Conspiracy Theories In American History

Aryan Nations

Aryan Nations was founded by Richard Girnt Butler in the 1970s as the political arm of the Church of Jesus Christ Christian, part of the religious movement called Christian Identity. Aryan Warriors, as they are called, believe it is their duty to fight for the preservation of the Aryan race against the scourge of international […]

Arnold, Benedict

A military commander during the American Revolution, Benedict Arnold (1741-1801) felt that he had been insufficiently rewarded for his service. In revenge and in order to advance his own flagging career, Arnold conspired with the loyalists to betray General Washington by surrendering West Point to the British in September 1780, but the plot was foiled. […]

Asian Americans

Like other minorities, Asian Americans have repeatedly been the target of conspiracy-infused scapegoating. The term “yellow peril” was first used to refer to Chinese and later Japanese immigration in the United States in the second half of the nineteenth century, but it was rapidly extended to all Asians seen as a threat to Western Christian […]

Bacon's Rebellion

In 1676, Nathaniel Bacon led a group of planters, small landholders, indentured servants, and slaves first in defiance of, then in assault on the colonial government of Virginia. Accusing the royal governor Sir William Berkeley, his cousin by marriage, of conspiring with hostile Native Americans to enrich himself and his cronies, Bacon and his adherents […]

B-25 Ghost Bomber

On 31 January 1956, a Mitchell B-25 Bomber en route to Olmstead Air Force Base near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, ran out of fuel over the Pittsburgh area. The pilot was forced to ditch the plane in the Monongahela River near Homestead, Pennsylvania, after failing to make it to the Greater Pittsburgh Airport. The plane disappeared beneath […]

Aurora

Following the initial research and development of a hypersonic “scramjet”-powered aircraft in the early 1980s, and the funding of the National Aerospace Plane (NASP) in 1984 (often mischaracterized as the “Orient Express”), rumors began to swirl that either the Air Force or the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) had already funded a secret, ultrafast […]

Atomic Secrets

Although there are imagined conspiracies, there are also real conspiracies, and Soviet atomic spying belongs to the second category. There was a large-scale espionage apparatus reaching into at least three countries—the United States, Great Britain, and Canada—during the Cold War. Historians of the 1960s and 1970s tended to dismiss the accusations of spying as products […]

Bank of Credit and Commerce International

Known as the “Outlaw Bank,” the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) was established in the Middle East in 1972 as the Third World’s first multinational bank after failing to acquire the Chelsea National Bank in New York. Some contended that the British were behind the bank as part of their “long-standing scheme” (according […]

Banco Nazionale del Lavoro

An Italian bank with alleged conspiracy connections to BCCI (Bank of Credit and Commerce International), the Vatican, George H. W. Bush, the Bank of England, and the Gulf War, Banco Nazionale del Lavoro (BNL) is viewed as partially responsible for funding Saddam Hussein’s military buildup. BNL, according to the theorists, is partially owned by the […]

Bank of the United States

Seen as an instrument of British interests, the Bank of the United States (BUS) was the most powerful single financial institution in the nation, and thus was the target of those who suspected that foreigners, especially the British, engaged in “shadow control” of the bank. After the First BUS had its charter expire, and was […]

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