By Whitney Webb, Posted on November 24, 2016
A recent survey found that over 54% of Americans do not believe the official government narrative of September 11th
The establishment has long used the term “conspiracy theory” to discredit any idea in the public sphere that has anti-establishment leanings or runs counter to the government’s narrative regarding an event or situation. In 1967, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) wrote a dispatch which coined the term to discredit those Americans who were not content with the findings of the Warren Commission following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The dispatch, which was obtained by the New York Times in 1976, was part of the CIA’s Clandestine Services (CS) unit and was classified as “psychological operations.” The document also lays out the exact arguments used by the establishment for years to discredit certain theories such as: claiming that eyewitness testimony is unreliable, claiming that it’s irresponsible to speculate, claiming its impossible for so many people to keep quiet about large conspiracies, claiming conspiracy theorists are politically or financially motivated in the promotion of these theories and refocusing attention on “official” reports.
Despite the CIA’s best efforts, the belief in conspiracy theories remains alive and well in the United States and many once-ridiculed conspiracies have been proven to be fact as information became declassified and publicly available. In fact, the assassination of President Kennedy has long been the most widely believed “conspiracy theory” among the US populace, with over 60% of Americans believing that Kennedy’s death was part of a larger conspiracy and not the work of a lone gunman. Now, another “conspiracy theory” is approaching that same level of acceptance as over half of Americans do not believe that government’s official narrative regarding the September 11th attacks.....