ON STREET GANG OATHS, CALl DRUG COMBINES, MAFIA OMERTA, AND THE GADIANTON TRADITION A Brief Foreword on Conspiracy Theorists One of the quickest ways to gain a reputation for being a crank is to subscribe to a conspiracy theory of world or criminal events. Fifty years ago, during the heyday of the anti-communist McCarthyist witchhunt, half a dozen senior American diplomats had their reputations besmirched and were deprived of their posts of trust in government because, it was charged, that while serving in the American mission to China before its fall to Mao Ze Deng, they had somehow conspired in the 1949 overthrow of Chang Kai Chek. And when President Kennedy was shot, many rushed to judgment that the assassination was either the work of the Mafia, in reaction to his Brother Bobby's work as Attorney General in which several mafia bosses were indicted -- or the work of Cuban agents in revenge for the Bay of Pigs. Even the tragic suicide of movie actress Marilyn Monroe was woven into the Kennedy conspiracy theory by some who eagerly speculated that somehow the government wished to cover up her affair with the Kennedy brothers. That the courts eventually exonerated all of the State Department officials, that the Warren Commission found that it was a lone assassin with his own crazy mission who shot JFK, and that the relationship of Marilyn to the Kennedy's was no more than one more tawdry sexual exploit in the Kennedy family annals, in no way deters such conspiracy buffs from yet pursuing their theories. But even the most reserved students of law, government, and international affairs, are quick to admit that conspiracies do exist. Guy Fawkes, a Catholic political activist, did indeed plan to blow up the House of Commons in the mid-sixteenth century. Burgess and McLean were indeed double agents in the service of the Soviet Union. Warned by another conspirator, and escaping from England, Burgess died a KGB Colonel in comfortable retirement in Moscow. There was as a matter of history a cabal of aristocratic German officers who tried to assassinate Adolph Hitler at the height of WW II (paying for their failure with their own lives). There was indeed a conspiracy to arrest reformist Prime Minister Gorbachev during his visit to Yalta to short circuit the reforms which eventually led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. And it has been established that conspiracies were behind the Lockerbie aircraft bombing, the Oklahoma City Federal Building bombing, the Tokyo subway gassings, and it is beginning to look like a conspiracy was involved in the TWA Flight 800 crash off Long Island. On Conspiracy Theory and American Frontier Society But all these examples involve fairly high affairs of state, including the sophisticated notion of "The Propaganda of the Deed", evolved by east European political theorists such as Nicolai Bakunin, which set off the First World War, bringing down as intended the multi-ethnic Austrian Empire: The sort of events which would be little known, and less understood, by a moderately educated young man on the American frontier in the early Nineteenth Century -- absent access to library, newspaper, or the gossip of town hall. One of the most striking evidences of the authenticity of the Book of Mormon as having been translated, by inspiration, from an actual document of historic antiquity, is its informed and knowledgeable discussion of such high conspiracies -- matters certainly beyond the knowledge or imagination of an innocent young frontiersman such as Joseph Smith. More striking yet, is the prophetic nature of the set of impressive conspiratorial criminal activities which took place from 50 to 24 B.C. as recorded in the Book of Mormon . For this book, we are told in its Foreword was "Written by way of commandment, and also by the spirit of prophesy . . . and hid up [by] the Lord . . . to come forth by the gift and power of God" as guidance and warning to both Jew and Gentile of the evil things which were to happen in our day as part of the events leading up to the "Manifestation] of the Eternal God . . . unto all nations". Even had the young Joseph heard rumors of the Burr cabal or the Whiskey Rebellion, it is beyond comprehension that he could have projected himself so beyond the simple society of his day -- frontier or New York sophisticate -- that he could have written so inventively about the complicated organization and oaths of Omerta of Mafia families; the employment of Masonic secrecy to underpin financial sculduggery in Italy and Switzerland; or the elaborate induction rites and blood oaths (including at times test-of-loyalty by killing) of New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles street gangs. And yet it is all there in the Book of Mormon . Today's events are a repetition of what happened in 50 B.C. when an earlier society in this same land became so set on power, riches, and worldly success that it forgot that social cohesion depends first and foremost on man's never forgetting that this life is but a probationary state in one's eternal progression; that one's fellow men are spirit brothers and sisters begotten of the same Heavenly Father who will sit in judgment one day on all mortal acts. If man is but another animal living ever so briefly by evolutionary chance on a