10+ Conspiracy Theories That Turned Out to be True

Civil rights leaders and antiwar activists in the 1960s often said the FBI was spying on them and trying to tear their groups apart. Critics called them paranoid. After all, why would the nation’s top police force target peaceful protesters? Then came a break-in.

One night in 1971, activists broke into a small FBI office in Pennsylvania and mailed the stolen files to newspapers. They exposed COINTELPRO, a secret campaign to spy on and sabotage political groups, even Martin Luther King Jr. The FBI shut it down that year.