Why do people believe in conspiracy theories, or why does Tom exist...

[sgreger1]

Why do people like Tom exist? What about truthwolf, what about ME? Why Americans in particular seem to love conspiracy theories. Is there just a lot of nuts in America? Is everyone living such a good life, so free of problems that they have to make up imaginary threats? Do we just read to much science fiction, or is it hollywood's fault?

The asnwer to this question that i'm sure some of you have asked in the past is simple: Our country in particular is riddled with a long history of actual conspiracies that did happen and are now admitted to. Many of these conspiracies are the basis for other spin-off conspiracies which may or may not be real, but they are all for the most part based on something that actually did happen in the united states.

What conspiracy theories ever turned outt o be true you ask? Here I will list a few of the many conspiracy theories that the government has not admitted to. Conspiracy theories lasting over 4 or 5 decades, billions of dollars spent etc. I will not reference anything that cannot be absolutely proven with actual government documents. If anyone wants me to elaborate on any of these please let me know, and if you think one of these is fake, please post something that supports your position.


Reason's America believes in conspiracy theories:

The Manhattan Project: This is possibly the biggest of all conspiracy theories. The government managed to keep this project secret for 25 years, and spent $2 billion dollars (in today's dollars that's $22 billion) without anyone noticing. The media never reported on it, the government never admitted it, and people had no idea. To add to it, they employed 130,000 people who all stayed quiet, and managed to spend the equivalent of 22 billion dollars off the record in order to bring the atom bomb to life. It started in 1939 and ended in 1946, with it's most active period occuring between 1942-1946 when it fell under the control of the U.S. Army Corp of engineers. All done in secret.

The Mafia: This secret crime society was virtually unknown until the 1960s, when member Joe Valachi first revealed the society's secrets to law enforcement officials.What was known was that organized crime existed, but not that the extent of their control included working with the CIA, politicians and the biggest businesses in the world.

^^^ (This is why many people believe in the concept that secret groups of organized crime syndicates, be they individuals or bankers or corporations, can manage to pull off elaborate amounts of control over things without anyone knowing or being able to prove it to the world. The mob worked with the CIA, politicians, the police etc, but operated for years in the shadows.)

Operation Mockingbird: In the 50's - 70's, the CIA paid a number of well-known domestic and foreign journalists (from big-name media outlets like Time, The Washington Post, The New York Times, CBS and others) to publish CIA propaganda. The CIA also reportedly funded at least one movie, the animated "Animal Farm," by George Orwell. The Church Committee finally exposed the activities in 1975.

Operation Northwoods: In the early 1960s, American military leaders drafted plans to create public support for a war against Cuba, to oust Fidel Castro from power. The plans included committing acts of terrorism in U.S. cities, killing innocent people and U.S. soldiers, blowing up a U.S. ship, assassinating Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees, and hijacking planes. The plans were all approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but were reportedly rejected by the civilian leadership, then kept secret for nearly 40 years.

Author James Bamford, "A Pretext For War", discusses the declassified "Operation Northwoods" documents revealing that in 1962 the CIA was planning to stage phony terrorist attacks on the US and blame it on Cuba to start a war

^^^ (This is why the 9-11 truth movement is so strong. Because we know the government is willing to pull of fake terrorist attacks to go to war. Operation Northwoods was signed of by the Join Chiefs of Staff for God's sake. They kept it secret for 40 freaking years without anyone knowing about it. )

The Tuskegee Syphilis Study: The United States Public Health Service carried out this clinical study on 400 poor, African-American men with syphilis from 1932 to 1972. During the study the men were given false and sometimes dangerous treatments, and adequate treatment was intentionally withheld so the agency could learn more about the disease. While the study was initially supposed to last just six months, it continued for 40 years.

Counter Intelligence Programs against activists in the 60's: COINTELPRO was a series of covert, and often illegal, projects conducted by the FBI aimed at investigating and disrupting dissident political organizations within the United States. According to FBI records, 85% of COINTELPRO resources were expended on infiltrating, disrupting, marginalizing, and/or subverting groups suspected of being subversive, such as communist and socialist organizations; the women's rights movement; militant black nationalist groups, and the non-violent civil rights movement, including individuals such as Martin Luther King, Jr. and others associated with the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, the Congress of Racial Equality, the American Indian Movement, and other civil rights groups; a broad range of organizations labeled "New Left", including Students for a Democratic Society, the National Lawyers Guild, the Weathermen, almost all groups protesting the Vietnam War, and even individual student demonstrators with no group affiliation; and nationalist groups such as those "seeking independence for Puerto Rico." The other 15% of COINTELPRO resources were expended to marginalize and subvert "white hate groups," including the Ku Klux Klan and National States' Rights Party. The directives governing COINTELPRO were issued by FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, who ordered FBI agents to "expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize" the activities of these movements and their leaders.


