The rumor mill: conspiracies are real. But for every real conspiracy there are many unsubstantiated rumors and conspiracy theories. Here are a few from recent years.

On October 30, 1938, listeners to CBS Radio who tuned in shortly after 8:00 p.m., heard the announcer proclaim: "Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. From the Meridian Room in the Park Plaza Hotel in New York City, we bring you the music of Ramon Raquello and his orchestra. With a touch of the Spanish, Ramon Raquello leads off with 'La Cumparsita.'" For a time the soothing tunes of the orchestra wafted over the airwaves and listeners settled in for a quiet and relaxing evening. Suddenly, the broadcast was interrupted for a news bulletin.

"Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt our program of dance music to bring you a special bulletin from the Intercontinental Radio News," the news announcer began. "At twenty minutes before eight, central time, Professor Farrell of the Mount Jennings Observatory, Chicago, Illinois, reports observing several explosions of incandescent gas, occurring at regular intervals on the planet Mars. The spectroscope indicates the gas to be hydrogen and moving towards the Earth with enormous velocity. Professor Pierson of the Observatory at Princeton confirms Farrell's observation and describes the phenomenon as, quote, 'like a jet of blue flame shot from a gun,' unquote. We now return you to the music of Ramon Raquello, playing for you in the Meridian Room of the Park Plaza Hotel, situated in downtown New York."

The bulletin was the first in what would soon be a cascade of similar reports documenting what was, at the time, an unthinkable and terrifying catastrophe. Soon, the announcer broke in again: "It is reported that at 8:50 p.m. a huge, flaming object, believed to be a meteorite, fell on a farm in the neighborhood of Grovers Mill, New Jersey, twenty-two miles from Trenton." Then, from reporter Carl Phillips at the scene: "Just a minute! Something's happening! Ladies and gentlemen, this is terrific[??]! This end of the thing is beginning to flake off! The top is beginning to rotate like a screw and the thing must be hollow! ... Ladies and gentlemen, this is the most terrifying thing I have ever witnessed.... Wait a minute! Someone's crawling out of the hollow top. Someone or ... something. I can see peering out of that black hole two luminous disks ... are they, eyes? It might be a face. It might be...."

Those Americans who were tuned in to the broadcast listened with rapt attention in terror. Hysteria spread across the land as announcers described what was quickly becoming an apparent alien invasion. Many people panicked. Stories circulated about a college student racing his car at breakneck speed for some 45 miles in an attempt to save his girlfriend from the alien invaders. Others took to their basements, going to ground in an attempt to save themselves. The tense and panicked audience only relaxed when it was announced that the invading alien attackers seemed to be dying of Earth diseases to which they had no natural immunity.

The broadcast, as it turned out, was only a radio dramatization of the H.G. Wells science fiction classic, The War of the Worlds. Though it had been announced as such at the beginning of the broadcast, most listeners tuned in late and did not hear the vital introduction. The next day, the New York Times reported that its switchboard "was overwhelmed by the calls" from worried listeners. According to the Times, "A total of 875 were received. One man who called from Dayton, Ohio, asked, 'What time will it be the end of the world?'"

The now-infamous Orson Welles broadcast of The War of the Worlds was not intended to be a hoax. But in the end, it became one of the most memorable hoaxes ever played on an unsuspecting public. It has not been the last. Time and again misinformation, disinformation, outright lies, and ridiculous rumors have misled well-intentioned but unsuspecting citizens. Now, with the Internet flooded with "urban legends," it is easier than ever to be led astray by false and misleading information. However, it is possible to avoid falling into this trap. And one way of doing so is to remember, as a cautionary exercise, those rumors and lies that led good, but unsuspecting, people astray in the past.

Black Helicopters, Foreign Troops, Concentration Camps

The use of rumors to foment agitation and generate unrest has a long and checkered history. It is, in fact, quite common for politicians of any age to play off people's fears in order to achieve some political end. The technique was used, infamously, during the French Revolution, when unsubstantiated rumors of brigands and other dangers roused the peasant population of the countryside to a feverish pitch during the "Great Fear" of the summer of 1789.

