The Mammoth Book of Conspiracies

by Jon E. Lewis

  The British Foreign Office have declared the documents to be Soviet disinformation.

  Further Reading

  Arthur Gavshon, The Mysterious Death of Dag Hammarskjold, 1962

  Lisa Pease, “Midnight in the Congo: The Assassination of Lumumba and the Mysterious Death of Dag Hammarskjold”, Probe, March–April 1999

  HEINRICH HIMMLER

  In conspiracy land, bad Nazis never die. Either they are taken by Vril-powered UFOs to Antarctica (like Hitler) or remodelled by plastic surgery to live in the USSR (like Martin Bormann). Then there is the strange case of Heinrich Himmler.

  In April 1945, as the end of the Third Reich loomed, Hitler’s number one – and the architect of the Holocaust – found a sudden and urgent desire to make peace with the Allies. When he was rebuffed, and his treason made public, Hitler ordered his arrest. Luckily for Himmler, Hitler promptly committed suicide in his Berlin bunker and news of the excommunication seems never to have reached Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz, the Reich’s new chief, whose Flensburg Government Himmler joined. To curry favour with the oncoming Allies, Dönitz dismissed Himmler on 6 May 1945.

  Himmler then tried his luck with the Americans, offering Dwight Eisenhower the surrender of all Germany if he was spared from prosecution. He even suggested to Ike that he, Himmler, be the Minister of Police in the new Germany. Ike said, “‘Nein!” and Himmler was declared a war criminal. Now actively hunted by the Allies, Himmler wandered around Flensburg near the Danish border disguised as a member of the gendarmerie. However, the stamps on his papers raised the suspicions of a British soldier, Arthur Britton, who arrested “Heinrich Hitzinger” on 22 May 1945 on suspicion of being a member of the SS. In captivity he was soon recognized. According to the official account, before Himmler could be interrogated he committed suicide in Lüneburg by swallowing a potassium cyanide capsule. Attempts to revive him were unsuccessful.The date was 23 May 1945.

  The Himmler conspiracy is two-fold: was the man who committed suicide in Lüneburg Himmler or a double? And, if it was Himmler, was he “suicided”.

  Among the first to proclaim that a “fake” Himmler died in Lüneburg were members of the Nazi “ratline” ODESSA, who maintained that the real Himmler escaped to the village of Strones in the Waldviertel, a hilly forested area in Lower Austria, where he was involved in reviving the Nazi movement. Conspiracies make odd bedfellows; the ODESSA “double” case is somewhat supported by the British forensic historian Hugh Thomas who in SS-1 questions whether the body examined by British military authorities was really that of the ex-chicken farmer and SS leader. Certain physical details of the dead man photographed lying on a bed at Lüneburg do, indeed, seem different from Himmler’s. One nostril is larger than the other; Himmler’s were symmetrical. The corpse seems to be free of a duelling scar, meaning he wasn’t the boy born to Anna and Dr Gebhard Himmler on 7 October 1900. Of course he might have been wearing make-up, which Nazi leaders were rather fond of. What bangs a nail into the “Himmler double” theory, grainy photography aside, is Himmler’s daughter. Gudrun Himmler (born 1929) was devoted to her father (and his politics, being a member of Stille Hilfe, the SS veterans’ support group), and he to her. If he had survived 1945, it is near inconceivable that they would have not been in touch. And there is not the slightest whiff of their corresponding or meeting.

  Revisionist author Joseph Bellinger and British writer Martin Allen are amongst the most prominent promoters of the alternative version of Himmler’s death. Both suggest that Himmler was assassinated by the British, with Allen claiming that Himmler had secretly negotiated with Britain as early as 1943. Churchill had him murdered to cover up the fact. Much of Allen’s “evidence” from the National Archives turned out to be twenty-nine forged papers. Allen’s protestations of innocence or deliberate planting by MI5/the Establishment/jealous historians to discredit his thesis were undone by his professional record: his two previous books also seem to have relied on documents of dubious provenance and authenticity.

