Top 10 Weird Government Secrets
Full List:
Churchill and UFOs
CIA Mind-Control Experiments
Area 51
UFOs in the U.S.S.R.
The Loch Ness Monster
The CIA Schemes to Kill Castro — with a Seashell
Julia Child's Intelligence
Grand Central Terminal's Secret Rooms
Listening In on Lennon
Potemkin Villages
Forty-five years after his death, Winston Churchill continues to make news. If it's not his triumphant dentures, it's his possible cover-up of a UFO sighting. Britain's Ministry of Defense has just released its latest batch of UFO-related files to the National Archives, and among the more than 5,000 pages are letters, written in 1999, from the grandson of a Royal Air Force (RAF) member who'd served as one of the former Prime Minister's bodyguards. According to the letter writer, a scientist who'd heard the story from his mother, the bodyguard claimed that during World War II, Churchill, intending to avert "mass panic," ordered the 50-year classification of an encounter between an RAF aircraft and a mysterious flying object. Churchill had reportedly discussed the matter with U.S. General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Although the Ministry of Defense has no documentation of the episode, its UFO files before 1967 no longer exist. Churchill definitely did, however, request a report on flying saucers in 1952.
At the height of the Cold War, the CIA conducted covert, illegal scientific research on human subjects. Known as Project MK-ULTRA, the program subjected humans to experiments with drugs such as LSD and barbiturates, hypnosis and (some reports indicate) radiological and biological agents. In 1973, CIA Director Richard Helms ordered all documents from Project MK-ULTRA destroyed. Nevertheless, late the following year, the New York Times reported on the illegal activities. In 1975, the Church Committee, headed by Senator Frank Church, and a commission headed by Vice President Nelson Rockefeller investigated the project. They found that over more than two decades, the CIA spent nearly $20 million, enlisted the services of researchers at more than 30 universities and conducted experiments on subjects without their knowledge. Some of the research was performed in Canada. Some historians argue that the goal of the program was to create a mind-control system by which the CIA could program people to conduct assassinations. In 1953, Richard Condon dramatized the idea in the thriller The Manchurian Candidate, which was adapted into a film starring Frank Sinatra. Such ultimately wacky ideas were also dramatized in the recent George Clooney film The Men Who Stare at Goats.
No list of this sort would be complete without a nod to Area 51. The secret military base about 75 miles (120 km) northwest of Las Vegas has been fodder for many a tale — which is only natural, considering the rumors of secret alien experiments carried out there. But when CIA veterans who are finally relieved of their secrecy vows recount their time at Area 51, they make clear that extraterrestrials are not a part of the job. What they have said is that in the 1960s, the site was the testing ground for spy planes like the A-12 and its record-breaking speedy successor the SR-71 Blackbird. A group of people called Roadrunners, who count themselves among those who have worked at Area 51, recall that they were paid either in cash or by checks issued from seemingly unrelated companies like Pan American World Airways. The base likely still tests super-top-secret planes and weapons systems, which is why it continues to be shrouded in mystery. But we can all go on pretending there are recovered bodies of aliens stored there, like the ones depicted in the popular film Independence Day. It's more fun that way.
In 1967, a Soviet astronomer called for a "joint effort of all the scientists of the world" to determine the nature of unidentified flying objects. The scientist, Feliks Zigel, was so convinced of the existence of flying saucers that he said, "Unfortunately, certain scientists both in the Soviet Union and in the United States deny the very existence of the problem instead of helping to solve it." His concern was prompted by some 200 reported sightings of "a luminous orange-colored crescent" whose "surface is only a little duller than that of the moon." It was also said to "throw out jets, sometimes with sparks." Such suspicions eventually gave rise to a study commissioned by the Soviet authorities in 1978 to research paranormal phenomena. The resulting documents allegedly make clear the seriousness with which the Soviet government treated the prospect of an alien invasion.
In 1934, a Scottish doctor claimed he saw a monster in the deep lake known as Loch Ness. He grabbed his camera and snapped what became known as the "surgeon's photograph," one of the iconic photos of the 20th century. A dark shape that resembles a brontosaurus with a long, curved neck appears to be swimming in the water. It was enough to stir a willing public, and since then, thousands of people have claimed to have spotted the aquatic creature, only to be rebuffed by skeptics. But were the believers wrong? At least some in the Scottish government said no. Newly published documents reveal that a former Scottish police chief named William Fraser opined, "That there is some strange creature in Loch Ness seems now beyond doubt, but that the police have any power to protect it is very doubtful." While the Scottish government itself has yet to confirm Nessie's existence, the new documents give hope to the many monster hunters out there.
