The Mammoth Book of Cover-Ups

by Jon E. Lewis

  John Fuller, The Interrupted Journey, 1966

  Budd Hopkins., Intruders, 1987

  John E. Mack, Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens, 1994

  AMERICAN MIA IN VIETNAM

  In Rambo: First Blood Part II, Sylvester Stallone’s gun-toting hero lands in Vietnam to rescue American POWs left behind after the conclusion of the war in 1973.

  But were there any such POWs in real life? No, said successive US governments, starting with Richard Nixon’s Republicans in 1973. Sociology professors agreed, labelling the “MIA myth” as mass conservative hysteria, a psychological unwillingness to let go of Vietnam as a hopeless cause.

  Yes, said an awful lot of US soldiers and intelligence agents, starting with US Marine Bobby Garfield. Garfield was captured by the Viet Cong in 1965 and released in 1979 – that is, five years after the US government had assured the nation that all MIAs and POWs had been accounted for. Families of MIAs/POWs then asked the Pentagon for declassified documents about their loved ones – only for the Pentagon to reclassify these documents. When the wife of one MIA wrote to President Reagan, he replied that his administration had planned a rescue raid for the MIA by Green Berets under the command of Colonel Bo Gritz in 1981.

  Eh? The official line was that no US MIA remained alive in Indochina.

  Some sense of the contradictions and denials of the White House was made by the authors Monika Jensen-Stevenson and William Stevenson in their 1990 book Kiss the Boys Goodbye. The Stevensons reported that Dr Henry Kissinger negotiated a secret clause in the Paris Peace Accord (which ended the war in Nam) whereby the US would pay North Vietnam $4 billion in reparations in return for POWs held by Hanoi. The US then reneged on the reparations – and the POWs stayed in Vietnam. “We had thousands of Americans after the release of 1973,” a Vietnamese secret police chief informed the Stevensons.

  Confirmation of the Stevensons’ case came in 1992 with the testimony of Richard Allen before Senator John Kerry’s Senate Select Committee on the fate of the American MIA. Allen informed the Committee that in 1981 Vietnam had offered to free the POWs it still held – some dozens – if the US handed over the $4 billion it had originally promised. The offer was rebuffed by the Reagan government because it was not willing to pay ransom money for hostages (a piece of high-mindedness that apparently ended at the border of Iran; in 1987 Reagan confessed on TV that he had traded arms for American hostages and funnelled the funds to the Contras in Nicaragua – see Iran-Contra Scandal). Some observers, however, considered that the Reagan rebuff was simply because his administration wanted to close down the MIA/POW issue for fear of exposing the US’s illegal operations in Laos, bordering Vietnam, where many POWs were believed held. According to whistle-blowing CIA agents, there were any number of embarrassing schemes operated by the agency in Laos, from drug-running to arms sales, waiting to be turned into headline news by the media. Better, then, to sacrifice the POWs and keep newshound noses out of Laos.

  So John Rambo had it right: there were MIAs/POWs left behind in Vietnam.

  Sadly, the chances of any POWs being left alive today, after 30 years of privation and imprisonment, are remote.

  The US government deliberately failed to rescue MIAs and POWs left behind in Vietnam: ALERT LEVEL 8

  Further Reading

  Monika Jensen-Stevenson and William Stevenson, Kiss the Boys Goodbye, 1990

  AREA 51

  Also known as the Groom Lake Facility, Area 51 is a high-security military base in the Nevada desert, 90 miles (145 km) north of Las Vegas. The facility, which comprises thousands of acres, is surrounded by security fencing and intruder-detection systems, and is regularly patrolled. A no-fly zone operates above it.

  So far, so military-base humdrum. Where Area 51 differs from other military installations is in the longstanding belief by conspiracists that it houses the UFO disc found at Roswell, as well as other crashed alien spaceships. At Area 51, the theory goes, the recovered UFOs are back-engineered so that their technology can be utilized by the US military. The latter are helped – either willingly or unwillingly – by captured alien pilots.

