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KOMAZEC DARKO Lexicon theories 2

Conspiracy theory is a term that originally was a neutral descriptor for any claim of civil, criminal, or political conspiracy. However, it has become largely pejorative and used almost exclusively to refer to any which explains a historical or current event as the result of a secret plot by conspirators of almost superhuman power and cunning. Conspiracy theories are viewed with by scholars because they are rarely supported by any conclusive evidence and contrast with institutional analysis, which focuses on people's collective behavior in publicly known institutions, as recorded in scholarly material and media reports, to explain historical or current events, rather than speculate on the motives and actions of secretive coalitions of individuals. The term is therefore often used dismissively in an attempt to characterize a as outlandishly false and held by a person judged to be a or a group confined to the lunatic fringe. Such characterization is often the subject of dispute due to its possible unfairness and inaccuracy. According to political , conspiracy theories once limited to fringe audiences have become commonplace in . He argues that this has contributed to conspiracism emerging as a cultural phenomenon in the of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, and the possible replacement of by conspiracy as the dominant paradigm of political action in the public mind. According to anthropologists Todd Sanders and Harry G. West, "evidence suggests that a broad cross section of Americans today…gives credence to at least some conspiracy theories." Belief in conspiracy theories has therefore become a topic of interest for sociologists, psychologists and experts in folklore. Contents • 1 Terminology • 2 Types • 3 Conspiracism • 4 Criticism • 5 Controversy • 6 Study of conspiracism ○ 6.1 Psychological origins  6.1.1 Projection  6.1.2 Epistemic bias 3

 6.1.3 Clinical psychology ○ 6.2 Socio-political origins  6.2.1 Media tropes  6.2.2 Fusion • 7 Political use • 8 Fiction

1.Terminology The term "conspiracy theory" may be a neutral descriptor for any legitimate or illegitimate claim of civil, criminal or political conspiracy. To conspire means "to join in a secret agreement to do an unlawful or wrongful act or to use such means to accomplish a lawful end." However, conspiracy theory is also used to indicate a narrative genre that includes a broad selection of (not necessarily related) arguments for the existence of grand conspiracies. The word "theory" is, in this usage, sometimes considered to be more informal as in "speculation" or "" rather than mainstream . Also, the term conspiracy is typically used to indicate powerful figures, often of the Establishment, who are believed to be deceiving the population at large, as in political corruption. Although some conspiracies are not actually theories, they are often labeled as such by the general populace.The first recorded use of the phrase "conspiracy theory" dates from 1909. Originally it was a neutral term but during the political upheaval of the 1960s it acquired its current derogatory sense. It entered the supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary as late as 1997. The term "conspiracy theory" is frequently used by scholars and in popular culture to identify secret military, banking, or political actions aimed at "stealing" power, money, or freedom, from "the people". Less illustrious uses refer to folklore and and a variety of explanatory narratives which are constructed with methodological flaws.The term is also used in a pejorative sense to automatically dismiss claims that are deemed ridiculous, misconceived, paranoid, unfounded, outlandish or irrational. For example, the term "Watergate conspiracy theory" does not refer to the generally accepted version in which several participants actually were convicted of conspiracy, and others pardoned before any charges were filed, but to alternative and additional theories such as claims that that the source(s) of information called "Deep Throat" was a fabrication. Daniel Pipes, in an early essay "adapted from a study prepared for the CIA", attempted to define which beliefs distinguish 'the conspiracy mentality' from 'more conventional patterns of thought'. He defined them as: appearances deceive; conspiracies drive history; nothing is haphazard; the enemy always gains power, fame, money, and sex. 4

According to West and Sanders, when talking about conspiracies in the Vietnam era, Pipes includes within the fringe element anyone who entertains the thought that conspiracies played a role in the major political scandals and that rocked American politics in the Vietnam era. "He sees the paranoid style in almost any critical historical or social-scientific analysis of oppression." 2. Types Political scientist Michael Barkun has categorized, in ascending order of breadth, the types of conspiracy theories as follows: • Event conspiracy theories. The conspiracy is held to be responsible for a limited, discrete event or set of events. The conspiratorial forces are alleged to have focused their energies on a limited, well-defined objective. The best-known example in the recent past is the Kennedy conspiracy literature. • Systemic conspiracy theories. The conspiracy is believed to have broad goals, usually conceived as securing control of a country, a region, or even the entire world. While the goals are sweeping, the conspiratorial machinery is generally simple: a single, organization implements a plan to infiltrate and subvert existing institutions. This is a scenario in conspiracy theories that focus on the alleged machinations of , Freemasons, and the Catholic , as well as theories centered on international or international capitalists. • Superconspiracy theories. Conspiratorial constructs in which multiple conspiracies are believed to be linked together hierarchically. Event and systemic are joined in complex ways, so that conspiracies come to be nested together. At the summit of the conspiratorial hierarchy is a distant but all-powerful evil force manipulating lesser conspiratorial actors. Superconspiracy theories have enjoyed particular growth since the 1980s, in the work of authors such as , and Milton William Cooper. 3. Conspiracism A world view that centrally places conspiracy theories in the unfolding of history is sometimes termed "conspiracism". The historian Richard Hofstadter addressed the role of paranoia and conspiracism throughout American history in his essay The Paranoid Style in American Politics, published in 1964. Bernard Bailyn's classic The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution (1967) notes that a similar phenomenon could be found in America during the time preceding the American Revolution. Conspiracism then labels people's attitudes as well as the type of conspiracy theories that are more global and historical in proportion. The term conspiracism was popularized by academic Frank P. Mintz in the 1980s. Academic work in conspiracy theories and conspiracism presents a range of hypotheses as a basis of studying the genre. Among the leading scholars of conspiracism are: Hofstadter, Karl Popper, Michael Barkun, Alan Goldberg, Daniel Pipes, Mark Fenster, Mintz, , George Johnson, and . According to Mintz, conspiracism denotes: "belief in the primacy of conspiracies in the unfolding of history": 5

"Conspiracism serves the needs of diverse political and social groups in America and elsewhere. It identifies , blames them for economic and social catastrophes, and assumes that things will be better once popular action can remove them from positions of power. As such, conspiracy theories do not typify a particular epoch or ideology". Throughout human history, political and economic leaders genuinely have been the cause of enormous amounts of death and misery, and they sometimes have engaged in conspiracies while at the same time promoting conspiracy theories about their targets. Hitler and Stalin would be merely the most prominent examples; there have been numerous others. In some cases there have been claims dismissed as conspiracy theories that later proved to be true. The idea that history itself is controlled by large long-standing conspiracies is rejected by historian Bruce Cumings: "But if conspiracies exist, they rarely move history; they make a difference at the margins from time to time, but with the unforeseen consequences of a logic outside the control of their authors: and this is what is wrong with 'conspiracy theory.' History is moved by the broad forces and large structures of human collectivities." The term conspiracism is used in the work of Michael Kelly, , and Matthew N. Lyons.According to Berlet and Lyons, "Conspiracism is a particular narrative form of that frames demonized enemies as part of a vast insidious plot against the common good, while it valorizes the scapegoater as a hero for sounding the alarm". 4. Criticism Conspiracy theories are the subject of broad critique by academics, politicians, and the media. Perhaps the most contentious aspect of a conspiracy theory is the problem of settling a particular theory's to the satisfaction of both its proponents and its opponents. Particular accusations of conspiracy vary widely in their plausibility, but some common standards for assessing their likely truth value may be applied in each case: • Occam's razor - does the alternative story explain more of the evidence than the mainstream story, or is it just a more complicated and therefore less useful explanation of the same evidence? • Logic - do the proofs offered follow the rules of logic, or do they employ fallacies of logic? • Methodology - are the proofs offered for the argument well constructed, i.e., using sound methodology? Is there any clear standard to determine what evidence would prove or disprove the theory? • Whistleblowers - how many people – and what kind – have to be loyal conspirators? The more wide-ranging and pervasive the conspiracy is alleged to be, the greater the number of people would have to be involved in perpetrating it - is it credible that nobody involved has brought the affair to light? • Falsifiability - would it be possible to determine whether specific claims of the theory are false, or are they "unfalsifiable"? 6

Noam Chomsky, an academic critical of the United States establishment, contrasts conspiracy theory as more or less the opposite of institutional analysis, which focuses mostly on the public, long-term behaviour of publicly known institutions, as recorded in, e.g. scholarly documents or mainstream media reports, rather than secretive coalitions of individuals.[21] 5. Controversy Aside from controversies over the merits of particular conspiratorial claims, the general discussion of conspiracy theory is itself a matter of some public contention. The term "conspiracy theory" is considered by different observers to be a neutral description for a conspiracy claim, a pejorative term used to dismiss such a claim without examination, and a term that can be positively embraced by proponents of such a claim. The term may be used by some for arguments they might not wholly believe but consider radical and exciting. The most widely accepted sense of the term is that which popular culture and academic usage share, certainly having negative implications for a narrative's probable truth value. Conspiracy theorists on the are often dismissed as a "fringe" group, but evidence suggests that a broad cross section of Americans today—traversing ethnic, , education, occupation, and other divides—gives credence to at least some conspiracy theories. Given this popular understanding of the term, it can also be used illegitimately and inappropriately, as a means to dismiss what are in fact substantial and well-evidenced accusations. The legitimacy of each such usage will therefore be a matter of some controversy. Michael Parenti, in his 1996 essay which examines the role of progressive media in the use of the term, "The JFK Assassination II: Conspiracy Phobia On The Left", states, "It is an either-or world for those on the Left who harbor an aversion for any kind of conspiracy investigation: either you are a structuralist in your approach to politics or a 'conspiracist' who reduces historical developments to the machinations of secret , thereby causing us to lose sight of the larger systemic forces."

Structuralist or institutional analysis shows that the term is misused when it is applied to institutions acting in pursuit of their acknowledged goals, e.g. when a group of corporations engage in price- fixing to increase profits. Complications occurs for terms such as UFO, which literally means "unidentified flying object" but connotes alien spacecraft, a concept also associated with some conspiracy theories, and thus possessing a certain social stigma. Michael Parenti gives an example of the use of the term which underscores the conflict in its use. He states, "In most of its operations, the CIA is by definition a conspiracy, using covert actions and secret plans, many of which are of the most unsavory kind. What are covert operations if not conspiracies? At the same time, the CIA is an institution, a structural part of the national security state. In sum, the agency is an institutionalized conspiracy." 7

The term "conspiracy theory" is itself the object of a type of conspiracy theory, which argues that those using the term are manipulating their audience to disregard the topic under discussion, either in a deliberate attempt to conceal , or as dupes of more deliberate conspirators. When conspiracy theories are offered as official claims (e.g. originating from a governmental authority, such as an intelligence agency) they are not usually considered as conspiracy theories. For example, certain activities of the House Un- American Activities Committee may be considered to have been an official attempt to promote a conspiracy theory, yet its claims are seldom referred to as such. Further difficulties arise from ambiguity regarding the term theory. In popular usage, this term is often used to refer to unfounded or weakly-based speculation, leading to the idea that "It's not a conspiracy theory if it's actually true". 6. Study of conspiracism In 1936 American commentator H. L. Mencken wrote: The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts. He ascribes all his failure to get on in the world, all of his congenital incapacity and damfoolishness, to the machinations of assembled in Wall Street, or some other such den of infamy.[24]

Belief in conspiracy theories has become a topic of interest for sociologists, psychologists and experts in folklore since at least the 1960s, when the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy eventually provoked an unprecedented public response directed against the official version of the case as expounded in the Report of the . 6.1. Psychological origins According to some psychologists, a person who in one conspiracy theory tends to believe in others; a person who does not believe in one conspiracy theory tends not to believe another. This may be caused by differences in the information upon which parties rely in formulating their conclusions. Psychologists believe that the search for meaning is common in conspiracism and the development of conspiracy theories, and may be powerful enough alone to lead to the first formulating of the idea. Once cognized, and avoidance of may reinforce the belief. In a context where a conspiracy theory has become popular within a social group, communal may equally play a part. Some research carried out at the , UK suggests people may be influenced by conspiracy theories without being aware that their attitudes have changed. After reading popular conspiracy theories about the death of , , participants in this study correctly estimated how much their peers' attitudes had changed, but significantly underestimated how much their own attitudes had changed to become more in favor of the conspiracy theories. The 8 authors conclude that conspiracy theories may therefore have a 'hidden power' to influence people's beliefs. Humanistic psychologists argue that even if the behind the conspiracy is almost always perceived as hostile there is, often, still an element of reassurance in it, for conspiracy theorists, in part because it is more consoling to think that complications and upheavals in human affairs, at least, are created by human beings rather than factors beyond human control. Belief in such a cabal is a device for reassuring oneself that certain occurrences are not random, but ordered by a human intelligence. This renders such occurrences comprehensible and potentially controllable. If a cabal can be implicated in a sequence of events, there is always the hope, however tenuous, of being able to break the cabal's power - or joining it and exercising some of that power oneself. Finally, belief in the power of such a cabal is an implicit assertion of human dignity - an often unconscious but necessary affirmation that man is not totally helpless, but is responsible, at least in some measure, for his own destiny. 6.1.1 Projection Some historians have argued that there is an element of in conspiracism. This projection, according to the argument, is manifested in the form of attribution of undesirable characteristics of the self to the conspirators. Richard Hofstadter, in his essay The Paranoid Style in American Politics, stated that: ...it is hard to resist the conclusion that this enemy is on many counts the projection of the self; both the ideal and the unacceptable aspects of the self are attributed to him. The enemy may be the cosmopolitan intellectual, but the paranoid will outdo him in the apparatus of scholarship... the imitated Catholicism to the point of donning priestly vestments, developing an elaborate and an equally elaborate hierarchy. The emulates Communist cells and quasi-secret operation through "front" groups, and preaches a ruthless prosecution of the ideological war along lines very similar to those it finds in the Communist enemy. Spokesmen of the various fundamentalist anti-Communist "" openly express their admiration for the dedication and discipline the Communist cause calls forth. Hofstadter also noted that "sexual freedom" is a vice frequently attributed to the conspiracist's target group, noting that "very often the fantasies of true believers reveal strong sadomasochistic outlets, vividly expressed, for example, in the delight of anti-Masons with the cruelty of Masonic punishments." 6.1.2 Epistemic bias

Conspiracy theories are “ popular because ” no matter what they posit, they are all actually 9

comforting, because they all are models of radical .

—Novelist William Gibson, October 2007.

It is possible that certain basic human epistemic biases are projected onto the material under scrutiny. According to one study humans apply a 'rule of thumb' by which we expect a significant event to have a significant cause.[30] The study offered subjects four versions of events, in which a foreign president was (a) successfully assassinated, (b) wounded but survived, (c) survived with wounds but died of a heart attack at a later date, and (d) was unharmed. Subjects were significantly more likely to suspect conspiracy in the case of the 'major events' — in which the president died — than in the other cases, despite all other evidence available to them being equal. Connected with pareidolia, the genetic tendency of human beings to find patterns in coincidence, this allows the "discovery" of conspiracy in any significant event. Another epistemic 'rule of thumb' that can be misapplied to a mystery involving other humans is cui bono? (who stands to gain?). This sensitivity to the hidden motives of other people may be an evolved and universal feature of human . However, this is also a valid rule of thumb for detectives to use when generating a list of suspects to investigate. Used in this way "Who had the motive, means and opportunity?" is a perfectly valid use of this rule of thumb. 6.1.3 Clinical psychology For some individuals, an obsessive compulsion to believe, prove or re- tell a conspiracy theory may indicate one or more of several well- understood psychological conditions, and other hypothetical ones: paranoia, denial, schizophrenia, mean world syndrome.[31] 6.2 Socio-political origins represents conspiracy theories as the 'exhaust fumes of democracy', the unavoidable result of a large amount of information circulating among a large number of people. Other social commentators and sociologists argue that conspiracy theories are produced according to variables that may change within a democratic (or other type of) society. Conspiratorial accounts can be emotionally satisfying when they place events in a readily-understandable, moral context. The subscriber to the theory is able to assign moral responsibility for an emotionally troubling event or situation to a clearly-conceived group of individuals. Crucially, that group does not include the believer. The believer may then feel excused of any moral 10 or political responsibility for remedying whatever institutional or societal flaw might be the actual source of the dissonance. Where responsible behavior is prevented by social conditions, or is simply beyond the ability of an individual, the conspiracy theory facilitates the emotional discharge or closure that such emotional challenges (after Erving Goffman require. Like moral panics, conspiracy theories thus occur more frequently within communities that are experiencing social isolation or political dis-empowerment. Mark Fenster argues that "just because overarching conspiracy theories are wrong does not mean they are not on to something. Specifically, they ideologically address real structural inequities, and constitute a response to a withering civil society and the concentration of the ownership of the means of production, which together leave the political subject without the ability to be recognized or to signify in the public realm" (1999: 67). Sociological historian Holger Herwig found in studying German explanations for the origins of : Those events that are most important are hardest to understand, because they attract the greatest attention from myth makers and .

This normal process could be diverted by a number of influences. At the level of the individual, pressing psychological needs may influence the process, and certain of our universal mental tools may impose epistemic 'blind spots'. At the group or sociological level, historic factors may make the process of assigning satisfactory meanings more or less problematic. Alternatively, conspiracy theories may arise when evidence available in the public record does not correspond with the common or official version of events. In this regard, conspiracy theories may sometimes serve to highlight 'blind spots' in the common or official interpretations of events (Fenster, 1999). 6.2.1 Media tropes Media commentators regularly note a tendency in and wider culture to understand events through the prism of individual agents, as opposed to more complex structural or institutional accounts. If this is a true observation, it may be expected that the audience which both demands and consumes this emphasis itself is more receptive to personalized, dramatic accounts of social phenomena. A second, perhaps related, media trope is the effort to allocate individual responsibility for negative events. The media have a tendency to start to seek culprits if an event occurs that is of such significance that it does not drop off the news agenda within a few days. Of this trend, it has been said that the concept of a pure accident is no longer permitted in a news item. Again, if this is a true observation, it may reflect a real change in how the media consumer perceives negative events. Hollywood motion pictures and television shows perpetuate and enlarge belief in conspiracy as a standard functioning of corporations and governments. Feature films such as and Shooter, 11 among scores of others, propound conspiracies as a normal state of affairs, having dropped the idea of questioning conspiracies typical of movies of eras prior to about 1970. Shooter even contains the line, "that is how conspiracies work" in reference to the JFK . Interestingly, movies and television shows do the same as the news media in regard to personalizing and dramatizing issues which are easy to involve in conspiracy theories. Coming Home converts the huge problem of the returning injured soldier into the chance that the injured soldier will fall in love, and when he does, the strong implication is that the larger problem is also solved. This factor is a natural outcome of Hollywood script development which wishes to highlight one or two major characters which can be played by major stars, and thus a good way of marketing the movie is established but that rings false upon examination. Further, the necessity to serve up a dubiously justified happy ending, although expected by audiences, actually has another effect of heightening the sense of falseness and contrived stories, underpinning the public's loss of belief in virtually anything any mass media says. Into the vacuum of that loss of belief falls explanation by conspiracy theory. Too, the act of dramatizing real or fictional events injects a degree of falseness or contrived efforts which media savvy people today can identify easily. "News" today is virtually always dramatized, at least by pitting "one side" against another in the fictional journalistic concept that all stories must contain "both sides" (as though reality could be reduced to two sides) or by using more intensive dramatic developments similar to feature movies. That is, by obvious dramatizing, the media reinforces the idea that all things are contrived for someone's gain which could be another definition of, at least, political conspiracies theories. --Dr. Charles Harpole in "History of American Cinema" Scribner/U. Calif Press. 6.2.2 Fusion paranoia Michael Kelly, a Post journalist and critic of anti-war movements on both the left and right, coined the term "fusion paranoia" to refer to a political convergence of left-wing and right- wing activists around anti-war issues and civil liberties, which he claimed were motivated by a shared belief in conspiracism or anti- government views. Social critics have adopted this term to refer to how the synthesis of paranoid conspiracy theories, which were once limited to American fringe audiences, has given them mass appeal and enabled them to become commonplace in mass media, thereby inaugurating an unrivaled period of people actively preparing for apocalyptic millenarian scenarios in the United States of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. They warn that this development may not only fuel lone wolf terrorism but have devastating effects on American political life, such as the rise of a revolutionary right-wing populist movement capable of subverting the established political powers. Daniel Pipes wrote in a 2004 Jerusalem Post article titled Fusion Paranoia: 12

Fears of a petty conspiracy – a political rival or business competitor plotting to do you harm – are as old as the human psyche. But fears of a grand conspiracy – that the or Jews plan to take over the world – go back only 900 years and have been operational for just two centuries, since the French Revolution. Conspiracy theories grew in importance from then until World War II, when two arch-conspiracy theorists, Hitler and Stalin, faced off against each other, causing the greatest blood-letting in human history. This hideous spectacle sobered Americans, who in subsequent decades relegated conspiracy theories to the fringe, where mainly two groups promoted such ideas.

The politically disaffected: Blacks (, Cynthia McKinney), the hard Right (John Birch Society, ), and other alienated elements (Ross Perot, Lyndon LaRouche). Their theories imply a political agenda, but lack much of a following. The culturally suspicious: These include "Kennedy assassinologists," "ufologists," and those who believe a reptilian race runs the and alien installations exist under the earth's surface. Such themes enjoy enormous popularity (a year 2000 poll found 43 percent of Americans believing in UFOs), but carry no political agenda. The major new development, reports Barkun, professor of political in the Maxwell School at Syracuse University, is not just an erosion in the divisions between these two groups, but their joining forces with occultists, persons bored by . Occultists are drawn to what Barkun calls the "cultural dumping ground of the heretical, the scandalous, the unfashionable, and the dangerous" – such as , Theosophy, alternative , , and . Thus, the author who worries about the Secret Service taking orders from the Bavarian Illuminati is old school; the one who worries about a " Reptilian-Bavarian Illuminati" takeover is at the cutting edge of the new synthesis. These bizarre notions constitute what Michael Kelly termed "fusion paranoia," a promiscuous absorption of fears from any source whatsoever.[36] 7. Political use Conspiracy theories exist in the realm of myth, where imaginations run wild, fears trump facts, and evidence is ignored. As a superpower, the United States is often cast as a villain in these dramas. America.gov

In his two volume work The Open Society and Its Enemies Popper used the term "conspiracy theory" to criticize the ideologies driving , , and communism. Popper argued that was founded on "conspiracy theories" which drew on imaginary plots driven by paranoid scenarios predicated on tribalism, chauvinism, or . Popper did not argue against the existence of everyday conspiracies (as incorrectly suggested in much of the later literature). Popper even uses the term "conspiracy" to describe ordinary political 13 activity in the classical Athens of (who was the principal target of his attack in The Open Society & Its Enemies). In his critique of the twentieth century totalitarians, Popper wrote, "I do not wish to imply that conspiracies never happen. On the contrary, they are typical social phenomena." He reiterated his point, "Conspiracies occur, it must be admitted. But the striking fact which, in spite of their occurrence, disproved the conspiracy theory is that few of these conspiracies are ultimately successful. Conspirators rarely consummate their conspiracy." 8. Fiction Because of their dramatic potential, conspiracies are a popular theme in thrillers and . Complex history is recast as a morality play in which bad people cause bad events, and good people identify and defeat them. Fictional conspiracy theories offer neat, intuitive narratives, in which the conspirators' plot fits closely the dramatic needs of the story's plot. As mentioned above, the cui bono? aspect of conspiracy theories resembles one element of mystery stories: the search for a possibly hidden motive. Dr. Strangelove was a 1964 comedy about modern . The end of the world is precipitated by the of General Jack D. Ripper who happens to be in control of a SAC nuclear air wing. General Ripper believes there is a Communist conspiracy which threatens to "sap and impurify" the "precious bodily fluids" of the American people with fluoridated water. Conspiracy Theory is a 1997 thriller about a taxi driver (played by Mel Gibson) who publishes a newsletter in which he discusses what he suspects are government conspiracies, and it turns out that one or more of them are true. The X-Files was a popular television show during the 1990s and early 2000s, which primarily followed the investigations of two FBI agents, and , who were sometimes helped by a group of conspiracy theorists known as The Lone Gunmen. Many of the episodes dealt with a plot for overseen by elements of the U.S. government, led by an individual known only as the and an even more mysterious international "". The famous tag line of the series, "The Truth Is Out There", can be interpreted as reference to the meaning-seeking nature of the genre discussed above. 's novel Foucault's Pendulum is a broad on conspiracism in which the characters attempt to construct an all-embracing conspiracy theory starting with the Templars and including the Bavarian Illuminati, the Rosicrucians, enthusiasts, the Cathars, and the Jesuits. The three-part novel Illuminatus! by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson (published in 1975) is a highly satirical, psychedelic novel dealing with complex, Byzantine conspiracies nested within other larger conspiracies—with the scale of the plots and the audacity of their plotters expanding to enfold more and more minds as the story progresses, evolving to wrap itself around many extant conspiracy theories such as the ones revolving around the Bavarian Illuminati, the Masons, the Vatican, the Mafia, governments large and small, and 14 fringe groups of both left and right-wing persuasions. Their plottings merge with the overarching plans of several fictitious organizations— and also an actual "" which conceives of itself as a joke (the Discordians.) In an ironic twist of fate, Illuminatus! may have even caused the development of a real-world Discordian society (which manifests in loose clusters of affiliation, rather than as any formalized group) when the novel's success as a countercultural mainstay brought the "holy writ" of the Discordians, the Principia Discordia, out of obscurity over the final three decades of the twentieth century. Shea and Wilson used witty quotes drawn from this comedic pamphlet glorifying Eris, the Greek goddess of chaos and discord, as opening lines for chapters of the Illuminatus! books. Conspiracy theories have even influenced video games. The critically acclaimed RPG/shooter Deus Ex, and its sequel (albeit to a lesser degree), Deus Ex: Invisible War, draw upon current-day conspiracy theories such as , , and the Illuminati. Other novels, such as Dan Brown's 2000 controversial book "Angels and Demons" have also popularized the idea of conspiracy theories. The book surrounds the quest of Robert Langdon, a fictional symbologist who is bent on uncovering the mysteries of a known as the Illuminati. Brown's novel, and others alike, harp on the ideas of the unknown, a life source for conspiracy theorists. Michael Barkun, a political scientist specializing in the study of conspiracism in American culture, notes that a vast popular audience has been introduced by the 1997 film Conspiracy Theory to the notion that the U.S. government is controlled by a secret team in black helicopters - a view once confined to right-wing extremists. The Da Vinci Code is a 2003 mystery-detective fiction novel written by an American author, Dan Brown. It follows symbologist Robert Langdon and Sophie Neveu as they investigate a murder in Paris's Louvre Museum and discover a Conspiracy surrounding the possibility of Christ of Nazareth having been married to Mary Magdalene.

List of conspiracy theories

The list of conspiracy theories is a collection of the most popular theories related but not limited to clandestine government plans, elaborate murder plots, suppression of secret technology and , and other supposed schemes behind certain political, cultural, and historical events. While a 15 conspiracy is defined by law as an agreement between two or more people to commit a crime, fraud, or other wrongful act, a conspiracy theory attempts to attribute the ultimate cause of an event (usually major political, social, historical, or cultural events), chain of events, or the concealment of causes from public knowledge, to a secret and often deceptive plan by a group of people or organizations. Such theories usually go against a general consensus or cannot be proven using the historical method. Purposely excluded from this list are proven historical conspiracies, e.g. the conspiracy to assassinate U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and members of his cabinet in 1865. Contents • 1 Order ○ 1.1 System • 2 operations • 3 Wars • 4 Coups d'état • 5 Official Conspiracy Theories • 6 Assassinations ○ 6.1 • 7 Technology and weapons ○ 7.1 Suppression of technologies ○ 7.2 Development of weapons technology ○ 7.3 Weapons testing ○ 7.4 , and intelligence agencies • 8 Media ○ 8.1 DTV Transition • 9 Medicine ○ 9.1 Drug legalization ○ 9.2 Chemtrails ○ 9.3 Diet ○ 9.4 Creation of diseases ○ 9.5 Water fluoridation ○ 9.6 Traditional, Natural and Alternative • 10 Peak Oil 16

• 11 Secret societies • 12 Ethnicity and race ○ 12.1 Armenian International Conspiracy ○ 12.2 Jewish world domination ○ 12.3 Arab-Israeli relations ○ 12.4 "Babylon" and racist oppression ○ 12.5 ○ 12.6 Arab- axis ○ 12.7 La Reconquista () ○ 12.8 Baha'i ○ 12.9 The Plan • 13 activity ○ 13.1 Evil aliens ○ 13.2 Extraterrestrials • 14 Religion ○ 14.1 Apocalyptic prophecies ○ 14.2 conspiracy theory ○ 14.3 Catholicism a veiled continuation of Babylonian paganism ○ 14.4 Jerusalem Temple Candelabrum in the Vatican cellars • 15 Miscellaneous

1.New World Order This conspiracy theory states that a small group of international elites controls and manipulates governments, industry, and media organizations worldwide. The primary tool they use to dominate nations is the system of central banking. They are said to have funded and in some cases caused most of the major wars of the last 200 years, carry out false flag attacks to manipulate populations into supporting them, and they have a grip on the world economy, deliberately causing inflation and depressions at will. Operatives working for the New World Order are said to be placed in high positions in government and industry. The people behind the New World Order are thought to be international bankers, in particular the owners of the private banks in the Federal Reserve System and other central banks, and members of the Council on Foreign Relations, and 17

Bilderberg Group.[2] The New World Order is also said to control supranational and global organizations such as the , , , International Monetary Fund and the proposed . The term gained popularity following its use in the early 1990s, first by President George H. W. Bush when he referred to his "dream of a New World Order" in his speech to the on September 11, 1990, and second by David Rockefeller in a statement to the United Nations Business Council in September 1994, sometimes cited as evidence that the New World Order had a motive for carrying out the September 11, 2001 attacks:"We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis and the nations will accept the New World Order." The concept of this shadow government predates 1990; it is accused of being the same group of people who, among other things, created the Federal Reserve Act (1913), supported the Bolshevik Revolution (1917), and supported the rise of the in , all for their own agenda. The World Bank and national central banks are said to be the tools of the New World Order; war generates massive profits for central banks because government spending (hence borrowing at interest from the central banks) increases dramatically in times of war. Many conspiracy theorists believe that International Airport is the western U.S. headquarters of the New World Order, and a massive underground base and city is believed to exist underneath the airport. Reasons for this include the airport's unusually large size (larger than some major cities), distance from the Denver, city center, and the set of bizarre murals depicting burning cities, gas-mask wearing soldiers, girls in coffins, Masonic symbols and strange writing. It is believed that secret fleets of black helicopters are ready to take control when the New World Order is set up. 1.1 Federal Reserve System The New World Order is said to control the wealth of nations through central banks, via the issuance of currency. The Federal Reserve System is the central bank of the United States, though not a part of the government, created in 1913. There is a theory that the Federal Reserve System is designed to transfer wealth from the poor and middle classes of the United States to the international bankers of the New World Order. 2. False flag operations False flag operations are covert operations conducted by governments, corporations, or other organizations, which are designed to appear as if they are being carried out by other 18 entities. Numerous conspiracy theories have developed suggesting that false flag operations have been carried out throughout the 20th century, and the of the true nature of the events have been maintained by successful cover-ups. The following are some attacks that are believed by some to be examples of false flag attacks: • The sinking of the RMS Lusitania was provoked in order to put the United States into World War I. • On February 27, 1933, the German parliament, the Reichstag building, was subject to an arson attack; this is seen as the pivotal event for the appropriation of authoritarian power by the government of . Several leading German historians concluded that the fire was a secret Nazi operation for which the Nazis then blamed a communist. • Gulf of Tonkin incident was a to start the Vietnam War. • Pearl Harbor advance-knowledge debate • Flight 103 conspiracy theories . • Columbine conspiracy theories . • Korean Air Lines Flight 007 , a political thriller novel suggests that the 1983 shoot-down of a 747 was plotted by U.S. and Soviet military and political figures in order to capture Larry McDonald. • The 1993 World Trade Center bombing was allegedly orchestrated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation. • Martin Bryant , the perpetrator of the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, is said to have been framed, and that the massacre was engineered by the Australian government in order to facilitate gun control. • Former GRU officer Aleksey Galkin, former FSB officer Alexander Litvinenko and other defectors from the Russian government and security services have asserted that the 1999 Russian apartment bombings, which precipitated the Second Chechen War, were false flag operations perpetrated by the FSB, the successor organization to the KGB. • Many 9/11 conspiracy theories have been presented to explain the September 11, 2001 attacks, many of them claiming that individuals in the United States government knew about the attacks beforehand and purposefully allowed them to occur, or orchestrated the attacks themselves, as a pretext for the "War on Terror", wars in Afghanistan and , increased militarization, expansion of the police state, and other intrusive foreign and domestic policies by which they would 19

benefit. If they did orchestrate the attacks themselves, the hijackers would in reality be agents of the U.S. government carrying out the operation for political purposes. Proponents point to the Project for the New American Century, a conservative think tank that argues for increased American global leadership, whose former members include ex- Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, former Vice President Dick Cheney and several other key Bush administration figures. A 2000 report from the group stated that "some catastrophic and catalyzing event — like a new Pearl Harbor" would be needed as a pretext for carrying out their plans for "United States global hegemony" in the 21st century. The 9/11 Truth Movement is the self-bestowed name of those who seek the purported "truth" about 9/11. • Rumours and conspiracy theories about the July 2005 bombings allege that intelligence services were behind the attacks. 3. Wars The motivations for nations starting, entering, or ending wars are often brought into question by conspiracy theorists. Munitions suppliers are often blamed[11] for devising, coordinating and precipitating the events that lead nations into war, either in part or in toto. According to this view, there is always a party within a nation that benefits from war, on whatever pretext: the suppliers of weapons and other military material. President Dwight Eisenhower referred to this source of potential conflict of interest as the military-industrial complex. President Abraham Lincoln is known to have made a similar observation near the close of the American Civil War. Related is the allegation that certain wars which are claimed by politicians to be in the national interest, or for humanitarian purposes, are in fact motivated by the conquest and control of natural resources for commercial interest. In the Spanish- American War, the explosion of the USS prompted the United States annexation of , the Philippines, and Guam. Opponents of the war, such as Mark Twain and , claimed that it was being fought for imperialist motives. A war planned for economic gain can be seen as a conspiracy in the conventional sense of a secret plot — particularly when the public is presented with false pretexts for war. It has also been suggested that war is a perfect way of distracting citizens, as an electoral tactic, from difficulties facing the current government. This premise is the basis of the film Wag the Dog, and the George Orwell novel 1984. Some have claimed[who?] that this 20 was the motivation behind the Falklands War. At that time the National Reorganization Process, the right-wing that ruled between 1976 and 1983, was facing increasing discontent among the population and this may have contributed to the decision to invade the Falkland Islands. In many cases, critics have accused the U.S. of engaging in realpolitik in the cynical sense of political action without regard for principle or morals. In recent times, wars in the Middle East such as the Gulf War and the invasion of Iraq have been described as wars for oil. 4. Coups d'état Governments, particularly the United States government, have been accused of carrying out false flag coups d'état, in order to install friendly governments in foreign countries. Some of these have since been acknowledged - such as Operation Ajax (1953), a covert coup to topple the democratically elected leaders of . Some other coups that some believe may have been actively supported by the United States government include the following: • 1958 Pakistani coup d'état . • 1963 The Kennedy assassination (President John F. Kennedy) • 1965 30 September Movement. • 1968 Robert F. Kennedy assassination (presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy). • 1973 Chilean coup d'état The Augusto Pinochet regime takeover in and the death of president Salvador Allende in the coup bombing of the La Moneda presidential palace. Declassified documents confirmed the U.S. intervention.[12] • 1975 Bangladeshi coup d'état . • 1975 Gough Whitlam – theory that the dismissal of Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam by Governor-General John Kerr was brought about by U.S. intelligence operatives unhappy with Whitlam's economic, social and foreign policies.[citation needed]

• 1977 Pakistani coup d'état . • 1980 Turkish coup d'état . • 1991 Haiti coup d'état . • 1992 Venezuelan coup d'état attempts . • 1998 Indonesian Revolution . • 2000 The overthrow of Yugoslavia (Serbian) president Slobodan Milošević, see Overthrow of Slobodan Milošević. 21

• 2002 Venezuelan coup d'état attempt . 5. Official Conspiracy Theories Some conspiracy theories have been advanced by governmental organizations. • 1947 International Communist Conspiracy • 1968 Conspiracy Trial • 1998 Vast Right Wing Conspiracy 6. Assassinations Conspiracy theories sometimes emerge following assassinations of prominent people. The best known is the assassination of John F. Kennedy (1963), which has caused a number of conspiracy theories to develop. Central to this theory is the claim that the injuries received by Kennedy and Governor could not have been caused by a lone gunman behind the motorcade and to the right. This theory was popularised by the movie, JFK. Three polls conducted in 2003 suggest that there is widespread disbelief among the U.S. public about the official story of a lone gunman between 68% and 83%.The assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy, King, Jr. and are also the subject of conspiracy theories. In many cases, it is asserted that a "Manchurian candidate" may have been used. Often evidence for such theories includes the reactions by individuals and government agencies following the events, such as the creation of biased commissions to conduct official investigations. The question of "Who benefits?" is also often asked, with conspiracy theorists asserting that insiders often have far more powerful motives than those to whom the assassination is attributed by mainstream society. Earlier examples of assassinations about which there are conspiracy theories include those of Abraham Lincoln and Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. The assassinations of historical figures, such as Eric V of Denmark and Tsarevich Dmitry Ivanovich of Russia remain subject to conspiracy theories. More recent examples include those of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Carrero Blanco, Benigno Aquino, Jr., Olof Palme, Yitzhak Rabin, Alexander Litvinenko and Benazir Bhutto. Some deaths that are officially recorded as accident, suicide or natural causes are also the subject of some conspiracy theories. Examples include the car crash that killed Diana, Princess of Wales and in 1997, the death of John F. Kennedy Jr. in a plane crash in 1999, and the death of Senator Paul Wellstone in a plane crash in 2002. Other examples include: the suicide of Deputy Counsel Vincent Foster; the plane crash that 22 killed United States Secretary of Commerce ; the Mayerling Incident; and the deaths of U.S. Presidents Zachary Taylor and Lyndon B. Johnson, Władysław Sikorski, James Forrestal, British political leader Hugh Gaitskell, Australian prime minister Harold Holt, James P. Brady, prime minister Norman Kirk, and David Kelly. There are also theories about untimely deaths of celebrities, the number one example arguably being the death of Monroe, but also Sam Cooke, Brian Jones, Tupac Shakur, Christopher Wallace, Jimi Hendrix, , Jeff Buckley, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Elvis Presley, Bob Marley, John Lennon, and more recently Michael Jackson. There are also theories that some assassination attempts have been carried out by secret conspiracies, in some cases failures but in other cases entirely staged events. The motive for staging an unsuccessful assassination attempt can be to augment the popularity of the person involved; public opinion polls tend to be boosted by unsuccessful attempts on the life of a prominent politician. There have been numerous unsuccessful attempts to assassinate U.S. Presidents. Some of them, such as the attempted assassinations of Gerald Ford, and George H. W. Bush have aroused suspicion from conspiracy theorists that the events might have been staged. In India there are several conspiracy theories circulating about the 1945 death of pro-Axis Indian nationalist leader Subhas Chandra Bose - that he did not die in an accident, as officially claimed, but was assassinated; that he did not die at that time, but much later; or that he is still alive and hidden somewhere.

6.1 Clinton Body Count The Clinton Body Count, as it is popularly known, is a conspiracy theory that , while he was president and before, was quietly assassinating his associates (ostensibly anyone who got in the way of his career, such as ). It was started as a retaliation to the Bush Body Count (which ostensibly had various members of the Bush family responsible for events like JFK assassination and the October surprise merrily killing lesser co-conspirators on their way). The Clinton Body Count is a list of about 50-60 associates of Clinton who have died "under mysterious circumstance". The list began circulating over the Internet starting in the mid-1990s. The list grew out of a 1993 list of about 24 names prepared by the pro-gun lobby group American Justice Federation [18] which was led by Linda Thompson. 23

The list was posted to the group's Bulletin board system.[19] .com has debunked this list, noting 1) many of those claimed to be assassinated actually died from very well documented accidents that leave no possibility of assassination 2) a political figure who becomes President of the United States will have a loosely defined circle of "associates", and many of these associates are in dangerous positions (police officers, pilots, soldiers) or older men in high stress jobs (therefore at greater risk of dying of stress related disease or suicide). 7. Technology and weapons 7.1 Suppression of technology • Avro Arrow —Cancellation of this system. • Termination of rocket experiments at Cuxhaven . • Vril Society Conspiracy which suggests that a secret form of , called "Vril", is used and controlled by a secret subterranean society of matriarchal socialist utopian superior beings. The theory also claims that Nazi Germany used this technology to create advanced aircraft (flying saucers). • A typical suppressed invention story is that of the incredibly efficient automobile carburetor, whose inventor was supposedly killed or hounded into obscurity by petroleum companies desirous to protect their business from an engine that would make their product obsolete. It has been claimed that the Elsbett diesel engine running on plant oil had to put up against unfair competition practices. • The documentary Who Killed the Electric Car? alleged that electric car technology has been largely suppressed by big oil and gas firms. The first suppression of such occurred shortly after the turn of the 20th century (in 1899 the world's land speed record was set by an electric car at 65 mph); the second time was in 1913-1914 when the same interests sabotaged 's and Thomas Edison's attempt to produce an 'inexpensive' electric car. This activity, and further industry conspiracies to rid the U.S. of the electric trolley system and electric trains, are documented in the book Internal Combustion, by Edwin Black. • Nikola Tesla has been the object of several conspiracy theories, with claims relating to revolutionary energy generation and distribution technologies which may or may not have been utilised by "HAARP", an American military- funded research program. While the technology Tesla 24

discovered was real and exists today, his discoveries have often been linked to such as Wilhelm Reich's "" generator which was supposedly suppressed by the establishment. • The Phoebus cartel set up in 1924 certainly seems to have stopped competition in the light bulb industry for some years, and has been accused of preventing technological advances that would have produced longer-lasting light bulbs. However, the Phoebus cartel also features in 's fictional 's Rainbow, which has led some to blur fact and fiction. • Free energy suppression 7.2 Development of weapons technology • - A supposed attempt to turn a U.S. Navy warship invisible that allegedly caused severe harm to on-board crew members. According to official sources, the experiment's actual goal was only to make the ship invisible to torpedoes, through degaussing technology and other methods. • - A continuation of the Philadelphia Experiment, the Montauk Project would put government trained (Duncan Cameron) into a program with the intent of mind control, , and even mental manifestation. Although denied by the government, a few (Preston Nichols, Al Bielek) have given lectures and written books on the subject. • High Frequency Auroral Research Program theory claims that HAARP could be used as directed-energy weapon, weather control, earthquake induction device and/or for mind control. • It has been speculated that the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami may have been caused intentionally by a "tsunami bomb" - a detonated in a strategic position under the ocean. Some reason that the technology is at least feasible since research into such technology has been conducted by the military as far back as World War II. According to declassified files, top-secret "tsunami bomb" experiments utilising explosions to trigger "mini-tidal waves" were conducted off the coast of New Zealand in 1944 and 1945.[23] The U.S. Defense Department had even expressed concern about earthquake-inducing technology in warfare well before the 2004 disaster. In 1997 Defense Secretary William S. Cohen stated, "Others are engaging even in an eco-type of 25

terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves. So there are plenty of ingenious minds out there that are at work finding ways in which they can wreak terror upon other nations. It's real, and that's the reason why we have to intensify our efforts, and that's why this is so important." • Chemtrail theory : Clouds behind aircraft, having the general appearance of contrails, but alleged to be chemical spraying performed for some secretive purpose. 7.3 Weapons testing • Peter Vogel 's book The Last Wave from Port Chicago argues that the Port Chicago disaster was an accidental detonation or intentional test of a nuclear weapon on ships manned by (mostly African American) U.S. sailors. • A ubiquitous and persistent rumour in Cameroon has it that the Lake Nyos carbon dioxide disaster of 1986 was caused by the U.S. or French (depending on the version) military testing a secret bomb in the lake. • According to some theories the crashes of Arrow DC8 and TWA800 were caused by a secret electromagnetic directed- energy weapon. • Contention lingers over the continuing after-effects of secret British nuclear testing at Maralinga, South during the 1950s. • The Venezuelan state-run TV station ViVe has claimed that the was caused by US government weapons testing, and a government cover-up took place.[28] 7.4 Surveillance, espionage and intelligence agencies Particular technologies of surveillance and control arouse concern that has bordered upon, or crossed over into, conspiracy theory. These are technologies being developed by governments which are intended to intrude into the privacy or harm the persons of citizens, particularly dissenters. Conspiracy theories of this sort cast government agencies as pursuing vast technical powers in order to spy on people, control their minds, or otherwise suppress an alienated populace. The plausibility of establishing such surveillance capabilities, by technical means or by a widespread network of informants, should perhaps be viewed in the context of events in former Eastern bloc countries, particularly the activities of the East German Stasi before the fall of the Berlin Wall. The various services provided by 26 have also been considered to invade people's privacy, thus enabling intelligence agencies to monitor their activities. Many governments use intelligence agencies to promote national policies in secretive ways — in several cases including the use of sabotage, , and assassination. Intelligence agencies, such as the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), KGB, MI6, BND, Inter-Services Intelligence, Internal Security Act (ISA) and Mossad, are a common element of political conspiracy theories precisely because they are known to participate in some activities similar to those described in conspiracy theories.[29] Indeed, conspiracy theories about espionage agencies go back at least as far as the 17th century, with allegations the English spymaster Robert Cecil was responsible for the Gunpowder plot of 1605. Some examples include the Pine Gap satellite tracking system in Australia, which is believed by some to be a global database used to track individuals Big Brother style, and the Government Warehouse, which is a conspiracy that alleges that the government has secret warehouses which contain articles that they do not want people to know about. Numerous theories have been put forward surrounding Korean Air Lines Flight 007, a Boeing 747, carrying 269 people including anti-communist Cong. Larry McDonald. KAL 007 was shot down near Moneron Island by the Soviet military after it strayed into prohibited airspace in 1983.[30] These theories started in a era of heightened tensions and mutual distrust, and have been fanned by subsequent misinformation, , suppression of evidence and political events. 8. Media 8.1 DTV Transition Some theorists claim that forced transition to digital television broadcasting is practical realization of "Big Brother" concept. They claim that miniature cameras and microphones are built into Set-top boxes and newer TV sets to spy on people. Another claim describes use of mind control technology that would be hidden in the digital signal and used to subvert the mind and feelings of the people and for subliminal advertising.

9. Medicine The subject of suppressed-invention conspiracy also touches on the realm of medical : proponents of more unlikely forms 27 of are known to allege conspiracy by mainstream doctors to suppress their cures. Such conspiracies are often said to include government regulators, to the extent that a legal decision may be relevant. Some medical conspiracy theorists argue that the medical community could actually cure supposedly "incurable" diseases such as cancer (like the noted Luigi di Bella's medicines) and AIDS if it really wanted to, but instead prefers to suppress the cures as a way of maintaining the multi- trillion dollar "cancer industry". The costs for long-term treatment are generally higher than for a one-time cure. Other medical conspiracies charge that pharmaceutical companies are in league with some medical practitioners to 'invent' new diseases, such as ADD, ADHD, HSV and HPV. 9.1 Drug legalization Some activists and spokespersons for legalization of drugs (especially marijuana) have long espoused a theory that government and private industry conspired during the first half of the 20th century to hemp, allegedly so that it would no longer provide inexpensive competition to pulp paper and synthetic materials. is often pointed to as one of the businessmen responsible due to his involvement in the printing industry and his eminence in the public eye.[32] An extensive study on the subject has been done by Jack Herer in his book The Emperor Wears No Clothes. 9.2 Chemtrails Some people believe that chemtrails contain chemicals or biological agents purposely sprayed on the population by governments or other authorities. Not to be confused with contrails which dissipate within minutes. chemtrails linger and slowly spread. 9.3 Diet This type of theory posits that, with the help of the food industry and the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the medical industry is generating billions in drug and treatment revenue from consumers who have become unhealthy as a result of poor or incomplete diet guidelines from the FDA. It is claimed that as long as the medical industry's dietary research studies are accepted and enforced as the measure, they will continue to suggest a minimum calorie intake above the actual healthy level, and will also continue to suppress any findings of the greater benefits of fasting and other calorie restriction type diets, and as long as the consumer continues to eat at the level suggested by the FDA, the incidence of obesity will 28 continue to rise and the medical industry will continue to profit. Thus, it would be self-defeating for the medical industry to produce a cure for the many services that they depend on to generate revenue from unhealthy dietary practices of their customers. 9.4 Creation of diseases There are claims that AIDS is a man-made disease (i.e. created by in a laboratory). Some of these theories allege that HIV was created by a conspiratorial group or by a secretive agency such as the CIA. It is thought to have been created as a tool of and/or population control. Other theories suggest that the virus was created as an experiment in biological and/or , and then escaped into the population at large by accident. Some who believe that HIV was a government creation see a precedent for it in the Tuskegee syphilis study, in which government-funded researchers deceptively denied treatment to black patients infected with a sexually transmitted disease. It has been claimed that the CIA deliberately administered HIV to and homosexuals in the 1970s, via tainted hepatitis vaccinations. Groups such as the and Louis Farrakhan's Nation of assert that this was part of a plan to destroy the black race. Others claim that it was administered in Africa as a way of crippling the development of the continent. There have been suggestions that either the HIV virus or a sterilizing agent has been added to polio vaccines being distributed by the World Health Organization in Nigeria. Since these claims have been in existence, there has been a marked increase in the number of polio cases in the country, because Muslim clerics have urged parents not to have their children vaccinated. 9.5 Water fluoridation Water fluoridation is the controlled addition of fluoride to a public water supply to reduce tooth decay. Although almost all major health and dental organizations support water fluoridation, or have found no association with adverse effects, efforts to introduce water fluoridation meet considerable opposition whenever it is proposed. Since fluoridation's inception in the 1950s, opponents have drawn on distrust of experts and unease about medicine and science. Conspiracy theories involving fluoridation are common, and include the following: • Fluoridation is part of a Communist or New World Order or Illuminati plot to take over the world. This notion is mentioned, with comical effect, in Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove. 29

• Fluoridation was designed by the military–industrial complex to protect the U.S. atomic weapons program from litigation. • Fluoridation was pioneered by a German chemical company to make people submissive to those in power. • Fluoridation was used in Russian prison camps and produces schizophrenia. • Fluoridation is backed by the aluminum or phosphate industries as a means of disposing of some of their industrial waste. • Fluoridation is a smokescreen to cover failure to provide dental care to the poor. Fluoridation researchers are accused to be in the pay of corporate or political interests as part of the plot. Specific anti-fluoridation arguments change to match the of the time. 9.6 Traditional, Natural and Alternative medicines Many proponents of traditional, natural and alternative medicines claim that pharmaceutical companies and various governments and government agencies conspire to maintain profits by ensuring that the general public uses only modern medicines. For example, many countries have laws that prevent unproven medicinal claims from being printed on packaging, advertisements, etc. for medicines. Any substance for which medicinal claims are made are deemed "drugs". (See Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.) Many of these laws originated in part to due to when and other such remedies were sold without any government regulation. Proponents of traditional, natural and alternative medicines often claim that since herbs, etc. are of natural origin, they are not drugs and that such laws fallaciously define them as drugs in order to control and ultimately limit or prevent their distribution thus ensuring profits for the pharmaceutical industry. A variation on this conspiracy is claimed by Kevin Trudeau, author of Natural Cures "They" Don't Want You to Know About. He claims that in the USA, "they" (pharmaceutical companies, the FDA and FTC) conspire to withhold natural cures because "they" can make more profit selling long-term treatments, that do not cure, in perpetuity. 10. Peak Oil There are theories that the "Peak Oil" concept 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, according to these theories, but it deliberately 30 refuses to utilize them in order to maintain the illusion of scarcity. Parallels have been drawn between this and the diamond industry, where it is recognized that a monopoly cabal maintains an illusion of scarcity of diamonds in order to increase their value. Such an idea was featured prominently in the novel Shock Wave by Clive Cussler. The alleged presence of large quantities of oil has led to increased interest in the in a theory of the origin of oil that was popular in the 1950s and 1960s in the —the Abiogenic petroleum origin theory. 11. Secret societies Though the past or present existence of these secret societies is not disputed, a variety of theories regarding hidden plots and/or agendas actively guarded from the general public have been proposed. • Ashmedai's 2069 • 1001 Club • Bilderberg Group • [41] [42] • Committee of 300 • Council on Foreign Relations • Freemasonry (see Masonic conspiracy theories)[43] • The Illuminati —Thought of as a secret group attempting to control the world. • Le Cercle • Majestic 12 • • Nine Unknown Men • Pilgrims Society • Royal Institute of International Affairs • and Bones —This fraternity is often thought of as being a secret society producing many financial and political leaders who have control or seek to gain control. • Trilateral Commission 12. Ethnicity and race 12.1 Armenian International Conspiracy 31

Samuel A. Weems (December 12, 1936— January 25, 2003) was a writer and a disbarred lawyer in Arkansas, United States, who was paid by the Turkish lobby in the United States, who is in turn sponsored by the Turkish government. In his book, Armenia: The Secrets of a Christian Terrorist State (2002), he argued in favor of the myth that the Armenian Genocide was a gigantic fraud designed to "fleece" Christian nations out of billions of dollars. He also "claimed" that the Armenian Church was a "state owned" entity that organizes and funds terrorist (including ASALA) attacks and that Armenians had "infiltrated" the United States. That book purports that Armenian Diaspora communities in the United States and throughout the world are actually "colonies" political bases intended to gain money and support for Armenian Republic. The books also purport that Armenia is founded on land stolen from and that Armenians have perpetrated enormous massacres against Turks and Azeris, both recently (in the Nagorno-Karabakh war) and in the past. He has been quoted, lying that "The religion of the Armenians is fake" and that his research shows "that there is clearly an Armenian Master Plan that generates Armenian hate around the world."[46] Prior to his death in 2003, he was preparing to write a second book claiming the international Armenian community collaborated with and supported Nazi Germany. However, this is false, as 25% of the male population of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic perished while fighting for the Allies in World War II. The book, along with essays and homemade videos by Weems, have been criticized as racist and Anti-Armenian by the Armenian Assembly of America.[46] The book is available in several online bookstores in United States and . However, there is no need to denounce the book as "racist" when it is clearly pure pabulum. It has also been translated in Turkish and distributed in Turkey. Belief in an "Armenian International Conspiracy", that ethnic Armenians are attempting to change history and hide certain facts for political gain, can also be encountered in Azerbaijan, which has clashed with Armenia over Nagorno Karabakh, a de facto independent republic, officially part of Azerbaijan. Many Azeris believe that the Sumgait , where ethnic Azeris massacred Armenians during the dissolution of the Soviet Union, was in fact intentionally provoked by Armenians for propaganda purposes. Actual proponents of the "Armenian International Conspiracy" are scarce, and said theories are rarely found outside Turkey and Azerbaijan, countries which have histories of conflict with Armenians. The conspiracy also garners little if any support from scholars, as there exists incontrovertible historical evidence that shows the existence of Ancient Armenia before the arrival of Turks from Central Asia into Anatolia over three thousand 32 thousand years after the origination of the proto-Armenian language in Anatolia and the Trans Caucasian Mountains. 12.2 Jewish world domination

1905 Stolypin's investigation - A secret investigation ordered by the newly appointed chairman of the Council of Ministers Pyotr Stolypin came to conclusion that the Protocols first appeared in Paris in antisemitic circles around 1897–1898.[49] Even though he himself was anti- Semitic, when Nicholas II learned of the results of this investigation, he requested: "The Protocols should be confiscated, a good cause cannot be defended by dirty means."[50] Despite the order, or because of the "good cause", numerous reprints proliferated. • 1921 Exposure in - in 1920, the history of the concepts found in the Protocols was traced back to the works of Goedsche and Joly by Lucien Wolf (an English Jewish journalist); was published in London in August 1921; and was similarly exposed in the series of articles in The Times by its Constantinople reporter, , who took his information from Wolf's work. • 1934-1935 The Berne Trial - In 1934, Dr. Alfred Zander, a Swiss Nazi, published a series of articles accepting the Protocols as fact. He was sued in what has come to be known as the Berne Trial. The trial began in the Cantonal Court of Bern on October 29, 1934. On May 19, 1935, the court, after full investigation, declared the Protocols to be forgeries, , and obscene literature. • United States Congress, Senate. Committee on the Judiciary. Protocols of the Elders of Zion: a fabricated "historic" document. A report prepared by the Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other Internal Security Laws (Washington, U.S. Govt. Printing Office, 1964). 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 , fabricated the text in the late 1890s or early 20th century. Among the most notable early refutations of the Protocols as a forgery was a series of articles printed in The Times of London in 1921. This series revealed that much of the 33 material in the Protocols was plagiarized from earlier that did not have an anti-Semitic theme. Since 1903, when the Protocols appeared in print, its earliest publishers have offered vague and often contradictory testimony detailing how they obtained their copy of the rumored original manuscript. The text was popularized by those opposed to Russian revolutionary movement and was disseminated further after the revolution of 1905, becoming known worldwide after the 1917 . It was widely circulated in the West in 1920 and thereafter. It influenced the publication of Henry Ford's book . The and the rise of Nazism were important developments in the history of the Protocols, and the hoax continued to be published and circulated despite its debunking, becoming "a that would not die." Continued usage of the Protocols as an anti-Semitic propaganda tool substantially diminished with the defeat of the Nazis in World War II. However, it is still believed in by the neo-Nazis. It is still frequently quoted and reprinted, and is sometimes used as evidence of an alleged Jewish cabal, especially in the Middle East.[53] 12.3 Arab-Israeli relations Daniel Pipes, a former Bush cabinet member, has written a book[54] and many essays in which he asserts that there is a prevalence of conspiracy theories throughout the Arab and . Conspiracy theories in the Arab and Muslim worlds, he claims, largely blame Israelis or Jews for many problems facing the world. Some of these include the following: • Some Arabs, mostly Egyptians, believe that Israelis engineered the crash of EgyptAir Flight 990 in 1999. Others insist that the US is covering up for Boeing, the airplane's manufacturer. Richard Landes and some other pro- advocates maintain that Muhammad al-Durrah, a 12-year-old Palestinian boy reported to have been killed in the Gaza Strip by Israeli forces in September 2000, was not in fact killed and the entire incident was staged by Palestinian cameramen. 12.4 "Babylon" and racist oppression Some Rastafarians maintain that a white racist patriarchy ("Babylon") controls the world in order to oppress the African race.[58] They believe that Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia did not die when it was reported in 1975, and that the racist, white media (again, "Babylon") propagated that rumour in order to squash the Rastafari Movement and its message of overthrowing Babylon. Other Rastafarians, however, believe in peace and unity, 34 and interpret Babylon as a metaphor for the established "system" that oppresses (or "downpresses", in Rasta terminology) groups such as Africans and the world's poor. 12.5 Eurabia Italian journalist Oriana Fallaci and British-Egyptian writer Bat Ye'or, author of Eurabia: The -Arab Axis, proposed a conspiracy they said was hatched between a cadre of French elites within the European Economic Community and the in the mid-1970s to form a strategic alliance against the United States and Israel, and to turn Europe into an appendage of the Islamic world. 12.6 Arab-fascist axis Radio host David Emory claims that Nazi leader Martin Bormann never died and has built a global empire involving, among many others, the Bush family, Hassan al Banna, Grover Norquist, Meyer Lansky, and Michael Chertoff. 12.7 La Reconquista (Mexico) In Spanish, La Reconquista means "The Reconquest". It is a popular conspiracy myth that Hispanics, especially Mexicans, are massively immigrating (often through illegal ), becoming a new ethnic majority and repopulating the Southwestern United States, because the land being the US states of Arizona, , Colorado, , and are lost territories after the Mexican-American War of 1848. The myth is thought to come from political and economic interests by both the U.S. and Mexican governments to promote and support the Reconquista for selfish reasons. 12.8 Baha'i Iran's Baha'i minority has been the target of persecution since its inception and has been the subject of various conspiracy theories entailing involvement with foreign or hostile powers. In the 19th and 20th century they accused the Baha'is of being agents of the Russian or British . More recently they have been accused of being allied with or of being agents of the Shah. 12.9The Plan In U.S. cities that are controlled by African-American majorities, a persistent conspiracy theory holds that Caucasians are plotting to regain control and take over those cities. Cities that are experiencing an urban renaissance, such as Washington, D.C., are particular centers of "The Plan". 35

13. Paranormal activity 13.1 Evil aliens A somewhat different version of this theory maintains that humanity is actually under the control of shape-shifting alien reptiles, who require periodic ingestion of human blood to maintain their human appearance. David Icke has been a devoted proponent of this theory.[61] Reportedly the Bush family and the are actually such creatures, and Diana, Princess of Wales was aware of this, presumably relating to her death. David Icke's theory, which encompasses many other conspiracy theories, is that humanity is actually under the reptilians; with evidence ranging from Sumerian tablets describing the "" (which he translates as "those who from heaven to earth came"), to the serpent in the Biblical Garden of Eden, to child and water fluoridation. This theory has been the subject of several books. 13.2 Extraterrestrials A sector of conspiracy theory with a particularly detailed mythology is the extraterrestrial phenomenon, which has become the basis for numerous pieces of popular entertainment, the Area 51/Grey Aliens conspiracy, and allegations surrounding the Dulce Base. It is alleged that the United States government conspires with extraterrestrials involved in the abduction and manipulation of citizens. A variant tells that particular technologies, notably the transistor — were given to American industry in exchange for alien dominance. The enforcers of the clandestine association of human leaders and aliens are the Men in Black, who silence those who speak out on UFO sightings. This conspiracy theory has been the basis of numerous books, as well as the popular television show The X-Files and the movies Men in Black and Men in Black II. The X-Files based the plots of many of its episodes around urban legends and conspiracy theories, and had a framing plot which postulated a set of interlocking conspiracies controlling all recent human history. There are claims about secret experiments known as the Montauk Project conducted at Camp Hero, Montauk, . Allegedly, the project was developing a powerful psychological war weapon. The project is often connected to other alleged government projects such as the Philadelphia Experiment and Project Rainbow, both of which involved the use of the Unified field theory to cloak vessels. Experiments involving teleportation, time travel, contact with extraterrestrials, and mind control are frequently alleged to have been conducted in the camp. Preston B. Nichols has authored five books on the subject, including Montauk Project: Experiments in time. 36

14. Religion 14.1 Apocalyptic prophecies Apocalyptic prophecies, particularly Christian apocalyptic and eschatalogical claims about the end times, the , and the end of the world have inspired a range of conspiracy حححححح :theories. Many of these deal with the ( Masih ad-Dajjal). This Antichrist, also known as the /حح ححححح Beast 666, is supposed to be a leader who will create a world empire and oppress Christians (and, in some readings, Jews as well). In apocalyptic conspiracy theory, some person from current events is alleged to be the Antichrist, and some supranatural organization is alleged to be the Antichrist's world organization of evil. Countless historical figures have been called "Antichrist" in their times, from the Roman emperor Nero to to Ronald Reagan to Javier Solana. At times, apocalyptic speculation has mixed with anti-Catholicism to yield the interpretation that the reigning Pope is the Biblical Antichrist. A more recent conspiratorial interpretation sees the Antichrist as a world leader involved with the United Nations, who will create a one (aka New World Order) and establish a single monetary system. The latter is identified with the Mark of , which the Bible states that people in the end times will need in order to conduct trade. Two nations often involved in apocalyptic conspiracy theories are Israel and Iraq. The former is the location of both the Temple Mount and (Megiddo), places seen as important in prophecy. The latter is the ancient location of Babylon, which also figures in the . During the Gulf War, some suggested that Saddam Hussein had ordered the excavation and re-population of the city of Babylon, thus casting Saddam as an Antichrist figure. Other interpretations have held that "Babylon" in the Book of Revelation refers to another mighty nation, such as the Roman Empire, the Vatican (in Rome) and the , or more recently the Soviet Union or the United States of America. 14.2 Bible conspiracy theory Bible conspiracy theories posit that much of what is known about the Bible, in particular the New Testament, is a deception. These theories variously claim that Jesus really had a wife, Mary Magdalene, and children, that a group such as the has secret information about the bloodline of Jesus, that Jesus did not die on the cross and that the carbon dating of the Shroud of Turin was part of a conspiracy by the Vatican to suppress this 37 knowledge, that there was a secret movement to censor books that belonged in the Bible, or the Christ myth theory, proposed for example in , the Movie as a means of social control by the Roman Empire. This is portrayed in the book The Da Vinci Code. 14.3 Catholicism a veiled continuation of Babylonian paganism The Two Babylons was an anti-Catholic religious pamphlet produced initially by the Scottish theologian and Presbyterian Alexander Hislop in 1853 then published as a book in 1919. Its central theme is its allegation that the Catholic Church is a veiled continuation of the pagan religion of Babylon, the veiled paganism being the product of a millennia old conspiracy.[63][64] It has been recognized by scholars as discredited and has been called a "tribute to historical inaccuracy and know-nothing religious bigotry" with "shoddy scholarship, blatant dishonesty" and a "nonsensical thesis". Although scholarship has shown the picture presented by Hislop to be absurd and based on an exceedingly poor understanding of historical Babylon and its religion, his book remains popular among some fundamentalist Christians.[63] Mormons before the reign of Pope John XXIII routinely referred to the Roman Catholic Church as the "Church of the "; after Pope John XXIII, they discontinued support for this conspiracy theory. The book's thesis has also featured prominently in the conspiracy theories of racist groups such as The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord and other conspiracy theorists. Although extensively footnoted, giving the impression of reliability, commentators (in particular Ralph Woodrow) have stated that there are numerous misconceptions, fabrications and grave factual errors in the document, and that this book follows the line of thought of works like: Martin Luther - On the Babylonian Captivity of the Church (1520), Titus Oates - An Exact Discovery of the Mystery of Iniquity as it is now in Practice amongst the Jesuits (1679), Conyers Middleton - Letter from Rome (1729). 14.4 Jerusalem Temple Candelabrum in the Vatican cellars Among some Jewish religious and extreme right groups is circulating the assertion that the Menorah (golden candelabrum) - which was in 70 C.E. pillaged by Titus's soldiers from the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem - still exists and is secretly kept by the Catholic Church in the cellars of the Vatican. This rumor surfaces again and again. Most recently, during the visit of Pope Benedict XVI to Israel in May 2009, a small group of extreme right militants demonstrated against the Pope with signs reading 38

"Thief, give back our Menorah!". Two followers of the late - Itamar Ben Gvir and Baruch Marzel – at the time actually tried to get a judicial injunction to prevent the Pope from leaving the country "pending the return of the stolen Jewish treasures". The judges refused to grant any such injunction, as the appellants could bring no concrete evidence of the Menorah truly being in the Vatican. Historians in general assume that the Menorah - like many other treasures stored in Ancient Rome - had been looted by the Vandals during the Sack of Rome in 455 CE. There is no shred of historical evidence of its having ever been in the hands of the Catholic Church. Nevertheless, the above theory persists in certain Jewish circles, as a focus for anti- Catholic (and generally anti-Christian) agitation. 15. Miscellaneous War • That the Pearl Harbor attack was not a surprise event. US president Franklin D. Roosevelt knew about the risk of a military attack by the Japanese, so he ordered the US Department of State kept it quiet through late 1941 because he knew that the attack would galvanize public opinion in favor of the United States entering World War II. (See Pearl Harbor advance-knowledge debate) • The 1999 US bombing of the People's Republic of embassy in Belgrade had been a deliberate retaliation. China was secretly helping Yugoslavia in resisting NATO forces, particularly, by providing advanced radar technology which enabled the Army of Yugoslavia to shoot down an F-117 stealth fighter - the first US stealth aircraft lost in action. An alternative theory states China had bought the remains of that F-117 from Yugoslavia and stored them temporarily inside its embassy's basement. US force discovered this and attempted to destory these remains before they were to be shipped to China. It was stated that one hardened penetrator bomb was amongst the bombs dropped, that bomb reached the basement after penetrating several floors, but failed to explode. Most of the F-117 remains were eventually transported to China, as well as the laser- guided bomb. Nature • Several theories are advanced regarding the cause and aftermath of . 39

• Because of its ineffectiveness, the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) is often jokingly referred to as "International Conspiracy to Catch all Tuna". Advertising • There is a theory that the famous "computer vs. human" chess game - between Russian grandmaster Garry Kasparov and IBM's Deep Blue computer - involved cheating by IBM, to ensure they would achieve a victory that would be widely publicized. This theory is argued by the documentary Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine. • Another conspiracy theory related to advertising is that The Coca-Cola Company intentionally changed to an inferior formula with New Coke with the intent of driving up demand for their classic product, later reintroducing it for their financial gain. Alternatively, people believe the switch was made to allow Coca-Cola to reintroduce "classic" Coke with a new formulation using less expensive corn syrup. Space • Theorists claim that some or all of the Apollo landings were "staged" in a Hollywood movie or other studio either because they never happened or to conceal some aspect of the truth of the circumstances of the actual landing. • Another theory regarding the moon landings is that the Apollo found a human skeleton and footprints on the moon.(Even though the fact that there is no way for anything to decompose on the moon because of its lack of atmosphere strictly contradicts this.) The theory received more widespread attention when the Weekly World News twice published stories about a human skeleton on the moon, first on Nov 28, 1989, and then again on Jul 15, 1997. • Soviet space program conspiracy accusations suppose that some failed human spaceflights in the USSR occurred but were concealed by the government. • Also some theorists claim that China secretly tried a manned spaceflight in the winter of 1978/1979 but it was a failure. Communism • Since the mid-1970s, a variety of conspiracy theories have emerged centering around British Labour Party Prime Minister Harold Wilson. These range from Wilson having been a Soviet agent, to Wilson being the victim of plots by right-wing members of the civil service. Żydokomuna is a theory that 40

Communism in Poland during the Cold War was controlled by Jews. There is a theory that Lech Wałęsa was an informer of the SB, communist secret police in Poland. Celebrities • In October 1969, a rumour began circling that Paul McCartney, one of The Beatles, died in a car crash in late 1966 and was replaced by a lookalike. Proponents of the theory, which is commonly referred to as the hoax, cite "clues" in the form of peculiar album covers, possible symbolism in strange lyrics, and . • John Lennon also of The Beatles is supposed by some to have been assassinated by the CIA using mind manipulation upon Mark Chapman, because Lennon had too much influence. • There have been many purported sightings of Elvis Presley over the years since his death in 1977. Several conspiracy theories have developed suggesting that he is still alive. • Kurt Cobain , singer and guitarist of Nirvana was suggested to not to have committed suicide, but was in fact murdered. • Some people believe that comedian Andy Kaufman faked his own death. Some believe Tupac Shakur also faked his death. Some claim that Michael Jackson is still alive, having faked his death. • Some people believe Jimi Hendrix was killed by his manager, who would gain $2,000,000 if Hendrix was to die. • Some people believe that Bob Marley was assassinated by the CIA. Allegedly someone gave him a pair of boots, and when he put them on a small copper wire inside jabbed him in the toe-the toe that gave him the cancer (acral lentiginous melanoma) that would eventually kill him. Global Warming • The Global warming conspiracy theory asserts that the global community of climate scientists have colluded to fabricate a vast body of scientific evidence and literature in order to deceive the world into believing there is a significant anthropogenic component to increases in global temperatures, with the objective of misdirecting research funding, political power, or simply money. History • Some theories, such as the Phantom time hypothesis of Heribert Illig and the Fomenko-Nosovsky chronology, claim that the conventional dating of historical 41

events is incorrect, and that the historical timeline has been purposely distorted by powerful interests. • Revisionist history in regards to the Irish Potato Famine was more of a result by the British naval blockade around Ireland when the international community began to send naval ship food shipments and the British reroute those naval ships to England. • Another revisionist history event was the Trail of Tears, that US president Andrew Jackson made an arrangement with Cherokee chief John Ross to voluntarily relocate the tribe and the forced marches was not out of hatred by the US government. Sports • The "Frozen Envelope Theory" suggests that the NBA rigged the 1985 NBA Draft Lottery so Georgetown University standout Patrick Ewing would land with the New York Knicks, who had the first pick in that year's draft. Conspiracy theorists argue that the New York Knicks' envelope was placed in the freezer so that when NBA commissioner David Stern reached into a bowl containing the envelopes of all the teams participating in the draft lottery, he would be able to identify the Knicks’ envelope by its being colder than the others. • The death of Phar Lap, the champion New Zealand and Australian racehorse, was purported to be a deliberate poisoning. There are also several theories concerning the disappearance of the champion racehorse, Shergar. Electronic banking conspiracy • The Theory of Electronic Conspiracy is said to be a variant of modern New World Order conspiracy theories. The theory consists of the belief that a secret group has attempted for centuries to reach world domination, even if the result by design would be world destruction. According to this theory, the worldwide dominion has been planned from antiquity and follows the following phases: 1. The substitution of precious metal-based coin currency by paper currency. This process began in the Renaissance, with the beginning of the use of tickets which allowed for people to have a tangible good (such as silver or gold pieces) by paper—a more virtual, but comfortable, medium which the state was committed to provide the equivalent amount of precious metal if such was required. 42

2. The appearance of virtual money, with credit cards: money approaches wholly virtual status. Money is no longer a tangible paper- or metal-based object but rather a series of numbers recorded in magnetic stripes. 3. The proliferation of Internet and Electronic commerce: credit cards are no longer required in order to purchase or sell goods and services from an Internet-connected computer. 4. The concentration of the worldwide bank into few hands, by means of continuous international banking fusions. 5. The worldwide implementation of an electronic identity card. 6. The great worldwide blackout. A tremendous disaster will take place when, after a great electrical blackout on a planetary scale, the data of all electronic accounts erase simultaneously. After this event, chaos and poverty will immediately ensue throughout the planet; and will revert to its primitive forms of slavery to survive. This is the last aim of the "secret organization" which has spent centuries guiding this process. The worldwide blackout will be preceded by partial blackouts that would only be tests and "signals" to communicate that different phases of the process are being fulfilled. An example of these partial blackouts would be those that have been produced almost simultaneously in different parts around the world; and, at the beginning of the 21st century, shortly after the September 11, 2001, attacks: the blackouts in the United States, , Australia, and the .

New World Order (conspiracy theory)

In conspiracy theory, the term New World Order or NWO refers to the emergence of a bureaucratic collectivist one-world 43 government. The common theme in conspiracy theories about a New World Order is that a secretive power with a globalist agenda is conspiring to eventually rule the world through an authoritarian world government — which replaces sovereign nation- states — and an all-embracing ideology that indoctrinates . Significant occurrences in politics and finance are speculated to be orchestrated by an extremely influential cabal operating through many front organizations. Numerous historical and current events are seen as steps in an on-going plot to achieve world domination through secret political gatherings and decision-making processes. Prior to the early 1990s, New World Order conspiracism was limited to two American countercultures, primarily the militantly anti-government right, and secondarily fundamentalist Christians concerned with end-time emergence of the Antichrist. Skeptics, such as Michael Barkun and Chip Berlet, have expressed concern that right-wing populist conspiracy theories about a New World Order have now not only been embraced by many left-wing conspiracy theorists but have seeped into popular culture, thereby inaugurating an unrivaled period of people actively preparing for apocalyptic millenarian scenarios in the United States of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. These political scientists warn that this mass hysteria may not only fuel lone-wolf terrorism but have devastating effects on American political life, such as the far right wooing the far left into joining a revolutionary movement capable of subverting the established political powers. Contents • 1 History of the term • 2 Conspiracy theories ○ 2.1 ○ 2.2 Freemasonry ○ 2.3 Illuminati ○ 2.4 Protocols of the Elders of Zion ○ 2.5 Round Table ○ 2.6 Open Conspiracy ○ 2.7 ○ 2.8 Fourth Reich 44

○ 2.9 Alien Invasion ○ 2.10 Brave New World • 3 Postulated implementations ○ 3.1 Gradualism ○ 3.2 Coup d'état ○ 3.3 Mass surveillance ○ 3.4 Occultism ○ 3.5 Population control ○ 3.6 Mind control • 4 Alleged conspirators • 5 Criticism

1.History of the term During the 20th century, many statesmen, such as and , used the term "new world order" to refer to a new period of history evidencing a dramatic change in world political thought and the balance of power after World War I and World War II. They all saw these periods as opportunities to implement idealistic proposals for global governance only in the sense of new collective efforts to identify, understand, or address worldwide problems that go beyond the capacity of individual nation-states to solve, while respecting their sovereignty. These proposals led to the creation of international organizations, such as the United Nations and NATO, and international regimes, such as the Bretton Woods system and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, which were calculated both to maintain a balance of power as well as regularize cooperation between nations, in order to achieve a peaceful phase of . These creations in particular and liberal internationalism in general, however, would always be criticized and opposed by the American Old Right on isolationist grounds and by the New Right on benevolent imperalist grounds. In the aftermath of the two World Wars, progressives welcomed these new international organizations and regimes but argued they suffered from a democratic deficit and therefore were inadequate to not only prevent another global war but also foster global justice. 45

Thus, activists around the globe formed a world federalist movement hoping in vain to create a "real" new world order.[11] In the 1940s, British writer and futurist H. G. Wells would go further than progressives by appropriating and redefining the term "new world order" as a synonym for the establishment of a scientifically-coordinated world state and socialist economy.

The signing of the UN Charter in 1945 During the Red Scare of 1947–1957, conspiracy theorists of the American secular and increasingly embraced and mongered unfounded fears of Freemasons, Illuminati, and Jews being the driving force behind an "international communist conspiracy". The threat of world communism in the form of a state atheistic and bureaucratic collectivist world government, demonized as a "Red Menace", therefore became the main focus of apocalyptic millenarian conspiracism. The Red Scare would shape one of the core ideas of the political right in the U.S. which is that liberals and progressives with their welfare-state policies and international cooperation programs such as foreign aid unwittingly contribute to a gradual process of that will inevitably lead to nations being replaced with a communist one-world government. In the 1960s, right-wing populist individuals and groups with a producerist worldview, such as 46 members of the John Birch Society, disseminated a great deal of conspiracy theories claiming that the governments of both the United States and the Soviet Union were controlled by a cabal of corporate internationalists, greedy bankers and corrupt politicians intent on using the United Nations as the vehicle to create the "One World Government". These unfounded fears would fuel the Bircher campaign for U.S. withdrawal from the U.N.. American writer Mary M. Davison, in her 1966 booklet The Profound Revolution, traced the alleged New World Order conspiracy to the creation of the U.S. Federal Reserve System in 1913 by international bankers, who she claimed later formed the Council on Foreign Relations in 1921 as the shadow government. At the time the booklet was published, "international bankers" would have been interpreted by many readers as a reference to a postulated "international Jewish banking conspiracy" masterminded by the Rothschild s. Claiming that the term "New World Order" is used by a secretive elite dedicated to the destruction of all national sovereignties, American producers writer Gary Allen, in his 1971 book None Dare Call It Conspiracy, 1974 book Rockefeller: Campaigning for the New World Order and 1987 book Say "No!" to the New World Order, articulated the anti-globalist theme of much current right-wing populist conspiracism in the U.S.. Thus, after the fall of communism in the early 1990s, the main demonized scapegoat of the American far right shifted seamlessly from crypto-communists who plotted on behalf of the Red Menace to globalists who plot on behalf of the New World Order. The relatively painless nature of the shift was due to growing right-wing populist opposition to the negative effects of capitalist globalization but also in part to the basic underlying apocalyptic millenarian paradigm, which fed the Cold War and the witch-hunts of the McCarthy period. In his 11 September 1990 Toward a New World Order speech to a joint session of the U.S. Congress, President George H. W. Bush described his objectives for post-Cold-War global governance in cooperation with post- Soviet states: Until now, the world we’ve known has been a world divided—a world of barbed wire and concrete block, conflict and cold war. Now, we can see a new world coming into view. A world in which there is the very real prospect of a new world order. In the words of Winston Churchill, a "world order" in which "the principles of justice and fair play ... protect the weak against the strong ..." A world where the United Nations, freed from cold war stalemate, is poised to fulfill the historic vision of its founders. A world in which freedom and respect for find a home among all nations. observed that progressives were denouncing this new world order as a rationalization for American imperial 47 ambitions in the Middle East, while conservatives rejected new security arrangements altogether and fulminated about any possibility of U.N. revival.[14] However, Chip Berlet, an American investigative reporter specializing in the study of right-wing movements in the U.S., writes: When President Bush announced his new foreign policy would help build a New World Order, his phrasing surged through the Christian and secular hard right like an electric shock, since the phrase had been used to represent the dreaded collectivist One World Government for decades. Some Christians saw Bush as signaling the End Times betrayal by a world leader. Secular anticommunists saw a bold attempt to smash US sovereignty and impose a tyrannical collectivist system run by the United Nations. American televangelist Pat Robertson with his 1991 best- selling book The New World Order became the most prominent Christian popularizer of conspiracy theories about recent American history as a theater in which Wall Street, the Federal Reserve System, Council on Foreign Relations, Bilderberg Group, and Trilateral Commission control the flow of events from behind the scenes, nudging us constantly and covertly in the direction of world government for the Antichrist. Observers note that the galvanization of right-wing populist conspiracy theorists, such as Linda Thompson, Mark Koernke and Robert K. Spear, into militancy led to the rise of the militia movement, which spread its anti-government ideology through speeches at rallies and meetings, through books and videotapes sold at gun shows, through shortwave and satellite radio, and through fax networks and computer bulletin boards. However, viral propaganda on the Internet is what most effectively contributed to their extremist political ideas about the New World Order finding their way into the politically left-wing literature of the anti-globalization movement, but also the previously apolitical literature of many Kennedy assassinologists, ufologists, lost land theorists, and, most recently, occultists. The worldwide appeal of these subcultures then transmitted New World Order conspiracism like a "mind virus" to a large new audience of seekers of counterknowledge from the mid-1990s on. In the United Kingdom, British national-anarchist ideologue called for a pan-European nationalist front to wage a full-fledged war of liberation against the "Zionist, Capitalist New World Order". National-anarchists see a convergence in the near-future between the decentralist left and decentralist right rising to combat the political and economic centralization of the New World Order. After the turn of the century, specifically during the financial crisis of 2007–2010, many politicians and pundits, such as Gordon Brown, and Henry Kissinger, used the term "new world order" in 48 their advocacy for a Keynesian reform of the global financial system and their calls for a "New Bretton Woods", which takes into account emerging markets such as China and India. These declarations had the unintended consequence of providing fresh fodder for New World Order conspiracism, and culminated in former Clinton administration adviser Dick Morris and conservative talk show host arguing on his Channel program Hannity that "conspiracy theorists were right". Fox News in general, and its opinion show in particular, have been repeatedly criticized by progressive media watchdog groups for not only mainstreaming the New World Order conspiracy theories of the radical right but possibly agitating its lone wolves into action. In 2009, American film directors Luke Meyer and Andrew Neel released New World Order, a critically-acclaimed documentary film which explores the world of conspiracy theorists, such as American radio host , who are committed to exposing and vigorously opposing what they perceive to be an emerging New World Order. 2. Conspiracy theories There are numerous systemic conspiracy theories through which the concept of a New World Order is viewed. The following is a list of the major ones in relatively chronological order: 2.1 End Time For over 2,000 years, apocalyptic millenarian Christian eschatologists have feared a globalist conspiracy as the fulfillment of prophecies about the "end time" in the Bible, specifically in the , the , the found in the Synoptic Gospels, and the Book of Revelation. They assert that people who have made a deal with the Devil to gain wealth and power have become pawns in a chess game to deceive humanity into accepting an utopian world government, which rests on the spiritual foundations of a syncretic-messianic world religion, that will later reveal itself to be a dystopian world empire, which imposes the imperial cult of the Unholy Trinity — , the Antichrist and the False . In many contemporary Christian conspiracy theories, the False Prophet will either be the last pope of the Catholic Church (groomed and installed by an Alta Vendita or Jesuit conspiracy) or a from the New Age movement or even the leader of an elite fundamentalist Christian organization like The Fellowship, while the Antichrist will either be the president of the European Union or the secretary-general of the United Nations or even a Colossus-like supercomputer. Some of the most vocal critics of end-time conspiracy theories come from within 49

Christianity.[13] In 1993, American historian Bruce Barron wrote a stern rebuke of apocalyptic Christian conspiracism in the Christian Research Journal, when reviewing American televangelist Robertson's 1991 book The New World Order.[26] Another critique can be found in American historian Gregory S. Camp's 1997 book Selling Fear: Conspiracy Theories and End-Times Paranoia,[2] which has been described as "impressive both as a historical and theological work". Camp warns of the "very real danger that Christians could pick up some extra spiritual baggage" by credulously embracing conspiracy theories.[2] Progressive Christians, such as American preacher-theologian Peter J. Gomes, argue that the Bible must be read carefully to avoid misusing the text to legitimize ideological prejudices in the dominant culture. They caution conservative Christians that a "spirit of fear" can distort scripture and history by dangerously combining biblical literalism, apocalyptic timetables, , and oppressive prejudices, such as sexism, , classism, , racism, and . They therefore call on Christians who indulge in conspiracism to repent. More broadly, preterist Christians argue that some or all of the biblical prophecies concerning the end time refer literally or metaphorically to events which already happened in the first century after Jesus' birth. In their view, the "end time" concept refers to the end of the covenant between God and Israel, rather than the end of time, or the end of planet Earth. They argue that prophecies about the , the defiling of the Temple, the destruction of Jerusalem, the Antichrist, the , the Tribulation, the , the Last Judgment, and the resurrection of the dead were fulfilled at or about the year 70 when the Roman general (and future Emperor) Titus sacked Jerusalem and destroyed the Second Temple of Jerusalem, putting a permanent stop to the daily animal sacrifices. According to Preterists, many passages in the New Testament indicate with apparent certainty that the second coming of Christ, and the end time predicted in the Bible were to take place within the lifetimes of Jesus' disciples rather than millennia later: Matt. 10:23, Matt. 16:28, Matt. 24:34, Matt. 26:64, Rom. 13:11-12, 1 Cor. 7:29-31, 1 Cor. 10:11, Phil. 4:5, James 5:8-9, 1 Pet. 4:7, 1 Jn. 2:18. Ultimately, full Preterists argue that all Christians should reject apocalyptic and embrace realized eschatology. 2.2 Freemasonry Anti-Masonic conspiracy theorists believe that "high-ranking" Freemasons are involved in conspiracies to create an New World Order. They claim that some of the Founding Fathers of the 50

United States, such as George Washington and Benjamin Franklin, had Masonic symbolism interwoven into American society, particularly in the Great Seal of the United States, the United States one-dollar bill, the architecture of landmarks, and the streets and highways of Washington, D.C.. Conspiracy theorists speculate that American Freemasons used the power of the occult to bind their planning of a government in with the plan of the Great Architect of the because of their belief that the "Masonic God" has tasked the United States with the eventual establishment of the "Kingdom of God on Earth " — a Masonic world theodemocracy with as its capital city and the as its holiest site.

