Every major event prompts a conspiracy theory and over the years people have come up with some far out stories and cover ups. But are they all that far fetched? Or have many of these conspiracy theories been guided by those behind the original plot?
Let’s take a look at 15 of the most famous conspiracies that just might be closer to the truth than we think.
Chemtrails
Chemtrail conspiracy theorists believe that some contrails, which consist of ice crystals or water vapor condensed behind aircraft, actually result from chemicals or biological agents being deliberately sprayed at high altitude for some undisclosed purpose. The staple of right-wing radio shows in the US, there is fevered speculation that the chemicals being sprayed are part of a wider plot that involves the so-called New World Order and is being directed by shadowy forces within the government. The existence of chemtrails has been repeatedly denied by federal agencies and scientists.
The Aids virus was created in a laboratory
Based on the theories of Dr William Campbell Douglass, many believe that that HIV was genetically engineered in 1974 by the World Health Organisation. Dr Douglass believed that it was a cold-blooded attempt to create a killer virus which was then used in a successful experiment in Africa. Others have claimed that it was created by the CIA or the KGB as a means to reduce world population.
Global warming is a hoax
Some climate change doubters believe that man-made global warming is a conspiracy designed to soften up the world’s population to higher taxation, controls on lifestyle and more authoritarian government. These skeptics cite a fall in global temperatures since last year and a levelling off in the rise in temperature since 1998 as evidence.
Plastic coffins and concentration camps
Just outside Atlanta, Georgia, beside a major road are approximately 500,000 plastic coffins. Stacked neatly and in full view, the coffins are allegedly owned by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema). Conspiracy theorists believe that Fema has also set up several concentration camps in the US in preparation for the imposition of a state of martial law and the killing of millions of Americans. They suggest that the financial crisis will be used to justify the imposition of a police state.
Fluoridation
Fluoride is commonly added to drinking water as a way to reduce tooth decay. However, there has been some evidence that there could be some harmful side effects from fluoride and conspiracy theorists believe that this information is known and recognised by those responsible for adding the fluoride, but that they continue the practice regardless. Drug companies have been targeted as possible beneficiaries, as they will profit from a population with ill-health. Another motive is that fluoride lowers mental abilities thereby “dumbing down” the entire population.
Pearl Harbor was allowed to happen
Theorists believe that President Franklin Roosevelt provoked the Japanese attack on the US naval base in Hawaii in December 1941, knew about it in advance and covered up his failure to warn his fleet commanders.
He apparently needed the attack to provoke Hitler into declaring war on the US because the American public and Congress were overwhelmingly against entering the war in Europe.
Theorists believe that the US was warned by the governments of Britain, the Netherlands, Australia, Peru, Korea and the Soviet Union that a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor was coming and that, furthermore, the Americans had intercepted and broken all the important Japanese codes in the run up to the attack.
Peak oil
Peak oil (a theory in itself) is the supposed peak of oil production during and after which demand for oil outstrips supply sending prices through the roof. The peak oil conspiracy theorists believe that peak oil is a fraud concocted by the oil industries to increase prices amid concerns about future supplies. The oil industry is aware of vast reserves of untapped oil, but does not utilise them in order to maintain the illusion of scarcity, they claim.
July 7, 2005 London Tube bombings
One of the supposed mysteries surrounding the 7/7 attacks is this image, used by several news outlets, of the bombers entering Luton station on their way to London at around 7.20am on July 7. Theorists claim this image is fake because the man in the white hat – believed to be Mohammed Sidique Khan – has been electronically placed on the picture after it was taken. They claim that it shows his arm behind a railing while the rest of his body is in front and that the bar behind his head goes across and in front of his face. Theorists postulate, among other things, that the bombs which went off on the Tube trains were actually under the floors of the vehicles and not in the alleged plotters’ back packs.
Elvis Presley faked his own death
A persistent belief is that “the King” did not die in 1977. Many fans persist in claiming he is still alive, that he went into hiding for various reasons. This claim is allegedly backed up by thousands of so-called sightings.
The main reason given in support of the belief that Presley faked his death is that, on his grave, his middle name Aron is spelt as Aaron. But “Aaron” is actually the genuine middle name for Presley. Apparently, either Presley or his parents tried to change the name to “Aron” to make it more similar to Presley’s stillborn twin, Jesse Garon Presley.
Two tabloid newspapers ran articles covering the continuing “life” of Presley after his death, in great detail, including a broken leg from a motorcycle accident, all the way up to his purported “real death” in the mid 1990s.
Diana, Princess of Wales, was murdered
Despite an official inquiry that found no evidence of a plot by MI6 or any other entity to murder the princess and Dodi Fayed in 1997, fevered speculation continues.
The theory is that rogue elements in the British secret service decided that Diana’s relationship with Fayed was a threat to the monarchy and, therefore, to the British state.
A plot was hatched in which a white Fiat Uno carrying agents was sent to blind and disorientate driver Henri Paul as he sped through the Paris underpass pursued by photographers. Later, Paul’s blood was switched with a sample of somebody who had drunk a lot of alcohol.
The Illuminati and the New World Order
A conspiracy in which powerful and secretive groups (the Illuminati, the Bilderberg Group and other shadowy cabals) are plotting to rule mankind with a single world government. Many historical events are said to have been engineered by these groups with one goal – the New World Order (NWO).
The groups use political finance, social engineering, mind control, and fear-based propaganda to achieve their aims. Signs of the NWO are said to be the pyramid on the reverse of the Great Seal of the United States, inset, strange and disturbing murals at Denver International Airport, pictured, and pentagrams in city plans.
International organisations such as the World Bank, the IMF, the European Union, the United Nations, and Nato are listed as founding organisations of the New World Order.
