Deep History

A CIA U-2 spy plane is shot down over Russia.

The CIA begins Operation 40, organizing groups of anti-Castro Cuban exiles and carrying out various acts of terrorism against Cuba.

The U.S. begins an embargo against Cuba.

The Aerospace Corporation is founded.

A nuclear missile at MacGuire Air Force Base in New Jersey catches on fire and burns intensely for 45 minutes. The nuclear warhead luckily does not explode despite the missile's 100-pound TNT detonator.

From the early 60's through the late 80's, leading Western pharmaceutical companies including Bayer, Hoechst, Roche, Schering, and Sandoz pay the East German government millions to use over 50,000 patients in state-run hospitals as unwitting guinea pigs. Several patients die as a result of the illicit drug trials.

At the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Frank Drake begins Project Ozma, which will develop into the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Program.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) is established.

The CIA establishes JMWAVE, a secret operations center to carry out anti-Castro actions. It will soon become their largest operations center outside of their headquarters in Langley, Virginia.

CIA-supported paramilitary units, backed by U.S. bombers, attempt a coup at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba but are defeated.

Following the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion, Air Force General Edward Lansdale launches Operation Mongoose (also known as Special Group Augmented or simply The Cuban Project) to wage a covert terrorism campaign against Cuba.

A coup deposes the first democratically elected Prime Minister of the Republic of the Congo, Patrice Lumumba. He is captured and executed with the help of the CIA.

The Defense Intelligence Agency is formed.

Rafael Trujillo, the Dominican Republic dictator once supported by the U.S., is assassinated with help from the CIA.

A B-52 bomber breaks up in midair over Goldsboro, North Carolina and two hydrogen bombs drop to the earth. One parachutes down while the parachute and three out of four safety switches on the other one fail.

In Project West Ford, MIT and the U.S. military attempt to create an artificial ionosphere above the Earth by dispersing hundreds of millions of tiny antennae into medium Earth orbit in order to facilitate radio communications. Although the U.S. assures the international community that the needles will fall out of orbit within a few years, clumps of them remain to this day.

The National Reconnaissance Office is formed to design, build, and operate the U.S.'s spy satellites.

The right-wing Hudson Institute think tank is founded.

The Atlantic Council think tank is established to promote globalist policies. Its board includes numerous political heavyweights including Henry Kissinger, James Schlesinger, R. James Woolsey, Dov Zakheim, and Zbigniew Brzezinski.

Russian Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human to enter space.

In Operation Plowshare, the U.S. begins a series of experiments in using nuclear explosions for peaceful purposes including large-scale construction. The tests will continue until 1977 when they are halted amidst widespread public outcry over the radioactive fallout and water contamination they are producing.

Nazi Paul Schäfer opens a cult compound in Chile known as Colonia Dignidad. The heavily armed cult keeps people in conditions resembling a concentration camps and sexually molests the children there. For a time infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele finds refuge there. After dictator Augusto Pinochet rises to power in the U.S.-sponsored coup of September 11, 1973, his secret police will be invited to use the compound as a detention and torture center.

Alpha 66, a right-wing anti-Castro terrorist organization, is formed. A sister organization known as Omega 7 is also created during the early 1960's.

A New Hampshire couple named Betty and Barney Hill claim to have been abducted by aliens. It is the first widely-reported alien-abduction account, and subsequent accounts share a number of similarities with it.

Joint Chiefs Chair Lyman Lemnitzer and other top military and intelligence officials approve Operation Northwoods, a series of false flag terrorist attacks to be directed against American citizens and blamed on Cuba to justify a war. President Kennedy vetoes the plan and removes Lemnitzer from his post.

The U.S. military begins Operation Ranchhand, spraying 20 million gallons of Monsanto's Agent Orange over 500,000 acres of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. The purpose of the operation is to destroy foliage cover for enemy troops and also to destroy food crops. The toxic chemicals also cause widespread death and disease including half a million children in the area being born with birth defects. U.S. soldiers also develop numerous health problems.

