Simpson - Thats what they want you to think : conspiracies real, possible, and paranoid

Paul Simpson

We are above reason; we are beyond ridicule; we see with nobodys eyes, we hear with nobodys ears, we feel with nobodys hearts, but our own. Glorious, glorious privilege! And how is it earned? Ah, my friends, you may spare yourselves the useless inquiry! We are the only people who can earn itfor we are the only people who are always right.

Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone (1868)

For Barbara
Nobody Does It Better.

Late seventeenthor early eighteenthcentury broadside ballad version of the story of the Gunpowder Plot. Public domain

Conspiracies have been around as long as mankindtheres probably a cave painting somewhere depicting two cavemen plotting against a thirdand European history is replete with plots, both successful and otherwise, many of which continue to capture the imagination today. The 1605 Gunpowder Plot in Britain saw conspirators plan to blow up the Houses of Parliament; ironically, their failure is celebrated by the annual Guy Fawkes fireworks displays every November 5 in the United Kingdom. Historical accounts of the Borgia and the de Medici families in Italy (and their graphic depictions on the small screen) show how little human nature has changed.

The Dreyfus Affair in France was a horrific example of the power of anti-Semitism, even before the publication of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion inflamed a generation against the Jewish people. In 1894, a French army officer of Jewish extraction, Alfred Dreyfus, was accused of passing secrets to the Germans and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devils Island. When the true culprit was uncovered, his guilt was hidden by his superiors, and a scandal ensued, finally leading to Dreyfuss release and the restoration of his honor in 1906. Like Watergate seventy-five years later, the Dreyfus Affair saw senior officials decide on a course of action and then follow it through, irrespective of the requirements and oaths of their offices.

This front-page open letter, JAccuse... ! (I accuse), from mile Zola to the French president Flix Faure, exposed the conspiracy and cover-up to the French public in 1898. Zola was convicted of libel and escaped to England to avoid prison; the charge was dropped the following year after Dreyfus was granted a new trial. Public domain

Technological advancement has meant that interest in conspiracies has only increased. Put the words conspiracy theory into a search engine such as Google, and youll immediately get over five million results. Promoting conspiracy theories is one of the growth industries of the twenty-first century because of the arrival of the Internet. Before the World Wide Web, if you wanted to share your theory, no matter how serious or crackpot, you had to find some way of getting it to the general public, whether by writing about it yourself, printing your work, and advertising it in places where it would be seen by people of a similar disposition. Or you had to persuade a friendly newspaper or magazine editor (or, even better, book publisher) to print your theories. The Dreyfus Affair, for example, was exposed by a pamphlet written by the famous writer mile Zola.

But now, anyone, young or old, can get space on the web and put up a website to promote their ideas. Which has been both a blessing and a curse when researching this book. Thats What They Want You to Think (TWTWYTT) derived from discussions with editor Scott Pearson at Zenith Press. A shared longtime interest in conspiracy theories prompted the commissioning of this overview, which we think of as Conspiracy Theory 101 in many ways. In two to four thousand words per entry, theres no possible way that we can delve into every murky corner and seek out every conflicting piece of evidence. The whole books word count could be devoted exclusively to the Lone Gunman theory on the John F. Kennedy assassination, for example!

Instead, TWTWYTT will whet your appetite for investigating further. The blessing of the Internet is that many source documents, previously unavailable to researchers, can now be accessed at the click of a mouse button (and here Id like to pay tribute to Tom Leatherwood and his staff at the Shelby County Archives in Memphis, Tennessee, who must have spent hours scanning and digitizing all the material relating to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.s assassination). In 1997, I worked on a book that required trawling through physical copies of newspapers at an archive; those same papers are now searchable online by keyword and date! In the footnotes, weve given web addresses for the locations of many of the original documents (which were still accurate at press time) so readers can go and in to see the material for themselves and weigh the same evidence. The curse is that its easy to miss the forest for the trees; there is so much information that assessing it is commensurately harder.

The scope of this book isnt restricted to the United States. The deaths of Pope John Paul I in the Vatican, Princess Diana in Paris, and weapons expert Dr. David Kelly in England are covered, as are the Lockerbie bombing in Scotland, the operation of the P2 Lodge in Italy, the British Roswell in Rendlesham Forest, and the Bermuda Triangle. The book also breaks new ground regarding Alternative 3the hoax British documentary that has created a whole raft of conspiracy theorieswith input from its creators who, contrary to various theories, are (A) alive and well and (B) very definitely not puppets of the CIA. Except where the theories clearly veer into the realms of the absurd (yes, were talking about the lizard aliens are in charge of us all idea promulgated by David Icke), weve tried to be even-handed. And as a result of going back to the source documentation, our opinions about the truth have changed.

As the subtitle indicates, TWTWYTT deals with some genuine conspiracies, as well as those that may only be conspiracies in the eyes of the theorists. The assassination of Abraham Lincoln in 1865, the many and various plots to oust Hitler that culminated in the use of Operation Valkyrie, the cover-up of the burglaries at the Watergate building, the events of 9/11 (which, however you parse them, are the result of a conspiracy on one side or other)each of them rewards further investigation if the reader is so inclined.

And its with one such genuine conspiracy that we begin...

Paul Simpson
October 2011

Abraham Lincoln

O, fatal day. O, noble Victim. Treason has done its worst. The President has been Assassinated. It has just been announced at my door that he was shot a half hour ago at Fords Theatre. Is it possible? I have just come from near the scene, it is too True. 11 oclock P.M. Horatio Nelson Tafts diary entry for April 14, 1865, faithfully recounts the treacherous attack on President Abraham Lincoln by the actor John Wilkes Booth at Fords Theatre in Washington that night. Lincoln would die at 7:22 the next morning.