Definition : an agreement between two or more persons to commit a crime.

Per this definition (which would probably obtain in most of the courts in most of the civilized countries) conspiracies have been rather numerous in the recorded history of Man.

For example, just from my memory. There is a story somewhere in the Bible about a man who badly wanted to marry some woman somewhere in the Middle East.

He had been promised the wife on condition that he would have first performed 7 years of unpaid labour for the father, or for the family — in some capacity or other.

After the 7 years the marriage took place, when consummated, the hero found himself in bed not with the woman he had wanted but with her sister.

He still wanted the other woman though, and was promised her for wife on condition that he perform 7 more years of unpaid labor.

I do not recall what he had done next ; I found the story neither edyfying nor so much as amusing. The fool was defrauded by the head of the family acting in agreement with one of the daughters — sister of the woman who was wanted. The complicity of the other sister in the deceit seems probable.

This is one recorded example (whether factual or fabulous) of an agreement between several (at least two) persons to commit a crime, in this instance a crime against one single person.

The man had fallen victim to a conspiracy between members of the family into which he had wanted to marry, to defraud him of the promised exchange for a number of years of his own labour — per some more nearly modern standards.

From The Mitrokhin Archive, Christopher Andrew and Vasili Mitrokhin, 1999

Andropov . . . increasingly turned to using terrorist proxies. Among the first opportunities for their use was a new wave of troubles in Northern Ireland. On November 6, 1969, the general secretary of the Irish Communist Party, Michael O�Riordan, a veteran of the International Brigades,²⁰ forwarded a request for Soviet arms from the Marxist IRA leaders Cathal Goulding and Seamus Costello. [ . . ] ²¹

The IRA had been widely criticized by its supporters for failing to defend the Catholic community during the Belfast troubles of August 1969 . . . ²² In his message to Moscow, O�Riordan said that during the �August crackdown� the IRA had failed to act as �armed defender� of the nationalist community because �its combat potential was weakened by the fact that it had previously concentrated its efforts on social protests and educational activity.� He claimed that there was now a real possibility of civil war in Northern Ireland between the two communities, and of serious clashes between British troops and the Catholics. Hence the IRA�s appeal for arms. In a report to the Central Committee, Andropov insisted that, before going ahead with an arms shipment, it was essential to verify O�Riordan�s ability �to guarantee the necessary conspiracy* in shipping the weapons and preserve the secret of their source of supply.� ²³ It was more than two and half years before Andropov was sufficiently satisfied on both these points to go ahead with the arms shipment.

( pages 377-8 )

 

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    20. O�Riordan�s history of the Irish members of the International Brigades, Connolly Column, was printed in East Germany (though published in Dublin), and gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the Soviet agent and British defector to East Germany, John Peet.
    21. The text of O�Riordan�s appeal for weapons for the IRA is published in the appendix to Yeltsin, The View from the Kremlin, pp. 311-16. In December 1969, shortly before the split which led to the emergence of the Provisionals, a secret meeting of the IRA leadership approved a proposal by Goulding to establish a National Liberation Front including Sinn Fein, the Irish Communist Party and other left-wing groups. Coogan, The Troubles, p. 95.
    22. Bishop and Mallie, The Provisional IRA, p. 88.
    23. Eight memoranda on the subject by Andropov on the IRA appeal for arms are published, in whole or part, in the appendix to Yeltsin, The View from the Kremlin, pp. 311-16.

( notes on pages 639-40 )

New York : Basic Books, 1999.

The "theories of conspiracy" have been numerous and seem to be getting more and more numerous.

Per my own studies some of those �theories of conspiracy� were/are being produced solely with the purpose of extending the number of �theories� of conspiracy in the universes of discourse — and have no other purpose than to make the number of the �theories� greater.

Why : the reader who has been swamped with a sufficient number of "theories" on a subject, some of them fantastic or even farcical, might tend to ignore the entire subject ; and, in the case of this one issue, might tend to overlook or disbelieve the existence of some criminal group-activities which had actually taken place or of some which may be taking place contemporaneously.

Some one big conspiracy has been also sometimes asserted to have existed — and has been no less often disproved (no quotation marks) — or, "disproved" (quotation marks) — as the case might be.

One text I have seen about one big conspiracy was clearly bogus. The point is, the numerous conspiracies which have actually existed were not necessarily connected. There were far more such than one.

It stands to reason that any criminal group (a number of persons agreeing, or, conspiring, to commit crimes) will find it convenient to endorse any proofs of non-existence of criminal group-activities, whether such proofs might be true or untrue. The most murderous enemies one of the other would agree on this one issue — if perhaps not on any other.

The plain man, the 'man in the street' is being here encouraged to most thorough skepticism on these matters.

No less is he encouraged to finding the truths, such as he (or she) might find useful to himself and his kin or kith.

The actions of obscuring useful knowledge have been numerous — whatever the motives of the perpetrators (and there have been more than one distinct group seeing some interest in disinforming said 'plain man').

Ditto, the actions of planting harmful "knowledge". The two categories are usually connected.

WPT