Conspiracies: The Facts * the Theories * the Evidence (4 page)

memories and expressed the (surprising, even to him) view that

many of his subjects were simply relaying something that was

entirely real to them, whether they were physical or hal ucinogenic experiences, he was met with overt hostility and cal s for him to step down from his post. He narrowly avoided losing his job in

1994 after the dean of Harvard Medical School set up a committee

to investigate his methods and beliefs, but it was a sobering

lesson for other academics who might be considering delving

into alternative paradigms. Ironical y, Mack was killed in 2004

when an apparently drunken driver ran him over on a London

street – creating a whole slew of new ‘Manchurian candidate’ (i.e.

mind controlled) style conspiracy theories, implying that he was

assassinated by authorities afraid of a respectable figure getting too near the truth.2

Another professor, the US physicist Steven E Jones, also found

himself in hot water when he decided to use his skil s to examine the mystifying total destruction of the World Trade Center after the attacks on 9/11 (
see
chapter 6). After publishing a highly influential 2005 paper entitled ‘Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings

Col apse?’ and presenting a seminar which supported the view that internal combustibles and explosives must have been deployed

to bring down the towers, Jones soon found himself suspended

from his position at Brigham Young University. This was followed

by scrutiny from both the American Association of University

Professors and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, among other bodies, questioning the scientific skil s and ethics of a man formerly considered an expert in his field. Never able to

return to his post, Jones elected to take early retirement in 2007, but he refused to recant and was confident enough in his beliefs to 15

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help found the influential organization Scholars for 9/11 Truth & Justice. The curtailment of his career was another demonstration

of the grave consequences for those in the academic world who

decide to go public with unconventional views, no matter how

much they may be supported by empirical evidence (although

Jones was also attacked by a few truthers themselves, dismayed at his dismissal of the energy technology theories).

With funding and reputations hanging on the accepted, if

unspoken, agreement that certain lines of ‘acceptability’ will never be crossed and that peer consent must always be maintained, the

academic world ensures, as much as the extremist conspiracy

mindset, that nothing can threaten its self-imposed boundaries.

Those who choose to challenge this must embrace the hard reality

that trying to change anything from within will almost certainly

result in ostracization, leaving only the dreaded course of becoming a ‘maverick’, as Jones, Mack and others have discovered.

Those conspiracy theorists unswayed by the fanatical critics

from within their own ranks and who embrace the probability

that mainstream respectability will never be afforded to them

at least have the comfort that, as they are considered dissidents from the very start, there is little to lose by pressing on ful y with raising awareness for their heartfelt beliefs. The academic world, on the other hand, is forever hamstrung by fear for professional

credibility and the dilemma of whether to go public with

something that challenges peer prejudice. Yet history records that it is the mavericks who often propel human evolution the furthest.

Evidence, Not Beliefs

A common truthseeker retort heard towards those who refer to

conspiracy theories is: ‘It’s not conspiracy
theory
– it’s conspiracy FACT.’ Sometimes this is technical y true (9/11, for example,

was factual y a conspiracy, whether perpetrated by al-Qaeda or

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what is conspiracy theory?

contrived as a covert ‘inside job’), but more often than not such a defensive exclamation is rooted only in opinion, which may

or may not be correct. This speaks greatly of the passionate and

sometimes impressive faith of truthers in their own convictions,

but doesn’t help convince an outside world conditioned to see

these people as delusional. A bridge across this divide, therefore, has to be found and, taking the oft-vaunted merits of the ‘scientific method’ as a model (albeit one often breached by scientists

themselves, masked with fudge factors and caveats), it is surely

only evidence, and not belief, that can be seriously considered

when trying to justify allegations of conspiracy. This does not

mean that a well-represented theory will necessarily be afforded

any more mainstream respect than the more unsupported ones,

to begin with at least, but it does make it more likely that its

plausibility will gradual y seep into the wider public consciousness (as with 9/11, David Kel y, JFK, etc.). Indeed, this slow filtration process may be the bottom line in identifying the wider consensus on specific conspiracy assertions.

It could be argued that the majority of people once appeared

to believe that the Sun revolved around the Earth, but that

‘consensus’ on this didn’t make it true. However, many minds had, in fact, long challenged the geocentric model, although its public expression was suppressed by religious and political authorities.

That much of the population will happily allow itself to go along with an official decree while it is more convenient or safer to do so isn’t the same as something having validity. When convincing

alternative information is presented, people are quicker to change their views on things than authorities would like us to believe. It may yet be that future history records a number of the supposed

‘fringe’ beliefs of our times as having turned out to be valid.

As the likes of Galileo showed in the face of institutional

condemnation, it is the diligent accumulation of proper evidence, guarded for posterity, that ultimately speaks for itself. The truth wil , in the end, surely be championed by this, rather than by the 17

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blinkered prejudices of a passing era, creating an even greater

imperative to gather sensible and convincing data if conspiracy

theory is ever going to become conspiracy fact. This requires an

approach that uses discernment and reasoned analysis. Neither

knee-jerk condemnation nor blind support for a hypothesis of

any kind is of the slightest help without the application of these qualities and the presentation of meaningful evidence.

iii) hoW far shoulD ConspiraCy

Theories go?

Paul McCartney: A Conspiracy Case Study

With the above observation about evidence in mind, the quest to

balance
apparent
evidence with discerning analysis is, conversely, where the dividing lines between potential y credible conspiracy

scenarios and wilder fantasies can become blurred, throwing up

the strangest synchronicities. A fascinating example (as astrologer John Green has pointed out) is the relatively lightweight but luridly obsessive theory that ex-Beatle Paul McCartney was, in reality,

killed in a car crash around 1966–7 but that his death was covered up, his place thereafter being taken by a stunningly convincing

and equal y talented lookalike. The suggestion runs that the

surviving Beatles didn’t want their careers destroyed so early by this tragedy, hence the plot, but that they couldn’t help themselves leaving tantalizing clues to the events in their lyrics and record sleeve artwork thereafter. The Paul-is-dead scandal began as an

apparent joke rumour that took off in US college campuses and

radio station phone-ins in 1969, but gathered credence as more

‘clues’ were found, rapidly growing into a global phenomenon.

On the surface, the McCartney hypothesis seems so ludicrous,

and indeed hilarious, that it doesn’t even fall onto the radar

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of many serious conspiracy believers. However, in one of the

weirder twists of fringe investigation, when reasons to support the theory are sought, even when the most tenuous and contentious

connections (and there are lots of these) are discarded, tantalizing and almost disturbing points of potential validation do somehow

manage to present themselves.

McCartney did, as a matter of record, have a minor moped

accident in 1965, resulting in a chipped tooth and lip scar, and in 1967 his Mini Cooper car was written off in a motorway crash.

There is evidence that the details of this latter incident were

indeed obfuscated, although this may simply have been to cover

up the possible involvement of hal ucinogenics – and the fact

that McCartney had loaned the car to a friend that night and was

therefore not present. Or so it is claimed.

Some of the many Paul-is-dead ‘clues’ are demonstrably bogus

or can be taken as curious chance. For example, the second line of the number plate on the VW Beetle car behind the zebra crossing

on 1969’s
Abbey Road
sleeve reads ‘281F’ and is said by some to mean that Paul would have been be 28 ‘if’ he had lived (1F being

read as IF) – but actual y he was then 27. Likewise, the mumbled

coda of 1968’s ‘I’m So Tired’ is often taken as ‘Paul is a dead man, miss him, miss him, miss him’, but in truth the master tapes

reveal the line as ‘Monsieur, monsieur, how about another one’.

Meanwhile, the claimed (and almost unintelligible) spoken phrase

‘I buried Paul’ at the end of 1967’s ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ is, according to John Lennon anyway, simply ‘cranberry sauce’.

What, however, do we make of the fact that, even recently,

compellingly convincing and professional y qualified forensic

comparisons of photographs before and after the supposed

time of the fabled accident have been produced that apparently

demonstrate quite a different facial and head structure in the

post-1966 McCartney, along with other anomalies to do with

height and voice tones?3 Also, some of the numerous and more

substantial ‘clues’ from the Beatles pantheon are admittedly very 19

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odd. Is it merely coincidence that the repeated spoken refrain of 1968’s ‘Revolution 9’ played backwards produces the uncannily

clear phrase ‘turn me on, dead man’? Or that placing a mirror in

the middle of the bass drum on the front of 1967’s
Sgt. Pepper’s
Lonely Hearts Club Band
album sleeve produces, unquestionably, the phrase ‘one he die’, interspersed with Roman numerals (which

some say give the date of McCartney’s death, November 1966)?

The same picture also includes, among its many celebrity cut-outs, an image of arch black magician Aleister Crowley, who famously

recommended that learning to speak backwards or in code was

key to the path of spiritual mastery.

McCartney himself is often singled out on the later album

sleeves: he is the only one with his back to the camera on the

rear cover of
Sgt. Pepper’s
; he wears a black carnation in 1967’s
Magical Mystery Tour
ballroom sequence, when the other three wear red ones; most famously, only he is bare-footed on the

zebra crossing cover shot of
Abbey Road
(allegedly an allegorical

‘funeral procession’). There are numerous other examples,

endlessly pored over by Beatles fanatics, while several strange

and morbid lyrical references also intrigue. ‘He blew his mind out in a car’ in 1967’s ‘A Day in the Life’ is but one example, or the almost blatantly direct spoken line ‘He hit a light pole and we

better go to see a surgeon’ in 1968’s ‘Revolution 9’, together with its sung alternative, ‘You were in a car crash, and you lost your hair’, from the same year’s ‘Don’t Pass Me By’. Some say the car

crash references are more to do with the death of wealthy socialite and Beatles friend Tara Browne, who
did
die by hitting a lamp post in 1966 – the claimed inspiration for the ‘A Day in the Life’

verse – but the overt and repeated car crash themes elsewhere

do seem oddly highlighted. There is a multitude of websites and

books available which explore much more.4 Taken together, it

seems that there is, at the very least, an intriguingly unusual stock of coincidences that are hard to dismiss entirely when trying to

assess this especial y peculiar conspiracy theory.

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What could it all mean? Could the death of such a prominent

public figure as McCartney real y be covered up so successful y?

Even less likely, could the substitution of someone so like him,

with almost identical talents, be effected so perfectly that not

only the public but even his close friends and relatives didn’t

notice? (The extreme end of this theory runs that the somewhat

disastrous introduction of Heather Mil s into McCartney’s life in the early 2000s was a deliberate attempt to stop his now-doubting doppelganger from lifting the lid on his real identity, and that

covert forces employed her as a romantic trap through which

to subject him to mind-control techniques which guaranteed

his silence – of such darkly entertaining confections are some