Rumors and conspiracies

Here at the newspaper office, we hear a lot of rumors and conspiracy theories. Sometimes, if the timing is right, we get all jacked up on a news tip before we finally get sidetracked to what we're really supposed to be doing — covering day-to-day events.

A few weeks ago, news from the grapevine was that a well-known rock-and-roll musician with an even more well-known reality TV show and a less well-known proclivity for biting the heads off bats had secured a lot up on Iron Horse and was building a trophy home.

What got the adrenaline really flowing was word that his daughter was downtown shopping. I tried to sic my photographer on the story, but he resisted, claiming he didn't do "paparazzi."

More recently, while pumping weights at a downtown gym, a local "chauffeur" described to me a grandiose Fourth of July party at the Flathead ranch home of a former NFL team owner. Apparently a dozen important football players were there — including one whose first name is now the name of a small town in Montana — and a big-name rock-and-roll group took the "journey" here to play at the exclusive party.

The driver said anyone who wanted to see pop icons need only hang out at Glacier Park International Airport during the small arrival-and-departure windows there. You might even get to see a TV crime-scene investigator from Las Vegas depart for a fly-fishing excursion down by Spotted Bear.

If we journalists are not chasing down leads on million-dollar babies, we're deciphering clues on the latest conspiracy theory. Somehow people believe it's possible that a handful of hidden characters can control millions of hard-working corporate, government and media employees in the name of greed, power or religion.

Not long ago, while strapped down in a dentist's chair with a mouthful of complex apparatus blocking my speech, I was asked whether the American media had conspired to hold back a story about a Pentagon study on global warming. The study looked at potential threats caused by dislocations 20 or 50 years in the future, and how the U.S. military should prepare for them.

For citizens concerned that our government was not properly addressing the idea of global warming, this was big news — if the Pentagon took it seriously, why not Congress and the White House?

The story eventually appeared in the mainstream press a week or so later, which got me off the hook. How could I convince people that I don't get marching orders from the White House? That I don't get an e-mail or fax stamped "Top Secret, For Your Eyes Only" telling me which stories to run and which to hold back?

The accusation reminds me of a 1991 blockbusting movie on the assassination of President Kennedy. By the time the movie ended, the conspiracy behind JFK's killing had expanded practically exponentially to include 10,000-or-more bureaucrats in the Pentagon, FBI, CIA, Congress and media industry.

I could tell you more about all this but, of course, I'm bound to secrecy.