Main Core: A database maintained since the 1980s by the federal government of the United States, which contains personal and financial data of millions of U.S. citizens believed to be threats to national security. The data, which comes from the NSA, FBI, CIA, and other sources, is collected and stored without warrants or court orders.

The Main Core database originated with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in 1982, following Ronald Reagan's Continuity of Operations plan outlined in the National Security Directive (NSD) 69 / National Security Decision Directive (NSDD) 55, entitled "Enduring National Leadership," implemented on September 14, 1982.

As of 2008 there are reportedly eight million Americans listed in the database as possible threats, often for trivial reasons, whom the government may choose to track, question, or detain in a time of crisis.

^^^^^^ ( Couple this witht eh patriot act and Obama's internet patriot act and you see why people are always coming up with conspiracy theories about how the government is watching you. 8 million people who can be tracked, question, or detained without warrant or reason because they are all suspected terrorists or other "threats to national security"? That's insane.)

[sgreger1]

Rex 84: short for Readiness Exercise 1984, is a plan by the United States federal government to test their ability to detain large numbers of American citizens in case of civil unrest or national emergency.

The exercise anticipated civil disturbances, major demonstrations and strikes that would affect continuity of government and/or resource mobilization. To fight subversive activities, there was authorization for the military to implement government ordered movements of civilian populations at state and regional levels, the arrest of certain unidentified segments of the population, and the imposition of martial law.
Rex 84 was mentioned during the Iran-Contra Hearings in 1987.

Exercises similar to Rex 84 happen regularly. Plans for roundups of large numbers of persons in the United States in times of crisis are constructed during periods of increased political repression such as the Palmer Raids and the McCarthy Era.

For example, from 1967 to 1971 the FBI kept a list of over 100,000 persons to be rounded up as subversive, dubbed the "ADEX" list. This list contained many labor leaders, scholars, and public figures of the time.

In 2008, for the first time an active military unit has been given a dedicated assignment stateside for civil unrest containment. It is assigned to Northcom, a joint command established in 2002 to provide command and control for federal homeland defense efforts and coordinate defense support of civil authorities.


^^^^^^ (This is where the FEMA camp scare comes from. When the military does exercises simulating the mass round-ups of civilians into camps because of civil unrest, people naturally start to assume that the government is planning for a situation like this. While I think most FEMA conspiracies are overblown, it is a fact that the government has considered the option and even executed readiness training for it in the past.


Iran-Contra: In 1985 and '86, the White House authorized government officials to secretly trade weapons with the Israeli government that were then secretly traded with Iran in exchange for the release of U.S. hostages held in Iran. The funds from the trades were then used to help finance the illegal war in Nicaragua. The plot was uncovered by Congress in 1987.

During Iran Contra, drug smuggling by the CIA was uncovered and to this day the United States population is largely unaware of the findings of this information.


CIA Drug Running in LA: Nicaraguan drug traffickers sold and distributed crack cocaine in Los Angeles during the 1980s, and that drug profits were used to fund the CIA-supported Nicaraguan Contras. The CIA was aware of the cocaine transactions and the large shipments of cocaine into the U.S. by the Contra personnel.


The Gulf of Tonkin Never Happened: In 2005, an internal National Security Agency historical study was declassified; it concluded that USS Maddox had engaged the North Vietnamese on August 2, but that there may not have been any North Vietnamese vessels present during the engagement of August 4. The report stated “It is not simply that there is a different story as to what happened; it is that no attack happened that night…”In truth, Hanoi's navy was engaged in nothing that night but the salvage of two of the boats damaged on August 2.In 1965, President Johnson commented privately: "For all I know, our Navy was shooting at whales out there."

^^^^ (This was the single most important reason for the escalation of the Vietnam War) We faked an attack to gain public support. Again, this is why shit like 9-11 truth movements exist.