  Few of the human government employees who work at Groom have ever talked about their work, but two who did were Leo Williams and Bob Lazar. Williams claimed to have worked in alien technology evaluation, the results of which informed the design of the B-2 stealth bomber. In 1989 Lazar announced on local TV that he too had been involved in “back engineering” at Groom’s S-4 hangars complex, including assessment of the Roswell craft’s propulsion system. He had even uncovered “Gravity B”, a force arising from the manipulation of a new nuclear element, “ununpentium”.

  Neither Williams nor Lazar proved very convincing witnesses. Lazar had invented his purported MIT physics qualification and before working in back-engineering had been engaged in the rather less than cutting-edge employment of managing a photo shop. A steady stream of sightings of strange lights and craft at Groom, however, kept alive the notion of Area 51 as a top-secret UFO lab, perhaps the manufacturing plant of Black Helicopters.

  Certainly, Area 51 has been the testing centre for weird and wonderful aircraft. The U-2 spy plane was flown there; so was the SR-71 Blackbird, the B-2 stealth bomber and the F-117 stealth fighter. And these are only the planes the public has been informed about. It’s reasonable to suppose that other prototype and avant-garde aircraft have taken to the air at Groom, less reasonable to suppose that they have been developed from alien technology.

  Area 51 is the holding centre for crashed alien ships: ALERT LEVEL 3

  Further Reading

  David Darlington, Area 51: The Dreamland Chronicles, 1998

  Eric Elfman, Almanac of Alien Encounters, 2001

  Phil Patton, Dreamland: Travels Inside the Secret World of Roswell and Area 51, 1998

  BABYLONIAN BROTHERHOOD

  Remember V, the science fiction TV series where reptilian humanoids took over the Earth?

  David Icke does. According to the New Age guru and conspiracist, 12-foot (3.66m) lizards from the planet Draco have colonized Earth (above and below ground) and, organized into the Babylonian Brotherhood, rule it through such “Global Elites” as The Illuminati and The Bilderberg Group. The Babylonian Brotherhood are externally convincing as humans, but their reptilian-humanoid DNA courses through the veins of the world’s rulers; indeed, it is precisely this hybrid genetic plus which gives them the necessary attributes for ruling:

  The Rothschilds, Rockefellers, the British royal family, and the ruling political and economic families of the US and the rest of the world come from these SAME bloodlines . . . the reptilian-mammalian DNA.

  In such books as The Biggest Secret (1999) and Children of the Matrix (2001), Icke has assiduously tracked the doings of the Brotherhood and their human supporters as they seek to gain ever tighter control over the world. The Brotherhood’s modus operandi is, according to Icke, the “problem-reaction-solution”, whereby the Brotherhood perpetrates some outrage – such as 9/11 or the Oklahoma City Bombings – so that the public clamours for a policy change. Which, of course, is exactly what the Brotherhood wants.

  Icke shares some of the same political bed as the armed American militias, who likewise identify the New World Order project as the source of all modern evil. On occasion Icke has addressed US patriot groups. Where Icke and the militias part company is on the “Jewish Question”: the militias are virulently anti-Semitic, Icke is not. “This [the Brotherhood] is not a Jewish plot,” Icke told the British journalist Jon Ronson in the latter’s book Them (2001). Travelling with Icke and his entourage, Ronson, a Jew, found little evidence of race hatred.

  The suggestion that humanoid-reptilians rule the Earth is not Icke’s first visit to the furthest shores of the imagination. Born in Leicester, England, in 1952, Icke was originally a professional footballer, playing for Coventry and Hereford, before arthritis forced a change of career to sports reporting for the BBC. Outside the studio he became increasingly involved with politics, first
with the Liberal Democrats and then with the Green Party. It was during a session of spiritual healing in 1990 for arthritis that messages from “master souls and Extra-Terrestrials” reached Icke, informing him that he was the Son of God. “I am a channel for the Christ Spirit. The truth was given me very recently by the Godhead,” Icke said at the time. Dressed completely in turquoise, claiming to be the risen Christ, Icke became a figure of such national fun that he went and hid for years.

