Conspiracies Declassified

by Brian Dunning

  Two of the main pieces of evidence are simply false. There was plenty of aircraft wreckage at the crash site, and it’s easy to find photos of it online. It was even visible in the live news footage, so it wasn’t planted later. And as far as the Pentagon’s defense systems, it never had any. In all of the thousands of aerial photographs of the Pentagon, it’s plain to see that there are no antiaircraft batteries or other rooftop defenses.

  Regarding the radar track of the approach that was taken, it was indeed a wild circle descent that would have been unsafe to perform in a 757. But that proves nothing. It was still well within a 757’s capabilities, and the hijackers never had any intention of being safe. Moreover, missiles have no need to circle to lose altitude; they can simply go straight down. Large planes can’t, not without breaking up from aerodynamic stresses.

  As for the video of the incoming small white streak? No tail is visible because, in the one frame where the plane appears, it has not yet entirely entered the field of view, so its tail is still out of frame. Beyond this, the image is almost uselessly indistinct. The security camera was fitted with an ultra-wide-angle lens in order to capture the entire parking gate area. The Pentagon building itself appears deeply curved from the distortion of this lens. Anything far away, like the airplane, would be dramatically reduced in size. The fact that the white streak is as large as it is means that it has to be something as big as a 757. The video is absolutely consistent with how a 757 would appear to that lens.

  As with all large conspiracy theories, we should consider the number of people who would have to be in on the truth in order to make it happen. What is the minimum number of people at American Airlines who would know if a nonexistent flight was added to their database? Consider all the people who worked at Washington Dulles International Airport, the flight’s origin. The baggage handling and gate crews from all the American Airlines gates would have heard about the crash and quickly, by talking among themselves, have all learned that no such flight existed that day. They would have reported the inconsistency up their chain of command. Soon everyone with knowledge of American Airlines’ flight schedules would have checked their books. At some level, virtually every one of American Airlines’ 100,000 employees worldwide, 3,900 members of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association, 57,000 members of the Air Line Pilots Association, and 116,000 members of the Transport Workers Union of America would have heard about this discrepancy from their coworkers. More than a quarter of a million people would have had to be paid off or killed, without a single one of them coming forward to report this over more than a decade.

  When a missile is fired—and we can assume this would have had to be a cruise missile launched either from the sea or from the air to avoid witnesses to its firing—how many people know about it? Certainly the crew of the boat or aircraft, but what about the teams responsible for the missile inventories, the civilian contractors who replace them, the civilian auditors who track everything? How many people know when a submarine’s entire crew of 150 is paid off or threatened? At some point, it becomes an exercise in absurdity. The Pentagon was hit by American Airlines Flight 77, which was commandeered by terrorists. End of story.

  Skeptoid ® Says . . .

  The Pentagon Memorial, situated at the crash site, has an inscribed bench for each of the 184 victims, arranged by birth date, from 1930 to 1998. It is open to the public twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year.

  PART 5

  Suppressed Science

  The Earth is flat. The cures for many common diseases have been created and tested. You can ditch your electric company and power your home for free. All this and more is true . . . if you’re a conspiracy theorist, that is!

  In this part we’ll take a look at the conspiracy theories surrounding the business of suppressive science. Now, you’ll often find made-up or misrepresented sciences used to explain technologies that exist only in our dreams. The expected result is an Internet filled with impossible-to-createmachines and wild theories, all explained by tossed-together sciencey-sounding words with no real meaning. Closely related is the idea that “science doesn’t know everything,” which of course means that anything a person wants to believe to be true is true. The names of famous scientists like Nikola Tesla, Albert Einstein, and Galileo Galilei can almost always be found backing up these claims. These scientists’ theories are almost always grossly misrepresented, but for people who want to believe, including these “proven” ideas helps back up any conspiracy theory. So let’s take a look and find out what the theorists think about suppressed science.

  The Hollow Earth Theory

  * * *

  Date: ca. 1600–Present

  Location: The Earth

  The Conspirators: World governments

  The Victims: The world population

  * * *

  The Theory

  You’d think that the idea of the Earth as a globe of rock with humanity living on its outside surface would seem to be an absolute given. Not for conspiracy theorists! In fact, there have been a number of groups throughout the centuries who claim that this accepted model of the Earth is absolutely false. These theorists believe in a hollow Earth and have claimed that the authorities—the mysterious and unnamed “powers that be”—are lying to the public in order to control us and prevent us from knowing the true geometry of the world.

  There have been a number of divergent theories in the hollow Earth canon. In its most basic version, the universe consists of an infinite expanse of solid rock, and the surface of Earth consists of the concave surface of an empty bubble inside that rock. It is exactly the same surface area with the same surface features as the standard model of Earth, just turned inside out. Another variation, which is the more popular one that still survives today, has us living on the Earth’s outer surface as in reality, but an alien civilization lives in the hollow, inner surface, and the aliens come and go through various openings in the Earth’s poles in flying saucers. And, in yet another variation, the Earth is made up of concentric spheres with various civilizations living on each level, nested inside one another like gigantic Russian nesting dolls.