MK Ultra: In the 1950s to the 1970s, the CIA ran a mind-control project aimed at finding a "truth serum" to use on communist spies. Test subjects were given LSD and other drugs, often without consent, and some were tortured. At least one man, civilian biochemist Frank Olson, who was working for the government, died as a result of the experiments. The project was finally exposed after investigations by the Rockefeller Commission.


The Shah of Iran: After the leader of Iran nationalized the oil fields in 1951 which led to BP losign a LOT of money, the United States overthrew their government and backed the return of the Shah, one of the most brutal dictators the country had ever seen. The Iranians eventually overthrew the Shah and replaced him with a new form of government, an anti-West Islamic Republic. Ayatollah Khomeini led a violently anti-American revolution, which even lead to them taking hostages at the US Embassy. This was reported in the American media as the rise of radical Islam in Iran, not as them taking back their country from a US installed puppet government that we installed because it was friendly to our oil interests.

CIA Assasinations: After watergate, the CHURCH Comittee (United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities) was commissioned after the watergate scandal. The Committee uncovered, among many other things, that the CIA had violated its charter to perform only gathering of intelligence.

For example, the assassinations of Allende in Chile and Mossadegh in Iran. Assassinations against Central and South American leaders and revolutionaries, as well as Africa, Middle East and East Asia.The list was tremendous.They even declassified a “Heart Attack Gun” the Agency had made for the use of killing someone without it being detected.Cancer, car accidents, skiing accidents, suicide, boating accidents, heart attacks, and just plain being shot were common assassination methods.The hearings, although recorded in full in congressional record, the mainstream media and official policies, is still largely not taught in American schools on recent history.


^^^^ (This is why conspiracy theorists always think that the government is out killing people they don't like or who "speak the truth" as they would say. Because the CIA really did do things like fake deaths to make them look like accidents, and even went to the extent of creating a custom assasination gun that created an untraceable heart attack in whomever they used it on, so that it would look like the person died of natural causes. This is why so many outspoken individuals die of heart attacks at in-opertune times.)


The Kennedy Assasination: This one has no "official" proof, unlike the others. But we all know what happened, and therefore it goes into the list. Even the HSCA during the 2nd investigation of the assasination of JFK concluded that there was a "probable conspiracy". They found multiple connections between Ruby and the Mafia, and between Oswald and the CIA.

[sgreger1]

CIA Drug Smuggling in Arkansas: August 23, 1987, in a rural community just south of Little Rock, police officers murdered two teenage boys because they witnessed a police-protected drug drop.The drop was part of a drug smuggling operation based at a small airport in Mena, Arkansas. The Mena operation was set up in the early 1980's by the notorious drug smuggler, Barry Seal. Facing prison after a drug conviction in Florida, Seal flew to Washington, D.C., where he put together a deal that allowed him to avoid prison by becoming an informant for the government. As a government informant against drug smugglers, Seal testified he worked for the CIA and the DEA. In one federal court case, he testified that his income from March 1984 to August 1985, was between $700,000 and $800,000. This period was AFTER making his deal with the government. Seal testified that nearly $600,000 of this came from smuggling drugs while working for -- and with the permission of the DEA. In addition to his duties as an informant, Seal was used by CIA operatives to help finance the Nicaraguan Contras. The CIA connection to the Mena operation was undeniable when a cargo plane given to Seal by the CIA was shot down over Nicaragua with a load of weapons. In spite of the evidence, every investigator who has tried to expose the crimes of Mena has been professionally destroyed, and those involved in drug smuggling operations have received continued protection from state and federal authorities.


Bohemian Grove: For years, many conspiracy theorists were saying that the rich and powerful met every year in the woods and worshiped a giant stone owl in an occult fashion.It turns out, ABC, CBS, NBC, and many other credible news agencies investigated this and found out, its true.It is said to be just all fun and games, like brotherhood style fraternity stuff.These news clips can be viewed by clicking here.



Project Paperclip: The well known conspiracy to allow war criminals who worked as scientists for the Nazi's to be given fake identities and clean records in return for coming to work for the US's science team. President Truman said to not allow any scientists who supported the Nazi scheme, but it turned out that all the best scientists did and therefore the Office of Strategic Services just did it anyways despite his disaproval.


