The Mammoth Book of Cover-Ups Read online

  Jon E. Lewis is a writer and historian. His many previous books include the best-selling The Mammoth Book of the Edge, The Mammoth Book of How It Happened: Everest and The Mammoth Book of Wild Journeys.

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  The Mammoth Book of

  COVER-UPS

  An Encyclopedia of Conspiracy Theories

  JON E. LEWIS

  With Emma Daffern

  ROBINSON

  London

  Constable & Robinson Ltd

  3 The Lanchesters

  162 Fulham Palace Road

  London W6 9ER

  www.constablerobinson.com

  First published in the UK by Robinson,

  an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd, 2008

  Collection and editorial material copyright © J. Lewis-Stempel and Emma Daffern, 2008

  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.

  ISBN 978-1-84529-608-7

  Printed and bound in the EU

  3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Alien Abduction

  American MIA in Vietnam

  Area 51

  Babylonian Brotherhood

  Barcodes

  BCCI

  Bilderberg Group

  Black Helicopters

  Bohemian Grove

  Martin Bormann

  British Royal Family

  Bush-Bin Laden Connection

  Roberto Calvi

  Cancer

  Le Cercle (The Circle)

  Chappaquiddick

  Chechen Bombings

  Chemtrails

  Club of Rome

  Council on Foreign Relations

  Crop Circles

  Dead Sea Scrolls

  Diana, Princess of Wales

  Face on Mars

  Fluoridation

  Vincent Foster

  Freemasons

  Gemstone File

  Gunpowder Plot

  HAARP

  Rudolf Hess

  HIV/AIDS

  Jimmy Hoffa

  Hollow Earth

  Holocaust Denial

  Illuminati

  Iran–Contra Scandal

  Pope John Paul I

  Jonestown

  KAL007

  Dr David Kelly

  John F. Kennedy

  Robert F. Kennedy

  Martin Luther King

  Norman Kirk

  Knights Templar

  John Lennon

  Alexander Litvinenko

  Lockerbie Bombing

  Madrid Train Bombings

  Majestic-12

  Marijuana

  Christopher Marlowe

  Robert Maxwell

  Men in Black

  MK-ULTRA

  Marilyn Monroe

  Montauk Point

  Moon Landing Hoax

  Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

  Hilda Murrell

  Nazi Gold

  Nazi Moon Base

  New World Order

  9/11

  Oklahoma City Bombing

  Omega Agency

  Opus Dei

  Pearl Harbor

  Philadelphia Experiment

  Port Chicago Explosion

  Elvis Presley

  Priory of Sion

  Project Blue Book

  PROMIS

  Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion

  P2 (Propaganda Due)

  Rainbow Warrior

  Ronald Reagan

  Rendlesham Forest

  Rosicrucians

  Roswell

  Royal Institute of International Affairs

  Satanic Ritual Abuse

  7/7

  Shag Harbour

  Tupac Shakur

  Karen Silkwood

  Skull & Bones

  Sovereign Military Order of Malta

  Star Gate

  Temple Mount Plot

  Titanic

  Trilateral Commission

  TWA Flight 800

  Waco

  Watergate

  Harold Wilson

  Wingdings

  Malcolm X

  INTRODUCTION

  This is the boom time of conspiracy theory. 9/11, the War on Terror, the death of Diana, Opus Dei (as featured in Dan Brown’s bestselling conspiracy novel The Da Vinci Code): the list of conspiracies seemingly perpetrated by “them” against “us”
goes on endlessly. More and more people subscribe to alternative histories of events, such as Michael Moore’s celebrated documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, and less and less do people accept the word of the establishment – of government, business, the Church – at face value.

  The conspiracy theory “boom” has been rolling towards us and gathering pace since 22 November 1963, when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. That the most famous man in the world could be murdered in broad Texan sunlight by a “lone gunman” beggared belief. A sense of innocence was lost that day. It was beaten into oblivion by the succession of American figures who were also, supposedly, assassinated by “lone gunmen”: Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X. The proof that there was something rotten in the state of Western politics came in the next decade. Watergate.

  Of course, there were conspiracies and assumed conspiracies before 1963: some considered the Bolsheviks a product of conspiracy, others the Jews, yet others the Freemasons and yet more the bankers of Wall Street. Hitler’s Nazis indisputably conspired to burn the Reichstag, put the blame on the Communists, and so engineer a coup d’état. But in 1963 paranoia began to eat away at the soul of society. Conspiracy theories spread from the fringe into the centre of the body politic.

  The word “conspiracy” comes from the Latin conspirare, meaning “to breathe together”. But everybody understands its time-amended meaning of two or more individuals secretly plotting and perpetrating an action that would be widely considered negative or harmful to specific individuals, or to society as a whole. Nobody conspires to do something good, like feed the poor. Conspiracy theory is the how and the why of the plot, and the mechanics of the cover-up. Almost without exception the alternative conspiracy theory of history proposes that any large-scale or far-reaching event was not the result of chance or of accident, or of the widely accepted view of its cause, but of some secret plan by someone, somewhere.

  Or the event didn’t happen. Period. Thus Hitler still lives. As does Elvis (whose name is a natty anagram of LIVES).

  It has been said that conspiracy theory is the new religion. With the decline of a widespread belief in God, people seek the guilty hand of man (or alien invaders) in unfathomable events. The new power is a secret cabal. This cabal goes under numerous names (and its composition depends on the political eye of the beholder) and paradoxically the smaller a cabal is suspected of being, the more powerful its hold is thought to be. The Illuminati, the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission are just three of the tiny elites believed to pull the strings of the entire world.

  If conspiracy theory is the new religion, the new medium for spreading its word is the internet. Once upon a printed-piece-of-paper time, counter beliefs would spread oh so slowly, via samizdat magazines and word of mouth. Nowadays a variant thought, conjecture, a piece of evidence from anybody with access to a PC and a telephone line is transmitted around the globe in seconds. Dissemination of material over the internet mainly sidesteps the censorship of states and companies. It’s a space where the truth can emerge into the light.

  The internet is also a democracy of fools, where everybody’s opinion is aired as though of equal merit: a cyberspace where the lunatic and the malicious weigh in at the same weight as the rational, concerned citizen. Just as some people believe just about every conspiracy theory punted their way, the madness of some internet-borne conspiracy theories produces an opposite reaction: numerous rational citizens disbelieve every conspiracy theory they encounter. It’s the fear of association. After all, who wants to be connected even remotely with David Icke’s shape-shifting lizards or the Aryan supremacists who reckon that Adolf Hitler is currently shacked up in an ice-cave in Antarctica?

  Hostility to conspiracy theory is as useless in understanding the world as an indiscriminate acceptance of it. The task, surely, is to disentangle the mad and bad conspiracies from those that illuminate the darkened, secret corners of power. To this end The Mammoth Book of Cover-Ups takes a considered, objective scalpel to one hundred of the most compelling conspiracy theories of modern times. The theories are arranged alphabetically, assessed and interrogated. Where appropriate, the relevant documents are reproduced, and details of where to look to find out more are listed. Each conspiracy theory is assigned an “Alert Level” rating indicating its likely veracity.

  But this is only an indication: the reader must make up his or her own mind.

  It’s only “them” who tell you what you must believe.

  Jon E. Lewis

  2008

  ALIEN ABDUCTION

  They’re not out there. They’re here . . .

  Early morning, 19 September 1961. Betty and Barney Hill are driving home from vacation in Niagara Falls. On Route 3 south of Lancaster, New Hampshire, the Hills notice a bright light in the sky which seems to be following them. Perplexed, Barney halts the car and gets out and recognizes the white light as a UFO; inside the alien craft Barney Hill can clearly see beings looking out at him. When Barney approaches within 75 feet (23m) of the flying saucer a door in the craft opens and Barney, fearing he is going to be captured, runs back to the car and drives off. A little while later the Hills hear a strange bleeping sound and the car is enveloped in white haze. Suddenly the Hills realize they are miles from where they should be. Later, after the Hills reach home, they discover the journey has taken two hours more than it ought.

