The Encyclopedia of Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theories

433 Pages·2010·6.41 MB·English

by  Newton, Michael

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF
C O N S P I R A C I E S
AND CONSPIRACY
T H E O R I E S
Michael Newton
For Harold Weisberg
The Encyclopedia of Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theories
Copyright © 2006 by Michael Newton
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Newton, Michael, 1951–
The encyclopedia of conspiracies and conspiracy theories / by Michael Newton.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0–8160–5540–8 (hc: alk. paper)
1. Conspiracies—Encyclopedias. I. Title.
HV6275.N49 2004
364.1’03—dc222004004284
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Contents
Preface iv
Entries A–Z 1
Bibliography 398
Index 404
Preface
Black’s Law Dictionary defines a conspiracy as “a The fact that thousands of conspiracies exist
combination or confederacy between two or more and have been amply documented does not mean, of
persons formed for the purpose of committing, by course, that every theoretical conspiracy is true.
their joint efforts, some unlawful or criminal act.” Some are absurd, transparently ridiculous, or even
That is it, in a nutshell—and the marvel of modern physically impossible. A number of the plots detailed
journalism is that virtually any suggestion of an within these pages seem to be half tawdry jest
active conspiracy provokes knee-jerk charges of and half distilled insanity. Unfortunately for the
“paranoia,” “eccentricity,” or outright “delusional critics of “conspiratorial thinking,” some of the
insanity.” silliest plans are also among the best-documented,
In fact, we are surrounded by conspiracies each confessed by their authors and verified from declas-
day, around the world, in every walk of life. Each sified government files.
time a pair of thieves goes shoplifting, it is a conspir- Who, in real life, would plot to embarrass a
acy. Wherever prostitutes and pushers meet with national leader by dusting his clothes with depilatory
johns and junkies, conspiracies thrive and multiply. powder to make his hair fall out? Or by lacing his
Each time a bribe is offered and accepted, anywhere favorite cigars with hallucinogenic drugs to make
criminals or corrupt politicians plot illicit backroom him babble incoherently on television? Who would
deals for their own benefit, wherever police ignore ever think to kill a famous skin diver by planting
the commission of crime—there lies conspiracy. explosive seashells along his favorite beach? What
Illegal plots are hatched within the best and worst twisted mind would surgically implant microphones
of families, in seedy bars and Fortune 500 board- inside a stray cat and then release the cat on the
rooms, at the Pentagon and in the nests of radicals grounds of a hostile embassy?
who scheme against the government. The White House The answer to all four of those questions is the
has been both a target and a hotbed of conspiracy in same: the CIA. Within living memory, our “master
modern times. Some famous (or notorious) organiza- spies” devoted countless hours and untold taxpay-
tions are conspiratorial by definition—the Mafia, the ers’ dollars to these and other bizarre schemes:
Ku Klux Klan, and the CIA are only three examples “remote viewing” by psychic spies, mind control via
out of thousands. Other institutions, though created LSD, and assembly-line production of hypnotized
to deter illegal actions, have themselves become cor- “robot” assassins. By 1976, in the wake of Water-
rupted over time, committing more crimes than they gate, the Vietnam War and congressional hearings on
solve. Some individuals and institutions are the illegal domestic surveillance, citizens in the Land of
authors and the targets of conspiracies: The late the Free had to ask themselves if there was any dif-
President John F. Kennedy provides a case in point. ference between truth and illusion, between conspir-
In fact, it may be said that active plotters, by virtue acy and government business as usual.
of their lifestyles, are most likely to become the focus As conspiracies vary in scope and intent, so the
of hostile conspiracies (a lesson some leaders of selection of topics for the work in hand has been
organized crime have learned only during the final arbitrarily confined to significant conspiracies and
moments of their violent lives). conspiracy theories. The author defines that term to
iv
Preface
mean any plot (or suspected plot) that involves or tion of conspiracy, and allegations of such actions
affects large numbers of people, or that, while hav- are included here. Likewise, while some hoaxes,
ing a limited direct impact, still inspires widespread practical jokes, and publicity stunts stop short of
interest or comment. An example of the first variety crossing the line into fraud, their impact on society
would be the Iran-contra conspiracy, in which two may be profound and deleterious, thus warranting
successive presidents violated federal law, obstructed inclusion here.
