In a way which was strangely counter-cultural and refreshing in our time, Tom was much more concerned about the message than the messenger, much more enthusiastic about the content than the vehicle of its communication.” That’s part of the story. The title of an obituary in the lesser-known Constantine Report reads as follows: “Tom Bethell, the Far-Right Propagandist who Sabotaged Jim Garrison’s Investigation of JFK Murder.” Here is a relevant passage from that obituary, citing another:

The New Orleans Advocate‘s obituary traces Bethell’s career after the Kennedy assassination as a far-right propagandist whose dodgy work product was closely aligned with CIA media manipulations of the Nixon and Reagan eras. Bethell edited right-wing journals, joined the American Enterprise Institute (under Reagan, a CIA and military intelligence front) even won a fellowship at the ultra-conservative Hoover Institute. From humble origins (undermining an investigation of far-right gunplay), to lucrative positions in the mass deception industry—and all he had to do was stab Garrison in the back. Bethell’s life represents the American Dream gone black.

The above context should be considered for this next part of the analysis of how the psychologization and reification of the conspiracy label came about. Below, I have provided a summary of Tom Bethell’s hard-to-find 1975 editorial, “The Quote Circuit,” as produced by 4o, along with the machine’s analysis of how it contributed to McCauley and Jacques’s (1979) peer-reviewed article:

Tom Bethell’s article “The Quote Circuit” explores how the media uses a select group of experts, mainly psychiatrists, to provide quotes and explanations for significant events. Bethell critiques this practice, highlighting its potential for editorial bias and questioning the diversity and legitimacy of the quoted perspectives.

Main Arguments/Prescriptions:

1. Media Reliance on Experts:
   • The media frequently turns to a small, select group of experts for quotes and commentary on significant events.
   • This practice leads to repetitive and potentially biased explanations being presented to the public.
2. Editorial Bias:
   • Reporters may selectively choose quotes that align with their own viewpoints, leading to a form of editorializing disguised as expert opinion.
   • Bethell questions whether this practice truly provides an unbiased and comprehensive understanding of events.
3. Legitimacy and Diversity of Perspectives:
   • Bethell examines the legitimacy and diversity of the experts frequently quoted, noting that many are psychiatrists who may not always offer the most relevant insights.
   • The article suggests that the dominance of these voices can marginalize other important perspectives.
4. Mechanics of the Quote Circuit:
   • Bethell explains how the “Quote Circuit” operates, with reporters maintaining lists of go-to experts for various topics.
   • He illustrates this with examples from major newspapers and magazines, showing how the same experts are repeatedly quoted across different media outlets.
5. Critique of Psychiatrists’ Role:
   • The article specifically critiques the prominent role of psychiatrists in providing explanations for political and social events.
   • Bethell argues that their interpretations often lack substantive connection to the events they comment on, leading to superficial or misleading conclusions.

Tom Bethell’s article, “The Quote Circuit,” critiques the media’s reliance on a select group of experts to provide commentary on significant events, often leading to editorial bias and a lack of diverse perspectives. This concept serves as a foundation for McCauley and Jacques’s article by highlighting the problematic nature of repetitive and potentially biased expert commentary in the media. McCauley and Jacques expand on this idea by examining how conspiracy theories about presidential assassinations become popularized through similar mechanisms of selective and repetitive media reporting. They argue that the media’s reliance on a narrow range of expert opinions can contribute to the spread and acceptance of conspiracy theories, as it limits the diversity of viewpoints and critical analysis presented to the public. In essence, Bethell’s critique of the media’s quote circuit provides a basis for understanding how certain narratives, including conspiracy theories, can gain traction and influence public perception through media practices.

The above section was produced by 4o, and if readers contest any part of it, I will be happy to hear about it. It is worthwhile quoting Bethell at length in order to showcase the fact that Bethell generated his own pet theory in his editorial piece in a media outlet in which he served at the time as an editor:

…And so, by analogy, when the President is shot at (another big headline event), people feel that this needs to be explained, too.

This time, however, the demand for extra explanation is not necessarily rational. The “explanation” is sought because the potential consequences of the act — a new President, a new Administration, a new foreign policy — are out of all proportion to its cause, namely a disgruntled or deranged person squeezing a trigger. This, more than anything, accounts for the currently widespread search for a new “explanation” of the Kennedy assassination: We are expected to believe, according to the official explanation, that the Johnson Administration and all that it entailed, possibly including the debacle of Vietnam was set in motion by one man who had quarreled with his wife; who had, as it were, gotten out of bed on the wrong side that morning, and found a gun lying there.

The cause doesn’t fit the effect. But the fact is, when great power is vested in one man, as in the President of the United States, it is always possible that a small cause (a microbe in his blood, for example, leading to a fatal disease, leading to a new President, leading to a “Vietnam”) can trigger a large effect.

