Top Five Conspiracy Theories
A Conspiracy Theory is a presumption that explains an event or set of events as the result of a plot, usually secret and usually by powerful behind the scenes conspirators. It usually rejects the common accepted explanation for an alternative hypothesis.
As an example it is commonly accepted that a vaccine to prevent cancer has, as yet, not been discovered. A conspiracy theorist, however, might say that the vaccine has been discovered, but the formula has been bought by Big Pharmaceutical companies and shelved indefinitely because there is much more profit in selling medicine to sick people then to sell one-time vaccines to prevent cancer. Thus, based upon some lesser known scientific articles, interviews and news clips, it may be easy for some to assume that the vaccine has been developed but is not being released to the public. That is the nature of a conspiracy theory.
The term Conspiracy Terrorists is believed to have been coined by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the 1960s, originally in a manner to attack anyone who challenged the official narrative from the Warren Commission regarding the "official findings" on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. Many people thought the Warren Commission report was a cover-up of the true events surrounding the assassination, and the CIA's use of the term "conspiracy theorists" was an attempt to discredit people who were too close to finding and revealing government secrets. This label has continued since the phrase was coined in the 1960’s, with the intention of making people seem outrageous and confused and unbelievable, and stifling any alternative truths from getting out.
But the truth is that there are hundreds of legitimate alternative theories for a wide host of events, not just in government but perhaps even more so in corporate America. The term conspiracy theorists has been "weaponized" in a fashion to deflect from the person with the alternative theory by having people believe that the person with the belief is mentally unstable, that the opinion is too far fetched, or to otherwise distract the public from believing in him/her and their hypothesis.
EDITOR's NOTE: Not every Conspiracy Theory is true, but then again, not every Conspiracy Theory is false. To be sure, as astrophysicist, author, and science communicator Neil deGrasse Tyson said, “Follow the evidence wherever it leads, and question everything.”
THE ASSASSINATION OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY
John F. Kennedy (JFK), was one of the most beloved presidents to have ever served in the United States. He was elected as the 35th president and served January 1961 until his assassination on November 22, 1963 in Dallas Texas.
JFK was noted for his service on a Patrol Boat in World War II. He was the youngest man to be elected president, and the first and only Roman Catholic. As president his service is noted for his diplomacy with the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War, dealing with the Mafia, establishing civil rights programs including the Peace Corps, and taking real and true action on a host of domestic and foreign policy initiatives.
JFK's public approval rating was about 70%, and remains among the highest for any president in the history of the United States. But, Kennedy had made enemies.
The assassination of Kennedy was attributed to Lee Harvey Oswald, a man identified as a Marxist. Oswald was arrested for the assassination, but was shot to death by Jack Ruby two days later and before he could be fully interrogated and the truth could come out. Ruby, who was immediately detained, claimed that rage at Kennedy’s murder was the motive for his action. Ruby reportedly had some ties to the underworld.
Interestingly, Oswald repeatedly denied shooting Kennedy (as well as Police Officer J.D. Tippit.) In fact, he reported that he was "just a patsy" in the assassination. "I didn’t shoot John Kennedy. … I didn’t even know Gov. John Connally had been shot. … I don’t own a rifle. … It’s a mistake. I’m not guilty… The only thing I am here for is because I popped a policeman on the nose in the theater on Jefferson Avenue, which I readily admit I did because I was protecting myself. … I haven’t shot a rifle since the Marines. … I did not kill President Kennedy or Officer Tippit. If you want me to cop out to hitting, or pleading guilty to hitting a cop in the mouth when I was arrested, yeah, I plead guilty to that. But I do deny shooting both the president and Tippit."
Immediately people suspected a conspiracy. Forensic science did not conclude that the shots could have all been made by Oswald, nor from that distance. There was even a question as to if Oswald was on that floor of the book depository at the time of the shooting. Some said that Oswald was really tied in to the CIA and was working with them and was just a patsy used to pin the assassination on. Witnesses heard shots coming from the grassy knoll behind them and not from the book depository. The angle of the shots left questions. There were rumors of interference by Criminal Justice Organizations, rumors of vengeance by the Mafia, rumors of a Russian conspiracy, and even rumors of retaliation by some within Kennedy's own party. There were even rumors that the autopsy had been falsified and that Kennedy's body had been switched in transit to Washington. And there were rumors - and some evidence - that Jack Ruby knew and had met with Oswald prior to the assassination, and that the killing of Oswald was to silence him from telling of the real assassination conspiracy and all the people involved.
