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Unspeakable Secrets and the Psychoanalysis of Culture State University of New York Press Esther Rashkin Year: 2008 Language: english File: PDF, 1.93 MB Your tags: 0 / 0

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Markt- und Produktmanagement - Die Instrumente des Business-to-Business-Marketingt, 2.Auflage Michael Kleinaltenkamp, Wulff Plinke, Frank Jacob, Albrecht Sollner (Hrsg.) Language: german File: PDF, 6.71 MB Your tags: 0 / 0

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF

CONSPIRACIES
AND CONSPIRACY
THEORIES
Michael Newton

For Harold Weisberg

The Encyclopedia of Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theories
Copyright © 2006 by Michael Newton
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic
or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval systems, without
permission in writing from the publisher. For information contact:
Facts On File, Inc.
132 West 31st Street
New York NY 10001
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Newton, Michael, 1951–
The encyclopedia of conspiracies and conspiracy theories / by Michael Newton.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0–8160–5540–8 (hc: alk. paper)
1. Conspiracies—Encyclopedias. I. Title.
HV6275.N49 2004
364.1’03—dc222004004284
Facts On File books are available at special discounts when purchased in bulk quantities for businesses,
associations, institutions, or sales promotions. Please call our Special Sales Department in New York at
(212) 967-8800 or (800) 322-8755.
You can find Facts On File on the World Wide Web at http://www.factsonfile.com
Text design by Erika K. Arroyo
Cover design by Nora Wertz
Printed in the United States of America
VB FOF 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Contents

Preface
Entries A–Z

iv
1

Bibliography

398

Index

404

Preface
Black’s Law Dictionary defines a conspiracy as “a
combination or confederacy between two or more
persons formed for the purpose of committing, by
their joint efforts, some unlawful or criminal act.”
That is it, in a nutshell—and the marvel of modern
journalism is that virtually any suggestion of an
active conspiracy provokes knee-jerk charges of
“paranoia,” “eccentricity,” or outright “delusional
insanity.”
In fact, we are surrounded by conspiracies each
day, around the world, in every walk of life. Each
time a pair of thieves goes shoplifting, it is a conspiracy. Wherever prostitutes and pushers meet with; 
johns and junkies, conspiracies thrive and multiply.
Each time a bribe is offered and accepted, anywhere
criminals or corrupt politicians plot illicit backroom
deals for their own benefit, wherever police ignore
the commission of crime—there lies conspiracy.
Illegal plots are hatched within the best and worst
of families, in seedy bars and Fortune 500 boardrooms, at the Pentagon and in the nests of radicals
who scheme against the government. The White House
has been both a target and a hotbed of conspiracy in
modern times. Some famous (or notorious) organizations are conspiratorial by definition—the Mafia, the
Ku Klux Klan, and the CIA are only three examples
out of thousands. Other institutions, though created
to deter illegal actions, have themselves become corrupted over time, committing more crimes than they
solve. Some individuals and institutions are the
authors and the targets of conspiracies: The late
President John F. Kennedy provides a case in point.
In fact, it may be said that active plotters, by virtue
of their lifestyles, are most likely to become the focus
of hostile conspiracies (a lesson some leaders of
organized crime have learned only during the final
moments of their violent lives).

The fact that thousands of conspiracies exist
and have been amply documented does not mean, of
course, that every theoretical conspiracy is true.
Some are absurd, transparently ridiculous, or even
physically impossible. A number of the plots detailed
within these pages seem to be half tawdry jest
and half distilled insanity. Unfortunately for the
critics of “conspiratorial thinking,” some of the
silliest plans are also among the best-documented,
confessed by their authors and verified from declassified government files.
Who, in real life, would plot to embarrass a
national leader by dusting his clothes with depilatory
powder to make his hair fall out? Or by lacing his
favorite cigars with hallucinogenic drugs to make
him babble incoherently on television? Who would
ever think to kill a famous skin diver by planting
explosive seashells along his favorite beach? What
twisted mind would surgically implant microphones
inside a stray cat and then release the cat on the
grounds of a hostile embassy?
The answer to all four of those questions is the
same: the CIA. Within living memory, our “master
spies” devoted countless hours and untold taxpayers’ dollars to these and other bizarre schemes:
“remote viewing” by psychic spies, mind control via
LSD, and assembly-line production of hypnotized
“robot” assassins. By 1976, in the wake of Watergate, the Vietnam War and congressional hearings on
illegal domestic surveillance, citizens in the Land of
the Free had to ask themselves if there was any difference between truth and illusion, between conspiracy and government business as usual.
As conspiracies vary in scope and intent, so the
selection of topics for the work in hand has been
arbitrarily confined to significant conspiracies and
conspiracy theories. The author defines that term to
iv

Preface

mean any plot (or suspected plot) that involves or
affects large numbers of people, or that, while having a limited direct impact, still inspires widespread
interest or comment. An example of the first variety
would be the Iran-contra conspiracy, in which two
successive presidents violated federal law, obstructed
justice, and condoned illegal sale of weapons and
narcotics to pursue an outlawed terrorist campaign
abroad. The latter might include a claim that John
Dillinger (America’s most famous outlaw of the
1930s) escaped his final shootout with police and
left a hapless double to die in his place. Both plots
pervert the course of justice, one threatening the very
soul of the republic, with the other being a mere
sideshow, and both are offered here—if nothing else,
for sheer variety.
As indicated by this volume’s title, some conspiracies detailed within its pages may exist only in theory, lacking any sort of “smoking gun” that would
permit indictment, trial, and conviction of suspected
plotters—where, in fact, conspirators are even
named. Inclusion of those theories here, as theories,
does not constitute endorsement either by the
author or his publishers. In every case, the allegations have been previously published elsewhere;
those sources may be found in the work’s extensive
bibliography.
In a similar vein, while legal definitions of conspiracy require the plotting of a crime, society
accepts a broader meaning that includes any covert
combination against the public interest, whether
or not laws are broken. Thus, it may not be a crime
to pay off inventors and suppress their inventions—
a superefficient carburetor, say, or a cure for AIDS—
but such actions clearly fall within the wider defini-

tion of conspiracy, and allegations of such actions
are included here. Likewise, while some hoaxes,
practical jokes, and publicity stunts stop short of
crossing the line into fraud, their impact on society
may be profound and deleterious, thus warranting
inclusion here.
Entries in this encyclopedia are alphabetically
arranged. They include short biographies of conspirators and victims, profiles of conspiratorial organizations and movements, brief histories of nations
that have spawned or suffered from conspiracies
(and which has not?), descriptions of specific conspiratorial events, and general essays on social, political, or religious movements of a conspiratorial
nature. The appearance of a name or term in SMALL
CAPITALS denotes a subject with its own discrete entry
in the text. “Blind” entries also direct the reader to
entries containing information on the subject listed
(e.g., Billy the Kid—See UNDEAD OUTLAWS). The bibliography is limited to sources published or translated
in the English language, and while extensive, it is by
no means exhaustive. Most of the works listed there
contain their own bibliographies, replete with further leads to this or that conspiracy theory.
Thanks are due to Dave Frasier at Indiana University for his generous assistance with various points of
research. Every effort has been made to make the
work in hand as timely and complete as possible, but
conspiracy theories evolve and mutate with the speed
of e-mail in this Internet age. Readers are invited to
submit corrections and any pet conspiracy theories
of their own to the author in care of Facts On File.
Barring a request for anonymity, any material used
in future editions of this work will be publicly
acknowledged.

v

A
ABBAS, Abu (1948–2004)

in hiding until 1996 when Israeli authorities permitted him to settle in the Gaza Strip as part of the
endless Middle East “peace process.” Abbas publicly embraced nonviolence, while U.S. and Italian
authorities ignored him. U.S. troops captured Abbas
in April 2003 after they invaded Baghdad as part of
OPERATION IRAQI FREEDOM. His death in U.S. custody was announced in February 2004, with jailers
blaming his demise on natural causes while the late
prisoner’s widow called his death an assassination.

One of the world’s most notorious terrorists prior to
the advent of Osama bin Laden (see BIN LADEN
FAMILY), Abu Abbas was born in 1948 in a Syrian
refugee camp for Arabs who were expelled from
ISRAEL. He studied at Damascus University and was
recruited by the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine in 1968. After guerrilla training in the
Soviet Union, Abbas joined the newly formed Palestine Liberation Front and engaged in bitter conflict
between rival Palestinian groups in LEBANON. He
subsequently allied himself with Yasser Arafat and
Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). In
1981, Abbas was credited with planning the hangglider attack on an oil refinery at Haifa, Israel. A
year later, when the PLO was exiled to Tunisia,
Abbas was elected to the group’s ruling executive
committee. In October 1985 U.S. authorities named
Abbas as the mastermind of the Achille Lauro
hijacking, during which an American hostage was
murdered. Abbas negotiated the surrender of four
hijackers in that case and joined them on a flight to
Tunisia, where they were supposed to be “disciplined” by PLO leaders. That flight was intercepted
by U.S. warplanes, with Abbas and the hijackers
jailed by Italian authorities, but Abbas was released
to Yugoslavia on October 12, 1985. From there,
he reportedly flew to Baghdad, IRAQ. An Italian
court subsequently convicted Abbas in absentia and
sentenced him to life imprisonment, but he remained

AFGHANISTAN
Darius I and Alexander the Great were the first conquerors to visit Afghanistan, followed by Muslim
invaders in the seventh century, Genghis Khan (13th
century) and Tamerlane (14th century). Four hundred years later, the “great game” between England
and RUSSIA for control of central Asia sparked three
Afghan Wars (1839–42, 1878–80, and 1919). Britain
was victorious, granting Afghani independence in
1919, and the monarchy of Emir Amanullah was
founded in 1926.
The Afghan front remained peaceful until the cold
war prompted King Mohammed Zahir Shah to
accept financial aid from the Soviet Union. A royal
cousin, Mohammed Daud Khan, dethroned the king
in 1973 and was himself unseated by rival Noor
Taraki five years later. Taraki and successor Babrak
Karmal tried to establish a Communist state, but
1

AFRICAN National Congress

Islamic rebels (mujahideen) violently opposed the
move. Fearing defeat, Karmal requested Soviet military aid; Moscow responded with a full-scale invasion in December 1979.
Enter the United States, with heavy covert aid for
the mujahideen (whose ranks included Osama bin
Laden and the future leaders of AL-QAEDA). Armed
and trained by the CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
(CIA) and U.S. Special Forces, financed in equal parts
by U.S. aid and international HEROIN sales, the
mujahideen waged bloody guerrilla war against the
Russians until April 1988, when diplomats from the
United States, the Soviet Union, Afghanistan, and
PAKISTAN agreed to cut off foreign support for
Afghani combatants. Russian troops withdrew in
February 1989, leaving the pro-Soviet regime of
President Najibullah in nominal command of the
nation. Islamic rebels deposed Najibullah in April
1992 and then turned on each other as rival drugdealing warlords battled for supremacy. Amid the
chaos, a group of extreme Muslim fundamentalists
(the Taliban) seized the capital in September 1996
and imposed a system of religious statutes that
included death by stoning for adultery and severing
of hands for theft. By 1998 the Taliban controlled 90
percent of Afghanistan, though its regime was recognized only by Pakistan, SAUDI ARABIA, and the United
Arab Emirates.
Global isolation made Afghanistan a fertile breeding ground for radical groups and heroin smugglers.
Bin Laden and al-Qaeda used Afghanistan as a
launching pad for acts of TERRORISM, culminating in
the PENTTBOM attacks of September 11, 2001,
whereupon President George W. Bush invaded the
country and unseated the Taliban regime (missing
bin Laden in the process). U.S. conduct during that
military action—dubbed “Operation Enduring Freedom”—remains highly controversial. Several hundred Afghan prisoners of war were transferred to a
U.S. military base in Cuba, where they remain today
without criminal charges being filed; the White
House refuses to identify the captives. One prisoner
who was released, Pakistani national Mohammad
Sagheer, claimed in November 2002 that some 7,000
POWs died in U.S. custody before or during transportation to the mysterious “Camp X-Ray” in Cuba.
Meanwhile, military action continues in “liberated”
Afghanistan, where a U.S. air strike killed 50 members of a wedding party in Oruzgan Province in
2002. Another tragic “accident” occurred in April

2003 when American planes bombed a residential
district in eastern Afghanistan, killing 11 civilians.
Curiously, while U.S. spokesmen claimed that
suppression of Afghanistan’s heroin network was
a major secondary goal of Operation Enduring
Freedom, drug smuggling has increased dramatically
since the U.S. invasion in 2001. By February 2002
Afghanistan supplied an estimated 75 percent of the
world’s total heroin supply, and 90 percent of all
heroin found in Great Britain. According to various
sources including the UNITED NATIONS, Afghan heroin
production decreased by 91 percent under Taliban
rule and then soared again in the wake of the U.S.
invasion, until Afghanistan surpassed MYANMAR as
the world’s foremost producer of opium and its illicit
derivatives. U.S. authorities have no comment on the
curious trend, except to note (in May 2003) that
“most of the heroin that winds up in New York City
comes from COLOMBIA.” Critical observers note disturbing parallels between Afghanistan and VIETNAM,
where CIA agents and their warlord clients collaborated on heroin smuggling throughout the 1960s.
The situation remained volatile in the first half of
2005 when an unsubstantiated report in Newsweek
claimed that U.S. soldiers had desecrated copies of
the Koran at the Guantánamo Bay prison camp in
order to intimidate prisoners. The article sparked
riots in Afghanistan and other parts of the Muslim
world that resulted in several deaths and extensive
property destruction. Newsweek later retracted the
article when no evidence could be located to backup
the claim and it appeared their initial source was
unreliable. Much of the Muslim world reacted to the
retraction with skepticism.
See also BIN LADEN FAMILY; BUSH DYNASTY.

AFRICAN National Congress
The African National Congress (ANC) was created
at Bloemfontein, SOUTH AFRICA, on January 8, 1912,
to defend the rights of the nation’s black majority
from dominant racist whites. Its first campaign was
limited to opposing passage of the 1913 Land Act,
which barred black Africans from owning land in
broadly defined “white areas” of South Africa. That
effort failed, and the ANC stagnated until 1944
when a new and more militant ANC Youth League
was organized by activists Nelson Mandela, Oliver
Tambo, and Walter Sisulu. The revitalized ANC
sponsored nonviolent mass action against South
2

AGENT Orange

Africa’s increasingly racist legislation, forging an
alliance to that end in 1947 with the Natal Indian
Congress and the Transvaal Indian Congress.
In 1948, neofascist elements with ties to the lately
defeated THIRD REICH organized South Africa’s
National Party to inaugurate a sweeping system of
apartheid (Afrikaans for “separateness” of the
races), and the next four years saw black rights
steadily erode on all fronts. In June 1952 the ANC
joined other antiapartheid groups for a Defiance
Campaign of civil disobedience, but that effort was
scuttled in April 1953 by a new law banning protest
meetings. In June 1955 a “Congress of the People”
held at Kliptown, near Johannesburg, adopted the
Freedom Charter that would henceforth serve as the
primary document of opposition to apartheid.
Sweeping arrests in 1956 jailed 156 leaders of the
ANC and allied groups, but all were acquitted at
their “treason trial” in 1961. ANC leader Albert
Luthuli won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1960, but the
ANC was soon outlawed in South Africa, its members driven underground by accusations of TERRORISM and sedition.
Once banned from legitimate discourse, the ANC
had no choice but to adopt armed struggle as a
method to depose apartheid. In 1961, its leaders
organized Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation)
to wage war against the racist power structure in
South Africa. Nelson Mandela was arrested in 1962
and sentenced to life imprisonment, along with Walter Sisulu and other ANC leaders, at trial in 1964.
Oliver Tambo subsequently established the ANC’s
government in exile, fielding an estimated force of
6,000 guerrillas from bases in ANGOLA, MOZAMBIQUE, and ZAMBIA. The ANC forged close ties with
the banned South African Communist Party, and its
central party document, the Manifesto of the Azanian People, described the ANC’s primary goal as the
destruction of “racial capitalism” in South Africa.
Three decades of struggle and repression climaxed
on February 2, 1990, when President F.W. de Klerk
lifted the ANC’s ban. Nelson Mandela won the
Nobel Peace Prize in 1993, and majority rule was
restored to the nation in 1994. That April, the ANC
won a landslide victory in South Africa’s first integrated election, to become the nation’s ruling party.
Mandela served as president until 1999, when he
was succeeded by Thabo Mbeki. The ANC also
holds an elected majority in eight of the country’s
nine provinces.

A curious sideshow to mainstream activities
involves the controversial career of Nelson Mandela’s ex-wife. Winnie Mandela was charged with
attempted murder in 1991, following the disappearance of a young bodyguard whose torture and death
she allegedly ordered. In the absence of a corpse, she
was acquitted of the primary charge, but jurors convicted her of kidnapping. The court imposed a suspended sentence for that offense, but Mrs. Mandela’s
legal problems continued. On April 25, 2003, she
was convicted on 43 counts of fraud and 25 counts
of theft, receiving a five-year prison term. Court
watchers predicted that she would serve a maximum
of eight months in jail.

AGENT Orange
“Agent Orange” was the code name used for a powerful herbicide employed by the U.S. military during
the VIETNAM War. The name derives from an orange
band painted around metal drums that contained the
product. Although initially developed in the 1940s, it
was not seriously tested for application in tropical
climates until the early 1960s. By 1971, when its use
was discontinued, an estimated 20 million gallons of
Agent Orange were sprayed in Vietnam, either by
hand or (more commonly) in mass drops from aircraft. (The motto of one airborne chemical unit:
“Only You Can Prevent Forests.”)
Agent Orange was a 50–50 mix of two chemicals,
commonly known as 2,4–D and 2,4,5–T. The combined product was mixed with kerosene or diesel fuel
before dispersal in widespread “deforestation” campaigns. A variant form (dubbed “Orange II” or
“Super Orange”), used in Vietnam during 1968–69,
combined chemicals 2,4–D and 2,4,5–T. Early health
concerns surrounding Agent Orange focused on contamination of the product with TCDD, a form of
dioxin related to the dibenzofurans and pcb’s. Some
dioxins occur in nature and may be harmless, but
TCDD has produced a wide variety of diseases in lab
testing on animals, including several ailments fatal to
humans.
Beginning in the late 1960s, Vietnamese natives
complained that Agent Orange and other military
defoliants were killing livestock and producing birth
deformities in humans. The Pentagon ignored those
claims and likewise struck a pose of denial in the
postwar years when U.S. veterans displayed abnormally high rates of cancer and other diseases linked
3

AGHORA cult

to TCDD exposure. Finally, on January 23, 2003,
the Veteran Affairs Department acknowledged a link
between Agent Orange and chronic lymphocytic
leukemia (CLL), granting an extension of government benefits to veterans suffering from that disease.
Speaking for the government, Secretary Anthony
Principi said, “It’s sad that we have to presume service connection, because we know that [veterans]
have cancer that may have been caused by their battlefield service. But it’s the right thing to do.” And
while the “right thing” came too late for veterans
who died of CLL and similar diseases prior to 2003,
Veterans Affairs (VA) doctors announced their
expectation of finding 500 new CLL cases per year
among Vietnam vets.
At the time of the VA’s belated announcement,
10,000 Vietnam survivors were under treatment for
illness related to Agent Orange, Super Orange, or the
13 other defoliants widely used during the Asian war.
The other compounds, all used between 1962 and
1964, included: “Blue” (cacodylic acid), Bromacil,
Dalapon, Dinoxol (mixing 2,4–D and 2,4,5–T),
Diquat, Diuron, “Green” (2,4,5–T), Monuron,
“Pink” (2,4,5–T), “Purple” (2,4–D and 2,4,5–T),
Tandex, Trinoxol (2,4,5–T), and “White” (a formulation of Picloram and 2,4–D).

Yon told Reuters, “I heard rumors that European
and American tourists were being taken. It sounds
ludicrous, but where it is in India, anything goes.” As
Yon explained the cult’s philosophy, white foreigners
are viewed as possessing great Shakti—a creative
energy that Hindus believe flows directly from God.
“If you sacrifice a rich or powerful person,” Yon
explained, “they have more Shakti. Children have
more Shakti because they haven’t lived long.”
Yon discovered that the sect is not confined to
India but also thrives in Nepal. Bribes of whiskey—
consumed by cultists as a sacrament—led Yon to an
American convert, 52-year-old Texas native Gary
Stevenson, now known as Kapal Nath. Adorned with
dreadlocks, tattoos and a set of tom-toms made from
infant human skulls, Nath sipped his liquor from a
hollowed skull while briefing Yon on the proper
method of cooking human flesh. “I like to take a fresh
body, you know,” Nath told Yon, “maybe even an
Israeli, cook ’em barbecue.” The technique, Nath
explained, involved a “big, big bucket of barbecue
sauce, paintbrush, roller, you know.”
Yon emerged from the interview with a disturbing
view of Hinduism’s darker side. “The amazing
thing,” he told Reuters, “is that they are doing it
there in the open. A policeman was burning the body
of his neighbor and cracked open the skull to release
the soul. The policeman gave Nath some of the
brains to eat.” Human brains, in fact, topped Nath’s
list of favorite foods. A self-confessed serial killer,
Nath admitted multiple murders during a conversation that Yon taped for posterity. His first victim,
long before joining the cult, was apparently a man he
shot in San Francisco sometime in the 1970s. Nath
also boasted of stalking human prey on the Hawaiian island of Oahu, where he lived from 1978 to
1994. As Yon recalled, “He said he liked to eat the
brain and heart. He said human meat has the same
taste as pork.”

AGHORA cult
Described by investigators as “a very open society,”
the Aghora sect of the Hindu religion is nonetheless
one that would surprise most westerners for its practice of ritual cannibalism. In June 2003 Reuters
News Service reported the experience of Mike Yon, a
Florida native and ex-Green Beret who visited India
in search of ideas for a book he was planning. On
September 5, 2002, Yon was present when an Israeli
tourist drowned in the Ganges River near Rishikesh.
A team of Israeli divers sent to recover the body
found another Caucasian corpse instead, and Yon
watched with dive-team leader Yigal Zur as a member of the Aghora cult approached the bloated body,
placed a coin on the dead man’s exposed liver, and
then tore off a piece of flesh and ate it on the spot.
Widespread stories persist that the Aghoris are not
mere scavengers but may be active predators in the
mold of the Thugs who terrorized India from the 12th
century until the latter 1800s. Like the Thugs, Aghoris
worship Kali, the dark god of Hinduism, and they also
revere Shiva (god of destruction and reproduction). As

AGNEW, Spiro (1918–1996)
A son of Greek immigrants born in Baltimore on
November 9, 1918, Spiro Agnew received a law
degree from the University of Baltimore in 1947. In
1962, campaigning as a reformer, he was elected
chief executive of Baltimore County. Four years later,
Agnew was elected governor of Maryland. Republican presidential candidate RICHARD NIXON chose
Agnew as his running mate in 1968.
4

AIDS

failed to report the income on his tax returns. Meeting with Nixon on August 6, 1973, Agnew proclaimed himself innocent of any wrongdoing, but his
days were numbered. On October 10, 1973, he
resigned in disgrace, pleading “no contest” the same
afternoon on one count of income tax evasion dating from 1967. Agnew was fined $10,000 and
placed on three years’ probation. Following his resignation, Agnew told friends that he had been
threatened by unnamed persons at the Nixon White
House and stated, “I feared for my life.” He never
spoke to Nixon again, but he described the events in
a memoir titled Go Quietly or Else (1980). Agnew
died in 1996.

