A Myth of Competence?

On some points, I am a tin-foil hatted conspiracy loon, but only when I can apply Ockham’s razor to the conspiracy. It must be a simple conspiracy, which isn’t subject to events, in someone’s interest and fewer than a dozen have to be in on the con. So, I ask myself is there something the State dept REALLY wants someone to believe in Wikileaks’ recently published cross between Skynet and Tobermory

For those of you who don’t know the short stories of Hector Hugh Munro, Tobermory was a talking cat, whose trainer was eventually killed by an Elephant, (which is no more than he deserved for attempting to teach it German irregular verbs). Tobermoray himself talked but lacked the hypocrisy needed for diplomacy in society and told people uncomfortable truths.

Of course most of Wikileak’s revelations are in the “y’think?” category. Putin wears the Trousers and Nigel Farage Medvedev is a puppet, Ahmadinnerjacket is a loon, Quaddafi kaddaffi Gadaffi shags about, Gordon Brown (isn’t he dead yet?) was a fruitcake, Silvio Berlusconi parties a bit too hard for a man of his advancing age (but don’t we all secretly admire him for it), and so on…

Which brings me to a conspiracy theory. Back when the Thatcher Government was trying to stop Peter Wright publishing “Spycatcher“, and granting them masses of publicity in the process, I thought “they can’t be that stupid, can they?”. Surely there must be something in the book that we REALLY REALLY wanted the Russians to believe, and therefore pursued them through the courts safe in the knowledge that whatever was there was more believably as a result. Such subterfuge is surely possible: The only people who would need to be in on the conspiracy are Peter Wright and a few people very high up in MI5 and Government. No more than a dozen people. All those people in court need not know, the conspiracy was “fire and forget”.

Of course, the Berlin wall came down, and all those people in on it would have been publicly patting themselves on the back for being so jolly clever. So clearly, MI5 was indeed “bugging and burgling it’s way around London” and Roger Hollis WAS a spy, and I was wrong. Though in my defence, I was 10 at the time. Wikileaks, of course makes the whole process simpler. If the CIA was in the slightest bit competent, it isn’t, but pretend for a minute it is, all you needed to do was feign embarrassment and everything in the “leak” would be believed. It’s a godsend for misinformation, which could allow anyone with an eye for PR to create any myth they liked. Like that of a competent CIA which was in control of shit…

Ah. QED.