On November 29, 1963 President Lyndon B. Johnson appointed the President's Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy. This became known as the Warren Commission as it was headed by the chairman, Earl Warren, Chief Justice of the United States. They were to evaluate all matters relating to both the assassination of JFK and the subsequent killing of Oswald, and to report its findings and conclusions.
The report was presented to President Johnson and subsequently was made public. It concluded that President Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald and that Oswald acted entirely alone. It also concluded that Jack Ruby acted alone when he killed Oswald two days later. It stated that there was no conspiracy for the assassination. The Commission's findings were immediately questioned by many, and proven controversial and challenged by later studies.
In 1976, the US House of Representatives established the House Select Committee on Assassinations to reopen the investigation of the assassination in light of allegations that previous investigations had not received the full cooperation of federal agencies.
Interestingly, the House Select Committee on Assassinations did initially report "a high probability that two gunmen fired" at the president based upon a “discovery” that four or more shots were fired; this however, was later disproved and thus "negated."
To this day, the real story of the assassination has never been fully finalized and accepted.
THE ROSWELL INCIDENT
Every U.F.O. (Unidentified Flying Object) enthusiast is familiar with the Roswell incident. Roswell is located in New Mexico. It is more commonly known as Area 51, and is noted as the location of a crashed flying saucer (Unidentified Flying Object.)
In June of 1947, William Brazel, a local worker noticed scattered debris in a field about 30 miles north of Roswell. He picked up some of the materials, and after hearing reports of "flying disks" reported to the sheriff that he may have found a flying disk. The sheriff reported it to the nearby Roswell Army Air Field (RAAF) Major Jesse Marcel, and a person was sent out to help recover parts of the disk.
On July 8th, 1947, the RAAF released a press article that stated that they had recovered a "flying disc", which had crashed on a ranch near Roswell. The debris, from all accounts, consisted of tinfoil, paper, tape and sticks. The media reported it as a crashed flying saucer. Apparently it later had been described as a balloon carrying a radar reflector or a military weather balloon, but subsequent reports suggested it was a nuclear detection balloon.
Why then is Roswell considered a conspiracy theory? Because on Tuesday, July 8, the RAAF issued a press release that was picked up by news stations that the intelligence office of the 509th Bomb Group of the Eighth Air Force at the Roswell Army Air Field, gained possession of a disc that landed on a ranch near Roswell. The rancher who found the disk stored it until he was able to contact the sheriff's office, who in turn notified the RAAF. Action was immediately taken and the disc was picked up, inspected at the Roswell Army Air Field, and subsequently sent to higher headquarters.
The Roswell conspiracy also includes suspect information including the secretive manner that the debris was obtained by the military, information about finding alien bodies at the scene, about autopsies of these bodies, about back-engineering of alien technology from the U.F.O., about strange markings (like hieroglyphics) on the materials, and a host of other suspicious findings. Several individuals have now come forth saying that they have seen or worked on the recovered craft - including one who gave his testimony as a death-bed confession. Others claim that the series of technological advances the U.S. achieved since the 1950s, were due directly to the study and engineering from the crashed saucer.
Clearly, the Roswell U.F.O. incident, if and as a cover-up, remains a hallmark of the series of conspiracy theories.
THE APOLLO MOON LANDING WAS FAKE
The landing of the Apollo 11 on the surface of the moon was some 50 years ago.
In the early 1960s, it was clear that the United States was losing the space race. The Soviet Union had successfully launched the first satellite, Sputnik 1, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first man in space, and Russia clearly was leading in other space-based technologies.
President Kennedy, in his speech to Congress on May 25, 1961, said that the US "should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth."
He reiterated that publicly at a speech in Houston Texas on September 12, 1962, when he said, "We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win." Thus, the Kennedy administration set a primary goal of sending a man to the moon.
Kennedy did not live to see his goal achieved, but in July 1969 some 500 million people across the world watched as the Apollo 11 with astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the moon.
Interestingly, although this was heralded as one of America's finest hours, the Apollo landing did not usher in an era of lunar exploration, and no further missions were sent to the Moon after Apollo 17 in 1972. All subsequent planned Apollo missions were cancelled.
Enter the conspiracy theorists. Now the evidence may be circumstantial, but it is overwhelming in weight that leads to the conclusion that the moon landing was fake and falsified by the government.
Not long after the first landing, "discrepancies" began to turn up to make people question - and make experts cringe - as to the truth and reliability of the moon landing.
First, it was reported that Australia apparently had the only live transmission of the landing, and all other transmissions were delayed by directive. A woman in Australia claims that she saw a Coca Cola can lying on the "surface of the moon." When the transmission was re-broadcast, she noticed that the can had been "edited out." She immediately knew the transmission was manipulated, and that the entire moon landing was faked.
