The Mammoth Book of Conspiracies (46 page)

If John Wilkes Booth and Boston Corbett were pawns in the assassination of Lincoln, there is no shortage of contenders for the title of the “Arch-Conspirator”, the cabal or the individual who masterminded the deed:

Of course, there is always someone who sees Jewish bankers behind every evil deed, and sure enough the Rothschilds have been nominated as the hands that steered Booth. Their reason? Because Lincoln had issued “greenbacks”, government notes to fund the war, thus robbing the Rothschilds of easy high-interest shekels. Equally, no conspiracy is complete without putting a secret society in its sights, and as soon as Lincoln’s heart stopped beating at 7.22 on the morning after he was shot, rumours began to circulate that the
Knights of the Golden Circle
, a circle of pro-South Northern Democrats, were up to their elegant necks in the deed. And there is always the super-ambitious alternative history in which plural plotters come together for one epoch shaping moment; in
The Lincoln Conspiracy
, David Balsiger and Charles E. Sellier Jr propose a heady, swirling scenario whereby Secretary of War Stanton linked up with Confederate spymaster Jacob Thompson, plus Northern speculators who wanted to keep the money-making war going and good ol’ Maryland boys who wanted to keep Negroes in their place, viz. down on the slave plantation. Just in case you thought that Booth was treated a little harshly for his part in delivering a bullet to Lincoln’s brain, he did not die staggering from a bullet in a blazing barn. No, no, no. In this left field conspiracy scenario, the body in the barn belonged to a James William Boyd, a Confederate fugitive, who unfortunately for him looked like Booth, the latter having been smuggled by Stanton out of the country. Some said to California, England and India. Yes, exotic India, not humdrum Indiana.

Like the controversy over the assassination of
John F. Kennedy
, that over the assassination of Lincoln shows no sign of slowing up. Unfortunately, the death of Lincoln is now so far in the past that any new evidence is unlikely to be unearthed. The truth lies buried with the bodies of the main actors in the drama.

Further Reading

David Balsiger and Charles E Sellier,
The Lincoln Conspiracy
, 1977

Otto Eisenschiml,
Why Lincoln was Murdered
, 1937

Theodore Roscoe,
The Web of Conspiracy: The Complete Story of the Men Who Murdered Abraham Lincoln
, 1960

LUSITANIA

On 7 May 1915 the British passenger liner
Lusitania
, under the command of Captain Turner, was sunk by a U-boat off the south coast of Ireland.

The loss of life was terrible. Since the ship was lying on its side, the starboard lifeboats could not be used, and 1,201 people died. Of these, 128 were citizens of neutral America.

Firing at a passenger liner was outside the accepted rules of war, and anti-German riots occurred in many countries. The President of the USA, Woodrow Wilson, wrote to the German government demanding “reparation so far as reparation is possible”. At the fourth time of writing, the Germans caved in, accepted responsibility and agreed to stop the sinking of passenger ships.

In the short term, German capitulation to Wilson’s demands was enough to prevent the USA entering the war on the Allied side. However, anti-German sentiment had been so effectively stoked by the sinking, that when Germany resumed unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917 it was inevitable that the US would side with Britain, France and Russia.

Over time, military historians have come to suspect that the sinking was a set-up in which the Germans were deliberately encouraged by the British to sink the liner in the expectation that the negative publicity would lure the Americans onto the British side.

The suspicions were brought together in 1972 by Colin Simpson in
The Lusitania.
As Simpson detailed, the British failed to provide the
Lusitania
with any form of escort, although the Germans had placed advertisements in the newspapers of New York (from where
Lusitania
sailed) warning “that any travellers sailing in the war zone on ships of Great Britain or her allies do so at their own risk”. More, the
Lusitania
appeared to make no effort to avoid a U-boat attack although it was travelling through a zone where U-boats lurked. No less than twenty-three merchantmen had already gone to Davy Jones’s locker in the area.

A letter written by Winston Churchill, First Lord of Admiralty, to Walter Runciman, the president of Britain’s Board of Trade, seems damning evidence of the conspiracy: “It is most important to attract neutral shipping to our shores in the hope especially of embroiling the United States with Germany … For our part we want the traffic – the more the better; and if some of it gets into trouble, better still.”

Furthermore, the radio exchanges between the
Lusitania
and the Admiralty from early May remain classified to this day.

Conspiracy or cock-up? The
Lusitania
was not “neutral shipping” and the fact that Churchill hoped that a ship got into useful trouble is not proof he planned the
Lusitania
sinking. In 1915, the minds of the Admiralty were concentrated on the Dardenelles campaign, and the sailing of one liner was a minor matter. Also, the ship was famously fast and well built, and the brass at the Admiralty likely presumed she was uncatchable at best, unsinkable at worst.

A foul-up would also explain the cover-up and locking-up of the radio traffic between the Admiralty and
Lusitania
: if the blunder had been made public, it would have been an embarrassment in front of the world.

Further Reading

Colin Simpson,
The Lusitania
, 1972

PAUL McCARTNEY

The Beatles, a.k.a. the Fab Four. John, Paul, George and Ringo.

Actually, make that the Terrific Three plus an imposter. According to a rumour broadcast in October 1969 by Detroit disc jockey Russ Gibb, Paul McCartney had died in a car crash in 1966, having been distracted by a lovely meter maid. As this would have destroyed The Beatles, Paul was replaced by a lookalike, William Campbell. (Or was it Billy Shears?) With a little plastic surgery here, a handy growth of facial hair there, William/Billy made a passable Paul and The Beatles kept on making money, money, money.

The Paul is Dead rumour swept the world. The evidence for Gibb’s proposition? Nothing less than The Beatles’ own lyrics and album covers. Racked by guilt, the remaining mop-tops could not stop themselves inadvertently hinting at Paul’s demise, in a sort of mass outbreak of Freudian slips. Thus on the sleeve of
Sergeant Pepper
Paul is standing next to a grave, while the hand of the statue of the Hindu god Shiva, “The Destroyer”, points
directly
at Paul. Then there’s the BEATLES wreath, and the doll in the red-lined dress, to symbolize Jane Asher, who died in the car with him. Inside, the sleeve depicts Paul wearing an arm patch with the letters OPD, standing for “Officially Pronounced Dead”. The lyrics are the clincher. In “She’s Leaving Home” the accident is revealed to have been on “Wednesday morning at five o’clock”, while “Good Morning Good Morning” confirms there was “nothing to do to save his life” and the climactic “A Day in the Life” acknowledges he “blew his mind out in a car”.

If the track “I’m so Tired” on
The White Album
is played backwards, the words become “Paul is dead, man, miss him, miss him”.

But it is The Beatles’ 1969
Abbey Road
that provides the mother lode of clues to Paul’s death. On the LP cover the four Beatles are pictured crossing the road in a funeral procession. Lennon is the priest (he’s wearing white), Harrison is the grave-digger (wearing denim), Starr is the funeral director (dressed formally). McCartney is the corpse: he’s out of step with the others, has bare feet, and is smoking a cigarette – the symbol of death in Sicilian culture. More, the licence plate on the car reads “LMW 281F”, which stands for “Linda McCartney Weeps”.