That campaign was well advanced when President
(LBJ) heard rumors of a
Republican effort to sabotage peace negotiations on
the VIETNAM War. Specifically, Anna Chennault—a
Chinese-born Republican activist and leader of Concerned Asians for Nixon—was suspected of urging
South Vietnamese leaders to stall the peace talks.
Johnson ordered a FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION (FBI) investigation, which included wiretaps
and physical surveillance on Chennault. Three days
before the election, on November 2, 1968, FBI eavesdroppers heard Chennault advise a South Vietnamese
politician that his country would “get a better deal”
from Nixon in the new year. Asked if Nixon knew
what she was doing, Chennault replied, “No, but our
friend in New Mexico does.” Coincidentally or otherwise, Spiro Agnew spent that afternoon in Albuquerque, making campaign speeches.
J. EDGAR HOOVER, himself a staunch Nixon supporter, reported the conversation to President Johnson on November 6. Furious, LBJ telephoned
Nixon—already the president-elect—and chastised
him for meddling in U.S. foreign policy. Hoover subsequently reported the FBI investigation of Agnew
and Chennault to Nixon, placing full blame on the
Johnson White House.
If Agnew took offense at the snooping, he covered
it well. During the next four years, employed primarily as Nixon’s mouthpiece for stinging attacks on
the press, “radical liberals,” and other targets drawn
from the White House enemies list, Agnew repeatedly sought Hoover’s help in preparing his inflammatory speeches, once requesting “especially graphic
incidents” from classified files with which to smear
his critics. A phone call placed on May 18, 1970, for
instance, solicited FBI assistance in defaming Rev.
Ralph Abernathy, a civil rights activist and leader of
the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Hoover described the call in a memo: “The Vice
President said he thought he was going to have to
start destroying Abernathy’s credibility, so anything I
can give him would be appreciated. I told him that I
would be glad to.”
Exposure of the WATERGATE scandal in 1972
spelled political doom for Spiro Agnew. Journalists
investigating the Nixon administration discovered
that Agnew had been taking bribes since 1962 from
engineers and architects pursuing government contracts in Maryland. The payoffs had continued after
he became vice president, and Agnew persistently
LYNDON BAINES JOHNSON

AIDS
The deadly disease known as AIDS—Acquired
Immune Deficiency Syndrome—was first officially
reported in 1981 from the United States, though
most authorities believe that it originated in Africa.
(Some claim that the first case, unrecognized at the
time, may have surfaced as early as 1969.) The
human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) that causes
AIDS was identified in 1983, and reliable tests for the
virus were perfected two years later. The virus is
transmitted by exchange of bodily fluids, chiefly via
sex, transfusions of infected blood, or sharing contaminated hypodermic needles. There is presently no
cure for AIDS, though various drugs retard its
advance in some patients. AIDS kills by leaving its
victims open to attack by various “opportunistic”
diseases that are normally repelled by healthy
immune systems. At the end of 2001, the World
Health Organization reported that AIDS had killed
24.8 million victims worldwide; another 40 million
persons were infected, more than half of them (28.1
million) residing in sub-Saharan Africa.
What is the origin of HIV? Reporter William
Carlsen, writing for the San Francisco Chronicle,
notes that “[i]n the early years of the AIDS epidemic,
theories attempting to explain the origin of the disease ranged from the comic to the bizarre: a deadly
germ escaped from a secret CIA laboratory; God sent
the plague down to punish homosexuals and drug
addicts; it came from outer space, riding on the tail
of a comet.” Today, the official line traces HIV to a
population of African apes that were infected with a
similar virus, which somehow jumped the normal
“species barrier” to attack human beings. Still unex5

AIR America

(known as a cause of cancer in white blood cells).
Army denials persisted, but Col. David Huxsoll created further doubt in February 1987 with a public
announcement that “studies at army laboratories have
shown that the AIDS virus would be an extremely
poor biological warfare agent.” (Huxsoll later denied
ever making that statement; the reporter who quoted
him maintains that his report was accurate.)
If gays were targeted for a secret biowarfare blitz,
how and when did it happen? In 1978, more than
1,000 nonmonogamous gay men received experimental hepatitis B vaccinations at the New York
Blood Center in Manhattan, sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes
of Health. The first U.S. cases of AIDS were recorded
among New York gays in 1979; by 1985, 64 percent
of the original CDC-NIH test group in Manhattan
were dying from AIDS. At the same time, two other
“new” diseases surfaced among Manhattan homosexuals. One, a herpes virus now believed to cause
Kaposi’s sarcoma (also known as “gay cancer”) is
closely related to a cancer-causing herpes strain studied in U.S. animal research labs a decade before AIDS
appeared. The other, an infectious microbe christened Mycoplasma penetrans, attacks the patient’s
circulatory and respiratory systems. Its origin
remains officially unknown.

plained is the means by which a mutated simian disease suffered by heterosexual black Africans spanned
the Atlantic in the 1970s to infect predominantly gay,
Caucasian victims in North America. Those yawning
gaps in medical knowledge invite sinister speculation, and conspiracy theories are fed by tantalizing
bits of evidence from the public (or not-so-public)
record.
On June 9, 1969, a high-level biological research
administrator for the U.S. Defense Department, Dr.
Donald MacArthur, appeared before a House subcommittee on military appropriations, seeking funds
for a new line of research. “Within five to ten years,”
MacArthur testified, “it would probably be possible
to make a new infective microorganism which would
differ in certain important aspects from any known
disease-causing organisms. Most important of these
is that it might be refractory to the immunological
and therapeutic processes upon which we depend to
maintain our relative freedom from infectious disease. Should an enemy develop it, there is little doubt
that this is an important area of potential military
technological inferiority in which there is no adequate research program.” Congress funded
MacArthur’s research—and AIDS surfaced in Africa
a decade later, during 1977–78.
Coincidence?
On July 4, 1984, a New Delhi newspaper called
the Patriot published the first accusation that AIDS
was created as a weapon by the U.S. Army. Citing
articles from an official army research publication on
“natural and artificial influences on the human
immune system,” Patriot reporters claimed that scientists from the Army Biological Warfare Laboratory
at Fort Detrick, Maryland (known since 1969 as the
National Cancer Institute’s Frederick Cancer
Research Facility), scoured Africa to find “a powerful virus that could not be found in Europe or Asia.”
When located, the Patriot claimed that material “was
then analyzed at Fort Detrick and the result was the
isolation of a virus that causes AIDS.”
Army spokesmen branded the Patriot report an
example of “infectious propaganda” from RUSSIA, but
the story would not die. In 1986, two French-born
scientists living in East Germany, Jakob and Lilli
Segal, published a pamphlet titled AIDS: USA HomeMade Evil. The document, circulated widely in
Europe and Africa, claimed that HIV is a genetically
engineered hybrid of the visan virus (source of a brain
disease borne by sheep) and a virus dubbed HTLV-I

AIR America
Once the largest unofficial airline in the world, Air
America evolved from a makeshift operation in the
1930s when Gen. Claire Chennault’s “American Volunteer Group” was dispatched to aid CHINA in its
long war against JAPAN. In December 1941 the PEARL
HARBOR attack eliminated any vestiges of feigned
U.S. neutrality, but the covert tradition died hard. In
1947, the CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY (CIA) and
the State Department used the framework of Chennault’s old group to create Civil Air Transport
(CAT), operating a fleet of aircraft to assist Nationalist Chinese forces in their war against the communist
troops of MAO ZEDONG. With the Red victory, CAT
moved its headquarters to TAIWAN, continuing support for “Free China” while operating routine passenger flights throughout Southeast Asia. The
Korean War (1950–53) found CAT pilots flying more
covert missions on behalf of “democracy.” The end
of that “police action” brought diversification, with
CAT elements operating as Southern Air Transport,
6

ALEXANDER I

Reds won a decisive victory in the March 1991 elections, even as the Soviet Union collapsed, but a general strike and riotous street demonstrations soon
forced the ruling cabinet to resign. A change of names
and public policy failed to carry 1992’s election for
the former Communist (now Socialist) Party, as Dr.
Sali Berisha became Albania’s first elected president.
Unfortunately, Albania’s democratic experiment
failed in early 1997 when a series of shady pyramid
schemes collapsed, robbing gullible investors of $1.2
billion in savings. The furious dupes turned their
wrath on the government, which had naively endorsed
the swindlers. Rioting destroyed Albania’s fragile
infrastructure, while rebels and organized gangsters
turned the country into a free-for-all shooting gallery.
A multinational force of 6,000 peacekeepers arrived
to restore a semblance of order and supervise elections
that ousted President Berisha from office. Trouble
continued for Albania at the turn of the new millennium. Ethnic cleansing in neighboring SERBIA drove
440,000 Albanian expatriates back to their ancestral
homeland. Since then, a witch’s brew of political dissension, minority rebellion, organized crime, and economic instability has frustrated efforts to create a
functioning democracy in this troubled land.

Air America, and Air Asia Ltd. Mercenary pilots
hired with U.S. taxpayers’ money flew various illicit
(and unrecorded) missions, including support for
FRANCE in its losing battle to maintain control of
Indochina (today VIETNAM, LAOS, and CAMBODIA).
In the 1960s, as the United States assumed the
French imperial burden in Vietnam, the CIA consolidated its various client airlines under the single logo
of Air America. Most of the pilots were military veterans, responding to advertisements for “the most
highly skilled, adventurous, and patriotic aviation
personnel who could be found.” Air America’s motto
was “Anything, Anytime, Anywhere”—a catchall
that included illegal supply flights from Vietnam into
Laos and Cambodia, as well as transportation of
HEROIN shipments from Asia’s “Golden Triangle” to
the United States. Air America officially disbanded in
1975 with the fall of Saigon. Twelve years later on
May 30, 1987, former CIA Director William Colby
dedicated an Air America Memorial at the University
of Texas in Dallas.

ALBANIA
Located on the eastern shore of the Adriatic Sea,
Albania was ruled from ancient times successively by
Rome (to A.D. 535), the Byzantine Empire (535–
1444), and the Ottoman Turks (1446–1912). It was
then, and remains today, one of the poorest European nations. A ravaged battlefield in World War I,
Albania emerged from that conflict to declare itself a
republic, but Muslim strongman Ahmed Zogu proclaimed himself president in 1925 and then switched
his title to king (Zog I) three years later. He ruled
until 1939, when Benito Mussolini’s fascist government annexed Albania. Near the end of World War
II, in 1944, Communist guerrillas led by Enver
Hoxha liberated Albania from Italian occupation.
Unfortunately for natives who expected liberty,
Hoxha was a devotee of Soviet dictator JOSEPH
STALIN and emulated Stalin’s brutal methods of suppressing dissent. In 1961 Hoxha broke with RUSSIA
over personal and political differences with Nikita
Khrushchev, forging a new alliance with the Chinese
government of MAO ZEDONG. With Mao’s death in
1978, Hoxha was set adrift, pursuing his own deadend policies that left Albania the most impoverished
and isolated country in Europe. Ramiz Alia succeeded
Hoxha in 1985, and public faith in COMMUNISM
remained strong, despite the nation’s failed economy.