Similar unsubstantiated rumors began to circulate in the heartland of America during the 1990s. Well-intentioned, patriotic citizens began to fear the appearance of black helicopters over U.S. communities as a sign of an imminent UN invasion. These rumors became so widespread that even then-UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Gali made a snide remark about them. Returning from vacation in 1996 he quipped: "It's great to get back. Frankly, I get bored on vacation. It's much more fun to be at work here, blocking reform, flying my black helicopters, imposing global taxes."

As an example of some of these rumors, in the spring of 1994, stories began to circulate among some groups that upwards of 3,000 UN troops had encamped near the rural town of Tallulah Falls, Georgia. This proved, upon examination, to be untrue. In another example, again from 1994, a posting on an Internet bulletin board claimed that witnesses saw "over 200 troops suited in black uniforms" patrolling near the town of Peebles, Ohio. In addition, the posting stated: "The infamous 'black helicopters' were all over the place, landing in fields and pastures in full view for everyone to see. They were practicing house to house searches and car stops...." Similarly, in Northwestern Montana, these "black helicopters" were supposedly being used by a UN occupation force composed of Belgian soldiers. In both cases, the rumors proved unfounded. THE New AMERICAN checked with both the authorities and the local news media in Peebles. No one there had heard anything about the alleged invasion of their town. In Montana, locals there said the only time they heard anything about the black-suited Belgian commandos was when outsiders came in and told them about it.

As with many rumors, there is one kernel of truth contained in these stories, and this lies with the dreaded "black helicopters." The U.S. military does, in fact, operate helicopters that are painted in dark color schemes. There is, however, nothing clandestine about them. In fact, scores of images of such aircraft are readily accessible on any number of websites maintained by branches of the U.S. military.

A related rumor involves the existence of secret detention camps, usually under the control of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), that are to be used in the near future to hold those patriotic Americans who refuse to relinquish their liberties. In the mid-1990s, two individuals, Linda Thompson and Mark "from Michigan" Koernke, argued that one such detention center had been secretly created in Indianapolis, Indiana. The facility turned out to be nothing of the sort. It was only the Amtrak Beech Grove Maintenance Shop.

Y2K and Millennium Hysteria

Technology has always had a frightening aspect. In the early 19th century, workers in England, fearing that newly invented industrial machinery would reduce demand for manual laborers, went on a rampage, destroying the machines that were the engines of the Industrial Revolution. The movement was so well-known that its numerous adherents began to be called Luddites (after William Ludd, its leader). The name stuck and to this day is used to describe those who loathe and fear technology.

More recently, science fiction writers envisioned a day when machines would become self-aware and. tiring of their human masters, would wage genocidal war on mankind. Popular culture at the close of the second millennium has produced several high-profile examples of this genre, particularly in film and on television. In the 1970s, Battlestar Galactica (recently resurrected in a new series) envisioned an age in which humans were hunted nearly to extinction by self-aware machines known as Cylons. Director James Cameron's Terminator movies envision a similar future in which an artificially intelligent computer network seeks to destroy the human race. Likewise, the recent Matrix films postulate a future in which mankind is enslaved in a virtual-reality existence by self-aware machines.

Behind such dreadful visions of the future lies a basic truth about human society's current relationship with technology. We have reached a stage in which the technologies most people use each day are understood, if at all, in only vague or imperfect ways by those who use them. The most compelling example is the computer. The digital world is a part of daily life for hundreds of millions of people. And yet most people do not fully comprehend the manner in which these machines function. This lack of knowledge causes a sense of unease and fear, and this fear very nearly boiled over in the days and months before January 1, 2000.

According to popular consensus, on that day the world's computers, unable to calculate the date correctly due to a programming error made many years earlier, would either shut down or begin spewing forth incorrect data. The result would be TEOTWAWKI (The End of the World as We Know It), said many commentators. One, Gary North, said that Y2K would reduce human civilization to 14th-century levels.

The climate of fear generated by Y2K was fertile ground for the growth of unsubstantiated rumor. Among the most lurid rumors circulating at the time were those claiming that cities would be cordoned off and that martial law would be declared. The rumor mill received a substantial boost from Gary North's popular and widely cited Y2K website. On March 19, 1999, North posted the contents of a letter he claimed to have received. The letter provided details of the planned lockdown of Los Angeles. According to the letter, a witness saw "'marines in biochemical protective wear running timed drills at the Las Pulgas exit off of the I-5 freeway. He described their quickly blocking on and off ramps and then setting up a command post. They then broke it all down and repeated the drill." The letter writer went on to claim that the Marines had contracted with a major fence manufacturer. The fences, supposedly, were to be used to cordon off American cities. In comments following the letter. Gary North had this to say: "The fences would be used for containment, but not of whole cities. A fence large enough to contain all of Los Angeles would be pretty long. But for detainment centers, fencing is a must. Don't make trouble in 2000. Don't be too visible. Don't be in Los Angeles."