Freemasons rebut these claims of Masonic conspiracy. They assert that Freemasonry, which promotes a balance between rationalism and through a system of degrees of initiation and the use of sacred geometry in art and architecture, places no power in occult symbols themselves. It is not a part of Freemasonry to view the drawing of symbols, no matter how large, as an act of consolidating or controlling power.[34] Furthermore, there is no published information establishing the Masonic membership of the men responsible for the design of the Great Seal or the street plan of Washington, D.C.[35] The Latin phrase "novus ordo seclorum", appearing on the reverse side of the Great Seal since 1782 and on the back of the one-dollar bill since 1935, means "New Order of the Ages" and only alludes to the beginning of an era where the United States is an independent nation-state, but is often mistranslated by conspiracy theorists as "New Secular Order" or "New World Order".[1] Lastly, Freemasons argue that, despite the symbolic importance of the Temple of Solomon in their mythology, they have no interest in rebuilding it, especially since "it is obvious that any attempt to interfere with the present condition of things [on the Temple Mount] would in all probability bring about the greatest religious war the world has ever known". More broadly, Freemasons assert that a long-standing rule within regular Freemasonry is a prohibition on the discussion of politics in a Masonic Lodge and the participation of lodges or Masonic bodies in political pursuits. Freemasonry has no politics, but it teaches its members to be of high moral character and active citizens. The accusation that Freemasonry has a hidden agenda to establish a Masonic government ignores several facts. While agreeing on certain Masonic Landmarks, the many independent and sovereign Grand Lodges act as such, and do not agree on many other points of belief and practice. Also, as 51 can be seen from a survey of famous Freemasons, individual Freemasons hold beliefs that span the spectrum of politics. The term "Masonic government" has no meaning since individual Freemasons hold many different opinions on what constitutes a good government, and Freemasonry as a body has no opinion on the topic. Ultimately, Freemasons argue that even if it were proven that influential individuals have used and are using Masonic Lodges to engage in crypto-politics, such as was the case with the illegal Italian Lodge Propaganda Due, this would represent a cooptation of Freemasonry rather than evidence of its hidden agenda.[38] 2.3 Illuminati The Order of the Illuminati was an Enlightenment-age secret society founded on 1 May 1776, in Ingolstadt (Upper Bavaria), by Adam Weishaupt, who was the first lay professor of canon law at the University of Ingolstadt. The movement consisted of advocates of freethought, secularism, liberalism, republicanism and gender equality, recruited in the Masonic Lodges of Germany, who sought to teach rationalism through mystery schools. In 1785, the order was infiltrated, broken up and suppressed by the government agents of Charles Theodore, Elector of Bavaria, in his preemptive campaign to neutralize the threat of secret societies ever becoming hotbeds of conspiracies to overthrow the Bavarian monarchy and its state religion, Roman Catholicism. In the late 18th century, reactionary conspiracy theorists, such as Scottish physicist John Robison and French Jesuit Augustin Barruel, began speculating that the Illuminati survived their suppression and became the masterminds behind the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror. The Illuminati were accused of being subversives who were attempting to secretly orchestrate a revolutionary wave in order to globalize the most radical ideals of the Enlightenment — anti-clericalism, anti-monarchism, and anti- patriarchalism — and create a world noocracy. During the 19th century, fear of an Illuminati conspiracy was a real concern of European ruling classes, and their oppressive reactions to this unfounded fear provoked in 1848 the very revolutions they sought to prevent. During the interwar period of the 20th century, fascist propagandists, such as British revisionist historian Nesta Helen Webster and American socialite Edith Starr Miller, not only popularized the myth of an Illuminati conspiracy but claimed that it was a subversive secret society which serves the Jewish elites that supposedly propped up both finance capitalism and Soviet communism in order to divide and rule the world. American evangelist Gerald Burton Winrod and other conspiracy theorists within the fundamentalist Christian movement in the 52

United States, which emerged in the 1910s as a backlash against the principles of Enlightenment secular humanism, modernism, and liberalism, became the main channel of dissemination of Illuminati conspiracy theories in America. Right-wing populists subsequently began speculating that some collegiate fraternities (), gentlemen's clubs () and think tanks (Council on Foreign Relations, Trilateral Commission) of the American upper class are front organizations of the Illuminati, which they accuse of plotting to create a New World Order through a one-world government. Skeptics argue that evidence would suggest that the Bavarian Illuminati was nothing more than a curious historical footnote since there is no evidence that the Illuminati survived its suppression in 1785. 2.4 Protocols of the Elders of Zion The Protocols of the Elders of Zion is an , originally published in Russian in 1903, alleging a Judeo-Masonic conspiracy to achieve world domination. The text purports to be the minutes of the secret meetings of a cabal of Jewish masterminds, which has coopted Freemasonry and is plotting to rule the world on behalf of all Jews because they believe themselves to be the chosen people of God. The Protocols incorporate many of the core conspiracist themes outlined in the Robison and Barruel attacks on the Freemasons, and overlay them with antisemitic allegations about anti-Tsarist movements in Russia. The Protocols reflect themes similar to more general critiques of Enlightenment liberalism by conservative aristocrats who support monarchies and state . The interpretation intended by the publication of The Protocols is that if one peels away the layers of the Masonic conspiracy, past the Illuminati, one finds the rotten Jewish core. The Protocols has been proven by polemicists, such as Irish journalist Philip Graves in a 1921 The Times article, and British academic Norman Cohn in his 1967 book , to be both a hoax and a clear case of . There is general agreement that Russian-French writer and political activist Matvei Golovinski fabricated the text for Okhrana, the secret police of the Russian Empire, as a work of counter-revolutionary propaganda prior to the 1905 Russian Revolution, by plagiarizing it, almost word for word in some passages, from The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu, a 19th century satire against Napoleon III of France written by French political satirist and Legitimist militant Maurice Joly. Responsible for feeding many antisemitic and anti-Masonic mass hysterias of the 20th century, The Protocols is widely considered to be influential in the development of conspiracy theories in general, 53 and reappears repeatedly in contemporary conspiracy literature about a Zionist Occupied Government and a New World Order.[5] For example, the authors of the 1982 controversial book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail concluded that The Protocols was the most persuasive piece of evidence for the existence and activities of the Priory of Sion. They speculated that this secret society was working behind the scenes to establish a theocratic "United States of Europe". Politically and religiously unified through the imperial cult of a Merovingian sacred king — supposedly descended from a Jesus bloodline — who occupies both the throne of Europe and the Holy See, this "Holy European Empire" would become the hyperpower of the 21st century. Although the Priory of Sion, itself, has been exhaustively debunked by journalists and scholars as a hoax, fringe Christian eschatologists concerned with the emergence of a New World Order became convinced that the Priory of Sion was a fulfillment of prophecies found in the Book of Revelation and further proof of an anti-Christian conspiracy of epic proportions. Skeptics argue that the current gambit of contemporary conspiracy theorists who use The Protocols is to claim that they "really" come from some group other than the Jews such as alien invaders or fallen angels. Although it is hard to determine whether the conspiracy-minded actually believe this or are simply trying to sanitize a discredited text, skeptics argue that it doesn't make much difference, since they leave the actual, antisemitic text unchanged. The result is to give The Protocols credibility and circulation when it deserves neither. 2.5 Round Table English-born South African businessman, mining magnate, and politician Cecil Rhodes advocated the reannexing the United States of America and reforming itself into an "Imperial Federation" to bring about a hyperpower and lasting world peace. In his first will, of 1877, written at the age of 23, he expressed his wish to fund a secret society (known as the Society of the Elect) that would advance this goal: To and for the establishment, promotion and development of a Secret Society, the true aim and object whereof shall be for the extension of British rule throughout the world, the perfecting of a system of emigration from the United Kingdom, and of colonisation by British subjects of all lands where the means of livelihood are attainable by energy, labour and enterprise, and especially the occupation by British settlers of the entire Continent of Africa, the Holy Land, the Valley of the Euphrates, the Islands of Cyprus and Candia, the whole of , the 54

Islands of the Pacific not heretofore possessed by Great Britain, the whole of the Malay Archipelago, the seaboard of China and Japan, the ultimate recovery of the United States of America as an integral part of the British Empire, the inauguration of a system of Colonial representation in the Imperial Parliament which may tend to weld together the disjointed members of the Empire and, finally, the foundation of so great a Power as to render wars impossible, and promote the best interests of humanity. In his later wills, a more mature Rhodes abandoned the idea and instead concentrated on what became the Rhodes Scholarship, which had British statesman Alfred Milner as one of its trustees. Established in 1902, the original goal of the trust fund was to foster peace among the great powers by creating a sense of fraternity and a shared world view among future British, American, and German leaders by having enabled them to study for free at the University of Oxford. Milner and British official Lionel George Curtis were the architects of the Round Table movement, a network of organizations promoting closer union between Britain and its self-governing colonies. To this end, Curtis founded the Royal Institute of International Affairs in June 1919 and, with his 1938 book The Commonwealth of God, began advocating for the creation of an imperial federation that eventually reannexes the U.S., which would be presented to Protestant churches as being the work of the Christian God to elicit their support. The Commonwealth of Nations was created in 1949 but it would only be a free association of independent states rather than the powerful imperial federation imagined by Rhodes, Milner and Curtis. The Council on Foreign Relations began in 1917 with a group of New York academics who were asked by President Woodrow Wilson to offer options for the foreign policy of the United States in the interwar period. Originally envisioned as a group of American and British scholars and diplomats, some of whom belonging to the Round Table movement, it was a subsequent group of 108 New York financiers, manufacturers and international lawyers organized in June 1918 by Nobel Peace Prize recipient and U.S. secretary of state, Root, that became the Council on Foreign Relations on 29 July 1921. The first of the council’s projects was a quarterly journal launched in September 1922, called Foreign Affairs.[48] The Trilateral Commission was founded in July 1973, at the initiative of American banker David Rockefeller, who was chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations at that time. It is a private organization established to foster closer cooperation among the United States, Europe and Japan. The Trilateral Commission is widely seen as a counterpart to the Council on Foreign Relations. Conspiracy theorists believe that the Council on Foreign 55

Relations and the Trilateral Commission are "globalist" think tanks that serve as front organizations for the Round Table of the "Anglo-American Establishment", which they believe is an "international banking cabal" that has been plotting from 1900 on to rule the world. Conspiracists therefore fear that the international bankers of financial capitalism are planning to eventually subvert the independence of the U.S. by subordinating national sovereignty to a strengthened Bank for International Settlements. The research findings of historian , author of the 1966 book Tragedy and Hope, are taken by both conspiracy theorists of the American Old Right (Cleon Skousen) and New Left (Carl Oglesby) to substantiate this view, even though he argued that the Establishment is not involved in a plot to implement a one-world government but rather British and American benevolent imperialism driven by the mutual interests of economic elites in the United Kingdom and the United States. Quigley also argued that, although the Round Table still exists today, its position in influencing the policies of world leaders has been much reduced from its heyday during World War I and slowly waned after the end of World War II and the Suez Crisis. Today the Round Table is largely a ginger group, designed to consider and gradually influence the policies of the Commonwealth of Nations, but faces strong opposition. Furthermore, in American society after 1965, the problem, according to Quigley, was that no elite was in charge and acting responsibly. Larry McDonald, the 2nd president of the John Birch Society and a conservative Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives who represented the 7th congressional district of , wrote a forward for Allen's 1976 book The Rockefeller File, wherein he stated: The drive of the Rockefellers and their allies is to create a one-world government, combining super-capitalism and Communism under the same tent, all under their control ... Do I mean conspiracy? Yes I do. I am convinced there is such a plot, international in scope, generations old in planning, and incredibly evil in intent. In his 2002 autobiography Memoirs, Rockefeller wrote: For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents ... to attack the for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more 56 integrated global political and economic structure—one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it. Barkun argues that this statement is partly facetious (the claim of "conspiracy" and "") and partly serious — the desire to encourage trilateral cooperation among the U.S., Europe, and Japan, for example — an ideal that used to be a hallmark of the internationalist wing of the Republican Party — known as "Rockefeller Republicans" in honor of Nelson Rockefeller — when there was an internationalist wing. The statement, however, is taken at face value and widely cited by conspiracy theorists as proof that the Council on Foreign Relations uses its role as the brain trust of American presidents, senators and representatives to manipulate them into supporting a New World Order in the form of a one-world government. In a 13 November 2007 interview with Canadian journalist Benjamin Fulford, Rockefeller countered: I don't think that I really feel that we need a world government. We need governments of the world that work together and collaborate. But, I can't imagine that there would be any likelihood or even that it would be desirable to have a single government elected by the people of the world ... There have been people, ever since I've had any kind of position in the world, who have accused me of being ruler of the world. I have to say that I think for the large part, I would have to decide to describe them as crackpots. It makes no sense whatsoever, and isn't true, and won't be true, and to raise it as a serious issue seems to me to be irresponsible. Some American social critics, such as Laurence H. Shoup, argue that the Council on Foreign Relations is an "imperial brain trust", which has, for decades, played a central behind-the- scenes role in shaping U.S. foreign policy choices for the post- WWII international order and the Cold War, by determining what options show up on the agenda and what options do not even make it to the table;[53] while others, such as G. William Domhoff, argue that it is in fact a mere policy discussion forum, which provides the business input to U.S. foreign policy planning. The latter argue that it has nearly 3,000 members, far too many for secret plans to be kept within the group; all the council does is sponsor discussion groups, debates and speakers; and as far as being secretive, it issues annual reports and allows access to its historical archives. However, all these critics agree that historical studies of the council show that it has a very different role in the overall power structure than what is claimed by conspiracy theorists. 57

2.6 Open Conspiracy In his 1928 book The Open Conspiracy British writer and futurist H. G. Wells promoted cosmopolitanism and offered blueprints for a world revolution to establish a scientifically-coordinated world state and socialist economy. Wells warned, however, in his 1940 book The New World Order that: ... when the struggle seems to be drifting definitely towards a world social democracy, there may still be very great delays and disappointments before it becomes an efficient and beneficent world system. Countless people ... will hate the new world order, be rendered unhappy by the frustration of their passions and ambitions through its advent and will die protesting against it. When we attempt to evaluate its promise, we have to bear in mind the distress of a generation or so of malcontents, many of them quite gallant and graceful-looking people. Wells' book was extremely influential in giving a second meaning to the term "new world order", which would only be used by both democratic socialist supporters and anti-communist opponents for generations to come. But the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to a period of triumphalism by capitalists world wide, the elimination of the only obstacle to the spread of a neoliberal form of globalization, and a shattering of the confidence of those who hoped that Perestroika and Glasnost reforms of the late 1980s would return the Soviet Union (which had become a degenerated workers' state) to democratic and transform it into one of the building blocks of the new world order envisioned by Wells. Right-wing populist conspiracy theorists, however, simply changed their focus from the Soviet Union to the United Nations as the bureaucratic collectivist menace.[54] 2.7 New Age British neo-Theosophical occultist , one of the founders of the so-called New Age movement, prophesied in 1940 the eventual victory of the Allies of World War II over the (which occurred in 1945) and the establishment by the Allies of a political and religious New World Order. She saw a federal world government as the culmination of Wells' Open Conspiracy but argued that it would be synarchist because it was guided by the Masters of the Ancient Wisdom, intent on preparing humanity for the mystical second coming of Christ, and the dawning of the Age of . According to Bailey, a group of ascended masters called the Great White Brotherhood works on the "inner planes" to oversee the transition to the New World Order but, for now, the members of this Spiritual Hierarchy are only 58 known to a few occult scientists, with whom they communicate telepathically, but as the need for their personal involvement in the plan increases, there will be an "Externalization of the Hierarchy" and everyone will know of their presence on Earth. Bailey's writings, along with American writer 's 1980 book The Aquarian Conspiracy, contributed to conspiracy theorists of the Christian right viewing the New Age movement as the "false religion" that would supersede in a New World Order.[59] Skeptics argue that the term "New Age movement" is a misnomer, generally used by conspiracy theorists as a catch- all rubric for any new religious, spiritual or philosophical belief, symbol and practice that is not fundamentalist Christian. By their lights, anything that is not Christian is by definition actively and willfully anti-Christian. The implication is that these independent and sometimes contradictory schools of thought are all part of a monolithic whole. This is logically and empirically false, and rationally simplistic. Paradoxically, since the 2000s, New World Order conspiracism is increasingly being embraced and propagandized by New Age occultists, who are people bored by rationalism and drawn to what Barkun calls the "cultural dumping ground of the heretical, the scandalous, the unfashionable, and the dangerous" — such as alternative medicine, astrology, mysticism, spiritualism, and Theosophy. Thus, New Age conspiracy theorists, such as the makers of documentary films like Esoteric Agenda, claim that globalists who plot on behalf of the New World Order are simply misusing occultism for Machiavellian ends, such as adopting 21 December 2012 as the exact date for the establishment of the New World Order in order to take advantage of the growing , which has its origins in the fringe theories of New Age writers José Argüelles, Terence McKenna, and . Skeptics argue that the connection of conspiracy theorists and occultists follows from their common fallacious premises. First, any widely accepted belief must necessarily be false. Second, counterknowledge — what the Establishment spurns — must be true. The result is a large, self-referential network in which, for example, UFO religionists promote anti-Jewish phobias while antisemites claim direct reception of prophetic material: the voice of the Mesoamerican god Quetzalcoatl. 2.8 Fourth Reich Conspiracy theorists often use the term "Fourth Reich" simply as a pejorative synonym for the "New World Order" to imply that its state ideology and government will be similar to Germany's Third Reich. However, some conspiracy theorists use the research findings of American journalist Edwin Black, author of the 2009 59 book Nazi Nexus, to claim that some American corporations and philanthropic foundations — whose complicity was pivotal to the Third Reich's war effort, Nazi and — are now conspiring to build a Fourth Reich. Conspiracy theorists, such as American writer , claim that some ex-Nazis, who survived the fall of the Greater German Reich, along with sympathizers in the United States and elsewhere, given safe haven by organizations like ODESSA and Die Spinne, have been working behind the scenes since the end of World War II to enact at least some of the principles of Nazism (e.g., , imperialism, widespread spying on citizens, , the use of propaganda to manufacture a national consensus) into culture, government, and business worldwide, but primarily in the U.S.. They cite the influence of ex-Nazi scientists brought in under Operation Paperclip to help advance aerospace manufacturing in the U.S. with technological principles from Nazi UFOs, and the acquisition and creation of conglomerates by ex-Nazis and their sympathizers after the war, in both Europe and the U.S. This neo-Nazi conspiracy is said to be animated by an "Iron Dream" in which the American Empire, having overthrown its Zionist Occupation Government, gradually establishes a Fourth Reich formally known as the "Western Imperium" — a pan-Aryan world empire modeled after Adolf Hitler's New Order — as the best hope for the survival of Western civilization under the threat of the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy. Skeptics argue that conspiracy theorists grossly overestimate the influence of ex-Nazis and neo- Nazis on American society, and point out that , big business and political repression have a long history that predates World War II. Some political scientists, such as Sheldon Wolin, have expressed concern that the twin forces of democratic deficit and superpower status have paved the way in the U.S. for the emergence of an inverted totalitarianism which contradicts many principles of Nazism. 2.9 Alien Invasion Since the late 1970s, extraterrestrials from other habitable planets or parallel dimensions (such as "Greys") and intraterrestrials from Hollow Earth (such as "Reptilians") have been included in the New World Order conspiracy, in more or less dominant roles, as in the theories put forward by American writers Stan Deyo and Milton William Cooper, and British writer David Icke. The common theme in such conspiracy theories is that aliens have been among us for decades, centuries or millennia, but a government cover-up has protected the public from knowledge of an alien invasion. Motivated by speciesism and imperialism, these aliens have been and are secretly manipulating developments 60 and changes in human society in order to more efficiently control and exploit it. In some theories, alien infiltrators have shapeshifted into human form and move freely throughout human society, even to the point of taking control of command positions in governmental, corporate, and religious institutions, and are now in the final stages of their plan to take over the world.[65] A mythical covert government agency of the United States code- named Majestic 12 is often cited by conspiracy theorists as being the shadow government which collaborates with the alien occupation, in exchange for assistance in the development and testing of military "flying saucers" at Area 51, in order for U.S. armed forces to achieve full-spectrum dominance. Skeptics, who adhere to the for unidentified flying objects, argue that the convergence of New World Order conspiracy theory and UFO conspiracy theory is a product of not only the era's widespread mistrust of governments and the popularity of the extraterrestrial hypothesis for UFOs but of the far right and ufologists actually joining forces. Barkun notes that the only positive side to this development is that, if conspirators plotting to rule the world are believed to be aliens, traditional human scapegoats (Freemasons, Illuminati, Jews, etc.) are downgraded or exonerated. 2.10 Brave New World and neo-Luddite conspiracy theorists emphasize technology forecasting in their New World Order conspiracy theories. They speculate that the global power elite are reactionary modernists pursuing a transhumanist agenda to develop and use human enhancement technologies in order to become a "posthuman ruling caste", while change accelerates toward a technological singularity — a theorized future point of discontinuity when events will accelerate at such a pace that normal unenhanced humans will be unable to predict or even understand the rapid changes occurring in the world around them. Conspiracy theorists fear the outcome will either be the emergence of a Brave New World-like dystopia — a "Brave New World Order" — or the of the human . Democratic transhumanists, such as American sociologist James Hughes, and singularitarians, such as American inventor Raymond Kurzweil, counter that many influential members of the American Establishment are bioconservatives strongly opposed to human enhancement, as demonstrated by President Bush's Council on Bioethics's proposed international treaty prohibiting human cloning and germline engineering. Regardless, transhumanists and singularitarians claim to only support developing and making publicly available technologies to eliminate aging and to greatly 61 enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities for the common good; as well as taking deliberate action to ensure that the Singularity — the moment when technological progress starts being driven by superintelligence — occurs in a way that is beneficial to humankind. 3. Postulated implementations Just as there are several overlapping or conflicting theories among conspiracists about the nature of the New World Order, so are there several beliefs about how its architects and planners will implement it: Gradualism Conspiracy theorists generally speculate that the New World Order is being implemented gradually, citing the formation of the U.S. Federal Reserve System in 1913; the League of Nations in 1919; the International Monetary Fund in 1944; the United Nations in 1945; the World Bank in 1945; the World Health Organization in 1948; the European Union and the euro currency in 1993; the World Trade Organization in 1998; and the in 2002 as major .[5] An increasingly popular conspiracy theory among American right- wing populists is that the hypothetical North American Union and the amero currency, proposed by the Council on Foreign Relations and its counterparts in Mexico and Canada, will be the next implementation of the New World Order. The theory holds that a group of shadowy and mostly nameless international elites are planning to replace the federal government of the United States with a transnational government. Therefore, conspiracy theorists believe the borders between Mexico, Canada and the United States are in the process of being erased, covertly, by a group of globalists whose ultimate goal is to replace national governments in Washington, D.C., Ottawa and with a European-style political union and a bloated E.U.-style bureaucracy. Skeptics argue that the North American Union exists only as a proposal contained in one of a thousand academic and/or policy papers published each year that advocate all manner of idealistic but ultimately unrealistic approaches to social, economic and political problems. Most of these get passed around in their own circles and eventually filed away and forgotten by junior staffers in congressional offices. Some of these papers, however, become touchstones for the conspiracy-minded and form the basis of all kinds of unfounded xenophobic fears especially during times of economic . For example, in March 2009, as a result of the financial crisis of 2007–2010, the People's 62

Republic of China and the Russian Federation pressed for urgent consideration of a new international reserve currency and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development proposed greatly expanding the I.M.F.'s Special Drawing Rights. Conspiracy theorists fear these proposals are a call for the U.S. to adopt a single global currency for a New World Order. Judging that both national governments and global institutions have proven ineffective in addressing worldwide problems that go beyond the capacity of individual nation-states to solve, some political scientists, such as Mark C. Partridge, argue that regionalism will be the major force in the coming decades, pockets of power around regional centers: Western Europe around Brussels, the Western Hemisphere around Washington, D.C., East Asia around Beijing, and Eastern Europe around Moscow. As such, the E.U., the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, and the G-20 will likely become more influential as time progresses. The question then is not whether global governance is gradually emerging, but rather how will these regional powers interact with one another. Coup d'état American right-wing populist conspiracy theorists, especially those who joined the militia movement in the United States, speculate that the New World Order will be implemented through a dramatic coup d'état by a "secret team", using black helicopters, in the U.S. and other nation-states to bring about a totalitarian world government controlled by the United Nations and enforced by troops of foreign U.N. peacekeepers. Following the Rex 84 and Operation Garden Plot plans, this military coup would involve the suspension of the Constitution, the imposition of martial law, and the appointment of military commanders to head state and local governments and to detain . These conspiracy theorists, who are all strong believers in a right to keep and bear arms, are extremely fearful that the passing of any gun control legislation will be later followed by the abolishment of personal gun ownership and a campaign of gun confiscation, and that the refugee camps of emergency management agencies such as F.E.M.A. will be used for the internment of suspected subversives, making little effort to distinguish true threats to the New World Order from pacifist dissidents. Before year 2000 some survivalists wrongly believed this process would be set in motion by the predicted Y2K problem causing .[74] Since many left-wing and right-wing conspiracy theorists believe that the were a false flag operation carried out by the United States intelligence community, as part of a strategy of tension to justify political repression at home and preemptive war abroad, they have become 63 convinced that a more catastrophic terrorist incident will be responsible for triggering Executive Directive 51 in order to complete the transition to a police state. Skeptics argue that unfounded fears about an imminent or eventual gun ban, military coup, internment, or U.N. invasion and occupation are rooted in an extremist form of constitutionalism but also an apocalyptic which provides a basic narrative within the American political right, claiming that the idealized society (i.e. "Christian nation", constitutional republic of "sovereign citizens") is thwarted by subversive conspiracies of liberal secular humanists who want "Big Government" and globalists who plot on behalf of the New World Order.[13] Mass surveillance Conspiracy theorists concerned with surveillance abuse believe that the New World Order is being implemented by the cult of intelligence at the core of the surveillance-industrial complex through mass surveillance and the use of Social Security numbers, the bar-coding of retail goods with Universal Product Code markings, and, most recently, RFID tagging via microchip implants. Skeptics warn that some consumer privacy advocates, such as Katherine Albrecht and Liz McIntyre, who claim that corporations and government are planning to track every move of consumers and citizens with RFID as the latest step toward a 1984-like surveillance state, have become Christian conspiracy theorists who believe spychips must be resisted because they argue that modern database and communications technologies, coupled with point of sale data-capture equipment and sophisticated ID and authentication systems, now make it possible to require a biometrically associated number or mark to make purchases. They fear that the ability to implement such a system closely resembles the Number of the Beast prophesied in the Book of Revelation. In January 2002, the Information Awareness Office (IAO) was established by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to bring together several DARPA projects focused on applying information technology to counter asymmetric threats to national security. Following public criticism that the development and deployment of these technologies could potentially lead to a mass surveillance system, the IAO was defunded by the United States Congress in 2003. The second source of controversy involved IAO’s original logo, which depicted the "all-seeing" Eye of Providence atop of a pyramid looking down over the globe, accompanied by the Latin phrase scientia est potentia (knowledge is power). Although DARPA eventually removed the logo from its website, it left a lasting impression on 64 privacy advocates. It also inflamed conspiracy theorists, who misinterpret the "eye and pyramid" as the Masonic symbol of the Illuminati, an 18th-century secret society they speculate continues to exist and is plotting on behalf of a New World Order. American historian Richard Landes, who specializes in the history of and was co-founder and director of the Center for Millennial Studies at University, argues that new and emerging technologies often trigger alarmism among millenarians and even the introduction of Gutenberg's printing press in 1436 caused waves of apocalyptic thinking. The , bar codes and Social Security numbers all triggered end- time warnings which either proved to be false or simply were no longer taken seriously once the public became accustomed to these technological changes. Civil libertarians argue that the privatization of surveillance and the rise of the surveillance- industrial complex in the United States does raise legitimate concerns about the erosion of privacy. However, skeptics of mass surveillance conspiracism caution that such concerns should be disentangled from secular paranoia about Big Brother or religious hysteria about the Antichrist. Occultism Conspiracy theorists of the Christian right believe there is an ancient occult conspiracy — started by the first mystagogues of Gnosticism and perpetuated by their alleged esoteric successors, such as the Kabbalists, Cathars, Knights Templar, Hermetics, Rosicrucians, Freemasons, and, ultimately, the Illuminati — which seeks to subvert the Judeo-Christian foundations of the Western world and implement the New World Order through a New Age one- world religion that prepares the masses to embrace the imperial cult of the Antichrist. More broadly, they speculate that globalists who plot on behalf of a New World Order are directed by occult agencies of some sort: unknown superiors, spiritual hierarchies, demons, fallen angels or Lucifer. They believe that, like Nazi occultists, these conspirators use the power of occult (), symbols (Eye of Providence), ( Masonic degrees ), monuments (National Mall landmarks), buildings (Manitoba Legislative Building) and facilities (Denver International Airport) to advance their plot to rule the world. For example, in June 1979, an unknown benefactor under the pseudonym "R. C. Christian" had a huge granite megalith built in the U.S. state of Georgia, which acts like a compass, calendar, and clock. A message comprising ten guides is inscribed on the occult structure in many languages to serve as instructions for survivors of a doomsday event to establish a more enlightened and sustainable civilization than the one which was destroyed. The 65

"" have subsequently become a spiritual and political Rorschach test onto which any number of ideas can be imposed. Some New Agers and neo-pagans revere it as a ley-line power nexus while a few conspiracy theorists are convinced that they are engraved with the New World Order's anti-Christian "". Should the Guidestones survive for centuries as their creators intended, many more meanings could arise, equally unrelated to the designer’s original intention. Skeptics argue that the demonization of by conspiracy theorists is rooted in religious intolerance but also in the same moral panics that have fueled witch trials in the Early Modern period, and allegations in the United States. Population control Conspiracy theorists believe that the New World Order will also be implemented through the use of population control in order to more easily monitor and control the movement of individuals. The means range from stopping the growth of human societies through reproductive health and family planning programs, which promote abstinence, contraception and abortion, or intentionally reducing the bulk of the world population through by mongering unnecessary wars, through plagues by engineering emergent viruses and tainting vaccines, and through environmental disasters by controlling the weather (HAARP, chemtrails), etc. The Codex Alimentarius, a collection of internationally recognized standards, codes of practice, guidelines and other recommendations relating to foods, food production and food safety, has also become the subject of conspiracy theories about population control through famines and foodborne diseases. Skeptics argue that fears of coercive population control can be traced back to the traumatic legacy of the eugenics movement's "war against the weak" in the United States during the first decades of the 20th century but also the Second Red Scare in the U.S. during the late 1940s and 1950s, and to a lesser extent in the 1960s, when activists on the far right of American politics routinely opposed public health programs, notably water fluoridation, mass vaccination and mental health services, by asserting they were all part of a far-reaching plot to impose a socialist or communist regime. Their views were influenced by opposition to a number of major social and political changes that had happened in recent years: the growth of internationalism, particularly the United Nations and its programs; the introduction of social welfare provisions, particularly the various programs established by the ; and government 66 efforts to reduce inequalities in the social structure of the U.S. Mind control Social critics accuse governments, corporations, and the mass media of being involved in the manufacturing of a national consensus and, paradoxically, a culture of fear due to the potential for increased social control that a mistrustful and mutually fearing population might offer to those in power. The worst fear of some conspiracy theorists, however, is that the New World Order will be implemented through the use of mind control—a broad range of tactics able to subvert an individual's control of his or her own thinking, behavior, emotions, or decisions. These tactics are said to include everything from Manchurian candidate- style of sleeper agents (Project MKULTRA, "Project Monarch") to engineering psychological operations (water fluoridation, subliminal advertising, "Silent Sound Spread Spectrum", MEDUSA) and parapsychological operations (Stargate Project) to influence the masses. The concept of wearing a for protection from such threats has become a popular stereotype and term of derision; the phrase serves as a byword for paranoia and is associated with conspiracy theorists. Skeptics argue that the paranoia behind a conspiracy theorist's obsession with mind control, population control, occultism, surveillance abuse, Big Business, Big Government, and globalization arises from a combination of two factors, when he or she: 1) holds strong individualist values and 2) lacks power. The first attribute refers to people who care deeply about an individual's right to make their own choices and direct their own lives without interference or obligations to a larger system (like the government), but combine this with a sense of powerlessness in one's own life, and one gets what some psychologists call "agency panic", intense anxiety about an apparent loss of autonomy to outside forces or regulators. When fervent individualists feel that they cannot exercise their independence, they experience a crisis and assume that larger forces are to blame for usurping this freedom. 4. Alleged conspirators According to Domhoff, many people seem to believe that the United States is ruled from behind the scenes by a conspiratorial elite with secret desires, i.e., by a small secretive group that wants to change the government system or put the country under the control of a world government. In the past the conspirators were usually said to be crypto-communists who were intent upon bringing the United States under a common world government with 67 the Soviet Union, but the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. in 1991 undercut that theory. Domhoff notes that most conspiracy theorists changed their focus to the United Nations as the likely controlling force in a New World Order, an idea which is undermined by the powerlessness of the U.N. and the unwillingness of even moderates within the American Establishment to give it anything but a limited role. In the 2008 book Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making, political scientist David Rothkopf argues that the world population of 6 billion people is governed by an elite of 6,000 individuals. Until the late 20th century, governments of the great powers provided most of the superclass, accompanied by a few heads of international movements (i.e., the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church) and entrepreneurs (Rothschilds, Rockefellers). According to Rothkopf, in the early 21st century, economic clout — fueled by the explosive expansion of international trade, travel and communication — rules; the nation-state's power has diminished shrinking politicians to minority power broker status; leaders in international business, finance and the defense industry not only dominate the superclass, they move freely into high positions in their nations' governments and back to private life largely beyond the notice of elected legislatures (including the U.S. Congress), which remain abysmally ignorant of affairs beyond their borders. He asserts that the superclass' disproportionate influence over national policy is constructive but always self- interested, and that across the world, few object to corruption and oppressive governments provided they can do business in these countries. Viewing the history of the world as the history of warfare between secret societies, conspiracy theorists go further than Rothkopf, and other scholars who have studied the global power elite, by claiming that members of the Bilderberg Group, Bohemian Club, Club of Rome, Council on Foreign Relations, Rhodes Trust, Skull and Bones, Trilateral Commission, and similar think tanks and private clubs, are synarchists conspiring to create a totalitarian New World Order — the implementation of a bureaucratic collectivist world government through a strengthened United Nations and a global central bank to force humanity into permanent slavery. Domhoff counters: The opponents are the corporate conservatives and the Republican Party, not the Council on Foreign Relations, Bilderbergers, and Bohemians. It is the same people more or less, but it puts them in their most important roles, as capitalists and political leaders, which are visible and legitimate... If thought of this way, then the role of a CFR as a place to try to hear new ideas 68 and reach consensus is more readily understood, as is the function of a social club as a place that creates social cohesion. Moreover, those understandings of the CFR and the clubs fit with the of the members of the elite. Progressives, who are skeptical of right-wing populist conspiracy theories, also accuse the global power elite of not having the best interests of all at heart, and many intergovernmental organizations of suffering from a democratic deficit, but they argue that the superclass are plutocrats only interested in brazenly imposing a neoliberal or neoconservative new world order — the implementation of global capitalism through economic and military coercion to protect the interests of transnational corporations [91] — which systematically undermines the possibility of a socialist one-world government. On the other hand, Marxists and anarchists, who believe the world is in the middle of a transition from the American Empire to the rule of a global ruling class that has emerged from within the American Empire,[92] point out that right-wing populist conspiracy theorists, blinded by their anti-communism, fail to see is that what they demonize as the "New World Order" is, ironically, the highest stage of the very capitalist economic system they defend. American intellectual Noam Chomsky, author of the 1994 book World Orders Old and New, often describes the New World Order as a post-Cold-War era of super-imperialism in which "the New World gives the orders". Commenting on the 1999 US-NATO bombing of , he writes: The aim of these assaults is to establish the role of the major imperialist powers--above all, the United States--as the unchallengeable arbiters of world affairs. The "New World Order" is precisely this: an international regime of unrelenting pressure and intimidation by the most powerful capitalist states against the weakest. 5. Criticism Skeptics of New World Order conspiracy theories accuse its proponents of indulging in the furtive fallacy, a belief that significant facts of history are necessarily sinister; conspiracism, a world view that centrally places conspiracy theories in the unfolding of history, rather than social and economic forces; and fusion paranoia, a promiscuous absorption of fears from any source whatsoever. Domhoff, a research professor in psychology and sociology who studies theories of power, writes in a March 2005 essay entitled There Are No Conspiracies: There are several problems with a conspiratorial view that don't fit with what we know about power structures. First, it assumes that a small handful of wealthy and highly educated people somehow develop an extreme psychological desire for power that 69 leads them to do things that don't fit with the roles they seem to have. For example, that rich capitalists are no longer out to make a profit, but to create a one-world government. Or that elected officials are trying to get the constitution suspended so they can assume dictatorial powers. These kinds of claims go back many decades now, and it is always said that it is really going to happen this time, but it never does. Since these claims have proved wrong dozens of times by now, it makes more sense to assume that leaders act for their usual reasons, such as profit- seeking motives and institutionalized roles as elected officials. Of course they want to make as much money as they can, and be elected by huge margins every time, and that can lead them to do many unsavory things, but nothing in the ballpark of creating a one-world government or suspending the constitution. Partridge, a contributing editor to the global affairs magazine Diplomatic Courier, writes in a December 2008 news article entitled One World Government: Conspiracy Theory or Inevitable Future?: I am skeptical that “global governance” could “come much sooner than that [200 years],” as Gideon posits. For one thing, —the natural counterpoint to global government—is rising. Some leaders and peoples around the world have resented Washington’s chiding and hubris over the past two decade of American unipolarity. Russia has been re-establishing itself as a “great power”; few could miss the national pride on display when China hosted the Beijing Olympics this summer; while Hugo Chavez and his ilk have stoked the national flames with their anti- American rhetoric. The departing of the Bush Administration could cause this nationalism to abate, but economic uncertainty usually has the opposite effect. [...] Another point is that attempts at global government and global agreements have been categorical failures. The WTO’s Doha Round is dead in the water, Kyoto excluded many of the leading polluters and a conference to establish a deal was a failure, and there is a race to the bottom in terms of corporate taxes—rather than an existing global framework. And, where supranational governance structures exist, they are noted for their bureaucracy and inefficiency: The UN has been unable to stop an American-led invasion of Iraq, genocide in Darfur, the slow collapse of Zimbabwe, or Iran’s continued uranium enrichment. That is not to belittle the structure, as I deem it essential, but the system’s flaws are there for all to see. Although some cultural critics see superconspiracy theories about a New World Order as "postmodern metanarratives" that may be politically empowering, a way of giving ordinary people a narrative structure with which to question what they see around 70 them,[95] skeptics argue that conspiracism leads people into cynicism, convoluted thinking, and a tendency to feel it is hopeless even as they denounce the alleged conspirators. The activities of conspiracy theorists (talk radio shows, books, websites, documentary videos, conferences, etc.) unwittingly draw enormous amounts of energy and effort away from serious criticism and directed to real and ongoing crimes of state, and their institutional background. That is why conspiracy-focused movements (JFK, UFO, 9/11 Truth) are treated far more tolerantly by centers of power than is the norm for serious critical and activist work of left-wing progressives who are marginalized from mainstream public discourse. Marxists, such as members of the U.S. Party for Socialism and Liberation, reject New World Order conspiracism because it produces false consciousness and cultism. They argue: Conspiracy “theories” lack any true analysis of the systemic class forces at work that oppress billions of people each day. They do not point to imperialism and capitalism as the main problems, instead ascribing society's ills to a few leaders from imperialist countries that are somehow above the class systems under which we live. Such “theories” are not only false, anti-Marxist and truly reductive of history—they are dangerous diversions that keep people from aiming their anger and hatred toward the system that actually causes oppression throughout the world. Marxists conclude that the real solution is something right-wing poplulist conspiracy theorists would never advocate or contemplate: democratic socialism. Concerned that the apocalyptic millenarian theme in all conspiracy theories about a New World Order might motivate lone wolves to engage in leaderless resistance, which can encompass anything from patriot hacking to United States presidential assassination plots, Barkun writes: The danger less in such beliefs themselves ... than in the behavior they might stimulate or justify. As long as the New World Order appeared to be almost but not quite a reality, devotees of conspiracy theories could be expected to confine their activities to propagandizing. On the other hand, should they believe that the prophesied evil day had in fact arrived, their behavior would become far more difficult to predict. Warning of the threat to American democracy posed by right-wing populist movements led by producerist demagogues who mobilize support for mob rule or even a fascist revolution by exploiting the fear of conspiracies, Berlet writes: Right-wing populist movements can cause serious damage to a society because they often popularize xenophobia, , scapegoating, and conspiracism. This can lure mainstream politicians to adopt these themes to attract voters, 71 legitimize acts of (or even ), and open the door for revolutionary right-wing populist movements, such as fascism, to recruit from the reformist populist movements. Criticisms of New World Order conspiracy theorists also come from within their own community. Despite believing themselves to be "freedom fighters", many right-wing populist conspiracy theorists hold views that are incompatible with their professed libertarianism, such as eliminationism, dominionism, and white supremacism. This paradox has led Icke, who argues that Christian Patriots are the only Americans who understand the truth about the New World Order (which he believes is controlled by a race of reptilians known as the "Babylonian Brotherhood"), to reportedly tell a Christian Patriot group: I don't know which I dislike more, the world controlled by the Brotherhood, or the one you want to replace it with.

UFO conspiracy theory 72

A UFO conspiracy theory is any one of many often overlapping conspiracy theories which argue that evidence of the reality of unidentified flying objects is being suppressed by the governments. Such theories are often intentionally hoaxed, and are backed by little or no evidence, and absolutely no reliable evidence despite significant research on the subject by non- governmental scientific agencies, [1] and therefore, are considered pseudoscience. They commonly argue that Earth governments, especially the Government of the United States are in communication or cooperation with extraterrestrials, despite public claims to the contrary. The theory's tendency to target the United States government over others, is likely because it is an American cultural phenomenon. [3] Some of these theories claim that the government is explicitly allowing . Contents • 1 Popular culture and opinions • 2 Chronology ○ 2.1 1930s ○ 2.2 1940s  2.2.1 The Great Air Raid  2.2.2 rockets  2.2.3  2.2.4 Mantell Incident  2.2.5 ○ 2.3 1950s ○ 2.4 1960s ○ 2.5 1970s  2.5.1 Holloman Air Force Base  2.5.2 ○ 2.6 1980s  2.6.1 MJ-12  2.6.2  2.6.3 Milton William Cooper  2.6.4 73

 2.6.5 "UFO Cover-Up?: Live!"  2.6.6 July 1989 MUFON Convention  2.6.7 Rendlesham Forest Incident ○ 2.7 1990s ○ 2.8 2000s ○ 2.9 MoD secret files • 3 Allegations of evidence suppression

1.Popular culture and opinions It has been suggested that UFO conspiracy theories have been presented to UFO enthusiasts as designed to distract from prosaic but secretive government effort; there is one well-documented instance of this occurring; see Paul Bennewitz. Some UFO conspiracy theories have been studied as emergent folklore or urban legends. It has also been suggested that UFO conspiracy theories were deliberately played into by the U.S. Air Force during the Cold War in order to create fear in the minds of Soviet leaders that the United States had access to superior alien technology and, thus, should not be attacked or provoked. Various conspiratorial UFO ideas have flourished on the internet and are frequently featured on 's program, Coast to Coast AM. In fiction, television programs (The X-Files and Stargate), films (Men in Black and Independence Day) and any number of novels have featured elements of UFO conspiracy theories. Elements may include the government's sinister operative from Men in Black, the military bases known as Area 51, RAF Rudloe Manor or Porton Down, a supposed crash site in Roswell, New Mexico, the Rendlesham Forest Incident, a political committee dubbed the "Majestic 12" or successor of the UK Ministry of Defence's Working Party (FSWP). Some civilians suggest that they have been abducted and/or body parts have been taken from them. The contention that there is a widespread cover-up of UFO information is not limited to the general public or UFO research community. For example, a 1971 survey of Industrial Research/Development magazine found that 76% felt the government was not revealing all it knew about UFOs, 54% thought UFOs definitely or probably existed, and 32% thought they came from . Notable persons to have publicly stated that UFO evidence is being suppressed include Senator Barry Goldwater, Admiral Lord Hill-Norton (former NATO head and chief 74 of the British Defence Staff), Brigadier-General Arthur Exon (former commanding officer of Wright-Patterson AFB), Vice-Admiral Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter (first CIA director), astronauts and , former Canadian Defence Minister Paul Hellyer, and the 1999 French COMETA report by various French generals and aerospace experts. 2. Chronology This is a list of events, statements and personalities which are related to UFO conspiracy theories. 2.1 1930s On the night before in 1938, directed the Mercury Theatre in their live radio adaptation of H. G. Wells's classic novel, The War of the Worlds. By mimicking a news broadcast, the show was quite realistic sounding for its time, and some listeners were fooled into thinking that a Martian invasion was underway in the United States. There was widespread confusion, followed by outrage and controversy. Some later studies have argued that the extent of the panic was exaggerated by the contemporary press, but it remains clear that many people were caught up, to one degree or another, in the confusion. According to U.S. Air Force Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, the Air Force's files often mentioned the panicked aftermath of the 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast as a possible reaction of the public to confirmed evidence of UFOs. 2.2 1940s 2.2.1 The Great Los Angeles Air Raid "The Great Los Angeles Air Raid" also known as "The " is the name given by contemporary sources to the imaginary enemy attack and subsequent anti-aircraft artillery barrage which took place from late 24 February to early 25 February 1942 over Los Angeles, California. Initially, the target of the aerial barrage was thought to be an attacking force from Japan, but Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox speaking at a press conference shortly afterward called the incident a "false alarm." A small number of modern-day UFOlogists have suggested the targets were extraterrestrial spacecraft. When documenting the incident in 1983, the U.S. Office of Air Force History attributed the event to a case of "war nerves" likely triggered by a lost weather balloon and exacerbated by stray flares and shell bursts from adjoining batteries. 2.2.2 75

Scandinavian countries, primarily , and then spread into other European countries. One USAF top secret document from 1948 stated that In 1946 and 1947, numerous so-called ghost rockets appeared over Swedish air intelligence informed them that some of their investigators felt that the objects were not only real but could not be explained as having earthly origins. Similarly, 20 years later, Greek physicist Dr. Paul Santorini publicly stated that in 1947 he was put in charge of a Greek military investigation into the ghost rockets sighted over . Again, they quickly concluded the objects were real and not of conventional origin. Santorini claimed their investigation was killed by U.S. scientists and high military officials who had already concluded the objects were extraterrestrial in origin and feared public panic because there was no defense. 2.2.3 Roswell Incident In 1947, the issued a press release stating that a "flying disk" had been recovered near Roswell, New Mexico. This press release was quickly withdrawn, and officials stated that a weather balloon had been misidentified. The Roswell case quickly faded even from the attention of most UFOlogists until the 1970s. There has been continued speculation that an alien spacecraft did indeed crash near Roswell despite the official denial. For example, retired Brigadier General Arthur E. Exon, former commanding officer of Wright-Patterson AFB, told researchers Kevin Randle and Donald Schmitt that a spacecraft had crashed, alien bodies were recovered, and the event was covered up by the U.S. government. Exon further claimed he was aware of a very secretive UFO controlling committee made up primarily of very high-ranking military officers and intelligence people. His nickname for this group was "The Unholy Thirteen" (see also Majestic 12) 2.2.4 Mantell Incident The 1948 death of Air Force pilot Thomas Mantell (the so-called Mantell Incident) may have contributed to a distrust of governmental UFO studies. Mantell's airplane crashed and he was killed following the pursuit of an aerial artifact he described as "a metallic object...of tremendous size." (Clark, 352) Project Sign personnel investigated the case and determined that Mantell had been chasing the planet Venus, a conclusion which met with incredulity. Later this theory was changed to include a Skyhook balloon instead of Venus, an explanation which continues to be debated to this day. 2.2.5 Project Sign 76

The U.S. Air Force may have planted the seeds of UFO conspiracy theories with Project Sign (established 1947) (which became and ). Edward J. Ruppelt, the first director of Blue Book, characterized the Air Force's public behavior regarding UFOs as "schizophrenic": alternately open and transparent, then secretive and dismissive. Ruppelt also revealed that in mid-1948, Project Sign issued a top secret Estimate of the Situation concluding that the flying saucers were not only real but probably extraterrestrial in origin. According to Ruppelt, the Estimate was ordered destroyed by Air Force Chief of Staff . 2.3 1950s • The UK Ministry of Defence’s UFO Project has its roots in a study commissioned in 1950 by the MOD’s then Chief Scientific Adviser, the great radar scientist Sir Henry Tizard. As a result of his insistence that UFO sightings should not be dismissed without some form of proper scientific study, the Department set up the Flying Saucer Working Party (or FSWP).[citation needed] • In August 1950, Montanan baseball manager Nicholas Mariana films several UFOs with his color 16mm camera. Project Blue Book is called in and, after inspecting the film, Mariana claimed they returned it to him with critical footage removed, clearly showing the objects as disc-shaped. The incident sparks nation-wide media attention. • 's 1950 Behind the Flying Saucers suggested that the U.S. government had recovered a crashed flying saucer and its dead occupants near Aztec, New Mexico, in 1948. It was later revealed that Scully had been the victim of a prank by "two veteran confidence artists". • was a retired U.S. Marine who wrote a series of popular books and magazine articles that were very influential in shaping public opinion, arguing that UFOs were indeed real and the U.S. government was suppressing UFO evidence. Keyhoe's first article on the subject came out in True Magazine, January 1950, and was a national sensation. His first book, Flying Saucers Are Real also came out in 1950, at about the same time as Frank Scully's book, and was a bestseller. In 1956, Keyhoe helped establish NICAP, a powerful civilian UFO investigating group with many inside sources. Keyhoe became its director and continued his attacks on the Air Force. Other contemporary critics also charged that the United States Air Force was perpetrating a cover-up with its Project Blue Book. 77

• Canadian radio engineer Wilbert B. Smith, who worked for the Canadian Department of Transport, was interested in flying saucer propulsion technology and wondered if the assertions in the just-published Scully and Keyhoe books were factual. In September 1950, he had the Canadian embassy in Washington D.C. arrange contact with U.S. officials to try to discover the truth of the matter. Smith was briefed by Dr. Robert Sarbacher, a physicist and consultant to the Defense Department's Research and Development Board. Other correspondence, having to do with Keyhoe needing to get clearance to publish another article on Smith's theories of UFO propulsion, indicated that Bush and his group were operating out of the Research and Development Board.[13] Smith then briefed superiors in the Canadian government, leading to the establishment of Project Magnet, a small Canadian government UFO research effort. Canadian documents and Smith's private papers were uncovered in the late 1970s, and by 1984, other alleged documents emerged claiming the existence of a highly secret UFO oversight committee of scientists and military people called Majestic 12, again naming Vannevar Bush. Sarbacher was also interviewed in the 1980s and corroborated the information in Smith's memos and correspondence. Throughout the 1950s and early 1960s, Smith granted public interviews, and among other things stated that he had been lent crashed UFO material for analysis by a highly secret U.S. government group which he wouldn't name. [14]

• The was a secret, CIA-assembled scientific UFO review committee that met in January 1953. In part, it recommended a public relations campaign to reduce public interest in UFOs, including ridiculing and discrediting those who claim UFO encounters, and to spy on civilian UFO groups. The Robertson Panel's existence was first disclosed in 1956 by former Blue Book director, Edward Ruppelt, who had participated in the discussions. Immediately after the Panel, Blue Book public relations officer Al Chop told Ruppelt that, "We've been ordered to work up a national debunking campaign, planting articles in magazines and arranging broadcasts to make UFO reports sound like poppycock." (Dolan, 193-202) This protocol is still in effect. • A few weeks after the Robertson Panel, the Air Force issued Regulation 200-2, ordering air base officers to publicly discuss UFO incidents only if they were judged to have been solved, and to classify all the unsolved cases to keep them 78

out of the public eye. In addition, UFO investigative duties started to be taken on by the newly formed 4602nd Air Intelligence Squadron (AISS) of the Air Defense Command. The 4,602nd AISS was tasked with investigating only the most important UFO cases with intelligence or national security implications. These were deliberately siphoned away from Blue Book, leaving Blue Book to deal with the more trivial reports. • In 1954 an automatic working station for UFO monitoring was installed at Shirley's Bay near Ottawa in Canada. After this station detected the first suspicious event, all data gained by this station was classified as secret, although the cameras of the monitoring station could not make any pictures because of fog. • 1956 saw the publication of 's They Knew Too Much About Flying Saucers, the book which publicized the idea of sinister Men in Black who appear to UFO witnesses and warn them to keep quiet. There has been continued speculation that the men in black are government agents who harass and threaten UFO witnesses. • Also in 1956, the group Foundation for Earth-Space Relations, led by film producer Tzadi Sophit, tested their own flying saucer outside the Long Island town of Ridge Landing. It is speculated in Robertson's "The Long Island Saucer" that an FBI cover-up silenced witnesses. (citation?) • On January 22, 1958, when Donald Keyhoe appeared on CBS television, his statements on UFOs were precensored by the Air Force. During the show when Keyhoe tried to depart from the censored script to "reveal something that has never been disclosed before", CBS cut the sound, later stating Keyhoe was about to violate "predetermined security standards" and about to say something he wasn't "authorized to release". What Keyhoe was about to reveal were four publicly unknown military studies concluding UFOs were interplanetary (including the 1948 Project Sign Estimate of the Situation and a 1952 Project Blue Book engineering analysis of UFO motion presented at the Robertson Panel. [, 286- 287; Richard Dolan 293-295] • Gordon Cooper reported suppression of a flying saucer movie filmed in high clarity by two Edwards AFB range photographers on May 3, 1957. Cooper said he viewed developed negatives of the object, clearly showing a dish- like object with a dome on top and something like holes or ports in the dome. The photographers and another witness, 79

when later interviewed by James McDonald, confirmed the story. Cooper said military authorities then picked up the film and neither he nor the photographers ever heard what happened to it. The incident was also reported in a few newspapers, such as the . The official explanation was that the photographers had filmed a weather balloon distorted by hot desert air.[15] 2.4 1960s • Throughout much of the 1960s, atmospheric physicist James E. McDonald suggested—via lectures, articles and letters—that the U.S. Government was mishandling evidence which would support the extraterrestrial hypothesis. 2.5 1970s Although strictly unrelated to a UFO conspiracy theory, the Watergate affair brought the curtain down on the era when authorities were generally trusted by the public. A decade after the assassination of John F. Kennedy a cottage industry of JFK conspiracy theorists seemed to spring up out of the woodwork, fed by the tabloids. UFO conspiracy theories found fertile ground in this paranoid zeitgeist. Clark also notes that many UFO conspiracy theory tales "can be traced to a mock documentary, Alternative 3, broadcast on British television on June 20, 1977, and subsequently turned into a paperback book." (Clark, 213–4) 2.5.1 Holloman Air Force Base Clark cites a 1973 encounter as perhaps the earliest suggestion that the U.S. government was involved with ETs. That year, Robert Emenegger and Allan Sandler of Los Angeles, California, were in contact with officials at Norton Air Force Base in order to make a documentary film. Emenegger and Sandler report that Air Force Officials (including Paul Shartle) suggested incorporating UFO information in the documentary, including as its centerpiece genuine footage of a 1971 UFO landing at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico. Furthermore, says Emenegger, he was given a tour of Holloman AFB and was shown where officials conferred with EBEs. This was supposedly not the first time the U.S. had met these aliens, as Emenegger reported that his U.S. military sources had "been monitoring signals from an alien group with which they were unfamiliar, and did their ET guests know anything about them? The ETs said no." (Clark 1998, 144) No film was ever presented, however, and the documentary was released in 1974 as UFO's: Past, Present and Future (narrated by Rod Serling). The 80 alleged Holloman UFO landing was discussed in the documentary and was depicted with illustrations. In 1988, Shartle said that the film in question was genuine, and that he had seen it several times. 2.5.2 Paul Bennewitz The late 1970s also saw the beginning of an affair centered around Paul Bennewitz of Albuquerque, New Mexico. 2.6 1980s 2.6.1 MJ-12 The so-called Majestic 12 documents surfaced in 1982, suggesting that there was secret, high-level U.S. government interest in UFOs dating to the 1940s.