justice, and condoned illegal sale of weapons and Entries in this encyclopedia are alphabetically
narcotics to pursue an outlawed terrorist campaign arranged. They include short biographies of conspir-
abroad. The latter might include a claim that John ators and victims, profiles of conspiratorial organi-
Dillinger (America’s most famous outlaw of the zations and movements, brief histories of nations
1930s) escaped his final shootout with police and that have spawned or suffered from conspiracies
left a hapless double to die in his place. Both plots (and which has not?), descriptions of specific con-
pervert the course of justice, one threatening the very spiratorial events, and general essays on social, polit-
soul of the republic, with the other being a mere ical, or religious movements of a conspiratorial
sideshow, and both are offered here—if nothing else, nature. The appearance of a name or term in SMALL
for sheer variety. CAPITALSdenotes a subject with its own discrete entry
As indicated by this volume’s title, some conspira- in the text. “Blind” entries also direct the reader to
cies detailed within its pages may exist only in the- entries containing information on the subject listed
ory, lacking any sort of “smoking gun” that would (e.g., Billy the Kid—See UNDEADOUTLAWS). The bibli-
permit indictment, trial, and conviction of suspected ography is limited to sources published or translated
plotters—where, in fact, conspirators are even in the English language, and while extensive, it is by
named. Inclusion of those theories here, as theories, no means exhaustive. Most of the works listed there
does not constitute endorsement either by the contain their own bibliographies, replete with fur-
author or his publishers. In every case, the allega- ther leads to this or that conspiracy theory.
tions have been previously published elsewhere; Thanks are due to Dave Frasier at Indiana Univer-
those sources may be found in the work’s extensive sity for his generous assistance with various points of
bibliography. research. Every effort has been made to make the
In a similar vein, while legal definitions of con- work in hand as timely and complete as possible, but
spiracy require the plotting of a crime, society conspiracy theories evolve and mutate with the speed
accepts a broader meaning that includes any covert of e-mail in this Internet age. Readers are invited to
combination against the public interest, whether submit corrections and any pet conspiracy theories
or not laws are broken. Thus, it may not be a crime of their own to the author in care of Facts On File.
to pay off inventors and suppress their inventions— Barring a request for anonymity, any material used
a superefficient carburetor, say, or a cure for AIDS— in future editions of this work will be publicly
but such actions clearly fall within the wider defini- acknowledged.
v

A
ABBAS,Abu (1948–2004) in hiding until 1996 when Israeli authorities permit-
One of the world’s most notorious terrorists prior to ted him to settle in the Gaza Strip as part of the
the advent of Osama bin Laden (see BIN LADEN endless Middle East “peace process.” Abbas pub-
FAMILY), Abu Abbas was born in 1948 in a Syrian licly embraced nonviolence, while U.S. and Italian
refugee camp for Arabs who were expelled from authorities ignored him. U.S. troops captured Abbas
ISRAEL. He studied at Damascus University and was in April 2003 after they invaded Baghdad as part of
recruited by the Popular Front for the Liberation of OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM. His death in U.S. cus-
Palestine in 1968. After guerrilla training in the tody was announced in February 2004, with jailers
Soviet Union, Abbas joined the newly formed Pales- blaming his demise on natural causes while the late
tine Liberation Front and engaged in bitter conflict prisoner’s widow called his death an assassination.
between rival Palestinian groups in LEBANON. He
subsequently allied himself with Yasser Arafat and
Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). In AFGHANISTAN
1981, Abbas was credited with planning the hang- Darius I and Alexander the Great were the first con-
glider attack on an oil refinery at Haifa, Israel. A querors to visit Afghanistan, followed by Muslim
year later, when the PLO was exiled to Tunisia, invaders in the seventh century, Genghis Khan (13th
Abbas was elected to the group’s ruling executive century) and Tamerlane (14th century). Four hun-
committee. In October 1985 U.S. authorities named dred years later, the “great game” between England
Abbas as the mastermind of the Achille Lauro and RUSSIA for control of central Asia sparked three
hijacking, during which an American hostage was Afghan Wars (1839–42, 1878–80, and 1919). Britain
murdered. Abbas negotiated the surrender of four was victorious, granting Afghani independence in
hijackers in that case and joined them on a flight to 1919, and the monarchy of Emir Amanullah was
Tunisia, where they were supposed to be “disci- founded in 1926.
plined” by PLO leaders. That flight was intercepted The Afghan front remained peaceful until the cold
by U.S. warplanes, with Abbas and the hijackers war prompted King Mohammed Zahir Shah to
jailed by Italian authorities, but Abbas was released accept financial aid from the Soviet Union. A royal
to Yugoslavia on October 12, 1985. From there, cousin, Mohammed Daud Khan, dethroned the king
he reportedly flew to Baghdad, IRAQ. An Italian in 1973 and was himself unseated by rival Noor
court subsequently convicted Abbas in absentia and Taraki five years later. Taraki and successor Babrak
sentenced him to life imprisonment, but he remained Karmal tried to establish a Communist state, but
1
AFRICAN National Congress
Islamic rebels (mujahideen) violently opposed the 2003 when American planes bombed a residential
move. Fearing defeat, Karmal requested Soviet mili- district in eastern Afghanistan, killing 11 civilians.
