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Conspiracy: The greatest cover-ups and unsolved mysteries
Did COVID-19 actually break out to kill 6 million people because of a leak from a Chinese laboratory? What are the links between QAnon and Russiagate, Alex Jones and Donald Trump? Why did our own MI5 try to block evidence about the death of Iraq weapons inspector Dr David Kelly and the radioactive poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko?
Putin is a brute who lies as a matter of policy. Hitler tried to blame Poland for starting WWII. We live in a world of fake news and false flags, secret plots and unexplained deaths. But what on earth can you believe, when nothing's ever quite what it seems?
In Conspiracy, Ian Shircore cuts through the fog and the fairy tales to deliver a balanced analysis of the stories that shape the times we live in. New evidence - from Freedom of Information requests, WikiLeaks files, deathbed confessions and declassified archives - has solved some classic mysteries. Yet it raises more questions than ever about the assassinations of the 1960s, the dirty secrets of the late 20th century and the deadly traumas of the last few years.
Now fully updated with new cases, material and evidence.
Putin is a brute who lies as a matter of policy. Hitler tried to blame Poland for starting WWII. We live in a world of fake news and false flags, secret plots and unexplained deaths. But what on earth can you believe, when nothing's ever quite what it seems?
In Conspiracy, Ian Shircore cuts through the fog and the fairy tales to deliver a balanced analysis of the stories that shape the times we live in. New evidence - from Freedom of Information requests, WikiLeaks files, deathbed confessions and declassified archives - has solved some classic mysteries. Yet it raises more questions than ever about the assassinations of the 1960s, the dirty secrets of the late 20th century and the deadly traumas of the last few years.
Now fully updated with new cases, material and evidence.
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
386 pages, Kindle Edition
Published June 23, 2022
About the author
Ian Shircore
16 books25 followersIan Shircore's mission is to rescue Clive James's poems from the "poetry ghetto" and bring them to people who would never normally read poetry (and would certainly not pick up a book about poetry).
Clive wrote some real duds - not surprising in the course of a 60-year career and more than 300 poems. But he also hit some wonderful highs. And like every other writer, musician or artist, he deserves to be remembered for his greatest work, rather than some dull, actuarial average. Would you choose to judge The Beatles by Run For Your Life, Octopus's Garden and Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey, or by their finest creations, like Strawberry Fields, Blackbird and Please, Please Me?
Some of Clive's best poems are already well known. The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered is still going strong, 37 years on, and Japanese Maple is loved all over the world. But there are others, like Use of Space, At Ian Hamilton's Funeral and The Falcon Growing Old, that are just as moving. All I want is for more people to discover them and share the joy.
Clive wrote some real duds - not surprising in the course of a 60-year career and more than 300 poems. But he also hit some wonderful highs. And like every other writer, musician or artist, he deserves to be remembered for his greatest work, rather than some dull, actuarial average. Would you choose to judge The Beatles by Run For Your Life, Octopus's Garden and Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey, or by their finest creations, like Strawberry Fields, Blackbird and Please, Please Me?
Some of Clive's best poems are already well known. The Book of My Enemy Has Been Remaindered is still going strong, 37 years on, and Japanese Maple is loved all over the world. But there are others, like Use of Space, At Ian Hamilton's Funeral and The Falcon Growing Old, that are just as moving. All I want is for more people to discover them and share the joy.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
August 13, 2026
Conspiracy theories in all their glory, 48 of them in total, explained, analyzed and mostly dismissed, often with extreme prejudice. We have a brief description of the events that gave rise to them and then a moderately detailed account of the conspiracies; who fomented them and what the basis for them was, and perhaps more importantly what the refutation is. Unsurprisingly, Shircore comes to the conclusion in the great majority of these cases, that the conspiracy theories are unsubstantiated and often total, blithering nonsense, perpetrated and perpetuated by rank nutcases. This is not, however, invariably the case, and some do stand up to close scrutiny; indeed the powers that be may even have made partial admissions of their validity.
All the usual suspects are here: Covid (invented to control the population and restrict freedom); Pizzagate & QAnon (Hillary Clinton’s sex slave operation); the assassinations of John and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King (Lyndon Johnson behind the first, an obscure security guard the second and almost anyone the third – dismiss Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan and James Earl Ray as obvious patsies and fall guys); Roswell; Jeffrey Epstein (murdered to keep him quiet – may well be true); Marilyn Monroe (murdered to shut her up re affairs with the Kennedys); the moon landings (faked); 9/11 (inevitably); Watergate; Glenn Miller; Princess Diana; etc. etc and, of course, everyone’s favourite – Elvis Presley (faked his death and still alive).
It is quite staggering the extent to which many of these blatantly fallacious ideas have gained very significant traction, even amongst intelligent people, and acquired hordes of followers online, despite repeated demonstrations of their falsity. But that is social media for you which gives a platform to every crank to bombard us with these idiocies. Regrettably, it also provokes demands for censorship of the internet, which seems to have occurred with some platforms such as Facebook re, for example, the Covid theories.
Many of the theories are of the ‘false flag’ type, i.e. the atrocity wasn’t committed by the obvious culprit but by the other side in order to blacken the real culprit’s reputation or to justify a war or drastic executive action. These are generally preposterous but one is clearly true in that the Nazis fabricated attacks by Polish insurgents on German border posts in 1939 to justify the invasion of Poland, using concentration camp inmates. But the 9/11 version that George W Bush and his administration was behind the Twin Tower attacks, to justify the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, is patently absurd, however much it might suit many to believe it. There may be some merit in the hypothesis that FDR knew about Pearl Harbor in advance, or had some inklings, but definitely not that he in any way planned it to justify war on Japan.