Majestic 12 Majestic 12 Majestic 12 #1 #2 #3 2.6.2 Linda Moulton Howe In September 1979 to May 1980, Linda Moulton Howe, Director of Special Projects at KMGH-TV, Channel 7 (then a CBS affiliate) produced, wrote, directed, edited and reported a documentary film for TV entitled A Strange Harvest about the Colorado and worldwide phenomenon of bloodless, trackless animal deaths called "animal mutilations." The documentary was first broadcast as a two hour special on May 18, 1980, and Howe was awarded a 1981 Regional Emmy. Some time after the broadcast, Linda was contacted by Jean Abounader, Director of the Documentary Division at Home Box Office, about producing an hour for HBO that would go beyond A Strange Harvest. On March 21, 1983, Howe was in to sign a contract in the HBO offices to produce an hour with the working title, UFO's: The ET Factor. Peter Gersten, New York attorney who had filed Freedom of Information Act inquiries on behalf of Citizens Against UFO Secrecy (CAUS) for UFO information from the CIA, NSA and other intelligence and military organizations, met with Howe in New York City. Mr. Gersten showed Howe correspondence he had from an AFOSI (Air Force Office of Special Investigations) Agent named Richard C. Doty. Doty's 81 correspondence with attorney Gersten was about an alleged military exchange at Ellsworth AFB in South Dakota with a landed UFO and humanoid entity that fired a ray of light at a security guard's gun. The ray allegedly melted the gun and burned the guard's hand. Gersten said that he and CAUS would like to investigate the Ellsworth AFB case and that he would arrange contact for Howe with Richard Doty. A meeting was set for April 9, 1983, in Albuquerque, New Mexico, at the Kirtland AFB office of AFOSI. Howe thought she was to receive names and phone numbers for eyewitnesses to the Ellsworth AFB event. Instead, Doty showed her a "Briefing Paper for the President of the United States On the Subject of Unidentified Aerial Vehicles (UAVs)." (Clark 1998, 154) Howe says she was not allowed to copy the paper or take notes, and was required to read it in Doty's presence. The document, Howe reported, detailed a series of events: several UFO crashes and recoveries, including one where an alien occupant was alive and remained in the care of the U.S. government at Los Alamos Laboratory "until it died of unknown causes on June 18, 1952." Howe reported that Doty promised considerable confirmation, including documents, film and photographs. She called Jean Abounader at HBO and the two agreed that an official letter from the U. S. Air Force was necessary to back up the promise of film, photographs and documents for use in Howe's HBO documentary. Abounader asked Howe to meet with the number two executive at HBO, Bridgett Potter, on May 18, 1983, to discuss the government's potential contribution to the HBO TV production. Howe met with Potter, Abounader and others at the New York HBO offices, but no official letter was ever forthcoming. Potter gave Howe until October 1983 to come up with official administration and military confirmation to her at HBO about the details of the briefing paper. Doty stopped communicating with the Howe/Gersten effort in June 1983 and nothing of an official nature was provided. HBO and Howe reached the October deadline and the documentary project ended. Howe continued to develop her own military and intelligence sources independent from the HBO/Doty/Gersten period of March to June 1983 and produced four books and other documentaries, including An Alien Harvest: Further Evidence Linking Animal Mutilations and Human Abductions to Alien Life Forms (1989); Glimpses of Other Realities, Vol. 1: Facts & Eyewitnesses © 1994; Glimpses of Other Realities, Vol. 2: High Strangeness (1998); Mysterious Lights and Crop Circles (2002); Strange Harvests 1993, an hour documentary film about an upsurge in animal mutilations and human interactions with aerial lights in Alabama and surrounding region from 1993 to 1994. By 1999, Linda Moulton Howe created Earthfiles.com, a news website 82

Howe reports, writes and edits about science, environment and Real X-Files issues and breaking news. Earthfiles has received several journalism awards for excellence. The Real X-Files section contains interviews, documents, illustrations and photographs related to a non-human presence on Earth and its interactions with civilians and military. 2.6.3 Milton William Cooper In the 1980s, Milton William Cooper achieved a degree of prominence due to his conspiratorial writings. 2.6.4 Bob Lazar In November 1989, Bob Lazar appeared in a special interview with investigative reporter George Knapp on TV station KLAS to discuss his alleged employment at S-4. In his interview with Knapp, Lazar said he first thought the saucers were secret, terrestrial aircraft, whose test flights must have been responsible for many UFO reports. Gradually, on closer examination and from having been shown multiple briefing documents, Lazar came to the conclusion that the discs must have been of extraterrestrial origin. In his filmed testimony, Lazar explains how this impression first hit him after he boarded the craft under study and examined their interior. For the propulsion of the studied vehicles, Bob Lazar claims that the atomic element 115 served as a nuclear fuel. Element 115 (provisionally named 'Ununpentium' (Uup)) reportedly provided an energy source which would produce anti-gravity effects under proton bombardment along with the production of antimatter used for energy production. Lazar's website says, as the intense strong nuclear of element 115's nucleus would be properly amplified, the resulting effect would be a distortion of the surrounding gravitational field, allowing the vehicle to immediately shorten the distance to a charted destination. Lazar also claims that he was given introductory briefings describing the historical involvement by extraterrestrial beings with this planet for 10,000 years. The beings originate from the Zeta Reticuli 1 & 2 star system and are therefore referred to as Zeta Reticulians, popularly called 'Greys. Lazar says he has degrees from the California Institute of Technology and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1993, the Los Angeles Times looked into his background and found there was no evidence to support his claims. 2.6.5 "UFO Cover-Up?: Live!" On October 14, 1988, actor Mike Farrell hosted "U.S. UFO Cover- Up: Live!" a two-hour prime-time syndicated television special that was broadcast in (and elsewhere). William 83

Moore and Jamie Shandera appeared (among many other guests) and discussed the acquisition of the Majestic 12 documents, and introduced their sources "Falcon" and "Condor", allegedly high- level government intelligence officials. Interviewed in shadow and with masked voices, Falcon and Condor disclosed information about the U.S. government’s involvement in UFOs and alien interaction, UFO crashes and occupant retrievals, and alien . This broadcast also included the first known mention of Area 51 on television. Also known as the "strawberry ice cream show" in reference to the informants' remark that a captured EBE enjoyed strawberry ice cream and Tibetan music.[16] 2.6.6 July 1989 MUFON Convention The Mutual UFO Network held their 1989 annual convention in Las Vegas, Nevada, on July 1, 1989. Bill Moore (ufologist) was scheduled as the main speaker, and he refused to submit his paper for review prior to the convention, and also announced that he would not answer any follow-up questions as was common practice. Unlike most of the convention's attendees, Moore did not stay at the same hotel that was hosting the convention. When he spoke, Moore said that he and others had been part of an elaborate, long-term disinformation campaign begun primarily to discredit Paul Bennewitz: "My role in the affair ... was primarily that of a freelancer providing information on Paul's (Bennewitz) current thinking and activities." (Clark, 1998, 163) Air Force Sergeant Richard C. Doty was also involved, said Moore, though Moore thought Doty was "simply a pawn in a much larger game, as was I." (ibid.) One of their goals, Moore said, was to disseminate information and watch as it was passed from person to person in order to study information channels. Moore said that he "was in a rather unique position" in the disinformation campaign: "judging by the positions of the people I knew to be directly involved in it, [the disinformation] definitely had something to do with national security. There was no way I was going to allow the opportunity to pass me by ... I would play the disinformation game, get my hands dirty just often enough to lead those directing the process into believing I was doing what they wanted me to do, and all the while continuing to burrow my way into the matrix so as to learn as much as possible about who was directing it and why."(ibid., 164)Once he finished the speech, Moore immediately left the hotel. He left Las Vegas that same night. Moore's claims sent shock waves through the small, tight-knit UFO community, which remains divided as to the reliability of his assertions. 2.6.7 Rendlesham Forest Incident 84

Britain's most celebrated UFO incident, and one of the best- documented in the world, occurred outside the US Air Force base at Woodbridge in Suffolk, England, shortly after Christmas 1980. Various lights were seen in neighbouring Rendlesham Forest by numerous servicemen, who investigated and found an apparent landing site. This site was examined by the deputy base commander, Charles I. Halt, who took readings with a Geiger counter and was also witness to a flashing light in the direction of Orford Ness as well as star-like objects in the sky. Copies of Halt's letter to the U.K. Ministry of Defense were routinely released by the American base public affairs staff until the base closed.[17] 2.7 1990s • On November 24, 1992, a UFO crashes in Southaven Park, Shirley, NY.[18] John Ford, a Long Island MUFON researcher, investigates the crash. On June 12, 1996, Ford is arrested and charged with plotting to poison several local politicians by sneaking radium in their toothpaste. On advice of counsel Ford pleads insanity and is committed to the Mid Hudson Psychiatric Center.[19] Critics say the charges are a frame-up.[20] • The Branton Files have circulated on the internet at least since the mid-1990s. They essentially recirculate the information presented above, with many asides from "Branton", the document's editor. • Philip Schneider made a few appearances at UFO conventions in the 1990s, espousing essentially a new version of the theories mentioned above. He claimed to have survived the Dulce Base catastrophe and decided to tell his tale. • In 1999 the French government published a study, "UFOs and Defense: What Must We Be Prepared For?" Among other topics, the study concludes that the United States government has withheld valuable evidence. 2.8 2000s UFO conspiracy theories show no signs of abating. 2003 saw the publication of Alien Encounters (ISBN 1-57821-205-7), by Chuck Missler and Mark Eastman, which primarily re-states the notions presented above (especially Cooper's) and presents them as fact. 2.9 MoD secret files 1978 to 1987 eight files on UFO sightings were first released on May 14, 2008, to the National Archives' website by the British Ministry of Defence. 200 files are set to be made public by 2012. 85

The files are correspondence from the public sent to government officials, such as the MoD and Margaret Thatcher. The information can be downloaded.[22] Copies of Lt. Col. Halt's letter regarding the sighting at RAF Woodbridge (see above) to the U.K. Ministry of Defense were routinely released (without addition comment) by the American base public affairs staff throughout the 1980s until the base closed. The MoD released the files due to requests under the Freedom of Information Act.[23] The files included, inter alia, alien craft flying over and Waterloo Bridge in London.[24] 3. Allegations of evidence suppression There have been allegations of suppression of UFO related evidence for many decades. There are also conspiracy theories which claim that physical evidence might have been removed and/or destroyed/suppressed by some governments. (See also Men in Black) Some examples are: • On July 7, 1947, William Rhodes photographed an unusual object over Phoenix, Arizona. The photos appeared in a Phoenix newspaper and a few other papers. An Army Air Force intelligence officer and an FBI agent interviewed Rhodes on August 29 and convinced him to surrender the negatives, which he did the next day. He was informed he wouldn't be getting them back, but later unsuccessfully tried to retrieve them.[26][27] The photos were analyzed and subsequently appeared in some classified Air Force UFO intelligence reports. (Randle, 34–45, full account) • A June 27, 1950, movie of a "flying disk" over Louisville, Kentucky, taken by a Louisville Courier-Journal photographer, had the USAF Directors of counterintelligence (AFOSI) and intelligence discussing in memos how to best obtain the movie and interview the photographer without revealing Air Force interest. One memo suggested the FBI be used, then precluded the FBI getting involved. Another memo said "it would be nice if OSI could arrange to secure a copy of the film in some covert manner," but if that wasn't feasible, one of the Air Force scientists might have to negotiate directly with the newspaper. In a recent interview, the photographer confirmed meeting with military intelligence and still having the film in his possession until then, but refused to say what happened to the film after that. • In another 1950 movie incident from Montana, Nicholas Mariana filmed some unusual aerial objects and eventually turned the film over to the U.S. Air Force, but insisted 86

that the first part of the film, clearly showing the objects as spinning discs, had been removed when it was returned to him. (Clark, 398)[citation needed] • According to some conspiracy theorists, during the military investigation of in New Mexico, UFOs were photographed by a tracking camera over White Sands Proving Grounds on April 27, 1949. They claim that the final report in 1951 on the green fireball investigation claimed there was insufficient data to determine anything. Conspiracy theorists claim that documents later uncovered by Dr. indicate that triangulation was accomplished. The conspiracy theorists also claim that the data reduction and photographs showed four objects about 30 feet in diameter flying in formation at high speed at an altitude of about 30 miles. According to conspiracy theorists, Maccabee says this result was apparently suppressed from the final report.[31] • On January 22, 1958, when NICAP director Donald Keyhoe appeared on CBS television, his statements on UFOs were pre- censored by the Air Force. During the show when Keyhoe tried to depart from the censored script to "reveal something that has never been disclosed before," CBS cut the sound, later stating Keyhoe was about to violate "predetermined security standards" and about to say something he wasn't "authorized to release." Conspiracy theorists claim that what Keyhoe was about to reveal were four publicly unknown military studies concluding UFOs were interplanetary (including the 1948 Project Sign Estimate of the Situation and Blue Book's 1952 engineering analysis of UFO motion). (Good, 286–287; Dolan 293–295) • A March 1, 1967 memo directed to all USAF divisions, from USAF Lt. General Hewitt Wheless, Assistant Vice Chief of Staff, stated that unverified information indicated that unknown individuals, impersonating USAF officers and other military personnel, had been harassing civilian UFO witnesses, warning them not to talk, and also confiscating film, referring specifically to the Heflin incident. AFOSI was to be notified if any personnel were to become aware of any other incidents. (Document in Fawcett & Greenwood, 236) • John Callahan, former Division Chief of the Accidents and Investigations Branch of the FAA, Washington D.C., also a Disclosure Project witness, said that following a 1986 encounter of a Japanese airlines 747 with a giant UFO over Alaska, recorded by air and ground radar, the FAA conducted an investigation. Callahan held a briefing a few days later for President Reagan's Scientific Study Group, the FBI, and 87

CIA. After the briefing, one of the CIA agents told everybody they "were never there and this never happened," adding they were fearful of public panic.

John F .Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories There has long been suspicion of a government cover-up of information about the assassination of John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. There are also many conspiracy theories regarding the assassination that arose soon after his death and continue to be promoted today. Most put forth a criminal conspiracy involving parties as varied as the CIA, the KGB, the American Mafia, Israeli government, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover, sitting Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, Cuban president , anti-Castro Cuban exile groups, the Federal Reserve, or some combination of those entities and individuals. Contents

• 1 Background ○ 1.1 Public opinion • 2 Possible evidence of a cover-up ○ 2.1 Alleged murder weapon ○ 2.2 Witness intimidation allegations ○ 2.3 Suspicious or unexplained witness deaths ○ 2.4 Withheld documents ○ 2.5 • 3 Conspiracy theories ○ 3.1 More than one gunman  3.1.1 Witnesses  3.1.2 Suspects in other than Oswald  3.1.3 Analysis ○ 3.2 conspiracy 88

○ 3.3 Federal Reserve conspiracy ○ 3.4 ○ 3.5 CIA conspiracy ○ 3.6 Secret Service conspiracy ○ 3.7 Cuban exiles ○ 3.8 E. Howard Hunt ○ 3.9 Organized crime conspiracy ○ 3.10 Lyndon Johnson conspiracy ○ 3.11 American Fact-Finding Committee ○ 3.12 Soviet Bloc conspiracy ○ 3.13 Cuban conspiracy ○ 3.14 Israeli conspiracy ○ 3.15 Decoy hearse and wound alteration • 4 Other published theories 1.Background President John F. Kennedy was assassinated as he traveled in an open top car in a motorcade in , Texas at 12:30 PM, November 22, 1963; Texas Governor John Connally was also injured. Within two hours, was arrested for the murder of Dallas policeman J.D. Tippit and arraigned that evening. At 1:35 AM Saturday, Oswald was arraigned for murdering the President. At 11:21 AM, Sunday, November 24, 1963, nightclub owner shot and killed Oswald as he was being transferred to the county jail. In 1964, the Warren Commission concluded that there was no persuasive evidence that Oswald was involved in a conspiracy to assassinate the President, and stated their belief that he acted alone. Critics, even before the publication of the official government conclusions, suggested a conspiracy was behind the assassination. Though the public initially accepted the Warren Commission's conclusions, by 1966 the tide had turned as authors such as with his best- selling book , and prominent publications such as the New York Review of Books and Life openly disputed the findings of the commission. In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) agreed with the Warren Commission that Oswald assassinated Kennedy but found its report and the original FBI investigation to be seriously flawed. The HSCA also concluded 89 that at least four shots were fired, that with "high probability" two gunmen fired at the President, and a conspiracy was probable. The HSCA also stated that "the Warren Commission failed to investigate adequately the possibility of a conspiracy to assassinate the President." The Ramsey Clark Panel and the Rockefeller Commission both supported the Warren Commission's conclusions, while New Orleans District Attorney unsuccessfully prosecuted Clay Shaw of conspiring to assassinate Kennedy. 1.1 Public opinion Polls show many Americans believe there was a conspiracy to kill President Kennedy.[3] These same polls also show that there is no agreement on who else may have been involved. A 2003, Gallup poll reported that 75% of Americans do not believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone. That same year an ABC News poll found that 70% of respondents suspected that the assassination involved more than one person. A 2004 Fox News poll found that 66% of Americans thought there had been a conspiracy while 74% thought there had been a cover-up. 2. Possible evidence of a cover-up Numerous researchers, including Mark Lane, Henry Hurt, Michael L. Kurtz, Gerald D. McKnight and others have pointed out inconsistencies, oversights, exclusions of evidence, errors, changing stories, or changes made to witness testimony in the official Warren Commission investigation, which could suggest a cover-up, without putting forward a theory as to who actually committed the murder. 2.1 Alleged murder weapon One example of a changing story involves the alleged murder weapon. Deputy Sheriff Eugene Boone and Deputy Constable Seymour Weitzman both initially identified the rifle found in the Dallas School Book Depository as a 7.65 Mauser. Weitzman signed an affidavit the following day describing the weapon as a "7.65 Mauser bolt action equipped with a 4/18 scope, a thick leather brownish-black sling on it". Deputy Sheriff Roger Craig claimed that he saw "7.65 Mauser" stamped on the barrel of the weapon. Dallas District Attorney Henry Wade told the press that the weapon found in the School Book Depository was a 7.65 Mauser, and this was reported by the news media. But investigators later identified the rifle as a 6.5 Italian Mannlicher . According to Mark Lane: "The strongest element in the case against Lee Harvey Oswald was the Warren Commission's conclusion that his rifle had been found on the 6th floor of the 90

Book Depository building. Yet Oswald never owned a 7.65 Mauser. When the FBI later reported that Oswald had purchased only a 6.5 Italian Mannlicher- Carcano, the weapon at police headquarters in Dallas miraculously changed its (caliber), its make and its nationality. The Warren Commission concluded that a 6.5 Mannlicher-Carcano, not a 7.65 German Mauser, had been discovered by the Dallas deputies." 2.2 Witness intimidation allegations Some witnesses to the assassination, or to events connected to the assassination, were intimidated or threatened. These include Jean Hill, Richard Carr, Roy Truly, Sandy Speaker, and A. J. Millican. Acquilla Clemmons, who claimed she saw two men at the scene of Officer J.D. Tippit's murder, also claimed she was told to keep quiet about what she saw by a man with a gun who came to her home. 2.3 Suspicious or unexplained witness deaths Jim Marrs and Ralph Schuster have pointed out what they have characterized as a suspiciously large number of deaths of people connected with the investigation of the assassination. They also point out that there seems to be a pattern of deaths around the times of various government investigations, such as during and just after the Warren Commission investigation, as New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison was launching his own investigation, while the Senate Intelligence Committee was looking into assassinations by U.S. intelligence agencies in the 1970s, and when the House Select Committee on Assassinations was gearing up its investigations. Marrs points out that "these deaths certainly would have been convenient for anyone not wishing the truth of the JFK assassination to become public." 2.4 Withheld documents Many government records relating to the assassination, including some from the Warren Commission investigation, the House Special Committee on Assassinations investigation and the Church Committee investigation, were kept secret from the public. These secret documents included the president's autopsy records. Some were not scheduled to be released until 2029, however many of these documents were released during the mid to late 1990s by the Assassination Records Review Board due to the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. Some of the material released contains redacted sections. Tax return information, which would identify employers and sources of income, has not been released. The existence of large numbers of secret documents related to the assassination, and the long period of secrecy, suggests to some the possibility of a cover- up. One historian noted, "There exists widespread suspicion about 91 the government's disposition of the Kennedy assassination records stemming from the beliefs that Federal officials (1) have not made available all Government assassination records (even to the Warren Commission, Church Committee, House Assassination Committee) and (2) have heavily redacted the records released under FOIA in order to cover up sinister conspiracies." According to the Assassination Records Review Board, "All Warren Commission records, except those records that contain tax return information, are (now) available to the public with only minor redactions." 2.5 Autopsy There is conflicting testimony about the autopsy performed on President Kennedy's body, particularly as to when the examination of the president's brain took place, who was present, and whether or not the photos submitted as evidence are the same as those taken during the examination. Douglas Horne, the Assassination Record Review Board's chief analyst for military records, said he was "90 to 95% certain" that the photographs in the National Archives are not of President Kennedy's brain. Dr. Gary Aguilar, assisted by pathologist Dr. Cyril Wecht, wrote in a 1999 piece for The Consortium News, "According to Horne’s findings, the second brain -- which showed an exit wound in the front -- allegedly replaced Kennedy's real brain -- which revealed much greater damage to the rear, consistent with an exit wound and thus evidence of a shot from the front." James H. Fetzer has noted 16 problems with the Warren Commission's version of events, which he claims prove decisively that its narrative is impossible, and therefore is likely a cover-up. He claims that evidence released by the Assassination Records Review Board substantiates these concerns. These include problems with bullet trajectories, the alleged murder weapon, the alleged ammunition used, inconsistencies between the Warren Commission's account and the autopsy findings, inconsistencies between the autopsy findings and what was observed by witnesses at the scene of the murder, eye-witness accounts that conflict with x-rays supposedly taken of the President's body, indications that the diagrams and photos of the President's brain in the National Archives are not the President's, testimony by those who took and processed the autopsy photos that the photos were altered, created or destroyed, indications that the has been tampered with, allegations that the Warren Commission's version of events conflicts with news reports from the scene of the murder, the change in the motorcade route that by an incredible coincidence brought the President right to the place where the ambush was set, inexplicably lax Secret Service and 92 local law enforcement security, and confessions by people who claim that they had knowledge of, or participated in, a conspiracy to kill the President. Physician Malcolm Perry described the original throat wound as "a very small injury, with clear cut, although somewhat irregular margins of less than a quarter inch in diameter, with minimal tissue damage surrounding it on the skin". 3. Conspiracy theories 3.1 More than one gunman The Warren Commission findings and the single bullet theory are implausible according to some researchers. Oswald's rifle, through testing performed by the FBI, could only be fired three times within five to eight seconds. The Warren Commission, through eyewitnesses, determined that only three bullets were fired as well: one of the three bullets missed the vehicle entirely; one hit Kennedy and passed through Governor John Connally, and the third bullet was fatal to the President. The weight of the bullet fragments taken from Connally and those remaining in his body supposedly totaled more than could have been missing from the bullet found on Connally's stretcher, known as the " bullet". However, witness testimony seems to indicate that only tiny fragments, of less total mass than was missing from the bullet, were left in Connally.[26] In addition, the trajectory of the bullet, which hit Kennedy above the right shoulder blade and passed through his neck (according to the autopsy), supposedly would have had to change course to pass through Connally's rib cage and wrist.[27] In the Zapruder film Kennedy appears to move backwards in the last, fatal shot. Claims have been made that suggest his head jerks forward and then backwards. Other evidence for the claim of more than three shots fired was the FBI photographs of the limousines, showing a bullet hole in the windshield of the vehicle above the rear-view mirror. The Warren Commission ignored the evidence. The Government's response was that it "occurred prior to Dallas". 3.1.1 Witnesses Thirty-five witnesses, some 32% of those who were eye-witnesses to the shooting, thought that shots were fired from somewhere in front of the President — from the area of the Grassy Knoll or Triple Underpass — while 56 eyewitnesses thought the shots came from the Depository, or at least in that direction, behind the President, and 5 witnesses thought that the shots came from two directions. was sitting in the presidential car 93 next to her husband, Governor John Connally. In her book From Love Field: Our Final Hours, Connally was adamant that her husband was hit by a bullet that was separate from the two that hit Kennedy. , a U.S. Secret Service Agent, testified that, "Now, in the seconds that I talked just now, a flurry of shells come into the car." Kellerman said that he saw a 5-inch-diameter (130 mm) hole in the back right-hand side of the President's head. was operating a railroad interlocking tower, overlooking the parking lot just north of the grassy knoll and west of the Texas School Book Depository. He reported that he saw two men behind the picket fence at the top of the grassy knoll before the shooting. When interviewed by Mark Lane, Bowers noted that he saw something that attracted his attention, either a flash of light, or maybe smoke, from the knoll, leading him to believe "something out of the ordinary" had occurred there. Bowers was cut off while giving testimony to the Warren Commission. Bowers told Lane he heard three shots, the last two in quick succession. Bowers was of the opinion that they could not have come from the same rifle. Clint Hill, the Secret Service Agent who was sheltering the President with his body on the way to the hospital, described "The right rear portion of his head was missing. It was lying in the rear seat of the car." Later, to a documentary film crew, he described the large defect in the skull as "gaping hole above his right ear, about the size of my palm." Robert McClelland, a physician in the emergency room who observed the head wound, testified that the back right part of the head was blown out with posterior cerebral tissue and some of the cerebellar tissue was missing. The size of the back head wound, according to his description, indicated it was an exit wound, and that a second shooter from the front delivered the fatal head shot, or the president had his head turned. Rose Cherami (sometimes spelled "Cheramie") was depicted in Oliver Stone's 1991 movie JFK as a "witness." Rose Cherami was a 41-year-old drug addict and prostitute who was picked up on Highway 190 near Eunice, Louisiana, on November 20, 1963—two days before the Kennedy assassination—by Lt. Francis Frugé of the Louisiana State Police. Cherami told Frugé that John F. Kennedy would shortly be killed. Fruge did not believe her at first, but after some time of adamant speaking by Cherami, he came around. During her confinement, and prior to the time JFK was shot in Dallas, Cherami supposedly spoke of the impending assassination. After Jack Ruby shot Lee Harvey Oswald, Cherami reportedly claimed that she had worked for Ruby as a stripper, that she knew both Ruby and Oswald, and that the two men were "bed partners" 94 who "had been shacking up for years." According to Lt. Frugé, Cherami declined to repeat her story to the FBI. She was killed when struck by a car on September 4, 1965, apparently while hitchhiking, near Gladewater, Texas. Among conspiracy theorists, the story has been considered quite credible since 1979, when an account by investigator Patricia Orr was published by the House Select Committee reviewing the JFK assassination (HSCA). This account was based primarily on the HSCA depositions of Francis Frugé and Victor Weiss, a doctor at the Jackson hospital. 3.1.2 Suspects in Dealey Plaza other than Oswald Numerous witnesses reported hearing gunfire coming from the Dal- Tex Building, which is located across the street from the Texas School Book Depository and in alignment with Elm Street in Dealey Plaza.[37] Several conspiracy theories posit that at least one shooter was located in the Dal-Tex Building due to witness accounts and other coincidences including the apprehension of suspicious individuals like the "man in black leather" and ex-con Jim Braden inside the building, as well as the trajectory of the bullet which hit the curb on the south end of Dealey Plaza injuring bystander . Also of note is the scientific acoustic evidence presented to the House Select Committee on Assassinations in 1978 which pinpointed the Dal-Tex building as a possible source of gunfire. 3.1.3 Analysis Former U.S. Marine Craig Roberts and Gunnery Sergeant Carlos Hathcock, who was the senior instructor for the U.S. Marine Corps Sniper Instructor School at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Quantico, , both said it could not be done as described by the FBI investigators. "Let me tell you what we did at Quantico," Hathcock said. "We reconstructed the whole thing: the angle, the range, the moving target, the time limit, the obstacles, everything. I don’t know how many times we tried it, but we couldn’t duplicate what the Warren Commission said Oswald did. Now if I can’t do it, how in the world could a guy who was a non-qual on the rifle range and later only qualified 'marksman' do it?" Kennedy's death certificate located the bullet at the third thoracic vertebra — which some claim is too low to have exited his throat.[42] Moreover, the bullet was traveling downward, since the shooter was by a sixth floor window. The autopsy cover sheet had a diagram of a body showing this same low placement at the third thoracic vertebra. The hole in back of Kennedy's shirt and jacket are also claimed to support a wound too low to be consistent with the Single Bullet Theory.[43][44] 95

3.2 New Orleans conspiracy Immediately following the assassination, allegations began to surface of a conspiracy between Oswald and persons with whom he was or may have been acquainted while he lived in New Orleans, Louisiana. On November 25, 1963 (the day after Oswald's murder by Jack Ruby) Dean Andrews, Jr., a New Orleans attorney who had occasionally provided legal advice to Oswald, informed the FBI that two days earlier he had, while in a local hospital under sedation, received a telephone call from a man named Clay Bertrand who inquired if he would be willing to defend Oswald in the murder and assassination case. Andrews later repeated these claims in testimony to the Warren Commission. Also in late November 1963 an employee of New Orleans private investigator Guy Banister named Jack Martin began making accusations of possible involvement in the assassination by fellow Banister employee David Ferrie. According to witnesses, in 1963 Ferrie and Banister were working for lawyer G. Wray Gill, on behalf of Gill's client, New Orleans Mafia boss Carlos Marcello. Ferrie had also attended Civil Air Patrol meetings in New Orleans in the 1950s that were also attended by a teenage Lee Harvey Oswald. In 1966, New Orleans D.A. Jim Garrison began an investigation into the assassination of President Kennedy. Garrison's investigation led him to conclude that Kennedy had been assassinated as the result of a conspiracy involving Oswald, David Ferrie and "Clay Bertrand." Garrison further came to believe "Clay Bertrand" was a pseudonym for New Orleans businessman Clay Shaw. On March 1, 1967, Garrison arrested and charged Shaw with conspiring to assassinate President Kennedy, with the help of Lee Harvey Oswald, David Ferrie, and others. On January 29, 1969, Clay Shaw was brought to trial on these charges, and the jury found him not guilty. In 2003, Judyth Vary Baker, a former employee of the Reily Coffee Company in New Orleans who had been employed there at the same time as Lee Harvey Oswald, appeared in an episode of Nigel Turner's ongoing documentary television series, The Men Who Killed Kennedy. According to Baker, she and Oswald had been hired by Reily in the spring of 1963 as a "cover" for a clandestine CIA project designed to develop biological weapons that could be used to assassinate Fidel Castro.[45] Baker further claimed that she and Oswald began an affair, and that they had planned to run away to Mexico together after the assassination. In the years since Baker first made her allegations public, she has failed to produce any evidence that she was acquainted with Oswald, and the research community has widely concluded that her claims are a hoax. 3.3 Federal Reserve conspiracy 96

Jim Marrs, in his book Crossfire: The Plot That Killed Kennedy, speculated that the assassination of Kennedy might have been motivated by the issuance of Executive Order 11110. This executive order enabled the Treasury to print silver certificates, bypassing the Federal Reserve System. Executive Order 11110 was not officially repealed until the Ronald Reagan Administration. Official explanations claim that the executive order was simply an attempt to drain the silver reserves, and did not actually endanger the careers of anyone working at the Federal Reserve. This theory was further explored by U.S. Marine sniper and veteran police officer Craig Roberts in the 1994 book, Kill Zone. Roberts theorized that the Executive Order was the beginning of a plan by Kennedy whose ultimate goal was to permanently do away with the United States Federal Reserve, and that Kennedy was murdered by a cabal of international bankers determined to foil this plan. Actor and author Richard Belzer has also discussed this theory. According to Belzer the plot to kill Kennedy was set in motion as a response to the President's attempt to shift power away from the Federal Reserve and to the U.S Treasury Department. 3.4 Three tramps Nearly a dozen people were taken into custody in and around Dealey Plaza in the minutes following the assassination. In most of these instances, no records of the identities of those detained were kept. The most famous of those taken into custody have come to be known as the "tramps": three men discovered in a boxcar in the rail yard west of the grassy knoll. Speculation regarding the identities of the three and their possible involvement in the assassination became widespread in the ensuing years. Photographs of the three at their time of arrest fueled this speculation, as the three "tramps" appeared to be well- dressed and clean-shaven, seemingly unlikely for hobos riding the rails. Some researchers also thought it suspicious that the Dallas police had quickly released the tramps from custody apparently without investigating whether they might have witnessed anything significant related to the assassination, and that Dallas police claimed to have lost the records of their arrests as well as their mugshots and . In 1989, the Dallas police department released a large collection of files that contained the arrest records of the three men, whose names were Harold Doyle of Red Jacket, West Virginia; John F. Gedney, with no listed home address; and Gus W. Abrams, also with no listed home address. The brief report described the men as "all passing through [Dallas]. They have no jobs, etc." and were known 97 to be rail-riders in the area. The previous evening they had slept in a homeless shelter where they showered and shaved, explaining their clean appearance on the day of the assassination. The three were released from custody four days after the assassination on the morning of November 26. When asked in a 1992 interview, Doyle said that he had deliberately avoided revealing himself to the public limelight, saying, "I am a plain guy, a simple country boy, and that's the way I want to stay. I wouldn't be a celebrity for $10 million."[56] Gedney independently affirmed Doyle's sentiment. Abrams had since died (in Ohio in 1987), but his sister also corroborated the events of that day and noted that Abrams "was always on the go, hopping trains and drinking wine." The three were evidently not involved in the assassination in any way. A list of the better known "identifications" of the three tramps alleged by conspiracy theorists includes: Charles Harrelson, the father of actor Woody Harrelson, has been alleged to be the tallest of the three tramps in the photographs. Harrelson at various times before his death boasted about his role as one of the tramps, however, in a 1988 interview, he denied being in Dallas on the day of the assassination. E. Howard Hunt, the CIA station chief who was instrumental in the , and who later worked as one of President 's White House Plumbers, was alleged by some to be the oldest of the tramps. At the time of his death, Hunt's son released tapes of Hunt implicating LBJ in Kennedy's assassination. In 1975, Hunt testified to the United States President's Commission on CIA activities within the United States that he was in Washington, D.C. on the day of the assassination. This testimony was confirmed by Hunt's family and a home employee of the Hunts. In 1985 however, in Hunt's libel suit against , defense attorney Mark Lane introduced doubt as to Hunt's location on the day of the Kennedy assassination through depositions from David Atlee Phillips, , G. Gordon Liddy, Stansfield Turner, and , plus a cross- examination of Hunt. Frank Sturgis is thought by some to be the tall tramp in the photographs. Like Hunt, Sturgis was involved both in the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Watergate burglary. In 1959, Sturgis became involved with Marita Lorenz, who later identified Sturgis as a gunman in the assassination. Hunt's confessions before his death similarly implicates Sturgis. Chauncey Holt, also alleged by some to be the oldest of the tramps, claims to have been a double agent for the CIA and the Mafia, and has claimed that his assignment in Dallas was to provide fake Secret Service credentials to people in the vicinity. Witness reports state that there were one or more 98 unidentified men in the area claiming to be Secret Service agents. The House Select Committee on Assassinations had forensic anthropologists study the photographic evidence. They were able to rule out E. Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis, Dan Carswell, Fred Lee Chapman, and other suspects in 1978. The Rockefeller Commission concluded that neither Hunt nor Frank Sturgis was in Dallas on the day of the assassination. Despite these positive identifications of the tramps and the lack of any connection between them and the assassination, some have maintained their identifications of the three as persons other than Doyle, Gedney and Abrams and have continued to theorize that they may have been connected to the crime. 3.5 CIA conspiracy Some researchers have claimed that CIA officer David Atlee Phillips used the alias "Maurice Bishop." He used the pseudonym while working with Alpha 66, an organization of anti-Castro Cubans. Alpha 66's founder, Antonio Veciana, claimed that during one of his meetings with "Bishop", Lee Harvey Oswald was also in attendance. HSCA investigator Gaeton Fonzi believed Phillips was Bishop. In 1995, former U.S. Army Intelligence officer and National Security Agency executive assistance John M. Newman published evidence that both the CIA and FBI had deliberately tampered with their files on Lee Harvey Oswald both before and after the assassination. Furthermore, he found that both had withheld information that might have alerted authorities in Dallas that Oswald posed a potential threat to the President. Subsequently, Newman has expressed a belief that James Angleton was probably the key figure in the assassination. According to Newman, only Angleton, "had the access, the authority, and the diabolically ingenious mind to manage this sophisticated plot." 3.6 Secret Service conspiracy The House Select Committee on Assassinations concluded that although Oswald assassinated Kennedy, a conspiracy was probable. Among its findings, the HSCA noted that President Kennedy had not received adequate protection in Dallas, that the Secret Service possessed information that was not properly analyzed, investigated or used by the Secret Service in connection with the President's trip to Dallas, and finally that the Secret Service agents in the motorcade were inadequately prepared to protect the President from a sniper. Although widely disputed but possible, this lack of protection may have occurred because Kennedy himself had specifically asked that the Secret Service make itself discreet during the Dallas visit. 3.7 Cuban exiles 99

Richard Helms, a director of the CIA's Office of Special Operations, had reason to be hostile to Kennedy since when first elected, Kennedy supported invading Cuba and then only later changed his mind about how to approach the matter. After the disastrous Bay of Pigs Invasion of Cuba sponsored by the CIA, Kennedy changed his mind about an invasion, earning the hatred of the Cuban exile community. Thus, Helms was immediately put under pressure from President Kennedy and his brother Robert (the Attorney General) to increase American efforts to get rid of the Castro regime. Operation Mongoose had nearly 4,000 operators involved in attacks on Cuban economic targets. The House Select Committee on Assassinations believed evidence existed implicating certain violent Cuban exiles may have participated in Kennedy's murder. These exiles worked closely with CIA operatives in violent activities against Castro's Cuba. In 1979, the committee reported this: President Kennedy's popularity among the Cuban exiles had plunged deeply by 1963. Their bitterness is illustrated in a tape recording of a meeting of anti-Castro Cubans and right-wing Americans in the Dallas suburb of Farmer's Branch on October 1, 1963. Holding a copy of the September 26 edition of , featuring a front-page account of the President's planned trip to Texas in November, the Cuban exile vented his hostility: "CASTELLANOS... we're waiting for Kennedy the 22d, [the date Kennedy was murdered] buddy. We're going to see him in one way or the other. We're going to give him the works when he gets in Dallas. Mr. good ol' Kennedy. I wouldn't even call him President Kennedy. He stinks." Author Joan Didion explored the Miami anti-Castro Cuban theory in her 1987 non-fiction book "Miami." In "Miami," she emphasizes the questions that investigators raised to Marita Lorenz regarding Guillermo Novo, a Cuban exile who was involved in shooting a bazooka at the U.N. building from the East River during a speech by Che Guevara. Allegedly, Novo was affiliated with Lee Harvey Oswald and Frank Sturgis and carried weapons with them to a hotel in Dallas just prior to the assassination. These claims, though put forth to the House Assassinations Committee by Lorenz, were never substantiated by a conclusive investigation. 3.8 E. Howard Hunt Former CIA agent and Watergate figure E. Howard Hunt has been named as a possible participant in several Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories. Separately, he denied complicity in the murder of JFK while accusing others of being involved. Some researchers have identified Hunt as a figure crossing Dealey 100

Plaza in a raincoat and fedora immediately after the assassination. Others have suggested that Hunt was one of the men known as the three tramps who were arrested and then quickly released shortly after the assassination. In 1976, a magazine called ran an article accusing Hunt of being in Dallas on November 22, 1963, and of having a role in the assassination. Hunt won a libel judgment against the magazine in 1981, but this was thrown out on appeal, and the magazine was found not guilty when the case was retried in 1985. Shortly before his death in 2007, Hunt authored an autobiography which implicated Lyndon B. Johnson in the assassination. Hunt suggested that Johnson had orchestrated the killing with the help of CIA agents who had been angered by Kennedy's actions as President. A 2007 article published in magazine revealed deathbed confessions by Hunt to his son which suggested a conspiracy to kill JFK orchestrated by Lyndon Johnson, CIA agents Cord Meyer, Bill Harvey and David Sánchez Morales, as well as a "French gunman" who purportedly shot at Kennedy from the grassy knoll. 3.9 Organized crime conspiracy Mafia criminals may have wished to retaliate for increasing pressure put upon them by Robert Kennedy (who had increased by 12 times the number of prosecutions under President Dwight Eisenhower). Documents never seen by the Warren Commission have revealed that some Mafiosi were working very closely with the CIA on several assassination attempts of Fidel Castro. Teamsters Union president Jimmy Hoffa, and mobsters Carlos Marcello, , Johnny Roselli, Charles Nicoletti and Santo Trafficante Jr. (all of whom say Hoffa worked with the CIA on the Castro assassination plots) top the list of House Select Committee on Assassinations Mafia suspects. Giancana, Marcello, and Trafficante were the leading figures of the organized crime families in Chicago, New Orleans, and Tampa, respectively. Carlos Marcello apparently threatened to assassinate the President to short-circuit his younger brother Bobby, who was serving as attorney general and leading the administration's anti-Mafia crusade. In his memoir, Bound by Honor: A Mafioso's Story, Bill Bonanno, son of New York Mafia boss Joseph Bonanno explains that several Mafia families had long-standing ties with the anti- Castro Cubans through the casinos operated by the Mafia before the Cuban Revolution. The Cubans hated Kennedy because he failed to fully support them in the Bay of Pigs Invasion; the Mafia hated the Kennedys because, as Attorney General, the young and idealistic Robert Kennedy conducted an unprecedented legal assault on organized crime. This was especially provocative 101 because several of the Mafia "families" had worked with JFK's father, Joseph Kennedy, to get JFK elected, and there was speculation about voting irregularities during the 1960 election. Both the Mafia and the anti-Castro Cubans were expert in assassination, the Cubans having been trained by the CIA. Bonanno reports that he realized the degree of the involvement of other Mafia families when he witnessed Jack Ruby killing Oswald on television: the Bonannos recognized Jack Ruby as an associate of Chicago mobster Sam Giancana. Information released only around 2006 by the FBI indicates that Carlos Marcello confessed in detail to having organized Kennedy's assassination. The FBI then covered up this information which it had in its possession. This version of events is also supported by the findings of a 1979 Congressional Committee investigation that Marcello was likely part of a Mafia conspiracy behind the assassination, and had the means and the opportunity required. The assassination came less than a fortnight prior to a coup against Castro in Cuba by the Kennedy brothers, related to the Missile Crisis and Bay of Pigs Invasion. James Files claims to be a former assassin working for both the Mafia and the CIA who participated in the assassination along with Johnny Roselli and Charles Nicoletti at the behest of Sam Giancana. He is currently serving a 30-year jail sentence for the attempted murder of a policeman. Judith Campbell Exner, an alleged girlfriend of President Kennedy was also Sam Giancana's mistress; she was interviewed (apparently live) by Maria Shriver (daughter of Eunice Kennedy and Sargent Shriver) on ABC's . The woman was asked if she ever carried messages between JFK and Giancana because she knew them both. The woman confirmed that and said no to the question by saying, "Sam would never write anything down." Famed investigative reporter Jack Anderson, who knew Kennedy well and had many sources within Organized Crime, concluded that Cuba and Fidel Castro worked with Organized Crime figures to arrange the assassination. In his book "Peace War and Politics," Anderson said Johnny Roselli gave him extensive details on the plot. Anderson said he was never able to independently confirm Roselli's entire story, but he wrote that many of Roselli's details checked out and he never found one detail that he could refute. Anderson said that whatever role Oswald played in the assassination, he was convinced that there was more than one gunman. 3.10 Lyndon Johnson conspiracy In 2003, researcher Barr McClellan published the book, Blood, Money & Power: How L.B.J. Killed J.F.K.. McClellan claims that 102