tary aid; Moscow responded with a full-scale inva- Curiously, while U.S. spokesmen claimed that
sion in December 1979. suppression of Afghanistan’s heroin network was
Enter the United States, with heavy covert aid for a major secondary goal of Operation Enduring
the mujahideen (whose ranks included Osama bin Freedom, drug smuggling has increased dramatically
Laden and the future leaders of AL-QAEDA). Armed since the U.S. invasion in 2001. By February 2002
and trained by the CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY Afghanistan supplied an estimated 75 percent of the
(CIA) and U.S. Special Forces, financed in equal parts world’s total heroin supply, and 90 percent of all
by U.S. aid and international HEROIN sales, the heroin found in Great Britain. According to various
mujahideen waged bloody guerrilla war against the sources including the UNITEDNATIONS,Afghan heroin
Russians until April 1988, when diplomats from the production decreased by 91 percent under Taliban
United States, the Soviet Union, Afghanistan, and rule and then soared again in the wake of the U.S.
PAKISTAN agreed to cut off foreign support for invasion, until Afghanistan surpassed MYANMAR as
Afghani combatants. Russian troops withdrew in the world’s foremost producer of opium and its illicit
February 1989, leaving the pro-Soviet regime of derivatives. U.S. authorities have no comment on the
President Najibullah in nominal command of the curious trend, except to note (in May 2003) that
nation. Islamic rebels deposed Najibullah in April “most of the heroin that winds up in New York City
1992 and then turned on each other as rival drug- comes from COLOMBIA.” Critical observers note dis-
dealing warlords battled for supremacy. Amid the turbing parallels between Afghanistan and VIETNAM,
chaos, a group of extreme Muslim fundamentalists where CIA agents and their warlord clients collabo-
(the Taliban) seized the capital in September 1996 rated on heroin smuggling throughout the 1960s.
and imposed a system of religious statutes that The situation remained volatile in the first half of
included death by stoning for adultery and severing 2005 when an unsubstantiated report in Newsweek
of hands for theft. By 1998 the Taliban controlled 90 claimed that U.S. soldiers had desecrated copies of
percent of Afghanistan, though its regime was recog- the Koran at the Guantánamo Bay prison camp in
nized only by Pakistan, SAUDIARABIA,and the United order to intimidate prisoners. The article sparked
Arab Emirates. riots in Afghanistan and other parts of the Muslim
Global isolation made Afghanistan a fertile breed- world that resulted in several deaths and extensive
ing ground for radical groups and heroin smugglers. property destruction. Newsweek later retracted the
Bin Laden and al-Qaeda used Afghanistan as a article when no evidence could be located to backup
launching pad for acts of TERRORISM, culminating in the claim and it appeared their initial source was
the PENTTBOM attacks of September 11, 2001, unreliable. Much of the Muslim world reacted to the
whereupon President George W. Bush invaded the retraction with skepticism.
country and unseated the Taliban regime (missing See also BINLADENFAMILY; BUSHDYNASTY.