Martial Law and Killer Bees

North's fears that U.S. cities would be cordoned off ran hand-in-hand with fears that martial law would be declared throughout the country. These fears were based, as usual, in some degree of fact. For instance, several state National Guard organizations planned to be on duty as 1999 drew to a close. Even the U.S. Reserve Officers Association was concerned about the prospect. At a full-day meeting of the group in July 1999, entitled, "National Conference on Presidential Powers and Executive Orders," Congressman Jack Metcalf (R-Wash.) worried out loud about what the Clinton administration might do. According to a report in Wired magazine about the event, when asked by an attendee if citizens should worry about martial law and the cancellation of elections, Metcalf responded: "That is my fear. It seems to me that the only emergency that we might see coming is the Y2K. [With] a power-hungry president, who knows what he might do."

Under the circumstances, federal agencies were forced to reply. The U.S. Information Agency indicated: "The President has no intention of declaring martial law for the Year 2000 transition." More recently, there were worries that terrorist attacks during the run-up to the 2004 elections would cause them to be canceled. In both of these cases, the worries and rumors were based on speculation about what the government might do in the event of disaster, whether caused by terrorists or Y2K. Martial law was not declared in either case, and neither is it likely in America in the near future. There wasn't even any talk of martial law in the hours and days after 9/11. If it wasn't declared then, we're not likely to witness any emergencies in the near future that would justify martial law either. The vast majority of U.S. citizens would not stand for it.

The rumor mill does not confine itself to the political sphere. Any sufficiently exotic threat can be blown out of proportion. Consider, for instance, the threat of killer bees. In the 1970s these hybrid African honeybees were thought to be an unstoppable menace, willing and able, with their large, aggressive swarms, to overwhelm North America while leaving a path of death and destruction in their wake. The supposed threat was the stuff of Hollywood, and Warner Brothers brought it to the screen with The Swarm in 1978. In the movie the bees killed thousands. In real life, people have died from their stings, but only in small numbers. This, though, is no aberration from the norm for bees, wasps, and hornets. People die each year from their stings as well.

That killer bees haven't proven to be the destroyers of civilization is demonstrated by their now wide geographical distribution. Having thoroughly colonized South and Central America, they are now living alongside Americans in the southern U.S. In fact, according to CNN, killer bees had officially colonized Los Angeles in 1999. The city, as its millions of residents can attest, still stands.

Like killer bees, killer viruses were supposed to threaten life in America, if not life on Earth. AIDS is a case in point. It is a terrible and terrifying disease afflicting large numbers of people. Fortunately, as bad as it is, it is not nearly as bad as some had forecast. Gary North, in a 1987 essay entitled "The Plague Has Come at Last," predicted: "64 million Americans will be infected by the end of 1990." The U.S., he said, would run out of hospital beds. This has not come to pass. While a large number of people are infected worldwide, in the U.S., the number is substantially lower. According to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, "As of the end of 2002, an estimated 384,906 people in the United States were living with AIDS." A further 501,669 Americans had died by the end of the same year. These numbers are significant, but are nevertheless far smaller than the exaggerated predictions.

Another example of the killer virus rumor got its start in the aftermath of the first Gulf War. Some American soldiers returning home from the Gulf exhibited symptoms of a mysterious and apparently debilitating degenerative medical condition that came to be known as Gulf War Syndrome. The condition may have been caused by a number of unrelated factors peculiar to each individual case. Some, however, were quick to embellish the story.

Captain Joyce Riley, a Gulf War-era vet who had not actually been to the Gulf, became famous for a time for her allegations that Gulf War Syndrome stemmed from secret government chem-bio warfare experiments and was similar to other exotic diseases like AIDS, Ebola, and Dengue Fever. "Have you been seeing anything in the newspaper about Dengue fever in South America, about these strange viral hemorrhagic diseases that all of a sudden they're attacking us from nowhere? Guess what. Guess what. They came out of the Gulf War," Riley averred in a 1996 speech.

