More Considerations on Conspiracies

We all love to either laugh off a “crazy conspiracy theory” or dive right into it just to see how crazy it is, but sometimes it turns out things aren’t so crazy as they seemed on the surface. Here are a few prominent examples; I’ve included the first paragraph of the Wikipedia article, and links, for each.  All of the links should be live as well; as is the case with all wiki footnotes, they’ll link to a reference at the bottom of the main page, and you can go check it out yourself. 

COINTELPRO – “COINTELPRO (syllabic abbreviation derived from Counter Intelligence Program) (1956–1971) was a series of covert and illegal^[1][2] projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic American political organizations.^[3][4] FBI records show COINTELPRO resources targeted groups and individuals the FBI deemed subversive,^[5] including feminist organizations,^[6] the Communist Party USA,^[7] anti–Vietnam War organizers, activists of the civil rights movement or Black Power movement (e.g. Martin Luther King Jr., the Nation of Islam, and the Black Panther Party), environmentalist and animal rights organizations, the American Indian Movement (AIM), independence movements (such as Puerto Rican independence groups like the Young Lords), and a variety of organizations that were part of the broader New Left, and unrelated groups such as the Ku Klux Klan.^[8]” It should be more than mildly startling and a little terrifying that, as the article notes with appropriate references, the techniques deployed during the official COINTELPRO period which ended in 1971 are still in use, even though they were largely deemed illegal as hell.

Project MKUltra – CIA doses people with LSD without their knowledge, and more fun. “Project MKUltra (or MK-Ultra) is the code name given to a program of experiments on human subjects that were designed and undertaken by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), some of which were illegal.^[1][2][3] Experiments on humans were intended to develop procedures and identify drugs such as LSD to be used in interrogations in order to weaken the individual and force confessions through brainwashing and psychological torture. The project was organized through the Office of Scientific Intelligence of the CIA and coordinated with the United States Army Biological Warfare Laboratories.^[4] Other code names for drug-related experiments were Project Bluebird and Project Artichoke.^[5][6]” (I’ve long had a low-key suspicion my dad was involved in this as a subject while a young Marine in the early 60’s, but he wouldn’t have said either way, if a) he was and b) he knew about it. He took his oaths pretty seriously.)  

Then there’s the Tuskegee Experiment: “The Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male^[1][2][3] (informally referred to as the “Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment,” the “Tuskegee Syphilis Study,” the “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the African American Male,” the “U.S. Public Health Service Syphilis Study at Tuskegee,” or the “Tuskegee Experiment”) was an ethically abusive study conducted between 1932 and 1972 by the United States Public Health Service (PHS) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).^[4][5] The purpose of this study was to observe the natural history of untreated syphilis. Although the African-American men who participated in the study were told that they were receiving free health care from the federal government of the United States, they were not.^[6]” In short, they gave a bunch of black guys syphilis and let ’em run around with it for four decades, living their lives, and told them only that they were getting free government health care.  Not only are the obvious problem obvious, but y’all wonder why poor black people don’t trust the government and medicaid. Literally sold these guys a story they were getting free health care from Uncle Sam, and not only used them as lab rats but sent them out into the world to infect others, all without knowing it. Our government did that.

These are all real things that really happened, and every one of them was dismissed for years as a wild-eyed conspiracy theory, something that simply could not be happening and no reasonable person would believe.

And yet…