Conspiracy: History’s Greatest Plots, Collusions and Cover-Ups (31 page)

T
HE FUNERAL PROCESSION
There are fewer visual clues to Paul's alleged death in the White Album but the ultimate source for the conspiracy theorists – and the immediate inspiration for the original radio broadcasts – was 1969's Abbey Road album. It is alleged that the front cover of this album depicts Paul's funeral procession. The four Beatles are pictured crossing the road. Lennon is the clergyman or priest (dressed in white), Starr is the funeral director or pallbearer (formally dressed), McCartney is the the corpse (he is out of step with the others and he has bare feet and a cigarette, which is a Sicilian symbol of death) and Harrison is the grave-digger (denim working clothes).

Furthermore, the license plate of the white car reads LMW 281F. LMW is said to stand for "Linda McCartney Widow (or Weeps)", and 28IF suggests that Paul would have been twenty-eight years old if he had not died. (At the time of the album's release, 26 September 1969, McCartney was in fact twenty-seven years old.) Additionally, the cigarette in the picture is in McCartney's right hand, even though he is left-handed.

In fact there appear to be so many clues, not to mention the dozens of photographs that allegedly prove that the later Paul McCartney is a different person to the original that, after a while, one can easily think that there must be something to it all. However, the fact that this new Paul McCartney look-alike went on to duplicate his hero's voice and his songwriting ability exposed the theory as the enjoyable nonsense that it plainly is.

Even The Beatles themselves saw the funny side of it. John Lennon, in the anti-Paul song "How Do You Sleep At Night?" from his solo album Imagine, includes the line "those freaks was right when they said you was dead". And, in 1993, McCartney himself paid tribute to this long-running conspiracy theory by calling his live album – what else? – Paul Is Live!

GENERAL

Stewart Galanor,
Cover-Up
, Kestrel, 1998.

Devon Jackson,
Conspiranoia! The Mother of All Conspiracy Theories
, Penguin, 2000.

Michael Newton,
The Encyclopedia of Conspiracies and Conspiracy Theories
, Checkmark, 2005.

Jonathan Vankin and John Walen,
Eighty Greatest Conspiracies of All Time
:

History's Biggest Mysteries, Cover-ups and Cabals,
Citadel Press 2004.

http://www.alternet.org/story/148
73 Overview of current conspiracy theories.

http://www.carpenoctem.tv/
Useful site that includes a review of the most popular conspiracy theories to date.

http://www.coverups.com
Entertaining site about the great cover-ups of history.

CHAPTER ONE: THE WAR ON TERROR

Jim Marrs,
Inside Job: Unmasking the 9/11 Conspiracies
, Origin, 2004.

John K. Cooley,
Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America, and International Terrorism,
Pluto, 2002.

Robert Parry,
Secrecy & Privilege: Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq
, The Media Consortium, 2004.

CHAPTER TWO: SECRET SOCIETIES

http://www.conspiracyarchive.com
Material on the Illuminati, secret societies, mind control, etc.

CHAPTER THREE: THE UNKNOWN

http://www.crystalinks.com/newmexico.html
Information about the Roswell, New Mexico UFO/alien incident.

http://www.ufoevidence.org
Site dedicated to UFO sightings, research, etc.

www.badastronomy.com
For a sceptical, scientific view of conspiracy theories involving the moon landings, UFOs, etc, this site is hard to beat.

http://www.forteantimes.com
Well-presented magazine concerning supernatural phenomena.

CHAPTER FOUR: WAR STORIES

Joachim C. Fest,
Inside Hitler's Bunker: the Last Days of the Third Reich
, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2004.

Richard J Evans,
Telling Lies About Hitler: The Holocaust, Hitler, and the David Irving Libel Trial
, Verso, 2002

Michael Shermer,
Why People Believe Weird Things
,
Pseudoscience, Superstition and Other Confusions of Our Time
, Owl Books, 2002

Michael Shermer & Alex Grobman,
Denying History: Who Says the Holocaust Never Happened, and Why Do They Say It?
, University of California Press, 2002

CHAPTER FIVE: POLITICAL COVER-UPS

Dick J. Reavis,
The Ashes of Waco: An Investigation
, Syracuse University Press, 1998.

Alexander Cockburn, Jeffrey St. Clair,
Whiteout: The CIA, Drugs and the Press,
Verso 1998.

CHAPTER SIX: MURDER MYSTERIES

James H. Fetzer (ed.),
Murder in Dealey Plaza: What We Know Now That We Didn't Know Then,
Open Court, 2000.

Noel Botham,
The Murder of Princess Diana
, Kensington Publishing Corporation, 2004.

Barbara Leaming,
Marilyn Monroe,
Three Rivers Press, 2000.

CHAPTER SEVEN: CELEBRITY INDISCRETIONS

Lloyd C. Gardner,
The Case That Never Dies: The Lindbergh Kidnapping
, Rutgers University Press, 2004

Matthew Parris & Kevin Maguire,
Great Parliamentary Scandals: Five Centuries of Calumny, Smear and Innnuendo
, Robson Books, 2004

Gail Brewer-Giorgio,
Is Elvis Alive?
, Tudor, 1988 Albert Goldman,
Elvis
, Penguin Books, 1982

Andru J Reeve,
Turn Me On, Dead Man: The Beatles and the 'Paul-Is-Dead' Hoax
, Authorhouse, 2004