Have there been any proven conspiracies, that we now know as fact, but at the time were hidden from public knowledge? It goes to the general question:
“Are conspiracy theorists complete whackos, or is there some historical basis for their ahem unorthodox beliefs?”
All of the searching I’ve done throws me to whacko sites.
The CIA involvement in the overthrow of Allende in Chile (1973) springs to mind:
The CIA has since indicated it has some involvement (the official report is here).
Recently declassified documents have indicated a great deal more involvement. See the National Security Archives report here.
Another “conspiracy” which turned out to be real was COINTELPRO, under which the FBI regularly spied on and subverted left wing political organizations.
There is some controversy over the Gary Webb article, linking the CIA to drug traffickers. Read about it in this thread.
The DOE has admitted it kept information about intentional radiation releases secret
There was also, of course the Tuskegee experiment.
Just so you don’t think it is all government doing the conspiring (gov’t does leave a better paper trail, though), check out this on the Ford Pinto.
This list is barely scratching the surface of secretive behavior at the expense of the public. To answer your question, there are real conspiracies.
Hot dog, this is my 100th post!
Possibly the Holocoust. I think most people suspected the Germans were up to no good with the Jews, yet still did not conceive of the true horror. Of course there is a conspiracy theory that it never happened.
Most conspiracy theorists are not complete whackos. They hold jobs, drink with their buddies, and unless you challenge them, would likely rather talk about the NFL playoffs or what they ate for dinner last night. The whackos, unfortunately, are the ones who organize their crazy beliefs into a dogma and recruit these lovable outcasts into forces of evil.
There really was an Illuminati and they really did try to usurp the Freemasons for political influence. However, despite all subsequent claims on the subject, they were disbanded within ten years of their founding.
There really was a conspiracy to assassinate an American president; Lincoln, not Kennedy. Booth was the leader of a small group of conspirators who planned on killing several other members of Lincoln’s administration along with the president himself. And Dr Mudd probably was involved to some degree.
The Roswell crash had nothing to do with aliens. But it was a part of a long term program of clandestine aerial reconnaissance of the Soviet Union. This program, along with the equipment used in it, had its existence denied by the military and intelligence groups that were carrying it out.
Following WWII, a number of high ranking members of the German and Japanese military, intelligence, and political communities had records of their wartime activities destroyed by the American government so they could transfer their services to the United Sates.
And while all the real evidence is that Oswald single- handedly killed Kennedy, there is some evidence that after the assassination the FBI intentionally destroyed evidence of suspicious activity by Oswald in order to protect its reputation.
Not according to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, who concluded,
Neener neener neener.
I guess we’ll never know who the grassy-knoll guy was.
Does Watergate count?
Well, friedo, I guess you’ve got me there. If Congress has concluded that there was a conspiracy then it must be true. Not only that, but I actually witnessed the whole thing happen. Admittedly, I was watching JFK but it seemed real so I guess that counts.
"I guess we’ll never know who the grassy-knoll guy was.
Stephen Witt does.
I’m about halfway through Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen’s “The 60 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time”. I really like the book since the authors work hard to be objective.
They offer their opinions as well: either the conspiracy is the result of whack job speculation (such as the “Faking of the Moon Landing” conspiracy) the conspiracy is very very real or at least the evidence shows it to be highly possible (CIA MK-Ultra LSD experiments) or there simply is not enough evidence either way (the “suicide” of conspiracy reporter Danny Casolero).
Here is a rundown of the theories that the authors say there might be something to. Keep in mind that this is the author’s opinions, not mine, so lay off:
-CIA trying crazy ways to kill Castro in the 1960s
-The Reagan Adminstration setting forth policies to allow FEMA to assume dictatorial powers in the early 80s
-The U.S. granting clemency to Japanese scientists who used Allied POWs in sickening human experiments in return for test reult data
-The Gulf War against Iraq had nothing to do with stopping Husseins aggression, there were other deeper, darker agendas (though we do not know what those were)
-The ATF stepping WAAAY over it’s bounds in the Waco incident (though most likely out of “petty vindictiveness”, not any grand conspiracy
-FBI closely monitoring underground cospiracy radio show host Mae Russell in the 70s and 80s.
