Conspiracy: 8 Far-Fetched Theories That Turned Out To Be True

Watergate

Watergate was a United States political scandal which involved the illegal activities of the incumbent Republican administration of President Richard Nixon, during and after the 1972 presidential campaign. It came to national attention following the arrest of five men on June 17, 1972, who had broken into the Watergate office and hotel complex, which was the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. The five men arrested were charged with burglary and wiretapping, before two others, former White House aide E. Howard Hunt and general counsel for the committee for the re-election of the President, G. Gordon Liddy faced the same charges.

In the run-up to their trial, President Nixon and his aides denied any knowledge or involvement in the Watergate affair. Despite Nixon’s denial, media reports to the contrary continued to suggest otherwise. Two journalists working for the Washington Post, namely Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein began to receive leaked reports from a source known as “Deep Throat.” The mysterious “Deep Throat” character’s identity was finally revealed in 2005 as W. Mark Felt, who at the time was the deputy director of the FBI.

At the men’s sentencing in March 1973, Judge John J. Sirica read a letter written by one of the defendants, James W. McCord Jr. which accused the President of conducting a cover-up, and claimed that the defendants had been pressured to plead guilty and remain silent. McCord also alleged that witnesses had perjured themselves before the court. On April 17, 1973, Nixon announced that he had begun a new investigation into the events surrounding Watergate. On April 30th Nixon stated publicly that he took responsibility for the actions of members of his staff implicated in the case.

In February 1973, the Senate established the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities under the chairmanship of Senator Sam J. Ervin to investigate any White House involvement. Before the committee, at one of the televised hearings, Dean accused Nixon of direct involvement in the cover-up, while a former staffer stated that conversations in the president’s offices had been secretly recorded. Subpoenas were issued for the tapes by the committee and by Special Watergate prosecutor, Archibald Cox. Nixon refused to hand over the tapes, claiming executive privilege and national security reasons for withholding them. Judge Sirica then ordered Nixon to hand over the tapes, and that order was upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals in October.

Nixon offered written transcripts of the tapes instead. When Cox rejected this, Nixon sought to have him fired. The Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General subsequently resigned, and Cox was later dismissed by the new Attorney General, Robert Bork. Seven of the nine subpoenaed tapes were eventually handed over in December 1973. The White House claimed that the other two never existed. One of the seven tapes handed over contained a gap that a panel of experts later concluded could not have happened accidentally.

By July 30, 1974, the House Judiciary Committee had passed three articles of impeachment. On August 5, Nixon supplied transcripts of the tapes which implicated him in the cover-up. Facing impeachment, Nixon resigned on August 9.

Prohibition or Poisoning?

Founded in 1893, the Anti-Saloon League led the state prohibition drive between 1906-1913. The Outbreak of World War I led to a Temporary Wartime Prohibition Act being passed to preserve grain supplies for food. In 1917, Congress voted on the resolution for submission of the Prohibition Amendment to the states. The vote reached the necessary two-thirds quota and was ratified on January 29, 1919, before coming into effect the following year. On October 28, 1919, the National Prohibition Act, also known as the Volstead Act after its promoter, Andrew J. Volstead, was enacted.

By 1920, prohibition had been enacted in thirty-three states. This led to the large-scale production and sale of bootlegged alcohol in the United States. One of the main players in the bootlegging trade was the notorious gangster Al Capone. The quest for control of the profitable industry led to a series of gang wars and murders during the 1920s.

In 1906 the U.S. Government ordered manufacturers of industrialized alcohol to begin using a denaturing process, which involved adding harmful chemicals to render it undrinkable. Industrialized alcohol was the main source of alcohol used by bootlegging gangs, who would redistil it to make it potable. By the mid-1920s, the U.S. Treasury Department, which oversaw alcohol enforcement, estimated as much as 60 million gallons of industrialized alcohol was stolen annually to supply the bootlegging trade.

To combat the gang’s illegal trade of alcohol, the U.S. Treasury Department introduced new formulas to be used in the denaturing process of industrialized alcohol. The new formulas included adding poisonous substances such as kerosene and brucine (a plant alkaloid similar to strychnine). Other formulas contained the addition of “gasoline, benzene, cadmium, iodine, zinc, mercury salts, nicotine, ether, formaldehyde, chloroform, camphor, carbolic acid, quinine, and acetone”. The U.S. Treasury Department also ordered that industrialized alcohol should contain up to 10% poisonous methyl alcohol.

In 1926, in New York alone, 1200 became ill following drinking poisonous bootlegged alcohol, 400 of whom died. The following year a further 700 people died in New York. Deaths due to alcohol poisoning began rising across the country. By the time the 18th Amendment was repealed in 1933 an estimated 10,000 people nationwide had died from drinking alcohol contaminated with deadly chemicals.

Project MKUltra

Project MKUltra was the code name of a series of “mind control” experiments conducted on unsuspecting American and Canadian citizens by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) between 1950-1973. The Scientific Intelligence Division of the CIA worked in coordination with the Special Operations Division of the U.S. Army Chemical Corps on the project.