The Cold War nearly goes nuclear during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Russia moves to place nuclear missiles in Cuba in response to American nuclear missiles in Turkey, attacks on Cuba, and other aggression. Kennedy and Krushchev are able to negotiate a mutual stand-down despite intense pressure from their respective military and intelligence establishments to launch a preemptive nuclear strike.

22 elderly patients at the Jewish Chronic Disease Hospital in Brooklyn, New York are injected with live cancer cells by Chester M. Southam, who in 1952 had done the same to prisoners at the Ohio State Prison.

The Hanford Site releases radioactive Iodine-131 into the atmosphere, stationing test subjects along its path to record its effect on them. Volunteers are also recruited to ingest milk contaminated with Iodine-131.

The Department of Defense begins Project 112, a 12-year program which tests both simulated and real chemical and biological aerosol weapons over the U.S. and at sites around the world.

South African police arrest Nelson Mandela following a detailed tip from the CIA.

The Ripon Society, a right-wing think tank, is founded.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies, a foreign policy think tank, is formed. Notable board members include Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, William Cohen, and Brent Snowcroft.

The Esalen Institute is founded to further the Human Potential Movement. It will have a significant impact on the New Age movement. For a few years it is highly influenced by Andrija Puharich's Lab 9 cult/government experiment, going so far as to list the Council of Nine on its board of directors.

President Kennedy is assassinated, allegedly by Lee Harvey Oswald. The evidence for a conspiracy led by CIA or ex-CIA personnel is too overwhelming to list here, but includes the management of Oswald by intelligence agencies, the Zapruder film which shows Kennedy being shot from both the back and the front, the deathbed confession of CIA hitman E. Howard Hunt, the numerous untimely deaths of people connected with the assassination, the official conclusion by the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations that there indeed was a conspiracy, and more.

Following his public insistence that he was merely a patsy, Lee Harvey Oswald is shot to death by Jack Ruby.

Civil rights figure Medgar Evars is assassinated by White Citizens' Council member Byron De La Beckwith.

The U.S. abandons support for South Vietnamese President Ngo Dinh Diem and the CIA begins to covertly support a coup led by General Duong Van Minh. Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu are assassinated.

Project SHAD exposes unwitting military personnel to chemical weapons.

University of Washington researchers irradiate the testes of 232 prisoners to determine the effects of radiation on testicular function. After release, a number of the prisoners have children born with birth defects, although no follow-up study is done, so the exact number remains unknown.

The American Israeli Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is formed. It will become one of the most powerful lobbying groups in the country.

The Gulf of Tokin Incident occurs.  A U.S. destroyer inside Vietnamese waters opened fires on three approaching gunboats. The Johnson administration claims that the Vietnamese gunboats were the first to fire, and that they attacked in international waters. The administration goes on to completely fabricate another attack which supposedly happened two days later. These "unprovoked attacks" are cited as the causus belli for the massive U.S. military escalation in Vietnam which follows.

A small plane carrying Senators Ted Kennedy and Birch Bayh crashes near Springfield, Massachusetts, but both survive.

Mary Pinchot Meyer, former wife of CIA official Cord Meyer and mistress to JFK, is murdered. Meyer was friends with Timothy Leary, and had told him and others that she was trying to turn Kennedy on to LSD to get him to realize how pointless the Cold War was. She also told friends of a diary she kept which they should safeguard if anything should happen to her. The morning after the murder, friends of Meyer's go to her house to search for the diary but find CIA Counterintelligence Chief James Jesus Angleton already there. Cord Meyer will later be named in the deathbed confession of E. Howard Hunt as a co-conspirator in Kennedy's assassination.

Cancer researcher Mary Sherman is murdered. Her body is found burnt and stabbed in her apartment. Sherman had been friends with suspected JFK assassination conspirator David Ferrie who will himself be found dead in his apartment a few years later. Sherman is rumored to have been performing weaponized cancer research on behalf of the CIA.

