Top 50 Conspiracy Theories That Turned Out to Be TRUE

Top 50 Conspiracy Theories That Turned Out to Be True

Welcome to WatchMojo, and today we’re counting down our picks for the Top 50 Conspiracy theories from the realms of history, politics, science, and more, that turned out to be at least somewhat real.

#50: Columbia's Falsos Positivos
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.

#49: The Lavon Affair: Israeli False Flags
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 and 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.

#48: The Philadelphia Experiment
The 1984 sci-fi film “The Philadelphia Experiment” is based on an urban legend. Supposedly, in October 1943, merchant marine Carl M. Allen saw the USS Eldridge turn invisible and disappear from the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard. It allegedly teleported to Virginia and back, with harrowing effects on the crew. Most of this story has been debunked, but researcher Jacques Vallée claims that it may hide some truth. He argues that the Eldridge was confused with the Engstrom, which was docked nearby. The Engstrom reportedly underwent a procedure to decrease its magnetic field, making it ‘invisible’ to torpedoes. It may have also traveled to Virginia and back in a single day via the Chesapeake & Delaware Canal. Imaginative retellings then warped the facts into the improbable Philadelphia Experiment.

#47: Money Laundering & Terrorism Finance at BCCI
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.

#46: Abuse in Hollywood
There have been rumors and accusations of sexual abuse in Hollywood for decades. Often, they involved powerful men with the power to break or make careers. While some, such as Roman Polanski, were exposed, the misconduct of others basically remained an open secret. In the 2010s, dozens of victims came forward with accusations against several prominent public figures, in particular Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein. The accusations against Weinstein launched the #MeToo movement, which revealed horrible abuses inside Hollywood and beyond. It confirmed the worst suspicions that many people had about how the entertainment industry often functioned.

#45: Gas Companies Knew About Climate Change
From sugary sodas to cancerous cigarettes, corporations have long seeked to suppress harmful truths about their products. But rather than impacting personal health, this one had global implications. Beginning in the 1970s, oil and gas giant ExxonMobil put its money behind climate change research, funding groups that dismissed human-caused global warming while knowing it existed. They even had a hand in the Global Climate Coalition, which fought the Kyoto Protocol, a treaty that pledged to lower greenhouse gas emissions. ExxonMobil’s climate denial continued through the ‘80s, ‘90s, and 2000s, first admitting that global warming posed an environmental threat in 2007. To this day, climate change’s treatment as a debate instead of a consensus can be traced back to the lobbying of fossil fuel companies.

#44: Breakfast Is Not the Most Important Meal of the Day
It’s magically delicious, but how about nutritious? While there are plenty of legitimate health benefits to starting the day with a balanced breakfast, that hasn’t always been the reason it was pushed so hard. After meat-heavy breakfasts went on the decline due to their digestive difficulty during the Industrial Revolution, James Caleb Jackson and John Harvey Kellogg changed the game with flaked corn cereal. As Seventh-day Adventists, they believed that a bland diet could aid in abstinence and ward off impure thoughts. Furthermore, emphasizing cereal potentially helped the US government in their meat-rationing efforts during World War II. So don’t worry too badly the next time you miss out on a breakfast of champions — it just might be a clever marketing tactic.

#43: The CIA Drugged Citizens Without Their Knowledge
Johns in the sky with diamonds? As part of a larger program on mind control in the 1950s and ‘60s, the CIA set their sights on an unlikely population to test the effects of LSD: clients of sex workers. By paying ladies of the night to lure in unsuspecting men, the agency was able to study how the substance could affect people who didn’t know they’d taken it — more specifically, whether they were likely to give up compromising information. As the sex workers drugged their patrons, CIA consultant George White would analyze their behavior from behind a one-way mirror. Of all the shady CIA experiments, this one quite possibly has the wildest code name, and that’s saying a lot: Operation Midnight Climax.

#42: The Oak Ridge Experiments
One of the most difficult aspects for a psychiatric patient is getting anyone to believe you when you speak about the atrocities happening in a hospital. Oak Ridge in Penetanguishene, Ontario, Canada, was a maximum-security psychiatric facility. By the 60s, the authorities drastically changed the way they treated patients. Instead, they initiated various experiments. Led by Dr. Elliot Barker, such “treatments” included giving patients LSD, putting them in an “artificial womb,” and placing them in a small room. But more concerning, some patients were given authority to “treat” other patients. By 1983, the government forced Oak Ridge to close, and it was later demolished. In 2023, 27 former patients were awarded $9 million in damages for the horror they experienced.

