The Mammoth Book of Conspiracies (78 page)

Further Reading

Peter Dale Scott
, The War Conspiracy
, 1972

DOCUMENT: TONKIN GULF RESOLUTION AND US SENTATE DEBATE

Eighty-eighth Congress of the United States of America

AT THE SECOND SESSION

Begun and held at the City of Washington on Tuesday, the seventh day of January, one thousand nine hundred and sixty-four

Joint Resolution

To promote the maintenance of international peace and security in southeast Asia.

Whereas naval units of the Communist regime in Vietnam, in violation of the principles of the Charter of the United Nations and of international law, have deliberately and repeatedly attacked United States naval vessels lawfully present in international waters, and have thereby created a serious threat to international peace; and Whereas these attackers are part of deliberate and systematic campaign of aggression that the Communist regime in North Vietnam has been waging against its neighbors and the nations joined with them in the collective defense of their freedom; and Whereas the United States is assisting the peoples of southeast Asia to protect their freedom and has no territorial, military or political ambitions in that area, but desires only that these people should be left in peace to work out their destinies in their own way: Now, therefore be it
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
That the Congress approves and supports the determination of the President, as Commander in Chief, to take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.

Section 2. The United States regards as vital to its national interest and to world peace the maintenance of international peace and security in southeast Asia. Consonant with the Constitution of the United States and the Charter of the United Nations and in accordance with its obligations under the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty, the United States is, therefore, prepared, as the President determines, to take all necessary steps, including the use of armed force, to assist any member or protocol state of the Southeast Asia Collective Defense Treaty requesting assistance in defense of its freedom.

Section 3. This resolution shall expire when the President shall determine that the peace and security of the area is reasonably assured by international conditions created by action of the United Nations or otherwise, except that it may be terminated earlier by concurrent resolution of the Congress

Senate Debate: [Extracts]

MR. NELSON:

[Gaylord Nelson, Dem.-Wis.] … Am I to understand that it is the sense of Congress that we are saying to the executive branch: “If it becomes necessary to prevent further aggression, we agree now, in advance, that you may land as many divisions as deemed necessary, and engage in a direct military assault on North Vietnam if it becomes the judgment of the Executive, the Commander in Chief, that this is the only way to prevent further aggression”?

MR. FULBRIGHT:

[William Fulbright, Dem.-Ark] As I stated, section 1 is intended to deal primarily with aggression against our forces … I do not know what the limits are. I do not think this resolution can be determinative of that fact. I think it would indicate that he [the President] would take reasonable means first to prevent any further aggression, or repel further aggression against our own forces … I do not know how to answer the Senator’s question and give him an absolute assurance that large numbers of troops would not be put ashore. I would deplore it …

MR. NELSON: … My concern is that we in Congress could give the impression to the public that we are prepared at this time to change our mission and substantially expand our commitment. If that is what the sense of Congress is, I am opposed to the resolution. I therefore ask the distinguished Senator from Arkansas if he would consent to accept an amendment [that explicitly says Congress wants no extension of the present military conflict and no U.S. direct military involvement].

MR. FULBRIGHT: … The Senator has put into his amendment a statement of policy that is unobjectionable. However, I cannot accept the amendment under the circumstances. I do not believe it is contrary to the joint resolution, but it is an enlargement. I am informed that the House is now voting on this resolution. The House joint resolution is about to be presented to us. I cannot accept the amendment and go to conference with it, and thus take responsibility for delaying matters .

MR. GRUENING: [Ernest Gruening, Dem.-Alaska] … Regrettably, I find myself in disagreement with the President’s Southeast Asian policy … The serious events of the past few days, the attack by North Vietnamese vessels on American warships and our reprisal, strikes me as the inevitable and foreseeable concomitant and consequence of U.S. unilateral military aggressive policy in Southeast Asia … We now are about to authorize the President if he sees fit to move our Armed Forces … not only into South Vietnam, but also into North Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, and of course the authorization includes all the rest of the SEATO nations. That means sending our American boys into combat in a war in which we have no business. which is not our war, into which we have been misguidedly drawn, which is steadily being escalated. This resolution is a further authorization for escalation unlimited. I am opposed to sacrificing a single American boy in this venture. We have lost far too many already …

MR. MORSE: [Wayne Morse, Dem.-Ore.] … I believe that history will record that we have made a great mistake in subverting and circumventing the Constitution of the United States … I believe this resolution to be a historic mistake. I believe that within the next century, future generations will look with dismay and great disappointment upon a Congress which is now about to make such a historic mistake.

SOURCE: Congressional Record. August 6–7, 1964. Pp. 18132–33, 18406–7, 18458–59, and 18470–71.

TURIN SHROUD

The Turin Shroud is a 14-feet long strip of linen that carries the faint image of a long-haired man with a beard. A man with wounds consistent with crucifixion. A man with the mark of a lance wound in his side. A man with cuts along his forehead as though he had worn a crown of thorns.

Jesus Christ! (As it were.) The Shroud of Turin is the shroud in which the Saviour was buried, his image being transferred onto the cloth!

Well, maybe.

Ever since the shroud appeared in northern France around 1350, there have been doubts about its authenticity. One of its first caretakers, local Bishop Pierre d’Arcis, was convinced it was a fraud, just one of the forty or so doing the round of medieval cathedrals to entice the pilgrim trade. A papal edict even banned its owners from calling it the real shroud of Jesus.