And last but not least, the real reason for this thread:


The Secret Team: The CIA and Its Allies in Control of the United States and the World is a book written by Air Force Col. L fletcher Prouty, published in 1973.From 1955 to 1963 Prouty was the "Focal Point Officer" for contacts between the CIA and the Pentagon on matters relating to military support for "black operations" but he was not assigned to the CIA and was not bound by any oath of secrecy. (From the first page of the 1974 Printing) It was one of the first tell-all books about the inner workings of the CIA and was an important influence on the Oliver Stone movie JFK. But the main thrust of the book is how the CIA started as a think tank to analyze intelligence gathered from military sources but has grown to the monster it has become. The CIA had no authority to run their own agents or to carry out covert operations but they quickly did both and much more.

This book tells about things they actually did and a lot about how the operate.In Prouty's own words, from the 1997 edition of The Secret Team: This is the fundamental game of the Secret Team. They have this power because they control secrecy and secret intelligence and because they have the ability to take advantage of the most modern communications system in the world, of global transportation systems, of quantities of weapons of all kinds, and when needed, the full support of a world-wide U.S. military supporting base structure. They can use the finest intelligence system in the world, and most importantly, they have been able to operate under the canopy of an assumed, ever-present enemy called "Communism." It will be interesting to see what "enemy" develops in the years ahead. It appears that "UFO's and Aliens" are being primed to fulfill that role for the future. To top all of this, there is the fact that the CIA, itself, has assumed the right to generate and direct secret operations. "He is not the first to allege that UFOs and Aliens are going to be used as a threat against the world to globalize the planet under One government.

[sgreger1]

In a country where such elaborate conspiracies can be carried out, some spanning decades, some using tens of billions of dollars in off-the-book money, and some inolving hundreds of thousands of accomplices all keeping quiet and never saying a word, does it surprise anyone that so many people believe in conspiracy theories today?

[lxskllr]

I've heard from a credible source that redundant projects are approved through the military, and the money is siphoned to the NSA so it can't be traced. In other words, the NSA's budget is much higher than it shows on paper due to diverted funds.

[sgreger1]

I've heard from a credible source that redundant projects are approved through the military, and the money is siphoned to the NSA so it can't be traced. In other words, the NSA's budget is much higher than it shows on paper due to diverted funds.

I wouldn't be surprised, in fact I think it is to be expected. One thing you will notice and that anyone who works in iraq will tell you is that often times the gov pays contracters waaaaaaaaaaaay more money than something is worth. Example: You work at some base repairing air conditioners or something. This operation is ran by a defense contractor. The defense contractor will order 3 inches of wire, and charge the gov $20. 3 screws, 10$ each. Etc etc. The gov pays this and the contractor recieves it. And once the contractor recieves the money it gives it's cut to whomever it is owed to. That way they are using military funding, which they know NO ONE will vote against or really audit, and using that to move money around into the hands of other. The whole thing gets written off as government innefficiency but we are talking numbers in the millions and billions.


I know for a fact, and it has to be a fact, that there is a whole off-the-records economy funding the NSA, CIA and probably some others. Money they can play with and no one will ask where it went. We saw it in the whole Nicaragua thing where the CIA was at a minimum allowing and even organizing the sale of narcotics in America to finance off-the-record projects. I wouldn't be surprised if half this middle east thing is about making money selling opium which can then be used for of-the-books CIA/NSA/DOD projects.


Shit, like I said they spent $22 billion (in today's dollars) on the manhattan project and no one noticed that lol. And the CIA has long been known to do rogue shit, they even established their own armed units which were not authorized, but that had access to the best technology, best weapons, and unaccounted for money.

[tom502]

Because they are true.

[raptor]

It's important to lend an ear to such conspiracy theories/questions about certain events, but one shouldn't live by assuming they're true.

[sgreger1]

In fact, if you havn't noticed, large quantities of money go missing ever few years. Be it all the money in the WTC or any of the other dozens of time it's happened, it all just goes missing. Billion and even trillions. Does anyone recall that AP new article earlier in the year that said of $10 billion spent on reconstruction in Iraq, 9.8 billion of it dissapeared and is unaccounted for? This money is going somewhere. The gov knows where it was going and want it to go there. If they didn't they would be looking under every rock to find where such a large amount of cash has gone.



Trillions missing from DoD

"We reported that DoD processed $1.1 trillion in unsupported accounting entries to DoD Component financial data used to prepare departmental reports and DoD financial statements for FY 2000."