#41: The Dalai Lama Works for the CIA
While the 14th Dalai Lama is a controversial figure due to recent, unpleasant actions, there have long been theories that he’s actually a CIA spy. And there’s some truth there. Mostly taking place in the 1960s, the CIA was helping to fund Tibetan operations against China. At the time, they were doing their best to disrupt world Communist governments as much as possible. Governmental documents showed the spy agency was handing Tibetan forces $1.7 million a year. With inflation, that’s $17.4 million in 2023. From this figure, the Dalai Lama was personally getting an annual fee of $180,000 from the CIA. That’s the equivalent of $1.8 million in 2023.

#40: The FBI Watched Ernest Hemingway
Near the latter half of his life, legendary author Ernest Hemingway was treated several times in hospitals for his mental health. He believed the FBI was watching him, cataloging his every move. Most people wrote it off as paranoid delusions. Many friends believe this belief of constant surveillance led to Hemingway’s untimely passing in 1961. However, in the 1980s, the Freedom of Information Act showed the Feds had done just that. They reportedly had a file on him detailing the writer’s trips to places such as Cuba, where he had created an amateur spy network against fascism during World War II. It also showed FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was distrustful of Hemingway and the information he passed on in Cuba.

#39: Beaming Messages
If we told you the US government has looked at beaming messages directly into our brains, you’d probably be concerned about us. However, this is a real thing, weirdly. Uncovered due to the Freedom of Information Act, the report known as the “Bioeffects Of Selected Nonlethal Weapons” became public knowledge. Within, the details of various technologies the government had been working on were disclosed, including the concept of microwave hearing. The information details a frequency that could be produced, akin to a microwave firearm, that could direct discreet messages at a person, such as a hostage. Frighteningly, the report hypothesizes the tech could be used to make someone think they have voices in their head. Thankfully, tin foil hats block it.

#38: Soldiers Passed Off Civilians as Rebels
As part of the Colombian conflict, where governmental forces fought against guerrilla groups for power, the government rewarded their soldiers whenever they showcased they had slain a rebel. They were given time off, promotions, or financial boosts for doing so. However, folk became suspicious of the high casualties and the questionable identities of certain guerrilla members. Family members especially. Known as the False Positive scandal in Colombia, it’s believed that between 2002 to 2008, over 6,400 non-guerrilla participants were killed and dressed to look like rebels. In reality, the victims were often poor farmers abducted by soldiers to boost their dark quotas. Several soldiers and officers have been sentenced for their crimes, but there are calls to do far more.

#37: The US Military Planned to Kill Civilians & Blame Cuba
In the 1960s, some figures really wanted the United States to go to war with Cuba… so much so that in 1962, among less lethal ideas, they planned to use the CIA to attack military sites, boats, airplanes, and cities and make it look as though Cuba was responsible. Known as Operation Northwoods, this false flag project theorized the possibility of slaying citizens and its own soldiers just to escalate the situation. All the Joint Chiefs of Staff gave the go-ahead for this possible destruction and handed it to the office of President John F. Kennedy. However, thankfully, it was rejected.

#36: The CIA Tried to Control Major Media Outlets
As the Cold War began, so did the CIA’s plan to manipulate the masses. Known as Operation Mockingbird, the group allegedly bribed or blackmailed newspaper journalists to create specific content or shutdown stories. On top of doing this in the States, the CIA did the same abroad. They infiltrated foreign media to gain information that they found vital. In 1975, files within The Church Committee showed that the CIA had been involved in this conspiracy. In 1977, investigative reporter Carl Bernstein claimed that the operation had resulted in over 400 journalists and media figures working for the agency at one point.

#35: The Phones Are Listening
When you talk about something, then see an ad for it online, it might just be because algorithms already have so much data on you, they can predict your interests and behaviors. However, there is at least one way in which your phone might be listening. Some applications use device microphones to listen to ultrasonic ‘audio beacons’, inaudible to the human ear, embedded in ads; they can also connect with the microphones of other devices. This can give them data such as your location and how long you watched a certain ad for. It’s a good idea to review app permissions to minimize this.