  The Truth

  The Earth is a globe and we live on its outer surface.

  The Backstory

  Claims of a hollow Earth have been as varied in their types of alternate geography as they have in their motivations, which, through the centuries, have sometimes been religious and sometimes political. Today, we know that Earth is a convex sphere because we can see it from space. Yet that does not stop modern authors from continuing to promote that it is hollow and filled with aliens who exit and enter Earth’s surface through openings at the poles.

  While this theory may be the most popular of those that survive today, it is not new. In the early 1800s, a former Army officer turned Hollow Earth promoter named John Symmes almost had the government persuaded to sponsor him on an expedition to find that north polar opening, in the hopes that the inner-world people could be persuaded to ally with the United States. The plan only died when President Andrew Jackson was elected and killed it, recognizing it as ridiculous.

  The evidence that theorists cite as proof of this model has included the fact that birds migrate seasonally, and where else would they be headed but to those polar openings; and the fact that world maps have changed over the centuries, which is consistent with their belief in government suppression of the true geography of the world.

  Even the model of nested concentric spheres has enjoyed serious scientific support at various times. In 1692 Astronomer Edmond Halley, after whom the famous comet is named, presented a paper to the Royal Society—Britain’s leading scientific academy—suggesting that the Earth might consist of various concentric spheres, all held in place by gravity. Assuming the concentric spheres were free to rotate within each other, this would explain phenomena such as the way the magnetic poles move around. Additionally, luminous gases leaking out through the north polar hole (for Halley’s model also had such holes) cou
ld explain the aurora.

  But in 1870, it was Cyrus Teed, an American alchemist and pagan religious leader, who turned the world inside out, so to speak. His model said that the universe is an infinite expanse of solid rock with an Earth-sized bubble of air in the center, and all the world’s oceans, continents, and people are on the inner surface of that vast bubble. His book The Cellular Cosmogony, or the Earth a Concave Sphere described the universe as being inside out, with the world as we see it on the inside surface of a sphere, and all the heavens contained within. Teed established a church called the Koreshan Unity focused on this concept.

  This concave sphere model of the Earth favored by Teed was famously put to the test by Ulysses Grant Morrow, a member of Teed’s Koreshan Unity. Morrow had conducted many ocean-level optical studies to learn whether the surface of the ocean appeared convex or concave and had grown familiar with the optical distortions that sometimes make distant ships either visible above the horizon or invisible below it. Using this idea as a base, he contrived a proof that the Earth’s surface curved upward that would not depend on sightings that he regarded as fallible and subject to optical illusions. Morrow reasoned that if he constructed an absolutely straight line four miles long and suspended it over the ocean, and that if it was absolutely level at one end, the far end would dip down toward the water, if the world was indeed concave and hollow.

  In 1897, Morrow began his experiment at a stretch of straight beach near Naples, Florida. Because it wasn’t practical to build a 4-mile-long object, he designed a set of four rigid H-shaped frames that he dubbed “rectilinears.” They were built by the Pullman railroad car company, the most reliable builder he could find. Each was 12 feet long and 4 feet wide, made of mahogany and brass, and diagonally braced with steel bars to be absolutely rigid.

  The first rectilinear was positioned just above sea level on rigidly anchored standards. It was leveled with four different types of level to be absolutely certain it was true. The next rectilinear was brought up beside it and bolted to it, and when it was secure, it too was fastened to a rigid standard. They continued down the beach this way, leap-frogging the last rectilinear and repositioning it at the front of the line. Caissons (watertight chambers) were placed in the water all along the way so the tides could be accurately measured and accounted for. Each measurement was checked and initialed by several people. Morrow went to great lengths to ensure that everything was absolutely correct.

  In the true model of the Earth, with a convex surface, Morrow’s line should have been about 2 percent higher off the ground at the far end, as the curvature of the Earth would slope down away from a perfectly straight line. However, in Morrow’s model that curvature was exactly reversed, so his mathematics predicted the line would be about 2 percent closer to the water’s surface. It took months of painstaking work, but when they reached the end of the line, the last rectilinear was exactly 2 percent lower than the first had been. His results? The concave sphere model was proven! Earth is indeed hollow, and we live on its concave inner surface.

  Skeptoid ® Says . . .

  Today, a structural engineer can look at the one surviving rectilinear on display at the well-preserved Koreshan State Historic Site in Florida, a state park (www.floridastateparks.org) where you can see the Koreshan Unity’s surviving buildings and workshops—not to mention their inside-out globe.

  The Explanation

  Let’s start by taking a look at Morrow’s “proof” of a hollow, inside-out Earth. With apologies to the engineers at Pullman, the rectilinears were built with an obvious geometric flaw. Although they were properly braced corner to corner, the point in the center where the diagonals crossed one another should have been fixed, with both diagonals fastened to the crossbar. Instead, the diagonals are free floating where they intersect the crossbar. This lack of attachment allowed the H-shaped frame to flex like an isosceles trapezoid. It is a testament to Pullman’s exceptional build quality that this freedom to flex escaped unnoticed. For Morrow to have gotten the result he did, his line could have sagged no more than 4 percent over the full 4 miles, which adds to the impressiveness of the achievement. Had the rectilinears been braced across the top and bottom, and/or had the diagonals been fixed at the center of the frame, Morrow would have certainly got even less of an error.