  The next day Betty Hill contacted the local Air Force base; their experience was in due course recorded in Project Blue Book, albeit only in the “insufficient data” section. But more data was forthcoming when the Hills, suffering nightmares and insomnia, sought out a psychiatrist. Dr Benjamin Simon gave Betty and Barney separate courses of hypnotic therapy, during which they both recalled being kidnapped by small grey humanoids and taken aboard the UFO. The mystery of the missing two hours was now explained: the Hills had been abducted by aliens, who communicated with them by telepathy. A sort of pregnancy test was conducted by the aliens on Betty Hill, who was also shown an astral chart; the aliens pointed to a star which Betty deduced was the home sun of the space travellers. After their examination, the Hills were replaced in their car and sent on their way.

  There had been one previous reported case of alien kidnap (in 1957 by the Brazilian Antonio Villas-Boas, who claimed that his female alien captor had sex with him), but it was the Hills’ case which truly began the alien abduction phenomenon. Written up with the help of author John G. Fuller, the Hills’ account of their close encounter, The Interrupted Journey, was a bestseller. The episode contained all the core elements of later abductions: missing time; it happens at night; paralysis; examination by the aliens, with resultant inexplicable marks left on victim’s skin; telepathic communication with the aliens; post-abduction sleep disorders . . .

  After the release of The Interrupted Journey in 1966, a parade of alien abductions followed, including:

  In November 1975 six woodcutters claimed that their colleague, Travis Walton, had vanished after encountering a UFO. When Walton reappeared he claimed that he, like the Hills, had been abducted by the aliens known throughout the UFO fraternity as “Greys”.

  In 1987 the horror novelist Whitley Strieber claimed in his book Communion (later filmed starring Christopher Walken) to have been abducted and anally probed by aliens.

  In 1991 Linda Cortile alleged that she was beamed out of her New York apartment into a UFO; the “case of the century” was researched by UFOlogist Budd Hopkins, who maintains he found two secret servicemen attached to the United Nations who witnessed Cortile’s aerial passage into the UFO.

  In the same year as Cortile’s alleged abduction, the Roper polling organization found that 2 per cent of the US’s 300 million population had been abducted by aliens. Most abductees reported multiple abductions over their lifetimes. On an average, humdrum day in the US, it follows, some 2,740 Americans are being taken aboard spaceships and examined, probed and raped.

  Why is abduction on this scale not a major news event? Ther
e are claims that the media systematically covers up the abduction phenomenon because the media’s masters in the New World Order gain from collusion with the aliens: the New World Order trades the citizens of America for futuristic technology. Anyone who dares to whistle-blow on this cosy arrangement is threatened with permanent silence by the Men in Black.

  Another scenario suggests itself: alien abduction is hooey. In almost all cases of alien abduction the only evidence is the abductee’s story, and 87 per cent of abductees are, according to one survey, fantasists. That is to say, most abductees make up, either consciously or unconsciously, their abduction experience. A telling point against alien abduction is that the abductees tend to repeat the Hill experience; yet, if aliens have the ability to travel a trillion miles, might they not have the ability to vary their experiments on humans a little? The church-going Hills themselves were likely victims of the psychological condition known as folie à deux, where two (or more) people subconsciously influence each other into sincerely believing a lie or delusion. Some would-be abductees have been found to be suffering from sleep terrors or temporal lobe epilepsy, both of which can cause vivid hallucinations.

  Then there is the primary tool for obtaining evidence of abduction experiences: hypnosis. While abduction supporters such as John E. Mack, sometime professor of psychiatry at Harvard, argue that hypnosis is necessary to circumvent the mental blocks put on the abduction experience by the aliens, the reliability of memories recovered under hypnosis is extremely poor. There is growing evidence that recovered memories either play to what the patient believes the therapist wants or are “confabulations”, amalgams of fact and fantasy.

  No physical evidence of alien interference with a human, be it an operation or the placing of an implant, has ever stood up to investigation. One “alien implant” was found to be a mercury dental filling!

  Humans are abducted by aliens with the collusion of the Earth’s establishment: ALERT LEVEL 3

  Further Reading

  Eric Elfman., Almanac of Alien Encounters, 2001