5 Conspiracy theories that were actually proven to be true.

Bohemian Grove

For years, many conspiracy theorists were saying that the rich and powerful met every year in the woods and worshiped a giant stone owl in an occult fashion. It turns out, ABC, CBS, NBC, and many other credible news agencies investigated this and found out, its true. It is said to be just all fun and games, like brotherhood style fraternity stuff.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/worldviews/post/bohemian-grove-where-the-rich-and-powerful-go-to-misbehave/2011/06/15/AGPV1sVH_blog.html

The truth about the Gulf of Tonkin

The Gulf of Tonkin Incident is the name given to two separate incidents involving the Democratic Republic of Vietnam and the United States in the waters of the Gulf of Tonkin. On August 2, 1964 two American destroyers engaged three North Vietnamese torpedo boats, resulting in the sinking of one of the torpedo boats. This was also the single most important reason for the escalation of the Vietnam War. After Kennedy was assassinated, the Gulf of Tonkin gave the country the sweeping support for aggressive military action against the North Vietnamese. The outcome of the incident was the passage by Congress of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, which granted President Lyndon B. Johnson the authority to assist any Southeast Asian country whose government was considered to be jeopardized by “communist aggression”. In 2005, an internal National Security Agency historical study was declassified; it concluded that USS Maddox had engaged the North Vietnamese on August 2, but that there may not have been any North Vietnamese vessels present during the engagement of August 4. The report stated “It is not simply that there is a different story as to what happened; it is that no attack happened that night…” In truth, Hanoi’s navy was engaged in nothing that night but the salvage of two of the boats damaged on August 2. In 1965, President Johnson commented privately: “For all I know, our Navy was shooting at whales out there.” In 1981, Captain Herrick and journalist Robert Scheer re-examined Herrick’s ship’s log and determined that the first torpedo report from August 4, which Herrick had maintained had occurred—the “apparent ambush”—was in fact unfounded. In 1995, retired Vietnamese Defense Minister Vo Nguyen Giap, meeting with former Secretary of Defense McNamara, categorically denied that Vietnamese gunboats had attacked American destroyers on August 4, while admitting to the attack on August 2. In the Fall of 1999, retired senior CIA engineering executive S. Eugene Poteat wrote that he was asked in early August 1964 to determine if the radar operator’s report showed a real torpedo boat attack or an imagined one. In October, 2005 the New York Times reported that Robert J. Hanyok, a historian for the U.S. National Security Agency, had concluded that the NSA deliberately distorted the intelligence reports that it had passed on to policy-makers regarding the August 4, 1964 incident. He concluded that the motive was not political but was probably to cover up honest intelligence errors.

http://www.historynet.com/case-closed-the-gulf-of-tonkin-incident.htm

Operation Northwoods

In the early 1960s, American military leaders drafted plans to create public support for a war against Cuba, to oust Fidel Castro from power. The plans included committing acts of terrorism in U.S. cities, killing innocent people and U.S. soldiers, blowing up a U.S. ship, assassinating Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees, and hijacking planes. The plans were all approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but were reportedly rejected by the civilian leadership, then kept secret for nearly 40 years.

Author James Bamford, “A Pretext For War”, discusses the declassified “Operation Northwoods” documents revealing that in 1962 the CIA was planning to stage phony terrorist attacks on the US and blame it on Cuba to start a war. Thank you Kennedy for saying NO!

http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/news/20010430/

The Tuskeegee Syphilis Study

The United States Public Health Service carried out this clinical study on 400 poor, African-American men with syphilis from 1932 to 1972. During the study the men were given false and sometimes dangerous treatments, and adequate treatment was intentionally withheld so the agency could learn more about the disease. While the study was initially supposed to last just six months, it continued for 40 years. Close to 200 of the men died from syphilis or related complications by the end of the study.

http://www.cdc.gov/tuskegee/timeline.htm

Operation Mockingbird

in the 1950s to ’70s, the CIA paid a number of well-known domestic and foreign journalists (from big-name media outlets like Time, The Washington Post, The New York Times, CBS and others) to publish CIA propaganda. The CIA also reportedly funded at least one movie, the animated “Animal Farm,” by George Orwell. The Church Committee finally exposed the activities in 1975.

the best source for info I found on this is actually Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird