Random Conspiracy Theories That Turned Out To Be True (19 items)

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  (#1) Lincoln's Assassination

  The assassination of President Abraham Lincoln was not the act of a crazed lone gunman, but an organized conspiracy of four shooters to kill the president, vice-president, and Secretary of State in one massive coup.

  Only John Wilkes Booth successfully carried out his role, with the other two planned shootings resulting in Secretary of State William Seward being wounded, and Vice President Johnson being spared by the cowardice of his planned killer.
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  (#2) The Trusts of 19th Century America

  Up until the trust-busting presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, a small group of powerful and wealthy business owners conspired to monopolize their various interests. This was done through price-fixing, bribery, intimidation, union busting, and running small business into the ground through unfair competition. An enormous amount of wealth was eventually concentrated in a few giant combinations, called trusts, which were almost as powerful as the government.

  These trusts were eventually broken up through lawsuits and legislation, but many of their successor companies still corner the market today in oil, mining, manufacturing, and food production.
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  (#3) Lenin Returns to Russia

  With the tide of World War I starting to turn against the German Empire, drastic steps needed to be taken to get Russia out of the war and move its troops to the Western Front. In early 1917, German authorities allowed exiled communist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin to cross Germany from Switzerland to Sweden in a sealed railway car. German authorities hoped that the return of the anti-war Lenin to Russia would help overthrow the government and undermine the Russian war effort.

  Berlin was right, and thanks to the communist revolutionaries led by Lenin, Russia was out of the war less than a year later.
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  (#4) The Black Hand Assassinates Franz Ferdinand

  A secret society, called The Black Hand, made up of Serbian nationals seeking to unify various Serbian enclaves, conspired to assassinate the Austrian Archduke. Their goal was to break off the southern Slavic provinces of Austria-Hungary and create a unified Slavic nation.

  Six members traveled to Sarajevo to carry out the deed, having been trained and equipped by additional conspirators in the Serbian military. One of them, Serbian student Gavrilo Princip, succeeded. His  act initiated the First World War.
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  (#5) Prohibition Alcohol Poisioning

  The US Department of the Treasury, in its efforts to enforce the Volstead Act, added deadly chemicals to the industrial alcohol that was being used by bootleggers as a substitute for grain alcohol. They hoped to make a few scofflaws sick and to discourage others from drinking cheap alcohol.

  It's been estimated that by the time Prohibition ended in 1933, at least 10,000 people had been killed by the federal poisoning program.
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  (#6) The July 20th Plot

  On July 20, 1944, senior-level members of the German military and civilian leadership conspired to kill Adolf Hitler by planting a bomb in the Wolf's Lair conference room at his military headquarters. The plot, dramatized in the Tom Cruise film Valkyrie, failed when the bomb was accidentally moved away from Hitler at the last second.  One person died and three others were mortally wounded, however, Hitler survived unscathed.

  After the failed assassination attempt, most individuals involved in the conspiracy committed suicide or were executed. 
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  (#7) The Tuskegee Experiment

  This shameful and racist conspiracy unfolded over decades, as the CDC (working with the Tuskegee Institute) knowingly withheld potentially lifesaving treatments from Black men with syphilis under the guise of a medical experiment. Once the conspiracy became public, hearings were held and a $10 million settlement was reached for its victims – along with lifetime medical care for their families and no-cost burials.
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  (#8) Cigarettes Cause Cancer

  Tobacco companies knew as early as the 1950s that smoking was directly linked to lung cancer. Even before then, in the 1920s, a few maverick researchers were publishing studies that theorized that the effects of smoking weren’t beneficial, as the tobacco manufacturers claimed.

  But it took until 1998’s Master Settlement Agreement between the US Government and the leading tobacco companies for these links to be acknowledged, and restitution made to victims.
  
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  (#9) The GM Trolley Car Conspiracy

  The so-called “General Motors streetcar conspiracy” involved a pair of transportation companies buying up and dismantling electric trolley car lines in dozens of American cities. These two companies, which later merged into one trust, were heavily financed by car and truck producers, tire manufacturers, oil companies, and the monolithic Standard Oil.

  While the government also had a role in destroying the burgeoning electric train industry, as well as the deep debt the trolley companies were in, many speculate that there was some kind of conspiracy to knock out GM’s competition and monopolize the transportation industry.
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  (#10) MK-ULTRA

  The infamous MK-ULTRA experiment ran for 20 years starting in 1953, and involved citizens unknowingly being dosed with mind-altering LSD and other drugs by CIA doctors to study effective ways to carry out mind control.

  While the goal was to advance US intelligence and special operations capabilities, it failed to achieve the desired results and violated ethical medical codes and basic human rights laws. It wasn't until 1976 that President Ford enacted an Executive Order to prohibit experimental drug use on human subjects without their informed consent.
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  (#11) COINTELPRO

  Short for “Counterintelligence Program,” this was a systematic and organized effort by the Federal government to investigate, infiltrate, discredit, and sometimes destroy political groups deemed hostile to the US. Among the groups illegally infiltrated and damaged by COINTELPRO were communist organizations, the Civil Rights Movement, the Rainbow Coalition, the anti-war left, and women’s rights organizations.

  A 1971 burglary of an FBI field office finally exposed the conspiracy, and it fell apart soon after.
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  (#12) Watergate

  The Watergate Hotel break in was a massive conspiracy at multiple levels of the Nixon administration to discredit the President’s opponents, steal secret documents, wiretap conversations and ensure Nixon’s reelection. Once it came to light, the revelation of the President of the United States either knowing about or actively being involved in a massive cover-up led to the beginning of articles of impeachment, arrests of major political figures, and soon thereafter, Nixon’s resignation.
  
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  (#13) The Iran-Contra Scandal

  As part of a complicated scheme involving the highest levels of government, the US sold weapons to Iran in exchange for the release of seven hostages being held in Lebanon, and used the money to support Nicaraguan militants.

  While the plan theoretically had good intentions, such as eliminating communism and freeing captives, it violated the US embargo against Iran, as well as a number of federal laws. It collapsed into a flurry of hearings and jail sentences, many of which were later pardoned by President George Bush.
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  (#14) The Nayirah Testimony

  When the world was deciding whether to fight Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, Congressional testimony by a young woman named Nayirah was the final straw. The young girl detailed the horrors perpetrated by Iraqi troops against the Kuwaiti people, including torture, turning off of public works, and most infamously, the removal of babies from incubators.

  However, little of this actually happened, most especially the incubator horrors. It was later discovered that "Nayirah" was the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the US and that her testimony had been organized by a conspiracy between a committee of Kuwaiti citizens and a US congressman.
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  (#15) Lysine Price-Fixing

  In the mid '90s, multiple conglomerates, including American industrial giant Archer Daniels Midland, conspired to fix prices of the animal feed additive lysine. The plot was uncovered by a whistle-blower, inciting the FBI to prosecute the companies as an international cartel. ADM was fined $100 million for this and another conspiracy to fix the price of the chemical citric acid. The entire affair was dramatized in the 2011 Matt Damon film The Informant!
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  (#16) Steroids in Baseball

  Dozens of baseball players and their clinicians were involved in a conspiracy to take steroids, obtain fraudulent prescriptions, and hide the effects of the drugs they were taking. Major League Baseball, at least to some extent, knew what was going on and looked the other way, as long as the players involved kept making money for the game and the league.

  It finally fell apart when a 20 month Congressional investigation led to a long list of players who had taken illegal substances. In 2003, under enormous fan and government pressure, baseball instituted a new drug testing policy.
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  (#17) GlaxoSmithKline Shenanigans

  Executives at the pharmaceutical giant conspired to, among other things, illegally promote certain products to treat diseases off label, hide incriminating safety data that questioned the efficacy of these drugs, fix prices, and pay kickbacks to doctors in exchange for promoting their drugs. A massive criminal investigation followed, and GSK was fined $3 billion, the largest fine ever levied against any pharma company by any government.
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  (#18) Apple E-Book Price-Fixing

  In July 2013, Apple agreed to settle a class action lawsuit for over $450 million, alleging that the computing monolith had conspired with five publishing companies to drive up e-book prices, in an effort to thwart Amazon. A Federal judge in New York agreed that the plot constituted a conspiracy to drive Amazon out of business and hurt competitive practices.

  However, even after the decision, Amazon still controlled close to two-thirds of the e-book market, often fixing prices themselves, selling e-books at a loss to get customers to buy other products. 
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  (#19) The Pentagon Paid For Fake Patriotism

  When you can't generate propaganda organically, just get out your wallet and pay for it with someone else's money. That's the lesson behind a November 2015 press conference by Senators Jeff Flake and John McCain. They revealed that the Pentagon had spent nearly $9 million paying professional sports leagues to promote America.

  Those big on-field displays of the American flag, heartfelt reunions with returning soldiers, and honoring veterans? All paid for by the Department of Defense to boost recruiting - an Orwellian nightmare combining our love of sports with our desire to let everyone know we "support the troops." And the worst part of it is that the study that the two Senators were quoting revealed the displays had no effect on recruitment numbers, only fattening the wallets of teams in the NFL, NHL, and Major League Baseball.

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