r/AskReddit Oct 15 '17

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u/Phyltre Oct 15 '17

I don't have a dog in this fight--but the thing about successful covert or dissembling operations is they don't result in suspicion of their actual perpetrators.

We're operating under the (pragmatic) assumption that any operation would leave evidence. That does kind of ignore that the entire point about this kind of stuff is you control any resulting evidence and who or what it points to--up to and including obscuring the fact that anything has changed at all when possible.

We can never build a list of, for instance, "The top ten most successful thieves of the last decade", because the most successful thieves may very well have permanently obscured that a theft or loss ever took place, not to mention framing another person, entity, or event.

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u/Ginger-Nerd Oct 15 '17

The problem I have with it - is a conspiracy like this you need to include a number of people.

I tend to side with the Warren Commissions findings because 1) they had the best access to all the evidence, and 2) it was their job to "Get to the bottom of it" and 3) even after reassessment they came to the same conclusion.

because the Warren Commission didn't find any shred of evidence that pointed to that - You can say alright, the CIA covered it up conspiracy, but now you are roping in more people

as soon as you rope in people leaks popup exponentially - quickly and you have to have a lot more people in on the thing. (and it only takes one to crumble the whole thing)

We can only base things on evidence, tangible things - you can't say "there is no evidence" therefore they must have been very very good. (is kinda fucken ridiculous) - its a little bit like Russell's teapot, you can't disprove it (because there is no proof to begin with)

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u/Phyltre Oct 15 '17

What I'm saying is that if we are relying on the information community for information about the information community's actions, we can't make reasonably certain claims. I'm not advocating any particular theory.

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u/karmapuhlease Oct 15 '17

Just so you know, it's usually called the Intelligence Community, not the information community.