Cite as: 537 U. S. 270 (2003)
Opinion of the Court
States, 522 U. S. 52, 65 (1997). The conspiracy poses a "threat to the public" over and above the threat of the commission of the relevant substantive crime—both because the "[c]ombination in crime makes more likely the commission of [other] crimes" and because it "decreases the probability that the individuals involved will depart from their path of criminality." Callanan v. United States, 364 U. S. 587, 593-594 (1961); see also United States v. Rabinowich, 238 U. S. 78, 88 (1915) (conspiracy "sometimes quite outweigh[s], in injury to the public, the mere commission of the contemplated crime"). Where police have frustrated a conspiracy's specific objective but conspirators (unaware of that fact) have neither abandoned the conspiracy nor withdrawn, these special conspiracy-related dangers remain. Cf. 2 W. LaFave & A. Scott, Substantive Criminal Law § 6.5, p. 85 (1986) ("[i]m-possibility" does not terminate conspiracy because "criminal combinations are dangerous apart from the danger of attaining the particular objective"). So too remains the essence of the conspiracy—the agreement to commit the crime. That being so, the Government's defeat of the conspiracy's objective will not necessarily and automatically terminate the conspiracy.
Second, the view we endorse today is the view of almost all courts and commentators but for the Ninth Circuit. No other Federal Court of Appeals has adopted the Ninth Circuit's rule. Three have explicitly rejected it. In United States v. Wallace, 85 F. 3d 1063, 1068 (CA2 1996), for example, the court said that the fact that a "conspiracy cannot actually be realized because of facts unknown to the conspirators is irrelevant." See also United States v. BelardoQuiñones, 71 F. 3d 941, 944 (CA1 1995) (conspiracy exists even if, unbeknownst to conspirators, crime is impossible to commit); United States v. LaBudda, 882 F. 2d 244, 248 (CA7 1989) (defendants can be found guilty of conspiracy even if conspiracy's object "is unattainable from the very beginning"). One treatise, after surveying lower court conspir-
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