Lyndon Johnson, motivated by the fear of being dropped from the Kennedy ticket in 1964 and the need to cover up various scandals, masterminded Kennedy's assassination with the help of his friend attorney Edwardo Clark. The book suggests that a smudged partial from the sniper's nest likely belonged to Johnson's associate Malcolm "Mac" Wallace, and that Mac Wallace was therefore the assassin. The book further claims that the killing of Kennedy was paid for by oil magnates including Clint Murchison and H. L. Hunt. McClellan's book subsequently became the subject of an episode of Nigel Turner's ongoing documentary television series, The Men Who Killed Kennedy. The episode, entitled "The Guilty Men", drew widespread condemnation from both the Johnson family and President Johnson's former aides following its airing on The History Channel, which subsequently agreed not to air the episode in the future. Madeleine D. Brown, who was an alleged mistress of Johnson, has also implicated him in a conspiracy to kill Kennedy. Brown alleged in 1997 that Johnson along with H. L. Hunt had begun planning Kennedy's demise as early as 1960. Brown claimed that by its fruition in 1963 the conspiracy involved dozens of persons including the leadership of FBI and the Mafia as well as well- known politicians and journalists.[92] In the documentary The Men Who Killed Kennedy, Brown and a former employee of Clint Murchison both placed J. Edgar Hoover and LBJ at a dinner at Murchison's mansion shortly before the assassination. Brown claimed in the documentary that Johnson told her after the party that the Kennedys "will never embarrass me again." Johnson was also accused of complicity in the assassination by former CIA agent and Watergate figure E. Howard Hunt. 3.11 American Fact-Finding Committee Many researchers and conspiracy theorists talk about the full page, black-bordered advertisement published in the Nov 22, 1963 Dallas Morning News that accused Kennedy of ignoring the United States Constitution and implying that he was a communist. The ad was signed by the "American Fact-Finding Committee", Bernard Weissman, chairman. The FBI later investigated the source of funds for the ad, and interviewed many people involved, as described in the Warren Commission Hearings Volume XXIII. These people are many of the same discussed in the Lyndon Johnson theories and the allegations of Madeleine Brown (see above). Weissman was a supporter of the John Birch Society. 3.12 Soviet Bloc conspiracy 103

According to a 1966 FBI document, a source considered reliable by the Bureau related to the FBI in late 1963 that Colonel Boris Ivanov, Chief of the Soviet Committee for State Security (KGB), who resided in New York City at the time of the assassination, stated that it was his personal feeling that the assassination of President Kennedy had been planned by an organized group rather than being the act of one individual assassin. Much later, the highest-ranking Soviet Bloc intelligence defector, Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa described his conversation with Nicolae Ceauşescu who told him about "ten international leaders the Kremlin killed or tried to kill": "László Rajk and Imre Nagy of Hungary; Lucreţiu Pătrăşcanu and Gheorghiu-Dej in ; Rudolf Slánský, the head of , and Jan Masaryk, that country's chief diplomat; the shah of Iran; Palmiro Togliatti of ; American President John F. Kennedy; and Mao Zedong." Pacepa provided some additional details, such as a plot to kill Mao Zedong with the help of Lin Biao organized by KGB and noted that "among the leaders of Moscow's satellite intelligence services there was unanimous agreement that the KGB had been involved in the assassination of President Kennedy." New information regarding the murder of John F. Kennedy confidante Mary Pinchot Meyer has led to a reinterpretation of a statement by retired senior CIA official Cord Meyer shortly before his death in 2001. Meyer's statement seems to suggest that CIA learned many years ago, possibly from a defector, that the KGB organized the assassination of Kennedy, most likely as revenge for the humiliation of the Cuban missile crisis.[97] However, Cord Meyer himself has been mentioned as a possible conspirator in the LBJ assassination theory. 3.13 Cuban conspiracy In the early 1960s Clare Booth Luce, wife of publisher was one of a number of prominent Americans who sponsored the anti-Castro movement in the United States. This support included the funding of a motorboat used by exile commandos in their raids against Cuba. In a 1975 interview, Clare Luce revealed that on the night of the assassination, she received a phone call from one of the boat's crew members. According to Luce, the caller's name was "something like" Julio Fernandez, and he said he was calling her from New Orleans. Julio Fernandez told her that Lee Harvey Oswald had approached his group and offered his services as a potential Castro assassin. Fernandez further claimed that he and his associates had eventually found out that Oswald was actually a committed Communist and supporter of Castro, and that they kept a close watch on his activities until he suddenly came into money and went to Mexico City and then Dallas. Finally, 104

Fernandez told Luce, "There is a Cuban Communist assassination team at large and Oswald was their hired gun." Luce told the caller to give his information to the FBI. Subsequently, she would reveal the details of the incident to both the Church Committee and the HSCA. Both committees attempted to investigate the incident, but were unsuccessful in uncovering any evidence to corroborate the allegations in question. President Lyndon Johnson informed several journalistic sources of his personal belief that the assassination had been organized by Fidel Castro from Cuba. Johnson had received in 1967 information from both the FBI and CIA that in the early 1960s, the CIA had tried to have Castro assassinated, had employed members of the Mafia in this effort, and that Attorney General Robert Kennedy had known about both the plots and the Mafia's involvement. It was Johnson's belief that JFK's assassination had been organized by Castro as a retaliation for the CIA's efforts to kill Castro. In October, 1968, Johnson told veteran newsman Howard K. Smith, that "Kennedy was trying to get to Castro, but Castro got to him first." In September, 1969, in an interview with of CBS, Johnson said that in regard to the assassination he could not, "honestly say that I've ever been completely relieved of the fact that there might have been international connections." Finally, in 1971, Johnson told Leo Janos of Time Magazine that he, "never believed that Oswald acted alone." 3.14 Israeli conspiracy This theory alleges that the Israeli government was displeased with Kennedy for his pressure against their pursuit of a top- secret nuclear program at the Negev Nuclear Research Center (commonly called "Dimona")[101] and/or the Israelis were angry over Kennedy's sympathies with Arabs.[102] Gangster Meyer Lansky[103] and Lyndon B. Johnson often play pivotal roles in this conspiracy theory as organizing and preparing the hit, thus bleeding into and possibly catalyzing many of the other conspiracies as well. In July 2004 Israel's nuclear whistleblower Mordechai Vanunu claimed in the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper that the state of Israel was complicit in the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Vanunu, a former technician at the Dimona plant who was jailed for 18 years for revealing its inner workings to Britain's Sunday Times in 1986, made the statement after his 2004 release. He claimed there were "near-certain indications" Kennedy was assassinated in response to "pressure he exerted on Israel's then head of government, David Ben-Gurion, to shed light on Dimona's nuclear reactor." 3.15 Decoy hearse and wound alteration 105

David S. Lifton and others have theorized that the coffin removed from Air Force One and placed in a waiting ambulance at Andrews Air Force Base on the evening of November 22, 1963 was empty. The president's body was taken off the jet out of the television camera's view. This portion of Lifton's theory comes from a House Select Committee on Assassinations report of an interview of Lt. Richard A. Lipsey on January 18, 1978 by committee staff members Donald Andrew Purdy Jr. and T. Mark Flanagan Jr. in which Lipsey said that in his capacity as aide to General Wehle, he had met President Kennedy's body at Andrews Air Force Base. The report stated that Lipsey "placed [the casket] in a hearse to be transported to Bethesda Naval Hospital. Lipsey mentioned that he and Whele then flew by helicopter to Bethesda and took the President's body into the back of Bethesda. A decoy hearse had been driven to the front." A decoy hearse carrying an empty casket. Laboratory Technologist Paul Kelly O'Connor[106] was one of the major witnesses supporting 's theory that somewhere between Parkland and Bethesda the President's body was made to appear as if it had been shot only from the rear. O'Connor says that President Kennedy's body arrived at Bethesda in a body bag, which differed from the sheet it was wrapped in at Parkland Hospital. He stated the brain had already been removed by the time it got to Bethesda, and that there was only "half of a handful" of brain matter left inside the skull. According to Nigel Turner, director of the 1988 British television documentary The Men Who Killed Kennedy, "There were mysterious men in civilian clothes at the autopsy. They seemed to command a lot of respect and look over my shoulder or over Dr. J. Thornton Boswell's shoulder, then they'd go back and have a conference in the corner. Then one of them would say 'Stop what you're doing and go on to another procedure.' We jumped back and forth, back and forth. There was no smooth flow of procedure at all." As done with all cargo on airplanes for safety, the coffin and lid were held by steel wrapping cables to prevent shifting during takeoff and landing and in case of air disturbances in flight. The casket was also under ample armed guard at all times, a fact that Lifton neglects to mention. In addition, the plane was watched by thousands of people that bathed the far side of the plane in lights and provided a very public stage for any body snatchers. 4. Other published theories • James W. Douglass' JFK and the Unspeakable (2008) presents evidence that JFK was assassinated by elements within the US 106

Government opposed to his attempts to end the Cold War through back channel negotiations with Khrushchev and Castro. ISBN 1- 57075-755-0. • The Gemstone File: A Memoir (2006), by Stephanie Caruana, posits that Oswald was part of a 28-man assassination team which included three U.S. Mafia hitmen (Jimmy Fratianno, John Roselli, and Eugene Brading). Oswald's role was to shoot John Connally. Bruce Roberts, author of the Gemstone File papers, claimed that the JFK assassination scenario was modeled after a supposed attempted assassination of President F.D. Roosevelt. Roosevelt was riding in an open car with Mayor Anton Cermak of Chicago. Cermak was shot and killed by Giuseppe Zangara. In Dallas, JFK was the real target, and Connally was a secondary target. The JFK assassination is only a small part of the Gemstone File's account. ISBN 1-4120-6137-7. • David Wrone's The Zapruder Film (2003) concludes that the shot that killed JFK came from in front of the limousine, and that JFK's throat and back wounds were caused by an in-and-through shot originating from the grassy knoll. Three shots were fired from three different angles, none of them from Lee Harvey Oswald's window at the Texas School Book Depository. Wrone is a professor of history (emeritus) at the University of Wisconsin– Stevens Point. ISBN 0-7006-1291-2. • JFK: The Second Plot (2002) by Matthew Smith explores the strange case of Roscoe White. In 1990, Roscoe's son Ricky made public a claim that his father, who had been a Dallas police officer in 1963, was involved in killing the president. Roscoe's widow Geneva also claimed that before her husband's death in 1971 he left a diary in which he revealed that he was one of the marksmen who shot the President, and that he also killed Officer J. D. Tippit. ISBN 1-84018-501-5. • The Kennedy Mutiny (2002) by Will Fritz (not the same as police captain J. Will Fritz), claims that the assassination plot was orchestrated by General Edwin Walker, and that he framed Oswald for the crime. ISBN 0-9721635-0-6. • 's Oswald's Tale: An American Mystery (1995) concludes that Oswald was guilty, but holds that the evidence may point to a second gunman on the grassy knoll, who, purely by coincidence, was attempting to kill JFK at the same time as Oswald. "If there was indeed another shot, it was not necessarily fired by a conspirator of Oswald's. Such a gun could have belonged to another lone killer or to a conspirator working for some other group altogether." ISBN 0-679-42535-7. • Passport to Assassination (1993) by Oleg M. Nechiporenko, the Soviet consular official (and highly placed KGB officer) who met with Oswald in Mexico City in 1963. He was afforded the unique opportunity to interview Oswald about his goals including his genuine desire for a Cuban visa. His conclusions were (1) that 107

Oswald killed Kennedy due to extreme feelings of inadequacy versus his wife’s professed admiration for JFK, and (2) that the KGB never sought intelligence information from Oswald during his time in the USSR as they did not trust his motivations. ISBN 1- 55972-210-X. • Who Shot JFK? : A Guide to the Major Conspiracy Theories (1993) by Bob Callahan and Mark Zingarelli explores some of the more obscure theories regarding JFK's murder, such as "The Coca-Cola Theory." According this theory, suggested by the editor of an organic gardening magazine, Oswald killed JFK due to mental impairment stemming from an addiction to refined sugar, as evidenced by his need for his favorite beverage immediately after the assassination. ISBN 0-671-79494-9. • Mortal Error: The Shot That Killed JFK (1992) by Bonar Menninger (ISBN 0-312-08074-3) alleges that while Oswald did attempt to assassinate JFK and did succeed in wounding him, the fatal shot was accidentally fired by Secret Service agent George Hickey, who was riding in the Secret Service follow-up car directly behind the Presidential Limousine. The theory alleges that after the first two shots were fired the motorcade sped up while Hickey was attempting to respond to Oswald's shots and he lost his balance and accidentally pulled the trigger of his AR-15 and shot JFK. Hickey's testimony says otherwise: "At the end of the last report (shot) I reached to the bottom of the car and picked up the AR 15 rifle, cocked and loaded it, and turned to the rear." (italics added). George Hickey sued Menninger in April 1995 for what he had written in Mortal Error. The case was dismissed as its statute of limitations had run out. • Mark North's Act of Treason: The Role of J. Edgar Hoover in the assassination of President Kennedy, (1991) implicates the FBI Director. North documents that Hoover was aware of threats against Kennedy by organized crime before 1963, and suggests that he failed to take proper action to prevent the assassination. North also charges Hoover with failure to work adequately to uncover the truth behind Kennedy's murder. ISBN 0-88184-877-8. • Reasonable Doubt (1985) by Henry Hurt, who writes about his Warren Commission doubts. Mr. Hurt pins the plot on professional crook Robert Easterling, along with Texas oilmen and the supposed Ferrie/Shaw alliance. ISBN 0-03-004059-0. • Appointment in Dallas (1975) by Hugh McDonald suggests that Oswald was lured into a plot that he was told was a staged fake attempt to kill JFK to embarrass the Secret Service and to alert the government of the necessity for beefed-up Secret Service security. Oswald’s role was to shoot at the motorcade but deliberately miss the target. The plotters then killed JFK themselves and framed Oswald for the crime. McDonald claims that, after being told the "truth" about JFK's death by CIA agent Herman Kimsey in 1964, he spent years trying to locate a man 108

known as “Saul.” Saul was supposedly the unidentified man who was photographed exiting the Russian embassy in Mexico City in September 1963, whose photos were subsequently sent to the FBI in Dallas on the morning of November 22, 1963 (before the assassination), and mislabelled “Lee Harvey Oswald.” McDonald claims to have finally tracked Saul down in London in 1972 at which time Saul revealed the details of the plot to him. ISBN 0- 8217-3893-3.

Moon landing conspiracy theories Different Moon landing conspiracy theories claim that some or all elements of the Apollo Project and the associated Moon landings were falsifications staged by NASA and members of other organizations. Since the conclusion of the , a number of related accounts espousing a belief that the landings were faked in some fashion have been advanced by various groups and individuals. Some of the more notable of these various claims include allegations that the Apollo astronauts did not set foot on the Moon; instead NASA and others intentionally deceived the public into believing the landings did occur by manufacturing, destroying, or tampering with evidence, including photos, telemetry tapes, transmissions, rock samples, and even some key witnesses themselves. Such claims are common to most of the conspiracy theories. There is abundant third-party evidence for Apollo Moon landings, and commentators have published detailed rebuttals to the hoax claims.[1] Various polls have shown that 6% to 28% of the people surveyed in various locations do not think the Moon landing happened. Contents 109

• 1 Origins and history ○ 1.1 Public opinion • 2 Predominant hoax claims ○ 2.1 Motives ○ 2.2 Involvement of the Soviet Union ○ 2.3 Hoax proponents and their proposals • 3 Critical examination of hoax accusations ○ 3.1 Imaging the landing sites ○ 3.2 Academic work ○ 3.3 MythBusters special ○ 3.4 Missing data  3.4.1 Tapes  3.4.2 Blueprints ○ 3.5 Technology ○ 3.6 Photographs and films ○ 3.7 Ionizing radiation and heat ○ 3.8 Transmissions ○ 3.9 Mechanical issues ○ 3.10 Moon rocks ○ 3.11 Deaths of key Apollo personnel • 4 Alleged non-NASA involvement • 5 NASA book incident

1.Origins and history The first book dedicated to the subject, 's self- published We Never Went to the Moon: America's Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle, was released in 1974, two years after the Apollo Moon flights had ceased. Folklorist Linda Degh suggests that writer-director Peter Hyams's 1978 film , which depicts a hoaxed journey to Mars in a spacecraft that looks 110 identical to the Apollo craft, may have given a boost to the hoax theory's popularity in the post-Vietnam War era. She notes that this occurred during the post-Watergate era, when segments of the American public were inclined to distrust official accounts. Degh writes: "The mass media catapult these half- into a kind of twilight zone where people can make their guesses sound as truths. Mass media have a terrible impact on people who lack guidance." In A Man on the Moon, published in 1994, Andrew Chaikin mentions that at the time of Apollo 8's lunar-orbit mission in December 1968 similar conspiracy ideas were already in circulation. 1.1 Public opinion There are subcultures worldwide which advocate the belief that the Moon landings were faked. James Oberg of ABC News stated that claims made that the Moon landings were faked are actively taught in Cuban schools and wherever Cuban teachers are sent. A 1999 Gallup poll found that 6% of the American public doubted that the Moon landings had occurred and that 5% had no opinion on the subject, which roughly matches the findings of a similar 1995 Time/CNN poll. Officials of Fox television stated that such skepticism increased to about 20% after the February 15, 2001 airing of that network's TV show entitled Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon? Seen by approximately 15 million viewers, the 2001 Fox special is viewed as having promoted the hoax claims. A 2000 poll conducted by the Russian Public Opinion Fund found that 28% do not believe that American astronauts have been on the Moon, and this percentage is roughly equal in all social- demographic groups. In 2009, a poll conducted by the British Engineering & Technology magazine found that 25% of Britons do not believe that humans have walked on the Moon. Similarly, 25% of Americans between the age of 18 and 25 are not sure the landings happened. 2. Predominant hoax claims A number of different hoax claims have been advanced that involve conspiracy theories outlining concerted action by NASA employees and sometimes others, to perpetuate false information about landings that never occurred, or to cover up accurate information about the landings that occurred in a different manner than have been publicized. Believers have focused on perceived gaps or inconsistencies in the historical record of the missions. The Society was one of the first organizations to accuse NASA of faking the landings, arguing that they were staged by 111

Hollywood with Walt Disney sponsorship and based on a script by Arthur C. Clarke and directed by Stanley Kubrick. The most predominant idea is that the entire human landing program was a complete hoax from start to finish. Some claim that the technology to send men to the Moon was insufficient or that the Van Allen radiation belts, solar flares, solar wind, coronal mass ejections and cosmic rays made such a trip impossible. has claimed that the crew of and subsequent astronauts had faked their orbit around the Moon and their walk on its surface by trick photography and that they never got more than halfway to the Moon. A subset of this proposal is advocated by those who concede the existence of retroreflectors and other observable human-made objects on the Moon. British publisher Marcus Allen represented this argument when he said "I would be the first to accept what [telescope images of the landing site] find as powerful evidence that something was placed on the Moon by man". He goes on to say that photographs of the lander would not prove that the United States put men on the Moon. "Getting to the Moon really isn't much of a problem – the Russians did that in 1959, the big problem is getting people there". He suggests that NASA sent robot missions because radiation levels in space would be lethal to humans. Another variant on this is the idea that NASA and its contractors did not recover quickly enough from the fire, and so all the early Apollo missions were faked, with Apollo 14 or 15 being the first authentic mission. Philippe Lheureux, French author of Moon Landings: Did NASA Lie? and Lights on the Moon: Did NASA Lie? (Lumières sur la Lune: La NASA a-t-elle menti?), said that astronauts did land on the Moon but in order to prevent other nations from benefiting from scientific information in the real photos, NASA published fake images. 2.1 Motives Proponents of the view that the Moon landings were faked give several differing theories about the motivation for the U.S. government to fake the Moon landings. Cold War prestige, monetary gain and providing a distraction are some of the more notable motives given.The U.S. government considered it vital that the U.S. win the Space Race against the Soviet Union. Going to the Moon would be risky and expensive, as exemplified by John F. Kennedy famously stating that the U.S. chose to go because it was hard. Proponents also claim that the U.S. government benefited from a popular distraction from the Vietnam War; and so lunar activities suddenly stopped, with planned missions canceled, around the same time that the U.S. ceased its involvement in the Vietnam War. Bill Kaysing maintains that, despite close 112 monitoring by the Soviet Union, it would have been easier for the U.S. to fake the Moon landing, thereby guaranteeing success, than for the U.S. to actually go there. Kaysing claimed that the chance of a successful landing on the Moon was calculated to be 0.017%. NASA raised approximately US$30 billion in order to go to the Moon as well, and Kaysing claims that this amount could have been used to pay off a large number of people, providing significant motivation for complicity. The issue of delivering on the promise is often brought up as well. Since most proponents believe that the technical issues involved in getting people to the Moon either were insurmountable at the time or remain insurmountable, the Moon landings had to be faked in order to fulfill President Kennedy's 1961 promise "to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth." Others have made the claim that, with all the known and unknown hazards of traveling into deep space, NASA would not have risked the public humiliation of astronauts crashing to their deaths on the lunar surface, broadcast on live TV. So, with time running out, instead of risking a national fiasco and embarrassment and a cut-off of funding of billions of dollars should some catastrophe happen, it's argued that NASA had to stage and fake the moon landing to avoid such a major risk. 2.2 Involvement of the Soviet Union A primary reason for the race to the Moon was the Cold War. Philip Plait states in Bad Astronomy that the Soviets, with their own competing Moon program and a formidable able to analyze NASA data, could be expected to have cried foul if the United States tried to fake a Moon landing, especially since their own program had failed. Successfully pointing out a hoax would have been a major propaganda coup. Bart Sibrel has responded, "the Soviets did not have the capability to track deep spacecraft until late in 1972, immediately after which, the last three Apollo missions were abruptly canceled." However, the Soviet Union had been sending unmanned spacecraft to the Moon since 1959., and "during 1962, deep space tracking facilities were introduced at IP-15 in Ussuriisk and IP-16 in Evpatoria (Crimean Peninsula), while Saturn communication stations were added to IP-3, 4 and 14", the latter having a 100 million km range. The Soviet Union monitored the missions at the Space Transmissions Corps, which was "fully equipped with the latest intelligence-gathering and surveillance equipment". Vasily Mishin ("The Moon Programme That Faltered."), in Spaceflight. 33 (March 1991): 2-3 describes how the Soviet Moon programme lost energy after the Apollo landing. 113

2.3 Hoax proponents and their proposals • Bill Kaysing (1922–2005) an ex-employee of , the company which built the F-1 engines used on the rocket. Kaysing was not technically qualified, and worked at Rocketdyne as a librarian. Kaysing's self published book, We Never Went to the Moon: America's Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle, made many allegations, effectively beginning the discussion of the Moon landings possibly being hoaxed. NASA and others have debunked the claims made in the book. • Bart Sibrel, a filmmaker, produced and directed four films for his company AFTH, including a film in 2001 called A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Moon, examining the evidence of a hoax. The arguments that Sibrel puts forward in this film have been debunked by numerous sources, including Svector's video series Lunar Legacy,[34] which disproves the documentary's primary argument that the Apollo crew faked their distance from the Earth command module, while in low orbit. Sibrel has stated that the effect on the shot covered in his film was produced through the use of a transparency of the Earth. Some parts of the original footage, according to Sibrel, were not able to be included on the official releases for the media. On such allegedly censored parts, the correlation between Earth and Moon Phases can be clearly confirmed, refuting Sibrel's claim that these shots were faked. Sibrel was also punched in the face by after Sibrel confronted Aldrin with his theories about the moon hoax[35] while accusing the former astronaut of being "a coward, and a liar, and a thief". Sibrel attempted to press charges against Aldrin but the case was thrown out of court when the judge ruled that Aldrin was within his rights given Sibrel's invasive and aggressive behavior. • William L. Brian , a nuclear engineer who self-published a book in 1982 called Moongate: Suppressed Findings of the U.S. Space Program, in which he disputes the Moon's surface gravity. • David Percy, TV producer and expert in audiovisual technologies and member of the Royal Photographic Society, is co-author, along with Mary Bennett of Dark Moon: Apollo and the Whistle-Blowers (ISBN 1-898541-10-8) and co-producer of What Happened On the Moon?. He is the main proponent of the "whistle-blower" accusation, arguing that the errors in the NASA photos in particular are so obvious that they are evidence that insiders are trying to 'blow the whistle' on 114

the hoax by deliberately inserting errors that they know will be seen.[37] • - An inventor and 'self taught' engineering buff. Author of NASA Mooned America (second edition OCLC 36317224). • Charles T. Hawkins - Author of How America Faked the Moon Landings, • James M. (d. 1998) - American journalist and author, producer of the video Was It Only a Paper Moon ? in 1997. • Jack White - American photo historian known for his attempt to prove forgery in photos related to the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy. • Marcus Allen - British publisher of Nexus who said that photographs of the lander would not prove that the U.S. put men on the Moon. "Getting to the Moon really isn't much of a problem - the Russians did that in 1959 - the big problem is getting people there". the 2001 Digital Video Underground Festival in San Francisco. He received a Golden Cine Eagle and two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. • Aron Ranen states in his documentary film Did We Go? (2005) "at this point right now I'm about 75% believing we went". On July 20, 2009, Ranen appeared on Geraldo at Large (Fox News Channel) to argue that no one has landed on the moon. • Clyde Lewis - Radio talk show host. • David Groves - Works for Quantech Image Processing and worked on some of the NASA photos. Notably he has examined the photo of Aldrin emerging from the LM. He said he can pinpoint the exact point at which an artificial light was used. Using the focal length of the camera's lens and an actual boot, he has calculated, using ray-tracing, that the artificial light source is between 24 to 36 centimetres (9.4 to 14 in) to the right of the camera.[40] This corresponds with the sunlit part of Armstrong's spacesuit. • Yuri Mukhin - Russian opposition politician, publicist and writer and author of the book The Moon affair of the USA (2006) in which he denies all Moon landing evidence and accuses the U.S. establishment of plundering the money paid by the American taxpayers for the Moon program and the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and some Soviet scientists for helping NASA commit the hoax without being denounced.[42] 115

• Alexander Popov - Russian doctor of physical-mathematical sciences and author of the book Americans on the Moon - a great breakthrough or a space affair? (Moscow, 2009, ISBN 978-5-9533-3315-3) in which he aims to prove that Saturn V was in fact a camouflaged Saturn 1B and denies all Moon landing evidence. • Stanislav Pokrovsky - Russian candidate of technical sciences and General Director of a scientific-manufacturing enterprise Project-D-MSK who calculated that the real speed of the Saturn V rocket at S-IC staging time was only half of what was declared. His analysis appears to assume that the solid rocket plumes from the fusellage and retro rockets on the two stages came to an instant halt in the surrounding air so they can be used to estimate the velocity of the rocket. He ignored high altitude winds and the altitude at staging, 67 km, where air is about 1/10,000 as dense as at sea level, and claimed that only a loop around the Moon was possible, not a manned landing on the Moon with return to the Earth. He also determined the reason for this - problems with the Inconel superalloy used in the F-1 engine. 3. Critical examination of hoax accusations According to James Longuski, Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics Engineering at , the size and complexity of the alleged conspiracy theory scenarios make their veracity an impossibility. More than 400,000 people worked on the Apollo project for nearly ten years, and a dozen men who walked on the Moon returned to Earth to recount their experiences. Hundreds of thousands of people, including astronauts, scientists, engineers, technicians, and skilled laborers, would have had to keep the secret. Longuski also contends that it would have been significantly easier to actually land on the Moon than to generate such a massive conspiracy to fake such a landing. Vince Calder and Andrew Johnson provided a detailed rebuttal to the conspiracy theorists' claims, in a question and answer format, on the Argonne National Laboratory web site.[50] They show that NASA's portrayal of the Moon landing is fundamentally accurate, allowing for such common errors as mislabeled photos and imperfect personal recollections. Through application of the scientific process, any hypothesis that is contradicted by the observable facts may be rejected. The lack of narrative consistency in the hoax hypothesis occurs because hoax accounts vary from proponent to proponent. The 'real landing' hypothesis is a single story, since it comes from a single source, but there 116 are many hoax hypotheses, each of which addresses a specific aspect of the Moon landing, and this variation is considered a key indicator that the hoax hypothesis actually constitutes a conspiracy theory. Many astronauts of the Apollo era have observed that the "hoax" stance has never been officially taken by Russia or members of its space program. Given the importance of the space race during the years leading to the first moon landing, this is usually received as one of the clearest and most significant rejections of hoax theories. 3.1 Imaging the landing sites Another component of the Moon hoax theory is based on the argument that professional observatories and the Hubble Space Telescope should be able to take pictures of the lunar landing sites. The argument runs that if telescopes can "see to the edge of the universe" then they ought to be able to take pictures of the lunar landing sites, implying that the world's major observatories (as well as the Hubble Program) are complicit in the Moon landing hoax by refusing to take pictures of the landing sites. Images of the moon have been taken by Hubble, including at least two Apollo landing sites; but the Hubble resolution limits viewing of lunar objects to sizes no smaller than 60-75 yards (55–69 meters), which is insufficient to see any landing site features. Leonard David published an article on space.com, on April 27, 2001 which displayed a picture taken by the Clementine mission showing a diffuse dark spot at the location that NASA says is the Apollo 15 Lunar Module Falcon. The evidence was noticed by Misha Kreslavsky, of the Department of Geological Sciences at Brown University, and Yuri Shkuratov of the Kharkov Astronomical Observatory in . The European Space Agency's SMART-1 unmanned probe sent back imagery of the Apollo Moon landing sites, according to Bernard Foing, Chief Scientist of the ESA Science Program. "Given SMART-1’s initial high orbit, however, it may prove difficult to see artifacts", said Foing in an interview on space.com. (London) published a story in 2002 saying that European astronomers at the Very Large Telescope would use it to view the remains of the Apollo lunar landers. According to the article, Dr Richard West said that his team would take "a high-resolution image of one of the Apollo landing sites". Marcus Allen, a Moon hoax proponent, pointed out in the story that no images of hardware on the Moon would convince him that manned landings had taken place. As the VLT is capable of resolving equivalent to the distance between the headlights of a car as seen from the Moon, it may be able to directly image some features of the Apollo landing site. Such 117 photos, if and when they become available, would be the first non-NASA produced images of the site at that definition. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) launched their SELENE lunar orbiter on September 14, 2007 (JST) from Tanegashima Space Center. SELENE orbited the Moon at about 100 kilometres (62 mi) altitude. In May 2008 JAXA reported detecting the "halo" generated by the Apollo 15 lunar module engine exhaust from a Terrain Camera image. A 3-D reconstructed photo also matched the terrain of an Apollo 15 photograph taken from the surface. Apollo 11 landing site - "There the lunar module sits, parked just where it landed 40 years ago, as if it still really were 40 years ago and all the time since merely imaginary." –The New York Times. On July 17, 2009 NASA released low-resolution engineering test photographs of the Apollo 11, Apollo 14, Apollo 15, Apollo 16 and Apollo 17 landing sites that have been imaged by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter as part of the process of starting its primary mission. The photographs show the descent stage of the lunar module from each mission on the surface of the Moon. The picture of the Apollo 14 landing site also shows tracks created by an astronaut between a science experiment (ALSEP) and the lunar lander. Photographs of the Apollo 12 landing site were released by NASA on September 3, 2009. The Intrepid lunar module descent stage, experiment package (ALSEP), Surveyor 3 spacecraft, and astronaut footpaths are all visible. While the LRO images have been enjoyed by the scientific community as a whole, they have not done anything to convince conspiracy theorists that the landings took place. The main reason for this doubt is because the LRO is a NASA project, and is therefore assumed to be biased. 3.2 Academic work In 2004, Martin Hendry and Ken Skeldon of the University of Glasgow were awarded a grant by the UK based Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council in order to investigate 'Moon Hoax' proposals. In November 2004, they gave a lecture at the Glasgow Science Centre where the top ten lines of evidence advanced by hoax proponents were individually addressed and refuted. Alex R. Blackwell, of the University of Hawaii has pointed out that photos taken by Apollo astronauts are currently the best available images of the landing sites; they show shadows of the lander, but not the lander itself. 3.3 MythBusters special An episode of MythBusters in August 2008 was dedicated to NASA, and each myth addressed during the show was related to the Moon landings, such as the pictures and video footage. A few members of the MythBusters crew were allowed into a NASA training 118 facility to test some of the myths. All of the hoax-related myths examined on the show were labeled as having been "Busted". 3.4 Missing data Blueprints and design and development drawings of the machines involved are missing. Apollo 11 data tapes containing telemetry and the high quality video (before scan conversion) of the first moonwalk are missing. 3.4.1 Tapes Dr. David Williams (NASA archivist at Goddard Space Flight Center) and Apollo 11 flight director Eugene F. Kranz both acknowledged that the Apollo 11 telemetry data tapes are missing. Hoax proponents interpret this as support for the case that they never existed. The Apollo 11 telemetry tapes were different from the telemetry tapes of the other Moon landings because they contained the raw television broadcast. For technical reasons, the Apollo 11 Lunar Module (LM) carried a slow-scan television (SSTV) camera (see Apollo TV camera). In order to be broadcast to regular television, a scan conversion has to be done. The radio telescope at Parkes Observatory in Australia was in position to receive the telemetry from the Moon at the time of the Apollo 11 Moonwalk. Parkes had a larger antenna than NASA's antenna in Australia at the Honeysuckle Creek Tracking Station, so it received a better picture. It also received a better picture than NASA's antenna at Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex. This direct TV signal, along with telemetry data, was recorded onto one-inch fourteen-track analog tape there. A crude, real- time scan conversion of the SSTV signal was done in Australia before it was broadcast around the world. The original SSTV transmission had better detail and contrast than the scan- converted pictures. It is this tape, that was recorded in Australia, before the scan conversion, which is missing. Tapes or films of the scan-converted pictures exist and are available. Still photographs of the original SSTV image are available (see photos). About fifteen minutes of the SSTV images of the Apollo 11 moonwalk were filmed by an amateur 8 mm film camera, and these are also available. Later Apollo missions did not use SSTV, and their video is also available. At least some of the telemetry tapes from the ALSEP scientific experiments left on the Moon (which ran until 1977) still exist, according to Dr. Williams. Copies of those tapes have been found. Others are looking for the missing telemetry tapes, but for different reasons. The tapes contain the original and highest quality video feed from the Apollo 11 lunar landing which a number of former Apollo personnel want to recover for posterity, while NASA engineers looking 119 towards future moon missions believe the Apollo telemetry data may be useful for their design studies. Their investigations have determined that the Apollo 11 tapes were sent for storage at the U.S. National Archives in 1970, but by 1984 all the Apollo 11 tapes had been returned to the Goddard Space Flight Center at their request. The tapes are believed to have been stored rather than re-used, and efforts to determine where they were stored are ongoing. Goddard was storing 35,000 new tapes per year in 1967, even before the lunar landings. On November 1, 2006 Cosmos Magazine reported that some one-hundred data tapes recorded in Australia during the Apollo 11 mission had been discovered in a small marine science laboratory in the main physics building at the Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Australia. One of the old tapes has been sent to NASA for analysis. The slow-scan television images were not on the tape. Britain's Sunday Express reported in late June 2009 that the missing tapes were found in storage facility in the basement of a building on a university campus in Perth, Australia. On July 16, 2009, NASA indicated that it must have erased the original Apollo 11 Moon footage years ago so that it could reuse the tape. On December 22, 2009 NASA issued a final report on the Apollo 11 telemetry tapes Senior engineer Dick Nafzger, who was in charge of the live TV recordings back during the Apollo missions, is now in charge of the restoration project. After an extensive three-year search, an "inescapable conclusion" was that approximately 45 tapes (estimated 15 tapes recorded at each of the three tracking stations) of Apollo 11 video were erased and reused, said Nafzger. In time for the 40th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing, Lowry Digital of Burbank, California has been tasked with restoring the surviving footage. President of Lowry Digital Mike Inchalik stated that, "this is by far and away the lowest quality" video the company has previously dealt with. Nafzger praised Lowry for restoring "crispness" to the Apollo video, which will remain in black and white and contain conservative digital enhancements. The $230,000 restoration project that will take months to complete will not include sound quality improvements. Some selections of restored footage in high definition have been made available on the NASA website. 3.4.2 Blueprints The website Xenophilia.com documents a hoax claim that blueprints for the , Lunar rover, and associated equipment are missing. There are some diagrams of the Lunar Module and Lunar rover on the NASA web site as well as on Xenophilia.com. Grumman appears to have destroyed most of their documentation, but copies of the blueprints for the Saturn V 120 exist on microfilm. An unused LM is on exhibit at the Cradle of Aviation Museum. The Lunar Module designated LM-13 would have landed on the Moon during the Apollo 18 mission, but was instead put into storage when the mission was canceled: it has since been restored and put on display. Other unused Lunar Modules are on display: LM-2 at the National Air and Space Museum and LM-9 at Kennedy Space Center. Four mission-worthy Lunar Rovers were built. Three of them were carried to the Moon on Apollo 15, 16, and 17, and left there. After Apollo 18 was canceled (see Canceled Apollo missions), the other lunar rover was used for spare parts for the Apollo 15 to 17 missions. The only lunar rovers on display are test vehicles, trainers, and models. The "Moon buggies" were built by Boeing.[86] The 221-page operation manual for the Lunar Rover contains some detailed drawings, although not the design blueprints. An original Saturn V rocket is currently on display at the USA Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama.[88] The rockets components are on public display as well, as is much of the original equipment used in the Apollo missions. 3.5 Technology At the time that the Apollo Program occurred, Bart Sibrel claims that the Soviet Union had five times more manned hours in space than the United States, and that they had put the first man-made satellite in orbit (October 1957, Sputnik 1); the first living creature to enter orbit, a female dog named Laika, (November 1957, Sputnik 2), the first to safely return living creature from orbit, two dogs Belka and Strelka, 40 mice, 2 rats (August 1960, Sputnik 5); the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin, also the first man to orbit the Earth (April 1961, Vostok 1); the first to have two spacecraft in orbit at the same time [though it was not a space rendezvous, as frequently described] (, Vostok 3 and Vostok 4); the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova (June 1963, Vostok 6, as part of a second dual-spacecraft flight including Vostok 5); the first crew of three cosmonauts on board one spacecraft (October 1964, Voskhod 1); and the first spacewalk (EVA) (March 1965, Voskhod 2). On January 27, 1967, the three astronauts aboard Apollo 1 died in a fire on the launch pad during training. The fire was triggered by a spark in the oxygen-rich atmosphere used in the spacecraft test, and fueled by a significant quantity of combustible material within the spacecraft. Two years later all of the problems were declared fixed. Bart Sibrel believes that the accident led NASA to conclude that the only way to win the Moon race was to fake the landings.[citation needed] In any case, the first manned Apollo flight, Apollo 7, occurred in October 1968, 21 121 months after the fire. Before the first manned Earth-orbiting Apollo flight (Apollo 7), the USSR had made nine spaceflights (seven with one cosmonaut, one with two, one with three). The U.S. had made sixteen flights (six with one astronaut, ten with two). The USSR and U.S. each had six spaceflights in 1961-63, each with one astronaut or cosmonaut. The USSR had only three spaceflights in 1964-67 (each only a little longer than one day) whereas the U.S. had ten in this period (averaging over four days each). In terms of spacecraft hours, the USSR had 460 hours of space flight; the U.S. had 1,024 hours. In terms of astronaut/cosmonaut time, the USSR had accumulated 534 hours of manned spaceflight whereas the U.S. had accumulated 1,992 hours. By the time of Apollo 11, the United States's lead was much wider than that. (See List of human spaceflights, 1960s.) NASA and others say that these achievements by the Soviets are not as impressive as the simple list implies; that a number of these firsts were mere stunts that did not advance the technology significantly, or at all (e.g. the first woman in space). A close examination of the many flight missions reveal many problems, risks, and near-catastrophes for both the Soviet and American programs. A negative first for the Soviets was the first in- flight fatality, in April 1967, three months after the Apollo I fire, as Soyuz 1 crash-landed. Despite that disaster, the Soyuz program continued, after a lengthy interval to solve design problems, as with the Apollo program. Most of the Soviet accomplishments listed above were matched by the U.S. within a year, and occasionally within weeks. In 1965 the U.S. started to achieve many firsts which were important steps in a mission to the Moon. See List of space exploration milestones, 1957-1969 for a more complete list of achievements by both the U.S. and USSR. The USSR never developed a successful rocket capable of a Moon landing mission — their N1 rocket failed on all four launch attempts. They never tested a lunar lander on a manned mission. 3.6 Photographs and films Moon hoax proponents devote a substantial portion of their efforts to examining NASA photos. They point to various oddities of photographs and films purportedly taken on the Moon. Experts in photography (even those unrelated to NASA) respond that the anomalies, while sometimes counter-intuitive, are in fact precisely what one would expect from a real Moon landing, and contrary to what would occur with manipulated or studio imagery. Hoax proponents also state that whistleblowers may have deliberately manipulated the NASA photos in hope of exposing NASA. 1. Crosshairs appear to be behind objects. 122

• Overexposure causes white objects to bleed into the black areas on the film. 2. Crosshairs are sometimes misplaced or rotated. • Popular versions of photos are sometimes cropped or rotated for aesthetic impact. 3. The quality of the photographs is implausibly high. • There are many poor quality photographs taken by the Apollo astronauts. NASA chose to publish only the best examples.