A CIA-backed coup overthrows democratically elected Brazilian President João Goulart. The right-wing military junta which takes power brutally suppresses political opposition while receiving substantial loans and credit from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

The Warren Commission issues their report which concludes that Oswald acted alone in killing JFK and Jack Ruby acted alone in killing Oswald. Prominent within the Commission is Allen Dulles, the man Kennedy removed from his top post at the CIA, and immediately following the release of the report, CIA mockingbirds begin to popularize the phrase "conspiracy theorist" as a derogatory term for those who question the Commission's findings.

The right-wing Philadelphia Society think tank is formed.

Malcolm X is assassinated, likely with help from the FBI.

The CIA begins the Phoenix Program, a terrorist campaign against suspected Viet Cong civilian sympathizers. Over 26,000 are killed while some 55,000 others are captured and subjected to rape, electrocution, maulings, and other torture.

Dorothy Kilgallen, an American journalist critical of her government, dies under questionable circumstances.

In Operation Power Pack, U.S. forces occupy the Dominican Republic, intervening in a civil war which ultimately sees U.S.-friendly Joaquín Balaguer take the presidency.

Following the murder of civil rights activist Jimmie Lee Jackson by Alabama State Trooper James Fowler, a march in his honor from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, is brutally attacked by police in an incident known as Bloody Sunday.

The Atomic Energy Commission launches an experimental nuclear reactor known as SNAP-10A into space. Components malfunction and it later begins shedding parts and possibly radioactive materials.

The canonical text of Discordianism, the Principia Discordia, is published.

Most silver coins in the U.S. are phased out and replaced with substantially less valuable copper and nickel versions.

Ken Kesey carries out the first psychedelic "acid tests".

A pair of UFOs visits Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota. They disrupt radio communications, but are tracked on radar and witnessed by a strike team sent to investigate them along with numerous other personnel. Three different missile sites confirm their presence.

The left-handed William Pitzer dies from a gunshot to his right temple in what is ruled a suicide. Pitzer had worked at the National Naval Medical Center where JFK was autopsied. Fellow naval officer Dennis David has testified that Pitzer showed him autopsy slides of the slain president which contradicted the official story. Instead, the slides are consistent with video of the assassination in which Kennedy's head twists back and to the left, suggesting that the fatal shot came from ahead of him and to the right. Lt. Col. Dan Marvin of the U.S. Army will later testify that he turned down a CIA contract to assassinate Pitzer.

The unmanned Russian probe Luna 9 makes the first ever soft landing on the moon.  The American Surveyor 1 lands four months later.

A B-52 bomber carrying four nuclear bombs crashes into another aircraft over Palomares, Spain. The high explosives of two of the bombs detonate on impact with the ground. The nuclear warheads themselves luckily do not explode, but the surrounding area is contaminated with radioactive material.

Anton LaVey founds the Church of Satan.

George Jackson and W. L. Noel found the Black Guerrilla Family.

Israeli fighter aircraft and torpedo boats attack the USS Liberty, killing 34 crew members and wounding 171. Israel later claims that the attack was due to mistaken identity. Many survivors insist that the attack was deliberate, possible motives being a (failed) false-flag attack to draw America into the Six Day War, or to cover up Israeli war crimes during the war.

The U.S. Military begins Operation Popeye (also known as Motorpool and Intermediary-Compatriot). It is a weather modification program which seeds clouds with silver iodide to successfully extend the monsoon season over the Ho Chi Minh trail to disrupt enemy convoys.

Bolivian Special Forces, with the aid of the CIA, capture and execute Che Guevara.

A bomb destroys Cyprus Airways Flight 284 in midair. The culprit or culprits remain unknown.

A CIA-backed coup in Greece overthrows the democratic government and replaces it with a neo-fascist military junta.

