mikegerber.com

On 5/13/10, longtime JFK researcher Lisa Pease gave a fascinating interview to Black Op Radio which is here (click on show #474, part two–Real Player required). In the talk, she addresses the ignorant and dangerous recommendations of Cass Sunstein, whom she took on in a letter reprinted here on her blog. Not only is infiltration/manipulation of conspiratorial nodes impossible in our era of internet blather, any efforts in this dubious direction would be likely to sow even more paranoia and distrust of authority. Anyone with even a cursory knowledge of the topic would know that such programs–COINTELPRO, Operation CHAOS–were tried in the late 60s and 70s and, while they might have been successful at tamping down the counterculture, are primary drivers behind conspiratorial thinking today. It’s one thing to be wrong, but it’s another thing to be ignorant of the topic at hand.

Pease is truly sober and measured, one of the bellwethers of the JFK research community, and her opinions on these matters should not be discounted. In a sensible world, her singular respect for the forensic elements of historiography, and her willingness to follow the evidence wherever it leads (regardless of how it jibes with the conventional wisdom) would be rewarded appropriately…say, with a professor’s chair at Harvard. But then what would we do with apparatchiks like Sunstein? Wall Street is only so big you know.