Page 53 - Psychoceramics and the Test of Fire

Cabalocracy and the Hall of Mirrors

the gathering of intelligence from which a chain of inference could be
forged. Only the most trustworthy data could pass the test of
deceptive counter-intelligence. Anything presented by a lone witness
or expert had to be treated as suspect. This was the same process
governmental espionage agencies, with their huge budgets, carried
out tirelessly to defeat real and imagined adversaries. In the same way
that those professionals had to deal with subversion from within by
political agendas, double agents and nascent cabals embedded in the
military or civil bureaucracy, the lone CT investigator had to beware
of defeating his own purpose by letting his bias distort the facts. At
this point, Capra also cautioned, every move made by that researcher
had to be from a secure position: the viewer must not be viewed, for
several reasons. That limited him to sources available to all:
newspapers, reference works in public libraries, books sold for cash
in large shops. Online research is definitely not a private enterprise!
Then, having winnowed the wheat from the chaff without being
observed, but with some confidence that the results are not tainted,
the seeker has to make a decision and stick to it. He should recognize
that his evidence is perforce circumstantial and the conclusions to be
drawn from it highly debatable, if not controversial; otherwise the
alleged conspiracy would already have been exposed. He might,
therefore, abandon the quest, maintaining the physical security he
already enjoyed as an anonymous citizen ostensibly in pursuit of
nothing beyond the normal goods and services sought by his
compatriots. Or he could continue digging, determined to follow
every lead as far as possible to build a stronger case for his CT. That
journey should not be undertaken lightly: it sends the investigator
into an even more bewildering hall of mirrors. Now he must contend
with dangers from without as well as within. For if he truly believes
in his CT, he should not add to the list of possible deceptions the
illusion that a real conspiracy will not protect itself against discovery.
His problem is to know without being known. Something as
powerful—but not all-powerful!—as a world-class plot may be
presumed capable of temporarily preventing even the possibility of
exposure. The means of doing so run the gamut from discrediting the
claimant to assassinating him, with intermediate tactics in the vein of
planting easily demolished false leads in his path and salting the
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