Jon Lewis - The Mammoth Book of Cover-Ups

This is the boom time of conspiracy theory. 9/11, the War on Terror, the death of Diana, Opus Dei (as featured in Dan Brown’s bestselling conspiracy novel The Da Vinci Code): the list of conspiracies seemingly perpetrated by “them” against “us” goes on endlessly. More and more people subscribe to alternative histories of events, such as Michael Moore’s celebrated documentary Fahrenheit 9/11, and less and less do people accept the word of the establishment—of government, business, the Church—at face value.

The conspiracy theory “boom” has been rolling towards us and gathering pace since 22 November 1963, when President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. That the most famous man in the world could be murdered in broad Texan sunlight by a “lone gunman” beggared belief. A sense of innocence was lost that day. It was beaten into oblivion by the succession of American figures who were also, supposedly, assassinated by “lone gunmen”: Robert F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X. The proof that there was something rotten in the state of Western politics came in the next decade. Watergate.

Of course, there were conspiracies and assumed conspiracies before 1963: some considered the Bolsheviks a product of conspiracy, others the Jews, yet others the Freemasons and yet more the bankers of Wall Street. Hitler’s Nazis indisputably conspired to burn the Reichstag, put the blame on the Communists, and so engineer a coup d’état. But in 1963 paranoia began to eat away at the soul of society. Conspiracy theories spread from the fringe into the centre of the body politic.

The word “conspiracy” comes from the Latin conspirare, meaning “to breathe together”. But everybody understands its time-amended meaning of two or more individuals secretly plotting and perpetrating an action that would be widely considered negative or harmful to specific individuals, or to society as a whole. Nobody conspires to do something good, like feed the poor. Conspiracy theory is the how and the why of the plot, and the mechanics of the cover-up. Almost without exception the alternative conspiracy theory of history proposes that any large-scale or far-reaching event was not the result of chance or of accident, or of the widely accepted view of its cause, but of some secret plan by someone, somewhere.

Or the event didn’t happen. Period. Thus Hitler still lives. As does Elvis (whose name is a natty anagram of LIVES).

It has been said that conspiracy theory is the new religion. With the decline of a widespread belief in God, people seek the guilty hand of man (or alien invaders) in unfathomable events. The new power is a secret cabal. This cabal goes under numerous names (and its composition depends on the political eye of the beholder) and paradoxically the smaller a cabal is suspected of being, the more powerful its hold is thought to be. The Illuminati, the Bilderberg Group, the Trilateral Commission are just three of the tiny elites believed to pull the strings of the entire world.

If conspiracy theory is the new religion, the new medium for spreading its word is the internet. Once upon a printed-piece-of-paper time, counter beliefs would spread oh so slowly, via samizdat magazines and word of mouth. Nowadays a variant thought, conjecture, a piece of evidence from anybody with access to a PC and a telephone line is transmitted around the globe in seconds. Dissemination of material over the internet mainly sidesteps the censorship of states and companies. It’s a space where the truth can emerge into the light.

The internet is also a democracy of fools, where everybody’s opinion is aired as though of equal merit: a cyberspace where the lunatic and the malicious weigh in at the same weight as the rational, concerned citizen. Just as some people believe just about every conspiracy theory punted their way, the madness of some internet-borne conspiracy theories produces an opposite reaction: numerous rational citizens disbelieve every conspiracy theory they encounter. It’s the fear of association. After all, who wants to be connected even remotely with David Icke’s shape-shifting lizards or the Aryan supremacists who reckon that Adolf Hitler is currently shacked up in an ice-cave in Antarctica?

Hostility to conspiracy theory is as useless in understanding the world as an indiscriminate acceptance of it. The task, surely, is to disentangle the mad and bad conspiracies from those that illuminate the darkened, secret corners of power. To this end The Mammoth Book of Cover-Ups takes a considered, objective scalpel to one hundred of the most compelling conspiracy theories of modern times. The theories are arranged alphabetically, assessed and interrogated. Where appropriate, the relevant documents are reproduced, and details of where to look to find out more are listed. Each conspiracy theory is assigned an “Alert Level” rating indicating its likely veracity.

But this is only an indication: the reader must make up his or her own mind.

It’s only “them” who tell you what you must believe.

Jon E. Lewis

2008

They’re not out there. They’re here…

Early morning, 19 September 1961. Betty and Barney Hill are driving home from vacation in Niagara Falls. On Route 3 south of Lancaster, New Hampshire, the Hills notice a bright light in the sky which seems to be following them. Perplexed, Barney halts the car and gets out and recognizes the white light as a UFO; inside the alien craft Barney Hill can clearly see beings looking out at him. When Barney approaches within 75 feet (23m) of the flying saucer a door in the craft opens and Barney, fearing he is going to be captured, runs back to the car and drives off. A little while later the Hills hear a strange bleeping sound and the car is enveloped in white haze. Suddenly the Hills realize they are miles from where they should be. Later, after the Hills reach home, they discover the journey has taken two hours more than it ought.

The next day Betty Hill contacted the local Air Force base; their experience was in due course recorded in Project Blue Book,albeit only in the “insufficient data” section. But more data was forthcoming when the Hills, suffering nightmares and insomnia, sought out a psychiatrist. Dr Benjamin Simon gave Betty and Barney separate courses of hypnotic therapy, during which they both recalled being kidnapped by small grey humanoids and taken aboard the UFO. The mystery of the missing two hours was now explained: the Hills had been abducted by aliens, who communicated with them by telepathy. A sort of pregnancy test was conducted by the aliens on Betty Hill, who was also shown an astral chart; the aliens pointed to a star which Betty deduced was the home sun of the space travellers. After their examination, the Hills were replaced in their car and sent on their way.

There had been one previous reported case of alien kidnap (in 1957 by the Brazilian Antonio Villas-Boas, who claimed that his female alien captor had sex with him), but it was the Hills’ case which truly began the alien abduction phenomenon. Written up with the help of author John G. Fuller, the Hills’ account of their close encounter, The Interrupted Journey, was a bestseller. The episode contained all the core elements of later abductions: missing time; it happens at night; paralysis; examination by the aliens, with resultant inexplicable marks left on victim’s skin; telepathic communication with the aliens; post-abduction sleep disorders…