The 30 Greatest Conspiracy Theories
by H. E. Hunt
Every major event of the last 2,000 years has prompted a conspiracy theory. Here are those with the biggest followings and the most longevity.
1. September 11, 2001
Thanks to the power of the web and live broadcasts on television, the conspiracy theories surrounding the events of 9/11 - when terrorists attacked the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington - have surpassed those of Roswell and JFK in traction. Despite repeated claims by al-Qaeda that it planned, organised and orchestrated the attacks, several official and unofficial investigations into the collapse of the Twin Towers which concluded that structural failure was responsible and footage of the events themselves, the conspiracy theories continue to grow in strength.
At the milder end of the spectrum are the theorists who believe that the US government had prior warning of the attacks but did not do enough to stop them. Others believe that the Bush administration deliberately turned a blind eye to those warnings because it wanted a pretext to launch wars in the Middle East to usher in another century of American hegemony. A large group of people - collectively called the 9/11 Truth Movement - cite evidence that an airliner did not hit the Pentagon and that the World Trade Centre could not have been brought down by airliner impacts and burning aviation fuel alone. This final group points to video evidence which they claim shows puffs of smoke - so-called demoliton squibs - emerging from the Twin Towers at levels far below the aircraft impact zones and prior to the collapses. They also believe that, on the day itself, the US air force was deliberately stood down or sent on exercises to prevent intervention that could have saved the lives of nearly 3,000 people.
Many witnesses - including firemen, policemen and people who were inside the towers at the time - claim to have heard explosions below the aircraft impacts (including in basement levels) and before both the collapses and the attacks themselves. As with the assassination of JFK, the official inquiry into the events - the 9/11 Commission Report - is widely derided by the conspiracy community and held up as further evidence that 9/11 was an “inside job”. Scientific journals have consistently rejected these hypotheses.
2. The Assassination Of John F Kennedy
The 35th President of the United States was shot on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas at 12.30pm . He was fatally wounded by gunshots while riding with his wife - Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy - in a motorcade. The ten-month investigation of the Warren Commission of 1963 to 1964, the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) of 1976 to 1979, and other government investigations concluded that the President had been assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald - who was himself shot dead by Jack Ruby while in police custody.
But doubts about the official explanation and the conclusion that Oswald was the lone gunman firing from the Texas Book Depository overlooking Dealey Plaza where Kennedy was hit surfaced soon after the commission report. Footage of the motorcade taken by Abraham Zapruder on 8mm film supported the growing belief that at least four shots were fired - not the three that the Warren Commission claimed. The moments of impact recorded on the film also suggested that at least one of the shots came from a completely different direction to those supposedly fired by Oswald - evidence backed up by testimony of several eye witnesses. Many believed that several shots were fired by gunmen hiding behind a picket fence on a grassy knoll overlooking the plaza.
The assassination is still the subject of widespread speculation and has spawned numerous conspiracy theories, though none of these has been proven. In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) found both the original FBI investigation and the Warren Commission Report to be seriously flawed. The HSCA also concluded that there were at least four shots fired and that it was probable that a conspiracy existed. However, later studies, including one by the National Academy of Sciences, have called into question the accuracy of the evidence used by the HSCA to support its finding of four shots.
3. A Flying Saucer Crashed At Roswell In 1947
The event that kick-started more than a half century of conspiracy theories surrounding unidentified flying objects (UFOs). Something did crash at Roswell, New Mexico, sometime before July 7, 1947 and - at first - the US authorities stated explicitly that this was a flying saucer or disk - as shown by the splash story on that day’s Roswell Daily Record, pictured. Numerous witnesses reported seeing metallic debris scattered over a wide area and at least one reported seeing a blazing craft crossing the sky shortly before it crashed. In recent years, witnesses have added significant new details, including claims of a large military operation dedicated to recovering alien craft and aliens themselves, at as many as 11 crash sites, and alleged witness intimidation. In 1989, former mortician Glenn Dennis claimed that he was involved in alien autopsies which were carried out at the Roswell air force base.
The conspiracy theory has been fanned by the US military repeatedly changing its story. Within hours of the army telling reporters that it had recovered a crashed saucer, senior officers insisted that the only thing that had fallen from the sky had been a weather balloon. A report by the Office of the Secretary of the Air Force released in 1995, concluded that the reported recovered material in 1947 was likely debris from a secret government program called Project Mogul, which involved high altitude balloons meant to detect sound waves generated by Soviet atom bomb tests and ballistic missiles.
A second report, released in 1997, concluded that reports of alien bodies were likely a combination of innocently transformed memories of military accidents involving injured or killed personnel, and the recovery of anthropomorphic dummies in military programs like Project High Dive conducted in the 1950s.
Since the late 1990s the debate about Roswell has polarised with several former pro-UFO researchers concluding that the craft was, indeed, part of a US military project and that it was, most likely, some sort of weather balloon. But further evidence has emerged - notably a signed affidavit by Walter Haut, the Roswell Army Air Field public affairs officer who had drafted the initial press release on July 8, 1947. Haut says in the affidavit -signed in 2002 - that he saw alien corpses and a craft and that he had been involved in a military cover up. Haut died in 2005.
4. Nasa Faked The Moon Landings
People who think that the Apollo moon landings were not all that they seemed at the time believe that Nasa faked some or all of the landings. Some of the theories surrounding this subject are that the Apollo astronauts did not land on the Moon; Nasa and possibly others intentionally deceived the public into believing the landings did occur by manufacturing, destroying, or tampering with evidence, including photos, telemetry tapes, transmissions, and rock samples; and that Nasa and possibly others continue to actively participate in the conspiracy to this day.
Those who think that Nasa faked some or all of the landings base their theories on photographs from the lunar surface which they claim show camera crosshairs partially behind rocks, a flag planted by Buzz Aldrin moving in a strange way, the lack of stars over the lunar landscape and shadows falling in different direction. Many commentators have published detailed rebuttals to the hoax claims, and these theories have been generally discounted but belief in them - particularly on the web - persists.