David K. Steensma
Acting Assistant Inspector General
for Auditing for the DoD
US Dept of Defense (DoD)
February 26, 2002

Billions missing from HUD

"At the time we discontinued our audit work... An additional 242 adjustments totaling about $59.6 billion, were made to adjust fiscal year 1999 activity."

Susan Gaffney
HUD Inspector General
US Dept of Housing
& Urban Development (HUD)
March 22, 2000

See Rumsfeld "We cannot
track $2.3 trillion"

Unnacounted for money since Jan 1 2010:

$803,167,858,046



A General Accounting Office report found that the U.S. Army lost track of 56 airplanes, 32 tanks, and 36 Javelin missile command launch-units. Are planes, tanks and missiles running away from home?


Military waste under fire $1 trillion missing
San Francisco Chronicle, May 18, 2003:
http://www.sfgate.com







We're talking several trillion dollars in "lost" money over the past 10 years or less. That is a HUGE amount of money. Where is it going? What is the government spending several trillion dollars to finance OFF-THE-RECORD?

[truthwolf1]

great list! Sgreger.

My journey into the rabbit hole started about 5-6 years ago. I worked for a large local/national news organization and was daily reading all of the big national and local news stations everyday. Mainstream media was pretty much where all of my time went into like somebody who spends most of their time in sports,fiction,sci fi, games music or hollywood entertainment. NEWS was my thing. Anything alternative, conspiracy etc. was completely ignored. I think it could of been even a little smugness that I was working for a major big player in the news world.

One night at a party somebody told my there was this video called "In Plane Site", where they said it could not of been a plane hitting the Pentagon. I laughed it off and ended with that is just made for money thought. Conspiracy this or that books and just another guy making a buck. I even remember the day that I was looking for info about that video and debunking a lot of it. THe flash before the window and the missle under the plane type things.

This whole conspiracy world "right or wrong" just really kept peeking my interest. I feel like most of my life something was keeping me from diving into it but once I did it really has been awakening.

a lot of it also ends up becoming true!

[tom502]

I have that In Plane Site DVD, it's a good one. Everyone mentions Loose Change, but I think In Plane Site was better. I also was very impressed when Fox played that Moon Hoax special. Then I later looked up the verboten event, and it was full of holes. And of course the government has supressed UFO info from day one.

[Snusdog]

I think this thread is a conspiracy...................... to distract us from other threads that are more conspiratorial

[NonServiam]

LMAO at the name of this thread!....."why does Tom exist"

[tom502]

Have you noticed the George Adamski UFO is a Haunebu?

[sgreger1]

I have that In Plane Site DVD, it's a good one. Everyone mentions Loose Change, but I think In Plane Site was better. I also was very impressed when Fox played that Moon Hoax special. Then I later looked up the verboten event, and it was full of holes. And of course the government has supressed UFO info from day one.

All I know about the UFO thing is that SOMETHING is happening. Probably not as exotic as the speculators would assume (like claiming they'r aliens), but I know for a fact that there are disc shaped aircraft capable of extreme speeds, hovering, operating almost silently, and maneuvering in ways far advanced to anything that has ever been released to the publics eye. Normally I would immediately assume it's just some new US test craft but:

A) There are so many sightings each year that for this to be the US doing it, they would have to have a whole fleet of these things constantly flying over every country. And that seems kind of unrealistic, though not impossible
B) These things have been spotted since before planes were invented, and the observers always claim to see roughly the same design (the saucer shaped, cigar shape, triangle shape etc), leading me to believe that they are all relitavely the same models and have not been significantly improved on. Why? Why fly around the same tech for 100 years? With other aircraft the look of them changes every generation, but with these thing's it's always the same kind of aircraft. Plus it just doesn't make sense that these things would exist prior to flight being invented. I could accept the theory if we just started seing them in today's day and age, but we are talking sightings back when no such thing could have possible existed.


Something is happening but I really have no clue what to call it. So far it is being done in secret as these things never really interact with us, and no government admits to having them, yet all governments have an intelligence deparment that keeps track of the UFO phenomena etc. Kind of wierd if you ask me. But the fact governments allocate resources to following UFO reports tells for for sure that SOMETHING is happening and that it's not all swamp gas, street lights and venus up there.