I believe Charles Featherstone has made some excellent points, and I for one believe that conspiracies are hard to keep in place. Someone asked Charles Colson on the 10th anniversary of Watergate about the “real lesson” of that incident. Colson replied that it “proved Christ was raised from the dead.”

Colson’s reasoning went this way: Knowledge of the hows and whats of Watergate was limited to a very small number of people, each of whom pledged not to spill the beans. However, within a short time, the story was out and the original conspirators did not keep the secret. Likewise, Colson said that the original disciples of Christ claimed that the risen Christ had appeared to them. Had it been a conspiracy built around a lie, he reasoned, sooner or later one of them would have confessed as arrests and torture became the order of the day.

Whether or not one agrees with Colson’s reasoning, I think it does present an interesting view of conspiracies. Charles is correct. For example, G. Gordon Liddy never would confess his role in Watergate and received a harsh prison term for his silence. So, some people will not reveal the conspiracy no matter what.

However, most people are not that strong-willed. Now, I will add that it is one thing to spill secrets and quite another to give the truth. For example, journalists often are unwilling to investigate wrongdoing by government officials if those officials are sources that help enhance a journalist’s career. Remember that journalists at the New York Times and Wall Street Journal helped Rudy Giuliani leak false information about Michael Milken, all to enable the feds to get a conviction. In other words, we had journalists and prosecutors teaming up to throw an innocent man into prison. Now, the press will never be willing to give us the truth of what happened in that situation, so in that case there is a conspiracy of silence.

(Yes, the word got out, but in the alternative press. Furthermore, since Milken was a capitalist, many of the alternative investigative entities like the Nation were all too happy to see him being railroaded to prison.)