5. The Illuminati And The New World Order
A conspiracy in which powerful and secretive groups (the Illuminati, the Bilderberg Group and other shadowy cabals) are plotting to rule mankind with a single world government. Many historical events are said to have been engineered by these groups with one goal - the New World Order (NWO). The groups use political finance, social engineering, mind control, and fear-based propaganda to achieve their aims. Signs of the NWO are said to be the pyramid on the reverse of the Great Seal of the United States, inset, strange and disturbing murals at Denver International Airport, pictured, and pentagrams in city plans. International organisations such as the World Bank, the IMF, the European Union, the United Nations, and Nato are listed as founding organisations of the New World Order.
6. The Jesus Conspiracy
The theory that launched a blockbusting novel (The Da Vinci Code), a film of the same name and a plagiarism battle in the courts (with the authors of the Holy Blood and holy grail). Those who believe in this - and they seem to number in their millions - think that Jesus married Mary Magdalene, had one or more children, and that those children or their descendants emigrated to southern France. Once there, they intermarried with the noble families that would eventually become the Merovingian dynasty, whose special claim to the throne of France is championed today by a secret society called the Priory of Sion.
7. Princess Diana Was Murdered
Why won’t this one go away? Despite an official inquiry that found no evidence of a plot by MI6 or any other entity to murder the princess and Dodi Fayed in 1997, fevered speculation continues. The theory is that rogue elements in the British secret service decided that Diana’s relationship with Fayed was a threat to the monarchy and, therefore, to the British state. A plot was hatched in which a white Fiat Uno carrying agents was sent to blind and disorientate driver Henri Paul as he sped through the Paris underpass pursued by photographers. Later, Paul’s blood was switched with a sample of somebody who had drunk a lot of alcohol. The trouble with the theory? Not a shred of evidence exists to support it.
8. Elvis Presley Faked His Own Death
What can we say? A persistent belief is that “the King” did not die in 1977. Many fans persist in claiming he is still alive, that he went into hiding for various reasons. This claim is allegedly backed up by thousands of so-called sightings. The main reason given in support of the belief that Presley faked his death is that, on his grave, his middle name Aron is spelt as Aaron. But “Aaron” is actually the genuine middle name for Presley. Apparently, either Presley or his parents tried to change the name to “Aron” to make it more similar to Presley’s stillborn twin, Jesse Garon Presley. Two tabloid newspapers ran articles covering the continuing “life” of Presley after his death, in great detail, including a broken leg from a motorcycle accident, all the way up to his purported “real death” in the mid 1990s.
9. Operation Northwoods
A genuine conspiracy involving a plan by the Joint Chiefs of Staff to launch a fake Cuban terror campaign on American soil to persuade the US public to support an invasion against Castro. The plan involved bombings and the simultaneous hijacking and blowing up of American airliners. The operation was quashed by President Kennedy leading many to speculate that it was linked to his assassination a year later. The plan has also been linked by theorists who believe that the September 11, 2001 attacks were a so-called “inside job” because of the use of airliners.
10. MK-ULTRA
The code name for a covert mind-control and chemical interrogation research programme, run by the Office of Scientific Intelligence. The programme began in the early 1950s, continuing at least through the late 1960s, using US citizens as test subjects. Project MK-ULTRA was brought first to wide public attention in 1975 by Congress and by the Rockefeller Commission. Investigative efforts were hampered by the fact that CIA Director Richard Helms ordered all MK-ULTRA files destroyed in 1973. Although the CIA insisted that MK-ULTRA-type experiments were abandoned, CIA veteran Victor Marchetti has stated in various interviews that the agency routinely conducts disinformation campaigns and that CIA mind control research continued. In a 1977 interview, Marchetti specifically called the CIA claim that MK-ULTRA was abandoned a “cover story”.
Conspiracy theorists believe that MK-ULTRA was behind many so-called black-ops: Lawrence Teeter, the attorney for Sirhan Sirhan, the man convicted of the assassination of Robert Kennedy, pictured, believed Sirhan was operating under MK-ULTRA mind control techniques. Furthermore, Jonestown, the location in Guyana where members of the Jim Jones cult and Peoples Temple committed mass suicide, was thought to be a test site for MK-ULTRA medical experiments.
11. North American Union
The North American Union (NAU) is a theoretical regional union of Canada, Mexico and the United States similar in structure to the European Union, sometimes including a common currency called the amero. Theorists who believe that the three countries are planning for this believe that it is part of a global conspiracy to set up something called the New World Order (NWO). Officials from all three nations have repeatedly denied that there are plans to create a NAU although the idea has been proposed in academic circles, either as a union or as a North American community as proposed by the Independent Task Force on North America. The amero received support in 1999 from Canadian economist Herbert Grubel, a senior fellow of the Fraser Institute think-tank, in a book entitled The Case for the Amero. Robert Pastor, vice-chairman of the Independent Task Force on North America, supported Grubel’s conclusions in his 2001 book Toward a North American Community, stating that: “In the long term, the amero is in the best interests of all three countries.”
12. Shakespeare Was Somebody Else
Who really was the English language’s greatest writer? Among the numerous alternative candidates that have been proposed Francis Bacon, Christopher Marlowe, William Stanley (6th Earl of Derby) and Edward de Vere (17th Earl of Oxford), are the most popular. Theorists believe there is a lack of evidence proving that the actor and businessman sometimes known as Shaksper of Stratford was responsible for the body of works that bear his name. Very little biographical information exists about Shakespeare.
13. The Disappearance Of Shergar
On February 8, 1983, a group of men wearing balaclavas and armed with guns turned up at the Ballymany Stud Farm in Co Kildare, Ireland and took a hostage – Jim Fitzgerald, the stud’s head groom. “We’ve come for Shergar,” they said. “We want £2m for him.” Shergar was arguably the greatest racehorse to have ever lived. But 25 years after he was kidnapped from Ballymany the mystery of exactly what happened to him after he was snatched that night still lingers. The theories are numerous with the IRA, Colonel Gadaffi and the Mafia featuring among the most lurid. One story suggests that the IRA kidnapped the horse for Gadaffi in return for weapons. Another suggests that the New Orleans mafia took him.
