Yet Another Cautionary Tale

Vanity Fair covers the dual suicide of a couple that at least has some peripheral connection to the 9-11 conspiracy theories.

Maybe it was Morales’s refreshing lack of knowledge of anything connected with Hollywood that made the couple gravitate so heavily now toward the hip pastor. Or maybe it was his knowledge of subjects which had come to interest them, which other friends of theirs considered a bit nutty. “The U.S. government invaded Iraq on the basis of lies and still some people want to deny the existence of conspiracies,” said Morales.

In May, Duncan published on her blog a long conversation with Morales on topics such as MK-Ultra and Operation Chaos—actual C.I.A. mind-control and surveillance programs between the 50s and the 70s. She announced on the blog (two days before she died) that she was writing a piece called “The Devil and Dick Cheney”—“a metaphysical investigation,” Morales explained, into whether the vice president “could actually be Satan.”

He offered to contact his friend Alex Jones about doing a Scientology show on his nationally syndicated radio program (The Alex Jones Show), which specializes in government secrets and conspiracies. Blake liked the idea. In January, he had sent someone an e-mail promoting Jones as a “colorful Texas populist who has hipster credibility.” It was through Jones’s show that he had become familiar with the “9/11 truth movement” and its questioning of the U.S. government’s so-called “official story.” He had e-mailed friends about this too. He now became a semi-regular attendee at the Sunday-night 9/11-truth meetings at St. Mark’s Church, which Morales oversees. Morales said, “He was talking about doing art around 9/11 truth.”

The piece is written by Nancy Jo Sales, who also wrote the piece on Dylan and the Loosers last year, and who, by no small coincidence is also the former wife of Frank Morales. Weird story.