33 Conspiracy Theories That Turned Out To Be True, What Every Person Should Know... (Updated, Revised and Extended)

1.The Dreyfus Affair: In the 1890s in France, Jewish artillery officer Alfred Dreyfus was wrongfully convicted of treason based on fabricated government documents and sentenced to life in prison.  The French government covered this up for several years, but Dreyfus was eventually pardoned after the affair was made public (an act that is credited to writer Émile Zola).

2.The Mafia: This secret crime society was virtually unknown until the 1960s, when member Joe Valachi first revealed the society’s secrets to law enforcement officials.What was known was that organized crime existed, but not that the extent of their control included working with the CIA, politicians and the biggest businesses in the world. 

Many people do not realize that J. Edgar Hoover, the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) of the United States, was appointed director of the Bureau of Investigation—predecessor to the FBI—in 1924 and was instrumental in founding the FBI in 1935, where he remained director until his death in 1972. Hoover is credited with building the FBI into a large and efficient crime-fighting agency, and with instituting a number of modern innovations to police technology, such as a centralized fingerprint file and forensic laboratories.  For the majority of his time as FBI Director, there were numerous Mafia shootings as a result of Prohibition.  Hoover continued to deny the very existence of organized crime.  Many figures in politics and media denied the existence of the Mafia, which had no official title.  Gangsters like Gambino and Capone were thought of as Street Kings only, just running local operations.  It was not until the 1960′s until people began to learn that a very organized system of superiors and control existed within the organized crime world.  

Throughout the entire time the media and the FBI denied the mafia existed, in reality, not only did it exist, but it operated in multiple territories.  Each region had a boss and underboss, with soldiers underneath them.  Above the boss was a Don and even above a Don was more figures.  As it went up, regions got larger.  It was extremely organized, down to the books.  In the 1950′s, crime bosses from around the United States met to centralize their power and organize their system.  All this time, the public was told that the organized crime world didn’t exist, and that all the crimes were committed by local gangsters… 

Even with all we knew about how organized the mafia was during prohibition, people still laugh at the idea of organized crime conspiracies taking place in politics.  Usually the excuse people wll give you is something along the lines of, “I just don’t think people are that organized…”  Funny how easy it must be to get away with stuff these days, no one believes its possible….

3.MK-ULTRA:

MK Ultra was a code name declassified in the 1970′s Church Committee and other lawsuits brought against the government where the public was informed that thousands of people, patients from hospitals, mental health patients, prisoners in the… justice system, and even public citizens were selected for testing without their consent. Testing was conducted int he 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s. Some claim they still go on today and provide evidence. The testing includes torture, drugs and exotic hypnosis experiments in an effort to explore the mind, propaganda and other related patterns. One sub department of the operation included a group of lunatic scientists who were looking to create an assassins program, to see if it was possible to kidnap someone, say an enemy in a country, conduct hypnosis and other techniques learned in Mk Ultra, and send them back to the country with a plan to assassinate their leaders. That plan is what scares people most. MK Ultra was carried out by the CIA illegally and in the 1970s, hundreds of patients sued the federal government for damages, and the government settled and paid millions of dollars.

Now here is the really trippy, scary info. Some of these patients where MK Ultra was used include Ted Kazinsky (the unabpmber), mark David Chapman (the man who shot Lennon), Sirhan Sirhan (the man who shot Bobby Kennedy) and even Lee Harvey Oswald is rumored to have attended a base in japan before heading to Russia where MK Ultra experiments were taking place. David Ferrie, Oswalds boss for a long period of time, is said to have been an MK Ultra specialist and specialized in hypnosis and believe it or not, sexual molestation to mess with his patients heads. David Ferrie was a convicted child predator who left the Catholic Church to train Black Operations hitmen for the invasion of Cuba. David Ferrie taught the Louisiana Civial Air Patrol where both Lee Harvey Oswald and Barry Seal joined as 15 year old children. Barry Seal became the primary operative in Iran-Contra who ran drugs for the CIA and was an active contract hitman, Oswlad was accused of killing John F Kennedy. David Ferrie was murdered, made to look like a suicide, the night before his testimony in a trial Jim Garrison brought against the CIA where he accused Ferrie and others of using Oswald as a patsy…

Here are some of the videos of the testimony from MK Ultra survivors during court cases against the government:

MKULTRA Victim Testimony C:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-ES8Bv0_8w

MKULTRA Victim Testimony B:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eXDASDDrDkM&feature=related

MKULTRA Victim Testimony A:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iflBkRlpRy0&feature=related

The CIA’s Project MKULTRA: Secret Human Experimentation

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_P35maITNqc&feature=related

In the 1950s to the 1970s, the CIA mind-control project was aimed at finding a “truth serum” to use on communist spies. Test subjects were given LSD and other drugs, often without consent, and some were tortured. At least one man, civilian biochemist Frank Olson, who was working for the government, died as a result of the experiments. The project was finally exposed after investigations by the Rockefeller Commission.

A short video about MK-ULTRA from a documentary called Secrets of the CIA:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doh1X_gXyw0&feature=player_embedded

4.Operation Mockingbird: Also in the 1950s to ’70s, the C.I.A. paid a number of well-known domestic and foreign journalists (from big-name media outlets such as Time, The Washington Post, The New York Times, CBS, and others) to publish C.I.A. propaganda.  The C.I.A. also reportedly funded at least one movie, the animated Animal Farm, based on the novel by George Orwell.  The Church Committee finally exposed these activities in 1975.

In 1953, Joseph Alsop, then one of America’s leading syndicated columnists, went to the Philippines to cover an election. He did not go because he was asked to do so by his syndicate. He did not go because he was asked to do so by the newspapers that printed his column. He went at the request of the CIA.

Alsop is one of more than 400 American journalists who in the past 25 years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency according to documents on file at CIA headquarters. Some of these journalists’ relationships with the Agency were tacit; some were explicit. There was cooperation, accommodation and overlap. Journalists provided a full range of clandestine services — from simple intelligence-gathering to serving as go-betweens with spies in Communist countries.Reporters shared their notebooks with the CIA. Editors shared their staffs. Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters who considered themselves ambassadors without portfolio for their country. Most were less exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association with the Agency helped their work; stringers and freelancers who were as interested in the derring-do of the spy business as in filing articles; and, the smallest category, full-time CIA employees masquerading as journalists abroad. In many instances, CIA documents show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements of America’s leading news organizations.

The history of the CIA’s involvement with the American press continues to be shrouded by an official policy of obfuscation and deception for the following principal reasons:

• The use of journalists has been among the most productive means of intelligence-gathering employed by the CIA. Although the agency has cut back sharply on the use of reporters since 1973 (primarily as a result of pressure from the media), some journalists are still posted abroad.

• Further investigation into the matter, CIA officials say, would inevitably reveal a series of embarrassing relationships in the 1950′s and 1960′s with some of the most powerful organizations and individuals in American journalism.

Among the executives who lent their cooperation to the Agency were William Paley of the Columbia Broadcasting System, Henry Luce of Time Inc., Arthur Hays Sulzberger of the New York Times, Barry Bingham Sr. of the Louisville Courier-Journal, and James Copley of the Copley News Services. Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include the American Broadcasting Company, the National Broadcasting Company, the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps-Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Heraldand the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald-Tribune.

By far the most valuable of these associations, according to CIA officials, have been with the New York Times, CBS and Time Inc.

[...]

Appropriately, the CIA uses the term ‘reporting’ to describe much of what cooperating journalists did for the Agency. “We would ask them, ‘Will you do us a favor?’” said a senior CIA official. “‘We understand you’re going to be in Yugoslavia. Have they paved all the streets? Where did you see planes? Were there any signs of military presence? How many Soviets did you see? If you happen to meet a Soviet, get his name and spell it right….Can you set up a meeting for us? Or arrange a message?’” Many CIA officials regarded these helpful journalists as operatives: the journalists tended to see themselves as trusted friends of the Agency who performed occasional favors — usually without pay — in the national interest.

[...]

Two of the Agency’s most valuable relationships in the 1960′s, according to CIA officials, were with reporters who covered Latin America – Jerry O’Leary of the Washington Star and Hal Hendrix of Miami News, a Pulitzer Prize winner who became a high official of the International Telephone and Telegraph Corporation. Hendrix was extremely helpful to the Agency in providing information about individuals in Miami’s Cuban exile community.

[....]

A note about Hendrix – he was the one who Seth Kantor, reporting on the JFK assassination, was told to call for ‘background’ on Oswald after Oswald’s arrest. Hendrix, from Miami, had all the info on Oswald’s pro-Castro leafleting activities in New Orleans, details about Oswald’s defection to the Soviet Union, etc.

Only years later did Kantor realize the significance of a guy like Hendrix, CIA, having so much info on Oswald so soon after the assassination.

“The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media.” 
–William Colby, former CIA Director, quoted by Dave Mcgowan, Derailing Democracy

“You could get a journalist cheaper than a good call girl, for a couple hundred dollars a month.” 
–CIA operative, discussing the availability and prices of journalists willing to peddle CIA propaganda and cover stories.Katherine the Great, by Deborah Davis

“There is quite an incredible spread of relationships.  You don’t need to manipulate Time magazine, for example, because there are [Central Intelligence] Agency people at the management level.”
–William B. Bader, former CIA intelligence officer, briefing members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, The CIA and the Media, by Carl Bernstein

“The Agency’s relationship with [The New York] Times was by far its most valuable among newspapers, according to CIA officials.  [It was] general Times policy … to provide assistance to the CIA whenever possible.”
–The CIA and the Media, by Carl Bernstein

“Senator William Proxmire has pegged the number of employees of the federal intelligence community at 148,000 … though Proxmire’s number is itself a conservative one.  The “intelligence community” is officially defined as including only those organizations that are members of the U.S. Intelligence Board (USIB); a dozen other agencies, charged with both foreign and domestic intelligence chores, are not encompassed by the term….  The number of intelligence workers employed by the federal government is not 148,000, but some undetermined multiple of that number.”
–Jim Hougan, Spooks

“For some time I have been disturbed by the way the CIA has been diverted from its original assignment.  It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the government….  I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations.”
–former President Harry Truman, 22 December 1963, one month after the JFK assassination, op-ed section of theWashington Post, early edition

5.Manhattan Project:The Manhattan Project was the codename for a project conducted during World War II to develop the first atomic bomb.  The project was led by the United States, and included participation from the United Kingdom and Canada.  Its formal designation, the Manhattan Engineer District (MED), refers specifically to the period of the project, 1942–1946, when it was under the control of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, under the administration of General Leslie R. Groves.  The scientific research was directed by American physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer.  The project’s roots lay in scientists’ fears since the 1930s that Nazi Germany was also investigating nuclear weapons of its own.

Born out of a small research program in 1939, the Manhattan Project eventually employed more than 130,000 people and cost nearly US$2 billion ($22 billion in current value).  It resulted in the creation of multiple production and research sites that operated in secret.  The total involved makes it one of the largest few conspiracies in history.  Entire towns were built for short periods, employing people all under secrecy—and top national secrecy at that.  The government never admitted to it, the media never reported on it, and for more than 25 years the public had no idea of it.

Project research took place at more than thirty sites across the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom.  The three primary research and production sites of the project were the plutonium-production facility at what is now the Hanford Site; the uranium-enrichment facilities at Oak Ridge, Tennessee; and the weapons-research and -design laboratory now known as Los Alamos National Laboratory.  The MED maintained control over U.S. weapons production until the formation of the Atomic Energy Commission in January 1947.

6.Asbestos: Between 1930 and 1960, manufacturers did all they could to prevent the link between asbestos and respiratory diseases, including cancer, from becoming known, so that they could avoid prosecution.  American workers in fact sued the Johns Manville company as early as 1932, but it was not until 1962 that epidemiologists finally established beyond any doubt what company bosses had known for a long time: that asbestos causes cancer.

7.Watergate:  Republican officials spied on the Democratic National Headquarters from the Watergate Hotel in 1972.  Whilst conspiracy theories suggested that underhanded dealings were taking place, it wasn’t until 1974 that White House tape recordings linked President Nixon to the break-in and forced him to resign.

8.The Tuskegee Syphilis Study: The United States Public Health Service carried out this clinical study on 400 poor African-American men with syphilis from 1932 to 1972.  During the study, the men were given false and sometimes dangerous treatments; adequate treatment was intentionally withheld so that the agency could learn more about the disease.  The study, which was initially supposed to last just six months, continued for 40 years.  Close to 200 of the men had died from syphilis or related complications by its end.

9.Operation Northwoods: In the early 1960s, American military leaders drafted plans to create public support for a war against Cuba, to oust Fidel Castro from power.  The plans included committing acts of terrorism in U.S. cities, killing innocent people and U.S. soldiers, blowing up a U.S. ship, assassinating Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees, and hijacking planes.  The plans were all approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but were reportedly rejected by the civilian leadership.  They were kept secret for nearly 40 years.

Author James Bamford, “A Pretext For War”, discusses the declassified “Operation Northwoods” documents revealing that in 1962 the CIA was planning to stage phony terrorist attacks on the US and blame it on Cuba to start a war:

10.1990 Testimony of Nayirah:  A 15-year-old girl named Nayirah testified before the U.S. Congress that she had seen Iraqi soldiers pulling Kuwaiti babies from incubators, causing them to die.  The testimony helped gain major public support for the 1991 Gulf War, but—despite protests that the dispute of this story was itself a conspiracy theory—the testimony was was later proven false.

The public-relations firm Hill & Knowlton, then in the employ of Citizens for a Free Kuwait, had arranged Nayirah’s testimony.  It turned out that Nayirah had taken acting lessons at the request of the C.I.A. and was actually Nayirah al-Sabah, the niece of a major politician in Kuwait and daughter of Saud bin Nasir Al-Sabah, Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S.A.

The Congressional Human Rights Caucus, of which Congressman Tom Lantos was co-chairman, had been responsible for hosting Nurse Nayirah, and thereby popularizing her allegations.  When the girl’s account was later challenged by independent human rights monitors, Lantos replied, “The notion that any of the witnesses brought to the caucus through the Kuwaiti Embassy would not be credible did not cross my mind…  I have no basis for assuming that her story is not true, but the point goes beyond that.  If one hypothesizes that the woman’s story is fictitious from A to Z, that in no way diminishes the avalanche of human rights violations”.  Nevertheless, the senior Republican on the Human Rights Caucus, John Edward Porter, responded to the revelations by saying that if he had known that the girl was the ambassador’s daughter, he would not have allowed her to testify.