There were many other anomalies with the landing. People saw the planting of the American Flag on the moon's surface. This was very patriotic, except they saw the flag flutter in the wind. This is interesting as there is no wind (or air) on the surface of the moon. Furthermore, there was no dust on the landing pads of the lunar module, no crater under the rocket of the module, and no stars visible in the sky - strange in that on the surface of the moon one would think that stars should have shown brighter.
One person pointed out the reflection of a person in the background, as though the filming was made in a television studio.
One expert stated that the U.S. did not have the technology in the 1960s to accomplish a tip to the moon, and that computers of the 1960s could not begin to address the computations of earth gravity, moon gravity and sun gravity at the shifting tides for the necessary course calculations and adjustments. He said that even the real-time communications were impossible then, that the command module could not have carried enough fuel, the lunar module could not have had the necessary battery power, and it would have been impossible to actually transport a rover or dune buggy to the moon. He also pointed out how there had not been a single successful earth landing of numerous trial attempts, and yet, they landed on the moon without any complications on the very first attempt.
Other people questioned the ability for a human being to survive a trip through the radioactive Van Allen Belt. Circuits, sensors and electronics can short circuit when traveling through the Belt, and while debatable, some believe the radiation is too great for humans to survive.
Others maintain that the photographs and video show inconsistencies like uniform mountains, or asymmetrical walking and jumping by the astronauts, and lighting irregularities that professional photographers have identified.
And at the following news conference, Commander Neil Armstrong, lunar module pilot Buzz Aldrin, and Command module pilot Michael Collins presented in an unusual and unconvincing manner. This lent further credence to the belief that this was falsified and a cover-up.
Another fact was that no one - including the Chinese and Russians or the U.S., have been able to repeat this landing in the past 40 years. This is interesting as one assumes that the technology has advanced thousands of times greater than that available in the 1960s.
In the case of the United States, one professional admitted the U.S. "lost" the technology that was employed in the 1960s and the U.S. no longer had the means or the telemetry data from those earlier flights as a basis to draw upon. The U.S. "lost the technology" of the 1960s, and can no longer travel to the moon. This is considered by many conspiracy theorists as "suspicious."
One final expose was from filmmaker and director Stanley Kubrick. It had long been thought that Kubrick, director of the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey" was secretly approach by NASA to direct the first three Moon landings. Certain events such as the launch and splashdown would be real, but the modules would stay in Earth orbit and Kubrick would shoot staged film that was fake and it would be broadcast as "live from the Moon."
This was all speculation, until Kubrick made a video before he died and admitted that this was "the greatest movie that was never known." He said how NASA contracted with him for his expertise, how he rented a studio in England, and how he shot the film with a skeleton crew to minimize any potential for it being exposed. Research has since shown that that interview with Kubrick was itself a "hoax." Kubrick died in 1999, so no one will ever know.
So were the Apollo launches and landing(s) a sham? There is still a sizeable community that believes so.
PROJECT BLUE BOOK
In July 1952, across a period of several weeks, numerous unidentified flying objects were seen by the general public as well as by radar, flying over the skies of the nation’s capital, Washington D.C. As many as 12 were seen at one time. The sightings were perceived as a “threat” and the Air Force was actually activated on a “saucer alert” and instructed to shoot down the saucers if possible. There were numerous rumors about where they were from and that they were piloted by little green men from outer space.
The primary issue however, was that these reports were coming from not just the general public, but also from both the military personnel, from pilots, and from others considered to be legitimate and credible authorities.
This was the year that America caught the flying saucer fever, and it has never gone away.
There was a series of hundreds of sightings over a period of months. The sightings of UFOs were so numerous here and across the country that people were in a panic. No one knew the source or the goals of these flying machines.
As such, the Air Force stepped in and convened Project Blue Book, an investigation into Unidentified Flying Objects.
From 1947 to 1969 when the Air Force terminated the project, the Air Force received 12,618 “sightings” but they said that they were all identified as normal phenomena, i.e., weather balloons, clouds, stars, military flights, even “swamp gas.” However, fully 701 sightings could not be explained.
The conclusions of Project BLUE BOOK were: (1) no UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the Air Force has ever given any indication of threat to our national security; (2) there has been no evidence submitted to or discovered by the Air Force that sightings categorized as "unidentified" represent technological developments or principles beyond the range of present-day scientific knowledge; and, (3) there has been no evidence indicating that sightings categorized as "unidentified" are extraterrestrial vehicles.
In other words, the United States Air Force dismissed all reports of UFOs as natural occurrences or observations, and summarily dismissed any possible reference to these as extraterrestrial craft with alien technology or beings from other worlds.