The Sandy Hook school killing spree comes in for extraordinary treatment by the trolls on social media who suggest it was all staged by actors to justify a crackdown on the possession of arms. Operation Northwoods, about which I was ignorant until reading this book, does seem to have been genuine; a plot cooked up by some in the US military to unleash terror on the American mainland to provoke a renewed invasion of Cuba but vetoed by Kennedy (and thus a major factor in the loathing of Kennedy by some generals and senior intelligence figures who might have liked to see him replaced). Intriguing how so many of these theories link up to each other! The majority of these theories are American and the CIA comes in for a battering. If you want a good conspiracy theory you just have to implicate the CIA.
But there is a good proportion of British. Very disturbing was the chapter on Porton Down, Britain’s chemical and biological research laboratories, which is alleged to have signed up young national servicemen, under false pretences, to participate in dire experiments with LSD and sarin nerve gas, and, even more alarmingly, may have deliberately sprayed germs and toxins across whole counties to see their effects. This seems to have been admitted a very long time after the events but if true deeply shocking.
The book says published in 2012 but this must be a much later edition because it includes very recent occurrences such as Covid, as already mentioned, and the sub-postmasters farrago (not really a conspiracy theory but an appalling scandal and miscarriage of justice).
All the usual suspects are here: Covid (invented to control the population and restrict freedom); Pizzagate & QAnon (Hillary Clinton’s sex slave operation); the assassinations of John and Bobby Kennedy and Martin Luther King (Lyndon Johnson behind the first, an obscure security guard the second and almost anyone the third – dismiss Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan and James Earl Ray as obvious patsies and fall guys); Roswell; Jeffrey Epstein (murdered to keep him quiet – may well be true); Marilyn Monroe (murdered to shut her up re affairs with the Kennedys); the moon landings (faked); 9/11 (inevitably); Watergate; Glenn Miller; Princess Diana; etc. etc and, of course, everyone’s favourite – Elvis Presley (faked his death and still alive).
It is quite staggering the extent to which many of these blatantly fallacious ideas have gained very significant traction, even amongst intelligent people, and acquired hordes of followers online, despite repeated demonstrations of their falsity. But that is social media for you which gives a platform to every crank to bombard us with these idiocies. Regrettably, it also provokes demands for censorship of the internet, which seems to have occurred with some platforms such as Facebook re, for example, the Covid theories.
Many of the theories are of the ‘false flag’ type, i.e. the atrocity wasn’t committed by the obvious culprit but by the other side in order to blacken the real culprit’s reputation or to justify a war or drastic executive action. These are generally preposterous but one is clearly true in that the Nazis fabricated attacks by Polish insurgents on German border posts in 1939 to justify the invasion of Poland, using concentration camp inmates. But the 9/11 version that George W Bush and his administration was behind the Twin Tower attacks, to justify the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, is patently absurd, however much it might suit many to believe it. There may be some merit in the hypothesis that FDR knew about Pearl Harbor in advance, or had some inklings, but definitely not that he in any way planned it to justify war on Japan.
The Sandy Hook school killing spree comes in for extraordinary treatment by the trolls on social media who suggest it was all staged by actors to justify a crackdown on the possession of arms. Operation Northwoods, about which I was ignorant until reading this book, does seem to have been genuine; a plot cooked up by some in the US military to unleash terror on the American mainland to provoke a renewed invasion of Cuba but vetoed by Kennedy (and thus a major factor in the loathing of Kennedy by some generals and senior intelligence figures who might have liked to see him replaced). Intriguing how so many of these theories link up to each other! The majority of these theories are American and the CIA comes in for a battering. If you want a good conspiracy theory you just have to implicate the CIA.
But there is a good proportion of British. Very disturbing was the chapter on Porton Down, Britain’s chemical and biological research laboratories, which is alleged to have signed up young national servicemen, under false pretences, to participate in dire experiments with LSD and sarin nerve gas, and, even more alarmingly, may have deliberately sprayed germs and toxins across whole counties to see their effects. This seems to have been admitted a very long time after the events but if true deeply shocking.
The book says published in 2012 but this must be a much later edition because it includes very recent occurrences such as Covid, as already mentioned, and the sub-postmasters farrago (not really a conspiracy theory but an appalling scandal and miscarriage of justice).
October 27, 2024
Most reviews complain on here on there not being too much detail on each case, but I think that’s why I enjoyed it. It gave me a short overview that either encouraged me to explore more of or leave my knowledge there.
February 23, 2023
Put conspiracies in a clearer light and give you additional information of finding documents mentioned in each chapter, but the book could have had a better reading flow
April 11, 2023
It felt like a lot of his reviews of different conspiracies were rather shallow. Some were much more in depth than others. Some aspects were interesting, but not a great book.
January 2, 2024
Interesting read, but i personally would’ve liked more in-depth arguments and research.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 29, 2024
Pretty good book lots of interesting material. It makes a good conversation topic, since so much of the theories are well known. From Elvis, Marilyn Monroe to JFK, Covid 19 to Chemtrails…there were a few more that I read about before, so if was good to go deeper.
February 2, 2025
Conspiracy Boys
who believe all that
Ain't got girlfriends
Just a tin foil hat.
Sit in their bedrooms
ranting and raving
Detached from the World
they believe they are saving.
who believe all that
Ain't got girlfriends
Just a tin foil hat.
Sit in their bedrooms
ranting and raving
Detached from the World
they believe they are saving.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews