ARE THEY OUT TO GET US? YOU BET; NO SHORTAGE OF WACKY STUFF TO BELIEVE IN.

Byline: Fred Shuster Daily News Staff Writer

The two recent headlines seem unconnected at first - one about the threat of germ warfare, the other about a potato salad recall in the Midwest.

But then you find yourself thinking, ``Did the government accidentally release something into that potato salad?''

If these sorts of thoughts come easily to you, join the club. You're part of the Age of Suspicion, a nationwide sense that disparate elements seem strangely connected. A feeling that the government just might be behind nefarious activity aimed directly at its citizens.

As the new action-adventure film ``Conspiracy Theory'' suggests, the '90s is a time of odd beliefs. Hordes of folks, for example, put stock in the Bermuda Triangle, poltergeists, biorhythms, psychokinesis, astrology, ghosts, UFOs, auras, emotional life in plants, life after death, spirits, clairvoyance, pyramid power, mysterious black helicopters that spy on citizens, faith healing, Big Foot and the imaginative possibility that O.J. Simpson was framed by the Japanese Mafia.

Others, many of whom visit the hundreds of Internet Web sites and spin their theories in the countless chat and message areas devoted to conspiracies, insist the recent Pathfinder trip to Mars was really a hoax originating on a New Mexico soundstage where faux red planet photos were taken. If you look closely, they say, you can even spot a discarded beer cap under a rock in one of the pictures.

In ``Conspiracy Theory,'' which opens today, Mel Gibson plays the cab-driving editor of an underground newsletter that gives the film its title. But just because he has only five subscribers doesn't mean he's not telling the truth.

``A good conspiracy is an unprovable one,'' Gibson's confused but lovable Jerry Fletcher says with logic that typically defies gravity. ``If you can prove it ... they must have screwed up somewhere along the line.''

In one scene, Fletcher wonders why assassins have three names - Mark David Chapman, Lee Harvey Oswald, John Wilkes Booth, James Earl Ray - but can't figure out how Sirhan Sirhan fits into the picture.

Tangled in the Web

Twisted logic reigns on the Web, where some argue that the most obviously faked photos of UFOs, aliens and Big Foot are designed that way on purpose by the government as a red herring to discredit all skeptics.

Robert Anton Wilson, co-operator of a Web site that links to hundreds of other conspiracy sites, said some of the most resonant theories go all the way back to the witch hunts.

``Some people always have to have secret servants of Satan to explain why the world isn't operating properly,'' Wilson said from his Santa Cruz home. ``And as for the paranoia about the government, that's absolutely inevitable. They've been caught in so many lies, they're under suspicion in so many ways. Because the government lies so much, it's not surprising that people are more and more suspicious.''

In the film, which also stars Julia Roberts as a kindly federal prosecutor, Fletcher takes random newspaper headlines and connects them in his mind. That way, the threat of germ warfare and a potato salad recall in the Midwest can seem part of an eerie plot.

The film's ad campaign trumpets: ``The Paranoia Begins This Summer!'' For many believers, the paranoia began a long time ago. Gibson himself admits he questions the Warren Commission's findings on the Kennedy assassination.

Talk radio, of course, has long been the province of assorted right-wingers, crackpots, paranoiacs and conspiracy theorists. Tune in to Glendale's KIEV-AM (870) any weekday afternoon or to Art Bell's syndicated nightly show, broadcast locally on KABC-AM (790), and you'll hear warnings that the Trilateral Commission controls the U.S., the government was behind the Oklahoma City bombing, Vince Foster's suicide was really a murder, a U.S. Navy missile blew up TWA Flight 800, and other assorted cover-ups.

A willing public

A 1991 Gallup Poll showed that 52 percent of Americans believe in astrology, 46 percent in extrasensory perception and 42 percent in communication with the dead. In 1963, the poll found that 74 percent of Americans trusted the government to do the right thing. Today, the figure is 24 percent.

