The Watergate break-ins were a "conspiracy theory" for over a year before they turned out to be verified and resulted in Nixon's downfall. Until the mainstream press picked up the story anyone who was aware of the details was labled a whacko conspiracy nut.

Congress attempted to put to rest the conspiracy theories regarding the assasination of President Kennedy. The result of their very public investigation was that there actually WAS a conspiracy. They just never took the next step to try to find out who was involved. No 'official' investigation into who killed Kennedy has ever been done, but, according to the US Congress, it was indeed a conspiracy and the conclusions of the Warren Commission were wrong.

"National Security" has been used to conceal many things that are merely abuses of position, misuse of funds, or personal agenda political manuevering that would never be tolerated by the public if they knew the truth. The abuse of "Classified" status of documents has been argued for decades.

If you just allow the judicial and legislative branches of the government to be the check and balance system it was intended to be, overseeing the administrative branch, you'll find there is no lack of conspiracies to manipulate world events, murder innocent victims, traffic in drugs, incite wars and riots, etc. There are innumerable cases played out in the House, the Senate and the Courts. Until a case is resolved in one of these institutions, it is considered a "conspiracy theory."

Dilligence and curiosity should not open someone to ridicule. America is only a free country because there are people willing to challenge the abuses of power and hidden agendas that pollute the political process. It's called being a good citizen - not a whacko.

I believe there are crooks in the governement, I believe Nixon was indeed one, as there has been and will continue to be more crooks in the goverment. But to say that the Governement, that abstract entity that has no name other than that vague label "Governement", conspires to kill Presidents, have secret meetings with the little green guys, or make up a machavelic plan in order to fool the American public is a little too much.

Sometimes I think that when people are too well, they make up bad things to feel better. Maybe its human nature. Dunno. When I was a teenager, I had the best parents in the World. I could go out as late as I wanted, go wherever I wanted, they never checked on me, they trusted me. Now, what fun is that? I used to make up things about my parents to my friends, cause it's just what a teen is supposed to do: complain about the old folks.

I wonder...
Does time have any meaning? Time...It has no meaning.

The landings would be real, otherwise, they'd have to really be desperate only for attention to spend billions of dollars and getting nothing but a lot of people cheering.

I think if they think it's fake, then they might think the shuttle blew up in the atmoshpere just below the stratos.

In the 50's there was an incedent that has always made me wonder. In Michigan's U.P. an Air Force radar operator noticed an oddly behaving object on his screen. A jet was scrambled to check it out. The pilot described an odd silvery object. He said he was going to get closer to get a better look. On the operator's radar screen both objects merged on his screen. Shortly afterwards the object disappeared.

At first that is how base officials told the story. After this started to cause a stir the official story became that it was a private plane that had collided with the Air Force jet. The jet and dead pilot were recovered. No private plane, pilot or passengers were ever found or reported as missing.

But that was just a crack-pot story from a retired Air Force Col.

There's been hundreds of UFO incidents involving pilots, air traffic controlers, police, military, etc. There are about 400 extremely credible eyewitnesses (mostly military, NASA and FAA)asking Congress to hold hearings where they can testify under oath as to what they know or have seen. Why would it be hard to believe there is intelligent life in the universe besides us? The simple fact is we have an awful lot of incidents that need to be explained. http://www.disclosureproject.org/access.htm

I had a sighting of my own in 1966. I was in North Ontario on the Ottowa River with a couple friends. We watched a craft of some sort that was glowing bright white flying around the mountain ridge across the river. It would fly along the ridge like it was looking for something and then suddenly shoot over and up about two miles in about one second, and stop (!), then do the same thing again. We watched it do that for about twenty minutes and then it dropped down behind the mountains... I have no idea what it was but I don't know of any airfcraft that can instantly accelerate to a thousand MPH and then just stop on a dime.