ALEPH

See AUM SHINRIKYO.

ALEXANDER I (1888–1934)
Alexander I had ruled as king of Yugoslavia for 13
years, by the time an assassin took his life on October
9, 1934. The king was in Marseille, riding in an open
car with French foreign minister Louis Barthou, when
Croatian nationalist Petrus Kaleman leaped onto the
vehicle’s running board and killed both men with
close-range fire from an automatic rifle. Kaleman, in
turn, was seized and fatally beaten by security police;
another 40 persons were injured when mounted
guards charged into a crowd along the parade route.
Detectives of the French Sûreté declared the double
murder the result of a conspiracy among Croatian
rebels. As a result of the slayings, the League of
Nations established two international conventions to
combat political TERRORISM in 1937: The Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of Terrorism
“criminalized” attacks on heads of state and other
“internationally protected persons,” while the Convention for the Creation of an International Criminal
7

ALEXANDER II

Court sought to enforce those regulations. However,
since few nations (including the United States) ratified
either convention, they had no legally binding effect.

roots, Algeria’s new leaders welcomed radicals from
around the world—including members of the BLACK
PANTHER PARTY, the IRISH REPUBLICAN ARMY, and
various Palestinian groups engaged in war against
ISRAEL—to train at desert camps described by U.S.
spokesmen as “schools for terrorism.”
Algeria’s first-ever parliamentary elections were
held in December 1991, but army leaders invalidated
the results after members of fundamentalist Islamic
Salvation Front (FIS) won a majority of votes. That
autocratic move plunged the nation into bloody civil
war, which continues to the present day. Chief
among the current rebel factions is the Armed
Islamic Group (GIA), headquartered on the Mitidja
Plain outside Algiers (lately dubbed the “Triangle of
Death”). Estimated body counts for the latest Algerian conflict range from 100,000 to 250,000 or more.
Wholesale slaughter of civilians has flourished since
February 1997 when GIA leaders vowed to “slash
the throats of all apostates and their allies.”
Observers briefly hoped for peace with Abdelaziz
Bouteflika’s ascension to the presidency in April
1999, but conflicts with the military have emasculated Bouteflika’s administration. Despite a facade of
democracy, Algeria is essentially a military dictatorship with Islamic militants and a long-disaffected
Berber minority engaged in perpetual rebellion.

ALEXANDER II (1818–1881)
Czar Alexander II ruled RUSSIA with an iron hand
for 26 years before he was assassinated on March
1, 1881. The murder was carried out by members
of a radical group called Narodnya Volya (“The
People’s Will”), organized with an estimated 500
members in 1875. Czar Alexander was traveling by
coach to view the wreckage of a recent Narodnya
Volya bombing in St. Petersburg, when suicide
bomber Ivan Grinevetsky attacked the royal coach,
killing himself along with his target. Various conspirators, including ringleader Sophia Petrovskaya,
were soon rounded up by police, convicted at a
perfunctory trial, and speedily hanged. In addition
to Czar Alexander, other Russian officials who
were slain by Narodnya Volya included the governorgeneral of St. Petersburg and a chief of the dreaded
OKHRANA.

ALGERIA
Beginning in the seventh century B.C., Algeria has
been pillaged by successive invaders including
Romans, Vandals, Hafsids, Merenids, assorted
pirates, Spaniards, Arabs, and Turks. French soldiers
conquered the country in 1830, and Algeria was
named an “integral part” of FRANCE in 1848. French
colonists put down roots with a vengeance, brutally
resisting when a nationalist uprising in 1954–55
escalated into full-scale war between France and
Algeria’s National Liberation Front (FLN). President
Charles de Gaulle opened peace negotiations in
1962, prompting renegade elements of the French
army—calling themselves the OAS (Secret Army
Organization)—to plot de Gaulle’s assassination.
Acts of TERRORISM in Algeria and France failed to
stop Algerian independence in July 1962, but FLN
victory did not end the violence.
Ahmed Ben Bella was elected premier in October
1963, but his regime was overthrown on June 19,
1965, by military forces under Col. Houari Boumediene. Boumediene promptly suspended Algeria’s
constitution in a bid to “restore economic stability,”
but the resultant military government was not a typical right-wing junta. Recalling their revolutionary

ALIEN abductions
Since the mid-1960s a sizable body of literature has
developed purporting to describe or debunk the
alleged phenomenon of humans being kidnapped
and detained by the (apparently extraterrestrial)
occupants of unidentified flying objects (UFOS).
Believers in the alien abduction phenomenon range
from self-described abductees to psychiatrists and
professors at prestigious universities. Their critics—
some with equally impressive scientific credentials,
others simply professional naysayers—insist that
such reports are the result of deliberate hoaxes or
mental illness, with the latter (typically long-distance) diagnoses running the gamut from FALSE MEMORY SYNDROME to full-blown psychosis.
Reports of UFOs—which may be any airborne
object unidentified by its immediate observers—are
as old as human history. “Close encounters” with
UFO pilots or passengers are a more recent phenomenon, with reports from Europe and North
America apparently beginning in the 19th century.
8

ALIEN abductions

The best-known cases of alleged alien abduction
include the following:

later dramatized in the motion picture Fire in
the Sky (1993).
August 26, 1976—Four fishermen were allegedly
abducted by aliens near Allagash, Maine. Their
case was later detailed by author Ray Fowler in
The Allagash Abductions (1994)—and may
well have inspired Stephen King’s best-selling
novel Dreamcatcher (2001).
December 1977—Bloomington, Indiana, resident
Debbie Jordan was reportedly abducted from
her home. A decade later, author Budd Hopkins
described the incident in his book Intruders
(1987). Jordan maintains an Internet Web site
with details of the case at www.debshome.com.
1987—Best-selling science-fiction author Whitley
Strieber published Communion, the first of several “nonfiction” books detailing his own
alleged experience with alien kidnappers.
Strieber’s background (and the profits derived
from his books) prompted skeptics to suggest a
long-running hoax.
September 1990—Three anonymous witnesses
(said to include an elected official and two
government agents) allegedly saw a woman
“floating” from a 12th-story apartment window in Manhattan, accompanied by three small
aliens who steered her levitating body toward a
hovering UFO. When all were safely aboard,
the craft nose-dived into the East River. Author
Budd Hopkins reported the case in his book
Witnessed (1996).

September 1961—Barney and Betty Hill reportedly experienced a “missing time” phenomenon
while driving near Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Under hypnosis they later recalled an
alien abduction that included medical experiments. Their case went public in 1966 in a twopart series in Look magazine and in John
Fuller’s book The Interrupted Journey. The case
was subsequently dramatized in a made-for-television movie, The UFO Incident.
January 25, 1967—Betty Andreasson was allegedly
taken by five-foot-tall aliens from her home
in South Ashburnham, Massachusetts, while
relatives stood paralyzed and helpless to assist
her. She later recovered fragmentary memories
of the event.
December 3, 1967—Police Sergeant Herbert
Schrimer lost consciousness after seeing a UFO
in Ashland, Nebraska, and woke with “a red
welt on the nerve cord” behind one of his ears.
Two months later, under hypnosis, Schrimer
described his conversation with “a white
blurred object” that descended from the UFO.
October 11, 1973—Mississippi residents Charles
Hickson and Calvin Potter were night fishing
along the Pascagoula River when they allegedly
sighted a UFO and were carried aboard by
three of the craft’s occupants. They were
released 20 minutes later, after the aliens told
them, “We are peaceful. We mean you no
harm.” Hickson reportedly passed a polygraph
test administered by private investigators on
October 30 and appeared on Dick Cavett’s TV
talk show in January 1974. Parker, meanwhile,
shunned publicity and moved out of state.
November 5, 1975—Logger Travis Walton was
allegedly beamed aboard a hovering UFO near
Heber, Arizona, in full view of six coworkers.
He was found five days later, nude and incoherent, but later recovered fragmentary and horrific memories of his captivity aboard the UFO.
In Walton’s absence the six witnesses (suspected
by police of murdering Walton and hiding his
body) sat for polygraph tests. Five were rated
“truthful” in their description of the incident,
while the sixth—a convicted felon—yielded
“inconclusive” test results. The incident was

By June 1992 the alien abduction phenomenon
was regarded seriously enough in some circles to rate
a five-day conference at the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology (MIT), chaired by MIT physicist
David Pritchard and Harvard psychiatrist John
Mack. One topic of discussion was the so-called
missing embryo/fetus syndrome (ME/FS) that was
reported by some female subjects who claim unexplained and prematurely terminated pregnancies following their abductions. Although such incidents are
“now considered one of the more common effects of
the abduction experience,” according to author
David Jacobs in his book Secret Life (1992), a report
to the MIT conference found no confirmatory evidence. “By now,” Dr. John Miller told the gathering,
“we should have some medically well-documented
cases of this, but we don’t. Proof of a case of ME/FS
has proved entirely elusive.”
9

ALPHA 66

the CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY (CIA), and other
organs of the U.S. government. (In 1976, Alpha 66
leader Antonio Veciana Banch told the CHURCH
COMMITTEE that his group was actively supported by
the CIA from 1960 to 1973, during which time the
group participated in CIA-MAFIA plots to kill Castro.) That relationship has not always been a friendly
one, however. Following the BAY OF PIGS fiasco,
Attorney General Robert KENNEDY staged raids
against exile training camps run by the CIA in conjunction with elements of the Mafia, the KU KLUX
KLAN, and other criminal groups. Antipathy toward
President John Kennedy was so pronounced among
right-wing Cuban exiles that they remain prime suspects in the 1963 JFK ASSASSINATION, and members
of Alpha 66 were questioned in 1977 by the HOUSE
SELECT COMMITTEE ON ASSASSINATIONS.
While acts of TERRORISM linked to Alpha 66 could
fill a hefty volume of their own, prosecutions in the
United States have been few and far between. Five
armed members of the group were captured in Cuba
in December 1968, but U.S. authorities made no effort
to punish Alpha 66 for violating neutrality laws. Two
years later in September 1970, Cuban authorities
announced the capture of nine more Alpha 66 commandos on the island. Terrorist actions in Cuba continued through the 1990s—including three drive-by
shootings at the same Havana hotel between March
1994 and May 1995—while the FBI professed inability to find the men responsible. Similar failure resulted
in various crimes committed on U.S. soil, thereby
strengthening the widespread belief that Alpha’s
efforts were endorsed from Washington. The group
remains active today, claiming chapters in various U.S.
cities with large Cuban-American populations.

The same is apparently true of other physical “evidence” reported by alleged abductees. Such phenomena as bloody noses, cuts, bruises, burns, and “scoop
marks” are cited as proof of alien contact, but all
have plausible explanations in everyday life. Various
subjects report surgical implants in their heads or
other parts of their bodies, but again none are confirmed. Alleged abductee Richard Price submitted a
tiny object, surgically removed from his penis, for
testing at MIT as a suspected “alien implant.” Laboratory analysis concluded that the object consisted of
“successive layers of human tissue formed around
some initial abnormality or trauma, occasionally
accreting fibers of cotton from Price’s underwear that
became incorporated into this artifact as the tissue
hardened.”
Such verdicts do not faze believers, including
many who suspect an intergalactic conspiracy of
silence surpassing anything seen on The X-Files. In
1998, author Ann Druffel published a book titled
How to Defend Yourself Against Alien Abduction,
with the recommended defensive techniques including mental and physical struggle, “righteous anger”
and “protective rage” (both “best employed before
the onset of paralysis”), and prayers to divine entities
(named by Druffel as “the most powerful technique
yet discovered” for repelling alien kidnappers). If
simple attitude proves ineffective, Druffel’s readers
are advised to employ various flowers, herbs, crucifixes, metal fans, and “bar magnets crossed over the
chest” to discourage abduction. Failure to be kidnapped by a snatch squad from beyond the stars presumably suggests that the repellents are effective.

