The FBI ran a covert campaign to discredit Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Conspiracy theories persist around Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1968 assassination

Despite multiple investigations—including FBI inquiries and a 1979 House committee report—questions and conspiracy theories have continued to surround the 1968 assassination of Dr. King long after his assassin’s conviction.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. used disciplined organizing tactics to win civil rights

This resource focuses on Dr. King as a strategic organizer, detailing how he selected campaign targets, partnered with local leaders, adapted his tactics, developed leadership pipelines, and employed political pressure to convert moral protest into political change.

The FBI surveilled Roosevelt for decades, suspicious of her civil rights and political work

J. Edgar Hoover's FBI maintained a large file on Eleanor Roosevelt, monitoring her involvement with civil rights groups, connections to progressive causes, and vocal opposition to McCarthyism. Although a formal investigation was never initiated, Hoover regarded her as a person of interest for most of her adult life.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. publicly denounced the Vietnam War in 1967

In a 1967 speech, Dr. King comprehensively condemned the US war in Vietnam, linking militarism, racism, and poverty—a break that cost him allies and drew backlash from political leaders and major media outlets.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was an avid fan of Star Trek

Dr. King praised the show’s vision of an integrated future and convinced African-American actress Nichelle Nichols to remain on the show, arguing her role offered a rare, powerful image of racial equality on American television.

US intelligence allegedly pursued more than 600 schemes to assassinate Cuban revolutionary Fidel Castro.

Malcolm X’s relationship with Dr. King gradually became less contentious over time

Malcolm X initially rejected Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolent approach and integrationist strategy. Still, he gradually acknowledged shared goals, signaling a late-life openness to cooperation within the broader Civil Rights movement.

US intelligence allegedly pursued more than 600 schemes to assassinate Fidel Castro

From exploding cigars and poisoned Cohibas to an infected scuba suit and plans to drug a TV studio with LSD, this account catalogs the CIA's strangest—and consistently unsuccessful—attempts to kill Fidel Castro over decades.

A movie helped make JFK assassination conspiracies widespread

Oliver Stone's film "JFK" (1991) imagined the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy as the result of a conspiracy by US government agents. Before the film, this belief was not common, but it became widely adopted afterward. The film's impact contributed to the release of major CIA files in subsequent decades. (Some users may experience a paywall.)

The FBI's most famous cases

From the D.B. Cooper plane hijacking to the kidnapping of Frank Sinatra Jr. to the details about the first FBI agent killed in the line of duty, this FBI archive overviews the agency's most famous cases. Cases are organized by investigative priorities, according to the agency. Clicking any of the linked investigations takes readers to detailed articles about the cases, some of which remain unsolved.

Hear the story of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s 'I Have a Dream' speech

This podcast traces Dr. King’s path into the Civil Rights movement and the buildup to the 1963 March on Washington, unpacking how his speech became a defining moment in US history.

An LSD scientist's role in a US mind control project

Within a decade of LSD's discovery, the US government had launched a secret initiative involving hypnosis and hallucinogens. LSD researcher Louis Jolyon West conducted experiments for the CIA's MKUltra project, which focused on the potential of mind control. He later took part in a criminal trial that hinged on testimony whose sourcing was seemingly inspired by MKUltra experiments. This article explores light shed by West's personal archive.

King was outed as Bachman by a bookstore clerk

King published several books in the 1970s and '80s under the pen name Richard Bachman, a device that allowed him to publish outside the horror genre. Eventually, Bachman was unmasked when a bookshop clerk noticed similarities between the Bachman novel “Thinner” and some of King’s other titles. A 2024 study in the Journal of Computational Literary Studies used quantitative methods to find similarities between works published under Bachman and King, arguing that genuine literary voices are immutable, despite some authors’ efforts.

The FBI kept tabs on Camus and Sartre

Jean-Paul Sartre worked as an American correspondent for Combat, the newspaper edited by Albert Camus. While he was in the States, J. Edgar Hoover's FBI kept tabs on him, concerned that Combat was publishing unfavorable portrayals of the US.

Dr. Bernard Fisher pioneered lumpectomy as a treatment for breast cancer

Dr. Bernard Fisher was a surgeon-scientist who developed and discovered cancer treatments that changed the way we treat and understand breast cancer. Despite these contributions, Fisher was also the subject of a congressional investigation that tarnished his reputation. Listen to the "Less Radical" six-episode podcast series covering the complex story of this influential doctor.

A fake vaccine campaign was used to locate Osama bin Laden, fueling vaccine distrust

As part of the intelligence operation to find bin Laden in Pakistan, the US Central Intelligence Agency recruited a Pakistani doctor who ran a fake hepatitis B vaccine campaign and obtained DNA samples from bin Laden. News of this fake campaign fueled further distrust of healthcare workers, attacks on them, and stymied efforts to vaccinate against polio in the region.

Nixon secretly recorded nearly 3,700 hours of conversations

The White House taping system was secretly installed on Feb. 16, 1971, beginning with the Oval Office and Cabinet Room, and later expanded to Nixon's offices, Camp David, and telephones.

There's no proof that the government pursued Holiday because of 'Strange Fruit'

Music writer Lewis Porter disputes the events of "The United States vs. Billie Holiday," a 2022 film that dramatized the Federal Bureau of Narcotics' pursuit of the jazz legend. Porter notes that the FBN did indeed target Holiday, but believes it's important to note that it wasn't necessarily for the release of the protest song.

The ACLU was founded in 1920 in direct response to the suppression of speech during World War I

The mass arrest and prosecution of anti-war activists, socialists, and immigrants under the Espionage and Sedition Acts prompted a group of civil libertarians to form the American Civil Liberties Union to defend constitutional rights.

A detective foiled an assassination plot against Lincoln before his inauguration

In February 1861, detective Allan Pinkerton uncovered a plot to kill Abraham Lincoln en route to his inauguration. Lincoln secretly altered his travel plans and sneaked into Washington DC to take the oath of office. Pinkerton later founded the well-known Pinkerton's National Detective Agency.

Actors on 'All the President's Men' immersed themselves in real-world reporting

Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford spent months shadowing the real Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward—working at The Washington Post, living with Bernstein's family, and studying their mannerisms—to bring authentic nuance to their portrayals of Watergate's investigative journalists.

The Illuminati were a real espionage society in the 1770s

Bavarian professor Adam Weishaupt founded the group in 1776 as an anti-clerical, anti-royalist sect that used hierarchy, codes, and surveillance as a proto-spy network. Within a decade, it was suppressed, but the mythology never quite died. Today, it functions as an adaptable conspiracy theory, able to fit any era's anxieties about who really holds power.

Abraham Lincoln was almost assassinated weeks before his inauguration as he traveled from Illinois to DC through Baltimore in 1861; it took two independent claims for Lincoln to be convinced the threat was real

The term ‘McCarthyism’ was coined by a political cartoonist

In February 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy infamously proclaimed that he had a list of communist State Department employees. The next month, cartoonist Herbert Block published a cartoon in the Washington Post featuring a reluctant elephant (the mascot of the Republican Party) being pushed to stand on a wobbly tower labeled “McCarthyism.”

Who were the Cambridge Five

Recruited in the 1930s, the Cambridge Five infiltrated British intelligence and leaked secrets to the Soviets for decades, shaping WWII and the Cold War.

See 33 images that became central to huge scandals, including a young Charles and Camilla, Michael Jackson's baby on a hotel balcony, and Hugh Grant's mugshot.

The history of brainwashing in America

"Brainwashing" refers to a coerced shift in worldview, often associated with cults or oppressive totalitarian governments. Though such processes are not well understood on a neurological level, they hold an outsized role in public imagination, particularly in science fiction and dystopias. This article reviews the history of the term, first popularized by Edward Hunter in 1950, and the subsequent use of the approach in pop psychology, the CIA, and more.

The idea for the Federal Reserve was conceived in secret in 1910—with bankers donning duck hunt gear for disguise while traveling to a remote country club on Georgia's Jekyll Island

Watch a former CIA deputy director rate spy gadgets from movies and television

Dawn Meyerriecks, former CIA deputy director of science and technology, examines the realism of gadgets, including James Bond's weaponized Aston Martin, climbing gloves from the Mission: Impossible franchise, and the briefcase and listening device from "The Americans."

The story of Dollree Mapp, whose legal challenge over her 1957 conviction for possessing "obscene material" led to a major strengthening of the Fourth Amendment

After her fellow cult members tried to kill her with an LSD-infused hamburger, one member of the Manson Family, the murderous cult led by Charles Manson, decided to testify against the group's leader.

At the beginning of the 20th century, a group of young men ate standard American food—replete with food additives like borax and formaldehyde—as part of government research to better understand food safety.

Exploring the Larry Bird punch that almost changed March Madness

Watch a 1934 short film starring jazz legend Cab Calloway, a major figure in the Harlem Renaissance's music scene

'Saturday Night Fever,' the 1977 film that introduced disco to the mainstream, was based on a fabricated magazine story.

70 years ago today, city officials in Santa Cruz, California, banned rock 'n' roll to protect its youth from corruption after witnessing a 'provocative' concert the night before.

During the French Revolution, a botanist's letter asking about "dear Rhus" (poison ivy) was intercepted, leading authorities to suspect he was conspiring with the Russians.

Many legends about George Washington, including his supposed wooden teeth and the story of cutting down the cherry tree, lack evidence.

A 2019 Facebook event called on attendees to "Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us," resulting in countless memes, the creation of a music festival, and eventually the arrests of those who did try to approach the area.

In 2009, the nation was gripped by the story of a missing young boy who was believed to be floating over Colorado in a homemade balloon, until it was revealed that he was at home the whole time.

Mark Twain spent decades feuding with the US Postal Service, convinced its costs and regulations were bureaucratic overreach.

Ebola is a filovirus, meaning it resembles a thread under a microscope, though it sometimes twists and can resemble a bowl of spaghetti.

Against his wishes, Albert Einstein's brain was removed before his cremation, and the pathologist responsible stored it for decades in mason jars within a beer cooler.

A small portion of The Winstons' 'Amen, Brother,' an obscure '60s gospel record, is the basis for thousands of hip-hop tracks, making it one of the most sampled records ever that's informally known as 'the Amen break.'

Watch contemporary footage covering the US-backed Shah of Iran fleeing the country in the face of the 1979 Iranian Revolution

The Brothers Grimm were lawyers before they were storytellers, but became interested in fairy tales as they began investigating how rules and customs had been passed down through cultures.

Famed poet TS Eliot rejected the manuscript for George Orwell's political fable 'Animal Farm,' writing that its criticism of authoritarianism was not 'the right point of view.'

Radioactive elements can introduce software errors because the ionizing radiation they produce can detach electrons from atoms, and computer code relies on the distribution of electrons.

Doctors differentiate between a phobia and fear by asking patients whether their fear interferes with their day-to-day activities.