14. Paul Is Dead
“Paul is dead” is an urban legend alleging that Paul McCartney died in a car crash 1966 and was replaced by a look-alike and sound-alike. “Evidence” for McCartney’s death consists of “clues” found among the Beatles’ many recordings. Hundreds have been cited at various times by various people. They include statements allegedly heard when a song is played backwards, symbolism found in obscure lyrics, and ambiguous imagery on album covers. A few of them are well known, such as the fact that McCartney is the only barefooted Beatle and is out of step with the others on the cover of Abbey Road, pictured.
15. The July 7, 2005 Tube Bombings
One of the supposed mysteries surrounding the 7/7 attacks is this image, used by several news outlets, of the bombers entering Luton station on their way to London at around 7.20am on July 7. Theorists claim this image is fake because the man in the white hat - believed to be Mohammed Sidique Khan - has been electronically placed on the picture after it was taken. They claim that it shows his arm behind a railing while the rest of his body is in front and that the bar behind his head goes across and in front of his face. Theorists postulate, among other things, that the bombs which went off on the Tube trains were actually under the floors of the vehicles and not in the alleged plotters’ back packs.
16. The Moscow Apartment Bombings
Former GRU officer Aleksey Galkin and former FSB officer the late Alexander Litvinenko (who was killed with Polonium-210 in London in November 2006) and other whistle-blowers from the Russian government and security services have asserted that the 1999 Russian apartment bombings were operations perpetrated by the FSB, the successor to the KGB, to justify the second Russian war against Chechnya.
17. Black Helicopters
The concept became popular in the American militia movement, and in associated political circles, in the 1990s as an alleged symbol and warning sign of a military takeover of part or all of the United States. Rumours would circulate that, for instance, the United Nations patrolled the US with black helicopters, or that federal agents used black helicopters to enforce wildlife laws. In Britain, a similar conspiracy theory known as “phantom helicopters” has been reported since the mid 1970s. This concept relates phantom helicopters to UFOs and alien invasion rather than to martial law.
18. Harold Wilson Was A Soviet Agent
Soviet defector Anatoliy Golitsyn is thought to have claimed that Wilson was a KGB spy. He further claimed that Hugh Gaitskell was assassinated by the KGB so that he could be replaced as Labour leader by Harold Wilson. Furthermore, former MI5 officer Peter Wright claimed in his memoirs - Spycatcher - that he had been told that Wilson was a Soviet agent. MI5 repeatedly investigated Wilson over the course of several years before conclusively deciding that he had no relationship with the KGB. On the BBC TV programme, The Plot Against Harold Wilson, broadcast in 2006, it was claimed that the military was on the point of launching a coup d’état against Wilson in 1974. Wilson himself told the BBC that he feared he was being undermined by MI5 in the late 1960s after devaluation of sterling and again in 1974 after he narrowly won an election against Edward Heath.
19. The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion
Despite being utterly discredited for at least 100 years, belief in this document has proved remarkably resilient on the internet. The text takes the form of an instruction manual to a new member of the “elders,” describing how they will run the world through control of the media and finance, and replace the traditional social order with one based on mass manipulation. Scholars generally agree that the Okhrana, the secret police of the Russian Empire, fabricated the text in the late 1890s or early 1900s but belief in it still persists - particularly in the Middle East.
20. The Peak Oil Conspiracy
Peak oil (a theory in itself) is the supposed peak of oil production during and after which demand for oil outstrips supply sending prices through the roof. The peak oil conspiracy theorists believe that peak oil is a fraud concocted by the oil industries to increase prices amid concerns about future supplies. The oil industry is aware of vast reserves of untapped oil, but does not utilise them in order to maintain the illusion of scarcity, they claim.
21. Pearl Harbor Was Allowed To Happen
Theorists believe that President Franklin Roosevelt provoked the Japanese attack on the US naval base in Hawaii in December 1941, knew about it in advance and covered up his failure to warn his fleet commanders. He apparently needed the attack to provoke Hitler into declaring war on the US because the American public and Congress were overwhelmingly against entering the war in Europe. Theorists believe that the US was warned by the governments of Britain, the Netherlands, Australia, Peru, Korea and the Soviet Union that a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor was coming and that, furthermore, the Americans had intercepted and broken all the important Japanese codes in the run up to the attack.
22. The Philadelphia Experiment
Popularised by the Charles Berlitz novel of the same name, conspiracy theorists believe that during an experiment at the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard in October 1943, the US Navy destroyer Eldridge was rendered invisible. According to some accounts, the scientists on the experiment found a way to bend light around an object but that the experiment went wrong and Eldridge was transported through space and time, reappearing at sea. Several sailors, it is said, were badly hurt when the experiment went wrong and some were melded into the ship’s superstructure. The US Navy has denied that the experiment ever took place.
23. Pan Am Flight 103
Pan Am Flight 103 was Pan American’s third daily scheduled transatlantic flight from Heathrow to New York John F. Kennedy International Airport. On December 21, 1988, the aircraft flying this route - a Boeing 747 - was destroyed by a bomb, killing all 259 people on board and 11 people on the ground. The remains landed around Lockerbie in southern Scotland. A popular theory for which no evidence has been produced suggests that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had set up a protected drug route from Europe to the United States - allegedly called Operation Corea - which allowed Syrian drug dealers to ship heroin to the US using Pan Am flights.
The CIA allegedly protected the suitcases containing the drugs and made sure they were not searched. On the day of the bombing, terrorists exchanged suitcases: one with drugs for one with a bomb. Another version of this theory is that the CIA knew in advance this exchange would take place, but let it happen anyway, because the protected drugs route was a rogue operation, and the American intelligence officers on the flight had found out about it, and were on their way to Washington to tell their superiors.