In such cases many people will seek a new cause that is commensurate with the effect — seek, in other words, large and global explanations that thereby imbue the event with appropriate meaning. In the case of the Kennedy assassination, of course, this means looking for a conspiracy — preferably a large one.

Thus was born the theory that large events lead some to irrationally believe that there must be large causes, or as Leman and Cinnirella put it in their article (3.), “A Major Event has a Major Cause.” Among the 209 articles citing Leman and Cinnirella is one that directly takes up this idea, titled “When consequence size predicts belief in conspiracy theories: The moderating role of perspective taking,” by Jan-Willem van Prooijen & Eric van Dijk (2014). As of August 27, 2024, van Prooijen & van Dijk’s (2014) article has been cited 175 times. By 2014, Bethell’s unwarranted psychologization of the public’s growing suspicion that the Warren Commission was not entirely truthful, honest, or trustworthy had become reified via the systematic production of peer-reviewed, empirical research by psychologists and researchers in many other academic disciplines. Perhaps there are people who need cognitive closure to help make sense of why major events occur, but none of this dispels empirical questions about factual anomalies that contradict the official, authorized accounts of historically significant events. Hence, the power of psychology in explaining away theories about conspiracies as mere “conspiracy theories” when it is not at all clear that we have good reason to do so automatically or prima facie.

Did They Get the Message?

Now, here is where I want to call attention back to the first article in this series, which hopefully will help those who claim “the CIA invented the term ‘conspiracy theory/ist’,” which it did not, and/or who understand that CIA Dispatch 1035-960 served as the basis from which the conspiracy label became a discursive stigmatizing force in society. First, I simply asked 4o to analyze and summarize that memo, being sure at this point to phrase my request neutrally, and then I asked if Bethell’s 1975 editorial fit the parameters of the memo. Here are the results:

The CIA document “Countering Criticism of the Warren Report” provides strategies to counteract and discredit criticism of the Warren Commission’s findings regarding President Kennedy’s assassination. The memo highlights the growing public skepticism and the spread of conspiracy theories, recommending ways to address and refute these criticisms to maintain confidence in the Commission’s conclusions.

Main Arguments and Prescriptions/Guidelines:

1. Concern Over Growing Skepticism:
   • The document notes increasing public doubt about the Warren Report, with a significant portion of Americans believing in a conspiracy and the Commission leaving questions unresolved.
   • This skepticism is seen as a threat to the credibility of the U.S. government and its institutions.
2. Media and Propaganda Strategies:
   • The CIA advises against initiating discussions on the assassination but recommends addressing existing discussions with authoritative rebuttals.
   • It suggests using media assets to publish book reviews and articles that refute critics, emphasizing the thoroughness and integrity of the Warren Commission.
3. Discrediting Critics:
   • The document outlines strategies to discredit critics by labeling them as politically or financially motivated, hasty in their research, or infatuated with their theories.
   • Specific critics like Mark Lane and Edward Epstein are mentioned, with recommended counter-arguments to their claims.
4. Promoting the Warren Report:
   • Encourages referencing the Warren Report itself to demonstrate its thoroughness and objectivity, suggesting that open-minded readers will find it superior to the work of its critics.
   • Recommends emphasizing that no significant new evidence has emerged since the Report’s publication and highlighting the impossibility of a large-scale conspiracy remaining concealed.
5. Private and Public Discussions:
   • Instructs CIA operatives to engage in private and public discussions to reinforce the credibility of the Warren Commission, especially with politicians and editors.
   • Advises pointing out the lack of new evidence and the improbability of a successful conspiracy, using logical arguments and examples to counter speculative claims.

Next, I asked 4o this: “Does Bethell’s 1975 article fit within any of these prescriptions or guidelines? If so, which ones and how?” Here is what it reported:

Tom Bethell’s 1975 article “The Quote Circuit” fits within several prescriptions and guidelines outlined in the CIA document “Countering Criticism of the Warren Report.” Specifically:

1. Media and Propaganda Strategies:
   • The CIA document recommends using media assets to publish articles that refute critics and emphasize the thoroughness and integrity of the Warren Commission. Bethell’s article aligns with this strategy by criticizing the media’s reliance on a select group of experts, which indirectly supports the Warren Commission by questioning the credibility and diversity of those who often critique it.
2. Discrediting Critics:
   • The CIA advises labeling critics as politically or financially motivated, hasty in their research, or infatuated with their theories. Bethell’s article critiques the repetitive nature of expert quotes in the media and questions the legitimacy of these perspectives. This critique can be seen as a way to discredit the critics by highlighting the potential biases and lack of diversity in their viewpoints.
3. Promoting the Warren Report:
   • The CIA document suggests promoting the Warren Report’s thoroughness and objectivity. Although Bethell’s article does not directly promote the Warren Report, by challenging the credibility of media critics, it indirectly supports the idea that alternative theories and criticisms are less reliable, thereby reinforcing the Warren Report’s findings.