#34: The CIA Was Involved in Cocaine Trafficking
For decades, there were rumors that the CIA was responsible for turning US areas and places abroad rife with illegal substances. In 1996, the press accused the agency of involvement with cocaine in Nicaragua during the civil war. According to a report by former Inspector General of the CIA, Frederick Hitz, the agency had known that the Contras, who the CIA backed, were involved in drug smuggling to fund their campaign. The group had reportedly brought in cocaine from Miami for use in the Central American region. However, the agency did nothing to stop this. When the Drug Enforcement Administration heard about the Contras smuggling drugs, the CIA worked to put them off the scent.

#33: UFO Investigations
The US government may not be investigating UFOs at Area 51. But that doesn’t mean that official research isn’t happening somewhere. Project Blue Book, which ran from 1952 and 1969, was public knowledge. But in 2017, it was revealed that from 2007 to 2012, the US government also funded an unpublicized investigation called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, to the tune of $22 million. In 2020, we learned of another UFO program, the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force. Its findings included photos and videos of UFOs that experts have struggled to explain.

#32: The US Navy Sprayed Chemicals Into the Bay Area
San Francisco is known for its fog, but it’s also been host to sinister substances. One day in 1950, eleven Bay Area residents checked into the same hospital with urinary tract infections. While ten recovered, one died due to a heart valve infection. Finally in 1977, the US Army revealed it was the result of a biological warfare test called Operation Sea-Spray. Weeks before the mysterious infections were reported, the Navy released two types of bacteria off a ship to test their impact on the city’s population. Additionally, the Army announced several other bioweapon experiments across the country from the 1950s and ‘60s that had gone undetected. While President Nixon put a stop to the program in 1969, this revelation isn’t any less terrifying.

#31: Canada Tried to Create Actual Gaydar
In the mid-twentieth century, gay men and women had to keep their orientation secret or risk losing their social standing, jobs, or even their lives. In an attempt to ferret out gay men in the military and other government institutions from the 1950s on, the Canadian government hired professor Frank Robert Wake. Wake invented what they would ultimately call “The Fruit Machine.” Today, we’d call it “gaydar.” Wake would strap men into a chair, force them to look at sexual images, and measure their physical reactions. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police investigated thousands of government employees as a result. Many men lost their jobs due to the dubious test results until it was discontinued.

#30: The CIA Experimented on Cats
Atomic Kitten isn’t just a girl group. During the height of the spy film craze in the 1960s, the CIA devised an interesting use for our feline friends — turning them into bionic carrier pigeons. In an initiative called Operation Acoustic Kitty, they inserted recording devices into cats so that they could eavesdrop on government officials and bring back secret intel. But in an extremely predictable turn of events, they had little interest in the pursuit of espionage and continued acting like normal cats, causing the tactic to be abandoned. On a Catwoman scale of Eartha Kitt to Zoë Kravitz, it’s safe to say this experiment was a Halle Berry-level misfire.

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#29: Weather Control Programs
The history of the US government’s attempts to control the weather began after the Civil War. In the late 1800s, an American engineer collected dozens of stories of rain following large battles. To recreate the effect, a general set off $9,000 worth of explosives in Texas. The results were inconclusive. The better part of a century later, the Pentagon incorporated weather control into their strategy for the Vietnam War. Operation Sober Popeye lasted for five years. Using planes, the military tried to seed rain clouds over Vietnam. If they could extend the monsoon season, it could provide a strategic advantage. A series of news stories revealed the program. Six years later in 1978, weather-based environmental warfare was banned around the world.

#28: Planned Obsolescence
Out with the old, in with the new. It’s long been speculated that tech companies like Apple and Samsung have purposely slowed down their existing gadgets after releasing new updates and models. And while the evidence was purely anecdotal at first, the arrival of iOS 10 in 2016 opened up the floodgates… or should we say, Batterygate. Months later, Apple admitted that the iPhone 6 and 6S struggled to adjust to the new update, causing slow phones and drained batteries. In the years since, the company has continued to face class action lawsuits and investigations related to the incident. The term “planned obsolescence” goes back to the 1930s, but confirmation of it in the digital age showed people they weren’t going crazy after all.

#27: The CIA Administered Fake Vaccines
Vaccines have long been a favorite subject for conspiracy theorists, and this might be the closest they’ve come to vindication. In 2011, the CIA conducted a Hepatitis B vaccination program in Pakistan — the catch? The vaccines were fake, and peoples’ DNA was being collected as an effort to retrieve Osama bin Laden’s whereabouts. The scheme was unsuccessful in more ways than one: besides doing little to track down the al-Qaeda leader, it’s still cited as a reason to distrust the US government when it comes to other more recent vaccines. While bin Laden was eventually located by other means that same year, the mission has done plenty to dissuade people from getting the jab.

#26: The US Government Poisoned Alcohol During Prohibition
Ratified in 1919, the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution prohibited alcohol. The period of prohibition would last until 1933, ending with the ratification of the 21st Amendment. Despite the law, illegal smuggling, manufacturing, and distribution of drinking alcohol was rampant. In an attempt to curtail drinking, the U.S. government tried something radical. Even before 1920, they’d mandated that extra contaminants be added to industrial alcohol to prevent its consumption. In 1926, they added new regulations, requiring the inclusion of more toxic poisons. Manufacturers added benzine, mercury, and methanol. Unsurprisingly, this stopped neither the bootleggers nor the drinkers. An estimated 10,000 people died and many others were blinded.

#25: The Sugar Industry Paid Off Scientists
It’s hard to imagine now with everything we know about diabetes and dental hygiene, but sugar was once viewed by many as a healthy food. The reason? Sugar producers and sweets companies pushed fat as the enemy instead. In 2016, a researcher at the University of California, San Francisco found that the Sugar Research Foundation funded a 1967 Harvard study downplaying sugar’s impact on heart health, instead pointing to saturated fat as a cause of heart disease. Meanwhile, Coca-Cola had been paying researchers millions to minimize the relationship between sugary sodas and obesity as recently as 2015. Unlike the taste of their products, these companies’ ethics were anything but sweet.

#24: The CIA Created a Heart Attack Gun
Guns and arrests go hand in hand, but cardiac arrests? Not so much. So-called heart attack guns seemed like the stuff of James Bond movies, until a 1975 CIA testimony revealed their existence. During the hearing, CIA director William Colby and Idaho Senator Frank Church unveiled a handgun that shot frozen darts containing shellfish toxin. Upon entering the body, the poison would leave behind a red dot and give off the impression of a heart attack — allowing the shooter to get away untraced, at least until the autopsy. However, while there’s evidence of the gun’s existence, there aren’t any confirmed cases of it being used in high-profile assassinations.

#23: Bayer Spread HIV
Many conspiracies tend to focus on governmental cabals. Oftentimes though, some of the worst secrets come from the private sector. German pharmaceutical company Bayer has been selling aspirin since 1899. Since that time, they’ve expanded to all kinds of drugs and medicines. In the 1980s, the Bayer-owned company Cutter Biological was selling blood-clotting factors for hemophiliacs, but recruiting high-risk donors to manufacture it. That clotting factor became contaminated with HIV. When the problem was discovered, Cutter declared the response “irrational” but switched over to safe, heat-treated products for the Western market. Then, they shipped the contaminated product to Latin America and Asia to make a buck. Roughly 20,000 patients were infected by Bayer’s products.

#22: The Iran-Contra Affair
In 1985, US President Ronald Reagan had a dilemma. Iran had approached the States to buy weapons from them. However, the country was backing Hezbollah, which had American Hostages in Lebanon. Plus, the US had an arms embargo on Iran due to the Hostage Crisis that began in 1979. But the lure of using the proceeds of the weapon sale to fund the rebel group Contras against the Socialist-led government of Nicaragua and get the hostages released was too much for the Reagan administration to ignore. Reagan initially denied the allegations when they leaked, only to reverse that soon after. Oliver North, who helped move the money to the Contras, came forward to confirm the rumors.