24. Fluoridation
Fluoride is commonly added to drinking water as a way to reduce tooth decay. However, there has been some evidence that there could be some harmful side effects from fluoride and conspiracy theorists believe that this information is known and recognised by those responsible for adding the fluoride, but that they continue the practice regardless. Drug companies have been targeted as possible beneficiaries, as they will profit from a population with ill-health. Another motive is that fluoride lowers mental abilities thereby “dumbing down” the entire population.
25. The 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami
A popular theory in the Muslim world is that the tsunami could have been caused by an Indian nuclear experiment in which Israeli and American nuclear experts participated. Several newspapers in Egypt and the Middle East alleged that India, in its heated nuclear race with Pakistan, has acquired sophisticated nuclear technology from the US and Israel, both of which “showed readiness to co-operate with India in experiments to exterminate humankind,” beginning with the heavily populated Muslim regions of southeast Asia, where the bulk of casualties took place.
26. Plastic Coffins And Concentration Camps
Just outside Atlanta, Georgia, beside a major road are approximately 500,000 plastic coffins. Stacked neatly and in full view, the coffins are allegedly owned by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema). Conspiracy theorists believe that Fema has also set up several concentration camps in the US in preparation for the imposition of a state of martial law and the killing of millions of Americans. They suggest that the financial crisis will be used to justify the imposition of a police state.
27. HAARP
More than 200 miles east of Anchorage, Alaska, is the Pentagon’s High-frequency Active Auroral Research Program, officially an enormous experiment to heat the ionosphere with radio waves. But conspiracy theorists believe the project is a weapon to bring down aircraft and missiles by lifting sections of the atmosphere, cause earthquakes or even a huge weather modification machine.
28. The Aids Virus Was Created In A Laboratory
Based on the theories of Dr William Campbell Douglass, many believe that that HIV was genetically engineered in 1974 by the World Health Organisation. Dr Douglass believed that it was a cold-blooded attempt to create a killer virus which was then used in a successful experiment in Africa. Others have claimed that it was created by the CIA or the KGB as a means to reduce world population.
29. Global Warming Is A Hoax
Some climate change doubters believe that man-made global warming is a conspiracy designed to soften up the world’s population to higher taxation, controls on lifestyle and more authoritarian government. These sceptics cite a fall in global temperatures since last year and a levelling off in the rise in temperature since 1998 as evidence.
30. Chemtrails
Chemtrail conspiracy theorists believe that some contrails, which consist of ice crystals or water vapor condensed behind aircraft, actually result from chemicals or biological agents being deliberately sprayed at high altitude for some undisclosed purpose. The staple of right-wing radio shows in the US, there is fevered speculation that the chemicals being sprayed are part of a wider plot that involves the so-called New World Order and is being directed by shadowy forces within the government. The existence of chemtrails has been repeatedly denied by federal agencies and scientists.
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Post a Comment
john doe on Friday, November 21, 2008Right up my street......The conspiracy of which i have been most interested in over the years is the NWO/ILLUMINATI.
I think most ‘shadowy’ goings on can be linked to them!
PP on Friday, November 21, 2008What makes you so sure they ARE just theories. I’m not saying they are not just theories, but the only evidence quoted that many of them are false is “official investigations.”
Like that can be taken as gospel!!
I would say there is more real evidence supporting many of these theories than there is evidence against them.
Jordan on Friday, November 21, 2008Just cause you are paranoid doesn’t mean they are not out to get you. What about the incoming zombies? Just you all wait. Government created, get out of control. What about the so called UFOs. They aren’t space visitors. Government controlled aircraft. Whats the last plane that was created that we know of. The SR-117 Blackbird. In the 70’s. Are you telling me that the government, having access to the best minds in the world hasn’t come up with something better than that since then. Think about that when you go to sleep tonight.
Francis on Friday, November 21, 2008Another odd (but localised) rumour/theory concerns the disappearance of Australian PM Harold Holt in December 1967. Holt, a keen swimmer, drowned off the Victorian coast but rumours persist to this day that he was abducted by a the crew of a Chinese submarine.
As with the other conspiracies (with the possible exception of the Kennedy assassination), it’s patent nonsense.
carbon_based on Saturday, November 22, 2008I’m intimately familiar with every single one of these theories and then some. some are true, many are false, most have a grain of truth. the author would be better to be less dismissive.
Jason on Saturday, November 22, 2008If 9/11 was a “terrorist” attack, then why does so much evidence point to the contrary. And why was Bush and Cheney so secretive and demanding to the 911 commission in its attempts to interview them.? Lets face it, our government is morally bankrupt.
Shandooga on Saturday, November 22, 2008Many of these are true. Silly theories are listed with true conspiracy to destroy credibility by association. It only works on stupid people--which is to say, almost everyone.
steve on Saturday, November 22, 2008I guess It’s time to put on our aluminum foil hats and kiss our butts goodbye!
Aaron on Sunday, November 23, 2008I stumbled across this exact article on The Independant’s website.
Skyephoenix on Sunday, November 23, 2008Add the assinations of counter cultural rock stars and other political figures.
Of course the Panthers were just assasinated - that’s a fact.
Also, crack is a CIA conspiracy- genocide for the black and underclass pop.
Joshua Bolin on Sunday, November 23, 2008theory: a coherent group of general propositions used as principles of explanation for a class of phenomena
Why do people say things like “JUST a theory”. The only form of evidence that goes higher than theory falls under mathematics. As perceptions change and instruments increase in complexity what we know to be true is often exposed as incomplete or wrong all together. This is why all things not proven mathematically are THEORIES. 2 + 2 = 4. Nothing will change this fact, even if someone develops a more advanced calculator.
rl colt on Sunday, November 23, 2008December 7, 1941 not 42
Dean Terry on Monday, November 24, 2008Colt - you are right. It was December 7 1941 . . . “a day that will go down in infamy.”
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Thank you for spotting this unfortunate error.
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The date has been corrected in the above article - but still remains incorrect in the original article which was published by The Telegraph.