From 1960 to 1965, the CIA brainstormed at least eight plots to assassinate Cuba's Fidel Castro. According to a report prepared in 1967 and declassified 36 years later, the CIA thought of using cigars, contaminated air, poisoned pills, fungus and a poison-filled syringe to take out the Communist leader. One plot, which sought only to damage Castro's image, suggested placing thallium salt in his shoes, in the hope that his beard would fall out. But one idea stood out above the rest: the plan to kill Castro with a booby-trapped seashell. You see, the dictator was a fan of skin diving, so intelligence agents plotted to place an especially spectacular shell in a reef Castro was known to frequent. The hope was that the shell would be so beautiful that Castro would pick it up and, by doing so, trigger an explosive. Desmond Fitzgerald, the CIA's head of Cuban operations, went as far as to buy two books on Caribbean mollusks. But the elaborate scheme was deemed impractical.
In August 2008, the United States National Archives released tens of thousands of personnel files of those who worked for the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA. Among the former employees was one Julia McWilliams, the future Julia Child. The French chef's intelligence background wasn't really a secret, but after the release, more people became aware of her service during World War II. A recipe for an intriguing life: before mastering French cuisine, work on developing shark repellent for underwater explosives.
Each day, hundreds of thousands of people commute into and out of Grand Central Terminal in New York City. Thousands more eat at the station's restaurants and sip cocktails at its elegant bars. But Grand Central houses two secret areas few people ever see. Nine stories below the lowest floor sits a bunker known as M-42. It's rumored that during World War II, the bunker had guards with shoot-to-kill orders, for fear of sabotage while the station's trains were being used to ferry troops into and out of New York.
Also below the elaborate station is Track 61, which is not on any train map. Track 61 was built for wealthy travelers arriving on private trains and has a freight elevator that rises to the garage level of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. The track's most frequent user was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who wore leg braces and used a wheelchair because of his polio. FDR's private train included a car specially outfitted to hold his Pierce-Arrow limousine. When he rode into Manhattan from his hometown of Hyde Park, N.Y., he would be driven in the limo off the train, into the freight elevator and right into the hotel. The clandestine entrance prevented the public from seeing the President's inability to walk.
John Lennon sure was a feisty one. The ex-Beatle protested war, promoted peace and once wrote a song called "I Am the Walrus." No wonder the FBI put him on its watch list before the 1972 Republican National Convention (which the feds erroneously thought he might disrupt), terminated his visa and began deportation proceedings — at the suggestion of Senator Strom Thurmond. During the 1972 presidential election, the FBI monitored Lennon's television appearances and concerts and even followed the activities of Yoko Ono's daughter from a previous marriage. Lennon didn't do anything suspicious, so the FBI closed its investigation a month after Nixon's re-election. After Lennon's murder in 1980, historian Jon Weiner fought a 14-year legal battle to force the FBI to release its Lennon files under the Freedom of Information Act. In the end, he won. The findings are detailed in the 2006 documentary The U.S. vs. John Lennon.
Grigory Potyomkin was a dashing 18th century Russian nobleman who intrigued in courts, smote his enemies upon the steppes and allegedly wooed Catherine the Great. It was while he was courting his nation's comely Tsarina — at least according to legend — that his name came to forever stand for something insubstantial. For Catherine's 1783 tour of new Russian possessions in the Crimea, Potyomkin endeavored to show her the best face of the empire. As the story goes, pasteboard facades of pretty towns were set up at a distance on riverbanks. At stops, she'd be greeted by regiments of Amazonian snipers or fields set ablaze by burning braziers and exploding rockets spelling her initials; whole populations of serfs were moved around and dressed up in fanciful garb to flaunt a prosperity that didn't exist (later precipitating famine in the region). Recent historical work has proved the tale in part apocryphal, but the legend stuck. A "Potemkin village" signifies any deceptive or false construct, conjured often by cruel regimes, to deceive both those within the land and those peering in from outside.
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