bin Laden in the process). U.S. conduct during that
military action—dubbed “Operation Enduring Free-
dom”—remains highly controversial. Several hun- AFRICAN National Congress
dred Afghan prisoners of war were transferred to a The African National Congress (ANC) was created
U.S. military base in Cuba, where they remain today at Bloemfontein, SOUTHAFRICA,on January 8, 1912,
without criminal charges being filed; the White to defend the rights of the nation’s black majority
House refuses to identify the captives. One prisoner from dominant racist whites. Its first campaign was
who was released, Pakistani national Mohammad limited to opposing passage of the 1913 Land Act,
Sagheer, claimed in November 2002 that some 7,000 which barred black Africans from owning land in
POWs died in U.S. custody before or during trans- broadly defined “white areas” of South Africa. That
portation to the mysterious “Camp X-Ray” in Cuba. effort failed, and the ANC stagnated until 1944
Meanwhile, military action continues in “liberated” when a new and more militant ANC Youth League
Afghanistan, where a U.S. air strike killed 50 mem- was organized by activists Nelson Mandela, Oliver
bers of a wedding party in Oruzgan Province in Tambo, and Walter Sisulu. The revitalized ANC
2002. Another tragic “accident” occurred in April sponsored nonviolent mass action against South
2
AGENTOrange
Africa’s increasingly racist legislation, forging an A curious sideshow to mainstream activities
alliance to that end in 1947 with the Natal Indian involves the controversial career of Nelson Man-
Congress and the Transvaal Indian Congress. dela’s ex-wife. Winnie Mandela was charged with
In 1948, neofascist elements with ties to the lately attempted murder in 1991, following the disappear-
defeated THIRD REICH organized South Africa’s ance of a young bodyguard whose torture and death
National Party to inaugurate a sweeping system of she allegedly ordered. In the absence of a corpse, she
apartheid (Afrikaans for “separateness” of the was acquitted of the primary charge, but jurors con-
races), and the next four years saw black rights victed her of kidnapping. The court imposed a sus-
steadily erode on all fronts. In June 1952 the ANC pended sentence for that offense, but Mrs. Mandela’s
joined other antiapartheid groups for a Defiance legal problems continued. On April 25, 2003, she
Campaign of civil disobedience, but that effort was was convicted on 43 counts of fraud and 25 counts
scuttled in April 1953 by a new law banning protest of theft, receiving a five-year prison term. Court
meetings. In June 1955 a “Congress of the People” watchers predicted that she would serve a maximum
held at Kliptown, near Johannesburg, adopted the of eight months in jail.
Freedom Charter that would henceforth serve as the
primary document of opposition to apartheid.
Sweeping arrests in 1956 jailed 156 leaders of the AGENT Orange
ANC and allied groups, but all were acquitted at “Agent Orange” was the code name used for a pow-
their “treason trial” in 1961. ANC leader Albert erful herbicide employed by the U.S. military during
Luthuli won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1960, but the the VIETNAM War. The name derives from an orange
ANC was soon outlawed in South Africa, its mem- band painted around metal drums that contained the
bers driven underground by accusations of TERROR- product. Although initially developed in the 1940s, it
ISMand sedition. was not seriously tested for application in tropical
Once banned from legitimate discourse, the ANC climates until the early 1960s. By 1971, when its use
had no choice but to adopt armed struggle as a was discontinued, an estimated 20 million gallons of
method to depose apartheid. In 1961, its leaders Agent Orange were sprayed in Vietnam, either by
organized Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation) hand or (more commonly) in mass drops from air-
to wage war against the racist power structure in craft. (The motto of one airborne chemical unit:
South Africa. Nelson Mandela was arrested in 1962 “Only You Can Prevent Forests.”)
and sentenced to life imprisonment, along with Wal- Agent Orange was a 50–50 mix of two chemicals,
ter Sisulu and other ANC leaders, at trial in 1964. commonly known as 2,4–D and 2,4,5–T. The com-
Oliver Tambo subsequently established the ANC’s bined product was mixed with kerosene or diesel fuel
government in exile, fielding an estimated force of before dispersal in widespread “deforestation” cam-
6,000 guerrillas from bases in ANGOLA, MOZAM- paigns. A variant form (dubbed “Orange II” or
BIQUE, and ZAMBIA. The ANC forged close ties with “Super Orange”), used in Vietnam during 1968–69,
the banned South African Communist Party, and its combined chemicals 2,4–D and 2,4,5–T. Early health
central party document, the Manifesto of the Azan- concerns surrounding Agent Orange focused on con-
ian People, described the ANC’s primary goal as the tamination of the product with TCDD, a form of
destruction of “racial capitalism” in South Africa. dioxin related to the dibenzofurans and pcb’s. Some
Three decades of struggle and repression climaxed dioxins occur in nature and may be harmless, but
on February 2, 1990, when President F.W. de Klerk TCDD has produced a wide variety of diseases in lab
lifted the ANC’s ban. Nelson Mandela won the testing on animals, including several ailments fatal to
Nobel Peace Prize in 1993, and majority rule was humans.
restored to the nation in 1994. That April, the ANC Beginning in the late 1960s, Vietnamese natives
won a landslide victory in South Africa’s first inte- complained that Agent Orange and other military
grated election, to become the nation’s ruling party. defoliants were killing livestock and producing birth
Mandela served as president until 1999, when he deformities in humans. The Pentagon ignored those
was succeeded by Thabo Mbeki. The ANC also claims and likewise struck a pose of denial in the
holds an elected majority in eight of the country’s postwar years when U.S. veterans displayed abnor-
nine provinces. mally high rates of cancer and other diseases linked
3