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Perhaps this is a conspiracy by the author of the article, H. E. Hunt, or the NWO, to re-write history.
jeepndesert on Monday, November 24, 2008Many of these are proven fact. Bilderberg, NAU, black helicopters, FEMA camps, black plastic coffins, etc.
Many more could be proven without a doubt with a real investigation.
The passing of the patriot act is proof the terrorists (the government) hate us for our freedoms.
Magányharcos on Monday, November 24, 2008Nézd a te gondolataidat, amik szavakká válnak.
Nézd a te szavaidat, amik tettekké válnak.
Nézd a te tetteidet, amik beidegződnek.
Nézd a te szokásaidat, amik szereplővé válnak.
Nézd a te szereplődet, ami a te végzeteddé válik.
Ess Pee on Monday, November 24, 2008_The majority of these conspiracies can be explained by watching Alex Jones: Endgame
Ryan on Tuesday, November 25, 2008Astute observers of history are aware that for every notable event there will usually be at least one, often several wild conspiracy theories which spring up around it. “The CIA killed Hendrix” “The Pope had John Lennon murdered”, “Hitler was half Werewolf”, “Space aliens replaced Nixon with a clone”, etc, etc. The bigger the event, the more ridiculous and more numerous are the fanciful rantings which circulate in relation to it.
So its hardly surprising that the events of Sept 11 2001 have spawned their fair share of these ludicrous fairy tales. And as always, there is—sadly—a small but gullible percentage of the population eager to lap up these tall tales, regardless of facts or rational analysis. One of the wilder stories circulating about Sept 11, and one that has attracted something of a cult following amongst conspiracy buffs is that it was carried out by 19 fanatical Arab hijackers, masterminded by an evil genius named Osama bin Laden, with no apparent motivation other than that they “hate our freedoms.”
Never a group of people to be bothered by facts, the perpetrators of this cartoon fantasy have constructed an elaborately woven web of delusions and unsubstantiated hearsay in order to promote this garbage across the internet and the media to the extent that a number of otherwise rational people have actually fallen under its spell.
Normally I don’t even bother debunking this kind of junk, but the effect that this paranoid myth is beginning to have requires a little rational analysis, in order to consign it to the same rubbish bin as all such silly conspiracy theories. These crackpots even contend that the extremist Bush regime was caught unawares by the attacks, had no hand in organizing them, and actually would have stopped them if it had been able.
Blindly ignoring the stand down of the US air-force, the insider trading on airline stocks—linked to the CIA, the complicit behavior of Bush on the morning of the attacks, the controlled demolition of the WTC, the firing of a missile into the Pentagon and a host of other documented proofs that the Bush regime was behind the attacks, the conspiracy theorists stick doggedly to a silly story about 19 Arab hijackers somehow managing to commandeer 4 planes simultaneously and fly them around US airspace for nearly 2 hours, crashing them into important buildings, without the US intelligence services having any idea that it was coming, and without the Air Force knowing what to do. The huge difficulties with such a stupid story force them to invent even more preposterous stories to distract from its core silliness, and thus the tale has escalated into a mythic fantasy of truly gargantuan proportions.
It’s difficult to apply rational analysis to such unmitigated stupidity, but that is the task which I take on in this article. However, it should be noted that one of the curious characteristics of conspiracy theorists is that they effortlessly change their so called evidence in response to each aspect which is debunked. As soon as one delusion is unmasked, they simply invent another to replace it, and deny that the first ever existed. Eventually, when they have turned full circle through this endlessly changing fantasy fog , they then re-invent the original delusion and deny that you ever debunked it, thus beginning the circle once more.
This technique is known as “the fruit loop” and saves the conspiracy theorist from ever having to see any of their ideas through to their (ill)logical conclusions. According to the practitioners of the fruit loop, 19 Arabs took over the 4 planes by subduing the passengers and crew through the use of guns,knives,box cutters and gas, and then used electronic guidance systems which they had smuggled on board to fly the planes to their targets.
The suspension of disbelief required for this outrageous concoction is only for the hard core conspiracy theorist. For a start, they conveniently skip over the awkward fact that there weren’t any Arabs on the planes. If there were, one must speculate that they somehow got on board without being filmed by any of the security cameras and without being registered on the passenger lists. But the curly question of how they are supposed to have got on board is all too mundane for the exciting world of the conspiracy theorist. With vague mumblings that they must have been using false ID ( but never specifying which IDs they are alleged to have used, or how these were traced to their real identities), they quickly bypass this problem, to relate exciting and sinister tales about how some of the fictitious fiends were actually searched before boarding because they looked suspicious.
However, as inevitably happens with any web of lies, this simply paints them into an even more difficult corner. How are they supposed to have got on board with all that stuff if they were searched? And if they used gas in a confined space, they would have been affected themselves unless they also had masks in their luggage. “Excuse me sir, why do you have a boxcutter, a gun, a container of gas, a gas mask and an electronic guidance unit in your luggage?” “A present for your grandmother? Very well sir, on you get.” “Very strange”, thinks the security officer. “That’s the fourth Arabic man without an Arabic name who just got on board with a knife, gun or boxcutter and gas mask. And why does that security camera keep flicking off every time one these characters shows up? Must be one of those days I guess...”
Asking any of these basic questions to a conspiracy theorist is likely to cause a sudden leap to the claim that we know that they were on board because they left a credit card trail for the tickets they had purchased and cars they had rented. So if they used credit cards that identified them, how does that reconcile with the claim that they used false IDs to get on to the plane? But by this time, the fruit loop is in full swing, as the conspiracy theorist
tries to stay one jump ahead of this annoying and awkward rational analysis.They will allege that the hijackers’ passports were found at the crash scenes. “So there!” they exalt triumphantly, their fanatical faces lighting up with that deranged look of one who has just a revelation of questionable sanity. Hmm? So they got on board with false IDs but took their real passports with them?
