10 Outlandish Conspiracies That Were Actually True

10. Watergate, Duh

You've gotta start with the obvious, right? Especially considering that Richard Nixon, the person at the heart of it all, was as paranoid and crazy as the people who imagine such conspiracies to exist in the first place.

Nixon was a nervous wreck for the majority of his tenure in the White House, trusting nobody and keeping a series of tape recorders in the Oval Office which secretly kept note of every single conversation he ever had, just in case somebody tried to blackmail him... or somebody needed blackmailing. Nixon wasn't lax when it came to underhanded deeds, even before he took the Presidency; his predecessor, Lyndon Johnson, recalled seeing Nixon sabotage peace talks with Vietnam which kept the war raging for years.

It was when he took the place of Commander in Chief that Tricky Dicky really hit his stride, though, with all of his paranoia and distrust of even his own cabinet leading to the Watergate scandal uncovered by two Washington Post journalists and adapted into the really rather good film All The President's Men (and equally good albeit quite boring The Post).

In a nutshell, the Watergate scandal began bad enough - Nixon paying people to break into the headquarters of his Democratic rivals to place bugs - and grew into a full-blown conspiracy as it transpired how many people were in on the President's underhanded (not to mention illegal) tactics, with everyone from senators to members of the IRS being harassed by his people to keep schtum. A huge conspiracy that took in half of Washington, DC, and it was orchestrated by the President himself, and it actually happened. Scary.