#21: Nazi Officers Tried to Kill Hitler
Several efforts were made to assassinate Adolf Hitler during the height of WWII. Perhaps the most famous one is sometimes known as Operation Valkyrie, otherwise referred to as the 20 July Plot. Members of the German resistance planned to set off a bomb during Hitler’s visit to the Wolf’s Lair headquarters. German army officer Claus von Stauffenberg managed to place the hidden explosive, but the result failed to kill the Nazi leader. The other part of the plot involved seizing control of the military in the dictator’s absence. Despite painstaking attempts to account for every move, the operation was discovered and the co-conspirators were largely executed. The film “Valkyrie” brought a renewed interest to the complicated story of the failed plot.

#20: The US Air Force Was Developing a Gay Bomb
How do you slow down an impending army? Instead of dropping lethal explosives, the US military once considered an unexpected alternative. Researchers considered the possibility of dropping a non-lethal bomb full of a pheromone mixture on troops. Although this idea never reached the battlefield, the theory was that soldiers would be too distracted by each other to keep fighting. It’s especially clear that authorities were really reaching with this particular idea. This isn’t to be confused with the theoretical and equally confusing concept of “Gaydar,” which the Canadian authorities hoped would reveal people’s sexual preferences. All the same, it’s crazy to think that any amount of time was spent working on a “Gay Bomb.”

#19: Operation Menu
The Vietnam War affected neighboring nations in Southeast Asia such as Cambodia. Northern Vietnamese troops used the eastern part of Cambodia for resupplying and encampment during the conflict. This prompted a bombing campaign from the US, which targeted Cambodian sites operating along the Vietnamese border. From 1969 to 1970, this bombardment leveled much of the area. This action was hugely controversial given the force and destruction unleashed on the Cambodians, along with the fact that the secret operation was conducted on a non-combatant country. It later inspired Operation Freedom Deal, which was an even harsher campaign that cut deeper into the heart of Cambodia. Details of this scheme were largely revealed in a declassification from the year 2000.

#18: The US Worked with Former Nazi Scientists
Even though the Allies won the war and put many Nazi war criminals on trial, that didn’t stop the US from hiring German scientists. These experts were later integral in the development of the US space program and other military improvements during the Cold War. Many of them had close ties and allegiance to the Nazis, making this entire operation all the more controversial. The Soviet Union also conducted a similar operation in an attempt to bolster their post-war staying power. One of the recruits for the American side, Wernher von Braun, is considered among the more important figures in modern rocketry and early space travel. Sometimes celebrating their achievements, the authorities also largely disregarded many of the subject’s connections to atrocities.

#17: The Business Plot Coup
Known as the Business Plot, this little-known conspiracy wanted to bring down the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Although this was a nefarious coup plot, the case didn’t come to light until the testimony of retired General Smedley Butler. Butler asserted that he was asked to usurp the 32nd President of the United States, partly due to his support of veterans’ groups. Even with the general’s revelations, some people question the veracity of certain details and the extent of the planning that took place. George H.W. Bush’s father, Prescott Bush, has been linked to the plot, but it's still unconfirmed as to his ultimate involvement. David O. Russell’s film “Amsterdam” is just one project that fictionalizes the events surrounding the scheme.

#16: Faked Gulf War Testimony
The Gulf War was a brief, but notable conflict preempted by the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. The US intervened soon after, using a number of stories to support the decision including the testimony of a teenager. She was known as Nayirah, and her account of babies being removed from incubators in Kuwait shocked and helped sell the war to American citizens. It became a much-quoted story for President George H.W. Bush and other proponents of military action. Later revealed to be falsified, Nayirah was actually the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States. She not only didn’t see any crimes firsthand, but many details were generated by a PR firm. The case has become infamous as a deeply-flawed attempt to sell the war.

#15: Tuskegee Study
One of the most horrifying chapters in American medical history came out of the Tuskegee Institute in Alabama. A research study offered black men free healthcare in exchange for a secretive and unethical observation, withholding syphilis diagnoses from participating members. Researchers from health organizations such as the US Public Health Service attempted to study the effects of untreated syphilis without treating the patients. This also came at a time when penicillin was becoming a widely confirmed treatment for sufferers of the disease. Not only was it a complete travesty perpetrated by the medical community, but it created a genuine mistrust of the healthcare system among many people in the African-American community.