microscopic bit of randomly whirling clay in lonely space, then lying a bit, cheating a bit, cutting corners a bit -- and organizing oneself into a conspiratorial band of fellow non-believers to advance one's interests as much and as quickly as possible, makes the only sense there may be to existence. On Humanism and Crime This is not to say that humanism is a formula for criminality. Indeed, many of the most just, humane, and decent folk of the Nineteenth (and early Twentieth) Century were humanists. But what they seem not to have inferred from their own behavior and that of their upright, educated, friends of similar persuasion, was that they'd been reared by Christian (or Jewish) parents in perhaps the strictest Judeo-Christian era of history -- and their own world-view emerged from their internalization of this ethic. When their children, or at least the children of the next generation, were in process of forming their own weltanschauang, the basis for these high ethics was no longer being widely practiced. Little surprise then that an increasingly large proportion of that generation's young people have been seduced by the rationalism of pure self-advancement -- by whatever means at hand. A Book of Mormon Precedent At least we're told that this is how the world came to be viewed by similar groups of determined individuals in a peaceful corner of the American continent in 50 B.C. when "it came to pass in the forty and second year of the reign of the judges, after Moroniha had established again peace between the Nephites and Lamanites . . . there was no one to fill the judgment seat; therefore there began to be a contention among the people concerning who should fill the . . . seat. And it came to pass that Helaman, who was the son of Helaman, was appointed to fill the judgment seat by the voice of the people. But behold, Kishkumen, who had murdered Pahoran [the previous judge] did lie in wait to destroy Helaman also; and he was upheld by his band, who had entered into a covenant that no one should know his wickedness. For there was one Gadianton, who was exceedingly expert in many words and also in his craft, to carry on the secret work of murder and of robbery; therefore he did become the leader of the band of Kishkumen. Therefore he did flatter them . . . that if they would place him in the judgement seat he would grant unto those who belonged to his band that they should be placed in power and authority among the people. [But, being given over to treachery, Kishkumen tried to betray Gadianton and seize full power himself.] And behold, when Gadianton found that Kishkumen did not return he feared that he [Gadianton] should be destroyed; therefore he caused that his band should follow him [into the wilderness]. And more of this Gadianton shall be spoken hereafter." (Helaman 2:4-12: excerpted) . . . . . "And it came to pass that in the sixty and sixth year . . . Cezoram was murdered by an unknown hand as he sat upon the judgment seat. And . . . his son who had been appointed by the people in his stead, was also murdered. . . . And . . . the people began to grow exceedingly wicked again. For behold the Lord had blessed them so long with the riches of the world . . . that they began to set their hearts upon their riches; yea, they began to seek to get gain that they might be lifted up one above another; therefore they began to commit secret murders, and to rob and to plunder, that they might get gain. And now behold, those murderers and plunderers [joined] the band who had been founded by Kishkumen and Gadianton. And now it had come to pass that there were many, even among the Nephites, of Gadianton's band. . . . And it was they who did murder the chief judge Cezoram. . . . And whosoever of those who belonged to their band [bound themselves by oath] that they should not reveal unto the world their wickedness and their abominations. . . . Now behold, it is these secret oaths and covenants which Alma commanded his son should not go forth unto the world, lest they should be a means of bringing down the people unto destruction. . . . . [So] these secret oaths and covenants did not come forth unto the Gadiantons from the records . . . but were put into their hearts . . . by that same being who did entice our first parents . . . yea, that same being who did plot with Cain that if he would murder his brother Abel it would not be known unto the world. . . . And seeing the people in a state of such awful wickedness, and these Gadianton robbers filling the judgment seats -- having usurped the power and authority of the land; laying aside the commandments of God, and not in the least aright before him; doing no justice among the children of men . . . that they might get gain and the glory of the world . . . and moreover that they might more easily commit adultery, and steal, and kill, and do according to their own wills . . . the heart of [Nephi] was swollen with sorrow . . . and he did exclaim in the agony of his soul." (Helaman 6:24-29 and Helaman 7:4-6 excerpted). Looking about one today, who can fail to feel such agony in his own soul, or to deny that this Voice of Warning has been fulfilled? Certainly over one brief lifetime, the author can assert that never in his wildest imagination did he ever dream that the most destructive varieties of drugs