One of the main reasons behind this series of experiments was to identify which methods would be most effective in eliciting confessions and/or intelligence from detainees during interrogations. The experiments involved the use of drugs (especially LSD), electronics, hypnosis, verbal and sexual abuse, as well as isolation and psychological torture.

Over one hundred of these experiments were carried out at eighty different institutions, including prisons, hospitals, military bases, pharmaceutical companies and forty-four different colleges and universities. In 1985, during the U.S. Supreme Court case of the CIA vs. Sims, it was revealed that Project MKUltra was concerned with “the research and development of chemical, biological, and radiological materials capable of employment in clandestine operations to control human behavior.”

Project MKUltra was first brought to light in 1975 following an investigation by the Church Committee and a President Gerald Ford commission which looked into the activities of the CIA within the United States. Investigations into Project MKUltra were seriously hampered as a result of CIA director Richard Helms order to destroy most of the documentary evidence and reports from these experiments at the end of the program in 1973. The Church Committee and Rockefeller Commission investigations compiled evidence for the existence of Project MKUltra from sworn witness testimony and the surviving documents.

In 1977, under the Freedom of Information Act, 20,000 additional documents which had been incorrectly stored in a financial building were discovered and released. These documents were investigated during the Senate Hearings of 1977. Further information relating to Project MKUltra was declassified and became public in July 2001. One of the documents from 1955 revealed the nature and aims of the project. For example, the CIA sought to identify:

• “substances which will enhance the ability of individuals to withstand privation, torture, and coercion during interrogation and so-called “brain-washing.”
• Materials and physical methods which will produce amnesia for events preceding and during their use.
• Substances which alter personality structure in such a way that the tendency of the recipient to become dependent upon another person is enhanced.
• A material which will cause mental confusion of such a type that the individual under its influence will find it difficult to maintain a fabrication under questioning.
• A knockout pill which can surreptitiously be administered in drinks, food, cigarettes, as an aerosol, etc., which will be safe to use, provide a maximum of amnesia, and be suitable for use by agent types on an ad hoc basis.”

Today conspiracy theorists believe that Project MKUltra did not come to an end in 1973. Victor Marchetti, who spent fourteen years in the CIA, said in an interview in 1977, that the reports Project MKUltra had ended were a “cover story.”

Operation Valkyrie

Operation Valkyrie was the code name for an emergency continuity of government plan in the event of civil unrest in Germany during World War II. Three high-ranking officers of the German Army, General Friedrich Olbricht, Major General Henning von Tresckow, and Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg had different intentions for the operation. They devised a plan to assassinate Hitler, and after he had been killed they intended to blame his assassination on a coup by the Nazi SS. From there they would utilize the German Reserve Army to disarm and arrest the Nazi SS leadership. This alleged treasonous coup would then justify the removal of the Nazi Party government from office.

Colonel-General Friedrich Fromm, Chief of the Reserve Army opposed the conspirator’s plan. However, Olbricht was determined to press ahead with the plot, with or without Fromm’s cooperation. Tresckow and Stauffenberg at first considered other officers with access to Hitler to carry out his assassination. On July 7, 1944, General Helmuth Stieff had been in place to assassinate Hitler at an unveiling of new uniforms at Klessheim Castle, but in the end backed out. Tresckow tried on a number of occasions to be assigned to Hitler’s headquarters but to no avail.

Ultimately Stauffenberg volunteered. On July 1, 1944, Stauffenberg had been appointed Chief of Staff to the Reserve Army. This position enabled Stauffenberg to attend Hitler’s military conferences which would give him the opportunity to carry out his assassination. At one of these conferences on July 14, 1944, Stauffenberg had with him a briefcase containing a bomb. It had been decided that both Heinrich Himmler and Hermann Goring would be assassinated along with Hitler. Stauffenberg had to abandon this assassination attempt because Himmler was not present. The following day at another conference meeting, Stauffenberg again had to abort the mission as Hitler was called out of the meeting.

On July 20, 1944, Stauffenberg attended another meeting in Hitler’s conference room. Again he had with him a briefcase containing a bomb which he primed in a bathroom prior to the meeting. The detonator of the bomb consisted of a thin copper tube with copper chloride inside which would take approximately ten minutes to dissolve the wire holding back the firing pin from the percussion cap. Stauffenberg had been unable to prime a second bomb he had with him as he had been interrupted by a guard knocking on the bathroom door informing him that the meeting was about to start.

Stauffenberg left the briefcase underneath the conference room table close to Hitler. He then received a planned telephone call and excused himself from the meeting. The bomb exploded but Hitler survived, sustaining only minor injuries. Operation Valkyrie had failed. Stauffenberg and many of his fellow conspirators were later executed. Prior to 2007, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg was believed to have been the mastermind behind Operation Valkyrie. However, documents recovered by the Soviet Union after the war, which were eventually released in 2007, pointed to Tresckow as the chief conspirator.

