Top 20 Secrets People Think The US Government Is Hiding

When Barack Obama ran for president in 2008, many Americans - without reason - began to question his birthplace. He was born in Hawaii, in 1961, only two years after it became a U.S. state. Many believed his birth certificate was forged, and that he was actually from Kenya. Donald Trump was a famous promoter of this discredited theory; there’s overwhelming evidence that he was indeed born in Hawaii. A 2015 study explored the motivations behind this and found a strong correlation between anti-black attitudes and believing Obama is a Kenyan. All in all, the theory is quite farfetched and it’s been proven to be motivated by racially-driven ideologies.

Advertisements that are flashed in pieces of media can be short enough that we don’t consciously notice them, but just long enough that the message enters our brains unconsciously. In 1957, James Vicary spliced frames saying “drink Coca-Cola” into movies and claimed it drove sales higher. He later admitted to having fudged the results, so there’s no credibility to his work; however, there have been other studies examining the idea. The results are mixed, with no conclusive evidence for or against its effectiveness. Some think the government is using this technique to control us, a theory with no credible evidence. Additionally, the FCC banned the practice in 1974, but this won’t phase the tin foil hatters, who likely view it as just a cover-up.

In 1968, Martin Luther King Jr., one of the greatest activists of all time, was shot by James Earl Ray, and died one hour later. Ray quickly pleaded guilty, but only a few days later he went back on this claim, saying it was a forced confession. The situation got even more suspicious when it came to light that the FBI was blackmailing King into taking his own life. In 1999, a jury in a civil trial found there was some credibility to the conspiracy, although critics thought the evidence lacked rigorous cross-examination. Also, Ray’s story is quite inconsistent, hampering his credibility. So some in America wanted him out of the picture, but it’s unclear what lengths they went to so that it happened.

In March 2023, Thierry Baudet, a far-right Dutch politician, tweeted an image of him pouring bugs onto the floor, captioned “we will not eat the bugs.” Apparently, some believe the upper echelon of society is seeking to make everyone else eat bugs. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration allows minor quantities of bugs in food, because it’s almost impossible to avoid them ending up in food products. Also, some organizations have promoted them as a sustainable food source, encouraging their consumption. The anti-bug phrase soon popped up on 4chan, with users overlaying it onto images of Greta Thunberg. Now it’s no longer just a meme, and many genuinely believe the theory, including Tucker Carlson.

Osama Bin Laden used to be America’s number one enemy, the founder of al-Qaeda, and the man behind the September 11th attacks. In 2011, he was finally killed by US Navy SEALs at his compound in Pakistan. Despite numerous first-hand accounts, and the al-Qaeda confirmation of his death, some believe it was a lie, and he’s still out there. This is because there was initially a lack of physical evidence publicly available, although there’s equally little evidence he is still alive. He was also buried at sea, which fueled further speculation. The CIA regrets not releasing photos of the corpse, since it encouraged these theories. It also doesn’t make sense why America would spare one of its biggest enemies.

Reptiles include animals like turtles, crocodiles, lizards, and snakes, and many humans keep some reptiles as pets. Some conspiracy theorists wonder if we own the lizards, or if they own us.. This is the reptile conspiracy theory, which at least 12 million Americans claim to believe. Found in some science fiction stories, it was given new life by David Icke, a notorious Holocaust denier. He claims to believe an alien race of shape-shifting lizards hijacked the Earth. Supposedly they control world politics to create “negative energy,” which is their primary source of nutrition. It’s an outlandish theory, with no real evidence existing anywhere.

Our next entry becomes extremely silly after rubbing two brain cells together and thinking about it for more than a minute. Many people think we already have a cure for cancer, and the government is hiding it. It’s supposedly to make money profiting off cancer patients. It can be debunked quite easily, since some of the wealthiest people have died from cancer. If society’s elite class has a cure, why don’t they use it to cure their cancer? Additionally, many countries across the globe have nationalized healthcare services, which don’t make any profit at all. These nations have even less motivation to withhold the cure, making this an extremely ludicrous theory, yet many still believe it regardless.

In the 1950s and 60s, the CIA experimented with mind control in Project MKUltra. It was wildly unethical, and became public knowledge in 1975. Its existence has fueled fears about large-scale population control, and approximately 17% of Americans believe this is happening via TV. It’s also been fueled by Operation Mockingbird, a covert CIA operation, aimed at spreading pro-U.S. and anti-Soviet propaganda in the Cold War. It’s unclear if America is still trying to literally mind control the public; however, news programs can be biased and can be a powerful tool for influencing public opinion. So it’s perhaps a valid topic of concern, though to what extent it may happen remains debated.

Are vaccines causing more harm than good? That’s what some people would have you believe. The anti-vaccine movement has been around for decades, but didn’t really become prominent until the 1990s when an article claimed there was a link between autism and the combined measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine. While this study has since been widely discredited, it has resulted in parents choosing not to vaccinate their children, which in turn has caused an increase in diseases like the measles. Conspiracy theorists would have you believe that government officials are behind this vaccine poisoning to support the lucrative pharmaceutical industry, or control the population but this seems highly unlikely.