• The Apollo astronauts used high resolution Hasselblad 500 EL/M Data cameras with Carl Zeiss optics and a 70- mm film magazine. 4. There are no stars in any of the photos; the Apollo 11 astronauts also claimed in a post-mission press conference to not remember seeing any stars. • The astronauts were talking specifically about naked- eye observations of stars during the daytime. They regularly sighted stars through the spacecraft navigation optics while aligning their inertial reference platforms. • The was shining. Cameras were set for daylight exposure, and could not detect the faint points of light.[94] Even the brightest stars are dim and difficult to see in the daytime on the Moon. said that he could not see stars on the daylight side of the Moon with his naked eyes.[95] Edwin Aldrin saw no stars from the Moon Harrison Schmitt saw no stars from the Moon. The astronauts' eyes were adapted to the brightly sunlit landscape around them so that they could not see the relatively faint stars. Camera settings can turn a well-lit background into ink-black when the foreground object is brightly lit, forcing the camera to increase shutter speed in order not to have the foreground light completely wash out the image. A demonstration of this effect is here. The effect is similar to not being able to see stars outside when in a brightly-lit room—the stars only become visible when the light is turned off. The astronauts could see stars with the naked eye only when they were in the shadow of the Moon. All of the landings were in daylight. 123

• An ultraviolet telescope was taken to the lunar surface on Apollo 16 and operated in the shadow of the lunar module. (It is seen in the background of the pictures showing JohnYoung's jump salutes of the US flag.) It captured pictures of the earth and of many stars, some of which are dim in visible light but bright in the ultraviolet. These observations were later matched up with observations taken by orbiting ultraviolet telescopes. Furthermore, the positions of those stars with respect to the earth are correct for the time and location of the Apollo 16 photographs. • Pictures of the solar corona that included the planet Mercury and some background stars were taken from lunar orbit by Apollo 15 Command Module Pilot Al Worden shortly before lunar sunrise and after lunar sunset. 5. The color and angle of shadows and light are inconsistent. • Shadows on the Moon are complicated by uneven ground, wide angle lens distortion, light reflected from the Earth, and lunar dust. Shadows also display the properties of vanishing point perspective leading them to converge to a point on the horizon. • This theory was demonstrated to be unsubstantiated on the MythBusters episode "NASA Moon Landing". 6. Identical backgrounds in photos which, according to their captions, were taken miles apart. • Shots were not identical, just similar. Background objects were mountains many miles away. Without an atmosphere to obscure distant objects, it can be difficult to tell the relative distance and scale of lunar features.[101] One specific case is debunked in Who Mourns For Apollo? by Mike Bara. 7. The number of photographs taken is implausibly high. Up to one photo per 50 seconds. • Simplified gear with fixed settings permitted two photographs a second. Many were taken immediately after each other as stereo pairs or panorama sequences. This calculation was based on a single astronaut on the surface, and does not take into account that there were two persons sharing the workload during the EVA. 8. The photos contain artifacts like the two seemingly matching 'C's on a rock and on the ground. 124

• The "C"-shaped image was from printing imperfections, not in the original film from the camera. 9. A resident of Perth, Australia, with the pseudonym "Una Ronald", said she saw a soft drink bottle in the frame. • No such newspaper reports or recordings have been verified. "Una Ronald"'s existence is authenticated by only one source. There are also flaws in the story, i.e. the emphatic statement that she had to "stay up late" is easily discounted by numerous witnesses in Australia who observed the event to occur in the middle of their daytime, since this event was an unusual compulsory viewing for school children in Australia. 10. The book Moon Shot contains an obvious composite photograph of Alan Shepard hitting a golf ball on the Moon with another astronaut. • It was used in lieu of the only existing real images, from the TV monitor, which the editors of the book apparently felt were too grainy to present in a book's picture section. The book publishers did not work for NASA. 11. There appear to be "hot spots" in some photographs that look like a huge spotlight was used at a close distance. • Pits in Moon dust focus and reflect light in a manner similar to minuscule glass spheres used in the coating of street signs, or dew-drops on wet grass. This creates a glow around the photographer's own shadow when it appears in a photograph. (see Heiligenschein) • If the photographer is standing in sunlight while photographing into shade, light reflected off his white spacesuit produces a similar effect to a spotlight.[107] • Some widely-published Apollo photos were high contrast copies. Scans of the original transparencies are in general much more uniformly illuminated. 12. Footprints in the extraordinarily fine lunar dust, with no moisture or atmosphere or strong gravity, are unexpectedly well preserved, in the minds of some observers – as if made in wet sand. • The moon dust has not been weathered like Earth sand and has sharp edges. These properties allow the moon dust particles to stick together and retain their 125

shape in the vacuum environment of the moon. The astronauts described it as being like "talcum powder or wet sand". • This theory was demonstrated to be unsubstantiated on the MythBusters episode "NASA Moon Landing". 3.7 Ionizing radiation and heat 1. The astronauts could not have survived the trip because of exposure to radiation from the Van Allen radiation belt and galactic ambient radiation (see radiation poisoning). Some hoax theorists have suggested that Starfish Prime (high altitude nuclear testing in 1962) was a failed attempt to disrupt the Van Allen belts. • The spacecraft moved through the belts in about four hours, and the astronauts were protected from the ionizing radiation by the aluminium hulls of the spacecraft. In addition, the orbital transfer trajectory from the Earth to the Moon through the belts was selected to minimize radiation exposure. Even Dr. James Van Allen, the discoverer of the Van Allen radiation belts, rebutted the claims that radiation levels were too dangerous for the Apollo missions. Plait cited an average dose of less than 1 rem, which is equivalent to the ambient radiation received by living at sea level for three years. The spacecraft passed through the intense inner belt and the low-energy outer belt. The astronauts were mostly shielded from the radiation by the spacecraft. The total radiation received on the trip was about the same as allowed for workers in the nuclear energy field for a year. • The radiation is actually evidence that the astronauts went to the Moon. Irene Schneider reports that thirty- three of the thirty-six Apollo astronauts involved in the nine Apollo missions to leave Earth orbit have developed early stage cataracts that have been shown to be caused by radiation exposure to cosmic rays during their trip. However, only twenty-seven astronauts left Earth orbit. At least thirty-nine former astronauts have developed cataracts. Thirty-six of those were involved in high-radiation missions such as the Apollo lunar missions. 2. Film in the cameras would have been fogged by this radiation. 126

• The film was kept in metal containers that prevented radiation from fogging the film's emulsion.[113] In addition, film carried by unmanned lunar probes such as the Lunar Orbiter and Luna 3 (which used on-board film development processes) was not fogged. 3. The Moon's surface during the daytime is so hot that camera film would have melted. • There is no atmosphere to efficiently couple lunar surface heat to devices such as cameras not in direct contact with it. In a vacuum, only radiation remains as a heat transfer mechanism. The physics of radiative heat transfer are thoroughly understood, and the proper use of passive optical coatings and paints was adequate to control the temperature of the film within the cameras; lunar module temperatures were controlled with similar coatings that gave it its gold color. Also, while the Moon's surface does get very hot at lunar noon, every Apollo landing was made shortly after lunar sunrise at the landing site. During the longer stays, the astronauts did notice increased cooling loads on their spacesuits as continued to rise and the surface temperature increased, but the effect was easily countered by the passive and active cooling systems. The film was not in direct sunlight, so it wasn't overheated. • Note: all of the lunar landings occurred during the lunar daytime. The Moon's day is approximately 29½ days long, and as a consequence a single lunar day (dawn to dusk) lasts nearly fifteen days. As such there was no sunrise or sunset while the astronauts were on the surface. Most lunar missions occurred during the first few Earth days of the lunar day. 4. The Apollo 16 crew should not have survived a big firing out when they were on their way to the Moon. They should have been fried. • No large solar flare occurred during the flight of Apollo 16. There were large solar flares in August 1972, after Apollo 16 returned to Earth and before the flight of Apollo 17. 3.8 Transmissions 1. The lack of a more than two-second delay in two-way communications at a distance of a 400,000 km (250,000 miles). 127

• The round trip light travel time of more than two seconds is apparent in all the real-time recordings of the lunar audio, but this does not always appear as expected. There may also be some documentary films where the delay has been edited out. Principal motivations for editing the audio would likely come in response to time constraints or in the interest of clarity. 2. Typical delays in communication were on the order of half a second. • Claims that the delays were only on the order of half a second are unsubstantiated by an examination of the actual recordings. It should also be borne in mind that there should not be a straightforward, consistent time delay between every response, as the conversation is being recorded at one end - Mission Control. Responses from Mission Control could be heard without any delay, as the recording is being made at the same time that Houston receives the transmission from the Moon. 3. The Parkes Observatory in Australia was billed to the world for weeks as the site that would be relaying communications from the Moon, then five hours before transmission they were told to stand down. • The timing of the first Moonwalk was moved up after landing. In fact, delays in getting the Moonwalk started meant that Parkes did cover almost the entire Apollo 11 Moonwalk. 4. Parkes supposedly provided the clearest video feed from the Moon, but Australian media and all other known sources ran a live feed from the United States. • While that was the original plan, and, according to some sources, the official policy, the Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) did take the transmission direct from the Parkes and Honeysuckle Creek radio telescopes. These were converted to NTSC television at Paddington, in Sydney. This meant that Australian viewers saw the Moonwalk several seconds before the rest of the world. See also The Parkes Observatory's Support of the Apollo 11 Mission, from "Publications of the Astronomical Society of Australia" The events surrounding the Parkes Observatory's role in relaying the live television of man's first steps on the Moon were portrayed in a 128

slightly fictionalized 2000 Australian film comedy The Dish. 5. Better signal was supposedly received at Parkes Observatory when the Moon was on the opposite side of the planet. • This is not supported by the detailed evidence and logs from the missions. 3.9 Mechanical issues 1. No blast crater or any sign of dust scatter as was seen in the 16 mm movies of each landing. • No crater should be expected. The Descent Propulsion System was throttled very far down during the final landing. The Lunar Module was no longer rapidly decelerating, so the descent engine only had to support the module's own weight, diminished by the 1/6 g lunar gravity and by the near exhaustion of the descent propellants. At landing, the engine thrust divided by the nozzle exit area is only about 10 kilopascals (1.5 PSI). Beyond the engine nozzle, the plume spreads and the pressure drops very rapidly. (In comparison the Saturn V F-1 first stage engines produced 3.2 MPa (459 PSI) at the mouth of the nozzle.) Rocket exhaust gases expand much more rapidly after leaving the engine nozzle in a vacuum than in an atmosphere. The effect of an atmosphere on rocket plumes can be easily seen in launches from Earth; as the rocket rises through the thinning atmosphere, the exhaust plumes broaden very noticeably. To reduce this, rocket engines designed for vacuum operation have longer bells than those designed for use at the Earth's surface, but they still cannot prevent this spreading. The Lunar Module's exhaust gases therefore expanded rapidly well beyond the landing site. However, the descent engines did scatter a lot of very fine surface dust as seen in 16mm movies of each landing, and many mission commanders commented on its effect on visibility. The landers were generally moving horizontally as well as vertically, and photographs do show scouring of the surface along the final descent path. Finally, the lunar regolith is very compact below its surface dust layer, further making it impossible for the descent engine to blast out a "crater". In fact, a blast crater was measured under the Apollo 11 Lunar Module using shadow lengths of the descent engine bell and estimates of the amount that the 129

landing gear had compressed and how deep the lander footpads had pressed into the lunar surface and it was found that the engine had eroded between 4 and 6 inches of regolith out from underneath the engine bell during the final descent and landing. 2. The second stage of the launch rocket and / or the Lunar Module ascent stage produced no visible flame. • The Lunar Module used Aerozine 50 (fuel) and dinitrogen tetroxide (oxidizer) propellants, chosen for simplicity and reliability; they ignite hypergolically –upon contact– without the need for a spark. These propellants produce a nearly transparent exhaust. The same fuel was used by the core of the American Titan rocket. The transparency of their plumes is apparent in many launch photos. The plumes of rocket engines fired in a vacuum spread out very rapidly as they leave the engine nozzle (see above), further reducing their visibility. Finally, rocket engines often run "rich" to slow internal corrosion. On Earth, the excess fuel burns in contact with atmospheric oxygen. This cannot happen in a vacuum. 3. The rocks brought back from the Moon are identical to rocks collected by scientific expeditions to Antarctica. 4. The presence of deep dust around the module; given the blast from the landing engine, this should not be present. • The dust is created by a continuous rain of micro- meteoroid impacts and is typically several inches thick. It forms the top of the lunar regolith, a layer of impact rubble several meters thick and highly compacted with depth. On the Earth, an exhaust plume might stir up the atmosphere over a wide area. On the Moon, only the exhaust gas itself can disturb the dust. Some areas around descent engines were scoured clean. Note: In addition, moving footage of astronauts and the lunar rover kicking up lunar dust clearly show the dust particles kicking up quite high due to the low gravity, but settling immediately without air to stop them. Had these landings been faked on the Earth, dust clouds would have formed. (They can be seen as a 'goof' in the movie Apollo 13 when (played by Tom Hanks) imagines walking on the Moon). This clearly shows the astronauts to be (a) in low gravity and (b) in a vacuum. 130

5. The flag placed on the surface by the astronauts flapped despite there being no wind on the Moon. Sibrel said "The wind was probably caused by intense air-conditioning used to cool the astronauts in their lightened, uncirculated space suits. The cooling systems in the backpacks would have been removed to lighten the load not designed for Earth’s six times heavier gravity, otherwise they might have fallen over". • The astronauts were moving the flag into position. Without air drag, these movements caused the free corner of the flag to swing like a pendulum for some time. A horizontal rod, visible in many photographs, extended from the top of the flagpole to hold the flag out for proper display. The flag's rippled appearance was from folding during storage, and it could be mistaken for motion in a still photograph. The top support rod telescoped and the crew of Apollo 11 could not fully extend it. Later crews preferred to only partially extend the rod. Videotapes show that when the flag stops after the astronauts let it go, it remains motionless. At one point the flag remains completely motionless for well over thirty minutes. See the photographs below.

Cropped photo of Buzz Aldrin saluting the flag Cropped photo taken a few seconds later, Buzz (note the fingers of Aldrin's right hand can be Aldrin's hand is down, head turned toward the seen behind his helmet). camera, the flag is unchanged. 131

Animation of the two photos, showing that though Armstrong's camera moved between exposures, the flag is not waving. The flag is not waving, but is swinging as a pendulum after being touched by the astronauts. Here is a thirty-minute Apollo 11 video showing that the flag does not move. • This theory was demonstrated to be unsubstantiated on the MythBusters episode "NASA Moon Landing". 6. The Lander weighed 17 tons and sat on top of the sand making no impression but directly next to it footprints can be seen in the sand. • The lander weighed less than three tons on the Moon. The astronauts were much lighter than the lander, but their boots were much smaller than the 1-meter landing pads. Pressure, or force per unit area, rather than force, determines the extent of regolith compression. In some photos the landing pads did press into the regolith, especially when they moved sideways at touchdown. (The bearing pressure under the lander feet, with the lander being more than 100 times the weight of the astronauts would in fact have been of similar magnitude to the bearing pressure exerted by the astronauts' boots.) 7. The air conditioning units that were part of the astronauts' spacesuits could not have worked in an environment of no atmosphere. • The cooling units could only work in a vacuum. Water from a tank in the backpack flowed out through tiny pores in a metal sublimator plate where it quickly vaporized into space. The loss of the heat of vaporization froze the remaining water, forming a layer of ice on the outside of the plate that also sublimated into space (turning from a solid directly into a gas). A separate water loop flowed through the LCG (Liquid Cooling Garment) worn by the astronaut, carrying his metabolic waste heat through the sublimator plate where it was cooled and returned to the LCG. Twelve pounds [5.4 kg] of feedwater provided some eight hours of cooling; because of its bulk, it was often the limiting consumable on the length of an EVA. Because this system could not work in an 132

atmosphere, the astronauts required large external chillers to keep them comfortable during Earth training. • Radiative cooling would have avoided the need to consume water, but it could not operate below body temperature in such a small volume. The radioisotope thermoelectric generators could use radiative cooling fins to permit indefinite operation because they operated at much higher temperatures.

8. Although Apollo 11 had made an almost embarrassingly imprecise landing well outside the designated target area, Apollo 12 succeeded, on November 19, 1969, in making a pin-point landing, within walking distance (less than 200 meters) of the Surveyor 3 probe, which had landed on the Moon in April 1967. • The Apollo 11 landing was several kilometers to the southeast of the center of their intended landing ellipse, but still within it. Armstrong took semi- automatic control of the lander and directed it further down range when it was noted that the intended landing site was strewn with boulders near a moderate sized crater. By the time Apollo 12 flew, the cause of the large error in the landing location was determined and improved procedures were developed and were demonstrated by the pin-point landing next to Surveyor III made by Apollo 12. Apollo 11 fulfilled its purpose by simply landing safely on the lunar surface and a pin-point landing was not a requirement on that mission. • The Apollo astronauts were highly skilled pilots, and the LM was a maneuverable craft that could be accurately flown to a specific landing point. During the powered descent phase the astronauts used the PNGS (Primary Navigation Guidance System) and LPD (Landing Point Designator) to predict where the LM was going to land, and then they would manually pilot the LM to a selected point with great accuracy.

9. The alleged Moon landings used either a sound stage, or were put outside in a remote desert location with the astronauts 133 either using harnesses or slow-motion photography to make it look like they were on the Moon and acting in lunar gravity. • While the HBO Mini-series "From the Earth to the Moon", and a scene from "Apollo 13" used the sound- stage and harness setup, it is clearly seen from those films that dust kicked up did not quickly settle (some dust briefly formed clouds). In the film footage from the Apollo missions, dust kicked up by the astronauts' boots and the wheels of the lunar rovers shot up quite high (due to the lunar gravity), and settled immediately to the surface in an uninterrupted parabolic arc (due to there being no air to support the dust). Even if there had been a sound stage for hoax Moon landings that had had the air pumped out, the dust would have reached nowhere near the height and trajectory as the dust shown in the Apollo film footage because of terrestrial gravity. • This video from Apollo 15 shows that they were in low gravity and in a vacuum: 10. All six lunar landings occurred during the first presidential administration of Richard Nixon and no other national leader of any country has even claimed to have landed astronauts on the Moon, even though the mechanical means of doing so should have become progressively much easier after almost 40 years of steady or even rapid technological development. • Other nations and later presidential administrations were evidently less interested in spending large sums to be merely the second nation to land on the Moon or to explore the barren Moon further. Had Nixon faked the Moon landings, the Soviets would have been happy to argue for a hoax as a propaganda victory, but the Soviets never did. Further exploration by the U.S. or U.S.S.R., such as establishing a Moon base, would have been much more expensive and perhaps too provocative to be in any nation's self-interest during the Cold War arms race. • Furthermore, the development of the Saturn V rocket, the Apollo CSM and LM and the flights up to Apollo 8 (which orbited the moon) were completed before Richard Nixon became president on January 20, 1969. Additionally, Nixon did not personally care much for the program started by the man who defeated him in the 1960 Presidential Election, and his administration 134

pushed for NASA to cancel Apollo 18, 19, and 20 in favor of development of the .[citation needed] 3.10 Moon rocks The Apollo Program collected a total of 382 kilograms (840 lb) of Moon rocks during the Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17 missions. Analyses by scientists worldwide all agree that these rocks came from the Moon — no published accounts in peer-reviewed scientific exist that dispute this claim. The Apollo samples are easily distinguishable from both meteorites and terrestrial rocks[129] in that they show a complete lack of hydrous alteration products, they show evidence for having been subjected to impact events on an airless body, and they have unique geochemical characteristics. Furthermore, most are significantly older than the oldest rocks found on Earth. The Moon rocks are more than 600,000,000 years older than the oldest Earth rocks known at the time. In 2008 some rocks were found on Earth that are older than any previously found Earth rocks but the Moon rocks are still more than 200,000,000 years older than them. The Moon rocks also share the same characteristics as the Soviet lunar samples that were obtained at a later date. Hoax proponents argue that Wernher von Braun's trip to Antarctica in 1967 (approximately two years before the July 16, 1969 Apollo 11 launch) was in order to study and/or collect lunar meteorites to be used as fake Moon rocks. Because von Braun was a former SS officer (though one who had been detained by the ),[131] the documentary film Did We Go? suggests that he could have been susceptible to pressure to agree to the conspiracy in order to protect himself from recriminations over the past. While NASA does not provide much information about why von Braun, the Marshall Space Flight Center Director, and three others were in Antarctica at that time; NASA has said that the purpose was "to look into environmental and logistic factors that might relate to the planning of future space missions, and hardware".[132] An article by Sankar Chatterjee at Texas Tech University states that von Braun sent a letter to F. Alton Wade, Chatterjee's predecessor, and that "Von Braun was searching for a secretive locale to help train the United States’ earliest astronauts. Wade pointed von Braun to Antarctica. NASA continues to send teams to work in McMurdo Dry Valleys, and to mimic the conditions on other planets such as Mars and the Moon. It is now accepted by the scientific community that rocks have been ejected from both the Martian and lunar surface during impact events, and that some of these have landed on the Earth in the form of Martian and lunar meteorites. However, the first Antarctic lunar meteorite was collected in 1979, and its lunar origin was not recognized until 135

1982. Furthermore, lunar meteorites are so rare that it is very improbable that they could account for the 382 kilograms of Moon rocks that NASA obtained between 1969 and 1972. Currently, there are only about 30 kilograms of lunar meteorites discovered thus far, despite private collectors and governmental agencies worldwide searching for these for more than 20 years. The large combined mass of the Apollo samples makes this scenario implausible. While the Apollo missions obtained 382 kilograms of Moon rocks, the Soviet Luna 16, Luna 20, and Luna 24 robotic sample return missions only obtained 326 grams combined (that is, less than one-thousandth as much). Indeed, current plans for a Martian sample return would only obtain about 500 grams of soil, [136] and a recently proposed South Pole-Aitken basin sample return mission would only obtain about 1 kilogram of Moon rock.[137] If a similar technology to collect the Apollo Moon rocks was used as with the Soviet missions or modern sample return proposals, then between 300 and 2000 robotic sample return missions would be required to obtain the current mass of Moon rocks that is curated by NASA. Concerning the composition of the Moon rocks, Kaysing asked: "Why was there no mention of gold, silver, diamonds, or other precious metals on the Moon? It was never discussed by the press or astronauts." Geologists realize that gold and silver deposits on Earth are the result of the action of hydrothermal fluids concentrating the precious metals into veins of ore. Since in 1969 water was believed to be absent on the Moon, no geologist would bother discussing the possibility of finding these on the Moon in any significant quantity. President Nixon gave 135 nations of the world, all 50 states and the U.S. territories each an Apollo 11 Moon rock and Apollo 17 Goodwill Moon Rock. Many of these Moon rocks have been stolen, destroyed, or are missing and in one celebrated case a moon rock housed in a museum in the Netherlands was found to be petrified wood. The loss of so many moon rocks has been used by conspiracy theorists to bolster their claim that man never went to the moon. NASA counters that accusation by stating that the vast majority of moon rocks and soil collected on the moon are securely maintained at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas and Brooks Air Force Base in , Texas. In addition NASA is quick to point out that independent scientists have studied the moon rocks collected on the Moon for 40 years. 3.11 Deaths of key Apollo personnel In a television program about the hoax allegations, Fox Entertainment Group listed the deaths of ten astronauts and of two civilians related to the manned spaceflight program as having possibly been killed as part of a cover-up. 136

• Theodore Freeman (T-38 crash, 1964) • Elliot See and Charlie Bassett (T-38 accident, 1966) • Virgil Ivan "Gus" Grissom (Apollo 1 fire, ). • Edward Higgins "Ed" White (Apollo 1 fire, January 1967) • Roger B. Chaffee (Apollo 1 fire, January 1967) • Edward "Ed" Givens (car accident, 1967) • Clifton "C. C." Williams (T-38 accident, October 1967) • X-15 pilot Michael J. "Mike" Adams (the only X-15 pilot killed during the X-15 flight test program in November 1967 - not a NASA astronaut, but had flown X-15 above 50 miles). • Robert Henry Lawrence, Jr., scheduled to be an Air Force Manned Orbiting Laboratory pilot, who died in a jet crash in December 1967, shortly after reporting for duty to that (later canceled) program. • NASA worker Thomas Ronald Baron (automobile collision with train, 1967 shortly after making accusations before Congress about the cause of the Apollo 1 fire, after which he was fired). Ruled as suicide. Baron was a quality control inspector who wrote a report critical of the Apollo program and was an outspoken critic after the Apollo 1 fire. Baron and his family were killed as their car was struck by a train at a train crossing. • Brian D. Welch, a leading official in NASA's Public Affairs Office and Director of Media Services, died a few months after appearing in the media to debunk the Fox pro-Moon hoax television show cited above. His obituary claims he died of a heart attack at the relatively young age of 42. (http://www.space.com/news/spaceagencies/welch_obit_001127.h tml) Conspiracy theorists find his age at death suspiciously young and would note that heart attacks can be induced, for example, through the stress of or through ingestion of certain chemicals. All but one of the astronaut deaths (Irwin's) were directly related to their job with NASA or the Air Force. Two of the astronauts, Mike Adams and Robert Lawrence, had no connection with the civilian manned space program. Astronaut James Irwin had suffered several heart attacks in the years prior to his death. There is no independent confirmation of Gelvani's claim that Irwin was about to come forward. All except two of the deaths occurred at least one or two years before Apollo 11 and the subsequent flights. Brian Welch's death is a blow against the alleged Hoax Conspirators since he was a of hoax claims. 137

Conspiracy theorists would argue his death was to prevent any public reversal of his position after he had served his purpose of debunking hoax claims and to prevent his leaking of any inside info about a hoax. As of April 2010 nine of the twelve astronauts who landed on the Moon still survive, including Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. 4. Alleged non-NASA involvement Stanley Kubrick is accused of having produced much of the footage for Apollo 11 and 12, presumably because he had just directed 2001: A Space Odyssey which is partly set on the moon and featured advanced special effects.[39] It has been claimed that when 2001 was in post-production in early 1968, NASA secretly approached Kubrick to direct the first three Moon landings. The launch and splashdown would be real but the spacecraft would remain in Earth orbit and fake footage broadcast as "live" from the lunar journey. No evidence was presented for this theory, which ignores many facts. For example, 2001 was released before the first Apollo landing and Kubrick's depiction of the lunar surface is vastly different from its actual appearance in Apollo video, film and photography. Kubrick did hire Frederick Ordway and Harry Lange, both of whom had worked for NASA and major aerospace contractors, to work with him on 2001. Kubrick also used some 50 mm f/0.7 lenses that were left over from a batch made by Zeiss for NASA. However, Kubrick only acquired this lens for Barry Lyndon (1975). The lens was originally a still-photo lens and required modifications to be used for motion filming. (There is a based on this idea, Dark Side of the Moon, which is clearly tongue-in-cheek by claiming to interview people with names as Dave Bowman or Jack Torrance, but could have contributed to the conspiracy theory in the eyes of casual viewers.) To date, nobody from the United States government or NASA who would have had a connection to the space program has come forward claiming the moon landings were staged. Penn Jillette made note of this in the "Conspiracy Theories" episode of his contrarian television show Penn & Teller: Bullshit! in 2005. He stated that, with the number of people that would have been required to be "in the know" of the staging, somebody would have outed the hoax by now. With the government's track record of keeping secrets (especially the Nixon administration, noting Watergate as an example), Jillette said there's no way the U.S. government could have silenced everybody if the landings were faked. 5. NASA book incident 138

In 2002, NASA granted US$15,000 to James Oberg for a commission to write a point-by-point rebuttal of the hoax claims. NASA subsequently canceled the commission later in the year, in the face of complaints that the book would dignify the accusations. Oberg stated that he intended to finish the project.[155][156] In November 2002 Peter Jennings said "[NASA] is going to spend a few thousand dollars trying to prove to some people that the United States did indeed land men on the Moon." and "[NASA] had been so rattled, [they] hired [somebody] to write a book refuting the conspiracy theorists." Oberg says that belief in the hoax theories is not the fault of the hoax proponents or believers, and that he puts the blame on educators and people (including NASA) who should provide information to the public.

9/11 conspiracy theories

9/11 conspiracy theories allege that the September 11 attacks in 2001 were either intentionally allowed to happen or were a false flag operation orchestrated by an organization with elements inside the United States government. A poll taken in 2006 by Scripps Howard and Ohio University showed that, "More than a third of the American public suspects that federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East." The most prominent theory is that the collapse of the World Trade Center and 7 World Trade Center were the result of a controlled 139 demolition rather than structural weakening due to fire.[3][4] Another prominent belief is that was hit by a missile launched by elements from inside the U.S. government[5] or that a commercial airliner was allowed to do so via an effective standdown of the American military. Motives cited by conspiracy theorists include justifying the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, and geostrategic interests in the Mideast, including pipeline plans launched in the early 1990s by Unocal and other oil companies. Published reports and articles by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Popular Mechanics and mainstream media have rejected the 9/11 conspiracy theories.[9][10] The civil engineering establishment generally accepts that the impacts of jet aircraft at high speeds in combination with subsequent fires, rather than controlled demolition, led to the collapse of the Twin Towers.[11] NIST stated that it did not perform any test for the residue of explosive compounds of any kind in the debris. Contents

• 1 History • 2 Mainstream account • 3 Types of criticism • 4 Main theories ○ 4.1 Foreknowledge  4.1.1 Suspected Insider Trading  4.1.2 Air Defense Stand Down Theory ○ 4.2 World Trade Center collapse ○ 4.3 The Pentagon ○ 4.4 Flight 93 ○ 4.5 Hijackers ○ 4.6 Phone calls ○ 4.7 Jewish and Israeli involvement • 5 Cover-up allegations ○ 5.1 Cockpit recorders ○ 5.2 Bin Laden tapes 140

• 6 Other theories ○ 6.1 Foreign governments ○ 6.2 No plane theories ○ 6.3 Reptilian shape-shifting aliens ○ 6.4 Drug industry cartel • 7 Motives ○ 7.1 Pax Americana ○ 7.2 Invasions ○ 7.3 Suggested historical precedents • 8 Proponents • 9 Media reaction ○ 9.1 In popular culture • 10 Criticism ○ 10.1 In the political arena ○ 10.2 Anti-Semitism in conspiracy theories

1.History Since the September 11 attacks, a variety of conspiracy theories regarding the 9/11 attacks have been put forward in Web sites, books, and films. Many groups and individuals advocating 9/11 conspiracy theories identify as part of the 9/11 Truth Movement. Unlike other conspiracy theories, such as those about the death of Princess Diana, 9/11 conspiracy theories did not emerge immediately after the event. Indeed, most professional conspiracy theorists in the United States appeared to be as shocked as the rest of the population. The first theories that emerged focused primarily on various anomalies in the publicly available evidence, and proponents later developed more specific theories about an alleged plot. One allegation that was widely circulated by e-mail and on the Web, is that not a single Jew had been killed in the attack and that attacks must have been the work of the Mossad, not Islamic terrorists. The first elaborated theories appeared in Europe. One week after the attacks the "inside job" theory was mentioned in Le Monde. Six months after the attacks ’s 9/11 exposé "L'Effroyable Imposture" topped the French bestseller list.[16] 9/11 conspiracy theories were 141 published by Mathias Bröckers, an editor at the German newspaper Die Tageszeitung at the time, the book 9/11: The by French journalist Thierry Meyssan, the book The CIA and September 11 by former German state minister Andreas von Bülow and the book Operation 9/11, written by the German journalist Gerhard Wisnewski. While these theories were popular in Europe, they were treated by the U.S. media with either bafflement or amusement and were dismissed by the U.S. government as the product of anti-Americanism. In an address to the United Nations on November 10, 2001, United States President George W. Bush denounced the emergence of "outrageous conspiracy theories [...] that attempt to shift the blame away from the terrorists, themselves, away from the guilty." By 2004, conspiracy theories about the September 11 attacks began to gain ground in the United States. One explanation for the increase in popularity was that it was not the discovery of any new or more compelling evidence or an improvement of the technical quality of the presentation of the theories, but rather the growing criticism of the and the presidency of George W. Bush, who had been reelected in 2004.[8] Revelations of spin doctoring and lying by federal officials, such as the claims about the existence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the belated release of the President's Daily Brief of August 6, 2001 and reports that NORAD had lied to the 9/11 Commission, may have fuelled the conspiracy theories. Between 2004 and the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks in 2006, mainstream coverage of the conspiracy theories increased. Reacting to the growing publicity, the U.S. government issued responses to the theories, including a formal analysis by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) about the collapse of the World Trade Center, a revised 2006 State Department webpage to debunk the theories, and a strategy paper referred to by President Bush in an August 2006 speech, which declared that terrorism springs from "subcultures of conspiracy and misinformation," and that "terrorists recruit more effectively from populations whose information about the world is contaminated by falsehoods and corrupted by conspiracy theories. The distortions keep alive grievances and filter out facts that would challenge popular prejudices and self-serving propaganda." Al-Qaeda has repeatedly claimed responsibility for the attacks, with chief deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri accusing Shia Iran and of intentionally starting rumors that Israel carried out the attacks to denigrate Sunni successes in hurting America. Some of the conspiracy theories about the September 11 attacks do not involve representational strategies typical of many conspiracy theories that establish a clear dichotomy between good 142 and evil, or guilty and innocent. Instead, they call up gradations of negligence and complicity. Matthias Bröckers, an early proponent of such theories, dismisses the official account of the September 11 attacks as being itself a conspiracy theory that seeks "to reduce complexity, disentangle what is confusing," and "explain the inexplicable". Just prior to the fifth anniversary of the attacks, mainstream news outlets released a flurry of articles on the growth of 9/11 conspiracy theories, with an article in the magazine Time stating that "This is not a fringe phenomenon. It is a mainstream political reality." Several surveys have included questions about beliefs related to the September 11 attacks. An August 2007 Zogby poll commissioned by 911Truth.org found that 63.6% of Americans believe that Arab fundamentalists were responsible for 9/11 while 26.4% of believed that "certain elements in the U.S. government knew the attacks were coming but consciously let them proceed for various political, military and economic reasons" and 4.8% of them believe that "certain U.S. Government elements actively planned or assisted some aspects of the attacks".[32] In 2008, 9/11 conspiracy theories topped a "greatest conspiracy theory” list compiled by The Daily Telegraph. The list was based on following and traction.[33][34] A study conducted by journalist Elizabeth Woodworth for the Center for Research on Globalization concludes that the increased presence in mainstream media reflected an improved professional approach within the 9/11 Truth movement. In Germany in 2003 the German book market was flooded with 9/11 "truth" books. In 2007 for the sixth anniversary of the attacks ZDF broadcast the sympathetic documentary “September 11, 2001: What Really Happened.” As of 2010, 67 percent of the German respondents identify "George W. Bush" (27 percent) or "U.S. Authorities" (25 percent) or the "Armaments Lobby" (15 percent) as having been behind the attacks. Only 25 percent choose while the issue of surveillance was reasonating with the German 9/11 truth movement. In 2010, the "International Center for 9/11 Studies", a private organization that is said to be sympathetic to conspiracy theories, successfully sued for the release of videos about September 11, 2001, that the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology had not made available to the public for years. According to the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung the videos which were published shortly before the ninth anniversary of the attacks provide "new food for conspiracy theorists". Many of the videos show images of 7 World Trade Center, a skyscraper in the vicinity of the WTC towers that also collapsed on September 11, 2001. Eyewitnesses have repeatedly reported explosions happening before the collapse 143 of both of the towers, while experts consider these theories to be unreasonable. 2. Mainstream account On September 11, 2001, 19 al-Qaeda terrorists hijacked four commercial passenger jet airliners. The hijackers intentionally crashed two of the airliners into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, killing everyone on board and many others working in the buildings. Both buildings collapsed within two hours, destroying at least two nearby buildings and damaging others. The hijackers crashed a third airliner into the Pentagon and a fourth plane crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania after the passengers and flight crew revolted. The 9/11 Commission Report disclosed prior warnings of varying detail of planned attacks against the United States by al-Qaeda. The report said that the government ignored these warnings due to a lack of communication between various law enforcement and intelligence personnel. For the lack of inter-agency communication, the report cited bureaucratic inertia and laws passed in the 1970s to prevent that caused scandals during that era. The report faulted the Clinton and the Bush administrations with “failure of imagination”. Most members of the Democratic and the Republican parties applauded the commission's work. Within the context of 9/11 conspiracy theories, the terms 'mainstream account,' 'official account' and 'official conspiracy theory' all refer to: • The reports from government investigations — the 9/11 Commission Report (which incorporated intelligence information from the earlier FBI investigation (PENTTBOM) and the Joint Inquiry of 2002), and the studies into building performance carried out by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). • Investigations by non-government organizations that support the mainstream account — such as those by the National Fire Protection Association, and by scientists of Purdue University and Northwestern University. • Articles supporting these facts and theories appearing in magazines such as Popular Mechanics, , and Time. • Similar articles in news media throughout the world, including The Times of India, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), the BBC, Le Monde, , the 144

Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), and The Chosun Ilbo of South Korea. • President 's June 2009 speech to the Muslim world where he said "I am aware that some question or justify the events of 9/11. But let us be clear: al-Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 people on that day." 3. Types of criticism Most 9/11 conspiracy theories generally originate from dissatisfaction with the mainstream account of 9/11. Non-conspiracy

Theories that do not necessarily require a conspiracy frequently allege that official reports have covered up incompetence or negligence from U.S. personnel or the Bush Administration.[54] Also, some theories claim involvement of a foreign government or organization other than al-Qaeda.[55] Conspiracy

The most prevalent conspiracy theories can be broadly divided into two main forms: • LIHOP ("Let it happen on purpose") – suggests that key individuals within the government had at least some foreknowledge of the attacks and deliberately ignored them or actively weakened America's defenses to ensure the hijacked flights were not intercepted.[53][56] • MIHOP ("Make it happen on purpose") – that key individuals within the government planned the attacks and collaborated with, or framed, al-Qaeda in carrying them out. There is a range of opinions about how this might have been achieved. [53][56]

Causes to be determined Other critics of the account of the September 11 attacks provided by the U.S. government are not proposing specific theories, but try to demonstrate that the U.S. government's account of the events is wrong. This, according to them, would lead to a general call for a new official investigation into the events of September 11, 2001. According to Jonathan Kay, managing editor for comment at the Canadian newspaper National Post,[57] who is currently working on a book about proponents of 9/11 conspiracy theories, "They feel their job is to show everybody that the official theory of 9/11 is wrong. And then, when everybody is convinced, then the population will rise up and demand a new 145 investigation with government resources, and that investigation will tell us what actually happened." 4. Main theories 4.1 Foreknowledge It has been claimed that action or inaction by U.S. officials with foreknowledge was intended to ensure that the attacks took place successfully. For example, Michael Meacher, former British environment minister and member of Tony Blair's Cabinet until June 2003 claims that the United States knowingly failed to prevent the attacks. Author David Ray Griffin alleges that the 9/11 conspiracy was considerably larger than the government claims and that the entire 9/11 Commission Report "is constructed in support of one big lie: that the official story about 9/11 is true." In a September 23, 2010 speech to the United Nations General Assembly, Iran's president claimed many in the United States and in other countries support the idea that "some segments within the US government orchestrated the attack to reverse the declining American economy and its grips on the Middle East, in order also to save the Zionist regime." 4.1.1 Suspected Insider Trading Just before 9/11 there was an "extraordinary" amount of put options placed on United Airlines and American Airlines stocks. Authorities believed, and some conspiracy theorists continue to maintain, that trading insiders may have known in advance of the coming events of 9/11 and placed their bets accordingly. An analysis into the possibility of insider trading on 9/11 concludes that: A measure of abnormal long put volume was also examined and seen to be at abnormally high levels in the days leading up to the attacks. Consequently, the paper concludes that there is evidence of unusual option market activity in the days leading up to September 11 that is consistent with investors trading on advance knowledge of the attacks. [63] —Allen M. Poteshman, The Journal of Business On the days leading up to 9/11, two airlines saw a rise in their put to call ratio. These two airlines were United Airlines and American Airlines, the two airlines whose planes were hijacked on 9/11. Between 6 and 7 September, the Chicago Board Options Exchange saw purchases of 4,744 "put" option contracts in UAL versus 396 call options. On 10 September, more trading in Chicago saw the purchase of 4,516 put options in American Airlines, the other airline involved in the hijackings. This compares with a 146 mere 748 call options in American purchased that day. No other airline companies saw anomalies in their put to call ratio in the days leading up to the attacks.[64] American Airlines however, had just released a major warning about possible losses. Insurance companies saw anomalous trading activities as well. Citigroup Inc., which has estimated that its Travelers Insurance unit may pay $500 million in claims from the World Trade Center attack, had about 45 times the normal volume during three trading days before the attack for options that profit if the stock falls below $40. Citigroup shares fell $1.25 in late trading to $38.09. Morgan Stanley, which occupied 22 floors at the World Trade Center, experienced bigger-than-normal pre-attack trading of options that profit when stock prices fall. Other companies that were directly affected by the tragedy had similar jumps. Raytheon, a defense contractor, had an anomalously high number of call options trading on September 10. A Raytheon option that makes money if shares are more than $25 each had 232 options contracts traded on the day before the attacks, almost six times the total number of trades that had occurred before that day. The initial options were bought through at least two brokerage firms, including NFS, a subsidiary of Fidelity Investments, and TD Waterhouse. It was estimated that the trader or traders would have realized a five million dollar profit. The Securities and Exchange Commission launched an insider trading investigation in which Osama Bin Laden was a suspect after receiving information from at least one Wall Street Firm. 4.1.2 Air Defense Stand Down Theory A common claim is that the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) issued a stand down order or deliberately scrambled fighters late to allow the hijacked airplanes to reach their targets without interference. According to this theory, NORAD had the capability of locating and intercepting planes on 9/11, and its failure to do so indicates a government conspiracy to allow the attacks to occur. The Web site emperors-clothes.com argues that the U.S. military failed to do their job. StandDown.net's Mark R. Elsis says "There is only one explanation for this.... Our Air Force was ordered to Stand Down on 9/11." In September 2001, NORAD generals said they learned of the hijackings in time to scramble fighter jets. Later, the U.S. government released tapes claiming to show the Federal Aviation Agency (FAA) did not tell the military about the hijackings until three of the four planes had crashed, a fact that would indicate that the FAA repeatedly lied to other U.S. government agencies. Phil Molé of Skeptic magazine has explained that it is neither quick nor easy to locate and intercept a plane behaving 147 erratically, and that the hijackers turned off or disabled the onboard radar transponders. Without these transponder signals to identify the airplanes, the hijacked airplanes would have been only blips among 4,500 other blips on NORAD’S radar screens, making them very difficult to track. According to Popular Mechanics, only 14 fighter jets were on alert in the contiguous 48 states on 9/11. There was no automated method for the civilian air traffic controllers to alert NORAD.[68] A passenger airline hadn't been hijacked in the US since 1979.[71] "They had to pick up the phone and literally dial us," says Maj. Douglas Martin, public affairs officer for NORAD. According to Popular Mechanics, only one civilian plane was intercepted in the decade prior to 9/11, which took 1 hour and 22 minutes. Rules in effect at that time, and on 9/11, barred supersonic flight on intercepts. Before 9/11, all other NORAD interceptions were limited to offshore Air Defense Identification Zones (ADIZ). "Until 9/11 there was no domestic ADIZ," says FAA spokesman Bill Schumann. After 9/11, the FAA and NORAD increased cooperation. They set up hotlines between command centers while NORAD increased its fighter coverage and installed radar to watch airspace over the continent. 4.2 World Trade Center collapse Criticism of the reports published by NIST on the destruction of the World Trade Center buildings plays a central role in theories about an alleged controlled demolition. The picture shows the simulated exterior buckling of 7 WTC during the collapse.The controlled demolition conspiracy theories claim that the collapse of the North Tower, South Tower and 7 World Trade Center was not caused by the plane crash damage, or by resulting fire damage, but by explosives installed in the buildings in advance. The reasoning behind this explained that if the US Government had planted explosives in the building but made it look like terrorists had done the damage, it would have given them a perfect excuse to go to war in Iraq. Demolition theory proponents, such as physicist Steven E. Jones, architect Richard Gage, software engineer Jim Hoffman, and theologian David Ray Griffin, argue that the aircraft impacts and resulting fires could not have weakened the buildings sufficiently to initiate a catastrophic collapse, and that the buildings would not have collapsed completely, nor at the speeds that they did, without additional energy involved to weaken their structures. Jones has presented the hypothesis that thermite or nanothermite was used to demolish the buildings and says he has found evidence of such explosives in the WTC dust. 148

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) concluded the official version was more than sufficient to explain the collapse of the buildings. The NIST and many mainstream scientists refuse to debate conspiracy theorists because they feel it would give these theories unwarranted credibility. Specialists in structural mechanics and structural engineering generally accept the model of a fire-induced, gravity-driven collapse of the World Trade Center buildings without the use of explosives. Soon after the day of the attacks, major media sources published that the towers had collapsed due to melted steel. Knowledge that the burning temperatures of jet fuel would not melt the steel support structure of the WTC contributed to the belief among skeptics that the towers would not have collapsed without external interference (something other than the planes). NIST does not claim that the steel was melted, but rather that the weakened steel (at 1000 degrees Celsius steel weakens to roughly 10% of its room temperature strength), together with the damage caused by the planes' impacts, caused the collapses.[84] NIST reported that a simulation model based on the assumption that combustible vapors burned immediately upon mixing with the incoming oxygen showed that "at any given location, the duration of [gas] temperatures near 1,000 °C was about 15 to 20 [minutes]. The rest of the time, the calculated temperatures were 500 °C or below." 4.3 The Pentagon According to some theories, the U.S. administration deliberately chose not to shoot down a plane that was heading for the Pentagon, while others contend that no plane hit the Pentagon at all. Thierry Meyssan and Dylan Avery argue that American Airlines Flight 77 did not crash into the Pentagon. Instead, they argue that the Pentagon was hit by a missile launched by elements from inside the U.S. government. Reopen911.org says that the holes in the Pentagon walls were far too small to have been made by a Boeing 757: "How does a plane 125 ft. wide and 155 ft. long fit into a hole which is only 60 ft. across?" Meyssan’s book, L’Effroyable Imposture (published in English as 9/11: The Big Lie) became an instant bestseller in France and is available in more than a dozen languages. When released, the book was heavily criticized by the French press. The French newspaper Liberation called the book "a tissue of wild and irresponsible allegations, entirely without foundation." According to Mete Sozen, a professor of structural engineering at Purdue University, a crashing jet doesn't punch a cartoon-like outline of itself into a reinforced concrete building. When Flight 77 hit the Pentagon, one wing hit the ground and the other was sheared off by the 149