The last few years there's been hundreds of sightings of huge (300 feet long) black triangular craft that "float" silently and can accelerate and stop like the little one I saw. These have been seen, filmed, photographed and documented by police departments all over the world. In Belgium about 300 people watched one of these, icluding the police and military. In Indiana several towns' police departments chased one around for hours. Wish I could see one of those, sounds pretty cool...

Little men in white coats alight from the black helicopters and whisk Lecrayon away...never to be seen again...

I am an alien sent to Earth to spy on you humans. What I see amuses me...

but you have a laserinstallation my dear DavidK...And with your skinning abilities...No wonder it is in area 51........

The recent discovery of oceans of water on Mars (currently frozen beneath the surface) brings up the very real possibility that there was not only life, but intelligent life on Mars in the distant past. We know that a catastrophic event stripped away the atmosphere and much of the surface of Mars (estimates are around 5 million years ago). We also have found many indications of life there like the photo with 'trees' and what seem to be foundations of structures showing intelligent design. Some of the latest imaging techniques point out differences in materials that aren't visible to optical cameras.

Ancient texts are full of references to visitors from elsewhere. Ancient Vedic books talk of aircraft and even nuclear war. Technology provided by the gods who were deeply involved in local events. A recent archeological find in India, in what is believed to be the scene of one the Vedic wars, revealed skeletons of people struck down suddenly while walking down a street which have a radioactivity that matches skeletons found at Hiroshima. They found large black globs of glass all over the place that were discovered to be pottery that had been melted. The accounts of the war talk of the air being incinerated and surviving soldiers leaping into rivers to wash the poison dust from their equipment and their bodies.

The Dogon tribe in Africa was a stoneage type culture that had a perfect and accurate understanding of the star system around Sirius, the Dog star they said was a binary star with three components which they described perfectly and depicted in primitive maps and drawings. Sirius B was not accurately described by western science until the 1950's and Sirius C (the third one) was only discovered in the last few years. How did they know?

We are given a very limited version of history which excludes as impossible many things for which there is compelling evidence. People tend to allow severe limitations (imposed by academics and religious doctrine) on the interpretation of historical data. The Egyptian Pyramid Texts is a great example, as are the Vedas, the Viramana, the small amount of surviving Olmec and Maya cultural beliefs and even much of the Torah and the Bible.

It's ridiculous to think that our scientific knowledge has achieved some omniscient state of perfection. Science should be about inquiry and be open to adjusting itself to discovery. Instead, any evidence that confounds our accepted conclusions, or that our models need to be changed, seems to be hidden away and supressed.

Is there intelligent life other than the humans on planet earth? Certainly. Have we been visited or maybe even manipulated somewhere in our past by an extraterrestial race? Probably. Are the conclusions of the Warren Commission false and an intentional cover-up of a greater conspiracy? Absolutely. [The Congressional hearing regarding the results of the Warren Commission decided there was a conspiracy but stopped short of any further investigation.]

It's certainly possible that mankind had evolved a technological culture in the past that could explain a lot of the strange referrences in ancient texts. The only thing that makes it seem unlikely that there was nothing more to it than that, is all the stories that specifically talk about visitors or gods that came here from the stars. And the Dogon's map showing our solar system as it would appear if viewed from the constellation of Orion. What would be the simpler explanation?

Hey, that's my mom's birthday. Looks like my cousin from outer space is there to visit me.

I wonder though, if there is alien life out there observing us, would they ever make contact? Say I were an alien, hten I'd think again after picking up terrestial tv-signals...

Not that I completely agree with Dave, but people and certainly science are way too herdish for their own good. If someone says something that goes against the tide, it's instantly rejected _because_ it goes against the tide.

Simple example: my science teacher. "You can't go faster than light, because that would break the scientific model"...

It's not that long ago that people were burned at the stake for saying the world was not flat. Or that the earth orbited around the Sun...

They say Einstein was an alien...no wonder he wasn't burnt (or is it burned?) Although he had an electric haircut,

Yeah, and there is also the infamous Trilateral Commission myth. But that's more like a corporate conspiracy thing...