Suspected JFK assassination conspirator David Ferrie is found dead in his apartment. Although he has just written two different suicide notes, the death is ruled to be the result of natural causes. Ferrie served in the same Civil Air Patrol until as Lee Harvey Oswald in the 1950's and was deeply involved with anti-communist groups, among other events linking him with the assassination.

The CIA begins Operation MHCHAOS, Project RESISTANCE, and Project MERRIMAC to spy on the student anti-war movement.

An oil tanker operated by British Petroleum sinks off the coast of England spilling 80,000 to 119,000 tonnes of oil.

L. Ron Hubbard founds Sea Org, an inner circle of the most dedicated members of the Church of Scientology. Members are subject to a strict disciplinary code and are made to work 100+ hours per week for the organization.

Nuclear missiles stored at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana inexplicably go offline after UFOs are sighted above the base.

The first recorded cattle mutilation incident occurs. Hundreds more will follow. Animals are found with organs removed with surgical precision, cauterized by high heat, completely exsanguinated, and left in areas with no tracks even when the ground is muddy. Unexplained lights are sometimes observed in the sky the night before the animals are discovered, and elevated background radiation levels are sometimes detected. Despite two federal investigations, no culprits are ever found.

Martin Luther King, Jr. is assassinated, allegedly by James Earl Ray. At his trial, Ray pleads guilty to avoid the death penalty but later recants his confession. A civil jury trial in 1999 finds that government agencies are party to the assassination.

Robert F. Kennedy is assassinated. Sirhan Sirhan confesses to the murder after being arrested but claims to have no memory of the events. His defense will later claim that he was the subject of mind control, which the CIA has successfully used to create hypnotized killers since 1953. An audio recording of the shooting also seems to reveal 13 shots being fired, suggesting a second shooter since Sirhan's revolver only had eight rounds.

Over 400 civilians are killed by U.S. Army soldiers in the My Lai Massacre. Some are raped before being killed. A single officer serves three years of house arrest as a result.

The right-wing Reason Foundation think tank is established.

Pro-war film The Green Berets is released. It received funding and support from the Pentagon following a request to President Johnson [33] from director and star John Wayne [33].

The Jewish Defense League, a right-wing terrorist organization, is formed.

An abusive Christian cult known first as the Children of God and later as the Family International is formed.

The Air Force-funded Condon Committee releases their study of UFOs. The study concludes that all UFOs sightings have prosaic explanations despite the numerous reports actually appearing in their study for which they had no explanation. Internal memos among members of the committee show that the intent was to write off the phenomenon from the start while creating the illusion of earnest objectivity.

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin [33] become the first men to walk on the moon.

ARPANET, the military forerunner to the Internet, is established.

The National Republican Heritage Groups Council is formed. It is a haven for Nazi émigrés from Eastern Europe, and is intended to serve as a far-right voting bloc. Several lead figures from this group will serve in George Bush's 1988 presidential campaign.

The U.S. Air Force begins Operation Menu, secretly carpet-bombing Laos and Cambodia. Though the attacks claim tens of thousands of lives, they are officially denied until the operation is declassified in 2000.

Black Panther activists Fred Hampton and Mark Clark are assassinated by the Chicago Police and FBI.

The National Agrarian Bank in Piazza Fontana in Milan, Italy is bombed. Although a number of inconclusive investigations and trials follow, it appears today that the attacks were carried out by far-right paramilitary elements supplied by the CIA under Operation Gladio.

The radical-left Weather Underground group is formed.

Grady McMurtry revives the Ordo Templi Orientis, which had been defunct since 1962 when Aleister Crowley's successor, Karl Germer died.

Anton LaVey publishes The Satanic Bible.

Charles Manson and a number of his cult devotees are arrested after they carry out a grisly series of murders. Manson had at one point been a Scientologist, and may have also drawn inspiration from The Process Church.

A blowout in a Union Oil offshore well in California leaks 80,000  to 119,000 tonnes of oil.

Aerospace and defense company SAIC is founded.