  The mystery surrounding Himmler’s death is unlikely to be settled anytime soon. Army personnel at Lüneburg were ordered to sign the Official Secrets Act, and unusually the relevant papers – those, that is, that haven’t conveniently disappeared – are not due for release until 2045. The mystery is compounded by the fact that British soldiers took Himmler’s body and buried it in an unmarked grave on Lüneburg Heath. It has never been found.

  Further Reading

  Martin Allen, Himmler’s Secret War, 2005

  Joseph Bellinger, Himmler’s Tod: Freitod oder Mord?, 2005

  Hugh Thomas, SS-1: The Unlikely Death of Heinrich Himmler, 2002

  HOLLOMAN AIR FORCE BASE

  Situated 15 km south-west of Alamogordo, New Mexico, Holloman Air Force Base is reputedly one of the first places where ETs and humans had a close encounter of the third kind. Conspiracists believe that a UFO landing at Holloman may have occurred as early as the mid-1950s, and was attended by no less than President Eisenhower. This saved the aliens saying, “Take us to your leader,” because he was already there. The more storied UFO touchdown occurred on 25 April 1964 (twelve hours after the Soccoro, New Mexico UFO occurrence), when a trio of UFOs hovered into view, one of which landed. Three aliens got out of the craft and talked with base officials. A retired counter-intelligence officer with the Air Force’s Office of Special Investigations (OSI), Richard Doty, later confirmed the event.

  A busy place Holloman. In 1973, documentary film-makers Robert Emenegger and Alan Sandler were informed by Air Force officials that footage existed of a 1971 UFO visit to the base. The 16 mm film was confirmed as genuine by Paul Shartle, an officer at nearby Norton AFB. According to Shartle the film showed aliens who were “human-size. They had an odd, gray complexion and a pronounced nose. They wore tight fitting jump suits, [and] thin headdresses that appeared to be communication devices, and in their hands they held a ‘translator’.”

  Emenegger claimed he was later given a personal tour of Holloman AFB, and shown the site where base officials chatted with the ETs; in the conversation, the AF apparently informed the ETs that they [the AF] had been monitoring signals from an alien group with which they were unfamiliar, and did their ET guests know anything about them? The ETs said, “No.” When Emenegger double-checked the authenticity of the Holloman event with USAF Colonel George Weinbrenner, the latter confirmed its truth. Off the record.

  Emenegger and Sandler’s documentary was released in 1974 as UFOs: Past, Present and Future, narrated by Rod Serling.

  Sceptics declare the Holloman landing(s) a hoax. Or an urban legend. Some sources suggest that new officers at Holloman were shown a training film, What If They Land?, which depicted a close encounter very much like the one described by Shartle.

  Further Reading

  Robert Emenegger and Alan Sandler, UFOs, Past, Present and Future, 1974

  HURRICANE KATRINA

  Hurricane Katrina roared across Florida into Louisiana on 29 August 2005 to cause over 1,830 deaths. New Orleans bore the brunt of the fatalities; wind speeds topped 200 kph, and the levee (dyke) system failed, leaving much of the city deep under water. With $81 billion of damage done, Katrina was the biggest natural disaster in US history.

  Hold the word “natural”; according to an army of internet alternative theorists, Katrina was anything but. One of the most popular “man-made” theories for the devastation caused by Katrina posits that the Bush Government (in alliance with the New World Order, naturally) bombed the levees in New Orleans to intentionally flood the city. The main evidence for this is that residents claimed to have heard explosions before the levees breached; other sources, suggest that Bush used something rather more sophisticated than a bag of gelignite, namely a HAARP-like device. Whatever, by flooding New Orleans, Bush achieved a triple whammy:

  1) He killed blacks. In the words of conspiracist “Liberal Lil” (some mistake in nomenclature surely?), Bush “wants to destroy the blacks so he can bolster his voter base”. Genoci
de against blacks could also “save big dollars on the Welfare money the Feds pay out”.

  2) Katrina allowed Bush to increase his “autocracy”. In this scenario, Bush let chaos rule in New Orleans following the hurricane, because he then had an excuse to roll out FEMA and impose draconian policies on rioters. To quote SwearBear, a member of the Above Top Secret forums, Katrina/New Orleans was a “beta test for the police state”.

