secret flights of planes like the U-2, and then again in the late 1970s and early 1980s to link area 51 to UFOs through ‘fake’ documents and eye-witness accounts of alien technology and even alien bodies”.
The object of the disinformation was to mask the real reasons for the building of the base, namely the R&D of air-machines to best the Ruskies.
The Government, in other words, conspired to create a conspiracy theory.
David Darlington,
Eric Elfman,
Annie Jacobsen,
Phil Patton,
JULIAN ASSANGE
During 2010, the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks released troves of classified US cables. They made fascinating reading, and Joe and Josephine Public learned a thing or a hundred it never knew its government and allies were up to, from the US CIA’s 3,000-strong secret army in Afghanistan to Saudi Arabia’s plea for a missile strike on Iran. WikiLeaks justified the release of the information as being in the “public interest”, while embarrassed establishments in the West complained about the endangering of national security. Julian Assange, the Australian founder of WikiLeaks, became, depending on your point of view, a hero or an Osama bin-Laden-style bogeyman. In the latter camp, Sarah Palin called for the “anti-American” Assange to be pursued “with the same urgency we pursue al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders”. But Palin had a particular hard spot for WikiLeaks; the site had published her emails from her unsuccessful run for VeePee of the USA, one of its highest profile coups since its foundation in 2007.
Not long after Palin blew her hunting horn, the US Government announced its intention to try Assange under the Espionage Act of 1917. Then there were cyberspace sabotage attacks on WikiLeaks, the US Air Force started blocked access on its computers to any website which posted the cables (including the
To put the cherry on the conspiracy cake, Julian Assange was then arrested in Britain, at the request of Swedish prosecutors, on a completely unrelated matter. The Swedes maintained that Assange was guilty of rape, unlawful coercion and molestation in their bailiwick. Assange directly accused the US of smearing him on trumped- up charges; meanwhile, the two Stockholm women allegedly assaulted by Assange—who were left-wing fans of his—explicitly denied being “set up by the Pentagon or anyone else”. In a prime case of wheels within wheels, WikiLeaks staff apparently blocked Assange from using the site to claim he was a victim of a conspiracy in the Swedish case. Citing Assange’s autocratic style and courting of publicity, other staff left, others called for his replacement. Some defectors allied with a new site that published leaks about—WikiLeaks.
All, clearly, was not well down in WikiWorld. As WikiObservers sagely noted, the US might not need to conspire to destroy Assange and his operation. He might do that himself.
For his part Assange uploaded an “Insurance File” onto the internet, which is reputed to be bursting with more top secret government information. Only Assange knows the password, and this is to be released posthumously—should he suffer an “accident”.
Daniel Domscheit-Berg,
David Leigh and Luke Harding,
AUM SHINRIKYO
Nipponese yoga teacher Shoko Asahara founded the Aum Shinrikyo (“Supreme Truth”) sect in 1984 on a religious programme that combined Buddhism with Nostradamus and End-is-Nigh Christianity. A standard issue cult leader, Asahara boasted a beard, plus messianic powers (the ability to make the sick rise from their beds) and supernatural abilities. He couldn’t quite walk on water, but he could walk through walls, a feat made difficult for his followers because he made them scald their feet. Despite—or maybe because of—Asahara’s certifiable lunacy, Aum Shinrikyo attracted over 50,000 members. In the material world of Japan, it did at least offer something more than the pursuit of the yen. That said, like many a cult leader, Asahara was an accomplished businessman, raising sect funds through software enterprises and outright extortion at gunpoint.
Asahara promised the faithful that one day Aum Shinrikyo would rule Japan. When an electoral bid for power failed miserably in 1989, Asahara determined on a terrorist takeover instead. Representatives of Aum travelled to the HQ of the International Tesla Society in New York looking for documents detailing Tesla’s weapons of doom (see Free Electricity and HAARP) but the FBI had long before seized the brainbox’s research notes. Frustrated in their search for advanced sci-fi weaponry, Aum settled on buying arms from Russia (including a military helicopter), making an Ebola bomb and the building of chemical weapons. After murdering and assassinating individuals not to its taste, in 1994 Aum launched a mass sarin gas attack in the city of Matsumoto. Eight died. On 20 March 1995, Aum committed the deed by which it became internationally infamous: the attack on Tokyo Subway System with sarin nerve gas in which twelve people died and thousands were injured. Asahara was apprehended by the Japanese police and, after a lengthy trial, was sentenced to death. To date the sentence has not been carried out.
To no great surprise, the reviled Aum rebranded itself in 2000, becoming “Aleph”.
D. W. Bracket,
BAVARIAN ILLUMINATI
It is the conspiracy whose name hardly dare be spoken. Through front organizations such as the Freemasons and the Bilderberg Group, the Bavarian Illuminati are poised to usher in the New World Order.
Such is the fear of serried ranks of conspiracy theorists. The Illuminati, then, have come a long way since their foundation in the smallsville Bavarian town of Ingolstadt on 1 May 1776 by Professor Adam Weishaupt, a lecturer at the local university. Like other intellectual groups which flourished in the Enlightenment, the Ancient Illuminated Seers of Bavaria (a.k.a. the Illuminati, a.k.a. the Order of Perfectabilists) flirted with progressive and subversive ideas, not least atheism and republicanism. Initiates were required to undergo a rigorous study of philosophy, beginning with the Ancient Greeks and ending with contemporaries such as Helvetius; graduates, enlightened and eager, would then—went Weishaupt’s plan—enter leading positions in Bavarian government and society, and so transform Catholic Bavaria into a utopia of liberalism and rationality. Like other such groups, the Illuminati adopted esoteric rituals and signs, partly for reasons of security, partly for the excitement of clubability. Each member had a code name: Weishaupt was Spartacus, and his right-hand man Zwack was Cato.