#14: Operation Condor
At this point, it’s well-known that the CIA had a large-scale and destructive influence on South American politics. Operation Condor was one such plan that completely altered the landscape of countries such as Argentina and Chile. By propping up dictators like Augusto Pinochet, the US helped finance coups of various leaders across the continent. The actions that were supported by American intelligence groups created irreversible damage in these nations as thousands were killed. President Clinton eventually declassified more information about the operation and its effects, bringing forth new details about the plans to de-legitimize left-leaning political movements in the region. In the decades since Operation Condor, its lasting impact is still felt in the countries affected.

#13: Bohemian Grove
Rumors have always swirled about secret societies and country clubs where elites meet up to discuss world affairs. In the case of Bohemian Grove, this accusation is at least partially true. Many of the most powerful and influential American figures of the 20th century met at the California club. The place was reserved for people like Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, along with a list of businessmen and even Nobel laureates. While one of their precepts involves leaving world affairs at the door, there’s no shortage of evidence to the contrary. It was also the site of a meeting regarding the Manhattan Project. The presence of many US presidents provokes even more gossip about the other conversations that took place there.

#12: The FBI Spied on John Lennon
When John Lennon moved to the US in the 70s, he became a target of FBI observation. His outspoken political beliefs were already controversial and some US leaders worried that he would influence the next election. With stories swirling about Lennon’s possible tour, which was an apparent attempt to recruit young liberal voters, J. Edgar Hoover put the musician under close watch. Not only that, the artist was threatened with deportation during this period. Republican Richard Nixon ended up winning the 1972 election, but the attempts to kick the singer out of the country continued until a court ruling in 1975. Unsurprisingly, this wasn’t the first or last person hounded by the FBI as their COINTELPRO program spied on many citizens and political groups.

#11: Big Tobacco’s Big Lie
Smoking causes lung cancer and a lot of other adverse health effects. Scientists demonstrated this definitively in the 1950s. However, public opinion wavered for decades, with sources springing up to generate controversy and debate. Some suspected that the tobacco industry was suppressing and distorting the facts through a coordinated campaign. And it eventually came out that they were! Together, the world’s largest tobacco companies initiated Operation Berkshire to generate fake controversy and debate. Big tobacco knew that smoking caused cancer, and that nicotine was addictive. They decided not to make cigarettes less harmful, because addiction made them a lot of money. Just goes to show – where there’s smoke, there’s often fire.

#10: The FBI Spied on Political Activist Groups
Those involved in political protests and other activist causes are often paranoid that they’re being watched. And they should be, because it’s happened before and it can happen again. From the late ‘50s to the early ‘70s, the FBI engaged in illegal surveillance, infiltration, and disruption of protest movements and other organizations deemed “subversive.” These ranged from independence movements, to civil rights activists, to feminist organizations. They even had John Lennon, the former Beatles frontman under watch! While this program, named COINTELPRO, was abolished in 1971, others may have taken its place.

#9: The First Female U.S. President
While the United States has yet to elect a woman to the office of president (by electoral college, anyway), some theorized that a woman has assumed the duties of the office already. In 1919, President Woodrow Wilson suffered a debilitating stroke. This left him bedridden and partially paralyzed, with some impaired judgment. For over a year, Wilson’s wife Edith aided him in governing the country, to the point where she was basically performing his job in all but name. The degree of her involvement was kept a close secret and Wilson herself denied that she made executive decisions until her death.
The First Female President

#8: The White Sox Threw the World Series
The Chicago White Sox are on record for having one of the longest droughts between winning the World Series, at 87 years. However, they weren’t always known for their bad luck. Back in the late 1910s, the Sox won in 1917 and they even had a wonder like Shoeless Joe Jackson on the team. Yet, rumors during the 1919 Series held that the games were fixed. The White Sox lost the series, but the rumors persisted into the next year. Eventually a grand jury found evidence that eight players, including Jackson (though his role is disputed), were involved in a conspiracy to receive money in exchange for throwing the Series. While a trial found them not guilty, they were nevertheless banned from the League permanently.

