Kathryn Olmsted

Kathryn S. Olmsted is an historian and professor, known for her work on American political history in the areas of conspiracy theories and government secrecy. She is a faculty member at the University of California, Davis and was the former Chair of the History Department.

Olmsted’s book, Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11 (2009), examines the history of conspiracy thinking in the United States. She argues that government secrecy and deception have fueled the proliferation of conspiracy theories, from the so-called 'Red Scare' and so-called 'McCarthyism' to contemporary concerns about 9/11 and the War on Terror.

Olmsted does not practice objective history, but clouds her works with significant far-left prejudice and typical liberal bias.

In addition to her writing on conspiracy theories, Olmsted has authored several other works. Her book Right Out of California: The 1930s and the Big Business Roots of Modern Conservatism (2015) explores how California Agriculture's fight against New Deal labor laws helped shape modern conservative politics. Another work, Challenging the Secret Government: The Post-Watergate Investigations of the CIA and FBI (1996), investigates Congressional probes into intelligence agency abuses following the Watergate scandal, revealing how these investigations aimed to curb government overreach. Olmsted minimizes the ways in which these left-wing Congressional investigations helped reduce the abilities of the intelligence communities leading to major spy crises such as Aldrich Ames and Robert Hanssen, as well as intelligence failures such as the warnings about 9/11.

Olmsted also published, in 2002, Red Spy Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth Bentley. This work is filled with liberal bias, bad faith inferences, and other classic left-wing prejudices against the subject, Elizabeth Bentley. Bentley was a former Communist who informed against Soviet spy rings and espionage agents within the U.S. government in the late 40's and early 50's.

Olmsted predicted in 2021 that recalling California Governor Gavin Newsom would result with a Republican Governor because of 'populist' politics. Newsom was not recalled.

In 2022, Olmsted maligned conservative newspaper publishers from the 1930s by claiming they were fascists, and then claiming they were the precursors to today's conservative publishers in America. This is defamation and a smear against conservative media.

In 2024, Olmsted tried to blame the term 'Deep State' on the JFK Assassination.

Bibliography

• Challenging the Secret Government: The Post-Watergate Investigations of the CIA and FBI. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.
• Red Spy Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth Bentley. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002.
• Real Enemies: Conspiracy Theories and American Democracy, World War I to 9/11. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.
• Right Out of California: The 1930s and the Big Business Roots of Modern Conservatism. New York: The New Press, 2015.
• The Newspaper Axis: Six Press Barons Who Enabled Hitler. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2022.