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The Clinton administration "spun" America's terrorist problem when it re-emerged in February 1993, with the bombing of the World Trade Center, one month into Bill Clinton's first term in office. New York FBI believed that was a "false flag" operation run by Iraq, working with and hiding behind Islamic militants.

But Clinton did not want to hear it (he thought he took care of the problem slyly if the FBI was correct when he hit Iraqi intelligence headquarters several months later). So his administration claimed a new terrorism had emerged, consisting of "loose networks" of Islamic militants, unsupported by states.

Israel might have recognized this for the dangerous misconception it was, were it not for the unrealistic expectations that set in regarding the "peace process" when Yitzhak Rabin was prime minister. Already then, a new "conceptzia" had begun to blur Western vision.

"Conceptzia" was the term coined by the Agranat Commission to describe the intelligence failure that led to the surprise of the Yom Kippur War. As a friend at Tel Aviv University explained, "It is much more than a mistake." It is a fundamentally flawed understanding of events that prevents one from seeing what is before his eyes.

Another mistaken 'conceptzia'

At least in the case of Ron Brown, why aren't Americans aggressively pushing Congress and the Justice Department to get at the truth? James Dale Davidson has a theory:

"We're in the point of a hillbilly song, and the line was, 'We really don't want to know.' I really don't want to know. People sometimes shy away from unhappy truths."

Gary Lane
Dying to Tell: The Mysterious Deaths of Clinton Colleagues



But even as the clintons fails to grasp the scandal's metabolism
they understand all too well its most significant byproduct.
You can see it in their eyes.
Once reflecting a Machiavellian confidence,
they now dart back and forth reflexively,
searching futilely for approval,
attempting desperately to dispel their own certain knowledge
that their moral authority is gone. . .
forever
Mia T

It is natural for man to indulge in the illusions of hope.
We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth,
and listen to the song of that siren
till she transforms us into beasts.
Is this the part of wise men,
engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty?
Are we disposed to be the number of those
who, having eyes, see not,
and having ears, hear not,
the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation?
For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost,
I am willing to know the whole truth;
to know the worst, and to provide for it.
Patrick Henry
In a dark time, the eye begins to see.
Theodore Roethke