I hope the RIGINT conference would be much better run than the 9/11 Inquiry in Toronto in May 2004.
http://www.oilempire.us/towers.html
International Citizens' Inquiry into 9/11, May 2004
The event was a mix of success and failure, great speakers, low turnout and not much political visibility (at least on the surface). Some of the best writers and investigators on these issues made presentations (which were recorded for future dissemination). Perhaps the high point of the Inquiry was Michael Ruppert's presentation toward the end of the week about the role of the military and intelligence war games on 9/11 which included new information that he had uncovered through careful investigatory journalism.
However, Ruppert's presentation (and the other speakers who spoke on the weekend) was made to a small audience in a very large auditorium (Convocation Hall at the University of Toronto), and without any media coverage. Many in the audience were privately sad (and embarrassed?) to see a huge hall virtually empty despite the tremendous importance of the topics. One of the speakers, John Gray, has written books that sold millions of copies (Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus), and presumably would have attracted a large crowd had there been adequate publicity about the event. The weekday presentations were in a much smaller location that would have been adequate for the weekend plenary conclusion session. Perhaps the low turnout was merely a case of Canadians being less directly interested or affected by the 9/11 issues. Perhaps it was a consequence of expensive tickets for the whole event, but one-day-only tickets were reasonably priced given the size of the event. Perhaps it was someone working surreptitiously to ensure that the Inquiry would be a money-losing event by renting the largest possible location and then "forgetting" to adequately publicize it. Whatever the cause(s) of the low turnout, the conference was deeply in debt afterwards.
http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/tuck.html
Dick Tuck was a legendary political hoaxer who made a career out of making life miserable for Richard Nixon.
In 1950 both Nixon and Tuck were near the start of their careers. Nixon was running for a California senate seat against democratic opponent Helen Gagahan Douglas, and Tuck was working for Douglas's campaign.
Nixon was running an extremely dirty campaign, making every effort to portray his opponent as a communist-sympathizer. This red-bashing had already worked successfully for him in a 1946 congressional race against the democrat Jerry Voorhis, and had propelled him to national fame as a member of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Tuck decided that he would undermine Nixon by getting himself hired as a campaign worker in Nixon's campaign, where he would secretly operate as a mole for Douglas.
As a campaign worker for Nixon, Tuck was responsible for organizing campaign rallies. He organized one such rally at UC Santa Barbara, and he booked the largest auditorium possible. However, he purposefully booked it on a day that few students would be able to attend, and then he barely publicized it at all. Therefore, when Nixon showed up to speak there were only 40 students waiting to hear him in a 4000 seat auditorium.