ALPHA 66
Alpha 66 ranks among the most violent and most
notorious of the Cuban-exile groups devoted to overthrowing FIDEL CASTRO’s regime in Havana. Official
histories of the organization claim it was founded in
PUERTO RICO sometime in the latter part of 1961.
The group’s cryptic name allegedly combines the first
letter of the Greek alphabet (marking “the beginning” of exile campaigns against Castro) with the
number of men present at its founding (66).
Throughout 40-odd years of arson, bombing,
murder, and futile commando raids against CUBA,
Castro has charged—and U.S. intelligence “insiders”
privately agree—that Alpha 66 enjoys covert support
from the FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION (FBI),

al-Qaeda See under Q.
AMERICA First Committee
Established in September 1940, the America First
Committee (AFC) was ostensibly an isolationist
group opposed to U.S. involvement in World War II.
Although its membership included prominent Americans of every political stripe, the group’s public tone
was set by inclusion of outspoken bigots including
Henry FORD and one-time hero aviator Charles
Lindbergh. Both men were bitter racists and antiSemites: Ford had spent the 1920s reviling Jews in
10

AMERICAN Indian Movement

Americans to overthrow the government.” Such revelations, coupled with the extremist remarks of AFC
leaders themselves, combined to destroy the group’s
once-substantial public influence by 1943.

his newspaper, the Dearborn Independent, while
Lindbergh was compromised by visits to Nazi GERMANY, where he fathered three illegitimate children
and accepted a medal from Reichsmarshal Hermann
Göring in October 1938. A public endorsement from
Jew-baiting Rev. Charles Coughlin in April 1941
cinched the AFC’s reputation as a thinly veiled proNazi propaganda vehicle. Lindbergh himself confirmed that judgment in a speech at Des Moines,
Iowa, where he declared that the “three most important groups who have been pressing this country
toward war are the British, the Jewish, and the Roosevelt administration.” Soon after, in another public
statement, Lindbergh said that “the Jewish people
are a large factor in our movement toward war.”
Flagrant bigotry notwithstanding, the AFC
attracted some 800,000 members to 450 local chapters by autumn 1941. Many recruits were die-hard
enemies of the NEW DEAL, seeking any vehicle to punish Franklin Roosevelt for “socializing” America.
Some sources claim that the AFC formally dissolved
on December 11, 1941, four days after the Japanese
raid on PEARL HARBOR, but Lindbergh and company
seemed unaware of that fact when he addressed an
audience of 50 AFC members in New York City on
December 17. Wound up to fever pitch by the U.S.
declaration of war against Germany and JAPAN,
Lindbergh railed that there was “only one danger in
the world, namely, the Yellow Danger.” Japan and
CHINA (at war with Tokyo for the past decade, now
America’s ally) were really “allied together against
the white race,” Lindbergh claimed, lamenting that
Washington had missed a chance to use Germany “as
a weapon against this alliance.” (Lindbergh’s genius
apparently did not extend to recognizing Germany’s
alliance with Japan against the United States.)
Instead of joining ADOLF HITLER to preserve a white
world, Lindbergh ranted, U.S. troops were “fighting
on the side of the Russians and Chinese.” Worse yet,
he said, Washington had “no plan and does not
know what it is fighting for.”
The federal government knew whom Lindbergh
supported, however. On February 23, 1934, FEDERAL
BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION Director J. EDGAR HOOVER
reported to Roosevelt that the AFC was funded by
Nazi supporters, including Axel Wenner-Gren, a proGerman financier in Sweden. As recently as November 1941, Hoover noted, AFC spokesman (and
former Wisconsin governor) Robert La Follette had
called for violent revolution by “fearless red-blooded

AMERICAN Indian Movement
Patterned after the California-based BLACK PANTHER
PARTY, the American Indian Movement (AIM) was
organized in Minneapolis during the summer of
1968. As chapters spread across the country, AIM
began to garner national attention. Members participated in the 1969 occupation of Alcatraz Island,
though AIM did not initiate the move. A 1972 “Trail
of Broken Treaties” march on Washington, D.C. climaxed with presentation of a 20-point solution
paper to President RICHARD NIXON. The following
year, a 71-day occupation of Wounded Knee, South
Dakota, included violent clashes with the FEDERAL
BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION (FBI) and U.S. Army, and
the government-sponsored vigilante group GUARDIANS
OF THE OGLALA NATION (GOON), resulting in exposure of the FBI’s illegal tactics. A total of 1,162 persons were finally arrested, including 562 siege
participants and 600 others detained across the
country for supporting AIM. Of the 1,162 initially
jailed, only 185 were finally indicted, some of them
on multiple felony charges. Trials spanned the next
two years, but the most important was the trial of
AIM leaders Dennis Banks and Russell Means in
1974. Each defendant was charged with 13 counts,
including arson, burglary, criminal conspiracy, theft,
interfering with federal officers, and possession of
illegal weapons. Judge Fred Nichol ultimately dismissed all charges, lamenting from the bench that
“the FBI I have revered so long, has stooped so low.”
Nichol added:
Although it hurts me deeply, I am forced to the conclusion that the prosecution in the trial had something
other than attaining justice foremost in its mind. . . .
The fact that the incidents of misconduct formed a
pattern throughout the course of the trial leads me to
the belief that this case was not prosecuted in good
faith or in the spirit of justice. The waters of justice
have been polluted, and dismissal, I believe, is the
appropriate cure for the pollution in this case.

Still, the GOON campaign of TERRORISM continued at Pine Ridge for another two years. On June 26,
11

AMERICAN Legion

attacked unfriendly editors, suspected communists,
or union strikers. The early legion plainly favored
FASCISM, as witnessed by its 1923 pledge of honorary
membership to Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.
Two years later, national commander Alvin Owsley
granted a newspaper interview that included threats
to overthrow the U.S. government.

1975, a shootout occurred on the reservation
between FBI agents and members of AIM, claiming
the lives Agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams,
along with AIM member Joe Killsright. On November 25, 1975, a federal grand jury indicted four AIM
members for the Coler-Williams murders. Defendants Darelle Butler, James Eagle, and Robert
Robideau were already in custody, while 31-year-old
Leonard Peltier remained at large. Canadian police
captured Peltier at Hinton, Alberta, on February 6,
1976, and extradited him to the United States on
December 18. At trial, defendants Butler and
Robideau admitted firing on Coler and Williams, but
they claimed that the G-men had started the
shootout; jurors acquitted both men on July 16,
1976, accepting their plea of self-defense. Prosecutors dropped all charges against James Eagle on September 8, 1976, leaving Peltier as the only defendant
in the case. At his trial, beginning in March 1977, the
government claimed Peltier alone had shot both
agents, killing them execution style with rifle bullets
fired at point-blank range. To prove that case, prosecutors illegally suppressed an FBI memo of October
2, 1975, stating that Peltier’s weapon “contains a different firing pin than that in [the] rifle used at
[the] . . . scene.” Deprived of that exculpatory evidence, jurors convicted Peltier on April 18, 1977. Six
weeks later, on June 1, 1977, Judge Paul Benson sentenced Peltier to two consecutive life terms. Today,
many FBI critics still regard his trial as a deliberate
frame-up.
AIM remains active today, though its programs
rarely make national headlines. FBI harassment has
presumably ceased, though members still recall an
off-the-record comment from one G-man after
Wounded Knee: “Half the stuff that went on out
there isn’t even on paper.” In 2000 FBI Director
Louis Freeh lobbied publicly (and successfully) to
discourage President Bill Clinton from pardoning
Leonard Peltier.
See also CLINTON, BILL AND HILLARY.

“If ever needed [said Owsley], the American Legion
stands ready to protect our country’s Institutions and
ideals as the Fascisti dealt with the destructionists who
menaced Italy!”
“By taking over the Government?” he was asked.
“Exactly that,” he replied. “The American Legion is
fighting every element that threatens our democratic
government—Soviets, anarchists, IWW, revolutionary
Socialists and any other ‘Red.’. . . . Do not forget that
the Fascisti are to Italy what the American Legion is to
the United States.”

Nine years later, in the spring of 1934, high-ranking
legionnaires attempted to carry out Owsley’s threat,
operating through a front group called the AMERICAN LIBERTY LEAGUE. On the eve of World War II,
legion commanders announced their plan to organize
a civilian spy network, keeping track of perceived
“subversives” from coast to coast. Attorney General
Robert Jackson sidetracked the vigilante campaign
by authorizing the FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION (FBI) American Legion Contact Program,
whereby some 40,000 legionnaires were recruited as
“confidential national defense informants,” reporting gossip about their coworkers and neighbors. So
successful was the program, filling J. EDGAR
HOOVER’s private files with much information he
might otherwise have missed, that it was continued
until 1966.
From the 1940s onward, legionnaires provided
Hoover’s most dependable forum for speeches
attacking communists, civil rights activists, antiwar
protesters, and other enemies of the FBI, but collaboration was not always peaceful. The legion’s superpatriots took themselves too seriously at times, as
during the McCarthy era of the early 1950s. In
1953 Hoover ordered Inspector Cartha DeLoach to
join the legion and “straighten it out.” DeLoach
enlisted, rising swiftly to become a post commander, department commander, and then national
vice-commander. Legionnaires wanted to elect him
as their national commander in 1958, but Hoover

AMERICAN Legion
Organized by veterans of the First World War in
1919, the American Legion was created to promote
“100% Americanism”—defined by its founders as
militant opposition to all things “radical” or “Bolshevik.” Violence quickly followed, with at least five
deaths resulting by year’s end, as legionnaires
12

AMES, Aldrich Hazen

called to testify, but exposure of the group’s plans in
media reports caused prominent backers to distance
themselves from the group. A half-baked scheme to
run Georgia governor (and KU KLUX KLAN ally)
Eugene Talmadge for president died on the drawing
board, and the league dissolved in 1936.

vetoed the move, deeming the top post “too political.”
Instead, DeLoach became chairman of the legion’s
national public-relations commission, ensuring that
any public criticism of Hoover or the FBI was met
by immediate protest from legion posts nationwide,
scripted by ghost writers in the FBI’s Crime Records
Division.

AMES, Aldrich Hazen (1941– )
AMERICAN Liberty League

The son of a CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY (CIA)
officer, born June 26, 1941, Aldrich Ames worked
summer jobs for the agency in his teens and joined
full-time in February 1962. He quickly mastered
Russian and distinguished himself in handling matters related to the Soviet Union. Lust intervened to
sidetrack his career in 1981 while Ames was assigned
to Mexico City. There, he met and fell in love with
Maria del Rosario Casas Dupuy, a cultural attaché
with the Colombian embassy who persuaded Ames
to divorce his wife and marry her. Ames soon discovered that his salary could not satisfy Maria’s expensive tastes, and his quest for additional money led
him to become a mercenary Russian “mole” within
the CIA.
Between 1985 and his arrest on February 21,
1994, Ames earned more than $2.5 million by selling classified information to Russian spies, his
betrayal continuing beyond the 1991 collapse of the
Soviet Union. Aside from delivering thousands of
CIA documents, Ames also identified 25 Russian
nationals employed as spies by the CIA or the FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION (FBI). All were
arrested by the KGB, with at least 10 subsequently
executed. Those losses belatedly prompted a joint
CIA-FBI investigation, beginning in 1991, but both
agencies somehow ignored Ames’s extravagant
lifestyle until May 1993 when he was betrayed by a
KGB defector. G-men then placed Ames under close
surveillance, including phone taps, searches of his
household trash (revealing notes from a Russian
contact), and retrieval of information stored on his
computer. Ames and his wife were both indicted on
April 26, 1994, Ames quickly striking a bargain on
Maria’s behalf. The couple pleaded guilty to various
charges on April 28, Ames receiving a sentence of
life without parole for conspiracy and tax fraud,
while Maria received a sentence of five years and
three months. Both the FBI and the CIA were widely
criticized for their apparent negligence in plugging
the deadly intelligence leak.

In July 1933 retired U.S. Marine Corps Maj. Gen.
Smedley Butler received a visit from two prominent
AMERICAN LEGION officials, William Doyle and
Gerald MacGuire, requesting that Butler campaign
for election as the legion’s next national commander.
The thoughtful legionnaires assured Butler that cash
had been collected to finance his campaign, yet Butler demurred when the pair produced a speech for
him to deliver at the legion convention in Chicago,
including demands for a U.S. return to the gold standard. A year later, MacGuire approached Butler
again, this time hailing the role military veterans had
played in bringing FASCISM to GERMANY and ITALY.
MacGuire asked Butler to lead a veteran’s march on
Washington, where they would stage a coup d’état
against President Franklin Roosevelt and save the
United States from a “communist menace.”
Although convinced that “the whole affair
smacked of treason,” Butler requested further
details. MacGuire spelled out a plan to seize the
government by force and install a suitable strongman in the White House. The plotters had $3 million in hand, with more on tap whenever they
needed it, MacGuire said. “Is there anything
stirring yet?” Butler asked. “Yes, you watch,”
MacGuire replied. “In two or three weeks, you will
see it come out in the papers.”
Two weeks later, in August 1934, the American
Liberty League was publicly launched by a coalition
of right-wing financiers and politicians known for
strident opposition to Roosevelt’s NEW DEAL.
Included were directors and officers of U.S. Steel,
General Motors, STANDARD OIL, J.C. Penney, Montgomery Ward, Goodyear Tire, Mutual Life Insurance, and the members of the wealthy DUPONT
family. After MacGuire approached him a third time,
Butler told his story to FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION Director J. EDGAR HOOVER, followed by an
appearance before the HOUSE COMMITTEE ON UNAMERICAN ACTIVITIES. No leaders of the league were
13

ANARCHISTS

ANARCHISTS

civilians and injured more than 260 others at a rally
for striking workers. Eight alleged anarchists were
convicted of conspiracy, though evidence proved that
none of them had thrown the bomb. Fear of anarchism increased with each reported act of
violence. In 1900, Italian anarchist Gaetano Bresci
left his adopted home in New Jersey to assassinate
King Umberto I of Italy. The following year, anarchist
Leon Czolgosz shot and killed President William
McKinley in Buffalo, New York. McKinley’s successor, Theodore Roosevelt, created the Bureau of Investigation (later, the FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
[FBI]) and signed legislation to stifle the anarchist
press in 1908. Four years later, two immigrant labor
organizers were framed on murder charges (but were
finally acquitted) during a textile strike at Lawrence,
Massachusetts. Colorado’s Ludlow massacre of 1914
prompted three anarchists to plot the murder of

In its purest form, anarchism is the belief that all
forms of government should be abolished. Historically, some anarchists have gone beyond mere advocacy and have attempted to secure their goal by
physical attacks on prominent officials in Europe
and the United States. Before the advent of Bolshevism with the Russian Revolution of 1917, “radicals” and “enemy aliens” in the United States were
likely to be branded anarchists regardless of their
actual philosophy. The same label was also broadly
applied to social reformers and labor organizers, just
as a later generation of activists would be falsely
branded Communist.
America’s anarchist panic dated from 1880 with
the onset of a major immigration wave from ITALY.
On May 4, 1886, the Chicago Haymarket bombing
killed eight policemen and an uncertain number of

In 1901, anarchist Leon Czolgosz (left) assassinated President William McKinley (right), and the murder sparked
widespread fear of anarchists in the United States. (Author’s collection)
14

ANARCHISTS

Emma Goldman (left) was among those deported to Russia in 1919 along with another advocate of violent revolution,
Alexander Berkman (right). (Author’s collection)

industrialist John D. ROCKEFELLER (and thus sparked
creation of the New York City bomb squad). Two
more anarchists were arrested (some say framed) in
New York the following year for plotting to blow up
St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
“Progressive” president Woodrow Wilson reserved
some of his harshest words and legislation for
“enemy aliens” on the eve of America’s entry into
World War I. The bolshevik revolution of 1917 gave
nativists a new reason to tremble, but communism
and anarchism (or “syndicalism”) were confused in
many minds, including that of a fledgling clerk at the
JUSTICE DEPARTMENT named J. EDGAR HOOVER.
War’s end brought no cessation of violence, as a
wave of strikes and riots sparked fears of an anarchist revolt in the United States.
Those fears were exacerbated in April 1919 when
29 bombs were sent through the mail to various

prominent targets around the United States. The first
was detected and disarmed on April 28 at the home
of Seattle mayor Ole Hanson (who had recently used
troops to crush a strike by 60,000 shipyard workers).
The next day, in Atlanta, a parcel bomb exploded at
the home of former U.S. Senator Thomas Hardwick,
maiming one of his servants. During the next week,
34 more bombs were intercepted and defused without
further injury. Their targets included Frederick Howe
(commissioner of immigration at Ellis Island); Senator Lee Overman (chairman of a series of recent hearings on the bolshevik menace); Supreme Court Justice
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.; U.S. Postmaster General
Albert Burlson; Secretary of Labor William Wilson;
Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer; federal judge
Kenesaw Landis (who had sentenced IWW leaders to
prison); and two living symbols of unfettered capitalism, J.P. MORGAN and John D. Rockefeller.
15

ANDERSON, Jack

nationwide dynamiting conspiracy exists to wreck
the American government and society.” As for the
authors of that conspiracy, veteran Red-hunter
Flynn had no doubts: they were the same anarchists
blamed for the still-unsolved bombings of 1919.
Attorney General Palmer arrested William (“Big
Bill”) Haywood, boss of the radical Industrial
Workers of the World, “as a precaution,” but no
evidence was found linking Haywood or his “Wobblies” to the crime.

The bombers tried again on the night of June 3,
1919. This time they delivered their “infernal
devices” by hand and all detonated, but the only
casualties were two of the bombers themselves. In
Washington, D.C., a blast outside the home of
Attorney General Palmer damaged houses within a
two-block radius, shredding the bodies of two
clumsy saboteurs who would remain forever
unidentified. Other bombs rocked targets in Boston;
Cleveland; New York City; Newtonville, Massachusetts; Paterson, New Jersey; Philadelphia; and Pittsburgh, without further injury. Handbills were found
at most of the bombing scenes, signed by “The
Anarchist Fighters.” Palmer and J. Edgar Hoover
struck back with a vengeance between November
1919 and January 1920 with a series of coordinated
dragnet raids designed to capture and deport
alleged “enemy aliens.” Thousands were arrested
without warrants or specific charges from coast to
coast, but fewer than 600 were finally deported;
most were released without so much as an apology
for their detention and occasional subjection to brutal “third-degree” tactics in custody. The sweeping
PALMER RAIDS produced no suspects in the 1919
bombing, and publicity surrounding the fiasco
boomeranged against Palmer in Congress, where
exposure of his vigilante tactics doomed his presidential ambitions and soon drove him from office in
disgrace. (Hoover dodged the axe and lived to raid
another day, concocting fables that he had
“deplored” the raids, although surviving documents
prove that he personally organized and supervised
every aspect of the events.)
On September 16, 1920, a horse-drawn wagon
filled with dynamite and iron sash weights exploded
outside the Wall Street offices of J.P. Morgan in
Manhattan. Its detonation, timed to coincide with a
lunchtime exodus of workers from buildings in the
financial district, instantly killed 30 victims and
injured at least 300 (of whom 10 more would die
from shrapnel wounds). Hundreds of windows were
shattered, some as far as a quarter-mile from
ground zero. William Flynn, chief of the U.S.
SECRET SERVICE (and soon to be director of the FBI),
denied that the bombing was an attempt to murder
Morgan, even then vacationing in Europe. “This
bomb was not directed at Mr. Morgan or any individual,” Flynn declared. “In my opinion it was
planted in the financial heart of America as a defiance of the American people. I’m convinced a

ANDERSON, Jack (1922– )
Born in 1922, newsman Jack Anderson first gained
national prominence in the late 1940s when he
joined Drew Pearson at the Washington Post,
helping to produce the nationally syndicated
“Washington Merry-Go-Round” column. Ironically, Anderson owed his position to J. EDGAR
HOOVER, who informed Pearson that his former
aide (Andrew Older) was a communist. Pearson
promptly fired Older and hired Anderson to replace
him. Anderson, in turn, became friendly with Senator Joseph McCarthy, funneling information from
Pearson’s private files to McCarthy without Pearson’s knowledge. Although forewarned that the files
contained unverified allegations, McCarthy quoted
the information as factual, thereby losing Anderson’s support. In 1951, after publicly questioning
the use of FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION (FBI)
agents to escort McCarthy’s secretary on a visit to
Hawaii, Anderson and Pearson were placed on the
bureau’s “no contact” list.
Despite that ostracism, the columnists still praised
Hoover effusively through the 1960s until the relationship finally soured in 1968, when Pearson and
Anderson began to investigate Senator Thomas
Dodd, a former G-man and the FBI’s unofficial
mouthpiece on Capitol Hill. FBI agents tried to foil
that investigation by stealing some of Anderson’s
mail, the theft later acknowledged by U.S. Postmaster General Lawrence O’Brien. The columnists retaliated with a December 1968 article in True magazine,
predicting that America was witnessing “the last
days of J. Edgar Hoover.” The piece ascribed
Hoover’s “sainthood” to “40 years of planted press
notices,” without mentioning that Anderson and
Pearson had participated in the charade.
FBI surveillance of Anderson continued into the
1970s, joined by agents of the CENTRAL INTELLI16

ANGOLA

(CIA), the INTERNAL REVENUE SERVand military intelligence. Anderson turned the
tables by interviewing Hoover’s neighbors and raiding his garbage cans, reversing the standard FBI
“trash cover” to report on Hoover’s favorite brand
of soap and liquor. Anderson won a Pulitzer Prize for
his coverage of Washington scandals in 1972,
prompting members of RICHARD NIXON’s staff
(including former FBI agent G. Gordon Liddy) to
plot Anderson’s assassination. Several methods were
discussed, including an LSD-induced car crash and a
simulated mugging, before the White House ruled
that murder was “too severe a sanction.” Instead,
Nixon aides asked Hoover to help them discredit
Anderson. Hoover cheerfully agreed, denouncing
Anderson as “the lowest form of human being to
walk the earth,” a “journalistic prostitute,” and “the
top scavenger of all columnists” who would “go
lower than dog shit for a story.”
On May 1, 1972, Anderson’s column branded
Hoover “the old curmudgeon of law enforcement,”
detailing decades of FBI harassment against MARTIN
LUTHER KING, JR., and others. Furious, Hoover
ordered an investigation to identify Anderson’s
sources within the bureau, but he never learned the
results. Next morning, the FBI director was found
dead at his home in Washington, D.C. Anderson subsequently became the first U.S. reporter to expose the
CIA’s long-running plots to murder Cuban leader
FIDEL CASTRO.

abuse in the guise of discipline—and to sexual predation which the church long ignored and then actively
denied until the cover-up unraveled in the 1970s and
1980s. An official church apology for the abuse in
1998 failed to mollify surviving victims, 12,000 of
whom filed a total of 4,500 civil lawsuits seeking
monetary damages. In autumn 2002 Anglican leaders agreed to settle out of court: The church agreed
to pay victims of the residential school system a total
of $25 million. The relatively simple resolution of
those claims, while long delayed, stands in sharp
contrast to the ongoing scandals surrounding the
Catholic Church’s protection of PEDOPHILE PRIESTS
on four continents.