Project Blue Book had been plagued with irregularities. Certain sightings were removed and taken away from their investigation, they had a severe staff shortage, there were numerous personnel changes, and funding was inadequate.
In the mid-1960s criticism of Project Blue Book continued to grow as the observations swelled and the Air Force had provided no firm data, analysis, or credible answers. With the termination of Project Blue Book, and because of the high costs involved and limited funding, the Air Force stopped all (official) investigation of UFOs. The final report was submitted to the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, and is available for public review and analysis.
Project Blue Book remains a mystery. It was one of the largest government projects of its day, and yet revealed or highlighted very little information. Was it, as some people claim, a government cover-up? Conspiracy theorists say yes.
THE WORLD TRADE CENTER BOMBING
Very few events throughout history had the potential to change the course of the world. One such event took place on September 11, 1991. The iconic World Trade Center, a bastion of international finance operations, businesses and corporations, and government administrations had been attacked by what conventional wisdom has identified as Al-Qaeda – a terrorist group led by Osama Bin Laden, a foe of America and the American way of life.
The World Trade Center was the hub of New York City’s financial district. It comprised a series of seven buildings, two of which – known as the Twin Towers, were the tallest buildings in the world when they were completed in April 1973.
On the morning of September 11, 2001, four commercial airliners were hijacked by members of the Islamic extremist group al-Qaeda.
The hijackers flew two Boeing 767 jets into the North and South Towers. The hijackers were later confirmed to be Al-Qaeda members. Two hours later both towers collapsed. The attack killed almost 3,000 people, making this one of the largest attacks on U.S. soil by a foreign entity in history. Debris from the towers led to fires in several surrounding buildings and caused damage to other structures in the surrounding area.
A third hijacked plane, American Airlines Flight 77, hit the side of the Pentagon, just outside Washington, D.C., and the fourth hijacked plane, United Airlines Flight 93, crashed down in a field in rural Pennsylvania, never reaching its intended target because its crew and passengers fought back against the terrorists.
About 10:00 am, the South Tower collapsed after burning for only 1 hour. It was reported that the fire caused steel columns, already weakened from the plane's impact, to fail. The North Tower collapsed at approximately 10:30 am, after burning for approximately 12 hours. And at about 5:30 pm, the World Trade Center Building 7 suspiciously collapsed apparently due to "uncontrolled fires causing structural failure." Building 7 had not been hot by a plane.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) was charged to produce a report on the collapse of the towers. The Institute released the report on August 22, 2002.
The report showed that "the towers withstood the impact of the planes as designed, and would have remained standing were it not for the dislodged insulation (fireproofing) and the
subsequent multi-floor fires. The robustness of the perimeter frame-tube system and the large
size of the buildings helped the towers withstand the impact. The structural system
redistributed loads from places of aircraft impact, avoiding larger scale damage upon impact.
The hat truss, a feature atop each tower which was intended to support a television antenna,
prevented earlier collapse of the building core. But it was a combination of impact damage and heat-weakened structural components that contributed to the abrupt structural collapse."
Editor's Note: Except Building 7 was never hit by a plane, and the fires in Building 7 were both incidental and had been extinguished prior to the collapse. There was no reason Building 7 should have collapsed.
The NIST report also found no corroborating evidence for alternative hypotheses suggesting that the WTC towers were brought down by controlled demolition using explosives planted prior to September 11th nor any evidence that missiles were fired at or hit the towers. Instead, photographs and videos from several angles "clearly showed that the collapse initiated at the fire and impact floors and that the collapse progressed from the initiating floors downward, until the dust clouds obscured the view."
So then, given all the eye-witness evidence and the thorough NIST report, what is the conspiracy speculation based upon?
There are several notable objections and analyses that claim that the destruction of the World Trade Center was not what was portrayed to the public.
- 1) An examination by Dr. Judy Wood, based upon some 14 different findings, led to her belief that a "directed energy weapon" cause the disintegration of the World Trade Center. Her analyses has both popularity and scientific backing for her findings.
- 2) Silverstein, who owned the World Trade Center was heard and recorded as saying “Pull Building 7”, i.e., “pull the building” is code for the conscious demolition of that building. Note: Building 7 was not hit by an airplane. There were fires on one of the floors but they were extinguished prior to the building “collapsing.”
- 3) There has never before been a collapse of a steel framed building due to fires. Even fires as hot as those started by jet fuel cannot burn hot enough to melt steel – especially steel that had been coated with a fire retardant.
