Top 10 Foreign Conspiracy Theories that Turned Out to Be TRUE

Dating as far back as 1932, there were over twenty assassination attempts on Adolf Hitler’s life. Thanks to Tom Cruise’s movie “Valkyrie,” the most well known of these is the 20 July Plot, a.k.a. Operation Valkyrie. Hitler had a military headquarters built for himself in Eastern Europe, called Wolfsschanze, or the Wolf’s Lair. In 1944, the German Resistance worked with members of Hitler’s staff to blow up the Wolf’s Lair with Hitler Inside. Army officer Claus von Stauffenberg hid a bomb in the bunker, but the resulting explosion left Hitler unharmed. The second half of Valkyrie involved an overthrow of Hitler’s toadies in the military. Unfortunately, that also failed and most of the co-conspirators were executed.

Many conspiracists falsely see Israel as a hidden hand in world affairs. Every once in a while, though, the conspiracies are true. In 1954, Israel launched Operation Susannah, a false flag operation to blow up relations between Egypt, the U.S., and Britain. Israeli intelligence recruited Egyptian Jews to plant bombs inside civilian targets like movie theaters, libraries, and American educational centers. They were meant to explode after closing to avoid casualties. The plan was to blame local militant groups like communists or the Muslim Brotherhood. If successful, the British would be forced to maintain occupation of the Suez Canal. The plot, since known as the Lavon Affair, failed before it began and several conspirators were arrested.

Candidate Ronald Reagan made overtures to Iran to delay release of their American hostages and sabotage Jimmy Carter in the 1980 election. As it turned out, that relationship with Iran lasted into Reagan's second term. In 1985, Iran had approached the U.S., asking for weapons. Unfortunately, their support of Hezbollah in Lebanon was a problem: Hezbollah was holding American hostages at the time. Reagan's administration saw a way to kill two birds with one stone: they could secretly sell arms to Iran in return for the hostages. The proceeds could be funneled to Contra rebels in Nicaragua, which the U.S. was backing to take down a Socialist government. The details of the plot leaked, and Reagan denied everything before eventually coming clean.

When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, there were calls for the United States to invade Iraq. But first, President Bush wanted public support. That came thanks to the Congressional testimony of Nayirah, a 15-year-old Kuwaiti who claimed to have witnessed horrific human rights violations by Iraqi soldiers. The testimony appeared all over the country. Bush repeated her claims for weeks and drummed up the support he needed, liberating Kuwait in less than a month. The problem? Nayirah, the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S., lied. Her testimony was a Kuwaiti propaganda operation. The entire thing was arranged by a PR firm and coordinated by the Congressional committee chairman. So those who suspected there was something fishy were proven right.

Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) was an international bank created by Pakistani financiers in the early 1970s. Its purported goal was to be an alternative to western banks for so-called “Third World Countries.” They had an anti-colonial mission to break western barriers to finance for Third World Nations. In truth, BCCI was a Ponzi scheme for its executives. Worse, BCCI engaged in widespread money-laundering. The bank was the premiere laundering institution for dictators the world over. The leaders of Iraq, Panama, and the Philippines all washed their money at BCCI, as did Latin American drug lords. BCCI drew the criminal roadmap used by international financiers to this day. By the time BCCI closed down, they had stolen almost 10 billion dollars.

It’s a sad truth that much of the modern-day turmoil in Latin America can be traced to 20th century interference by the US. Operation Condor was a widespread effort by the CIA to fight the potential spread of Socialism in Latin America. America backed right-wing coups and governments in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Uruguay and Peru. For twenty-years, right wing forces - sometimes even fascists - received covert financial and military support. Assassinations, coups, terrorist plots - there was no line the CIA refused to cross in their war against Communism and Socialism. Some historians estimate that upwards of 50,000 people across Latin America were killed in these operations. Tens of thousands of others disappeared and hundreds of thousands were imprisoned.

Eastern Columbia and Western Venezuela are dangerous regions mostly controlled by gangs and guerrillas. Residents live in constant terror of assassination or torture. The Columbian military had been waging war against FARC guerillas in the region for years. Recently, they’d racked up major victories, having broken FARC’s back in the region. Those victories have been tainted by decades of rumors about government atrocities dating all the way back to the late 1980s. In 2015, those rumors were proven to be true: The Columbian Military kidnapped and killed thousands of innocent men and boys. The military would kidnap civilians, dress their bodies as FARC guerillas, and claim victories in the war on drugs.

During World War II, Imperial Japan gave Nazi Germany a run for its money when it came to committing atrocities. It wasn’t until 1988 that Japan acknowledged the existence and crimes of their covert Unit 731. The Unit engaged in a series of illegal human medical experiments in Harbin, China. While their task was to conduct research into public health, secrecy allowed them to plumb the depths of human depravity. They used Chinese and Russian POWs for biological, chemical, and conventional weapons testing. The list of 731's atrocities is literally too long and horrible to mention here. In the immediate aftermath of the War, America helped to cover up some of their crimes to make use of the research findings of their program.

Bayer Pharmaceuticals is best known for aspirin. But, as with any big pharma company, they’ve expanded into other areas of medicine. One of their products in the 1980s was a wildly popular blood-clotting factor for hemophiliacs. Unfortunately, that product had a major problem. Contravening federal American law, Bayer had secretly used prisoners and I.V. drug users to donate blood to manufacture this clotting product. As a result, the product was contaminated by H.I.V. When the company discovered the problem, they didn’t alert the public. Instead, they fixed the problem in America and quietly sold the contaminated product to Latin America, Europe, and Asia. They gave H.I.V to over 20,000 innocent people.

By August of 1964, tensions between North Vietnam and the U.S. reached their boiling point. The U.S.S. Maddox had engaged with and sunk three Vietnamese torpedo boats in the Gulf of Tonkin. Two days later, the government reported a second attack, now known as the Gulf of Tonkin Incident. The second attack was used by President Johnson as justification to escalate and eventually begin the Vietnam War. The Gulf of Tonkin is what is colloquially known as a casus belli, or a pretext for war based on intentionally false information. The second attack never actually occurred, but the U.S. engagement in Vietnam led to a long, costly, and ultimately pointless war in which tens of thousands needlessly lost their lives.


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