Pentagon's load-bearing columns. According to ArchitectureWeek, the reason the Pentagon took relatively little damage from the impact was because Wedge One had recently been renovated. (This was part of a renovation program which had been begun in the eighties, and Wedge One was the first of five to be renovated. Airplane debris including Flight 77's black boxes, the nose cone, landing gear, an airplane tire, the fuselage, and an intact cockpit seat were observed at the crash site. The remains of passengers from Flight 77 were found at the Pentagon crash site and their identities confirmed by DNA analysis. Many eyewitnesses saw the plane strike the Pentagon. Further, Flight 77 passengers made phone calls reporting that their airplane had been hijacked. For example, passenger Renee May called her mother to tell her that the plane had been hijacked and that the passengers had been herded to the back of the plane. Another passenger named Barbara Olson called her husband (U.S. Solicitor General Theodore Olson) and said that the flight had been hijacked, and that the hijackers had knives and box cutters. A year before the attacks, a massive casualty (MASCAL) exercise was conducted in which a hijacked plane crashed into the Pentagon. 4.4 Flight 93 The fourth plane hijacked on 9/11, United Airlines Flight 93, crashed in an open field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania after the passengers revolted. Out of the four planes hijacked on that day, it was the only one not to reach its target. One of the popular conspiracy theories surrounding this event is that Flight 93 was actually shot down by a U.S. fighter jet. David Ray Griffin and Alex Jones say that large parts of the plane including the main body of the engine landed miles away from the main wreckage site, too far away for an ordinary plane crash. Jones says that planes usually leave a small debris field when they crash, and that this is not compatible with reports of wreckage found farther away from the main crash site. A posting on Rense.com claimed that the main body of the engine was found miles away from the main wreckage site with damage comparable to that which a heat-seeking missile would do to an airliner. According to some theories, the plane had to be shot down by the government because passengers had found out about the alleged plot. According to the magazine Skeptic, "[this] claim rests largely on unsupported assertions that the main body of the engine and other large parts of the plane turned up miles from the main wreckage site, too far away to have resulted from an ordinary crash. This is incorrect, because the engine was found only 300 yards from the main crash site, and its location was consistent with the direction in which the plane had been traveling." Michael K. Hynes, an airline 150 accident expert who investigated the crash of TWA Flight 800 in 1996, says that, at very high velocities of 500 mph or more, it would only take a few seconds to move or tumble across the ground for 300 yards. Reports of wreckage discovered at Indian Lake by local residents are accurate. CNN reported that investigators found debris from the crash at least eight miles away from the crash site, including in New Baltimore. However, according to CNN, this debris was all very light material that the wind would have easily blown away, and a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article from September 14, 2001 describes the material as "mostly papers", "strands of charred insulation", and an "endorsed paycheck". The same article quotes FBI agent Bill Crowley that, "Lighter, smaller debris probably shot into the air on the heat of a fireball that witnesses said shot several hundred feet into the air after the jetliner crashed. Then, it probably rode a wind that was blowing southeast at about 9 m.p.h."[104] Also, the distance between the crash site and Indian Lake was misreported in some accounts. According to the BBC, "In a straight line, Indian Lake is just over a mile from the crash site. The road between the two locations takes a roundabout route of 6.9 miles— accounting for the erroneous reports." Some conspiracy theorists believe a small white jet seen flying over the crash area may have fired a missile to shoot down Flight 93. However, government agencies such as the FBI assert this was a Dassault Falcon business jet asked to descend to an altitude of around 1500 ft to survey the impact. Ben Sliney, who was the FAA operation manager on September 11, 2001, says no military aircraft were near Flight 93. Some internet videos, such as , speculate that Flight 93 safely landed in Ohio, and a substituted plane was involved in the crash in Pennsylvania. Often cited is a preliminary news report that Flight 93 landed at a Cleveland airport; it was later learned that Delta Flight 1989 was the plane confused with Flight 93, and the report was retracted as inaccurate. Several websites within the 9/11 Truth Movement dispute this claim, citing the wreckage at the scene, eyewitness testimony, and the difficulty of secretly substituting one plane for another, and claim that such "hoax theories... appear calculated to alienate victims' survivors and the larger public from the 9/11 truth movement". The editor of the article has since written a rebuttal to the claims. The woman who took the only photograph of the mushroom cloud from the impact of Flight 93 hitting the ground says she has been harassed by conspiracy theorists, who claim she faked the photo. The FBI, the Smithsonian, and the ’s Flight 93 National Memorial consider it to be authentic. Conspiracy theorists have 151 claimed that passengers of Flight 93 and/or Flight 77, were murdered or that they were relocated, with the intent that they never be found. 4.5 Hijackers During the initial confusion surrounding the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the BBC published the names and identities of what they believed to be some of the hijackers. Some of the people named were later discovered to be alive, a fact that was seized upon by 9/11 conspiracy theorists as proof that the hijackings were faked. The BBC explained that the initial confusion may have arisen because the names they reported back in 2001 were common Arabic and Islamic names. In response to a request from the BBC, the FBI stated: The FBI is confident that it has positively identified the nineteen hijackers responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Also, the 9/11 investigation was thoroughly reviewed by the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States and the House and Senate Joint Inquiry. Neither of these reviews ever raised the issue of doubt about the identity of the nineteen hijackers. The New York Times also acknowledged these as cases of mistaken identity. According to John Bradley, the former managing editor of Arab News in Jeddah, , the only public information about the hijackers was a list of names issued by the FBI on September 14, 2001. When the FBI released photographs four days after the cited reports on September 27, the mistaken identities were quickly resolved. According to Bradley, "all of this is attributable to the chaos that prevailed during the first few days following the attack. What we're dealing with are coincidentally identical names." In Saudi Arabia, says Bradley, the names of two of the allegedly surviving attackers, Said al- Ghamdi and Walid al-Shari, are "as common as John Smith in the United States or Great Britain." According to Thomas Kean, chair of the 9/11 Commission, "Sixteen of the nineteen shouldn't have gotten into the United States in any way at all because there was something wrong with their visas, something wrong with their passports. They should simply have been stopped at the border. That was sixteen of the nineteen. Obviously, if even half of those people had been stopped, there never would have been a plot." Khalid al Mihdhar and Nawaf al Hazmi had both been identified as al-Qaeda agents by the CIA, but that information was not shared with the FBI or U.S. Immigration, so both men were able to legally enter the U.S. to prepare for the 9/11 attacks. Five of the alleged hijackers may have received training at U.S. military 152 facilities. The Defense Department confirmed that three of the hijackers, Mohamed Atta, Abdulaziz al-Omari and Saeed al-Ghamdi, "have the same names as alumni of American military schools." A Mohamed Atta attended the International Officers School at Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama; an Abdulaziz al-Omari went to the Aerospace Medical School at Brooks Air Force Base in Texas; and a Saeed al-Ghamdi was at the Defense Language Institute at the Presidio in Monterey, California. 4.6 Phone calls After 9/11, cellular experts said that calls were able to be placed from the hijacked planes, and that they were surprised that they lasted as long as they did. They said that the only reason that the calls went through in the first place is that the aircraft were flying so close to the ground. Alexa Graf, an AT&T spokesperson said it was almost a fluke that the calls reached their destinations. Other industry experts said that it is possible to use cell phones with varying degrees of success during the ascent and descent of commercial airline flights.[122] Marvin Sirbu, professor of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University said on September 14, 2001, that "The fact of the matter is that cell phones can work in almost all phases of a commercial flight." According to the 9/11 Commission Report, 13 passengers from Flight 93 made a total of over 30 calls to both family and emergency personnel (twenty-two confirmed air phone calls, two confirmed cell phone and eight not specified in the report). According to Debunk911myths.org, all but two calls from Flight 93 were made on air phones, not cell phones, and both calls lasted about a minute before being dropped.[123] Brenda Raney, Verizon Wireless spokesperson, said that Flight 93 was supported by several cell sites. There were reportedly three phone calls from Flight 11, five from Flight 175, and three calls from Flight 77. Two calls from these flights were recorded, placed by flight attendants Madeleine Sweeney and Betty Ong on Flight 11. 4.7 Jewish and Israeli involvement There are theories that 9/11 was part of an international Jewish conspiracy. According to Cinnamon Stillwell, another myth popular with 9/11 conspiracy theorists is that 4,000 Jewish employees skipped work at the World Trade Center on September 11. This was first reported on September 17 by the Lebanese Hezbollah-owned satellite television channel Al-Manar and is believed to be based on the September 12 edition of that stated "The Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem has so far received the names of 4,000 Israelis believed to have been in the areas of the World 153

Trade Center and the Pentagon at the time of the attacks." Both turned out to be incorrect; the number of Jews who died in the attacks is variously estimated at between 270 to 400. The lower figure tracks closely with the percentage of Jews living in the New York area and partial surveys of the victims' listed religion. The U.S. State Department has published a partial list of 76 in response to claims that fewer Jews/Israelis died in the WTC attacks than should have been present at the time. Five Israeli citizens died in the attack. It has been claimed that Israeli agents may have had foreknowledge of the attacks. Four hours after the attack, the FBI arrested five Israelis who had been filming the smoking skyline from the roof of a white van in the parking lot of an apartment building, for "puzzling behavior". The Israelis were videotaping the events, and one bystander said they acted in a suspicious manner: "They were like happy, you know … They didn't look shocked to me. I thought it was very strange," While , a New York Jewish news magazine, reported that the FBI considered them to be intelligence operatives, a spokesperson for the Israeli Embassy in the United States said that they had not been involved in any intelligence operation in the United States. The FBI had eventually concluded that the five Israelis had no foreknowledge of the attacks. Imam Anwar al-Awlaki of Virginia initially condemned the attacks. But just six days after the attack, he wrote on the IslamOnline.net website a suggestion that Israeli intelligence agents might have been responsible for the attacks, and that the FBI "went into the roster of the airplanes and whoever had a Muslim or Arab name became the hijacker by default. ABC news cited this report on June 21, 2002, adding that the FBI had concluded that the five Israelis had no foreknowledge of the attacks. 5. Cover-up allegations Conspiracy theorists say they detect a pattern of behavior on the part of officials investigating the September 11 attack meant to suppress the emergence of evidence that might contradict the mainstream account. The debris from ground-zero, for example, was removed without a proper forensic investigation, making it very difficult to discover why the World Trade Center buildings collapsed. 5.1 Cockpit recorders According to the 9/11 Commission Report, the cockpit voice recorders (CVR) or flight data recorders (FDR), or "black boxes", from Flights 11 and 175 were not recovered from the remains of 154 the WTC attack; however, two men, Michael Bellone and Nicholas DeMasi, who worked extensively in the wreckage of the World Trade Center, stated in the book Behind-The-Scenes: Ground Zero[143] that they helped federal agents find three of the four "black boxes" from the jetliners: "At one point I was assigned to take Federal Agents around the site to search for the black boxes from the planes. We were getting ready to go out. My ATV was parked at the top of the stairs at the Brooks Brothers entrance area. We loaded up about a million dollars worth of equipment and strapped it into the ATV. There were a total of four black boxes. We found three." According to the 9/11 Commission Report, both black boxes from Flight 77 and both black boxes from Flight 93 were recovered. However, the CVR from Flight 77 was said to be too damaged to yield any data. On April 18, 2002, the FBI allowed the families of victims from Flight 93 to listen to the voice recordings. In April 2006, a transcript of the CVR was released as part of the Zacarias Moussaoui trial. 5.2 Bin Laden tapes A series of interviews, audio and videotapes have been released since the 9/11 attacks that have been reported to be from Osama bin Laden. At first the speaker denied responsibility for the attacks. In a tape released in December 2001 the speaker claimed responsibility for the attacks. The Central Intelligence Agency claimed the tape was probably from Osama bin Laden. Some observers, especially people in the Muslim world, doubted the authenticity of the tape. In a audiotape released in a November 2007 also said to be from Bin Laden the speaker claimed sole responsibility for the attacks and denied the Taliban and the Afghan government or people had any prior knowledge of the attacks. 6. Other theories 6.1 Foreign governments There are allegations that individuals within the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) may have played an important role in financing the attacks. There are also claims that other foreign intelligence agencies, such as the Israeli Mossad, had foreknowledge of the attacks, and that Saudi Arabia may have played a role in financing the attacks. Francesco Cossiga, former President of Italy from 1985 until his resignation over Operation Gladio, asserts that it is common knowledge among democratic circles in the U.S. and Europe, and primarily in the Italian 155 center-left, that the 9/11 attacks were a joint operation of the CIA and the Mossad. General Hamid Gul, a former head of ISI, believes the attacks were an “inside job” originating in the United States, perpetrated by Israel or neo-conservative. 6.2 No Plane theory The "no plane theory," promoted by internet-only videos like 911 Taboo, asserts that this shot of the second impact, taken from a news helicopter, depicts a video composite of a Boeing 767 accidentally appearing from behind a Layer Mask. Nico Haupt and Morgan Reynolds, formerly the chief economist within the Labor Department under the Bush administration argue that no planes were used in the attacks. Reynolds claims it is physically impossible that the Boeing planes of Flights 11 and 175, being largely aluminium, could have penetrated the steel frames of the Towers, and that digital compositing was used to depict the plane crashes in both news reports and subsequent amateur video.[157] "There were no planes, there were no hijackers," Reynolds insists. "I know, I know, I'm out of the mainstream, but that's the way it is." According to David Shayler, "The only explanation is that they were missiles surrounded by holograms made to look like planes," he says. "Watch footage frame by frame and you will see a cigar-shaped missile hitting the World Trade Center." Truth movement veterans tend to distance themselves from "no- planers". Discussion of no plane theories have been banned from certain conspiracy theory websites while advocates have been threatened with violence by posters at other conspiracy theory websites.

6.3 Reptilian shape-shifting aliens English author and public speaker David Icke argues that reptilian, shape-shifting extraterrestrial humanoids are responsible for the 9/11 attacks. According to Icke, a reptilian global elite is behind all things that occur in the world. Icke's 2002 book Alice in Wonderland and the World Trade Center Disaster is focused on the 9/11 attacks. Icke's theories are rejected by 911blogger.com and other conspiracy theory sites. 6.4 Drug industry cartel In September 2009 public health expert Leonard G. Horowitz and journalist Sherri Kane published online and sent to the F.B.I. an affidavit with documents they claim prove the 9/11 attacks were part of a population reduction conspiracy by an international drug industry cartel that involves leading business and media figures. The pair alleged the documents show a link between the 156

9/11 attacks, Larry Silverstein and a conspiracy that also involved creating the swine flu .

7.Motives 7.1 Pax Americana In 2006, members of the group Scholars for 9/11 Truth argued that a group of US neo-conservatives called the Project for a New American Century (PNAC), which included Paul Wolfowitz, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, set on US world dominance and orchestrated the 9/11 attacks as an excuse to hit Iraq, Afghanistan and later Iran. In September 2000 the PNAC released a strategic treatise entitled Rebuilding America's Defences. David Ray Griffin in his 2004 book : Disturbing Questions About the Bush Administration and 9/11 argued that the treatise may have been the blueprint for 9/11 attacks. Specifically the language in the paper that read "the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor" was describing an alleged motive. The Defense Planning Guidance of 1992, was drafted by Paul Wolfowitz on behalf of then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney. This was described as "a blueprint for permanent American global hegemony" by Andrew J. Bacevich in his book American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy. Matt Taibbi argued in his book The Great Derangement that conspiracy theorists have taken what is written in the paper "completely out of context", and that the "transformation" referenced in the paper is explicitly stated to be a decades-long process to turn the Cold War-era military into a "new, modern military" which could deal with more localized conflicts. He stated that, for this to be evidence of motive, either those responsible would have decided to openly state their objectives, or would have read the paper in 2000 and quickly laid the groundwork for the 9/11 attacks using it as inspiration. 7.2 Invasions Conspiracy theorists have questioned whether the Oil Factor and 9/11 provided the United States and the United Kingdom with a reason to launch a war they had wanted for some time, and suggest that this gives them a strong motive for either carrying out the attacks, or allowing them to take place. For instance, Andreas 157 von Bülow, a former research minister in the German government, has argued that 9/11 was staged to justify the subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.[168] Former Malaysian premiere was quoted as saying that there was "strong evidence" that the attacks were faked so the United States could go to war against Muslims. 7.3 Suggested historical precedents Conspiracy theorists often point to as a precursor of the 9/11 attacks, which they theorize were carried out by the U.S. government as a false flag operation, which was then blamed on Islamic extremists. Operation Northwoods was a plan presented by the United States in 1962. The plan called for covert operatives to commit genuine acts of terrorism in U.S. cities, and to blame and subsequently invade Cuba for it. Time magazine contrasted events which inspired past conspiracy theories with those that inspire 9/11 conspiracy theories such as the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Time called the public assassination of Kennedy a "private, intimate affair" when compared with the attack on the World Trade Center, which was witnessed by millions of people and documented by hundreds of videographers; and stated, "there is no event so plain and clear that a determined human being can't find ambiguity in it." 8.Proponents Many individuals and organizations that support or discuss 9/11 conspiracy theories consider themselves to be part of the 9/11 Truth movement. Prominent adherents of the movement include, among others, theologian David Ray Griffin, physicist Steven E. Jones, software engineer Jim Hoffman, architect Richard Gage, film producer Dylan Avery, former Governor of Minnesota Jesse Ventura, former member of the U.S. House of Representatives Cynthia McKinney, actors Daniel Sunjata, Ed Asner, and Charlie Sheen, political science professor Joseph Diaferia and journalist Thierry Meyssan. Adherents of the 9/11 truth movement come from diverse social backgrounds and hold diverse views on other political issues. Among the organizations that actively discuss and promote such theories are Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth, a group that focuses on the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings; 9/11 Truth, founded in 2004; Scholars for 9/11 Truth, founded in 2005, and Scholars for 9/11 Truth & Justice, a group that split from Scholars for 9/11 Truth in 2007 and runs the online publication Journal of 9/11 Studies; 9/11 Citizens Watch, which was already formed in 2002; and the Hispanic Victims 158

Group. Several of these groups collects signatures for petitions asking for further investigation of the September 11 attacks.

9.Media reaction While discussion and coverage of these theories is mainly confined to Internet pages, books, documentary films, and conversation, a number of mainstream news outlets around the world have covered the issue. The Norwegian version of the July 2006 sparked interest when they ran, on their own initiative, a three page main story on the 9/11 attacks and summarized the various types of 9/11 conspiracy theories (which were not specifically endorsed by the newspaper, only recensed). The Voltaire Network, which has changed position since the September 11 attacks and whose director, Thierry Meyssan, became a leading proponent of 9/11 conspiracy theory, explained that although the Norwegian version of Le Monde diplomatique had allowed it to translate and publish this article on its website, the mother-house, in France, categorically refused it this right, thus displaying an open debate between various national editions. [178] In December 2006, the French version published an article by , co-editor of CounterPunch, which strongly criticized the alleged endorsement of conspiracy theories by the U.S. left-wing, alleging that it was a sign of "theoretical emptiness." Also, on the Canadian website for CBC News: The Fifth Estate, a program titled, "Conspiracy Theories: uncovering the facts behind the myths of Sept. 11, 2001" was broadcast on October 29, 2003, stating that what they found may be more surprising than any theories. On November 27, 2009, The Fifth Estate aired a documentary entitled The Unofficial Story where several prominent members of the 9/11 Truth Movement made their case. An article in the September 11, 2006 edition of Time magazine comments that the major 9/11 conspiracy theories “depend on circumstantial evidence, facts without analysis or documentation, quotes taken out of context and the scattered testimony of traumatized eyewitnesses”, and enjoy continued popularity because “the idea that there is a malevolent controlling force orchestrating global events is, in a perverse way, comforting”. It concludes that “conspiracy theories are part of the process by which Americans deal with traumatic public events” and constitute “an American form of national mourning.” 159

The Daily Telegraph published an article titled "The CIA couldn't have organised this..." which said "The same people who are making a mess of Iraq were never so clever or devious that they could stage a complex assault on two narrow towers of steel and glass" and "if there is a nefarious plot in all this bad planning, it is one improvised by a confederacy of dunces". This article mainly attacked a group of scientists led by Professor Steven E. Jones, now called Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice. They said "most of them aren't scientists but instructors... at second-rate colleges". A major Australian newspaper The Daily Telegraph, published an article in May 2007 that was highly critical of Loose Change 2, a movie which presents a 9/11 conspiracy theory. Doug MacEachern in a May 2008 column for wrote that while many "9/11 truthers" are not crackpots that espouse "crackpot conspiracy theories", supporters of the theories fail to take into account both human nature and that nobody has come forward claiming they were participants in the alleged conspiracies. This view seconded by Timothy Giannuzzi, a Calgary Herald op-ed columnist specializing in foreign policy. On June 7, 2008, The Financial Times Magazine published a lengthy article on the 9/11 Truth Movement and 9/11 conspiracy theories. Charlie Brooker, a British comedian and multimedia personality, in a July 2008 column published by as part of its "Comment is free" series agreed that 9/11 conspiracy theorists fail to take in account human fallacies and added that believing in these theories gives theorists a sense of belonging to a community that shares privileged information thus giving the theorists a delusional sense of power.[190] The commentary generated over 1700 online responses, the largest in the history of the series.[191] In a September 2009 piece, The Guardian were more supportive of 9/11 conspiracy theories however, asking, "when did it become uncool to ask questions? When did questioners become imbeciles?" On September 12, 2008, Russian State Television broadcast in prime time a documentary made by Member of the entitled Zero, sympathetic to those who question the mainstream account of the attacks according to Chiesa. According to Thierry Meyssan in with the documentary, Russian State Television aired a debate on the subject. The panel consisted of members from several countries including 12 Russians who hold divergent views. The motive of Russian State Television in broadcasting the documentary was questioned by a commentator from The Other Russia who noted that Russian State Television had a history of broadcasting programs 160 involving conspiracy theories involving the United States government. Nasir Mahmood in a commentary printed by the Pakistan Observer wrote favorably about a 9/11 truth lecture and film festival held in California and quoted a Jewish speaker at that festival who said that none of the 19 suspected hijackers had been proven guilty of anything and compared racism against Muslims resulting from what he called false accusations to the racism against Jews in the Nazi era. On November 10, 2008, ITN broadcast a story summarizing various 9/11 conspiracy theories. The emergence of the birther movement in 2009 has led to comparisons between that movement and the 9/11 Truth Movement, with both movements seen in a very negative light. Moon Landing conspiracy theories have also been compared to the birther and 9/11 conspiracy theories. James Borne, a journalist for The Times who covered the September 11 Attacks, described his assignment covering a 9/11 truth meeting "Perhaps the most intellectually scary assignment I have had in recent years". On August 31, 2009, the National Geographic Channel aired the program 9/11 Science and Conspiracy, in which the Energetic Materials Research and Testing Center tested some of the claims frequently made by those who question the official 9/11 account. Specifically, the experiments concluded that burning jet fuel alone can sufficiently raise the temperature of a steel support column to the point of structural failure, that a controlled demolition using conventional techniques would leave clear evidence that was not found at Ground Zero, that using thermite is not an effective technique to melt a steel column, and that even if thermite chemical signatures were found, it would be impossible to tell if thermite was actually used or if the traces came from the reaction of aircraft aluminum with other substances in the fire. The testing also concluded that the type of hole found at the Pentagon was consistent with the mainstream scenario, and that damage from a bombing or missile attack would differ from the damage that occurred. In the program, several prominent 9/11 conspiracy theorists viewed rough edits of the experiments, and expressed their disagreement with the findings. The British left wing magazine New Statesman listed David Ray Griffin as the 41st most important person who matters today. The magazine said that Griffin's "books on the subject have lent a sheen of respectability that appeals to people at the highest levels of government". The publication listed 9/11 conspiracy thories as "one of the most pernicious global myths". Griffin's book The New Pearl Harbor Revisited was chosen by Publishers Weekly as a "Pick of the Week" in November 2008. Denver public 161 television KBDI-TV has aired 9/11 truth documentaries several times. The stations spokesperson claimed airing these documentaries has been a boon for the stations fund raising efforts. Glenn Beck, television and radio host, said of the allegations: "There are limits to debasement of this country, aren't there? I mean, it's one thing to believe that our politicians are capable of being Bernie Madoff. It's another to think that they are willing to kill 3,000 Americans. Once you cross that line, you're in a whole new territory." In March 2010 editorialized against Yukihisa Fujita, a prominent Japanese politician who has espoused 9/11 conspiracy theories. They described Fujita as "a man so susceptible to the imaginings of the lunatic fringe". For the ninth anniversary of the attacks the Egyptian daily Almasry Alyoum published article n Egyptian questioning of the US government story and belief in conspiracy theories in which the senior analyst for the semi-official Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies and a member of Parliament from the Muslim Brotherhood was quoted. 9.1 In popular culture In June 2005 the popular German State Television murder mystery program Tatort ran an episode in which a woman who claims the 9/11 attacks were instigated by the Bush family for oil and power is targeted by FBI and CIA hitmen after her male roommate is found dead. The roommate was trained to be a 9/11 pilot but was left behind. The episode viewed by 7 million people ended when the detectives investigating the death believed her and she escapes to an unnamed Arab country. In season 10 of the animated show , the episode "Mystery of the Urinal Deuce" centers around 9/11 conspiracy theories. After Eric Cartman, a main character in the show, blames Kyle Broflovski of causing 9/11, Kyle and his friend Stan Marsh end up in the White House, where they are told that the government did in fact cause the 9/11 attacks. They escape, and eventually it is revealed that the government wants people to think that they caused 9/11, so that they think the government has more power than it does. A Rescue Me episode featured a character played by actor Daniel Sunjata who is a 9/11 conspiracy theorist in real life, explaining to a French journalist that the 9/11 attacks were a “neoconservative government effort” to create a new Pearl Harbor to control oil and increase military spending. According to Denis Leary major plot lines in the first 10 episodes of the show's season 5 revolved around reinvestigation and conspiracy theories surrounding the 9/11 attacks. 162

10.Criticism Critics of these conspiracy theories say they are a form of conspiracism common throughout history after a traumatic event in which conspiracy theories emerge as a mythic form of explanation. [215] A related criticism addresses the form of research on which the theories are based. Thomas W. Eagar, an engineering professor at MIT, suggested they "use the 'reverse '. They determine what happened, throw out all the data that doesn't fit their conclusion, and then hail their findings as the only possible conclusion." Eagar's criticisms also exemplify a common stance that the theories are best ignored. "I've told people that if the argument gets too mainstream, I'll engage in the debate." According to him, this happened when Steve Jones, a physics professor at Brigham Young University, took up the issue. An internet site run by the U.S. State Department devotes space to debunking the theories, apparently believing that the allegations need to be addressed forcefully rather than dismissed out of hand as the ruminations of a fringe group. , writing in Scientific American, said: "The mistaken belief that a handful of unexplained anomalies can undermine a well-established theory lies at the heart of all conspiratorial thinking. All the evidence for a 9/11 conspiracy falls under the rubric of this fallacy. Such notions are easily refuted by noting that scientific theories are not built on single facts alone but on a convergence of evidence assembled from multiple lines of inquiry." Scientific American, Popular Mechanics,[220] and The Skeptic's Dictionary have published articles that rebut various 9/11 conspiracy theories. Popular Mechanics has published a book entitled Debunking 9/11 Myths that expands upon the research first presented in the article. In the foreword for the book Senator John McCain wrote that blaming the U.S. government for the events "mars the memories of all those lost on that day" and "exploits the public's anger and sadness. It shakes Americans' faith in their government at a time when that faith is already near an all-time low. It trafficks in ugly, unfounded accusations of extraordinary evil against fellow Americans."[223] Der Spiegel dismissed 9/11 conspiracy theories as a "panoply of the absurd", stating "as diverse as these theories and their adherents may be, they share a basic thought pattern: great tragedies must have great reasons."[224] David Ray Griffin has published a book entitled Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory, [225][citation needed] and Jim Hoffman has written an article called 163

'popular mechanics assault on 9/11 truth" where he attacks the methods Popular Mechanics uses in forming their arguments. Journalist Matt Taibbi, in his book The Great Derangement, discusses 9/11 conspiracy theories as symptomatic of what he calls the "derangement" of American society; a disconnection from reality due to widespread "disgust with our political system". Drawing a parallel with the Charismatic movement, he argues that both "chose to battle bugbears that were completely idiotic, fanciful, and imaginary," instead of taking control of their own lives. While critical, Taibbi explains that 9/11 conspiracy theories are different from "Clinton-era black-helicopter paranoia", and constitute more than "a small, scattered group of nutcases [...] they really were, just as they claim to be, almost everyone you meet."[167] Taibbi also argued that 9/11 conspiracy theorists form "completely and utterly retarded" narratives to explain the attacks because of "defiant unfamiliarity with the actual character of America's ruling class". Historian Kenneth J. Dillon argues that 9/11 conspiracy theories represent an overly easy target for skeptics and that their criticisms obfuscate the underlying issue of what actually happened if there wasn't a conspiracy. He suggests that the answer is criminal negligence on the part of the president and vice president, who were repeatedly warned, followed by a cover- up conspiracy after 9/11. This was expanded upon by columnist Matt Mankelow writing for the online edition of the British Socialist Worker. He concludes that 9/11 truthers while "desperately trying to legitimately question a version of events" end up playing into the hands of the neoconservatives they are trying to take down by creating a diversion. Mankelow noted that this has irritated many people who are politically left wing. David Aaronovitch, a columnist for The Times, in his book entitled Voodoo Histories: The Role of the Conspiracy Theory in Shaping Modern History that was published in May 2009, claimed that the theories strain credulity.[101] Aaronovitch also charged that 9/11 conspiracy theorists have exaggerated the expertise of those supporting their theories, and noted that 9/11 conspiracy theorists including David Ray Griffin cross cite each other. 10.1 In the political arena Former Canadian Liberal Party leader Stéphane Dion forced a candidate from Winnipeg, Lesley Hughes, to terminate her campaign after earlier writings from Hughes surfaced in which Hughes wrote that U.S., German, Russian and Israeli intelligence officials knew about the 9/11 attacks in advance. Earlier, Peter Kent, Deputy Editor of Global Television Network News and Conservative 164

Party candidate in the 2008 Canadian election, had called for Hughes's resignation saying that the 9/11 truth movement is "one of Canada’s most notorious hatemongering fringe movements" composed of "conspiracy theorists who are notorious for holding anti-Semitic views."[232] On June 16, 2009, Hughes sued Kent, the Canadian Jewish Congress, the B'Nai Brith of Canada and four senior members of the two organizations alleging the anti-Semitic allegations were untrue and defamatory and ruined her career. Later another Conservative Party candidate called for the leader of the New Democratic Party to fire a candidate for her pro 9/11 truth views. Zijad Delic head of Canada's largest Muslim advocacy organization, the Canadian Islamic Congress is trying to remove 9/11 conspiracy theorists from the the board of the organization, in an effort to what he describes as purifying within and totally canadianize the organization. In 2008 calls for the resignation of Richard Falk, the special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories for the United Nations, were partially based on his support investigating the validity of 9/11 conspiracy theories. In February 2009, Aymeric Chauprade(fr), a professor of geopolitics at CID military college in Paris, was fired by French Defence Minister Herve Morin for writing a book entitled Chronicle of the Clash of that espoused 9/11 conspiracy theories. In September 2009 Van Jones, an adviser to US President Barack Obama, resigned after his signature on a 2004 petition calling for an investigation into whether government officials deliberately allowed the 9/11 attacks to occur and other controversial statements came to light drawing criticism. Van Jones said he was a victim of a smear campaign, adding that he does not currently, nor ever has agreed with that theory. 9/11 conspiracy theorist critic David Aaronovitch claims the popularity of 9/11 conspiracy theories has hurt the War on Terror. According to Aaronovitch, because a significant portion of educated Pakistanis believe that George W. Bush brought the towers down, dealing with the Taliban is difficult “because they actually don't believe the fundamental premise on which the war against terror was waged”. The 9/11 truth movement became an issue in the 2010 Texas Gubernatorial Republican primary when candidate Debra Medina replied when asked by Glenn Beck about US government involvement in the 9/11 attacks: "I think some very good questions have been raised in that regard, There are some very good arguments, and I think the American people have not seen all of the evidence there, so I have not taken a position on that." After being criticized for the remarks by opposing candidates, Medina stated 165 that she has never been a 9/11 truth movement member and believes the twin towers were attacked by Muslim terrorists. On September 23, 2010 Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a speech to the United Nations said that "The majority of the American people, as well as other nations and politicians, believe...some segments within the U.S. government orchestrated the attack to reverse the declining American economy and its grips on the Middle East in order also to save the Zionist regime". The remarks prompted the United States delegation as well as others to walk out. President Obama criticized Ahmadinejad's remarks before the United Nations General Assembly on the following day saying "For him to make a statement like that was inexcusable" and called the remarks "offensive" and "hateful." Previously Ahmadinejad had described the 9/11 attacks as a "suspect event" and suggested that the Bush Administration was involved in 9/11. 10.2 Anti-Semitism in conspiracy theories In 2003, pro-Israel Anti- League (ADL) published a report attacking "hateful conspiracy theories" that the 9/11 attacks were carried about by Israelis and Jews which had the potential to "rationalize and fuel global anti-Semitism." It found that such theories were widely accepted in the Arab and Muslim world, as well as in Europe and the United States. The League's report found that "The Big Lie has united American far- right extremists and white supremacists and elements within the Arab and Muslim world". It asserted that many of the theories were modern manifestation of the 19th century Protocols of the Elders of Zion which purported to map out a Jewish conspiracy for world domination. The ADL has characterized the website as carrying anti-semitic materials such as that " staged the 9/11 terrorist attacks for their own financial gain and to induce the American people to endorse wars of aggression and genocide on the nations of the Middle East and the theft of their resources for the benefit of Israel" 166

Death of Diana, Princess of Wales conspiracy theories

Although the initial French investigation found that Diana, Princess of Wales had died as a result of an accident, a number of researchers, and others, including most notably Mohammed Al- Fayed and the Daily Express have persistently raised conspiracy theories that she was assassinated. This led in 2004 to the establishment of a special Metropolitan Police inquiry team, Operation Paget, headed by the then Commissioner Lord Stevens to investigate the conspiracy theories. In December 2007, witnesses at Diana's inquest were questioned about a letter to Paul Burrell which Diana had written by hand in October 1993, of which only redacted versions had previously been public. In this letter, Diana said[2] - "This particular phase in my life is the most dangerous - my husband is planning "an accident" in my car, brake failure and serious head injury in order to make the path clear for him to marry Tiggy (Legge-Bourke). Camilla (Parker-Bowles) is nothing but a decoy, so we are all being used by the man in every sense of the word." Contents

• 1 Henri Paul • 2 Allegation of MI6 involvement • 3 Relationship with Dodi Fayed • 4 Pregnancy • 5 Embalming of the body • 6 A bright flash 167

• 7 A white Fiat Uno and James Andanson ○ 7.1 Possible Suicide • 8 CCTV images • 9 Seatbelt • 10 Transport to the hospital • 11 Conspiracy theories expressed in contemporary art

1.Henri Paul Allegations made about the driver of the Mercedes, Henri Paul, include that he was in the pay of a national security service, though different versions of the allegation name the country of the security service alternately as Britain, France or the United States. Purported evidence to support this arises mainly from the money in his possession at the time of his death and his personal wealth. These allegations are covered in chapter four of the Operation Paget criminal investigation report. One of the most well known allegations concerns the reliability of blood tests carried out that indicate he had been drinking before he took the controls of the car. The French investigators' conclusion that Henri Paul was drunk was made on the basis of an analysis of blood samples, which were said to contain an alcohol level that (according to Jay's September 1997 report) was three times the French legal limit. This initial analysis was challenged by a British pathologist hired by Al Fayed; in response, French authorities carried out a third test, this time using the medically more conclusive fluid from the sclera (white of the eye), which confirmed the level of alcohol measured by blood and also showed Paul had been taking antidepressants. It is claimed that the level of alcohol reported to have been found in Henri Paul's blood was not consistent with his sober demeanour, as captured on CCTV that evening. The families of Dodi Fayed and Henri Paul have not accepted the French investigators' findings. Fayed, for his part, stands by his belief that the Princess and his son were killed in an elaborate conspiracy. In November 2006, various news sources[who?] reported that the identity of the person to whom the blood samples belonged, had finally been ascertained, and that the samples belonged to a suicide victim. French forensic pathologist Dominique Lecomte was said to be facing an investigation over allegations of misleading the inquiry. Other 168 sources stated that while there were omissions and errors in the pathologist's report, DNA samples confirm the owner of the blood samples with high alcohol levels was indeed the driver, who was therefore correctly said to be under the influence of alcohol. On December 10, 2006, it was reported[who?] that DNA evidence concludes that the blood tested is indeed that of Henri Paul. The tests confirm that original post-mortem blood samples were from driver Henri Paul and that he had three times the French legal limit of alcohol in his blood, the BBC said. It has been disclosed that on November 2006 Lord Stevens had met with Henri Paul's parents telling them that their son was not drunk, and was found to have only had two alcoholic drinks (this was verified by CCTV footage at the hotel). Yet just five weeks later the report stated that Henri Paul was twice over the British drink-drive limit and three times over the French one. An expert cited in the report estimated that Paul had sunk the equivalent of ten small glasses of Ricard, his favourite liquorice-flavoured French aperitif, before driving. This contradicted Lord Steven's previous stance. Another issue raised in court by Lord Justice Scott Baker was the level of carbon monoxide found in one sample, which if true would have shown Mr Paul noticeably unwell. He told the jury: "You may conclude that there are some unsatisfactory features about aspects of the sampling and recording procedures". "Some of the results are puzzling." On CCTV footage made available for the jury, Henri Paul is shown on the night of the accident waving to photographers. Inspector Carpenter who was giving evidence confirmed to the court that Mr Paul had waved at the photographers within minutes of the couple's departure. He said that one of the photographers, sitting in his car close to where the couple would later exit the hotel, was in contact with other paparazzi. Inspector Carpenter earlier explained to the jury: "You will see Henri Paul exit into Rue Cambon [at the back of the hotel] and when you watch this sequence you will see him raise his hand as if waving to the paparazzi across the road. If you look at the paparazzi across the road you will see one of them (Jacques Langevin) raises his camera". The images claim to cast doubt on the long-held belief that the group of paparazzi waiting outside the hotel had been acting without any help from inside the hotel. Al Fayed claims that Henri Paul was working for MI6 and that they set him up. 2. Allegation of MI6 involvement Richard Tomlinson, a former MI6 agent who was dismissed from the intelligence services and later served time in prison for breaching the Official Secrets Act, has claimed that Britain's 169

MI6 was involved. Previously, rogue agents of the secret service had investigated John Lennon and tried to destabilize the 1970s Labour government. Although it would not have seemed impossible for such autonomous cells to get involved in a scandal, evidence later discredited the MI6 theory. Tomlinson alleged that MI6 was monitoring Diana before her death (many have said the group helped leak the Squidgygate phone-tap tapes), that her driver on the night she died was an MI6 agent, and that her death mirrored plans he saw in 1992 for the assassination of then President of Serbia Slobodan Miloševic'. Tomlinson was arrested by French authorities in July 2006 as part of their inquiry into the death of Diana. French police were also reported to have seized computer files and personal papers from his home in Cannes. The Operation Paget Inquiry was given unprecedented access to the offices of both MI5 and MI6 to investigate Tomlinson's claims. They found the original memo he referred to from 1992 and it was found to be a proposal to assassinate another Serbian figure if he gained power, not Slobodan Miloševic'. Furthermore, the plan had none of the detail about a car crash in a tunnel. The inquiry consulted the Crown Prosecution Service to see if a prosecution for conspiracy to murder was appropriate for the report's author as it is against British Government policy to carry out assassinations. A prosecution was not pursued but the author was subjected to a disciplinary procedure by MI6. The memo was shown to Tomlinson and he confirmed it was the one he was referring to in his claims. The inquiry found no evidence Henri Paul was an agent for any security service and only had very limited occasional and unpaid contact with the French Security Services due to the sensitive nature of his job. It also found limited evidence of surveillance of Diana, mainly arising from phone calls she made to her friend Lucia Flecha De Lima at the Brazilian Embassy but there was nothing to suggest a concerted effort to bug her phone calls and there was certainly no monitoring of her in Paris as there was strong evidence the British Authorities had no way of knowing she was in Paris at the time of the accident. Further evidence that discredited Tomlinson's claims was found in drafts of a book he was writing about his time in MI6 before he was jailed in 1998 for breaching the Official Secrets Act. The first draft of the book, dating from 1996, referred to the 1992 memo proposing assassination and contained none of the detail about a staged car crash in a tunnel. However, a later draft of the book from late 1997 had the same reference to the memo but contained the added car crash detail. Operation Paget regarded it as no coincidence that this detail appeared after news of how Diana died was in the public domain. The inquiry concluded by dismissing Tomlinson's claims as 170 an embellishment. It went on to comment that this embellishment is largely responsible for giving rise to the theories Diana was murdered. 3. Relationship with Dodi Fayed One of the main motives which have been advanced for alleged murder include suggestions Diana was pregnant with Dodi Fayed's child and the couple were about to get engaged. The alleged dislike of the idea of a non-Christian within the British Royal Family meant such a relationship between the mother of the future king and a prominent Egyptian Muslim would not be tolerated. Mohammed Fayed made the assertion in television interviews that the couple were going to announce their engagement on the Monday after the accident: 1 September 1997. Operation Paget commented that an announcement of such magnitude from the Princess of Wales would have been a substantial media event of worldwide interest and would have required much preparation. No evidence that any such preparation had been made was found. However, evidence has shown that Dodi did purchase a ring from Alberto Repossi jewellers on the day of their deaths. This ring was from a range of engagement rings offered by the jeweller. Whether or not it was intended to be an engagement ring for Dodi to present to Diana is uncertain, as CCTV footage from the jeweller show Mrs. Repossi casually offering it from her finger to Dodi's assistant, Claude Roulet, after he went back to attempt to find a ring Dodi had seen in the Repossis' shop in Monaco. The statements of Mohammed Fayed and the Repossis were contradicted by the statements of Claude Roulet, a shop assistant, and the CCTV. A few hours before the accident, on the afternoon of 30 August, Diana's journalist friend, Richard Kay received a call on his from Diana in which she asked about what was likely to appear in the following day's Sunday papers about her. During this call, she made no mention of any announcement she intended to make. More revealing was the statement given by Diana's eldest sister, Lady Sarah McCorquodale, who testified that in a phone conversation with Diana on Friday 29 August, Diana spoke about Dodi Fayed in a manner that gave her sister the impression the relationship was on "stony ground". Statements from other friends and confidantes she spoke to in the week before her death including her butler Paul Burrell, her friend Lady Annabel Goldsmith, and her spiritual adviser Rita Rogers were unanimous in stating she was firm about not wanting to get engaged or married to anyone at that point in her life. Her former private secretary, Patrick Jephson, said to the BBC in reaction to the publication of the Operation Paget Report in December 2006 that her facial expression in the CCTV footage of her at the Paris 171

Ritz on her final evening with Dodi Fayed was one she would wear when she was disgruntled with a situation. CCTV images released on October 6 taken just minutes before their deaths, show a relaxed Diana and Dodi affectionately holding hands. The inquiry interviewed , a Muslim heart surgeon of Pakistani origin based in London, who had a relationship with Diana for almost two years, from September 1995 until July 1997. Diana had even explored the possibility of marriage with him. This had been met with no opposition from the Royal Family and Prince Charles had given it his blessing. Khan stated that he had received some racist hate mail from members of the public because of the relationship but he had no reason to take what was said in this hate mail seriously. He also stated that he felt the relationship was not opposed by either the Royal Family or any other branch of the British Government including the security services. Paul Burrell stated that Diana was still not over her break-up with Khan at the time of her death. It was also pointed out that Dodi and Diana had only first met each other just under seven weeks before the accident, at Mohammed Fayed's villa in St. Tropez on 14 July, meaning there were only 47 days from their first meeting until the night of the accident. Of those days, their schedules permitted them to be together for an absolute maximum of 35 days. From analysis of Diana's actual movements, it is likely they had only spent approximately 23 days together before the accident. 4. Pregnancy In January 2004, the former coroner of The Queen's Household, Dr. John Burton, said (in an interview with The Times) that he attended a post-mortem examination of the Princess's body at Fulham mortuary, where he personally examined her womb and found her not to be pregnant. In an effort to prove the assertions made by Mohammed Fayed, Operation Paget had scientific tests carried out on pre-transfusion blood found in the footwell of the seat in the wrecked Mercedes the Princess of Wales occupied at the time of the accident. This blood was found to have no trace of the hCG hormone associated with pregnancy. The inquiry also extensively interviewed friends of Diana's who were in close contact with her in the weeks leading up to her death. The evidence obtained from these witnesses was of a very sensitive nature and most of it was not included in Operation Paget's criminal investigation report. However, it was reported that friends said she was in her normal menstrual cycle and there was evidence she was using contraception. Her friend, Rosa Monckton, said in an interview to a BBC documentary on the conspiracy theories in December 2006 172 that Diana had her period while on holiday with her about ten days before she died. Further evidence that disproved the pregnancy allegation was provided by Myriah Daniels who was a holistic healer who travelled aboard Mohammed Fayed's yacht ‘Jonikal’ on the second cruise she went on with him and his son Dodi at the end of August 1997. She had known Dodi Fayed since the late 1980s and travelled with him, often providing him with regular treatment. She provided the following statement to the Operation Paget investigators: ‘I have been asked whether or not Diana was pregnant. I can say with one hundred per cent certainty that she was not pregnant. I will explain how I can be so sure of this fact. Firstly, she told me herself that she was not pregnant. Secondly, when you have the years of experience that I have of caring for women’s bodies there are many indications as to whether or not a woman is pregnant. It is incomprehensible to me that Diana would have allowed me to carry out such an invasive treatment [deep massage] on her stomach and intestines if she thought she was pregnant…… ‘I have worked with women in the past, from prior to conception, through the full term of a pregnancy and I am familiar with what a pregnant body feels like even in its early stages, as well as the things that women would normally say to me about their pregnancy, no matter what stage it’s in. ‘…This is a very sensitive issue for me to discuss but I know for a fact she wasn’t pregnant because she told me she wasn’t and through the course of my work on her body I found no indications to show that she was. If there were any chance that she were pregnant, she definitely did not know about it herself. This is supported by a direct conversation I had with Diana on board the ‘Jonikal’.‘ Mohammed Fayed's persistence in asserting Diana was pregnant led him to get members of his staff to tell the media that on their final day together, Diana and his son had visited a villa he owned in Paris with a view to choosing a room "for the baby". While the couple had indeed visited the villa, the circumstances of the visit were exaggerated to say it lasted two hours and was in the presence of a prominent Italian interior designer. A security guard at the villa, Reuben Murrell, felt uncomfortable about lying about the matter and sold his story to The Sun stating the visit lasted just under thirty minutes and was not in the company of any interior designer. He provided stills from CCTV to prove this and said he had been in the presence of Diana and Dodi for the entirety of their visit and there was no conversation about them coming to live at the villa. He later 173 resigned from Mohammed Fayed's employment and initiated an employment tribunal for constructive dismissal after Fayed had successfully sued him for breach of contract because of the CCTV images he supplied to The Sun. Senior members of Fayed's staff made derogatory comments about Murrell and Trevor Rees-Jones in their statements to Operation Paget. In 2004, a Channel 4 documentary, The Diana Conspiracy, refuting the conspiracy theories claimed the butler at the villa who gave an interview to the ITV documentary Diana: Secrets Behind the Crash in June 1998 who claimed to have shown the couple around with a view to them living there wasn't even present at the villa on the day as he was on vacation. 5. Embalming of the body Mohamed Al Fayed alleged that Diana's body was deliberately embalmed soon after her death to ensure that any pregnancy test at post-mortem would produce a false result. Operation Paget found that 31 August 1997 was a very hot day in Paris. Diana's body had been stored in an empty room adjacent to the emergency room where she had been treated at the Pitié- Salpêtrière Hospital as the mortuary was on the other side of the hospital grounds and some distance away. Dry ice and air conditioning units were placed in the room to keep it cool but appeared to have little success. Diana's two sisters and Prince Charles were scheduled to view the body later that afternoon before bringing it back to England, President Jacques Chirac and his wife also wished to pay their respects. This meant there was very little time to prepare the body for viewing and it was clearly unacceptable to present Diana's body to her family and the President of France in its then state. Faced with this situation, the hospital staff decided to press ahead with embalming with only verbal authority from Madame Martine Monteil, the local superintendent of police, who assured Jean Monceau "that everything would be in order". Under French law, paperwork is required to be completed before undertaking the embalming of any body likely to be subject to a post-mortem. This paperwork was completed but only after the embalming had been carried out, giving rise to allegations of suspicious circumstances. This comes despite there being no way the hospital staff could have known whether or not Diana was pregnant as a pregnancy test would have been irrelevant to her post crash treatment and accordingly was not carried out. 6.A bright flash 174