Operation Northwoods

On November 18, 1997, a declassified document was made public which contained proposals for different contrived terrorist acts which the United States could carry out but would blame on the Cuban government of Fidel Castro. The ultimate aim of the operation was to create sufficient justification for military intervention in Cuba which would allow for Castro’s overthrow.

In a memo on March 13, 1962, the Joint Chiefs of Staff responded to a request from the Secretary of Defence, Robert McNamara to outline their thoughts on what could be done to justify military intervention in Cuba.

In the memo, L.L. Lemnitzer, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, describes different orchestrated scenarios which could be carried out by the United States and subsequently blamed on the Cuban government. Lemnitzer states that “the suggested courses of action are based on the premise that U.S. military intervention will result from a period of heightened U.S. Cuban tensions which place the United States in the position of suffering justifiable grievances.

World opinion and the United Nations forum should be favorably affected by developing the international image of the Cuban government as rash and irresponsible, and as an alarming and unpredictable threat to the peace of the Western Hemisphere.”

Lemnitzer stresses the importance of the time factor in carrying out these contrived acts of terrorism, due to the fact that Cuba and the Soviet Union at that time had no mutual support agreement binding the Soviet Union to Cuba’s defense. Some of the preliminary proposals by the Joint Chiefs of Staff included “a series of well-coordinated incidents in and around Guantanamo to give the genuine appearance of being done by hostile Cuban forces.”

These included burning aircraft at the airbase, blowing up ammunition inside the base and starting fires, napalming a ship in the harbor and/or sinking a ship near the harbor entrance and conducting a funeral for the “mock victims.”

Further proposals included developing a “Communist Cuban terror campaign” in Florida and Washington which “could be pointed at Cuban refugees seeking haven in the United States.”

Lemnitzer suggested “sinking a boatload of Cubans en route to Florida (real or simulated)” and using plastic explosives against civilians, which would lead to the arrest of Cuban agents and the release of prepared documents implicating the Cuban government.

Another proposal involved the staging of an aircraft carrying U.S. citizens flying over Cuba being shot down. It was suggested to make a drone duplicate of the actual commercial aircraft which would send out distress signals before being destroyed remotely.
All of the proposals put forward by the Joint Chiefs of Staff were subsequently rejected by President John F. Kennedy.

CIA Heart Attack Gun

Mary Embree, who began her career in the CIA as a secretary in the Audio-Surveillance Divison before being promoted to the Technical Services department, says she was asked to research a poison that would induce a heart attack in its victim but would be undetectable in a post-mortem. Embree’s research led to the development of a top-secret weapon known as the “heart-attack gun.”

It involved the freezing of shellfish toxin mixed with water to form a frozen dart which would then be fired from the heart attack gun. Once inside the body, the poison would then dissolve into the person’s bloodstream and cause a heart attack.

In 1975 CIA Director William Colby presented the weapon at a Church Committee hearing, chaired by Senator Frank Church. The heart attack gun was a handgun with a sight affixed to the top, had a battery in the handle, and used electricity to fire a dart.

Colby told the committee that the weapon was capable of firing a dart that could enter the body “without perception.” The only way of knowing that the person had been shot by the weapon, was the presence of a tiny red dot at the point of entry. Colby also claimed that the poison would not show up in the autopsy. The official cause of death would, therefore, be deemed a heart attack. The weapon was developed in order to allow the CIA to commit assassinations that could never be traced back to them.

Prism

In 2013 it was revealed that the National Security Agency (NSA) was conducting a “Big Brother” style surveillance programme of millions of Americans. The revelations came following the leaking of thousands of top-secret documents to the media by former operative Edward Snowden. The Washington Post revealed that the NSA had tapped directly into the servers of nine internet companies including, Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo to monitor the online communication activities of millions of Americans.

In June 2013, the British newspaper, The Guardian published a secret court order directing telecommunications company Verizon to supply the NSA with all of its telephone records on an “ongoing daily basis.” In January 2014 the British media revealed that the NSA programme known as “Dishfire” involved the collection and analysis of 200 million text messages worldwide per day. Snowden, who had previously worked at the CIA, had been hired by NSA contractor, Booz Allen Hamilton in 2013.

By early June of that year, Snowden had copied and leaked tens of thousands of classified documents to journalists Glen Greenwald and Ewen MacAskill, and documentary-maker Laura Poitras. In June The Guardian and the Washington Post subsequently broke the story. Der Spiegel and The New York Times later published further stories regarding the controversy. At his own request, Snowden asked The Guardian to reveal that he was behind the leaked documents because he felt that he had “done nothing wrong” and he also wanted to protect former colleagues from being suspected and investigated.

On June 21, 2013, the U.S. Department of Justice opened charges against Snowden, including two counts of violating the Espionage Act of 1917 and theft of government property. Snowden is facing charges of “unauthorized communication of national defense information and wilful communication of classified communications intelligence.” He is currently receiving asylum from the Russian government. He has been lauded as a hero and a whistle-blower, while others have accused him of being a traitor.