  Re-emerging as the clarion sounder against the Brotherhood, Icke is a fluent, persuasive, telegenic communicator, a natural politician.

  Which raises a dread possibility. If he is so gifted a leader, might Icke be a lizard disguised as a human himself?

  The world is run by reptiles disguised as humans: ALERT LEVEL 1

  Further Reading

  David Icke, The Biggest Secret, 1999

  David Icke, Children of the Matrix, 2001

  Jon Ronson, Them: Adventures Among Extremists, 2001

  BARCODES

  For most people barcodes are the handy black and white stripes on products that facilitate quick payment at the store: instead of the assistant keying in the price, the item is swiped over red laser lights which read it off. For the shopkeeper, barcodes have the advantage that swiping the barcode allows instant stock control.

  Oh, those poor deluded souls. They need to read the 1982 book The New Money System: 666 by Mary Stewart Relfe. For Relfe has divined that barcodes have Satanic importance. The guard bars on the code indicate 666 – the mark of the Devil and his cashless economy. It says so in Revelations 13:16-18:

  And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name. Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six hundred threescore and six.

  David Icke (he who, inter alia, tracks the doings of the Babylonian Brotherhood) is another to have a problem with barcodes, because they enable mass observation: everything you buy with a credit or debit card can be put against your name. Soon the government and the backroom cabal that runs it will know exactly what’s in your home.

  Icke may be a nut, but he might be right. The trend of the era is towards microscopic surveillance of citizens’ consumer habits. In 2005 the BBC reported that the Tesco supermarket chain had trialled Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) chips, which allowed products to be tracked via radio waves. Privacy groups labelled these chips “spy chips” because the tags could be used to track the behaviour of customers.

  There is clearly a need for citizens to watch out for what big business and governments are up to. The Devil, though, is not in the detail of the UPC and EAN barcodes used in America and Europe respectively.

  Barcodes are part of the prophecy of the Beast’s takeover: ALERT LEVEL 3

  Further Reading

  Mary Stewart Relfe, The New Money System: 666, 1982

  BCCI (Bank of Commerce and Credit International)

  Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce.

  President James Garfield

  It used to be called usury. These days it’s called “charging interest on loans” and is the raison d’être of those ubiquitous institutions, banks. Since the 17th century banks have loaned money to nations and companies as well as to individuals, and accordingly they have been charged with manipulation of national and international affairs. According to the True Conspiracies website the following, among other sins, can be laid at the reinforced doors of “the banks” (punctuation, spelling, capitalization, etc., sic):

  Boom and bust cycles along with the depressions, stock market crashes and wars are deliberately caused to make people lose money to the conspirators. They also weaken the people and tame governments into accepting the conspirators’ solutions.

  The history books controlled by the conspiracy do not tell the full truth on why many events happen. For example the conspirators blame slavery for the American civil war but the real reason was to establish a central bank in the USA and to force a war to enable them to lend money at interest. [. . .]

  The conspirators bribed members of the government by paying them and having them work for the bank. Intense deceptive media publicity convinced the public and politicians of the benefit of the Federal Reserve Act. It was done in ways such as by lying and saying that the banks will reduce boom and bust cycles. The Federal Reserve Act was passed near Christmas when few people were present to vote against it.

  Hitler was funded by the USA and Britain to create a bigger war. The U.S. government controlled by the bankers conspiracy, wanted Hitler to invade America but he declined due to the risk of the number of Americans with guns. The U.S. government also encouraged Japan to invade Pearl Harbor to get America into the war.

  The bankers funded Arab and Japanese companies to buy up property around the world so the bankers could gain more control of it.

