Speculation as to what the government might be hiding from us is an easy way to bring a conversation to an end. But very often the truth is stranger than fiction.
Here are ten declassified secrets—things our governments actually did then went out of their way to cover up–that make many conspiracy theories look tame.
10. Operation PBSUCCESS
In 1997, the CIA finally declassified proof of their grubby involvement in the Guatemalan coup of 1954. But the 1,400 self-incriminating documents were just a fraction of the 100,000+ thought to be in secret archives. Even the CIA's own historical review panel described their release–part of a wider dump of Cold War era documents–as “a brilliant public relations snow job.”
The coup had been nothing short of evil, violently reasserting capitalist oppression in a nation just beginning to recover from years of tyrannical rule. By the mid-20th century, governmental corruption had led to an obscene concentration of land ownership among a tiny minority of people–many of whom weren't even Guatemalan. The US-based United Fruit Company, for instance, had acquired 42% of the land while paying zero tax and duty.
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