#7: Roswell Cover-Up
In the summer of 1947, an object crashed down to Earth in Roswell, New Mexico. Theories that it was an alien spacecraft have pervaded pop culture for over half a century since. The U.S. Air Force claim that the object was merely a “weather balloon” only added fuel to the fire. And the conspiracy theorists were right – it was no weather balloon and there was a cover-up. But it wasn’t an alien ship either. Probably. The object was a high-altitude balloon, launched as part of Project Mogul. These balloons were intended to detect sound waves from Soviet atomic bomb tests. During the Cold War, the U.S. military couldn’t exactly be honest about that in the papers. Now whether you think that’s another cover story…well…

#6: Scientologists Infiltrated the US Government
The Church of Scientology is infamously touchy about any criticism of their organization. Their influence over celebrities is well-known, but theories about their influence over the government are also out there. And here’s the thing – Scientologists really did infiltrate the government. In the 1970s, at least 5,000 members of the organization conducted espionage on government agencies and private organizations! And this wasn’t a fringe element either – the founder’s wife, Mary Sue Hubbard, pleaded guilty and went to prison! It was one of the largest scale infiltrations of the U.S. government in history. All of this was done with the aim of destroying evidence that painted Scientology in an unfavorable light. It arguably had quite the opposite effect…

#5: Project SUNSHINE
With a name like this, images of happiness or some form of green energy initiation spring to mind. But in reality, it’s incredibly dark. Headed by the United States Atomic Energy Commission in 1955, Project SUNSHINE was created to see the effects of nuclear radiation on the human body. However, the group went morbid with it. In the 50s, around 1,500 bodies were taken across Europe and Australia, often without the permission of the next of kin. Most of those stolen were children or younger. To hide the body snatching, one British mother was refused access by authorities to dress her daughter in a Christening gown in 1957 in case she discovered what the doctors had done.

#4: The Watergate Scandal
Perhaps the most well-known political conspiracy of all time, the Watergate Scandal was unthinkable when it occurred. The scandal began when Republican President Richard Nixon’s administration illegally wiretapped and broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters. Their aim was to acquire information about Nixon’s opposition in the forthcoming election. The arrest of the perpetrators led to attempts by Nixon and his administration to cover-up their involvement. However, mounting evidence and leaks soon exploded into a scandal that has become a by-word for political disgrace - leading to Nixon’s resignation.

#3: The Government Is Spying on You
The common refrain of cranks and conspiracy nuts for decades has been that the government is watching our every move. And it’s not completely wrong. With the rise of smartphones and the internet, the government has unprecedented access to information on its citizens. In the wake of 9/11, the Bush administration initiated far-reaching mass surveillance programs - both foreign and domestic. The NSA’s activities in the years since have included sucking up and storing online history, emails, metadata, text messages, you name it. Edward Snowden revealed a lot of this info with his leaks, including how other governments were also implicated. Few believe that in the time since, governments have just given up.

#2: False Justification for War
In August 1964, the USS Maddox fired a warning shot as three North Vietnamese torpedo boats approached in the Gulf of Tonkin. After the torpedo boats opened fire, the Maddox sank all three. Two days later, the report of a second attack - known as the Gulf of Tonkin incident - prompted President Lyndon B. Johnson to authorize further military action in Vietnam. For years, people questioned this justification. It was eventually revealed that the second attack was imaginary, based on wrongly interpreted communications intercepts. It wasn’t the last dubious rationale for war. In 1990, George H. W. Bush leveraged false testimony crafted by a public relations firm to initiate the Gulf War. Over a decade later, his son would falsely claim that Iraq possessed WMDs to justify an invasion.

#1: The C.I.A. Conducted Mind Control Experiments
The idea of a government agency trying to control people’s minds might sound like science-fiction, but it really happened! In the 1970s, a commission on the CIA’s activities within the US exposed the existence of Project MKUltra, a secret program that used drugs and torture to manipulate its’ victims’ mental states. These experiments were conducted on prisoners in secret detention centers around the world, as well as within American universities, hospitals, and prisons. The CIA also funded brutal experiments involving electroconvulsive therapy in Montreal, Canada. Victims of MKUltra included Ken Kesey and Allen Ginsberg. It’s one of the darkest conspiracies out there, and we still don’t know the full extent of it.

Which of these conspiracies do you find most disturbing? Let us know in the comments