Can we trust our government?

I know we have all heard the 9/11 conspiracy theories and other seemingly outrageous accusations against our government ranging from concealing a Roswell incident to attacks on groups such as the Black Panthers. Now I have become more skeptical of our government since going through college but it has always seemed hard to believe that our government would ever want to harm innocent civilians. It has become easier to believe under the Bush administration and not seemed so outrageous that the American people could be harmed for the agenda of an administration.

Before anyone starts looking at me as a disloyal American who doesnt love his country please read further. I was recently listening to a podcast in which the Northwoods Papers were mentioned. This operation was planned by the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1962 and basically called for US attacks on our own innocent civilians and military persons so that the US could blame the attacks on Cuba and have a reason to go to war with the support of the American people. The article can be found here: http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=92662

This is not entirely unbelievable to me after living through the past 8 years. However, what is unbelievable to me is the fact that I have not known about these papers until a couple days ago. I consider myself an educated adult but I just recently found out about this. I think this is something every citizen should know about. I wonder what else is being concealed by the government that the rest of the public does not know about. Just knowing that this was an idea of members of our government should lead us all to have some skepticism in our government. I think some skepticism is good and it will allow us to put more pressure on our government in the future for transparency. Our population is not involved enough and we need to educate ourselves on these matters because it is our responsibility. It will only make our country better.