Dear dtnl,
This is a bit of a problem, because once it is out and clear, it is
not a conspiracy theory anymore. Most of the theories I've collected
are quite familiar, nothing up Pink's alley of 15th century's
conspiracies.
Some of the most prominent political scandals in US history began as a
conspiracy theory and turned out to be true; Wikipedia
(www.wikipedia.com) lists some of these:
"The United States Department of Defense Information Awareness Office
(IAO) has many similarities to conspiracy theories. First, its avowed
purpose is to gather and correlate information on ordinary citizens
for the purpose of predicting terrorism and other crime. Second, its
logo depicted the eye in the pyramid, a symbol associated with
Illuminati and Masonic representations of power or divinity, casting a
beam over the globe of the Earth. This has since been changed. The
original logo is still widely available on the internet, however.
Lastly, the name "Iao" is a Gnostic word for God, used in the Golden
Dawn and Thelema among others. [10]
The Mafia was essentially completely unknown to outsiders until Joe
Valachi revealed them in 1963.
Declassified papers as well as legal inquiries have shown that the CIA
was involved in many coup d'??tat, including the overthrow of Jacobo
Arbenz Guzman and Salvador Allende as well as into terrorist action,
for instance in Italy
From the 1950s to the 1970s, the CIA and the U.S. Army operated a
research program into mind control, codenamed MKULTRA. In this
program, CIA agents gave LSD and other drugs to unwitting and
unconsenting victims, in an effort to devise a working "truth serum"
and/or mind-control drug. MKULTRA was uncovered by Presidential and
Congressional research committees in 1975, and discontinued at that
time. Many prominent writers and drug figures were first exposed to
LSD under this program, including Ken Kesey of the Merry Pranksters,
Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, Baba Ram Dass (Richard Alpert) and
future 'Unabomber' Theodore Kaczynski. A source on this is the book
"Acid Dreams" by Bruce Shalin and Martin A. Lee.
ECHELON is a communications interception network operated by the
United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
It is designed to capture telephone calls, fax and e-mail messages.
New Zealand has openly admitted the existence of Echelon, and the
European Union commissioned a report on the system.
In the 2003 Iraq War, Iraqi resistance was strong at first and then
collapsed suddenly. A conspiracy theory emerged in Iraq and elsewhere
that there had been a safqah" ?? Arabic for: a secret deal ? ? between
the US and the Iraqi military elite, wherein the elite were bribed to
stand down. This conspiracy theory was ignored or ridiculed in the US
media.
In late May, 2003, General Tommy Franks, who had been the head of the
US forces in the conflict, confirmed in an interview with Defense News
that the US government had paid off high-level Iraqi military
officials and that they had stated that "I am working for you now".
How important this was to the course of the conflict was not entirely
clear at the time of this writing (May 24, 2003).
Operation Northwoods, a CIA plot to commit acts of apparent terrorism
and blame them on Cuba to encourage support for a war, was long
considered to be nothing but a conspiracy theory ? until the project's
documents were declassified and published.
The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male. For a
period of 50 years, the US Government used some members of the black
population of a town in Alabama to observe the effects of untreated
syphilis. The participants were not asked to participate and were not
told they were being untreated for their syphilis.
The US Federal Reserve lends money to the government at interest. When
this happens, money floods the market, and creates the "hidden tax" of
inflation. This scheme has had similar effects with the previous
national banks, and been predicted by conspiracy theories prior to its
implementation in 1913. Also, although the word "federal" is used, the
US Government does not own the Federal Reserve and has limited control
of its operations.
The Bilderberg Group, an annual convention of Western political and
economic elites, actually does exist. It is thought of as a modern-day
Illuminati-style conspiracy by some, where persons with power discuss
and arrange control of the world."
Martyn Jones also considers other as a true conspiracies, most
distinctively Watergate (Washington Post on Watergate:
<http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/watergate/front.htm>
; "Watergate.net" <http://www.watergate.info/>), but also
"British Premiere Margaret Thatcher ordered the Royal Navy warship
that had patrolled the coast of The Falklands since the 60s to
stand-down immediately prior to the islands invasion by an Argentinean
expeditionary force".
"Although many juvenile republicans and arm-chair supporters still
scoff at the idea that the Clintons were the target of a vast
conspiracy, overwhelming material evidence and the testimonials of
many participants on all aides indicates otherwise." (SOURCE: Martyn
Jones, <http://www.newsgarden.org/columns/martycolumns2.shtml> ;
However, I would say that "Monicagate" in itself *is* a conspiracy
turned out to be true: who would think the president would do such a
thing?)
One of the most fun people to have conspiracies about, that in turn
would turn out to be absolutly true is Imelda Marcos. You have to
worship that woman:
- Yes, she did try to have a porn film festival in Manila and called
the Cardinal "gay" because he opposed it;
- Yes, she did send the Filippino secret security forces to beat up
the Beatles at the Manila Airport, because the fab-four did not want
to meet her after their show in the Philippines;
- Yes, she did have so many shoes;
I get all of that (and many other unbelievable stories about the
Marcoses: he made up his record in the underground against the
Japanese occupation, for example) from a book, not from the Internet:
James Hamilton-Paterson, "America's Boy" (Granta).
Still in Asia, this article claims to have another, made-in-Seoul
real-life conspiracy:
Aidan Foster-Carter, "North Korea's missiles: just so convenient",
Asia Times January 09, 2001
<http://www.atimes.com/koreas/CA09Dg01.html>
I can't verify the validity of the claims made in Asia Times, because
I am not that acquinted with the story.
Another claims of "no smoke without fire" is made by another reputable
body, the Canadian CBC:
Fifth Estate, Conspiracy Theories (regarding 9/11)
<http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/conspiracytheories/>
This site deals mostly with the claims on Bush-Saudi connections, and
claims that although the theories continue to be just that - theories
and not facts - there are some supporting evidences.
However, I could add one more things that was also found to be true
(thought I am not sure how much of a conspiracy it has been):
The FBI established and operated COINTELPRO, designed to monitor and
sabotage the operations of social movements deemed "subversive"
(See Prof. David Cunningham's book "There's Something Happening Here"
U. California Press about it; and see his homepage:
<http://www.brandeis.edu/departments/sociology/cunningham.html>);
I hope this answered your question. There are probably some other
events that people consider as a "conspiracy theory" and were found to
be true; others would claim that by definition, a conspiracy theory
cannot be found to be true (but cannot be debunked either), because
then the whole conspirative tone would disappear. My search strategy
was to search for the term "conspiracy theory" with other terms likely
to appear in the text such as "to be true". I also searched
Snopes.com, but all of the conspiracy theories mentioned there are
labled as "false". |
