The Mammoth Book of Conspiracies Read online

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  Jon E. Lewis is a historian and writer, whose books on history and military history are sold worldwide. He is also the editor of many The Mammoth Book of anthologies, including the best-selling Cover-Ups.

  Other titles by Jon E. Lewis

  The Mammoth Book of Antarctic Journeys

  The Mammoth Book of Cover-Ups

  The Mammoth Book of Native Americans

  The Mammoth Book of How It Happened

  The Mammoth Book of On the Edge

  The Mammoth Book of Pirates

  The Mammoth Book of True War Stories

  The Mammoth Book of Wild Journeys

  London: The Autobiography

  Rome: The Autobiography

  World War II: The Autobiography

  Survivor: The Autobiography

  SAS: The Autobiography

  Spitfire: The Autobiography

  Constable & Robinson Ltd

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  First published in the UK by Robinson,

  an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd, 2012

  Copyright © J. Lewis-Stempel, 2012

  The right of Jon E. Lewis to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication

  Data is available from the British Library

  UK ISBN: 978-1-84901-363-5 (paperback)

  UK eISBN: 978-1-84901-730-5 (ebook)

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  First published in the United States in 2012 by Running Press Book Publishers,

  A Member of the Perseus Books Group

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  US ISBN: 978-0-7624-4271-3

  US Library of Congress Control Number: 2011930502

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  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Apple

  Area 51

  Julian Assange

  Aum Shinrikyo

  Bavarian Illuminati

  Bible Code

  Big Brother: InfraGard and ECHELON

  Osama bin Laden

  Black Death

  Cagoule

  Fidel Castro

  Cattle Mutilations

  Le Cercle

  CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research)

  Chupacabra

  Cloudbuster

  Club of the Isles

  Kurt Cobain

  Codex Alimentarius

  Committee of 300

  CAN

  Denver International Airport

  The Dreyfus Affair

  Dulce Base

  Ebola

  FEMA

  Foo Fighters

  Ford Pinto

  Free Electricity

  General Motors

  Global Warming

  Gulf War Syndrome

  HAARP

  Dag Hammarskjold

  Heinrich Himmler

  Holloman Air Force Base

  Hurricane Katrina

  Indian Ocean Tsunami

  IRS

  Israeli Bubblegum

  Jack the Ripper

  Michael Jackson

  Dr David Kelly

  John F. Kennedy

  Kissinger Associates

  KKK

  Knights of Columbus

  Knights of the Golden Circle

  Abraham Lincoln

  Lusitania

  Paul McCartney

  Mary Magdalene

  Manchurian Candidate

  Mantell Incident

  Mayan Calendar

  Nazca Lines

  Nazi Gold

  New Coke

  New World Order

  9/11

  North American Union

  Nostradamus

  Barack Obama

  October Surprise

  The Octopus

  Odessa/The Org

  Operation Black Dog

  Operation Northwoods

  The Paladin Group

  Peak Oil

  Plum Island

  Pope John Paul II

  Princess Diana

  Project Coast

  Project Montauk

  Project Paperclip

  Propaganda Due (P2)

  Reptilian Humanoids

  SARS

  William Shakespeare

  The Shriners

  Society of Jesus

  Society of the Elect

  Space Monolith

  Space Shuttle Columbia

  Stolen Elections

  Dominique Strauss-Kahn

  Subliminal Advertising

  Synarchy

  The Third Secret of Fátima

  The Thule Society

  The Tonkin Gulf Incident

  Turin Shroud

  Tuskegee Syphilis Study

  Unit 731

  USS Cole

  Vril Society

  Water Control

  Paul Wellstone

  The White House Putsch

  Harold Wilson

  INTRODUCTION

  These are, of course, theories. If they were proven beyond all doubt they would be conspiracy facts.

  This book, a companion to The Mammoth Book of Cover-Ups, is a guide to the weirdest, wackiest and the most dangerous conspiracy theories around. I have, hopefully, steered a path between the Scylla of outright scepticism and the Charybdis of wide-open gullibility, the latter constantly boosted by the Internet, a self-referring universe where one blogger’s claim becomes one researcher’s proof. As a measuring stick of a theory’s veracity, I have included an “ALERT” guide, with a 1 to 10 rating, with 1 being “No way, Jose” and 10 being “It’s a cert”. A small number of cases have appeared in Cover-Ups, but reappear here in the light of more and new information.

  There are conspiracy theories that cross the edge of madness – David Icke’s “reptilian-humanoid takeover” and Vril-powered UFOs driven by Nazis come hurtling to mind – but there are plenty out there that raise real issues about the abuse of power by secretive groups of politicos, CEOs, medicos and military honchos. Everyone should sleep a little less easy and be a little more vigilant after reading about the US Army’s “Operation Northwoods” (which proposed false-flag terrorist outrages on the American people and the sticking of the blame on Cuba) and you may wan
t to give the bio-research facility at Plum Island a wide, wide detour.

