Every major event prompts a conspiracy theory and over the years people have come up with some far out stories and cover ups. But are they all that far fetched? Or have many of these conspiracy theories been guided by those behind the original plot?
Let’s take a look at 15 of the most famous conspiracies that just might be closer to the truth than we think.
5.Aids virus was created in a laboratory:
Based on the theories of Dr William Campbell Douglass, many believe that that HIV was genetically engineered in 1974 by the World Health Organisation. Dr Douglass believed that it was a cold-blooded attempt to create a killer virus which was then used in a successful experiment in Africa. Others have claimed that it was created by the CIA or the KGB as a means to reduce world population.
4.Pearl Harbor was allowed to happen:
Theorists believe that President Franklin Roosevelt provoked the Japanese attack on the US naval base in Hawaii in December 1941, knew about it in advance and covered up his failure to warn his fleet commanders.
He apparently needed the attack to provoke Hitler into declaring war on the US because the American public and Congress were overwhelmingly against entering the war in Europe.
Theorists believe that the US was warned by the governments of Britain, the Netherlands, Australia, Peru, Korea and the Soviet Union that a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor was coming and that, furthermore, the Americans had intercepted and broken all the important Japanese codes in the run up to the attack.
3.Nasa faked the moon landings:
People who think that the Apollo moon landings were not all that they seemed at the time believe that Nasa faked some or all of the landings.
Some of the theories surrounding this subject are that the Apollo astronauts did not land on the Moon; Nasa and possibly others intentionally deceived the public into believing the landings did occur by manufacturing, destroying, or tampering with evidence, including photos, telemetry tapes, transmissions, and rock samples; and that Nasa and possibly others continue to actively participate in the conspiracy to this day.
Those who think that Nasa faked some or all of the landings base their theories on photographs from the lunar surface which they claim show camera crosshairs partially behind rocks, a flag planted by Buzz Aldrin moving in a strange way, the lack of stars over the lunar landscape and shadows falling in different direction. Many commentators have published detailed rebuttals to the hoax claims, and these theories have been generally discounted but belief in them – particularly on the web – persists.
2.9/11 Attacks:
Thanks to the power of the web and live broadcasts on television, the conspiracy theories surrounding the events of September 11, 2001 – when terrorists attacked the World Trade Centre in New York and the Pentagon in Washington. Despite repeated claims by al-Qaeda that it planned, organised and orchestrated the attacks, several official and unofficial investigations into the collapse of the Twin Towers which concluded that structural failure was responsible and footage of the events themselves, the conspiracy theories continue to grow in strength.
At the milder end of the spectrum are the theorists who believe that the US government had prior warning of the attacks but did not do enough to stop them. Others believe that the Bush administration deliberately turned a blind eye to those warnings because it wanted a pretext to launch wars in the Middle East to usher in another century of American hegemony. A large group of people – collectively called the 9/11 Truth Movement – cite evidence that an airliner did not hit the Pentagon and that the World Trade Centre could not have been brought down by airliner impacts and burning aviation fuel alone. This final group points to video evidence which they claim shows puffs of smoke – so-called demoliton squibs – emerging from the Twin Towers at levels far below the aircraft impact zones and prior to the collapses. They also believe that, on the day itself, the US air force was deliberately stood down or sent on exercises to prevent intervention that could have saved the lives of nearly 3,000 people.
Many witnesses – including firemen, policemen and people who were inside the towers at the time – claim to have heard explosions below the aircraft impacts (including in basement levels) and before both the collapses and the attacks themselves. As with the assassination of JFK, the official inquiry into the events – the 9/11 Commission Report – is widely derided by the conspiracy community and held up as further evidence that 9/11 was a the work of the US government. Scientific journals have consistently rejected these hypotheses.
1.The assassination of John F Kennedy:
The 35th President of the United States was shot on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dallas, Texas at 12.30pm . He was fatally wounded by gunshots while riding with his wife – Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy – in a motorcade. The ten-month investigation of the Warren Commission of 1963 to 1964, the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) of 1976 to 1979, and other government investigations concluded that the President had been assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald – who was himself shot dead by Jack Ruby while in police custody.
But doubts about the official explanation and the conclusion that Oswald was the lone gunman firing from the Texas Book Depository overlooking Dealey Plaza where Kennedy was hit surfaced soon after the commission report. Footage of the motorcade taken by Abraham Zapruder on 8mm film supported the growing belief that at least four shots were fired – not the three that the Warren Commission claimed. The moments of impact recorded on the film also suggested that at least one of the shots came from a completely different direction to those supposedly fired by Oswald – evidence backed up by testimony of several eye witnesses. Many believed that several shots were fired by gunmen hiding behind a picket fence on a grassy knoll overlooking the plaza.
The assassination is still the subject of widespread speculation and has spawned numerous conspiracy theories, though none of these has been proven. In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) found both the original FBI investigation and the Warren Commission Report to be seriously flawed. The HSCA also concluded that there were at least four shots fired and that it was probable that a conspiracy existed. However, later studies, including one by the National Academy of Sciences, have called into question the accuracy of the evidence used by the HSCA to support its finding of four shots.