MIKE RUPPERT: Hi, I am a former Los Angeles police narcotics detective, and I worked South Central Los Angeles. And I will tell you, Director Deutsch, emphatically and without equivocation, that the Agency has deal drugs throughout this country for a long time.

DCI JOHN DEUTSCH: If you have information about CIA illegal activity in drugs, you should immediately bring that information to wherever you want, but let me suggest three places: the Los Angeles Police Department--

(audience shouts)

DCI JOHN DEUTSCH: It is your choice: the Los Angeles Police Department, the Inspector General, or an office of one of your Congresspersons . . .

(some people are still shouting)

MIKE RUPPERT: That's what I did eighteen years ago, and I got shot at for it.

Perhaps one reason for the popularity of conspiracy theories is that they stimulate the brain to make new connections, and this mental activity raises consciousness. The titillation experienced is similar to hearing gossip, urban legends and ghost stories. We want to believe. How many people believed the Blair Witch Project was real, even after the media carefully explained that it was just a movie? How many people read The Weekly World News and believe in Bigfoot or that a cemetery or a B-17 bomber was found on the moon? From there, it is not too far-fetched to believe that the lunar landing was faked, that something funny is going on with the Freemasons--which has so many presidents and bigwigs as members, or that there are sinister overtones to the ultrasecret meetings of the Bildergers, Trilateral Commission and other groups that bring together the world's elite. When people hear about the eye-in-the-pyramid on the back of the dollar bill, their eyes go wide in a special kind of disbelief, the kind that says, "Wow. Tell me more." Conspiracy theories, it is strange to think, might be a way for adults to rediscovery mystery, to become children again who see bogeymen in the closet or under the bed.

Because of the stimulation that conspiracy theories deliver, they can be addictive. They can really cast a spell, and one level of belief leads to another. If you buy into one theory, that makes it easy to believe the next, until you're up late breathlessly reading web sites that appear to offer solid evidence, such as photos of concentration camps, that the United States government will be overthrown by unseen forces. Some become information addicts, and they're never satisfied—the conspiracy has to get bigger and bigger. After the World Trade Center attack, Web site traffic at www.GrandConspiracy.com, the official web site for the novel Paranoia, jumped 1000%. Big events get the gears turning. Imagine having a giant puzzle and after months you're given another piece to try to fit into the whole.

Other reasons conspiracy theories are popular is that people don't trust the government anymore, because there is usually just enough evidence to make most conspiracy theories sound true, to rebel against economic trends such as "globalization," and because the world just keeps getting more complicated, making people paranoid. In Paranoia, Palmer explains to Chad that in the modern age of technology, global community and terrorism, the natural state for humans is Paranoia:

You get an e-mail from a friend's address that gives your computer a virus, then automatically opens up your address book and sends the virus to your friends . . . You answer a fake marketing call and get tricked out of your credit card number. A guy knocks on your door saying there's been an accident and after you let him in he kills you . . . You punch your calling card number into a public pay phone and somebody with a pair of binoculars picks it up and sells it and your phone bill shows thousands of dollars in calls to China. You register at an Internet site and it sells your private information all over the world . . . Your company wants to do a drug test. Your company monitors what Internet sites you visit, taps your phone and reads your e-mails. A woman at your company accuses you of sexual harassment and gets you automatically fired . . . The IRS audits you. Your wife loads a program into your computer that records everything you type into it to make sure you're not having cybersex. Somebody steals your identity . . . You find out your wife is cheating on you, or maybe she's just talking about missing being single. You get a phone call and the caller hangs up. You hear a noise downstairs. You hear a click on the line . . .Well, guess what, Chad. There really is a bogeyman under your bed. There really is a man under your car at the mail waiting to slash your Achilles tendon with a razor. And it's not happening to somebody else. It's happening to you.

There's certainly much to be paranoid about in an age of hyper-accelerated technology, culture, globalization, change and marketing. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), most conspiracy theories are like cold fusion--they look like they work and produce a Eureka moment but the reality usually does not match appearances. Ray Brown, a Bowling Green University professor, writes, "There is just enough sanity in some of these conspiracy theories to make them almost believable. By and large, however, they are creations of very rich imaginations because we simply can't accept life as it is." Usually, the essence of conspiracy theory is that an event happened; there are connections between the person involved in the event and other people with their own agendas; and it could be theorized that all of these people were linked to make the event happen for a specific reason. To use the World Trade Center attack as an example:

1. The World Trade Center is attacked.
2. George W. Bush is an oilman and many of his friends are oilmen.
3. One of Osama Bin Laden's brothers was a partner of Bush's.
4. Afghanistan, where Bin Laden is hiding, is where oil companies want to run a pipeline but the Taliban government is unfriendly.
5. The intelligence community knew that something "spectacular" was going to happen but did not prevent it.
6. Therefore, Bush allowed Bin Laden to attack the World Trade Center in order to have an excuse to invade Afghanistan and set up a friendly government, which would allow the pipeline to run through and make oil companies money.