For this last analysis by 4o, you’ll have to draw your own conclusions. I suspect that this can easily be argued to be an artifact of poor or flawed analysis by 4o, and therefore, other AI systems should be used to do the same analysis. Other researchers should find ways to explain how and why an editorial in a regional news outlet was used to formulate a scientific hypothesis and how and why that particular publication catalyzed a line of research that happens to carry out the CIA’s stated agenda. I suspect the answer to the last question would be something like this: Of course, McCauley and Jacques (1979) can be understood as the first and, therefore, foundational article in the line of psychological literature on conspiracy theories because it in fact is the first article, but that doesn’t mean the CIA had anything to do with it! No, not directly, I might respond, but that being the case, the real question is whether Tom Bethell’s editorial was, in effect, the messenger harboring the message.

Summary and Conclusion

Tom Bethell’s (1975) article seems to fit well within the CIA’s 1035-960 prescriptions by challenging the credibility of critics and supporting the use of media strategies to counteract criticism of the Warren Report. Bethell formulated his hypothesis seemingly from the ether. More charitably, we can view Bethell’s postulation as a prototheory, which developed based on judicious research into the psychological literature of the time and was put into application to analyze the consequences of an event that happened 12 years earlier. Bethell’s hypothesis then just happened to be taken up by a small research team out of Bryn Mawr College, and this in the mid-1970s when there was no digital mechanism like the World Wide Web that would more easily connect that team with a single editorial published in regional print news media, The Washington Monthly. It seems a little far-fetched, but I’m probably a little more skeptical and cynical than the average person.

Perhaps McCauley and Jacques (1979) were working at their small women’s college located just outside of Philadelphia, and in pursuing their interests in the social psychology of cognitive consistency and dissonance, they went looking for anything that gave them a jumpstart in their research. Perhaps they happened to find in a minor editorial printed in a regional magazine a juicy subject to write about in their pure scientific endeavor to test a novel hypothesis and use a sophisticated, novel analytic technique, a Bayesian analysis. It’s just a coincidence, then, that their work utilized a hypothesis that seems to be in line with directives established in 1035-960, which was postulated by a man who published on more than one occasion editorials critical of the Warren Commission’s critics. It’s probably just coincidence that both Bethell and McCauley & Jacques just happened to address item 4C in 1035-960, which states that “Conspiracy on the large scale often suggested would be impossible to conceal in the United States,” i.e., a large cause would be necessary for concealment.

What I believe happened is this: The CIA released their memo to their chiefs as part of Project Mockingbird. Certain assets, namely Tom Bethell, engaged in the prescriptions of that memo, and knowingly or not, McCauley and Jacques played along. Over time, there was no pronounced need to suppress criticisms of the Warren Commission actively on a systematic, mass scale, but then the X-Files and Oliver Stone’s JFK came out in the early 90s. After the provocation of the Gulf War, the Oklahoma City Bombing, and then 9/11, there was an increased need to actively suppress a growing collective criticism of the official, authorized accounts of those and other historically significant events. The rise of the Internet and the World Wide Web exacerbated the situation. Therefore, academics, journalists, and other intelligentsia were recruited, incentivized, motivated, or allowed to produce the truth regimes that positioned and continue to position conspiracy theories against the mainstreamed received wisdom of a contrived consensus view of officialdom. Over the decades, the conspiracy label operated as an effective tool of cognitive closure, a consciousness-lowering discursive device, and this allowed for the reification of the conspiracy label to the point that it could be issued reflexively without rational or empirical justification. Through the process of reification, which is simultaneously an outcome due to its essential quality as a self-reinforcing feedback loop, the conspiracy label took on a natural, normalized connotation for those who invoke it. Still, the problem is, and always has been, reality.

The reality of the situation is that large-scale conspiracies do happen, that they are sometimes caused and covered up by large-scale networks of groups and organizations with shared motives and interests, and that more people than ever are talking to each other about such things. This diminishes pluralistic ignorance and emboldens more people to engage in communicative action. Now, if and when the Establishment continues to attempt large-scale conspiracies, we have the playbook used for decades to diminish and dismiss accusations of conspiracy as mere psychological disorders or epistemic flaws in reasoning. There have been too many direct interventions in too many people’s personal lives that stem from coordinated attempts to subvert societal well-being and the individual pursuit of happiness. Many of these people have begun to question more incidents than just those that directly affected them personally, and the more they learn, the more they talk to others who share similar experiences. This is leading us all to a situation in which the truth will be confronted one way or the other, and I prefer peace. Still, others seem to want more of the same. “What we have here is a failure to communicate…”

(Featured Image: “2019-09-16 12 33 11 View north along the George Washington Memorial Parkway at the exit for the George Bush Center for Intelligence, Central Intelligence Agency and Federal Highway Administration in McLean, Fairfax County, Virginia” by Famartin is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.)