During the same speech she suggested that Gulf War Syndrome and related diseases may be frighteningly transmissible. "How many of you have not seen the movie Outbreak? That is your homework. You must see the movie Outbreak. It is incredibly real and true and frightening and you need to see it." The movie, starring Dustin Hoffman, depicted the horrifyingly rapid spread of a deadly virus. Anyone listening to Joyce Riley would be appropriately frightened that the events depicted in the film were about to become terrifyingly real. It never happened.

Faked Moon Landings?

Among the wildest rumors is the allegation that the U.S. space program never got to the moon. According to this theory, when, at 10:56 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong appeared to step off Apollo 11's Lunar Module and onto the surface of the moon, he was, in fact, stepping onto a secret NASA soundstage.

The allegation that the moon landings were faked started to gain currency by the late 1970s. By then some were questioning whether NASA had the technical capability to reach the moon, and suggestions were made that the landings had been faked in order to satisfy an expectant public. The potency of the allegations can be gauged by the impact they made on Hollywood. In 1978 Hollywood released the film Capricorn One. Inspired by the idea that NASA did not have the technical capability to get to the moon and faked the moon landing in order to satisfy the public, the film featured a mission to Mars that was faked for the same reason.

Interest in the great moon conspiracy largely faded from public consciousness until being revived in 2001 by the Fox Television "documentary" Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon? The program repeated the allegation that the United States did not have the technology necessary to go to the moon in 1969, that photos of the U.S. flag apparently waving in the breeze on the airless moon were faked, and that the astronauts could not have survived traversing the Van Allen radiation belts between Earth and the moon without contracting radiation poisoning.

Certainly NASA is not above reproach and, in a broad sense, one can argue from constitutional principles that the federal government has no business in space. The alleged NASA Lunar conspiracy is, however, sheer lunacy. First, the Apollo program did not develop behind a curtain of government secrecy. As a highly publicized effort to build national pride, the program was frequently in the spotlight. Moreover, technology for the program was sourced from a variety of private sector technology firms, including North American Aviation, Boeing, Douglas Aircraft, IBM, Grumman Aircraft, and many others. These companies did build the componentry for which they were under contract. To claim that lunar landings were a hoax is to ignore the decade-long effort made by many organizations, not just NASA, to get Americans to the moon.

Specific Lunar hoax claims are easily dismissed. Why, some claim, are there no stars in the background of photos taken on the moon? According to NASA, "It's difficult to capture something very bright and something else very dim on the same piece of film--typical emulsions don't have enough 'dynamic range.' Astronauts striding across the bright lunar soil in their sunlit spacesuits were literally dazzling. Setting a camera with the proper exposure for a glaring spacesuit would naturally render background stars too faint to see." As far as the U.S. flag waving in space, Buzz Aldrin recalled:

   During a pause in operations, Neil
   suggested we proceed with the flag. It
   took both of us to set it up and it was
   nearly a disaster.... A small telescoping
   arm was attached to the flagpole
   to keep the flag extended and perpendicular.
   As hard as we tried, the
   telescope wouldn't fully extend. Thus the flag, which should have
   been flat, had its own unique permanent wave. Then to our dismay
   the staff of the pole wouldn't go far enough into the lunar surface
   to support itself in an upright position. After much struggling we
   finally coaxed it to remain upright, but in a most precarious
   position. I dreaded the possibility of the American flag collapsing
   into the lunar dust in front of the television camera.

Finally, those who walked on the moon did not come back empty handed. Among the more famous results of Apollo was the acquisition of numerous moon rocks. These are distinctive in their composition. Indeed, a great deal of research on the rocks has been completed by numerous scientists at institutions around the world. If they were of Earth or synthetic origin, the secret could not have been kept for long.

Of course, these are just a few of the many rumors and scare stories that have circulated in recent years. There are many, many more, especially when the multitude of Internet "urban legends" are considered. Unfortunately, these stories are usually more dangerous than the purported threats they "expose." Often, the time and attention of good and patriotic citizens is diverted from useful and important matters by sensationalistic swill masquerading as fact. Those Americans who choose to believe in and act upon such spurious stories are effectively marginalized and neutralized. There are real conspiracies out there, of course. But, in the end, the existence of and belief in unsubstantiated rumors makes it that much more difficult to expose and defeat real conspiracies.