15 Biggest US Government Cover Ups of All Time

The US government claims to be the moral police guiding the world, but it has always been a majorly corrupt institution as demonstrated by the biggest US Government cover ups of all time.

The US has taken upon itself to guard the world and protect it from evil, even if no one has asked it to do so. The US has often been involved in the affairs of other countries, throwing over regimes, killing dictators and dropping bombs on other countries. While it officially aims to improve the well-being of the citizens of those countries, it actually ends up causing significant damage, and worsening the situation in cases.

This is why the government often has to engage in covert operations, where the details are not made public due to the fact that they will be opposed by the public and because they are morally ambiguous. And when a conspiracy theory is revealed to be, the public collectively loses it. They start believing that everything is a cover-up and that the government is one big conspiracy machine run by the New World Order. This in turn leads to outlandish conspiracy theories being born and gaining traction, even if they are literally impossible. Even 16 years after 9/11 occurred, many people still believe that it was an inside job orchestrated by the US government as an excuse to invade countries, even though the US never invaded the country from which the bombers actually originated, Saudi Arabia! This has also led to the meme ‘Jet fuel can’t melt steel beams’ being born, mostly out of ignorance that has led to the belief that the 9/11 cover up is real. This article manages to debunk all the claims made by the 9/11 “Truthers”.

Often, when you read about such outlandish conspiracies, such as UFO government cover ups, you wonder how people can will themselves to believe something which is completely ignorant of logic and basic science. Well, if you want to learn more about the psyche behind this, you should read this extremely insightful article.

That is not to say that all outlandish conspiracy theories are false. Some, in fact, have been proven to be true and those are the ones we will focus on. Of course, we would never claim that the cover ups mentioned in this list have been successful; due to the fact that they have been exposed, they are definitely not the most successful cover ups and maybe a few decades later, the entries on this list may be usurped by newer, crazier cover ups. While we were focusing only on US government cover ups, governments from other countries demonstrate that this is not an isolated issue, as evidenced by the biggest government cover ups in history.

There is not an outright subjective method to determine the biggest US government cover ups of all time. After all, there are no standard metrics against which you can measure a cover up. Thus, we scoured the internet and various websites (that are named for each entry on the list separately), to learn about some of the major US government cover ups and conspiracies, and in the end, we came up with this list. We were shocked to learn about some of the atrocities the US government has committed and attempted to hide. But the truth finds a way, and that is why many of these came to light.

15. FBI infiltrated the Black Panther Movement

The Black Panther party was a revolutionary socialist and black nationalist organization. As the influence of the party kept on increasing, the government started to get worried. In response, the FBI infiltrated the Black Panther Movement under the operation termed “COINTELPRO” which was aimed to incriminate the members and discredit the party. It is believed this was the primary reason behind the premature end of the party.

14. Richard Nixon decided to kill his critic

Richard Nixon has been the center of perhaps the most infamous scandal and investigation to surround the office of the President of the United States. No wonder it’s on our list of biggest US Government cover ups of all time. However, while everyone knows about Watergate, few know that Nixon had a long-standing feud with a journalist Jack Anderson. While Nixon initially only had Anderson followed, he later planned to have him killed off, and perhaps the only reason he failed to accomplish this was that the Watergate scandal broke.

13. The FBI tried to blackmail Martin Luther King Jr. to commit suicide

We are continuing our list of the biggest US Government cover ups of all time with the J. Edgar Hoover, the infamous head of the FBI who was so paranoid (he makes the 9/11 truthers look sane) that decided King was against the American way. When the FBI found out that King was having an affair (yes even the most perfect people are fallible) they sent him a letter which was meant to persuade him to commit suicide. Of course, that didn’t end up happening, but that does not make this any less chilling.

12. Wealthy men tried to oust FDR

It is an old movie trope, old rich men actually running the country while puppets are put in place for the show. However, this very nearly became a reality when the heads of various large companies such as General Motors, Chase Bank, and Standard Oil along with Senator Prescott Bush attempted to tempt Major General Smedley Butler to overthrow President Roosevelt which would result in a fascist regime. Luckily for FDR, Butler reported this exchange and hence, perhaps saved America.

11. The CIA controlled the media

During the 1950s, the CIA decided that the national government could use some support. It ensured this by promoting pro-government articles in major newspapers as a result of purchasing services of over 400 journalists.

10. The US military stole the bodies of babies

The number 10 on our list of biggest US Government cover ups of all time sounds super ominous, and I’m not sure what follows will dispel that. Wanting to learn about the effects on humans AFTER bombing Japan, the US military started stealing the bodies of dead babies as the scientists needed a young tissue to effectively determine the effects.

9. The CIA dosed American citizens with LSD

We are now moving on to the certifiably insane biggest US government cover ups of all times. In the 1950s, the CIA wanted to test the effects of LSD on the mind and whether the drug could be weaponized. The CIA did this by drugging random citizens without informing them and followed up to see what would happen. The tests proved inconclusive, but the appalling lack of ethics was there for everyone to see.

8. The CIA funded the Dalai Lama

Nowadays, the popular thing to do is to accuse anyone of being a stooge of the government or an informant for the agencies, especially if the figure is popular. However, it is actually true in the case of the Dalai Lama, with the CIA paying millions over the course of a decade to gain the support of Tibetans to act against the Chinese. Let’s see what’s next on our list of biggest US Government cover ups of all time.

7. The Space Shuttle was actually an anti-Russian device

The main idea behind the Space Shuttle was to have it grab Russian satellites and send them to Earth for examination in Washington and then be sent back before anyone noticed they were missing. However, this cartoon-like mission was never actually carried out, or the Cold War might have become a “proper war”.

6. The US covered up Japan’s horrible human experiments to gain their data

Some of the most horrible experiments you could think of, including live dissections were carried out on unwilling POWs as well as civilians, by Japan’s biological warfare unit. All told, a million people died in these experiments. In order to gain an advantage over the Soviets, the US decided to overlook the whole “horribly repugnant activities and instead granted immunity in exchange for the data. No wonder it’s on our list of biggest US Government cover ups of all time, right?

5. The US military unleashed germs on San Francisco

In 1950, the US military simply sprayed San Francisco with S. marcescens, which saw 11 people being hospitalized and one man actually succumbing to it. Why did they do it? To learn more about chemical warfare.

4. The US hired Nazi scientists to boost their space research

To boost their position in the Space race, the US hired Nazi scientists in order to gain their expertise, creating fake IDs for them and allowing them immunity, despite being aware of the fact that these people were behinds thousands of deaths in World War II.

3. The US government killed tens of thousands of Americans during Prohibition

While the Prohibition was going on, the US government decided to poison alcohol to deter people from consuming it. By doing so, the US government is directly responsible for at least 10,000 deaths blamed on alcohol poisoning. But what are 10,000 deaths to a country which has killed tens of millions during its great history? Another one to mark in the biggest US government cover ups of all time.

2. The first Gulf War was based on a lie

Do you know how the first Gulf War started? A girl named Nayirah delivered testimony about the atrocities being committed in Kuwait. This testimony was the basis for the US entering the war and delivering hell. However, after the war ended, it was discovered that she was actually the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the US and the entire testimony was orchestrated. At least that’s the last time the US used a bullshit excuse to enact a war, right?

1. The US government covered up the deaths of 300 people

In Tulsa, contact between a black man and a white woman led to the white people being enraged. This was in 1921. The whites wanted to lynch the black man, and mobs of black and white men gathered near the jail. A gunshot went off, which resulted in the most violent domestic incident in US history. Tulsa was firebombed by white pilots, and the Black Wall Street, which was a place where well to do black people lived, was razed to the ground. After the riot ended, 300 black people had died. Incredibly, the cover up was so complete, for nearly 80 years, the official death toll stood at 39. Only in the 90s did we discover what actually happened, which is why this tops the list of the biggest government cover ups of all time.