Comments on: The Best Lie the Government Ever Told?

By: Bunkerhillbilly

Bunkerhillbilly — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 20:02:50 +0000

Communist infiltration into the U.S. government which was consistently denied by the Fellow-Travelling press going back to the late 1930s/early 1940s.

Only with the release of the decrypted Venona files was Sen. Joseph McCarthy proven correct long after haven been driven into the bottom of a whiskey bottle and an early grave by a backlash of political forces which feared the very light he was shining upon them.

By: jw

jw — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 16:41:16 +0000

i’m still waiting to see john kerry’s military records. for serious stuff, i’d probably go with ultra although the necessary amount of fissionable material to reach critical mass was kept secret for a long time. still is, sort of.

By: Ernie Loco

Ernie Loco — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 16:27:38 +0000

As a more recent example, Stuxtnet was a pretty well kept secret. It had been operating covertly for a couple years, screwing over the Iranians, and it wasn’t until the code was screwed up and discovered that government flunkies started talking.

By: Statutoryglory

Statutoryglory — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 05:07:27 +0000

Tuskegee Syphillis Experiments. Went on covertly for 30 yrs before a whistleblower blew the whole thing up.

By: John

John — Sat, 02 Feb 2013 00:04:04 +0000

High Praise! twice in one day. My ship has arrived…

By: Mark Noonan

Mark Noonan — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 23:55:22 +0000

Katyn Massacre – Roosevelt was informed officially, by his own emissary, that the Soviets had carried out the massacre but insisted that the American government accept the Soviet claim that the Nazis had carried out the killings. But, even there, we only kept the secret from 1944 until 1952…

By: Pieter Nosworthy

Pieter Nosworthy — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 23:43:21 +0000

One of the birther memes;

Mr. Obama has ran twice as an admitted child of a foreign national father that had no intent to nationalize. He, in fact, was born a dual national citizen of the most flagrant type unprecedented for those who have held the office.

The argument is whether those born dual nationals (such as anchor babies) are eligible for the presidency whereas those born contrary to Rogers v Bellei (1971) are not (foreign born to two American citizens).

No one blinked when Obama said he was eligible per the 14th Amendment but McCain had to have congressional review resolved with a non-binding senate resolution. Naturalized citizens take a very specific oath that still doesn’t grant them eligibility…yet, someone like Obama is given a free pass despite his non-requirement to an oath of fealty but self-professed birthright (born to a UK citizen and later Indonesian citizenship due adoption).

The word “unprecedented” in this particular regard is applicable.

The rest of the birther stuff is garbage.

By: RogerJ

RogerJ — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 23:41:14 +0000

The best coverup is actually Article VIII of the US Constitution which was written on the back as a postscript. It gives Congress the power to enact legislation not specifically enumerated in the preceding articles, gives the President the power to decide which laws it can ignore or break and gives the judicial branch the power to create or interpret laws passed by Congress any way they want.

By: Jimmy

Jimmy — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 23:32:00 +0000

UFO’s !!!!111!!!111!!

/removes tinfoil

By: innominatus

innominatus — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 23:04:38 +0000

Remember all the screwy looking “F-19 Stealth” illustrations/models/toys back in the ’80s? Then when we first saw the F-117 we all thought “WTF? That thing can actually fly?”

The gov’t actually did a good job keeping the lid on stealth technology.

By: Writer

Writer — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 21:49:36 +0000

42 years

They managed to keep secret the fact that they performed chemical and biological on aboard ships at sea.

When it did become public, the Government just shrugged.

By: DrEvil

DrEvil — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 21:03:35 +0000

My moonbase and Preparation H was constructed using highway funds.

By: ColoradoRight

ColoradoRight — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 20:38:17 +0000

The biggest lie was that Social Security was
a) a retirement fund
b) the money collected would never go into general government revenues
c) the maximum percentage you would ever pay would be 1.5%
d) and you would only pay on the first $400 in income

By: Harvey

Harvey — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 20:25:27 +0000

@15 – That’s what I get for skimming.

Ok, 32 years for top secret military wartime secrets before the invention of the internet.

So… we should see Obama’s birth certificate by 2040, latest.

Ya know, I still can’t believe there isn’t some bureaucratic flunkie in Hawaii with access who won’t photocopy the thing and sell it to the National Enquirer for $10,000.

Ditto Obama’s college transcripts.

Seriously, doesn’t money talk in this country anymore?

By: newshutz

newshutz — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 20:23:56 +0000

The largest on going hoax put forth by the government is a collection of hoaxes around Social Security.

the “trust fund” is safe, because it is “invested” in US bonds.

your FICA payments are put in an account that you draw from when you collect social security.

your FICA payments are insurance premiums.

Add your own

By: Apostic

Apostic — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 20:12:50 +0000

ULTRA (per same article) was secret until 73 or 74. Thirty-two years?

By: Harvey

Harvey — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 19:57:52 +0000

@12, 13 – Wikipedia says June of ’41:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra_%28WWII_intelligence%29

So… max shelf-life of a government conspiracy: 4 years.

By: Apostic

Apostic — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 19:54:43 +0000

Yeah. ULTRA crossed my mind, too, but I couldn’t get a date span on that one.

By: Matt Musson

Matt Musson — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 19:50:29 +0000

The ULTRA secret was probably the best kept secret. We were reading the German and Japanese codes.

By: Harvey

Harvey — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 19:48:09 +0000

@10 – True enough. In that case, consider the question to be “what’s the longest the government’s managed to cover up something huge?”

Off-hand, I’ll say maybe 3 years.

So if a conspiracy theory goes on longer than that, consider it debunked.

Up yours, 9/11 Truthers.

By: Marc

Marc — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 19:44:21 +0000

Trick question…If there has been a successfull cover up then we shouldn’t know about it…if we do know about it then it wasn’t successfull.

By: Apostic

Apostic — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 19:40:40 +0000

We could also kick in “______ is gay,” but most of those aren’t government secrets. (Examples: Rock Hudson, Richard Chamberlain, Markos Moulitsas — oh wait, that one’s not public yet….)

By: Greg

Greg — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 19:32:50 +0000

It was easier to keep the Manhattan Project quiet at the time because the press was not controlled by traitorous libtards that hated America. If today’s New York Times had been around in 1944, you KNOW it would have been front page news.

By: Chip

Chip — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 19:30:59 +0000

I was going to say Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction, but that one fell apart already.

The only lie the government has been able to perpetuate successfully is that Obama is a competent leader.

I will qualify that with a “so far” because I imagine even this lie is going to be unraveled eventually.

By: zzyzx

zzyzx — Fri, 01 Feb 2013 19:26:59 +0000

I’d say the date and place of the D-Day invasion is probably the best kept secret we’ve ever had. That’s in part because Hitler was an even worse, inept leader of the military then Hagel is going to be.