  3) Yet another benefit to Bush from blowing up the levees was the resultant disruption to Louisiana’s oil business, which in turn raised the price of crude. The Bush clan, of course, have close links to oil business.

  It’s a mad, mad world, my masters. Because there are just as many Katrina conspiracies that cite Bush’s main enemy, Islamic terrorists of the Osama bin Laden stripe, as Bush himself as the responsible party. Why would al-Qaeda types blow up the New Orleans dykes? Payback for the USA’s War on Terror against Afghanistan and Iraq.

  Idaho TV weatherman Scott Stevens cites much older enemies of Uncle Sam as being the brains and brawn behind Katrina. Stevens maintains that Japan’s Yakuza crime mob employed a Russian-made electromagnetic generator to cause Hurricane Katrina to avenge the Hiroshima atom bomb attack.

  Other sources, however, propose that Katrina was not a human conspiracy, but an act of God. Every Islamic fanatic under the sun sees the hand of Allah pushing Katrina into the Big Easy, yet fundamentalist US evangelicals have been no less quick to suggest that Katrina was divine retribution on New Orleans, Louisiana’s very own Sodom and Gomorrah. Well, it ain’t called the Big Easy for nothing. Reverend Bill Shanks of the New Covenant Fellowship of New Orleans declared that post-Katrina: “New Orleans is abortion free … Mardi Gras free … free of the witchcraft and false religion. God purged all of that and now we start over again.” Hallelujah.

  Then again, there is a peculiarly Jewish take on Katrina. Rabbi Avraham Shmuel Lewin, executive director of the Rabbinic Congress for Peace, told WND, that Katrina was thrust upon the US for its support of the evacuation of Jews from the Gaza Strip: “The US should have discouraged Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon from implementing the Gaza evacuation rather than pushing for it and pressuring Israel into concessions.”

  There is no credible evidence that any human agency caused Katrina or intentionally exploded the levees around N.O. The will of God is harder to divine. As for the tardiness of the US authorities in dealing with the post-Katrina mayhem in New Orleans, the stupidity and slowness of bureaucracy should never be underestimated.

  Further Reading

  www.usatoday.com/weather/.../2005-09-20-wacky-weatherman

  INDIAN OCEAN TSUNAMI

  On Boxing Day 2004, a tsunami struck the Indian Ocean coastline of South-east Asia, killing almost 230,000 people. Like Global Warming and Hurricane Katrina, the disaster was widely attributed by conspiracists to a human agency.

  A popular theory in the Muslim world is that the tsunami was unleashed by an Indian nuclear experiment. The test, conducted with Israeli/American help, took place in the earthquake-susceptible “Five Belt” area in the hope and expectation that the resultant giant wave – and it was giant, at 100 feet high – would impact on the heavily populated Muslim regions of south-east Asia, where the bulk of casualties did indeed take place. Journalist Mahmoud Bakri wrote in an Egyptian nationalist weekly that the Indian tsunami “appeared to be genuine American and Israeli preparations to act together with India to test a way to liquidate humanity. In the[ir] most recent test, they began destroying entire cities over extensive areas. Although the nuclear explosions were carried out in desert lands, tens of thousands of kilometers away from populated areas, they had a direct effect on these areas.”

  But “the Great Satan” never knowingly passes up an opportunity to getting his grasping Caucasian hands on oil, thus the nuclear experiment simultaneously allowed the USA to take control of the oil reserves in Aceh province, Indonesia. The first rescue reports from Aceh purportedly detailed the arrival of 2,000 marines and the contamination of local water supplies by radiation. The papers went inconveniently missing. Of course, no contemporary conspiracy featuring the USA is any good if it is HAARP-less, and sure enough it is frequently mooted in internet chat rooms that the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program is to blame for the Boxing Day tsunami. Fuelling the belief that the tsunami was a US plot was the strange case of Diego Garcia. How did this US base manage to avoid casualties while other islands in the Indian Ocean suffered huge losses?

  The US Navy’s answer: the island wasn’t damaged by the tsunami because it is surrounded by deep water and the grade of its shores prevents tsunamis building. Thus, the surge hitting the island was estimated at six-feet deep.

