Date: September 11th, 2001.
Personnel: Unknown [designate A], Unknown [designate B], Unknown [designate C].

A: It's done. The plane targeted at Congress was crashed by those on-board, but the Pentagon and Trade Center attacks occurred just as scheduled.

B: Congress seems sufficiently angry in any case. I don't think the further steps of the plan will meet with any opposition. We should gain the governmental powers we need, and the stock market should move as expected.

A: Good. Have you prepared the conspiracy theorists to accuse us?

B: Yes. All is in readiness. The first accusations will fly within the hour.

C: Er...

A: What is it?

C: Sorry, I know I'm a bit new to this sort of thing, but why are we sponsoring conspiracy theorists? Aren't they our arch-nemeses, tenaciously hunting down and exposing our lies?

A: No, my young apprentice, just the opposite. As soon as you pull off a conspiracy, the first thing you do is start a conspiracy theory about it. Day one.

C: What? We want to be accused of deliberately ignoring intelligence and assassinating that one agent who tried to forward specific information -

A: No, of course not! What you do in a case like this is start an accusation so ridiculous that nobody else wants to be associated with the accusers. You create a low-prestige conspiracy theory and staff it with as many vocal lunatics as you can. That way no one wants to be seen as affiliating with the conspiracy theorists by making a similar accusation.

C: That works? I know I'm not the brightest fish in the barrel - sometimes, hanging around you guys, I feel almost as dumb as I pretend to be - but even I know that "The world's stupidest man may say the sun is shining, but that doesn't make it dark out."

B: Works like a charm, in my experience. Like that business with the Section Magenta aircraft. All you need is a bunch of lunatics screaming about aliens and no one respectable will dream of reporting a "flying saucer" after that.

C: So what did you plan for the 9/11 cover conspiracy theory, by the way? Are the conspiracy theorists going to say the Jews were behind it? Can't get much lower-prestige than anti-Semitism!

B: You've got the right general idea, but you're not t...

JimLebeau

JimLebeau

JimLebeau

JimLebeau