13 Wild Conspiracy Theories That Turned Out to Be Real
Conspiracy theories often get tossed in the same bin as alien abductions and secret lizard societies. But every now and then, reality catches up with fiction, and it’s stranger than we imagined.
Here’s a list of the ones that turned out to be real.
Bohemian Grove’s Secret Meetings Were Real
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Each summer, some of the world’s most influential men gather in a private California redwood forest for rituals that include mock sacrifices in front of a giant owl statue. While it sounds fabricated, the Bohemian Grove exists, and the meetings are well-documented. Major political and business figures have attended, including those tied to the Manhattan Project.
Operation Northwoods Almost Triggered War
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In the early ’60s, a top-secret Pentagon proposal suggested staging fake attacks, like hijackings, even fake funerals, to whip up support for a large-scale conflict with Cuba. These acts would be carried out on American soil and blamed on Fidel Castro. President Kennedy saw the plan and shut it down. Still, the mere existence of the proposal—declassified decades later—shows just how far military leaders were willing to go for a political endgame.
CIA Imported Nazi Scientists
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After World War II, the U.S. government brought over more than 1,500 German scientists to work on space programs in research labs under Operation Paperclip. Their job was to help America win the space race. Their past affiliations were conveniently scrubbed, and off they went, earning paychecks from the very government that had fought to defeat them just years earlier.
FBI Sabotaged Civil Rights Groups
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Between the ’50s and early ’70s, the FBI ran COINTELPRO, a covert operation designed to infiltrate, sabotage, and discredit civil rights leaders, student activists, and other “radicals.” Methods included wiretaps, forged letters, and psychological manipulation, all targeted at nonviolent citizens exercising their rights. The program was only exposed years later, and the details still read like a political thriller gone rogue.
The CIA Planted Propaganda in American Media
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Operation Mockingbird was a covert CIA project that paid journalists and influenced media outlets to spread pro-American, anti-communist stories during the Cold War. Journalists working for major newspapers were on the CIA payroll. Though long dismissed as fiction, declassified reports confirmed its existence.
Wealthy Americans Plotted a Coup in 1933
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This story sounds made up until you realize it was confirmed in Congressional testimony. In 1933, a group of wealthy businessmen—including names tied to a future president—tried to recruit retired Marine General Smedley Butler to lead a coup against Franklin D. Roosevelt. Butler said no and promptly spilled the beans. Congress investigated, found the plot credible, and quietly let it fade.
CIA Admitted to Foreign Assassinations
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Assassinations disguised as accidents were all part of CIA protocol. The Church Committee hearings in the 1970s exposed that the CIA had attempted (and sometimes succeeded) to take out foreign leaders using all sorts of inventive methods. One of them involves firing a tiny dart that caused a fatal heart attack, virtually undetectable. The agency’s assassination wishlist included names like Castro and Lumumba, and the operations were often cooked up in total secrecy.
Scientologists Infiltrated U.S. Agencies
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Operation Snow White was a massive scheme by the Church of Scientology in the 1970s involving over 5,000 operatives. They infiltrated 136 organizations, including the IRS and DEA, to destroy unflattering documents and avoid taxes. The FBI raided the church, and several high-ranking members were sentenced to prison.
A Teen’s Fake Testimony Helped Start a War
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In 1990, a 15-year-old Kuwaiti girl named Nayirah told Congress she had witnessed Iraqi soldiers pulling babies from incubators. The testimony went viral, fueled public outrage, and helped justify military action. There was only one problem: the story wasn’t true. Nayirah was the daughter of a Kuwaiti diplomat, and she had been coached by a PR firm.
CIA Conducted Illegal Experiments
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From the 1950s to 1973, the CIA secretly experimented on unwitting individuals with hallucinogens under the MKUltra program, hoping to develop mind control techniques. They dosed citizens, prisoners, and hospital patients. Most records were destroyed before oversight could intervene, and few involved never saw justice.
Tuskegee Study Denied Treatment to Black Men
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For forty years, nearly 400 Black men in Alabama were part of a government-run study on syphilis—only no one told them they were part of a study. Even after penicillin became the standard treatment, doctors withheld care just to observe how the disease progressed. It wasn’t until a whistleblower came forward in 1972 that the program was finally shut down.
German Collaborators Shielded by U.S. Intelligence
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Though Operation Paperclip is widely known, the full extent of postwar leniency toward German collaborators ran deeper. Some U.S. agencies protected war criminals because they were considered useful during the early Cold War. Files show intelligence services actively suppressed evidence of these individuals’ past crimes.
CIA Sabotaged Socialist Governments Abroad
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Overthrowing governments didn’t stop at Iran and Chile. Throughout the Cold War, the CIA ran covert operations in dozens of countries by backing right-wing coups and undermining socialist leaders through propaganda and economic interference. While these actions were kept under wraps at the time, declassified materials later exposed a pattern: if a government leaned left, the U.S. had a backup plan, and it wasn’t always diplomatic.
Government Plans for Domestic Spying Were Drafted
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Long before smartphones started tracking our every move, U.S. agencies were sketching out plans for domestic surveillance. COINTELPRO was just the beginning. Memos from the era show a growing appetite for monitoring dissent, activism, and even art under the guise of national security.
Corporate Interests Backed Anti-Democratic Actions
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The so-called “Business Plot” wasn’t the only time wealthy elites pulled strings behind the scenes. Throughout the 20th century, powerful corporations have nudged and sometimes outright manipulated government policy to serve their bottom line.