GENCE AGENCY
ICE,

ANGOLA
The arrival of Portuguese explorers in 1482 spelled
disaster for native inhabitants of this nation in southwestern Africa. Soon, Angola became a major source
of slaves for PORTUGAL’s huge colony of BRAZIL.
Rigid colonial rule and brutal suppression of dissent
continued through World War II and the 30 years of
civil war that followed. Major nationalist groups
battling against the colonial regime included the Popular Movement for Liberation of Angola (MPLA),
the National Front for the Liberation of Angola
(FNLA), and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA). Portugal finally
granted Angolan independence in 1975, and the
dominant MPLA has controlled the new government
ever since, but opposition from UNITA leaders
sparked a new civil war that continues to the present
day. RUSSIA and CUBA supported the Marxist MPLA
government with aid and troops until 1989, while
U.S. arms and aid were funneled to UNITA through
the CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY (CIA). Angola
thus became a proxy battlefield for rival superpowers, much as SPAIN had been during its civil war in
the 1930s. The UNITED NATIONS supervised free elections in 1992, declaring victory for MPLA incumbent president José Eduardo dos Santos. UNITA
contender Jonas Savimbi instantly declared the
process fraudulent and resumed armed struggle
against the ruling regime. Although (allegedly)
deprived of CIA financing, until his death in a gun
battle in February 2002, Savimbi controlled 80 percent of Angola’s diamond supply, and funded his
struggle via outlawed sale of “conflict diamonds” on
the global black market.

ANGLICAN Church
The Anglican Church (or Church of England) was
created in 1536 when King Henry VIII dissolved all
monasteries and abbeys of the CATHOLIC CHURCH
throughout Britain. The rift with Rome resulted in
equal parts from a growing Protestant movement in
England and from Henry’s personal quarrel with the
pope (who refused to permit even royal divorces).
The Anglican creed followed British colonists to
Canada and there became a tool of imperial racism,
as thousands of aboriginal children were forcibly
installed in church-run “residential schools.” Those
sectarian institutions worked overtime to break ties
between captive students and their native culture,
imposing new language, religious creeds, dress codes,
and a view of history in which their ancestors were
“heathen savages.” Many children in the Anglican
residential schools were also subjected to sadistic
17

ANIMAL Liberation Front

ANIMAL Liberation Front

April 2, 1989—Nocturnal raiders took 1,231
lab animals from a Veterans Administration
Hospital at the University of Arizona in
Tucson. Spray painting and fires set in two
laboratory offices caused a total of $500,000
damage.
April 24, 1989—ALF claimed credit for arson fires
that inflicted $10,000 damage on three meat
markets in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Hycrest Meats and Robson Gourmet Meats
were closed forever by the fires, while Nazare
Meat spent four months in renovation.
August 1991—ALF’s “Operation Bite Back I” targeted the U.S. Department of Agriculture
(USDA) Fur Animal Research Facility at Washington State University. Intruders liberated 23
animals and inflicted $150,000 damage to
research facilities.
August 13, 1991—ALF claimed credit for a breakin at Bustad Hall on the Washington State University campus, where 18 experimental animals
were freed from their cages. Substantial damage
was inflicted to lab facilities and research
records.
December 14–15, 1991—The Billingsgate Fish
Company suffered $100,000 in damage
overnight when ALF commandos vandalized
the plant and torched three delivery vehicles.
December 22, 1991—An anonymous phone
call linked ALF to an arson fire that destroyed
a building at the Malecky Mink Ranch in
Yamhill, Oregon. The ranch owner, who collaborated with state researchers on various projects, claimed that his business was destroyed.
February 28, 1992—ALF arsonists set fire to a
research office at Michigan State University and
vandalized a lab where mink were kept, inflicting $100,000 in property damage. Medical
research data spanning three decades was lost
in the raid.
June 6, 1992—ALF raiders in Edmonton,
Alberta, struck the University of Alberta’s
Ellerslie Research Station, rescuing 29 cats and
inflicting $100,000 in property damage. Stolen
files documented the lab’s purchase of animals
from illegal sources.
October 24, 1992—ALF claimed responsibility
for a fire at a coyote farm run by researchers
from Utah State University. Damage was estimated at $100,000.

The Animal Liberation Front (ALF) was organized in
New York City in the early weeks of 1979. Officially,
it comprises a loose-knit network of autonomous
local units, each of which (in ALF’s own words)
“carries out direct action against animal abuse in the
form of rescuing animals and causing financial loss
to animal exploiters, usually through the damage
and destruction of property.” Such actions are illegal
by definition and thus constitute conspiracy,
although ALF spokespeople deny the existence of a
true organization, maintaining that “any group of
people who are vegetarians or vegans and who carry
out actions according to ALF guidelines have the
right to regard themselves as part of the ALF.” A list
of ALF actions, taken from the group’s own Internet
Web site, includes the following:
March 14, 1979—Two dogs, one cat, and two
guinea pigs were taken from the New York University Medical Center’s lab in New York City.
June 15, 1981—ALF activists in Toronto, Canada,
liberated 21 experimental animals from a laboratory at the Hospital for Sick Children.
May 1984—ALF commandos caused $60,000
property damage at the University of Pennsylvania’s Head Injury Laboratory, escaping with
60 hours of videotape that was later released as
a movie entitled Unnecessary Fuss, which
proved so disturbing to viewers that funding for
the program was ultimately slashed.
January 1, 1985—Canadian ALF activists rescued a
rhesus monkey and three cats from a lab at the
University of Western Ontario (in London), leaving the facility with $600 in property damage.
April 1985—Nearly 1,000 lab animals were liberated from the University of California at Riverside. An estimated $700,000 in property
damage was reported. The intruders escaped
with lab documents and videotapes (later
released to the media).
October 26, 1986—264 animals were liberated
from a breeding facility at the University of
Oregon, with $120,000 estimated damage
inflicted on the school laboratory.
April 6, 1987—ALF arsonists struck the Animal
Diagnostics Laboratory at the University of
California in Davis, destroying the lab and
damaging 20 university vehicles. Authorities
estimated the damage at $5.1 million.
18

ANIMAL Rights Militia

May 10, 1994—ALF took credit for an arson fire
that forced evacuation of 1,000 workers from
the Carolina Biological Supply Company
(CBSC) in Burlington, North Carolina. CBSC is
one of the largest U.S. suppliers of animals for
lab research and dissection in schools.
October 1994—ALF’s first fox liberation campaign
struck the McEllis Fur Farm at Pleasant View,
Tennessee, sparing an estimated 25 foxes from
certain death in the name of “fashion.”
October 2, 1995—Raiders struck the Dargatz
Mink Ranch near Chilliwack, British Columbia, destroying crucial breeding documents and
releasing 2,400 mink into the wild.
November 12, 1996—ALF arsonists leveled the
Alaskan Fur Company in Minnesota. Company
spokespeople pegged total damages at
$250,000 for the building and $2 million for
lost furs.
April 4, 1997—The Don Kelly Chinchilla Farm
in Texas was raided by ALF commandos, liberating 10 chinchillas for placement in private
homes.
April 26, 1997—More than 50 activists were
jailed after storming the Yerkes Regional Primate Center at Emory University in Atlanta.
Police battled the crowd with Mace and tear
gas, charging those arrested with various criminal counts.
May 30, 1997—“Operation Bite Back II” climaxed with a record theft of 10,000 mink
from the Arritola Mink Farm at Mount Angel,
Oregon.
July 21, 1997—ALF arsonists caused $1 million in
damage to Cavel West, a horse-rendering plant
in Redmond, Oregon, that provided tissue to
the Pacific Coast Tissue Bank in Los Angeles.
Medical procedures at Pacific Coast were postponed indefinitely.
July 5, 1998—Raiders at Cornell University (in
Ithaca, New York) liberated dozens of woodchucks, releasing them into the wild. The
intruders also removed data cards from the
cages, destroyed crucial ledgers, and left vials of
serum to spoil at room temperature.
November 13, 1998—ALF activists liberated
6,000 mink from the Rippin Fur Farm near
Aldergrove, British Columbia. At the same
time, breeding files collected during a 70-year
period were destroyed.

April 5, 1999—Activists struck research facilities
at the University of Minnesota, stealing 116 lab
animals, ransacking a dozen separate labs, and
destroying equipment valued in the millions of
dollars.
Those actions, while among the most spectacular,
are merely the tip of ALF’s iceberg. Between 1979
and 1993, JUSTICE DEPARTMENT spokespersons
claimed that at least 313 raids of various kinds were
carried out against various targets in the name of animal rights across the United States. No final tabulation is available for Canada or for Britain’s similarly
active ANIMAL RIGHTS MILITIA. The actions continue
to this day on all fronts.

ANIMAL Rights Militia
The Animal Rights Militia (ARM), an ally of the ANIMAL LIBERATION FRONT (ALF), was organized in England during the early 1980s and subsequently
expanded to North America. While emulating the
ALF’s tactics of liberating captive animals and causing
economic damage to its targets, ARM spokespeople
maintain that the ALF “does not go far enough with
regards to direct action. More effective victories can
be achieved with poisoning hoaxes, and other such
strategies.” Acknowledged ARM actions include:
1984—A poison hoax in England targeting the
Mars candy company, which “performed horrific tooth-decay experiments on animals with
no signs of stopping.” ARM threats of poisoned candy forced mass recalls of various
Mars products, inflicting “huge financial
losses” on the company and prompting abandonment of the offensive experiments.
September 1, 1987—ARM claimed credit for California arson fires that destroyed a paper products warehouse and caused $100,000 damage
to San Jose Veal Inc.
November 26, 1987—The same California arsonists caused $230,000 damage to the Ferrara
Meat Company, destroying a barn filled with
hay and grain.
January 2, 1992—ARM activists initiated a poison scare against Cold Buster candy bars in
Canada. The bar’s inventor, Larry Wang, was
named by ARM spokespeople as a participant
in cruel animal experiments at the University of
19