  Manipulation of agriculture has and will be used to force the population to accept the conspirators’ demands such as having to surrender guns to get food.

  The U.S. deliberately tried to lose the Korean and Vietnam wars so the communists would remain with territory. [. . .]

  Although involved with the conspiracy since his initial rise to power, President Kennedy was killed by an agent of the conspiracy for wanting to pull out of Vietnam and printing silver currency.

  Many countries now with conflicts had peace until the influence of International Bankers Conspiracy.

  The collapse of the Soviet Union was a hoax to fool the world into a false sense of security and also to slowly cause the world to accept communism. The bankers funded the Soviet Union to create an arms race, which cost time and money. Also it caused the nations to gladly surrender their arms in the name of peace so that the goal of a one-world army could be formed under the control of the United Nations.

  In World War 2 the US and British governments controlled by the bankers succeeded in getting the Soviet Union to control much of Eastern Europe.

  They can control the weather for Biological warfare. They are deliberately ruining the environment to gain more control.

  Phew. And there’s plenty more where that came from! In the fevered minds of some conspiracy theorists, the banks are run by a cabal of families – principally the Rothschilds, the Warburgs, Loebs and the Rockefellers – who hammer out their joint policy in the Bilderberg Group and implement said policy via various front organizations. The Bank of England, the Federal Reserve, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank all hold a special chill place in the hearts of the conspiracy theorists as the business end of the international banking conspiracy. And the end goal of that conspiracy? A New World Order, naturally.

  A distinct flaw in the international banking conspiracy theory is that the national banks continue to operate with patriotic bias. The Bank of England still promotes British interests above all others; the Bundesbank acts resolutely in favour of German strategy (which, according to some on the British left, is a conspiracy to run Europe from Berlin, a sort of soft-glove Third Reich), and so on and so forth. Then there’s that nasty sheen of anti-Semitism over much of the banking conspiracy theory, just as it had in the 1930s when Adolf Hitler blamed “Jew financiers” for the world’s woes, principally Bolshevism. Sixty years later it’s still the Jews who “destroyed Christian old line companies . . . who want Islamic owned companies excluded from Dow Jones . . . [who] live on the labour of others” according to the internet site Jew Watch. It’s not difficult to debunk the anti-Semitic fantasy: It takes just one name, the name of J.P. Morgan. The superbanker was a white Christian.

  Take out the anti-Semitism and the puppet-and-string notion of politics, however, and the conspiracists raise legitimate concerns about the most powerful of financial institutions. Banks are one
of the globalizing forces seeking to enervate the nation state, and banks do discuss mutual interests in elite forums such as Bilderberg, Le Cercle and the Trilateral Commission. The International Monetary Fund does operate in the worldwide capitalist interest (as numerous left-wing regimes have discovered when obliged to alter their internal economies in return for aid). Sometimes banks are immoral: the Vatican Bank allegedly laundered money for the Mafia (see Roberto Calvi), the Banco Nationale del Lavoro funded illegal arms purchases, Barclays underpinned the apartheid regime of South Africa before, with breathtaking hypocrisy, funding the black dictatorship of Mugabe in Zimbabwe . . .

  For sheer criminality, however, the Bank of Commerce and Credit International (BCCI) remains unsurpassed. The sorry tale of the BCCI is also one which ties in some of the biggest names of late 20th-century history, among them George W. Bush, Henry Kissinger and Osama bin Laden.

  The BCCI was founded in 1972 by the Pakistani banker Agha Hasan Abedi, with an initial chest of £2.5 million. In an astute piece of marketing it proclaimed itself the “Third World Bank”, with a mission to promote prosperity in the corners of the globe that Western banks ignored. Within a decade it had a million depositors and was working its way to a paper value of $25 billion. Despite its “Third World Bank” tag, BCCI was keen to break into North America, where in 1977 it bought four banks, including the First American Bank.