- 4) Nuclear explosions? A team of scientists from the US Geological Survey collected samples of dust from 35 locations in Lower Manhattan where it had come to rest
from the enormous pyroclastic dust cloud that enveloped the city. In the dust, they found high levels of chemical elements that included very rare elements: Strontium, Barium, Thorium, Cerium, Lanthanum and Yttrium… many of which are radioactive elements and may be indicative of (controlled) nuclear explosions.
In fact, Dimitri Khalezov, a former Russian KGB agent expert in nuclear weapons, claims that nuclear devices had been set off in concert with both the government and Silverstein, and it was those controlled (mini) nuclear blasts which collapsed all 3 buildings rather than either the impact or the fires. - 5) As many as 50,000 people could have - or should have been inside the World Trade Center and yet only a few thousands were, leading some to speculate that certain people had advanced notice and failed to show up for work at the usual time.
- 6) A group of Jewish men had been seen to filming the "event", and they left for Israel right after being seen and interrogated.
- 7) There was some indication that authorities had prior knowledge and failed to address the "imminent" attack.
- 8) The group "Engineers and Architects for Truth" representing more than 3,000 structural engineers and architects, said that the NIST report was wrong and the computer model upon which the assumptions were made was an invalid model. They reported that the plane attacks and subsequent fires could not have brought down these structures with so many redundant supports and systems.
- 9) Both government investigators and independent researchers found much evidence indicating the occurrence of high-temperature thermitic reactions before, during, and after the destruction of the towers, for instance seeing "molten steel" pour out the building before collapse - knowing that steel does not burn at those temperatures. In other words, there is some suspicion that explosives were used to implode the buildings. In fact, the collapse of the buildings themselves resembled a demolition by controlled implosion which brings the building down in a synchronized fashion directly into its own footprint.
- 10) As for the third plane which hit the Pentagon, footage never showed the plane itself, and many speculate that because of the speed, angle and blast it was actually an incoming missile and not a Boeing airplane.
- 11) The fourth plane which crashed in Pennsylvania had even more particularities: the cell-phone calls placed to the families should not have worked at over 10,000 feet; one call from a stewardess sounded like it was in code and she was actually saying "Listen close - this is fake"; and that the call saying "Let's go" when they attacked the cockpit terrorists was really staged for effect. Others point out that the obvious lack of plane material, luggage and bodies at the crash site was evidence that a full plane never crashed at all.
BONUS CONSPIRACY THEORY: The Illuminati
THE ILLUMINATI
For hundreds of years there have been rumors of a secret organization that has ruled the world - an organization that ruled over kings and presidents, over finances, an organization that controls governments, trade, and is even behind war and peace, and yet, this organization has remained secret to all but a select few.
Some have said that the Illuminati were a secret cult, others that it was the Free Masons, others that it was a religious organization, others that it was a central bank or the Bilderburg Group, or a hidden group of billionaires.
While there was a historical Illuminati in Europe in the 1700s, today it references a secret "enlightened" society whose primary mission is to bring about a "New World Order."
Today it is referred to as the Deep State, an international organization that masterminds world events from behind the scenes, and uses banks, corporations and governments to control world affairs through political and financial power - safely hiding behind the shadows of public exposure.
They conspire, pull the strings, and reward loyalty with money, power and influence while disciplining - and even killing - to achieve their ends to establish a New World Order bent toward Global Domination. Many have also called out the Illuminati as anti-Catholic and anti-Christian, and said that they have their roots in satanic and dark powers and have a mission to destroy the true Church of Christ.
The Illuminati have been one of the most speculated conspiracy theories of all time, with hundreds of articles and books trying to piece together national and international events toward identifying the organization and the individual players.
So the Illuminati have long been just a theory - one that no one could prove - until now. Enter Ronald Bernard, an amazing insider who turned whistleblower and revealed the true inner workings of this dark and sinister inside organization.
Bernard, a Dutch Banking expert, told about a group of 8,000 to 8,500 individuals in the world financing system that controls money and political influence and who run the whole world. This organization is behind drugs, war, counterfeiting, tax evasion, oil pricing, money laundering, and a host of other social evils, including even satanic worship and child sacrificing.
Bernard shared how they can use cold calculations to make money independent of any moral or ethical repsonsibilities, and how they see people not as human beings but as units with a monetary value to exploit.
Bernard, more than any other whistleblower, shares heartfelt testimony on the real workings of the inside deep state - the real Illuminati. His eye-opening testimony proves just how real - and how far down - the players have gone.
Conspiracy Theories? Not every Conspiracy Theory is true, but then again, not every Conspiracy Theory is false. To be sure, as astrophysicist, author, and science communicator Neil deGrasse Tyson said, “Follow the evidence wherever it leads, and question everything.”