However, by this time the fruit loop has been completely circumnavigated,and the conspiracy theorist exclaims impatiently, “Who said anything about false IDs? We know what seats they were sitting in! Their presence is well documented!” And so the whole loop starts again. “Well, why aren’t they on the passenger lists?” “You numbskull! They assumed the identities of other passengers!” And so on…
Finally, out of sheer fascination with this circular method of creative delusion, the rational skeptic will allow them to get away with this loop, in order to move on to the next question, and see what further delights await us in the unraveling of this marvelously stupid story. “Uh, how come their passports survived fiery crashes that completely incinerated the planes and all the passengers? “
The answer of course is that its just one of those strange co- incidences, those little quirks of fate that do happen from time to time. You know, like the same person winning the lottery four weeks in a row. The odds are astronomical, but these things do happen…
This is another favorite deductive method of the conspiracy theorist. The “improbability drive”, in which they decide upon a conclusion without any evidence whatsoever to support it, and then continually speculate a series of wildly improbable events and unbelievable co-incidences to support it, shrugging off the implausibility of each event with the vague assertion that sometimes the impossible happens (just about all the time in their world).
There is a principle called “Occam’s razor” which suggests that in the absence of evidence to the contrary, the simplest explanation is most likely to be correct. Conspiracy theorists hate Occam’s razor. Having for the sake of amusement, allowed them to get away with with the silly story of the 19 invisible Arabs, we move on to the question of how they are supposed to have taken over the planes. Hijacking a plane is not an easy thing to do. Hijacking it without the pilot being able to alert ground control is near impossible. The pilot has only to punch in a four digit code to alert ground control to a hijacking.
Unconcerned with the awkward question of plausibility, the conspiracy buffs maintain that on that Sept 11, the invisible hijackers took over the plane by the rather crude method of threatening people with boxcutters and knives, and spraying gas (after they had attached their masks, obviously), but somehow took control of the plane without the crew first getting a chance to punch in the hijacking code. Not just on one plane, but on all four.
At this point in the tale, the conspiracy theorist is again forced to call upon the services of the improbability drive. So now that our incredibly lucky hijackers have taken control of the planes, all four pilots fly them with breath taking skill and certainty to their fiery end, all four pilots unflinching in their steely resolve for a swift meeting with Allah. Apart from their psychotic hatred of “our freedoms”, it was their fanatical devotion to Islam which enabled them to summon up the iron will to do this. Which is strange, because according to another piece of hearsay peddled by the conspiracy buffs, these guys actually went out drinking and womanizing the night before their great martyrdom, even leaving their Korans in the bar -really impeccable Islamic behavior—and then got up at 5am the next morning to pull off the greatest covert operation in history.
This also requires us to believe that they were even clear headed enough to learn how to fly the huge planes by reading flight manuals in Arabic in the car on the way to the airport. We know this because they supposedly left the flight manuals there for us to find. It gets better. Their practical training had allegedly been limited to Cessnas and flight simulators, but this was no barrier to the unflinching certainty with which they took over the planes and skillfully guided them to their doom. If they are supposed to have done their flight training with these tools, which would be available just about anywhere in the world, its not clear why they would have decided to risk blowing their cover to US intelligence services by doing the training in Florida, rather than somewhere in the Middle East, but such reasoning is foreign to the foggy world of the conspiracy theorist, too trapped in the constant rotation of the mental fruit loop to make their unsubstantiated fabrications seem even semi-believable.
Having triumphantly established a circular delusion in support of the mythical Arabs, the conspiracy theorist now confronts the difficult question of why there’s nothing left of the planes.
Anybody who has seen the endlessly replayed footage of the second plane going into the WTC will realize that the plane was packed with explosives. Planes do not and cannot blow up into nothing in that manner when they crash. Did the mythical Arabs also haul a huge heap of explosives on board, and mange to deploy them in such a manner that they went off in the exact instant of the crash, completely vaporizing the plane?
This is a little difficult even for the conspiracy theorist, who at this point decides that its easier to invent new laws of physics in order to keep the delusion rolling along. There weren’t any explosives. It wasn’t an inside job. The plane blew up into nothing from its exploding fuel load! Remarkable! Sluggishly combustible jet fuel which is basically kerosene,and which burns at a maximum temperature of around 800 C has suddenly taken on the qualities of a ferociously explosive demolition agent, vaporizing 65 tons of aircraft into a puff of smoke. Never mind that a plane of that size contains around 15 tons of steel and titanium, of which even the melting points are about double that of the maximum combustion temperature of kerosene—let alone the boiling point—which is what would be required to vaporize a plane. And then there’s about 50 tons of aluminum to be accounted for. In excess of 15lbs of metal for each gallon of kerosene.
For the conspiracy theorist, such inconvenient facts are vaguely dismissed as “mumbo jumbo”. This convenient little phrase is their answer to just about anything factual or logical. Like a conjurer pulling a rabbit out of a hat, they suddenly become fanatically insistent about the devastating explosive qualities of kerosene, something hitherto completely unknown to science, but just discovered by them, this very minute.
Blissfully ignoring the fact that never before or since in aviation history has a plane vaporized into nothing from an exploding fuel load, the conspiracy theorist relies upon Hollywood images, where the effects are are always larger than life, and certainly larger than the intellects of these cretins. “Its a well known fact that planes blow up into nothing on impact.” they state with pompous certainty. “Watch any Bruce Willis movie.” “Care to provide any documented examples? If it’s a well known fact, then presumably this well known fact springs from some kind of documentation—other than Bruce Willis movies?”
At this point the mad but cunning eyes of the conspiracy theorist will narrow as they sense the corner that they have backed themselves into, and plan their escape by means of another stunning backflip. “Ah, but planes have never crashed into buildings before, so there’s no way of telling.” they counter with a sly grin.
Well, actually planes have crashed into buildings before and since, and not vapurized into nothing. “But not big planes, with that much fuel “, they shriek in hysterical denial. Or that much metal to vaporize. “Yes but not hijacked planes!”
“Are you suggesting that whether the crash is deliberate or accidental affects the combustion qualities of the fuel?” “Now you’re just being silly”. Although collisions with buildings are rare, planes frequently crash into mountains, streets, other aircraft, nosedive into the ground,or have bombs planted aboard them, and don’t vaporize into nothing. What’s so special about a tower that’s mostly glass?
But by now, the conspiracy theorist has once again sailed happily around the fruit loop. “Its a well documented fact that planes explode into nothing on impact.” Effortlessly weaving back and forth between the position that its a “well known fact” and that “its never happened before, so we have nothing to compare it to”, the conspiracy theorist has now convinced themselves ( if not too many other people) that the WTC plane was not loaded with explosives, and that the instant vaporization of the plane in a massive fireball was the same as any other plane crash you might care to mention. Round and round the fruit. loop…
But the hurdles which confront the conspiracy theorist are many, and they are now forced to implement even more creative uses for the newly discovered shockingly destructive qualities of kerosene. They have to explain how the Arabs also engineered the elegant vertical collapse of both the WTC towers, and for this awkward fact the easiest counter is to simply deny that it was a controlled demolition, and claim that the buildings collapsed from fire caused by the burning kerosene. For this, its necessary to sweep aside the second law of thermodynamics and propose kerosene which is not only impossibly destructive, but also recycles itself for a second burning in violation of the law of degradation of energy.
You see, it not only consumed itself in a sudden catastrophic fireball, vaporizing a 65 ton plane into nothing, but then came back for a second go, burning at 2000C for another hour at the impact point, melting the skyscraper’s steel like butter. And while it was doing all this it also poured down the elevator shafts, starting fires all through the building.
When I was at school there was a little thing called the entropy law which suggests that a given portion of fuel can only burn once, something which is readily observable in the real world, even for those who didn’t make it to junior high school science. But this is no problem for the conspiracy theorist. Gleefully, they claim that a few thousand gallons of kerosene is enough to: completely vaporize a 65 ton aircraft: have enough left over to burn ferociously enough for over an hour at the impact point to melt steel ( melting point about double the maximum combustion temperature of the fuel ): still have enough left over to pour down the elevator shafts and start similarly destructive fires all through the building.
This kerosene really is remarkable stuff! How chilling to realize that those kerosene heaters we had in the house when I was a kid were deadly bombs, just waiting to go off. One false move and the entire street might have been vaporized. And never again will I take kerosene lamps out camping. One moment you’re there innocently holding the lamp—the next—kapow! Vaporized into nothing along with with the rest of the camp site, and still leaving enough of the deadly stuff to start a massive forest fire.
These whackos are actually claiming that the raging inferno allegedly created by the miraculously recycling, and impossibly hot burning kerosine melted or at least softened the steel supports of the skyscraper. Oblivious to the fact that the smoke coming from the WTC was black, which indicates an oxygen starved fire -therefore, not particularly hot, they trumpet an alleged temperature in the building of 2000 C, without a shred of evidence to support this curious suspension of the laws of physics. Not content with this ludicrous garbage, they then contend that as the steel frames softened, they came straight down instead of buckling and twisting and falling sideways.
Since they’re already re-engineered the combustion qualities of jet fuel, violated the second law of thermodynamics, and re-defined the structural properties of steel, why let a little thing like the laws of gravity get in the way?
The tower fell in a time almost identical to that of a free falling object, dropped from that height, meaning that its physically impossible for it to have collapsed by the method of the top floors smashing through the lower floors. But according to the conspiracy theorists, the laws of gravity were temporarily suspended on the morning of Sept 11.
It appears that the evil psychic power of those dreadful Arabs knew no bounds. Even after they were dead, they were able, by the power of their evil spirits, to force down the tower at a speed physically impossible under the laws of gravity, had it been meeting any resistance from fireproofed steel structures originally designed to resist many tons of hurricane force wind as well as the impact of a Boeing passenger jet straying off course.
Clearly, these conspiracy nuts never did their science homework at school, but did become extremely adept at inventing tall tales for why. “Muslim terrorists stole my notes, sir” “No miss, the kerosene heater blew up and vaporized everything in the street, except for my passport.” “You see sir, the schoolbus was hijacked by Arabs who destroyed my homework because they hate our freedoms.”
Or perhaps they misunderstood the term “creative science” and mistakenly thought that coming up with such rubbish was in fact, their science homework. The ferocious heat generated by this ghastly kerosene was, according to the conspiracy theorists, the reason why so many of the WTC victims can’t be identified. DNA is destroyed by heat. (Although 2000 C isn’t really required, 100C will generally do the job.)
This is quite remarkable, because according to the conspiracy theorist, the nature of DNA suddenly changes if you go to a different city. That’s right! If you are killed by an Arab terrorist in NY, your DNA will be destroyed by such temperatures. But if you are killed by an Arab terrorist in Washington DC, your DNA will be so robust that it can survive temperatures which completely vaporize a 65 ton aircraft.
You see, these loonies have somehow concocted the idea that the missile which hit the pentagon was not a missile at all, but one of the hijacked planes. And to prove this unlikely premise, they point to a propaganda statement from the Bush regime, which rather stupidly claims that all but one of the people aboard the plane were identified from the site by DNA testing, even though nothing remains of the plane. The plane was vaporized by the fuel tank explosion maintain these space loonies, but the people inside it were all but one identified by DNA testing.
So there we have it. The qualities of DNA are different, depending upon which city you’re in, or perhaps depending upon which fairy story you’re trying to sell at any particular time. This concoction about one of the hijacked planes hitting the Pentagon really is a howler. For those not familiar with the layout of the Pentagon, it consists of 5 rings of building, each with a space in between. Each ring of building is about 30 to 35 ft deep, with a similar amount of open space between it and the next ring. The object which penetrated the Pentagon went in at about a 45 degree angle, punching a neat circular hole of about a 12 ft diameter through three rings ( six walls).A little later
a section of wall about 65 ft wide collapsed in the outer ring. Since the plane which the conspiracy theorists claim to be responsible for the impact had a wing span of 125 ft and a length of 155 ft, and there was no wreckage of the plane, either inside or outside the building, and the lawns outside were still smooth and green enough to play golf on, this crazy delusion is clearly physically impossible.