would be available to elementary school students in every major city (and, as he found to his dismay, in dreamy, rural America when he taught in a mid-sized Rocky Mountain university town some twenty years ago); that drive-by shootings in every major city would be reported as matters of routine in the nation's newspapers; that first graders would pack pistols to school; that Cali Drug Lords would be able to negotiate their own terms with Heads of Government -- and Supreme Court Judges publicly announce that they favored legalization of drugs; that a nation such as the Netherlands, where the Protestant ethic of hard work and clean living took root, should provide free needles and drugs to young people from any nation who could pay the tariff to fly there; that a dread venereal disease with no known cure and bringing certain death, would be spreading like wildfire in a world where modern medicine has a dozen methods of prophylactic protection; that the former Prime Minister of a great, civilized nation would be charged not only with collaboration with mafia leaders while in office, but with having probably been a formal member of a mafia clan? That his successor would be so subject to mafia influence that he would risk the dissolution of his government to release hundreds of malefactors from preventative detention, while their cases were being examined to prevent them from using their power and influence to tamper with evidence? Or that the Mayor of the capital city of the United States would, after being convicted of felonious possession and use of crack cocaine, be overwhelmingly re-elected upon his release from prison? And, alluding to how fornication became endemic in Ancient America when similar notions of selfish personal advancement and social dissolution became rampant, never did the author imagine that a third of the children born in the United States would come into the world in families in which a marriage had never taken place -- with the President himself predicting that the number will rise to over half by the end of the decade. It is perhaps needless to enter into more detail about how gangs, from street corner toughs, to Cali Drug Lords, to the most externally sophisticated Mafia Families living in exclusive suburban estates, operating some of the most renowned resorts in the nation, and often identified in the media as admired members of the "jet set", in fact operate under just the types of blood oaths and secret identification signs described and warned against, in scripture. Nor is it needful, perhaps, to remind readers that when omerta , or the law of silence, is broken -- as the FBI succeeded in getting one mafia under-boss to do, retribution takes place, despite the most diligent efforts to change identities and relocate such individuals under the Witness Protection Program. Indeed, two of the block-buster movies of the decade The Godfather and The Firm, attracted such great interest just because they so closely paralleled the events of our day. Nor is the phenomenon restricted to the Western Hemisphere, ancient and modern. The Chinese Triads operate in much the same tradition, as does the newly minted Russian mafia. According to the Economist Magazine. July 9, 1994 issue, p.20, one of the main contributions of the Brezhnev era was to allow the return in force of a class of the Russian godfather class known as v zakone , or "thieves in-law". This is an old and traditional profession pre-dating the Revolution. But it was in the Brezhnev gulags that the profession renewed its ranks and rites, according to General Gennady Chebotaryev, number two at the Interior Ministry's directorate for organized crime. Says Chebotaryev, a true thief-in-law is "opposed to laws in the most fundamental way. . . He will never do an honest day's work, never serve in the army, not own anything or have a family. When arrested he will never co-operate with the police. He will serve as a judge in disputes between criminals, and is responsible for looking after the pooled money of the criminal gang he guides." What could be closer in outlook or organization to the Gadianton's of 50 D.C.? In undertaking to write this paper, the author was motivated probably less by a sense of outrage (which all moral people must feel); or possession of insight into how we might go about solving our problem (while most would disapprove, if not fear, the long term results of Ross Perot's quasi-fascistic suggestions, it is clear, as Perot has said, that tough and unconventional strategies will be required). Rather it is written more out of a conviction that perhaps that one of the most telling evidences of the truth of the Book of Mormon is its informed, prophetic warning about how societies which turn from the morality of the ages in favor of quick wealth and worldly acclaim, inevitably open wide the door for secret combinations -- whether Gadiantons, Cali Drug Lords, Mafia Dons, Italian Masonic Lodges, the newborn Russian v zakone , or high school age Westside Raiders -- which lead to planned murder, casual killing, street muggings, corruption in high places, and unwanted children who soon become an unproductive, if not criminal, underclass. The truth of the Book lies all around us today. Account for so many parallel societal calamities otherwise, if you can.