Nasa faked the moon landings
People who think that the Apollo moon landings were not all that they seemed at the time believe that Nasa faked some or all of the landings.
Some of the theories surrounding this subject are that the Apollo astronauts did not land on the Moon; Nasa and possibly others intentionally deceived the public into believing the landings did occur by manufacturing, destroying, or tampering with evidence, including photos, telemetry tapes, transmissions, and rock samples; and that Nasa and possibly others continue to actively participate in the conspiracy to this day.
Those who think that Nasa faked some or all of the landings base their theories on photographs from the lunar surface which they claim show camera crosshairs partially behind rocks, a flag planted by Buzz Aldrin moving in a strange way, the lack of stars over the lunar landscape and shadows falling in different direction. Many commentators have published detailed rebuttals to the hoax claims, and these theories have been generally discounted but belief in them – particularly on the web – persists.
A flying saucer crashed at Roswell in 1947
The event that kick-started more than a half century of conspiracy theories surrounding unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Something did crash at Roswell, New Mexico, sometime before July 7, 1947 and – at first – the US authorities stated explicitly that this was a flying saucer or disk – as shown by the splash story on that day’s Roswell Daily Record, pictured.
Numerous witnesses reported seeing metallic debris scattered over a wide area and at least one reported seeing a blazing craft crossing the sky shortly before it crashed. In recent years, witnesses have added significant new details, including claims of a large military operation dedicated to recovering alien craft and aliens themselves, at as many as 11 crash sites, and alleged witness intimidation. In 1989, former mortician Glenn Dennis claimed that he was involved in alien autopsies which were carried out at the Roswell air force base.
The conspiracy theory has been fanned by the US military repeatedly changing its story. Within hours of the army telling reporters that it had recovered a crashed saucer, senior officers insisted that the only thing that had fallen from the sky had been a weather balloon.
A report by the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force released in 1995, concluded that the reported recovered material in 1947 was likely debris from a secret government program called Project Mogul, which involved high altitude balloons meant to detect sound waves generated by Soviet atom bomb tests and ballistic missiles. A second report, released in 1997, concluded that reports of alien bodies were likely a combination of innocently transformed memories of military accidents involving injured or killed personnel, and the recovery of anthropomorphic dummies in military programs like Project High Dive conducted in the 1950s.
Since the late 1990s the debate about Roswell has polarised with several former pro-UFO researchers concluding that the craft was, indeed, part of a US military project and that it was, most likely, some sort of weather balloon. But further evidence has emerged – notably a signed affidavit by Walter Haut, the Roswell Army Air Field public affairs officer who had drafted the initial press release on July 8, 1947. Haut says in the affidavit -signed in 2002 – that he saw alien corpses and a craft and that he had been involved in a military cover up. Haut died in 2005.
9/11 Attacks
Thanks to the power of the web and live broadcasts on television, the conspiracy theories surrounding the events of September 11, 2001 – when terrorists attacked the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. Despite repeated claims by al-Qaeda that it planned, organised and orchestrated the attacks, several official and unofficial investigations into the collapse of the Twin Towers which concluded that structural failure was responsible and footage of the events themselves, the conspiracy theories continue to grow in strength.
At the milder end of the spectrum are the theorists who believe that the US government had prior warning of the attacks but did not do enough to stop them. Others believe that the Bush administration deliberately turned a blind eye to those warnings because it wanted a pretext to launch wars in the Middle East to usher in another century of American hegemony. A large group of people – collectively called the 9/11 Truth Movement – cite evidence that an airliner did not hit the Pentagon and that the World Trade Centre could not have been brought down by airliner impacts and burning aviation fuel alone. This final group points to video evidence which they claim shows puffs of smoke – so-called demoliton squibs – emerging from the Twin Towers at levels far below the aircraft impact zones and prior to the collapses. They also believe that, on the day itself, the US air force was deliberately stood down or sent on exercises to prevent intervention that could have saved the lives of nearly 3,000 people.
Many witnesses – including firemen, policemen and people who were inside the towers at the time – claim to have heard explosions below the aircraft impacts (including in basement levels) and before both the collapses and the attacks themselves. As with the assassination of JFK, the official inquiry into the events – the 9/11 Commission Report – is widely derided by the conspiracy community and held up as further evidence that 9/11 was a the work of the US government. Scientific journals have consistently rejected these hypotheses.
The assassination of John F Kennedy
The 35th President of the United States was shot on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas at 12.30pm . He was fatally wounded by gunshots while riding with his wife – Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy – in a motorcade. The ten-month investigation of the Warren Commission of 1963 to 1964, the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) of 1976 to 1979, and other government investigations concluded that the President had been assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald – who was himself shot dead by Jack Ruby while in police custody.
But doubts about the official explanation and the conclusion that Oswald was the lone gunman firing from the Texas Book Depository overlooking Dealey Plaza where Kennedy was hit surfaced soon after the commission report. Footage of the motorcade taken by Abraham Zapruder on 8mm film supported the growing belief that at least four shots were fired – not the three that the Warren Commission claimed. The moments of impact recorded on the film also suggested that at least one of the shots came from a completely different direction to those supposedly fired by Oswald – evidence backed up by testimony of several eye witnesses. Many believed that several shots were fired by gunmen hiding behind a picket fence on a grassy knoll overlooking the plaza.
The assassination is still the subject of widespread speculation and has spawned numerous conspiracy theories, though none of these has been proven. In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) found both the original FBI investigation and the Warren Commission Report to be seriously flawed. The HSCA also concluded that there were at least four shots fired and that it was probable that a conspiracy existed. However, later studies, including one by the National Academy of Sciences, have called into question the accuracy of the evidence used by the HSCA to support its finding of four shots.
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