  Morrow could scarcely have predicted that in the future spacecraft would be able to see the convex blue sphere of the Earth in all its glory, but it is to his credit that, as wrong as he was, he made every effort to be as rigorous as possible in his science-based exploration of truth.

  By gravitational studies, we know that the Earth is a solid ball and does not contain the vast cavities assumed by the other various Hollow Earth theories, and with our detailed air and ground surveys and imaging we know there are no great polar holes through which migrating birds, alien flying saucers, or anything else come and go.

  The Flat Earth Theory

  * * *

  Date: ca. 1800–Present

  Location: The Earth

  The Conspirators: World governments

  The Victims: The world population

  * * *

  The Theory

  Out of all the conspiracy theories in the book, you’ve almost certainly heard this one before: the Earth is flat. The conspiracy theorists who believe this to be true think that the flat Earth is the greatest of all secrets, and that keeping it from the public is the ultimate act of control. As long as this most enormous of all possible truths is hidden from us, we remain under the control of the powerful elite, and are subject to whatever abuses they wish to impose. Many theorists who think the Earth is flat feel that it is their patriotic duty to believe; for if an immoral government is imposing a false claim on its people, resistance to that claim becomes a moral imperative, in their minds.

  The Truth

  The Earth is round.

  The Backstory

  Popular notions that ancient people believed the world was flat turn out to be almost universal, but are also almost universally false. Since the ancients first began forming concepts of the cosmos, humans have always understood the Earth to be a globe. Pythagoras noted this as early as the sixth century B.C.E., followed by Aristotle, Euclid, and others. More than 2,200 years ago, ancient computations had the circumference of the Earth to within 2 percent accuracy. Educated populations worldwide have always known that the Earth is round.

  It was not until the 1800s in England that a significant number of otherwise well-educated people discarded the notion of a round Earth. This view rose from the world of biblical literalism. A few Christian fundamentalists pointed to a number of Bible passages that they believed, when interpreted literally, proved the Earth must be flat. For example, references to “the four corners of the Earth” appear in Revelations 7:1, 20:8, and Isaiah 11:12, and references to “the ends of the Earth” appear in Psalms 67:7, 98:3, and Isaiah 45:22. All of which appear to suggest that the Earth has edges. Matthew 4:8 speaks of “all the world’s kingdoms” being visible from a single mountaintop, which could only be the case if the whole Earth was a flat plain. Biblical flat-Earth enthusiasts continue these odd interpretations ad nauseam with further verses about waters, the sky, compass directions, you name it.

  Skeptoid ® Says . . .

  A popular myth says Christopher Columbus had to persuade Ferdinand and Isabella to let him prove the Earth was round. This story is completely false. The spherical nature of the Earth had already been a fundamental of ocean navigation for a millennium. We also commonly believe Galileo was sent to the Inquisition for saying the Earth was round; but no, that had always been the prevailing view. Galileo was prosecuted for heresy, not for geography.

  Most influential among these was a gentleman named Samuel Rowbotham, who called himself Parallax. Parallax decided that the promotion of a flat Earth should be his life’s work, and he wrote, lectured, and debated about this idea tirelessly. He also came up with a number of experiments that were designed to prove the flatness of the Eart
h. He called his science Zetetic Astronomy (zetetic drawn from the Greek word for “inquiry”) and, in 1865, published Zetetic Astronomy: Earth Not a Globe, which became the magnum opus of flat Earthism. In his view, expressed in the book, the North Pole lay at the center of the flat Earth, and Antarctica was an ice wall that surrounded its circumference. The sun was never more than 400 miles overhead, and the stars were some 1,000 miles away. Biblical literalists joined his Universal Zetetic Society in droves.

  Flat Earthism languished for a few decades with no clear leadership until 1956, when English sign painter Samuel Shenton took up the torch and formed the International Flat Earth Research Society (IFERS), which worked to continue the ideas of the Universal Zetetic Society. Shenton’s view of the Earth was similar to Parallax’s, but he also believed that the mythical ancient society of Atlantis was located under the North Pole and would occasionally launch flying saucers through a hole in the center of the city to periodically visit us. When astronauts working for NASA’s Gemini program began sending back photographs of the Earth taken from space, Shenton developed convoluted explanations for everything in the sky that could be seen from the Earth. For example, although watching satellites passing overhead at night might prove to some of us that they are orbiting a spherical Earth, Shenton claimed in 1957 that Sputnik was merely circling overhead. In dismissing this as proof of a spherical Earth, he made the analogy of Sputnik to a sailboat, asking “Would sailing round the Isle of Wight prove that it were spherical?” Membership in the International Flat Earth Research Society dwindled to only twenty-four by the time Shenton died in 1971, insisting to the last that the Moon landings were fake.