ANSLINGER, Harry

Treasury Department in 1926. Appointed commissioner of PROHIBITION in 1929, he served barely a
year in that position before he was named commissioner of narcotics in 1930. Anslinger thereafter led
the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN) until his
retirement in 1962, campaigning for stricter drug
laws and harsh enforcement.
A perennial lightning rod for J. EDGAR HOOVER’s
wrath, Anslinger invited that reaction in various
ways. He courted national publicity, and Hoover
blamed Anslinger for using copycat initials to name
his agency (although the “FBI” label was not
adopted until 1935, five years after the FBN’s creation). The greatest bone of contention was
Anslinger’s public warnings of an international drugdealing MAFIA. Strong evidence supported Anslinger’s
contention, but Hoover was incapable of any compromise with enemies, a stance that led him to deny
the very existence of organized crime. Deputy Attorney General William Hundly recalled, years later,
that Hoover “got in a big pissing match with Harry
Anslinger over at Narcotics, who he didn’t like, and
Anslinger had the Mafia coming up out of the sewers
the same way Hoover had the communists coming
up out of the sewers. So Hoover got himself locked
into saying there was no Mafia.”
That claim proved humiliating over time.
Anslinger tapped exiled Mafioso CHARLES “LUCKY”
LUCIANO’s telephone in December 1946, exposing
narcotics traffic from Europe to America. Four
years later, he cooperated with Senator Estes Kefauver’s investigation of organized crime, while Hoover
and the FBI remained aloof. In 1957, following the
mass arrest of Mafia bosses at Apalachin, New
York, congressional investigator Robert Kennedy
demanded FBI files on the various gangsters identified and then infuriated Hoover by delivering the
information to Anslinger’s FBN, where Kennedy
thought prosecution was more likely to result. (In
fact, Kennedy found that the FBN had files on all
70 of the arrested mobsters, while the FBI had thin
dossiers on only 30.) While Hoover belatedly
ordered illegal phone taps on various “top hoodlums,” Anslinger recruited the U.S. Coast Guard,
INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE, and U.S. Customs officers to interdict narcotics shipments.
Anslinger retired from the FBN in 1962 and
published a book, The Murderers, that detailed
the growth of international drug cartels since the

Alberta. Development of the candy allegedly
included 16 years of animal research. The ARM
poison scare forced a recall of candy valued in
excess of $1 million.
April 23, 1992—ARM commandos equipped with
red paint celebrated the International Day for
Laboratory Animals by vandalizing the home of
Hans Fibiger, an animal researcher at the University of British Columbia.
August 10, 1994—ARM raiders in the United
Kingdom coordinated detonation of incendiary
devices at the Edinburgh Woolen Mill, Nurse’s
fur store, C.H. Brown’s saddlery and leather
shop, Westworld Leather Goods, and Madison’s leather shop.
August 24, 1994—ARM incendiary bombings
around England caused $4 million damage at
two leather shops, a fishing tackle shop, the
Cancer Research Fund Shop, and an outlet of
the Boots the Chemist chain (targeted as supporters of animal testing).
September 16, 1994—Further British incendiary
attacks caused an estimated $4 million damage
at the Linsley Brothers sport shop, the Imperial
Cancer Research Foundation store, and two
more Boots the Chemist outlets. Boots subsequently sold off its pharmaceutical division to
avoid further incidents.
December 23, 1994—Another ARM poison hoax
rocked Vancouver, British Columbia. Activists
falsely claimed to have injected frozen turkeys
with rat poison, placing the contaminated poultry in various Safeway and Save-on-Food markets throughout the city. Turkeys valued at $1
million were recalled, while Turkey Producers
Co-op reportedly suffered major revenue losses.
January 15, 1998—ARM activists in Uppsala,
Sweden, raided laboratories owned by Bio Jet
Service, liberating 92 guinea pigs slated for
experimentation at Uppsala University. The
breeder, Gothe Olofsson, announced that he
was giving up the trade in laboratory animals.

ANSLINGER, Harry (1892–1975)
A Pennsylvania native who was born in 1892,
Harry Anslinger went to work for the U.S. War
Department in 1917 and then shifted to the U.S.

20

ANTHRAX conspiracies

1920s. He remained outspoken on the subject until
his death in 1975.
See also KENNEDY DYNASTY.

(FBI) has twice investigated plots to
use anthrax within the country, as a terrorist
weapon, with unfortunate results in both cases.
The United States suffered a tragic brush with
anthrax in 2001. Between October 4 and November
21, at least 46 residents of the eastern United States
tested positive for exposure to anthrax, after a series
of infected letters were mailed to various media outlets and government offices. Five of those victims
died: two Washington postal workers, an employee
of a Florida tabloid, a New York hospital employee,
and an elderly Connecticut woman. Despite a massive nationwide investigation, including a $1 million
reward offer for information leading to the arrest of
persons responsible for the anthrax mailings, the
case remains unsolved today. FBI failure to crack the
case, despite unprecedented effort and publicity,
opened the bureau to harsh criticism from Congress,
the media, and the U.S. public at large.
In August 2002 Newsweek magazine reported
“intriguing new clues” in the bureau’s search for the
anthrax killer(s). According to that report, tracking
dogs employed to screen a dozen possible suspects
“went crazy” at the Maryland home of Dr. Steven
Hatfill, a 48-year-old scientist once employed at an
army bioweapons-research lab. Newsweek dubbed
Hatfill “eccentric . . . [f]lamboyant and arrogant,”
proclaiming that FBI agents were “finally on the verge
of a breakthrough” in the case. Hatfill was placed
under round-the-clock surveillance and subjected to a
polygraph test (which he reportedly passed), and his
home was searched twice without revealing evidence
of any criminal activity. Still, that did not prevent
Attorney General JOHN ASHCROFT from publicly
branding Hatfill “a person of interest” in the case,
refusing to define the term when challenged by Hatfill’s attorneys. Hatfill held a press conference to
declare his innocence on August 11, 2002; two days
later his attorney filed complaints with the bureau’s
Office of Professional Responsibility, alleging misconduct in Hatfill’s case. On September 4, 2002, Hatfill
was fired from his job at Louisiana State University’s
biomedical laboratory, after JUSTICE DEPARTMENT
officials barred him from working on projects funded
by federal grants. In May 2003 G-men acting on “a
tip” dredged a pond near Hatfill’s home and again
came away empty-handed. Disposition of Hatfill’s
lawsuit against the FBI and Justice Department was
pending as this volume went to press.
INVESTIGATION

ANTARCTICA
Antarctica is the fifth-largest continent on Earth,
with a total area of 5.4 million square miles. It is a
world of ice where no recorded temperature has ever
topped 59° Fahrenheit, and the record low (from
July 21, 1983) is –129°F. Despite the presence of
small research stations, Antarctica is officially uninhabited—but was it always so?
In 1959, while performing research at the Library of
Congress, Professor Charles Hapgood (Keene College,
New Hampshire) discovered a map drawn by Orontheus Phynius in 1531. It pictured Antarctica with
rivers and mountains but without its trademark milethick glaciers. A similar map of an ice-free Antarctica
was published in 1737 by Philippe Boiche, a member
of the French Academy of Science. In fact, Boiche
depicted the southernmost continent as two great bodies of land divided by water in the same region where
the Transantarctic Mountains are shown on modern
maps. Boiche’s vision was affirmed in 1958 when modern cartographers revealed that Antarctica is, in effect,
an icebound archipelago of large islands.
How did mapmakers of the 16th and 18th centuries present such a strikingly different picture of
Antarctica? Conspiracy theories advanced in this
realm typically involve some variation of the
“ancient astronauts” theme, though intimations of a
link to lost Atlantis or the mythic HOLLOW EARTH
are also popular. From those beginnings theorists
generally invoke a global conspiracy of silence,
masking The Truth (as they see it) about planet
Earth, its beginnings, and the origins of humankind.

ANTHRAX conspiracies
Anthrax is a spore-forming bacillus that is deadly to
humans and is transmitted in three different forms:
cutaneous (contracted through the skin), gastrointestinal (ingested orally while eating), and pulmonary
(inhaled by its victims). Various countries, including
the United States, have stockpiled anthrax since the
early 1930s, constantly experimenting and refining
the disease to make it more effective as a biological
weapon. In recent years, the FEDERAL BUREAU OF

21

APOLLO Project

APOLLO Project

includes empty spacecraft launched from Florida
and crashing back to Earth in the Antarctic, while
astronauts are flown to the Nevada movie set and
bogus Moon rocks are concocted in a high-tech
ceramics kiln. Curiously, a film with a similar theme,
Capricorn One, was released by Hollywood in
1978—13 years before Kaysing published his
treatise on NASA’s great scam.
In 1999 a public-opinion poll revealed that 11
percent of the U.S. population doubted that astronauts had ever set foot on the Moon. That margin
reportedly jumped to 20 percent in 2001 after the
Fox TV network twice broadcast a program titled
Conspiracy Theory: Did We Really Land on the
Moon? On September 9, 2002, in Beverly Hills,
aging astronaut Buzz Aldrin assaulted a heckler half
his age after the man brandished a Bible, asking
Aldrin to swear that he had walked on the Moon.
Throughout the mounting controversy, NASA
maintained stony silence, refusing to debate skeptics concerning the Apollo project’s validity. As late
as 2001 NASA’s response to the controversy consisted of a one-line memorandum: “Apollo: Yes, we
did.” Then, on October 30, 2002, newspapers
across the United States reported that NASA had
retained Houston author and aerospace engineer
James Oberg (for $15,000) to write a book
debunking critical claims. “Ignoring it,” Oberg
told reporters, “only fans the flames of people who
are naturally suspicious.” Stephen Garber, NASA’s
acting chief historian, weighed in with the opinion
that Oberg’s 30,000-word manuscript “is not going
to convince the people who believe in these myths.
Hopefully, it’ll speak to other people who are
broad-minded.” The book, Garber said, would
expose “space myths writ large [and will] look at
some of these broader issues of how these myths
get initiated and promulgated.”
The ink was barely dry on that announcement
when, nine days later, NASA announced cancellation
of Oberg’s book. An unnamed NASA spokesperson
told reporters that “the project stirred up too much
ridicule.” Instead of the reported $15,000 advance,
Oberg would receive $5,000 “for work already
done.” Oberg, for his part, vowed to find another
publisher. “I’m writing the book anyway,” he told
reporters, “and now commercial publishers are interested. We live in a time teeming with conspiracy theories, and people, especially teachers, have little to
help train students in critical thinking.”

On July 20, 1969, millions of people around the
world watched in awe as U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong stepped from his spider-legged spacecraft to
set foot on the Moon. It was, as Armstrong proclaimed to the television cameras, “One small step
for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
Or was it?
In 1991 author Bill Kaysing announced his “discovery” that there was, in fact, no Moon walk—not
on Armstrong’s flight nor on any of the subsequent
Apollo missions claimed by National Aeronautics
and Space Administration (NASA). The events were
not filmed in space, Kaysing said, but rather on a
military soundstage in Nevada (perhaps at supersecret AREA 51). In Kaysing’s view, the whole Apollo
program came down to a “$30 billion swindle,”
incorporating “programmed astronauts,” some
“well-faked photographs,” and bogus Moon rocks,
sold to the world with “the help of father-figure
[Walter] Cronkite as the journalistic goat.” In place
of proof, Kaysing posed pointed questions, which
NASA has thus far declined to answer. They
include:
• Why are no stars visible in photos of the jetblack lunar sky?
• If the Moon’s surface is dusty enough to show
deep footprints, why did the lunar lander’s
rocket dig such a shallow crater—and why is
there no dust on the spacecraft’s legs?
• If Armstrong was the first human to set foot on
the Moon, why was a shoeprint visible at the
base of the ladder as he filmed his own original
descent?
• If the Moon was proved sterile after the first
Apollo landing, why did astronauts from later
missions spend long terms in quarantine?
• In Kaysing’s own words, “Why did so many
astronauts end up as executives in very large
corporations?”
Kaysing believes the “fake” Moon landings were
staged after NASA discovered that its years of
expensive research and planning were all for nothing
and that the Moon walk was impossible; scientists
thereupon allegedly joined forces with members of
the MAFIA in LAS VEGAS to fake the various Apollo
missions, thereby avoiding criticism and potential
cancellation of their meal tickets. The scenario
22

ARGENTINA

AQUINO, Benigno (1932–1983)

1976 kidnap-murder of U.S. Ambassador Francis
Meloy and his chauffeur in Beirut, but the culprits in
that case were never caught. Alternate theories in
the case blame members of the Palestine Liberation
Organization and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

In th