In a week or so we will mark the 15th anniversary of the crash of TWA 800 in waters off Long Island, killing 230 people. I subscribe to the belief (bolstered by the work of scientist Tom Stalcup) that a missile brought the plane down, likely fired by mistake by an American submarine during a military training exercise that night.

One of the “problems” with my belief, people always said, was that scores of people would have been in on the truth, why didn’t any of them come forward? All the people serving on that sub, for instance. I always said– and I still do– that large groups of people can maintain such silence, if they have been successfully indoctrinated.

The Murdoch scandal demonstrates why I am right. The repulsive phone-hacking by Murdoch journalists was first exposed five years ago by the British police. At that time, only a couple of journos were implicated. Now it turns out the practice was widespread inside the Murdoch empire. Maybe even inside the U.S.?

Remember: this practice was clearly wrong and illegal. And scores of journalists were in on it, and said nothing. They feared for their jobs, they believed the Murdoch mission– who knows just why, but they were all indoctrinated.

A similar lesson can be drawn from the complicity of almost all the leading American Jewish organizations in supporting Jim Crow conditions in Israel and Palestine. They just smile and salute. Indoctrination works.