  As they say: just because you are paranoid, it doesn’t mean that they aren’t out to get you …

  Jon E. Lewis

  APPLE

  Ever wonder how two tech geeks like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak made their billions?

  Conspiracists know the answer. Jobs and Wozniak built the first Macintosh computer in a California garage and when it failed to raise interest they did a deal with the devil, selling their souls in exchange for success on earth. The proof was on the price tag of the first Mac: $666.66. The mark of the Beast. Rounding off the evidence is the Apple logo. There’s a bite taken out of the apple, the forbidden fruit.

  Alternatively, Apple did a deal with Big Brother. Take a look at an iPhone. It plays, unknown to its owner, iSpy on you. A secret file stores latitude and longitude, complete with a dater. The file is unencrypted and is transferred to any device the iPhone syncs with. Thus anyone with access to the owner’s computer can track his or her movements. Invasion of privacy anyone? Apple’s snooping habit doesn’t end with the locator file. The “Hackintosh hacker” alleged that Apple has stuck a code into the iPhone that tracks keyboard use, so every time the user taps in information this is relayed to Apple HQ. The claim has never been verified but Apple’s appetite for gathering personal information is infamous; in 2010 the company applied for a patent (“Systems and Methods for Identifying Unauthorized Users of an Electronic Device”) that could record the heartbeat of iPhone users, as well as covertly photograph them and their surroundings. If Apple collects information, as sure as God made little green apples, law enforcement agencies will one day come calling to use it. All of which has made dark rooms full of pale conspiracy theorists wonder if Apple is not doing the CIA/FBI’s job for them.

  Apple justified the patent application as a security measure to prevent thieves using stolen phones, but as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EEF) watchdog pointed out the technology also enabled Apple to cut off customers who pimped (quite lawfully) their devices. Improper use would also be reported to the Orwellian sounding “proper authorities”. The EEF christened the patent “traitorware”. Apple’s inclination to control is almost as great as its inclination to spy. On prudishly deciding that cartoonist Mark Fiore’s NewsToons app was too satirical for its taste Apple rejected it. When Fiore won a Pulitzer though they installed the app. Never one to miss a commercial opportunity, Apple.

  Of course, Apple likes to keep its own secrets very close to its chips: the company is heavily controlling of image and market share. When Consumer Reports had the brazen gall to say it couldn’t recommend the iPhone 4 until the antenna was improved, threads discussing the issue on Mac.com forums mysteriously disappeared overnight. And only an absolute cynic would claim that Apple’s 2010 litigious spat with internet mag Gizmodo about its review of an iPhone 4 prototype left in a bar and passed on to the website was a staged publicity stunt, what with the new phone getting oodles of free publicity, and security at Apple HQ being Fort Knox tight.

  Byte into an Apple. Indeed.

  Further Reading

  www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/08/

  steve-jobs-watching-you-apple-seeking-patent-0

  AREA 51

  “Warning. Restricted Area. Photography of This Area is Prohibited”.

  So read the signs staked around Area 51, a high-security military base in the Nevada desert, 90 miles (145 km) north of Las Vegas. Also known as Groom Lake, the facility, which comprises thousands of acres, is surrounded by security fencing and intruder detection systems, and is regularly patrolled. A no-fly zone operates above it. The US Government, you get the feeling, wants to keep peeping eyes away from what happens in Area 51.

  Why? There is a long-standing belief by conspiracists that Area 51 houses the UFO disc found at Roswell, as well as other crashed alien spaceships. At Area 51, the theory goes, the recovered UFOs are back-engineered so that their technology can be utilized by the US military. The latter are helped – either willingly or unwillingly – by captured alien pilots.

  Few of the human government employees who work at Groom have ever talked about their work, but two who did were Leo Williams and Bob Lazar. Williams claimed to have worked in alien technology evaluation, the results of which informed the design of the B-2 stealth bomber. In 1989 Lazar announced on local TV that he too had been involved in “back-engineering” at Groom’s S-4 hangars complex, including assessment of the Roswell craft’s propulsion system. He had even uncovered “Gravity B”, a force arising from the manipulation of a new nuclear element, “ununpentium”.

  Neither Williams nor Lazar proved very convincing witnesses. Lazar had invented his purported MIT physics qualification and before working in back-engineering had been engaged in the rather less than cutting edge employment of managing a photo shop. A steady stream of sightings of strange lights and craft at Groom, however, kept alive the notion of Area 51 as a top-secret UFO lab, perhaps the manufacturing plant of Black Helicopters.