Sticking with the topic of diseases, this well-known theory claims that the government, and specifically the CIA, created HIV to reduce the populations of gay men and African Americans. This theory stems from the fact that, at its beginning, the virus appeared to affect these specific groups more so than others. While African Americans and homosexual men have been the victims of prejudice and injustice for many years, it’s hard to believe that the government would create a deadly disease to eliminate these groups – regardless of the era. However, it wouldn’t be the first unconscionable thing the government’s done.

You may be a secret informant without even knowing it. Seriously. In 2008, Congress passed the FISA Amendments Act, which gave the government the authority to surveil Americans’ international communications. The Freedom of Information Act required the government to release FISA documents, but they withheld the identities of electronic communication service providers that provided information, stating that these businesses would be harmed if their customers knew they were giving information to the FBI. So, essentially, your cell phone provider could be allowing the FBI to surveil your activity, and you will never know about it.

The government released reports outlining what caused the financial crisis of 2007-08 and as most of us already know, things like faulty regulations, toxic mortgages and a basic failure of the system were primarily to blame. However, were those in charge of such predatory practices prosecuted and punished for their crimes? Not in the United States. White-collar criminals in Iceland, for example, were sent to jail for their roles in the economic crisis. But in the U.S., not only were these financial figures not held accountable; they were given jobs within the government itself. This causes many conspiracy theorists to suspect that the government is controlled by banks – and specifically, Goldman Sachs.

The idea of a spherical Earth has been supported by overwhelming evidence for thousands of years, stemming from observations, experiments, and logical reasoning. Despite this fact, many individuals think it’s flat. It’s one of the silliest theories and goes against basic observations in nature, like the Sun setting and rising, lunar eclipses, mirages, constellations changing in hemispheres, ships disappearing over horizons, et cetera. The concept of a round Earth goes back at least to the 6th century BCE, so it’s peculiar the flat Earth nonsense persists. It can be attributed to a combination of distrust in authorities and scientific illiteracy, rather than some kind of solid proof that supports the idea of a flat Earth.

5G is the newest form of cellular network technology, which is a type of non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation. For some bizarre reason, millions of people worldwide began to believe it caused COVID. The theory is incredibly whimsical, and has zero evidence at all supporting it. It’s also perplexing that people would be fearful of non-ionizing electromagnetic radiation, a label also used to describe visible light. If the theory is true, why have humans been safely living with visible light for thousands of years? It comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of high school science, which teaches viruses spread via physical contact - not through photons.

The government has been called a lot of things – murderers, racists, and now drug-dealers. In the late 1990s, Gary Webb, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for the San Jose Mercury News, wrote a series of articles that linked CIA agents in Central America to drug rings in Los Angeles. Webb claimed that the government protected its Nicaraguan allies and allowed them to sell cocaine to black residents in South Central LA. Why would they do this? Allegedly, so the CIA-backed terrorist rebel group the Contras could receive funding and so the government could carry out their plot to destroy inner city black America.

Many conspiracy theorists suggest that the government is poisoning us somehow, whether to keep us docile and controllable or to support pharmaceutical companies. Could they be using airplanes to do it? Some people believe that the traces left in the sky by planes are not simply condensation trails but actually chemical agents, which are distributed to control the population. This claim has been widely dismissed by scientists around the world who have repeatedly stated that there is nothing irregular about these trails. Still, this theory has plenty of prominent supporters, including Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy Corgan.

Nearly half a century later and people still don’t believe that we actually sent people to the moon. On July 20th, 1969, Apollo 11 crewmembers Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first people to walk on the moon. This effectively ended the Space Race, a competition between the Soviet Union and the United States. Of course, many people believe that the landing was staged to ensure that the U.S. got the upper hand on their Cold War rivals. Others believe that it was simply used as a distraction from the disastrous Vietnam War.

In Dallas, Texas, on November 22nd, 1963, Lee Harvey Oswald assassinated American President John Fitzgerald Kennedy. While the Warren Commission claimed that Oswald acted alone, many people believe that the President was murdered for a far bigger reason. While there are dozens of theories regarding the assassination, with blame being placed on the Soviets, the Cubans, and even the Mafia, one theory suggests that Kennedy’s vice president Lyndon B. Johnson may have been involved. Johnson has been accused of disliking the Kennedys and was worried that he may be dropped from the Kennedy ticket in 1964. But, more importantly, Kennedy conspiracy theorists think the government is aware of what happened and have consistently covered it up.

When the Twin Towers were attacked on September 11th, 2001, many people immediately believed that this was something more than an act of terrorism. Similar to the attack on Pearl Harbor, some claim that the U.S. government had ample warning about the attacks, but chose to ignore them so they would have a motive for initiating a war in the Middle East. Others believe that the towers collapsed as a result of a controlled demolition, which once again the Bush Administration could use to support invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

Whether it’s Area 51 or the Roswell crash, we seem to have an obsession with alien conspiracy theories. In 1947, a United States Air Force surveillance balloon crashed near Roswell, New Mexico, but some people would have you believe that it was actually an alien spacecraft. If it was a spacecraft, it was likely moved to Nevada’s Area 51, where theorists claim that the U.S. government examines alien technology and houses alien life forms. Although documents have revealed that Area 51 was actually used as a testing location for spy planes, people still believe that this is all just a cover-up for the existence of extra-terrestrial life.




What do you think are the most farfetched things people think America is hiding? Tell us in the comments!