Real Enemies Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11

by Olmsted, Kathryn S.

• ISBN13: 9780195183535
• ISBN10: 0195183533
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-01-02
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

Many Americans believe that their own government is guilty of shocking crimes. Government agents shot the president. They faked the moon landing. They stood by and allowed the murders of 2,400 servicemen in Hawaii--or 3,000 civilians in New York. In their zeal to cover up their crimes, theykilled witnesses, faked evidence, and stole into secure offices to snatch incriminating documents from the files. Although the paranoid style has been a feature of the American scene since the birth of the Republic, in Real Enemies, Kathryn Olmsted shows that it is only in the twentieth century that strange and unlikely conspiracy theories have become central to American politics. While Americans hadworried about bankers, Jews, and Catholics for decades, Olmsted sees World War I as a critical turning point for conspiracy theories. As the federal government expanded, Americans grew more fearful of the government itself--the military, the intelligence community, and even the President. Perhaps more important, Olmsted examines why so many Americans believe that their government conspires against them, why more people believe these theories over time, and how real conspiracies by government officials--such as the infamous Northwoods plan--have fueled our paranoia about thegovernment. She analyzes Pearl Harbor, Cold War and anticommunist plots, the JFK assassination, Watergate, and 9/11. Along the way, she introduces readers to a lively cast of characters, from the Nobel prize-winning scientist who became a leading conspiracist to a housewife who believed she couldunlock the secrets of the JFK assassination. Polls show that thirty-six percent of Americans think that George W. Bush knew in advance of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Real Enemies, an engaging work on a timely, important topic, sheds light on such theories, revealing how the rampant fear of conspiracy at once invigorates and underminesAmerican democracy.

Author Biography

Kathryn S. Olmsted is a professor of history at the University of California, Davis. She has written two previous books on secrecy in the U.S. government: Challenging the Secret Government: The Post-Watergate Investigations of the CIA and FBI and Red Spy Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth Bentley.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. 1
The Consent of the People: Presidential Secrecy and the First World War	p. 13
Lying Us into War? The Second Battle of Pearl Harbor	p. 45
Masters of Deceit: Red Spies and Red Hunters in the McCarthy Era	p. 83
The Dealey Plaza Irregulars: The JFK Assassination and the Collapse of Trust in the 1960s	p. 111
White House of Horrors: Nixon, Watergate, and the Secret Government	p. 149
Trust No One: Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theories from the 1970s to the 1990s	p. 173
Cabal of Soccer Moms: 9/11 and the Culture of Deceit	p. 205
Conclusion	p. 233
Notes	p. 241
Bibliography	p. 287
Index	p. 309
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