  Certainly, Area 51 has been the testing ground for weird and wonderful aircraft. The U-2 spy plane was flown there; so was the SR-71 Blackbird, the B-2 stealth bomber, the F-117 stealth fighter, and the unmanned aerial vehicle known as the “Beast of Kandahar” (and officially as RQ-170 Sentinel) that spied on the Abbottabad compound of Osama bin Laden. And these are only the craft the public has been informed about. It’s reasonable to suppose that other prototype and avant-garde aircraft have taken to the air at Groom, less reasonable to suppose that they have been developed from alien technology.

  There was, though, one conspiracy taking place at Area 51. Bill Sweetman, editor-in-chief of defence technology for Aviation Week, maintains that the government absolutely encouraged “deliberate disinformation campaigns to generate a lot of noise about UFOs back in the 1950s and 1960s to cover secret flights of planes like the U-2, and then again in the late 1970s and early 1980s to link area 51 to UFOs through ‘fake’ documents and eye-witness accounts of alien technology and even alien bodies”.

  The object of the disinformation was to mask the real reasons for the building of the base, namely the R&D of air-machines to best the Ruskies.

  The Government, in other words, conspired to create a conspiracy theory.

  Further Reading

  David Darlington, Area 51: The Dreamland Chronicles, 1998

  Eric Elfman, Almanac of Alien Encounters, 2001

  Annie Jacobsen, Area 51: An Uncensored History of America’s Top Secret Military Base, 2011

  Phil Patton, Dreamland: Travels Inside the Secret World of Roswell and Area 51, 1998

  JULIAN ASSANGE

  During 2010, the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks released troves of classified US cables. They made fascinating reading, and Joe and Josephine Public learned a thing or a hundred it never knew its government and allies were up to, from the US CIA’s 3,000-strong secret army in Afghanistan to Saudi Arabia’s plea for a missile strike on Iran. WikiLeaks justified the release of the information as being in the “public interest”, while embarrassed establishments in the West complained about the endangering of national security. Julian Assange, the Australian founder of WikiLeaks, became, depending on your point of view, a hero or an Osama bin-Laden-style bogeyman. In the latter camp, Sarah Palin called for the “anti-American” Assange to be pursued “with the same urgency we pursue al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders”. But Palin had a particular hard spot for WikiLeaks; the site had published her emails from her unsuccessful run for VeePee of the USA, one of its highest profile coups since its foundation in 2007.

  Not long after Palin blew her hunting horn, the US Government announced its intention to try Assange under the Espionage Act of 1917. Then there were cyberspace sabotage attacks on WikiLeaks, the US Air Force started blocked access on its computers to any website which posted the cables (including the New York Times), and PayPal, Mastercard, Visa, Amazon and Bank of America all refused to handle donations to WikiLeaks.

 
To put the cherry on the conspiracy cake, Julian Assange was then arrested in Britain, at the request of Swedish prosecutors, on a completely unrelated matter. The Swedes maintained that Assange was guilty of rape, unlawful coercion and molestation in their bailiwick. Assange directly accused the US of smearing him on trumped-up charges; meanwhile, the two Stockholm women allegedly assaulted by Assange – who were left-wing fans of his – explicitly denied being “set up by the Pentagon or anyone else”. In a prime case of wheels within wheels, WikiLeaks staff apparently blocked Assange from using the site to claim he was a victim of a conspiracy in the Swedish case. Citing Assange’s autocratic style and courting of publicity, other staff left, others called for his replacement. Some defectors allied with a new site that published leaks about – WikiLeaks.

  All, clearly, was not well down in WikiWorld. As WikiObservers sagely noted, the US might not need to conspire to destroy Assange and his operation. He might do that himself.

  For his part Assange uploaded an “Insurance File” onto the internet, which is reputed to be bursting with more top secret government information. Only Assange knows the password, and this is to be released posthumously – should he suffer an “accident”.

  Further Reading

  Daniel Domscheit-Berg, Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange at the World’s Most Dangerous Website, 2011

  David Leigh and Luke Harding, WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy, 2011

  AUM SHINRIKYO

  Nipponese yoga teacher Shoko Asahara founded the Aum Shinrikyo (“Supreme Truth”) sect in 1984 on a religious programme that combined Buddhism with Nostradamus and End-is-Nigh Christianity. A standard issue cult leader, Asahara boasted a beard, plus messianic powers (the ability to make the sick rise from their beds) and supernatural abilities. He couldn’t quite walk on water, but he could walk through walls, a feat made difficult for his followers because he made them scald their feet. Despite – or maybe because of – Asahara’s certifiable lunacy, Aum Shinrikyo attracted over 50,000 members. In the material world of Japan, it did at least offer something more than the pursuit of the yen. That said, like many a cult leader, Asahara was an accomplished businessman, raising sect funds through software enterprises and outright extortion at gunpoint.