Conspiracies pirouette on US stage: military, financial and sexual

New accounts of skullduggery at the White House, from Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind. The former WSJ reporter’s new book alleges that Bush ordered the creation of an Iraqi intelligence document that linked 9/11 to Saddam Hussein. So far, so normal – the accused deny it. Conspiracies are difficult to comment on, and rather circular to contemplate without some form of special access.

However: Suskind alleged in his NBC interview that the order to create the document came down to George Tenet from President Bush on ‘White House stationery’. Tenet was then the director of central intelligence, the coordinator of all America’s various acronymed agencies. Would he really have arrived, hot-handed, clutching a letter that read something like this:

THE WHITE HOUSE
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Dear George (Spy),

Please fake this document so we can go to war.

All the best,

George (President)

Or…

THE WHITE HOUSE
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Dear Agent ‘G’

Please proceed with operation ‘fake document’ so the horse can bolt the stable.

All the best,

GWB

It seems unlikely, although should serve to remind us that conspiracies are often the product of incompetence rather than evil. Are such details the accidental ‘tip of the iceberg’ or just another happening? Think about how one department rarely knows what the other is doing within private corporations, let alone public bureaucracies. The problem is, no-one ever knows for sure until it’s too late.

It’s always interesting to spot how coverage of conspiracies and their lesser cousins, scandals, play in the media. Spot the difference between the broadly-played corruption scandal embroiling the Republican senator Ted Stevens, recently indicted by a federal grand jury – and that involving former Democratic hopeful John Edwards.

It is now twice denied by the senator for North Carolina that he had an affair and a baby with Rielle Hunter; and while online media have reported the story, it has gone largely unplayed by print and broadcast (except Fox News).

There are two possible reasons for this: either they distrust the source (the National Enquirer, which has spent seven months on the story and is holding something back), in which case why not debunk it – or it is out of allegiance/sympathy to Mr Edwards’s wife, who has fought a long and public battle with a now incurable breast cancer. One imagines it will all come to a head some time around the Democratic National Convention, at the end of August.

UPDATE: John Edwards admitted to his affair with Rielle Hunter last Friday, although still denies that the child is his. There is no father listed on the birth certificate, and although married political aide Andrew Young has claimed paternity, Ms Hunter has refused a paternity test – which Mr Edwards had offered to take.