But hey, we’ve already disregarded the combustion qualities of jet fuel, the normal properties of common building materials, the properties of DNA, the laws of gravity and the second law of thermodynamics, so what the hell—why not throw in a little spatial impossibility as well? I would have thought that the observation that a solid object cannot pass through another solid object without leaving a hole at least as big as itself is reasonably sound science. But to the conspiracy theorist, this is “mumbo jumbo”. It conflicts with the delusion that they’re hooked on, so it “must be wrong” although trying to get them to explain exactly how it could be wrong is a futile endeavor.
Conspiracy theorists fly into a curious panic whenever the Pentagon missile is mentioned.They nervously maintain that the plane was vaporized by it’s exploding fuel load and point to the WTC crash as evidence of this behavior. (That’s a wonderful fruit loop.)
Like an insect which has just been sprayed, running back and forth in its last mad death throes, they first argue that the reason the hole is so small is that the plane never entered the wall, having blown up outside, and then suddenly backflip to explain the 250 ft deep missile hole by saying that the plane disappeared all the way into the building, and then blew up inside the building (even though the building shows no sign of such damage). As for what happened to the wings—here’s where they get really creative. The wings snapped off and folded into the fuselage which then carried them into the building, which then closed up behind the plane like a piece of meat.
When it suits them, they’ll also claim that the plane slid in on its belly, (ignoring the undamaged lawn) while at the same time citing alleged witnesses to the plane diving steeply into the building from an “irrecoverable angle.”
How they reconcile these two scenarios as being compatible is truly a study in stupidity. Once they get desperate enough, you can be sure that the UFO conspiracy stuff will make an appearance.
The Arabs are in league with the Martians. Space aliens snatched the remains of the Pentagon plane and fixed most of the hole in the wall, just to confuse people. They gave the Arabs invisibility pills to help get them onto the planes. Little green men were seen talking to Bin Laden a few weeks prior to the attacks.
As the nation gears up to impeach the traitor Bush, and stop his perpetual oil war, it’s not helpful to have these idiots distracting from the process by spreading silly conspiracy theories about mythical Arabs, stories which do nothing but play into the hands of the extremist Bush regime.
At a less serious time, we might tolerate such crackpots with amused detachment, but they need to understand that the treachery that was perpetrated on Sept 11, and the subsequent war crimes committed in “retaliation” are far too serious for us to allow such frivolous self indulgence to go unchallenged.
Those who are truly addicted to conspiracy delusions should find a more appropriate outlet for their paranoia. Its time to stop loony conspiracy theories about Sept 11.
Ant on Tuesday, November 25, 2008Ryan, you have too much time on your hands.
Way too much.
N/A on Wednesday, November 26, 2008The New World Order is not a conspiracy theory, Bush Sr. said it himself on TV on several occasions that the governments of the world were steering towards a NWO.
Chemtrails, Global Warming, Concentration Camps (there are several in the US, but has everyone forgotten about Guantanamo ?) and more of these “theories” are not theories, but facts.
But i think most importantly of all, the “conspiracy” issue with 9/11 should not be ridiculed like this. Several architechts and other experts have concluded that at the very least, the two planes couldn’t have knocked down the towers, making the offical story untrue.
Live footage of firemen standing next to the base of the towers being rocked by a massive explosion, that could not have happen without the use of detonated explosives.
Molten steel caused by thermite at the base of the towers, giant steel rods precisely cut as if they had been set with explosives - and last but not least, the theory that the airplane fuel caused a structual failure is just ridiculous - anybody who looks at the footage will see that all the fuel is sent towards the sky in a flaming fireball when the plane hits the tower.
And even if the fuel had reached the core of the towers, it couldn’t have caused the steel to fail, because there wasnt enough fuel - and the fuel doesnt burn at high enough temperatures to melt steel.
And last but not least, the North American Union is already under way, why is being labelled as a conspiracy theory ? It’s even official ? The NAFTA highway, the Amero, border immigration issues, DEA & FBI being allowed to govern and police Canadian & Mexican citizens in certain situations (fx DEA in the case of Marc Emery aka. The Prince of Pot in Canada).
Taylor on Wednesday, November 26, 2008You forgot the biggest conspiracy; the bible.
steve wells on Wednesday, November 26, 2008Funny isn’t it? When in a time we call the truth conspiracy.
We are living in the matrix and everyone is too busy believing their TV’s to think and recognize all the impossible events that take place in these government spun conspiracies.
DaftMonk on Thursday, November 27, 2008Where are the reptilians?!
Antoinette on Friday, November 28, 2008I suck because I believe in all of these. Even the one about Elvis...oh well.
gotalife on Sunday, November 30, 2008Fnord.
Tyranny on Monday, December 01, 2008I love how you conveniently leave out certain FACTS to make the “conspiracy” seem more delusional. It’s quite clever.
I’ll take the smallest of the “Conspiracy Theories” and give a prime example. Lets take for instance Number 26: Plastic Coffins And Concentration Camps. You state, “the coffins are allegedly owned by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema)”. Yet, you fail to disprove that the “coffins” do not belong to FEMA. This should be a fairly simple task, but you obviously can not produce evidence of who DOES own the “coffins”. Also, you mention, “Conspiracy theorists believe that Fema has also set up several concentration camps in the US”. And you treat this as if it’s hearsay ... yet it’s clearly backed up by the REX-84 agenda passed by congress. These sites DO exist and with a tiny bit of investigative journalism it can be proved. Google REX-84 and see for yourself.
Conspiracy? Most definitely.
Theory? Not in the least.
Rich on Monday, December 08, 2008In Britain the government is spending £15billion on a system to record every email, text and phone call. We have the largest database of DNA in the world (3.5million people), with plans to record everybodys DNA. We have more surveillance cameras than anywhere in the world and they’re trying to force us to have ID cards and a biometric passport with fingerprint and an image of our retina’s.
As the above is more expensive than the our envolvement in Iraq and we’ve only had minor terrorist incidents, a person may suspect that all the above isn’t just to prevent terrorism but as a means of control.