-That more than 400 journalists have worked as CIA assets in the 50s, 60s and 70s
-Bobby Kennedy was in L.A. the night Marilyn Monroe died, may even had been at her house, and that both Kennedy boys banged her. At best, Bobby may have came to her house to break off their affair, found her passed out from sleeping pills, called the hospital, and got the hell out of there. At worst, the name “Sam Giancana” comes up an awful lot.
-The Vatican Bank and P2, a secret Italian society, had Pope John Paul I rubbed out in 1978 when he suggested he was going to start giving the Catholic Church’s riches away.
-Several new theories on the Watergate scndal that have nothing to do with sabotaging the Democrats in the 1972 election.
-The CIA ran a prostitution ring in Washington so that it could get the goods on troublesome politicians.
-A very scary link between the Manson family, the Process Church of the Final Judgement, and the Son of Sam slayings.
Kinf of makes you a bit nervous about going to the office tommorow morning, doesn’t it? Sleep well, Dopers!
I’ve also read Vankin and Whalen’s book and I’m a great deal more skeptical. The evidence of many of the conspiracies they outline ultimately devolve to the unsubstantiated word of a single witness.
The tale of the Archer Daniels Midland Co. (yes, The Supermarket to the World) international price fixing scandal is a fascinating, thought provoking, and (YES!) true one.
They conspired to keep the global price for the amino acid lysine (an important additive to animal feed) artificially high. For a riveting audio account of corporate hubris and the tortuous investigation which ensued, I highly recommend this RA link to a This American Life broadcast.
Below is the show synopsis:
The so-called October Surprise was a real conspiracy, in which the Reagan campaign negotiated for the hostages in Iran not to be released before the 1980 election because of their fear that an earlier release would benefit the Carter campaign. The elder Bush was a player in this scheme, too. For one source, you can read all about in the appendices of Television and the Crisis of Democracy by Douglas M. Kellner.
I saw a great documentary (“One Day in September”, last year’s Oscar winner, I believe) a couple months ago about the hostage taking at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich. For those who don’t remember it too well, eleven Israeli athletes and coaches were taken hostage by Palestinian terrorists, and an attempted rescue went stunningly wrong and all the Israelis and most of the Palestinians were killed. At the end of the movie, it makes a brief mention of what happened to the three surviving terrorists who were captured by the West German police.
Apparently, a few months later, a Lufthansa airliner was hijacked and the hijackers demanded the release of the three Munich terrorists in return for the hostages on the plane. The West Germans agreed to it very quickly, without contacting the Israeli government, and the hijackers and terrorists made their way out of the country. But there were some suspicious things about it (only a dozen passengers on the entire plane, and all adult males), and after a bit of digging it turned out the West German government had been in on the hijakcing from the start. They colluded with the hijackers so they’d have an excuse to get rid of the Olympic terrorists. I gather they didn’t really know what to do with the terrorists once they had them. Israel was probably asking to extradite them, the germans didn’t want to be seen totally kowtowing to Israel, and a trial would have cast everyone’s attention on how thoroughly they had botched things to begin with.
This all happened when I was very young. I dimly remember the '72 Olympics, but I don’t remember hearing anything about the hijacking or the revelations that came out about it later. And it was kind of outside of the scope of the documentary to get into the details of that, but it does seem to merit inclusion on a list of modern conspiracies. If anyone else knows the details about this better than I, I’d be fascinated to hear.
Oh, in the years since, two of those three Palestinians have been killed, allegedly by agents of the Israeli government. The third has survived a few attempts on his life, and was interviewed in the movie. Appalling, but riveting.
My brother was in the Air Force when Korean Air 007 was shot down in 1983, and he told my mother some things about it that were apparently covered up by the U.S. government (he was working in communications at the time and heard some things). He told her some of the details, but I only overheard part of the conversation and I was 11 at the time, she absolutely refuses to tell anyone what he told her to this day. My brother won’t even talk about it.