  Conspiracy theories fingering the US/India/Israel as detonators of a nuclear bomb in the Indian Ocean tsunami flounder on this: there are hundreds of independent seismographers with state-of-the art kit the globe over, and none of them detected the signature of an atomic explosion. As for HAARP, it may be malicious in intent, it might even be effective – but powerful enough to trigger a tsunami? Unlikely. One scientist compared its power to putting the coil from a domestic immersion heater into the Yukon.

  The Indian Ocean tsunami raised serious questions – chiefly about the efficacy of the area’s warning systems – but whether the US and its acolytes dunnit isn’t one of them.

  IRS

  Donald Duck a conspirator? Unlikely as it seems, Disney’s famous cartoon character is alleged to be a player in the most successful financial conspiracy of all time.

  It happened like this, according to Freedom Club USA. Two years into World War II, the US Federal Government realized that it was running out of moolah to best the Nazis and the Nipponese. To raise more lucre, Congress enacted into law the Victory Tax Act of 1942, a tax on income legitimized by reference to Article 1, Section 5, Clause 2 of the Constitution: “To support Armies but no apportionment for money to that use shall be a longer term than two years.” But how to get Americans to pay up for these taxes?

  Enter screen left Donald Duck. The Treasury approached Walt Disney, who was given six weeks to make a short film “selling income tax” for distribution in the cinemas. Disney came up with a short film in which Donald Duck listened to a radio broadcast about how paying taxes would help win the war. So enamoured with the idea of paying taxes did Donald become that he filled in his tax return pronto and raced from LA to Washington DC in person to submit it. “Taxes to beat the Axis!” quacked Donald.

  Morgenthau, Secretary of the Treasury, disappointed that the short featured a cartoon character, only reluctantly approved it for release. He need not have worried; an estimated 60 million Americans saw the The New Spirit short, and a snap Gallup Poll discovered that voluntary payments of income tax increased by 37 per cent. A year later a Treasury official reported to Congress: “Up until 1941 we never received as many as 8,000,000 individual income-tax returns in a year. In 1941 that number increased to 15,000,000; in 1942 it increased to 16,000,000. This year we expect 35,000,000 taxable individual income-tax returns.”

  Another Disney short featuring Donald Duck, The Spirit of ’43, kept the money coming in. The Victory Tax Act was renewed in 1944 and was set to expire when the war was over. However, it remains in effect today, codified under the Internal Revenue Code at code section 3402 in subtitle C – Wage and Employment Tax. When WWII was over, Washington was simply unable to relinquish its new-found riches – the payroll tax the public had become accustomed to.

  Tax, it may be said, is not a popular issue in the USA. On the morning of 18 February 2010, Andrew Joseph Stack III flew his single-engine Piper Dakota airplane at full speed into the IRS collections office in Austin, killing himself and one worker. Stack was on the libertarian right of American politics, but the Tax Protest movement spans the political spectrum: what binds it is the belief that income tax and the IRS are illegal. The words of the Tea Party Patriots will stand for the movement as a whole: “The Tea Party argues that even if
the 16th Amendment to the US Constitution was properly ratified, which is debatable, the IRS still has no legal right to tax the income of American citizens.”

  This is why Disney’s duck is a conspirator. He was part of a plot to persuade Americans to do something mandatory that should be something voluntary.

  Actually, the two main claims of the tax protestors are dubious. Article 1 of the Constitution states unambiguously: “Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises.”

  It was Article I that allowed Lincoln to raise the money to fight the South. Furthermore, the16th Amendment, signed into law in 1913, declares: “Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.”

  Amendments to the US Constitution require the approval of 75 per cent of the States before they can become law. Officially, 79 per cent ratified the Amendment. Tax protestors, however, claim the ratification was invalid because the unhappily named Secretary, Philander Knox, ignored errors in the relevant documents, meaning the returns from these states were invalidated.

  The documents do have errors; however, in the 1986 ruling on US v. Thomas, the Court ruled that the “deviations” were trivial and so “the [Solicitor of the Dept of State] authorized [Knox] to declare the amendment adopted”.