Not until the 1960s did anyone much care about the shroud, when the Catholic Church set up a commission to determine the relic’s authenticity. The commission’s report, issued in 1976, found that pollen in the shroud suggested that the relic might have come from Palestine but the red on the cloth was paint not blood. In 1988, radiocarbon dating of small samples of the relic by three different teams of researchers (viz. Oxford University, Arizona University, Swiss Institute of Technology) all concluded that the cloth was woven between AD 1260 and 1390. Case for it’s-a-fake closed? Not quite. Other scientists assert that the carbon14-dating was thrown off course by 1,300 years because of the use of a bioplastic coating. And the red paint is from pilgrims holding pictures against the cloth in the hope of miraculous powers being transferred. Historian Ian Wilson, author of
The Blood and the Shroud: New Evidence that the World’s Most Sacred Relic is Real
, accounts for the gaping lack of mentions of the shroud before 1389 by claiming it was the Edessan icon relocated. Meanwhile, Richard Levi-Setti of the Enrico Fermi Institute and Joseph Kohlbeck from the Hercules Aerospace Company in Utah found tiny particles of travertine aragonite limestone on the relic; the chemical signatures of the Shroud samples and the limestone from ancient tombs around Jerusalem were identical.

Muddying the matter are alternative historians who mate the Turin Shroud mystery with their own pet conspiracy. Here Kersten and Gruber take the prize with
The Jesus Conspiracy: The Turin Shroud and the Truth About the Resurrection
. According to Kersten and Gruber science proves that the Shroud is real and that Jesus was wrapped in it whilst … alive. After three days of rest and recuperation Jesus then went off with
Mary Magdalene
. Second prize for conspiracy crossbreeding goes to Knights Templar occultists who claim that the shroud is that of Grand Master Jacques de Molya, burned at the stake in 1314 by the Inquisition.

The Turin Shroud is a riddle wrapped in a mystery. Even if it was forged in the fourteenth century, the maker’s method befuddles contemporary scientists because the image looks like a photographic negative.

On this one, the jury is still out.

Further Reading

Holger Kersten and Elmar R. Gruber,
The Jesus Conspiracy: The Turin Shroud and the Truth About the Resurrection,
1992

Joe Nickell,
Inquest on the Shroud of Turin: Latest Scientific Findings
, 1998

Brendan Whiting,
The Shroud Story
, 2006

Ian Wilson,
The Shroud: The 2000-Year-Old Mystery Solved
, 2010

TUSKEGEE SYPHILIS STUDY

There are conspiracies that make you nervous, there are conspiracies that make you mad. The Tuskegee Syphilis Study is the conspiracy that will make you weep with grief.

Syphilis is a sexually transmitted disease which, if untreated, can lead to blindness, crippling loss of muscle control, devastating internal damage, followed by an excruciatingly painful death.

In 1932, a clinical study by the Public Health Department began in Tuskegee, Alabama, on 399 syphilitic black men. Mostly poor, illiterate sharecroppers, the men were informed that they were being treated for “bad blood”, and were enticed into participation by free meals, a “Thank You” certificate from the surgeon general’s office, and a $50 insurance payment to cover their funeral fees. The research programme, properly the “Tuskagee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male”, was modelled on a study of white men in Norway, and started off with at least some legitimate intentions: at the time there was no viable cure for syphilis and proper questions were asked about treatments, some of which were likely doing more harm than good. Arsenic, for instance, was a popular “cure”. A sponsor of the study was the prestigious black college the Tuskagee Institute, founded by Booker T. Washington.

Fast forward to 1947. By then, the wonder drug penicillin was widely available, and was extremely effective in treating syphilis. Obviously, the Tuskagee researchers offered penicillin – in effect, life – to the black subjects of the study. Didn’t they?

No, they did not. Instead the “doctors” allowed the disease to run its course in the affected men, so they could record what would happen. There is also evidence that the doctors contacted the personal physicians of the men to ensure that they did not administer antibiotics.

Eventually, in 1966, Peter Buxtun, a PHS venereal-disease investigator from San Francisco discovered what was going down in Tuskegee and sent a letter to the director of the Division of Venereal Diseases to express his concerns about the morality of the study. The Center for Disease Control (CDC), which by then controlled the study, reaffirmed the necessity of continuing the study until all the subjects were dead. When he failed to alter the CDC’s mind, Buxtun blew the whistle, and in July 1972 the story broke in the
Washington Star
. It became front page news in the
New York Times
, which called the Tuskegee Syphilis Study “the longest nontherapeutic experiment on human beings in medical history”.

A public outcry ensured that the “research” ceased, and in time laws were passed governing medical experiments. Of the original 399 Tuskagee men, there were seventy-four survivors; twenty-eight had died of syphilis and a hundred of syphilis-related illnesses; over forty of their wives were infected, and nineteen children were born with congenital syphilis. A compensation package of $9 million was awarded to the Tuskagee men and their families. It was agreed to provide free medical treatment to surviving participants and to surviving family members infected as a consequence of the study. On 16 May 1997, President Bill Clinton formally apologized and held a ceremony for the survivors in the White House.