An alternative explanation for the cause of the crash has been reports of a bright white flash just before the car entered the tunnel, blinding the driver. Richard Tomlinson made this allegation in media interviews and claimed it was consistent with eyewitness testimony. Operation Paget investigated Tomlinson's claim that the use of a powerful strobe light to blind helicopter pilots formed part of MI6 agents' training in the early 1990s and it was apparent this tactic had been used to facilitate the murder of Diana. The police found that such a tactic never, at any time, formed part of MI6 training. The detail of eyewitness testimony was thoroughly reviewed and Operation Paget officers succeeded in uncovering two new witnesses. The police found that only one eyewitness at the scene of the crash, François Levistre, made a clear, specific reference to seeing a bright flash. He claimed to have seen it in his rear-view mirror and recounted other elements of what he saw in considerable detail while he was negotiating the difficult bend out of the tunnel, a task which would have required his full attention on the road in front of him. Crucially, however, his testimony was directly contradicted by his then-wife, who sat in the passenger seat next to him. Television documentaries produced by Channel 4 in 2004 and the BBC in 2006 both raised the issue of Levistre's prior criminal record for offences involving dishonesty. Other eyewitness testimony made little reference to the appearance of any inexplicable flashes at the crash site. Several witnesses who would be expected to have seen a blinding flash made no reference to one. In any event, the detailed crash reconstruction revealed that the chain of events that led to the car unavoidably colliding with the pillar started well before it was at the mouth of the tunnel where the flash is alleged to have been discharged. Furthermore, a strobe light of the type that was alleged to have been used is so powerful that a flash emitted from it would have been bright enough to illuminate a very wide area. It would have likely blinded not only Henri Paul, but also the driver of the white Fiat Uno, the pursuing paparazzi and witnesses standing at the road side. The Operation Paget report concluded the alleged flash did not happen. 7.A white Fiat Uno and James Andanson Analysis of the wreckage of the Mercedes revealed it had glancing contact with a white Fiat Uno car which left traces of paint on the Mercedes bodywork but extensive attempts by the French police to find the vehicle involved failed. The essence of the allegations made by Mohammed Fayed were the white Fiat Uno was used by the "security services" to block the road in front of the Mercedes, causing it to swerve and thereby crash into the side of 175 the tunnel. Fayed further alleged that the Fiat Uno involved was owned by a French photojournalist named Jean-Paul James Andanson who had photographed Diana while she was at his villa in St. Tropez in July 1997. Andanson's death in May 2000, Fayed claimed, was either due to guilt over what he had done or because he was assassinated by the French or British security services to silence him. Operation Paget found Andanson had a solid alibi for the night of the accident placing him at his home some 175 miles (282 km) south of Paris. This alibi was supported by documents related to travel he made from his home on the morning after the accident and statements from his widow and son. The white Fiat Uno he owned was in an unroadworthy condition, being nine years old at the time with 370,000 km on the clock and had not been maintained for several years before the death of Diana. He traded it in part exchange with a Fiat dealership near his home in November 1997 for a new car. Operation Paget concluded it extremely unlikely because of the car's condition and the fact Andanson had so openly disposed of it that it was the one at the scene of the accident in Paris. French police examined James Andanson's car as part of their effort to trace the one that had come into contact with the Mercedes with a view to prosecuting the driver for failing to render assistance. They reached the same conclusion Operation Paget investigators were to, seven years later. The French police spent a year after the accident searching for the vehicle and eliminated over 4000 white Fiat Unos from their inquiry. Operation Paget decided it would be unlikely renewed enquiries would identify the vehicle involved as such a long period of time had elapsed since the accident. It concluded the threat of prosecution for an imprisonable offence probably deterred the driver from coming forward at the time. 7.1.Possible Suicide James Andanson died in May 2000. The official verdict was suicide. His body was found in a black, burnt-out BMW in a forest in the south of France, the doors were locked with no sign of the car keys. Andanson's death was attributed to problems in his private life and evidence was uncovered from his friends and associates that he had talked of suicide long before the death of Diana and he had even mentioned details of the social circumstances in which he would take his life and the method by which he would do it. Their testimony was consistent with the way Andanson actually took his life. The Paget report states that when the car was found, Andanson's body was in the driver's seat of the car, his head was detached and lay between the front seats. There was also a hole in his left temple. The French pathologist concluded this was due to the intense heat of the 176 fire. Operation Paget found no evidence Andanson was known to any security service and, contrary to Fayed's claims, his death was thoroughly investigated by French police. A break-in at his former workplace in June 2000 alleged to have been carried out by security services was found to be unconnected to his death as no items related to him were stolen. The break-in was also thoroughly investigated by French police who successfully prosecuted known criminals for carrying it out. 8.CCTV images The absence of CCTV images showing the Mercedes' journey from the hotel to the crash site has been frequently cited as evidence of an organized conspiracy. In a submission to the Minister for Justice, Scotland for Public Inquiry in February 2003, Mohammed Fayed stated that there were approximately 10 video cameras on the route taken by the Mercedes, including one on the entrance to the tunnel itself, yet there are no recordings from any of these cameras for the night in question. In December 2006, The Independent newspaper published an article stating there were more than 14 CCTV cameras in the Pont de l'Alma underpass, yet none have recorded footage of the fatal collision. Judge Hervé Stéphan was appointed as Examining Magistrate in this case on 2 September 1997. On that day, by Judicial Order, he tasked the Brigade Criminelle with identifying all video and photographic images along the route taken by the Mercedes. Lieutenant Eric Gigou of the Brigade Criminelle led the team that carried out that work, initially by retracing the route several times and drawing up a list of possible locations. His report showed that the team identified ten locations of CCTV cameras. None of these had any images relevant to the inquiry, since they were principally security cameras facing the entrances to buildings. Most of the cameras were not maintained by the City of Paris: the owners of the buildings to which they were attached operated them privately. There was a traffic-monitoring camera above the underpass in the Place de l’Alma itself but this was under the control of la Compagnie de Circulation Urbaine de Paris (Paris Urban Traffic Unit). That department closed down at about 11 p.m., had no night duty staff and made no recordings. Officers in the Police Headquarters Information and Command Centre could continue to view the pictures shown by the traffic camera in real time but could not control it. There would be no reason for those in the overnight control room in Paris to be viewing that camera in particular, before the crash. The subject of the CCTV cameras is dealt with in Chapter 5 of the Operation Paget report. It was also found that a photograph that was published in a book by 177

David Cohen 'Diana, Death of a Goddess' and captioned as having been taken just before the car entered the tunnel was in fact taken by a photographer as the car left the back of the Paris Ritz. 9. Seatbelt There was some media discussion in April 2006 suggesting that Diana was a faithful seat belt user and therefore the fact that both her and Dodi's belts either failed or were not used was sinister and may suggest sabotage. Other sources question if she did in fact use her belt all the time, as suggested. "What is certain is that she was not wearing a seat belt and this made things worse. We would like to think that if she had been wearing a seat belt, we'd have been able to save her," said Prof. Andre Lienhart, who reviewed the emergency services' response for the French government investigation of the incident. CNN did an analysis of the crash and concluded that injuries would have been minor had the occupants been wearing seat belts. In 2005, the Daily Express published an article claiming that the Mercedes had been stolen prior to the crash and altered to render the seat belts dysfunctional. This alteration had allegedly been carried out by the DST working in co-operation with MI5 and MI6. In this version of events, the car crash was then caused by a bright flash of light aimed at Henri Paul from a passing white Fiat Uno. Analysis of the wreckage of the car after its repatriation to England in 2005 by a Forensic Accident Investigator from the Transport Research Laboratory of thirty- five years experience on behalf of Operation Paget found that all the seatbelts were in good working order with the exception of the right rear one which was for the seat Diana occupied. Follow up enquiries with French investigators found that they had declared all the seatbelts operational at an examination in October 1998, suggesting the damage to this seatbelt took place after the accident. 10. Transport to the hospital The first call to the emergency services switchboard was logged at 12.26 a.m. The SAMU ambulance carrying the Princess arrived at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital at 2.06 a.m. This length of time has prompted much conspiracy-related comment. The period between the crash and the arrival at the hospital needs to take into account the following: the time taken for emergency services to arrive; the time taken by the Sapeurs-Pompiers de Paris to remove the Princess from the damaged car; and the actual journey time 178 from the crash site to the hospital. Police Officers Sébastien Dorzee and Lino Gagliadorne were the first emergency officials to arrive at the scene at around 12:30 a.m. Sergeants Xavier Gourmelom and Philippe Boyer of the Sapeurs-Pompiers arrived at around 12:32 a.m. Doctor Jean-Marc Martino, a specialist in anaesthetics and intensive care treatment and the doctor in charge of the SAMU ambulance, arrived at around 12:40 a.m. The Princess was removed from the car at 1:00 a.m. She then went into cardiac arrest. Following external cardiopulmonary resuscitation the Princess of Wales’ heart started beating again. She was moved to the SAMU ambulance at 1:18 a.m. The ambulance departed the crash scene at 1:41 a.m. and arrived at the hospital at 2:06 a.m.—a journey time of approximately 26 minutes. This included a stop at the Gare d’Austerlitz ordered by Dr Martino because of the drop in the blood pressure of the Princess of Wales and the necessity to deal with it. The ambulance was travelling slowly on his express instructions. The doctor was concerned about the Princess of Wales’ blood pressure and the effects on her medical condition of deceleration and acceleration. The SAMU ambulance carrying the Princess of Wales passed the Hôtel-Dieu Hospital on the Ile de la Cité en route to the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital. The decision to transfer the Princess to the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital was taken by Dr Marc Lejay who was on despatch duty in SAMU Control on that night, in consultation with Dr Derossi, who was at the scene. The Pitié- Salpêtrière Hospital was the main reception centre for multiple trauma patients in Paris. The Hôtel-Dieu was not equipped to deal with the injuries the Princess of Wales had sustained. Dr Marc Lejay stated: ‘The Hôtel-Dieu hospital on the ‘Ile de la Cité’ is closer but not equipped with heart surgery teams or neurosurgical teams or teams trained to take patients with multiple injuries.’ Dr Lejay was also aware that Professor Bruno Riou was on duty at the Pitié-Salpêtrière that night and was particularly skilled to treat the Princess of Wales’ injuries. Dr Jean-Marc Martino supported this view. 11.Conspiracy theories expressed in contemporary art Diana has been depicted a number of times in contemporary art since her death. Some artworks have referenced the conspiracy theories, as well as paying tribute to Diana's compassion, and acknowledging her perceived victimhood. In July 1999, British artist Tracey Emin, at the height of her Turner Prize fame, created a number of monoprint drawings inspired by the public and private life of Diana for a themed exhibition called Temple of Diana held at The Blue Gallery, London. Among the works was a 179 delicate sketch of a rose drawn next to the phrase, It makes perfect sense to know they killed you. British artist Stella Vine provoked media controversy in 2004 when Charles Saatchi bought Hi Paul can you come over I'm really frightened (2003), a painting by her of Diana, Princess of Wales. The work's title came from the thick red text painted across the canvas, a reference to Diana's butler Paul Burrell. Vine painted as many as 30 paintings of Diana, having become fascinated by conspiracy theories into the Princess' tragic car crash which she had read on the Internet. Vine destroyed many of these paintings soon after they were created. She put them in a skip as she didn't have enough space to dry nor store the wet paintings. The only one she kept was later added to Saatchi's collection. Vine said she was upset that some people, including her relatives, didn't like her image of Diana, as she believe it was not a disrespectful picture but it was in fact a self portrait as much as depiction of Diana: "The picture is about two women. One who lived in . And the other who lives down the Whitecross Street. "I look at the picture," says Vine, "and I also see myself.""[38] In 2005, a new Vine painting of Diana, Murdered, pregnant and embalmed (2005), was bought by George Michael for £25,000, reported in The Sun newspaper which condemned it as "sick".

Global warming conspiracy theory

Global warming conspiracy and global warming conspiracy theory are terms used to refer to the claim that there is no on global warming or that it exists but is incorrect, that the theory of anthropogenic global warming (AGW; or sometimes CAGW for "catastrophic anthropogenic global warming") is incorrect, and that it is perpetuated for financial or ideological reasons. Alternate formulations of the term conspiracy theory are "global warming hoax" or "global warming fraud." 180

Contents • 1 Claims ○ 1.1 Fictional representations • 2 Participants • 3 Motives • 4 Criticism • 5 Counterclaims of conspiracy

1.Claims The suggestion of a conspiracy to promote the theory of global warming was put forward in a 1990 documentary The Greenhouse Conspiracy broadcast by Channel Four in the United Kingdom on 12 August 1990. The program was part of the Equinox series, and it asserted that scientists critical of global warming theory were denied funding. Although the program uses the word conspiracy in its title, Patrick Michaels downplayed the idea, saying, "It may not quite add up to a conspiracy, but certainly a coalition of interests has promoted the greenhouse theory; scientists have needed funds, the media a story, and governments a worthy cause". Writing in the in 1997, journalist Ronald Bailey said, "Militia members are famously worried that black helicopters are practicing maneuvers with blue-helmeted UN troops in a plot to take over America. But the actual peril is more subtle. A small cadre of obscure international bureaucrats are hard at work devising a system of 'global governance' that is slowly gaining control over ordinary Americans' lives." Bailey subsequently conceded that anthropogenic global warming is real, declaring that the "debate over whether or not humanity is contributing to global warming" is over. In a speech given to the US Senate Committee on the Environment and Public Works on July 28, 2003, entitled "The Science of ", Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla) concluded by asking the following question: "With all of the hysteria, all of the fear, all of the phony science, could it be that man-made global warming is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people?" Inhofe has suggested that supporters of the Kyoto Protocol such as Jacques Chirac are aiming at global governance. A Washington Post article describing the views of global warming skeptics quotes retired climatologist William M. Gray as having "his own conspiracy theory," saying, 181

"He has made a list of 15 reasons for the global warming hysteria. The list includes the need to come up with an enemy after the end of the Cold War, and the desire among scientists, government leaders and environmentalists to find a political cause that would enable them to 'organize, propagandize, force conformity and exercise political influence. Big world government could best lead (and control) us to a better world!'" In this article, Gray also cites the ascendancy of Al Gore to the vice presidency as the start of his problems with federal funding. According to him, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration stopped giving him research grants, and so did NASA. The March 1, 2007 issue of Whistleblower magazine, a publication of the conservative WorldNetDaily website, is titled "HYSTERIA: Exposing the secret agenda behind today's obsession with global warming," and asserts that "all the main players –- from politicians and scientists to big corporations and the United Nations –- benefit from instilling fear into billions of human beings over the unproven theory of man-made global warming". Commenting on criticism of the Lavoisier Group by Clive Hamilton, the Cooler Heads Coalition notes that "Hamilton accuses the Lavoisier Group of painting the UN's global warming negotiations as "an elaborate conspiracy in which hundreds of climate scientists have twisted their results to support the 'climate change theory' in order to protect their research funding" and adds, "Sounds plausible to us." Retired geography professor Tim Ball wrote in a February 2007 interview, "You’ve got this incestuous little group that is controlling the whole process both through their publications and the IPCC. I’m not a conspiracy theorist and I hate being even pushed toward that, but I think there is a consensus conspiracy that’s going on." A 2007 Minority Report of the Committee on Environment and Public Works (updated in 2009) originally citing support of 400 "dissenting scientists", and growing to 700 dissenting scientists. The report challenges man-made global warming claims made by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and former Vice President Al Gore. In 2009 conservative journalist James Delingpole wrote that "there is now a powerful and very extensive body of vested interests up against him: governments like President Obama’s, which intend to use ‘global warming’ as an excuse for greater taxation, regulation and ; energy companies and investors who stand to make a fortune from scams like carbon trading; charitable bodies like Greenpeace which depend for their funding 182 on public anxiety; environmental correspondents who need constantly to talk up the threat to justify their jobs." The Lyndon LaRouche organization claims that a scientific conference in 1975 was the origin of the "Global Warming Hoax". Former journalist Lord Monckton claims that the draft agreement for the United Nations Climate Change Conference 2009 would establish a communist world government. This claim has been endorsed by the right-wing[18] Australian opinion columnist Albrechtsen.[19] Monckton also appeared in an episode of Conspiracy Theory with Jesse Ventura, in which he stated that a scientific paper submitted to the IPCC did not include the criticizing peer reviews, which were deliberately omitted. 1.1 Fictional representations The novel State of Fear by Michael Crichton describes a conspiracy by scientists and others to create public panic about global warming. The novel includes 20 pages of footnotes, described by Crichton as providing a factual basis for the non- plotline elements of the story. 2. Participants Many of those claimed to be participants in a conspiracy to promote global warming theory appear prominently in other conspiracy theories. These include organizations such as • The United Nations • The Bilderberg Group • The environmental movement • The Club of Rome • Green Cross International and individuals such as • Al Gore • Kofi Annan • Ed Begley, Jr. • Jacques Chirac • Maurice Strong • • 3. Motives 183

A number of different, and sometimes contradictory, motives have been claimed for a conspiracy to promote the idea of global warming • A desire on the part of the United Nations and its supporters to promote a system of world government or global governance. Proponents of this theory frequently stress the role of Maurice Strong. • A desire on the part of climate science researchers to attract financial support • A desire by the government to raise taxes • A desire on the part of left-wing political activists to promote an agenda described by Melanie Phillips as a "left- wing, anti-American, anti-west ideology which goes hand in hand with anti-globalisation and the belief that everything done by the industrialised world is wicked. The agenda to cripple this world is revealed by highly questionable assumptions made by climate modellers about likely developments in economics, technology or population movements, which affect emissions and consequent temperature predictions." • A desire on the part of conservative political leaders including Margaret Thatcher, and Helmut Kohl to promote nuclear power while attracting the political support of Green groups • A desire on the part of leftwing individuals to garner financial gains for themselves through business dealings related to the global warming agenda. • A desire on the part of leftwing political leaders to promote socialism: ○ According to a critical special contribution written by Lawrie McFarlane in Victoria's Times , "For socialism, at least in its early form, shared those same instincts—distrust of private enterprise, animus toward wealth, the urge to proselytize and faith in big government. And like environmentalism, it marched under the banner of a superior morality. (...) Environmentalism is neither religion nor science. It is a political mission, every bit as unquestioning as socialism in its heyday, and offering the same giddy promise to followers: The delicious prospect of being in the right, and better still, running things."[31] ○ Czech President Václav Klaus said that "This ideology preaches earth and nature and under the slogans of 184

their protection – similarly to the old Marxists – wants to replace the free and spontaneous of mankind by a sort of central, now global, planning of the whole world"[32] ○ Nick Minchin, Australian former leader of the Opposition in the Senate stated on the ABC program 4 Corners that "For the extreme left it [climate change] provides the opportunity to do what they've always wanted to do, to sort of de-industrialise the western world. You know the collapse of communism was a disaster for the left, and the, and really they embraced environmentalism as their new religion." • Statements made or allegedly made by various supporters of climate change policies have been quoted as giving support to the idea that anthropogenic global warming may be used primarily for political purposes. ○ According to a critical editorial written by Peter Menzies in the Calgary Herald, Christine Stewart, former Canadian Environment Minister for the Liberal Party of Canada, said in 1998 that "No matter if the science is all phoney, there are collateral environmental benefits. ○ According to the 1993 book Science under Siege by Michael Fumento, former US Senator Timothy Wirth, (D- Colo) said that "We've got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing – in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.. “| 4. Criticism Critics of claims that scientists and others who promote anthropogenic (man made) global warming are propagating a fraud or hoax believe scientists are "data rigging" or fudging the numbers. On the other hand, those who describe the supposed scientific consensus on global warming as a "hoax", "fraud" or even "conspiracy" often object to the use of the terms "conspiracy theory" or "conspiracy theorists" to describe them and their views. Steve Connor links the terms "hoax" and "conspiracy," saying, "Reading through the technical summary of this draft (IPCC) report, it is clear that no one could go away with the impression that climate change is some conspiratorial hoax by the science establishment, as some would have us believe." 185

In a piece headed Crichton's conspiracy theory, Harold Evans described Crichton's theory as being "in the paranoid political style identified by the renowned historian Richard Hofstadter," and went on to suggest that "if you happen to be in the market for a conspiracy theory today, there's a rather more credible one documented by the pressure group Greenpeace," namely the funding by ExxonMobil of groups opposed to the theory of global warming , The documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle received much criticism. George Monbiot described it as "the same old conspiracy theory that we’ve been hearing from the denial industry for the past ten years".[39]. Similarly, in response to James Delingpole, Monbiot stated that his Spectator article was "the usual conspiracy theories [...] working to suppress the truth, which presumably now includes virtually the entire scientific community and everyone from Shell to Greenpeace and The Sun to Science magazine." UK Secretary of State for Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs, David Miliband presented a rebuttal of the main points of the film and stated "There will always be people with conspiracy theories trying to do down the scientific consensus, and that is part of scientific and democratic debate, but the science of climate change looks like fact to me."[41] John Houghton said, "The most prominent person in the programme was Lord Lawson, former Chancellor of the Exchequer who is not a scientist and who shows little knowledge of the science but who is party to the creation of a conspiracy theory that questions the motives and integrity of the world scientific community, especially as represented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)." 5. Counterclaims of conspiracy Some who accept the scientific consensus that humans have been largely responsible for recent and projected warming have similarly accused their opponents of being motivated by financial or ideological interests, and in some cases have used the term "conspiracy" to describe this. Critics have also been labeled as "holocaust deniers" by climate scientists and the main stream media. United States Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbitt stated in 1998 that: it’s an unhappy fact that the oil companies and the coal companies in the United States have joined in a conspiracy to hire pseudo scientists to deny the facts... the energy companies need to be called to account because what they are doing is un-American in the most basic sense. They are compromising our future by misrepresenting the facts by suborning scientists onto their payrolls and attempting to mislead the American people." Further evidence of the energy industry funding has been produced by Greenpeace with their Exxon Secrets 186 project.[45][46] ExxonMobil announced in 2008 that it would cut funding to many of the groups that were denying the science behind global warming but continues to fund over "two dozen other organisations who question the science of global warming or attack policies to solve the crisis." A survey carried out by the UK's Royal Society found that in 2005 ExxonMobil distributed $2.9m to 39 groups that the society said "misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence". 187 The Protocols of the Elders of Zion Conspiracy Theory

The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion (Russian: "Протоколы сионских мудрецов" or "Сионские протоколы") is one of many titles given to an antisemitic text purporting to describe a plan to achieve global domination by the Jewish people. Following its first public publication in 1903 in the Russian Empire, a series of articles printed in The Times in 1921 revealed that much of the material was directly plagiarized from earlier works of political satire unrelated to Jews. Contents

• 1 Publication history ○ 1.1 The Protocols in the West • 2 Images of early editions of the Protocols • 3 Plagiarism Sources and Origin of the Plot • 4 ○ 4.1 Maurice Joly ○ 4.2 • 5 First Russian language editions ○ 5.1 Comparison between The Protocols and Maurice Joly's Dialogue in Hell ○ 5.2 Conspiracy references • 6 Historical publications, usage, and investigations ○ 6.1 Emergence in Russia 188

 6.1.1 Krushevan and Nilus editions  6.1.2 Stolypin's fraud investigation, 1905 ○ 6.2 English language imprints ○ 6.3 The Times exposes a forgery, 1921 ○ 6.4 German language publications ○ 6.5 Middle East • 7 Switzerland ○ 7.1 The Berne Trial, 1934–1935 ○ 7.2 The Basel Trial • 8 Germany • 9 Contemporary imprints

1.Publication history The Protocols appeared in print in the Russian Empire as early as 1903. The anti-Semitic tract was published in , a newspaper owned by Pavel Krushevan, as a serialized set of articles. It appeared again in 1905 as a final chapter (Chapter XII) of a second edition of Velikoe v malom i antikhrist (The Great in the Small & Antichrist), a book by Serge Nilus. In 1906 it appeared in pamphlet form edited by G. Butmi. These first three (and subsequently more) Russian language imprints were published and circulated in the Russian Empire during 1903–1906 period as a tool for scapegoating Jews, blamed by the monarchists for the defeat in the Russo-Japanese War and the 1905 Russian Revolution. Common to all three texts is the idea that Jews aim for world domination. Since The Protocols are presented as merely a document, the front matter and back matter are needed to explain its alleged origin. The diverse imprints, however, are mutually inconsistent. The general claim is that the document was stolen from a secret Jewish organization. Since the alleged original stolen manuscript does not exist, one is forced to restore a purported original edition. This has been done by the Italian scholar, Cesare G. De Michelis in 1998, in a work which was translated into English and published in 2004, where he treats his subject as Apocrypha.[2][3] As fiction in the genre of literature the tract was further analyzed by Umberto Eco in his novel Foucault's Pendulum in 1988 (English translation in 1989), and in 1994 in chapter 6, "Fictional Protocols", of his Six 189

Walks in the Fictional Woods. As the 1917 Russian Revolution unfolded, causing white Russians to flee to the West, this text was carried along and assumed a new purpose. Until then The Protocols remained obscure; it was now an instrument for blaming Jews for the Russian Revolution. It was now a tool, a political weapon used against the Bolshevikis who were depicted as overwhelmingly Jews, allegedly executing the "plan" embodied in The Protocols. The purpose was to discredit the October Revolution, prevent the West from recognizing the Soviet Union, and bring the downfall of 's regime. 1.1 The Protocols in the West In the United States The Protocols are to be understood in the context of the Red scare, the First Red Scare (1917–1920). The text circulated in 1919 in American government circles, specifically diplomatic and military, in typescript form, a copy of which is archived by the Hoover Institute. It also appeared in 1919 in the Public Ledger as a pair of serialized newspaper articles. But all references to "Jews" were replaced with references to Bolsheviki as an expose by the journalist and subsequently highly respected School of Journalism dean Carl W. Ackerman. In 1923 there appeared an anonymously edited pamphlet by Society, a successor to The Britons, an entity created and headed by . This imprint was allegedly a translation by Victor E. Marsden, who died in October 1920. Most versions substantially involve "protocols", or minutes of a speech given in secret involving Jews who are organized as Elders, or Sages, of Zion, and underlies 24 protocols that are supposedly followed by the Jewish people. The Protocols has been proven to be a literary forgery and hoax as well as a clear case of plagiarism. 2. Images of early editions of the Protocols 190

The front piece of a 1912 edition utilizing occult symbols. It is Near, At the Door, An edition from 1917 by Serge Nilus 191

Texts drawn The Protocols appeared in the Public Ledger as anti-Bolshevik propaganda in 1919.

1920 edition from New York. A 1934 edition by the Patriotic Publishing Company of Chicago 3. Plagiarism Sources and Origin of the Plot Implicated in the creation of the forgery was Pyotr Ivanovich Rachkovsky, head of the Paris office of the Russian Secret Police during the same time period. The source material for the forgery was the synthesis of an 1864 book of fiction by French political satirist Maurice Joly, titled Dialogue aux enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu or Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu and a chapter from an 1868 book of fiction entitled "Biarritz" by antisemitic German novelist Hermann Goedsche, which had been translated into Russian in 1872. Joly's book was written as a veiled attack on the political ambitions of Napoleon III. In the book, Napoleon III was represented by Machiavelli[16] and was depicted as secretly plotting to rule the world. Joly, a monarchist and legitimist, had been imprisoned as a direct result of his book's publication. 4. Literary forgery 192

The forgery contains numerous elements typical of what is known in literature as a "False Document": a document that is deliberately written to fool the reader into believing that what is written is truthful and accurate even though, in actuality, it is not.[2] It is also one of the best-known and most-discussed examples of literary forgery, with analysis and proof of its fraudulent origin going as far back as 1921. The forgery is also an early example of "Conspiracy Theory" literature. Written mainly in the first person plural, the text embodies generalizations, truisms and platitudes on how to take over the world: take control of the media and the financial institutions, change the traditional social order, etc. It does not contain specifics. 4.1 Maurice Joly Elements of the text in the Protocols were plagiarized from the 1864 book, Dialogue aux enfers entre Machiavel et Montesquieu (Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu), written by the French satirist Maurice Joly. Joly's work attacks the political ambitions of Napoleon III using Machiavelli as a diabolical plotter in Hell as a stand-in for Napoleon's views. In the book, Machiavelli describes a series of steps that he intends to take to become ruler of the world.

4.2 Hermann Goedsche Hermann Goedsche's 1868 novel, Biarritz (in English as To Sedan) contributed another idea that may have inspired the scribe behind the Protocols. In the chapter, "The Jewish Cemetery in Prague and the Council of Representatives of the Twelve Tribes of Israel", Goedsche wrote about a nocturnal meeting between members of a mysterious rabbinical cabal, describing how at midnight, the Devil appears before those who have gathered on behalf of the Twelve Tribes of Israel to plan a "Jewish conspiracy". His depiction is also similar to the scene in Alexandre Dumas, père's Joseph Balsamo, where Cagliostro and company plot the affair of the diamond necklace. With Biarritz appearing at about the same time as The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu, it is possible that Goedsche was inspired by the ideas in Joly's pamphlet, especially in detailing the outcome of the cabal's secret meeting. "Goedsche was a postal clerk and a spy for the Prussian secret police. He had been forced to leave the postal work due to his part in forging evidence in the prosecution against the 193

Democratic leader Benedict Waldeck in 1849." Following his dismissal, Goedsche began a career as a conservative columnist, while also producing literary work under the pen name Sir John Retcliffe. In 1871, the story was being presented in France as serious history. In 1872, "The Jewish Cemetery in Prague", translated into Russian, appeared in St. Petersburg as a separate pamphlet of purported non-fiction. François Bournand, in his Les Juifs et nos contemporains (1896), reproduced a speech from the chapter as that of a Chief Rabbi "John Readcliff". 5. First Russian language editions 5.1 Comparison between The Protocols and Maurice Joly's Dialogue in Hell The Protocols 1–19 closely follow the order of Maurice Joly's The Dialogue in Hell Between Machiavelli and Montesquieu 1–17. In some places, the plagiarism is incontrovertible to any observer, trained or not. For example: Dialogue in Hell Between The Protocols of the Elders of Machiavelli and Montesquieu Zion

How are loans made? By the issue A loan is an issue of Government of bonds entailing on the paper which entails an Government the obligation to pay obligation to pay interest interest proportionate to the amounting to a percentage of the capital it has been paid. Thus, total sum of the borrowed money. if a loan is at 5%, the State, If a loan is at 5%, then in 20 after 20 years, has paid out a years the Government would have sum equal to the borrowed unnecessarily paid out a sum capital. When 40 years have equal to that of the loan in expired it has paid double, order to cover the percentage. after 60 years triple: yet it In 40 years it will have paid remains debtor for the entire twice; and in 60 thrice that capital sum. amount, but the loan will still remain as an unpaid debt. — Montesquieu, Dialogues, p. 209 — Protocols, p. 77

Like the god Vishnu, my press These newspapers, like the will have a hundred arms, and Indian god Vishnu, will be these arms will give their hands possessed of hundreds of hands, to all the different shades of each of which will be feeling opinion throughout the country. the pulse of varying public 194

— Machiavelli, Dialogues, opinion. p. 141 — Protocols, p. 43

Now I understand the figure of Our Government will resemble the the god Vishnu; you have a Hindu god Vishnu. Each of our hundred arms like the Indian hundred hands will hold one idol, and each of your fingers spring of the social machinery touches a spring. of State. — Montesquieu, Dialogues, — Protocols, p. 65 p. 207

In addition to mentioning Vishnu, improbable in the Jewish religious literature, and the lack of Talmudic citations that would be expected in it, textual references to the "King of the Jews", the semi-messianic idea that carries strong connotations of Jesus, further suggest the author was not well-versed in Jewish culture, as this term has been avoided in the Judaic tradition since the between and Christianity. In 1921, when Philip Graves published articles in The Times which showed the writers of the Protocols had plagiarized from the Dialogue, it became clear that the Protocols was not an authentic document.

5.2 Conspiracy references According to Daniel Pipes, The great importance of The Protocols lies in its permitting antisemites to reach beyond their traditional circles and find a large international audience, a process that continues to this day. The forgery poisoned public life wherever it appeared; it was "self-generating; a blueprint that migrated from one conspiracy to another."[25] The book's vagueness — almost no names, dates, or issues are specified — has been one key to this wide-ranging success. The purportedly Jewish authorship also helps to make the book more convincing. Its embrace of contradiction — that to advance, Jews use all tools available, including capitalism and communism, philo-Semitism and antisemitism, democracy and tyranny — made it possible for The Protocols to reach out to all: rich and poor, Right and Left, Christian and Muslim, American and Japanese. 195

Pipes notes that the Protocols emphasizes recurring themes of conspiratorial antisemitism: "Jews always scheme", "Jews are everywhere", "Jews are behind every institution", "Jews obey a central authority, the shadowy 'Elders'", and "Jews are close to success." The Protocols is widely considered influential in the development of other conspiracy theories, and reappears repeatedly in contemporary conspiracy literature, such as Jim Marrs' Rule by Secrecy. Some recent editions proclaim that the "Jews" depicted in the Protocols are a cover identity for other conspirators such as the Illuminati,[28] Freemasons, the Priory of Sion, or even, in the opinion of David Icke, "extra-dimensional entities." 6.Historical publications, usage, and investigations 6.1 Emergence in Russia The chapter "In the Jewish Cemetery in Prague" from Goedsche's Biarritz, with its strong antisemitic theme containing the alleged rabbinical plot against the European civilization, was translated into Russian as a separate pamphlet in 1872. In 1921 Princess Catherine Radziwill gave a private lecture in New York. She claimed that the Protocols were a forgery compiled in 1904- 1905 by Russian journalists Matvei Golovinski and Manasevich- Manuilov at the direction of Pyotr Rachkovsky, Chief of the Russian secret service in Paris. In 1944 German writer Konrad Heiden identified Golovinski as an author of the Protocols.[28] Radziwill's account was supported by Russian historian Mikhail Lepekhine, who published his findings in November 1999 in the French newsweekly L'Express. Lepekhine considers the Protocols a part of a scheme to persuade Tsar Nicholas II that the modernization of Russia was really a Jewish plot to control the world. Ukrainian scholar Vadim Skuratovsky offers extensive literary, historical and linguistic analysis of the original text of the Protocols and traces the influences of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's prose (in particular, The Grand Inquisitor and The Possessed) on Golovinski's writings, including the Protocols. In his book The Non-Existent Manuscript, Italian scholar Cesare G. De Michelis studies early Russian publications of the Protocols. The Protocols were first mentioned in the Russian press in April 1902, by the Saint Petersburg newspaper, Novoye Vremya (Новое Время - The New Times). The article was written by a famous conservative publicist Mikhail Menshikov as a part of his regular series "Letters to Neighbors" ("Письма к ближним") and was titled "Plots against Humanity". The author 196 described his meeting with a lady (Yuliana Glinka, as it is known now) who, after telling him about her mystical revelations, implored him to get familiar with the documents later known as the Protocols; but after reading some excerpts Menshikov became quite skeptical about their origin and did not publish them. 6.1.1 Krushevan and Nilus editions The Protocols were published at the earliest, in serialized form, from August 28 to September 7 (O.S.) 1903, in Znamya, a Saint Petersburg daily newspaper, under Pavel Krushevan. Krushevan had initiated the Kishinev pogrom four months earlier. In 1905, published the full text of the Protocols in Chapter XII, the final chapter (pages 305–417), of the second edition (or third, according to some sources) of his book, Velikoe v malom i antikhrist, which translates as "The Great within the Small: The Coming of the Anti-Christ and the Rule of Satan on Earth". He claimed it was the work of the First Zionist Congress, held in 1897 in Basel, Switzerland.[33] When it was pointed out that the First Zionist Congress had been open to the public and was attended by many non-Jews, Nilus changed his story, saying the Protocols were the work of the 1902–1903 meetings of the Elders, but contradicting his own prior statement that he had received his copy in 1901: In 1901, I succeeded through an acquaintance of mine (the late Court Marshal Alexei Nikolayevich Sukotin of Chernigov) in getting a manuscript that exposed with unusual perfection and clarity the course and development of the secret Jewish Freemasonic conspiracy, which would bring this wicked world to its inevitable end. The person who gave me this manuscript guaranteed it to be a faithful translation of the original documents that were stolen by a woman from one of the highest and most influential leaders of the Freemasons at a secret meeting somewhere in France — the beloved nest of Freemasonic conspiracy. 6.1.2 Stolypin's fraud investigation, 1905 A subsequent secret investigation ordered by Pyotr Stolypin, the newly appointed chairman of the Council of Ministers, came to the conclusion that the Protocols first appeared in Paris in antisemitic circles around 1897–1898. When Nicholas II learned of the results of this investigation, he requested: "The Protocols should be confiscated, a good cause cannot be defended by dirty means." Despite the order, or because of the "good cause", numerous reprints proliferated. 6.2 English language imprints On October 27 and 28, 1919, the Philadelphia Public Ledger published excerpts of an English language translation as the "Red 197

Bible," deleting all references to the purported Jewish authorship and re-casting the document as a Bolshevik manifesto. The author of the articles was the paper's correspondent at the time, Carl W. Ackerman, who later became the head of the journalism department at Columbia University. On May 8, 1920, an article in The Times followed German translation and appealed for an inquiry into what it called an "uncanny note of prophecy". In the United States, Henry Ford sponsored the printing of 500,000 copies, and, from 1920 to 1922, published a series of antisemitic articles titled "The International Jew: The World's Foremost Problem", in , a newspaper he owned. In 1921, Ford cited evidence of a Jewish threat: "The only statement I care to make about the Protocols is that they fit in with what is going on. They are 16 years old, and they have fitted the world situation up to this time."[39] In 1927, however, the courts ordered Ford to retract his publication and apologize; he complied, claiming his assistants had duped him. He remained an admirer of Nazi Germany, however. In 1934, an anonymous editor expanded the compilation with "Text and Commentary" (pages 136– 141). The production of this uncredited compilation was a 300- page book, an inauthentic expanded edition of the twelfth chapter of Nilus's 1905 book on the coming of the anti-Christ. It consists of substantial liftings of excerpts of articles from Ford's antisemitic periodical The Dearborn Independent. This 1934 text circulates most widely in the English-speaking world, as well as on the internet. The "Text and Commentary" concludes with a comment on Haim Weizman's October 6, 1920 remark at a banquet: "A beneficent protection which God has instituted in the life of the Jew is that He has dispersed him all over the world". Marsden, who was dead by then, is credited with the following assertion: It proves that the Learned Elders exist. It proves that Dr. Weizmann knows all about them. It proves that the desire for a "National Home" in Palestine is only camouflage and an infinitesimal part of the Jew's real object. It proves that the Jews of the world have no intention of settling in Palestine or any separate country, and that their annual prayer that they may all meet "Next Year in Jerusalem" is merely a piece of their characteristic make-believe. It also demonstrates that the Jews are now a world menace, and that the Aryan races will have to domicile them permanently out of Europe. This quote occurs on page 138. On the previous page, the nameless commentator has the following: "There has been recently published a volume of Theodor Herzl's Diaries, a translation of some passages of which appeared in of July 14, 1922". Accordingly, the commentary must have been written at least two years after Marsden's death. 6.3 The Times exposes a forgery, 1921 198

In 1920-1921, the history of the concepts found in the Protocols was traced back to the works of Goedsche and Jacques Crétineau- Joly by Lucien Wolf (an English Jewish journalist), and published in London in August 1921. But a dramatic exposé occurred in the series of articles in The Times by its Constantinople reporter, Philip Graves, who discovered the plagiarism from the work of Maurice Joly. According to writer Peter Grose, Allen Dulles, who was in Constantinople developing relationships in post-Ottoman political structures, discovered 'the source' of the documentation ultimately provided to The Times. Grose writes that The Times extended a loan to the source, a Russian émigré who refused to be identified, with the understanding the loan would not be repaid.[42] Colin Holmes, a lecturer in economic history of Sheffield University, identified the émigré as Michael Raslovleff, a self-identified antisemite, who gave the information to Graves so as not to "give a weapon of any kind to the Jews, whose friend I have never been." In the first article of Graves' series, titled "A Literary Forgery", the editors of The Times wrote, "our Constantinople Correspondent presents for the first time conclusive proof that the document is in the main a clumsy plagiarism. He has forwarded us a copy of the French book from which the plagiarism is made."[44] The New York Times reprinted the articles on September 4, 1921.[45] In the same year, an entire book[46] documenting the hoax was published in the United States by Herman Bernstein. Despite this widespread and extensive debunking, the Protocols continued to be regarded as important factual evidence by antisemites. 199

The Times exposed the Protocols as a forgery on August 16–18, 1921

6.4 German language publications The first and "by far the most important"[47] German translation was by Gottfried Zur Beek (pseudonym of Ludwig Müller von Hausen). It appeared in January 1920 as a part of a larger antisemitic tract dated 1919. After The Times discussed the book respectfully in May 1920 it became a bestseller. "The Hohenzollern family helped defray the publication costs, and Kaiser Wilhelm II had portions of the book read out aloud to dinner guests". 's 1923 edition "gave a forgery a huge boost".

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A translation made by an Arab Christian appeared in Cairo in 1927 or 1928, this time as a book. The first translation by an Arab Muslim was also published in Cairo, but only in 1951. 7.Switzerland 7.1 The Berne Trial, 1934–1935 The selling of the Protocols (edited by German antisemite ) by the National Front during a political manifestation in the Casino of Berne on June 13, 1933led to the Berne Trial in the Amtsgericht (district court) of Berne, the capital of Switzerland, on October 29, 1934. The plaintiffs (the Swiss Jewish Association and the Jewish Community of Berne) were represented by Hans Matti and Georges Brunschvig, helped by Emil Raas. Working on behalf of the defense was German anti-Semitic propagandist . On May 19, 1935, two defendants (Theodore Fischer and Silvio Schnell) were convicted of violating a Bernese statute prohibiting the distribution of "immoral, obscene or brutalizing" texts while three other defendants were acquitted. The court declared the Protocols to be forgeries, plagiarisms, and obscene literature. Judge Walter Meyer, a Christian who had not heard of the Protocols earlier, said in conclusion: I hope, the time will come when nobody will be able to understand how in 1935 nearly a dozen sane and responsible men were able for two weeks to mock the intellect of the Bern court discussing the authenticity of the so-called Protocols, the very Protocols that, harmful as they have been and will be, are nothing but laughable nonsense. Vladimir Burtsev, a Russian émigré, anti-Bolshevik and anti- Fascist who exposed numerous Okhrana agents provocateurs in the early 1900s, served as a witness at the Berne Trial. In 1938 in Paris he published a book, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion: A Proved Forgery, based on his testimony. On November 1, 1937 the defendants appealed the verdict to the Obergericht (Cantonal Supreme Court) of Berne. A panel of three judges acquitted them, holding that the Protocols, while false, did not violate the statute at issue because they were "political publications" and not "immoral (obscene) publications (Schundliteratur)" in the strict sense of the law. The presiding judge's opinion stated, though, that the forgery of the Protocols was not questionable and expressed regret that the law did not provide adequate protection for Jews from this sort of literature. The court refused to impose the fees of defence of the acquitted defendants to the plaintiffs, and the acquitted Theodor Fischer had to pay 100 Fr. to the total state costs of the trial (Fr. 28'000) that were eventually paid by the Canton of 201

Berne. This decision gave grounds for later allegations that the appeal court "confirmed authenticity of the Protocols" which is contrary to the facts. A view favorable to the pro-Nazi defendants is reported in an appendix to Leslie Fry's Waters Flowing Eastward. A more scholarly work on the trial is in a 139 page monograph by Urs Lüthi. 7.2 The Basel Trial A similar trial in Switzerland took place at Basel. The Swiss Frontists Alfred Zander and Eduard Rüegsegger distributed the Protocols (edited by the German Gottfried zur Beek) in Switzerland. Jules Dreyfus-Brodsky and Marcus Cohen sued them for insult to Jewish honor. At the same time, chief rabbi Marcus Ehrenpreis of Stockholm (who also witnessed at the Berne Trial) sued Alfred Zander who contended that Ehrenpreis himself had said that the Protocols were authentic (referring to the foreword of the edition of the Protocols by the German antisemite Theodor Fritsch). In June 5, 1936 these proceedings ended with a settlement. Jewish efforts concentrated on the Berne Trial because Bernese law seemed to offer better chances for their concern. Only in 1942 a central Swiss Criminal Law was introduced, and since 1995 Art. 261 bis (against racial discrimination) should prevent discrimination and racial propaganda. 8.Germany The Protocols also became a part of the Nazi propaganda effort to justify persecution of the Jews. It was made required reading for German students. In The Holocaust: The Destruction of European Jewry 1933–1945, Nora Levin states that "Hitler used the Protocols as a manual in his war to exterminate the Jews": Despite conclusive proof that the Protocols were a gross forgery, they had sensational popularity and large sales in the 1920s and 1930s. They were translated into every language of Europe and sold widely in Arab lands, the United States, and England. But it was in Germany after World War I that they had their greatest success. There they were used to explain all of the disasters that had befallen the country: the defeat in the war, the hunger, the destructive inflation.

Hitler refers to the Protocols in : ... To what extent the whole existence of this people is based on a continuous lie is shown incomparably by the Protocols of the Wise Men of Zion, 202 so infinitely hated by the Jews. They are based on a forgery, the Frankfurter Zeitung moans and screams once every week: the best proof that they are authentic. [...] the important thing is that with positively terrifying certainty they reveal the nature and activity of the Jewish people and expose their inner contexts as well as their ultimate final aims. Hitler endorsed it in his speeches from August 1921 on, and it was studied in German classrooms after the Nazis came to power. At the height of World War II, the Nazi Propaganda Minister proclaimed: "The Zionist Protocols are as up-to-date today as they were the day they were first published." In Norman Cohn's words, it served as the Nazis' "warrant for genocide". 9.Contemporary imprints While there is continued popularity of The Protocols in nations from South America to Asia, since the defeat of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy in WWII, governments or political leaders in most parts of the world have generally avoided claims that The Protocols represent factual evidence of a real Jewish conspiracy. The exception to this is the Middle East, where a large number of Arab and Muslim regimes and leaders have endorsed them as authentic. Past endorsements of The Protocols from Presidents Gamal Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat of , one of the President Arifs of Iraq, King , and Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi of , among other political and intellectual leaders of the , are echoed by 21st century endorsements from the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Ekrima Sa'id Sabri, and , to the education ministry of Saudi Arabia.

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