>Doug, what about Watergate, Iran-contra, the theft of PROMIS
>software by the Dept. of Justice under Meese, etc. Weren't those
>conspiracies? Don't you think that the Watergate conspiracy was
>significant? If not, why not?
Conspiracies happen, though that whole PROMIS thing seemed like a pretty weird obsession to me. They're not the driving force of history. Watergate could be read as Nixon's conspiracy, or a conspiracy by the East Coast elite against Nixon, or both. Iran-contra, though, was U.S. foreign policy, and the "rogue element" theory was a diversion from that fact.
Doug