Suspicion about those in power is as American as chocolate milk. After all, the overthrow of tyranny complete with bombs bursting in air is our nation's founding creed.

But today's pop culture, as personified by TV's increasingly popular ``The X-Files,'' is lousy with plots making feds the bad guys. Look at Waco and you realize that sometimes the government asks for it.

Take the recent report issued by the Air Force regarding one of the longest-running conspiracy theories - the supposed UFO crash in Roswell, N.M., 50 years ago.

A few days ago, the government copped to systematically lying to citizens who claimed they'd seen UFOs during the Cold War when reports of such sightings were at their height.

``The Internet spawns conspiracy theories,'' said Daniel Green, 34, co-editor of the New York-based Smoking Gun site. ``People on the Net are able to create these quite authentic-looking documents. And every couple of weeks, there's another document making the rounds that seems real.''

Green said his Web site publishes true-blue official documents ``that either give veracity to a conspiracy or shoot it down. We try and get the real information out there so people can make up their own minds.''

John Whalen, co-author with Jonathan Vankin of ``The 60 Greatest Conspiracies of All Time,'' now in its fourth printing, said certain politicians have long fed paranoia among the people. Vankin's research, incidentally, helped inspire ``Conspiracy Theory'' screenwriter Brian Helgeland.

``And not just on an honest level, like the Roswell business, but in an opportunistic fashion,'' he said, ``like the Red Scare, when politicians were making hay of alleged Communistic conspiracies inside the country. Then, Ronald Reagan fanning the flames of paranoia by claiming the Commies were about to invade Texas. Things like that keep these conspiracy theories alive. It's a blowback effect, and when the Commie threat disappears, our own government becomes suspect.''

It used to be that the one place many people could go to take comfort from society's chaos was the Bible. But at No. 4 on the best-seller list this week is Michael Drosnin's ``The Bible Code,'' which purports to unlock a secret code inside the Good Book that predicts both Kennedy assassinations, Oklahoma City, the election of Bill Clinton, World War II and Watergate.

Some simply see aliens under every rock.

How else to explain the faraway gaze of Sam Donaldson, Sonny Bono, Mark Fuhrman, Gene Siskel, Prince Charles or Smashing Pumpkins leader Billy Corgan?

How do they conspire? Let us count the ways

Some of Jerry Fletcher's theories in ``Conspiracy Theory'' are unique, even in the far-out world of conspiracy theorists.

For example, Mel Gibson's Fletcher character believes:

The Grateful Dead were really British secret agents (``That's why they stayed on tour for so long'').

Militia members are really foreign nationals posing as Americans and stockpiling weapons in order to eventually overthrow the United Nations.

Director Oliver Stone (``Platoon,'' ``JFK,'' ``Nixon'') is actually a disinformation specialist working for George Bush to obscure the truth behind, among other events, the Kennedy assassination.

The drawing of Benjamin Franklin on the new $100 bills makes him look like ``the love child of Fred Mertz and Rosie O'Donnell.'' Each bill ``is implanted with a tracking device.''

Black helicopters are usually on ``whisper mode. You can't hear them till they're already gone.''

Here are some Web sites specializing in conspiracy theories.

www.thesmokinggun.com

www.conspiracytheory.com

www.disinfo.com

www.conspire.com

www.cruzio.com

www.netizen.org/Arc-Hive/

www.weberman.com

www.parascope.com/

www.oberlin.edu/kmonaghea/

CAPTION(S):

8 Photos, 2 Boxes

Photo: (1--5--Cover--Color) The nation is humming with CONSPIRACY THEORIES (And you thought you were paranoid)

(6) Supposed plots to keep the public in the dark are explored in ``Conspiracy Theory,'' starring Mel Gibson and Julia Roberts.

(7) ``The whole Vietnam War was fought over a bet that Howard Hughes lost to Aristotle Onassis.''

(8) Every time the space shuttle is in orbit, there is a major earthquake on Earth.

Box: (1) How do they conspire? (See Text)

(2) Where to look (See Text)