1 The Gulf of Tonkin Incident, escalator of the Vietnam War, never happened

Conspiracy theory: The Gulf of Tonkin incident, a major escalator of US involvement in the Vietnam War, never actually occurred. It's true. The original incident – also sometimes referred to as the USS Maddox Incident(s) –involved the destroyer USS Maddox supposedly engaging three North Vietnamese Navy torpedo boats as part of an intelligence patrol. The Maddox fired almost 300 shells.President Lyndon B. Johnson promptly drafted the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which became his administration's legal justification for military involvement in Vietnam. Problem is, the event never happened. In 2005, a declassified internal National Security Agency study revealed that there were NO North Vietnamese naval vessels present during the incident. So, what was the Maddox firing at? In 1965, President Johnson commented: "For all I know, our Navy was shooting at whales out there." Worth pointing out: The NSA's own historian, Robert J. Hanyok, wrote a report stating that the agency had deliberately distorted intelligence reports in 1964. He concluded: "The parallels between the faulty intelligence on Tonkin Gulf and the manipulated intelligence used to justify the Iraq War make it all the more worthwhile to re-examine the events of August 1964." (Source 1 | Source 2)

2 Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment: Deliberate Non-treatment of Syphilis-Infected Patients

Conspiracy theory: Between 1932 and 1972, the US Public Health Service conducted a clinical study on rural African American men who had contracted syphilis. The Public Health Service never informed these men they had a sexually transmitted disease, nor did they offer treatment, even after penicillin became available as a cure in the 1940s.Sadly, it's true. Rather than receiving treatment, the subjects of these studies were told they had "bad blood." When World War II began, 250 of the men registered for the draft and were only then, for the first time, informed they had syphilis. Even then, the PHS denied them treatment. By the early 1970s, 128 of the original 399 men had died of syphilis and syphilis-related complications, 40 of their wives had the disease and 19 of their children were born with congenital syphilis.Worth pointing out: A similar experiment conducted on prisoners, soldiers, and patients of a mental hospital in Guatemala actually involved the PHS deliberately infecting the patients and then treating them with antibiotics. (Source 1 | Source 2)

3 Project MKUltra: CIA Mind Control Program

Conspiracy theory: the CIA ran secret mind control experiments on US citizens from the 1950s until 1973.It's so true that in 1995 President Clinton actually issued a formal apology on behalf of the US government. Essentially, the CIA used drugs, electronics, hypnosis, sensory deprivation, verbal and sexual abuse, and torture to conduct experimental behavioral engineering experiments on subjects. The program subcontracted hundreds of these projects to over 80 different institutions, including universities, hospitals, prisons, and pharmaceutical companies.Most of this was uncovered in 1977, when a Freedom of Information Act exposed 20,000 previously classified documents and triggered a series of Senate hearings. Because CIA Director Richard Helms had most of the more damning MKUltra files destroyed in 1973, much of what actually occurred during these experiments is still unknown and, of course, not a single person was brought to justice.Worth pointing out: There is growing evidence that Theodore Kaczynski, otherwise known as the Unabomber, was a subject of the Project MK Ultra while he was at Harvard in the late 1950s. (Source 1 | Source 2 | Photo)

4 Operation Northwoods: US military had plans for 'false flag' Cuban provocation

Conspiracy theory: The Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US military drew up and approved plans to create acts of terrorism on US soil in order to sway the American public into supporting a war against Cuba.It's true and the documents are out there. Fortunately, President Kennedy rejected the plan, which included: innocent Americans being shot dead on the streets; boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami, and elsewhere; people being framed for bombings they did not commit; and planes being hijacked. Additionally, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, led by Chairman Lyman Lemnitzer, planned to fabricate evidence that would implicate Fidel Castro and Cuban refugees as being behind the attacks.Perhaps most horrifyingly, Lemnitzer planned for an elaborately staged incident whereby a Cuban aircraft would attack and shoot down a plane full of college students. (Source 1 | Source 2)

5 CIA drug trafficking in Los Angeles

Conspiracy theory: During the 1980s, the CIA facilitated the sale of cocaine to the Crips and Bloods street gangs of Los Angeles and funneled millions in drug profits to a Latin American guerrilla army.It's convoluted and complex, but it's true. Gary Webb's book Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosionoutlines how CIA-backed Contras smuggled cocaine into the U.S. and then distributed crack to Los Angeles gangs, pocketing the profits. The CIA directly aided the drug dealers to raise money for the Contras. "This drug network," Webb wrote in a 1996 San Jose Mercury News article, "opened the first pipeline between Colombia's cocaine cartels and the black neighborhoods of Los Angeles, a city now known as the 'crack' capital of the world. The cocaine that flooded in helped spark a crack explosion in urban America . . . and provided the cash and connections needed for L.A.'s gangs to buy automatic weapons."Worth pointing out: On December 10, 2004, Webb committed suicide under suspicious circumstances, namely the fact that he used two bullets to shoot himself in the head.(Source | Photo)