O39 entries

• O'NEILL, TomAmerican investigative journalist whose twenty-year research into the Manson murders, documented in 'Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA, and the Secret History of the Sixties,' revealed previously unknown connections between the case and government programs.
• OgopogoLake serpent reported in British Columbia's Okanagan Lake, rooted in Indigenous Syilx oral tradition and continuing through modern sightings, with no physical evidence confirming an unknown aquatic species.
• Oklahoma City Bombing Conspiracy TheoriesOklahoma City bombing conspiracy theories allege a broader plot behind the April 1995 truck bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building beyond convicted perpetrators Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, claims contradicted by an extensive trial record and forensic investigation that identified the pair as acting with limited additional assistance rather than as part of a wider organized conspiracy.
• Operation AjaxCIA-orchestrated coup that removed Iran's democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in August 1953, later acknowledged by the U.S. government and documented in declassified intelligence files.
• Operation CHAOSCIA domestic surveillance program from 1967-1974 that monitored American anti-war activists and civil rights groups, violating the agency's charter prohibiting domestic intelligence operations.
• Operation CondorDocumented campaign of political repression and state terror coordinated among South American intelligence services during the 1970s and 1980s, involving surveillance, kidnapping, torture, and assassination of leftist dissidents across national borders.
• Operation CycloneCIA program from 1979 to 1989 of arming and financing Afghan mujahideen forces against Soviet occupation, one of the longest and most heavily funded covert operations in agency history.
• Operation GladioClandestine NATO-affiliated stay-behind paramilitary network established across Western Europe after World War II to organize resistance in the event of Soviet invasion, publicly acknowledged by the Italian government in 1990.
• Operation HighjumpGenuine 1946-47 United States Navy Antarctic expedition led by Admiral Richard Byrd that has been subject to conspiracy theories alleging it was actually an armed assault on hidden Nazi or extraterrestrial bases.
• Operation IA FeatureOperation IA Feature was a covert CIA program funding Angolan civil war factions in 1975-76, later exposed and condemned by the Church Committee as unauthorized paramilitary action.
• Operation INFEKTIONSoviet KGB disinformation campaign that promoted the false claim that the United States government created HIV and AIDS as a biological weapon, documented through declassified intelligence records as a systematic active measures operation.
• Operation Ivy BellsJoint U.S. Navy, CIA, and NSA program of underwater surveillance that placed taps on Soviet military communication cables in the Sea of Okhotsk, compromised in 1981 after an NSA employee sold details to the Soviet Union.
• Operation MerlinCIA operation that used a Russian defector to pass flawed nuclear weapon design information to Iran in an attempt to sabotage its nuclear program.
• Operation Midnight ClimaxCIA sub-project of MK-Ultra from the mid-1950s to mid-1960s that operated out of safehouses in San Francisco and New York, where unwitting individuals were covertly dosed with LSD while under surveillance.
• Operation MincemeatBritish intelligence deception operation in 1943 that used a corpse carrying fabricated documents to convince Axis forces that the Allied invasion target was Sardinia and Greece rather than Sicily.
• Operation MockingbirdAlleged CIA program to influence American news media during the Cold War, based on documented agency relationships with journalists revealed by congressional investigations.
• Operation MongooseCovert CIA program authorized in 1961 to conduct sabotage, propaganda, and destabilization efforts against the government of Fidel Castro, including planning that overlapped with documented assassination attempts.
• OPERATION NORTHWOODSDocumented U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff proposal for false flag operations against American targets to justify military intervention in Cuba, never approved or executed.
• Operation PaperclipConfirmed United States program conducted from 1945 to 1959 that recruited more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians to work on American rocketry, aviation, and weapons research, including former Nazi Party members whose backgrounds were sanitized to enable their employment.
• Operation PBHISTORYCIA operation conducted in Guatemala following the 1954 coup against Jacobo Árbenz, focused on exploiting captured government documents for intelligence and propaganda purposes.
• Operation PBSUCCESSCovert CIA operation that overthrew the democratically elected government of Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz in 1954, documented through declassified agency histories as a template for subsequent Cold War regime-change operations.
• Operation PhoenixOperation Phoenix, a joint American, South Vietnamese, and Central Intelligence Agency counterinsurgency program spanning 1965-1973, systematically targeted suspected Vietcong members through intelligence gathering, detention, and extrajudicial execution, resulting in estimated fifteen thousand to forty thousand deaths.
• Operation RYANOperation RYAN was a major Soviet intelligence program launched in 1981 under KGB chairman Yuri Andropov to detect early warning signs of a surprise NATO nuclear first strike, an initiative later documented through defector testimony and archival disclosure.
• Operation Sea SprayU.S. Navy experiment in 1950 that released the bacterium Serratia marcescens over San Francisco to study biological agent dispersal, later acknowledged by the military after questions arose about a subsequent pneumonia outbreak.
• Operation ShamrockNational Security Agency program from 1945-1975 under which major American telegraph companies secretly furnished copies of international cable traffic to the government, exposed by the Church Committee as early large-scale domestic communications interception.
• Operation TrustSoviet secret police counterintelligence deception operation in the 1920s that created a fake anti-Bolshevik monarchist organization to identify, lure, and neutralize émigré resistance networks abroad.
• Operation ValkyrieFailed July 20, 1944 plot by German army officers led by Claus von Stauffenberg to assassinate Adolf Hitler and overthrow Nazi Germany using the existing Valkyrie emergency plan as cover for seizing control of the government.
• Opioid Crisis Industry ClaimsAllegations that pharmaceutical companies deliberately understated the addictive risk of prescription opioids to drive sales, substantially validated through litigation and internal documents.
• Opus DeiCatholic institution founded in 1928 by Josemaría Escrivá that teaches ordinary work can be a path to holiness, subject to conspiracy theories due to its culture of discretion, particularly following The Da Vinci Code novel.
• Orang PendekSmall, bipedal, ape-like creature reported in the mountain forests of Sumatra, Indonesia, described consistently across decades of local and expedition reports but lacking conclusive scientific evidence.
• Order of the Solar TempleEsoteric Christian-occultist organization founded in 1984 whose leaders orchestrated murder-suicides among members in Switzerland, France, and Quebec between 1994-1997, tied to apocalyptic beliefs about spiritual transition through fire.
• Ordo Templi OrientisInternational occult fraternal organization founded in the early 20th century that adopted Aleister Crowley's Thelema as its central religious philosophy and continues to operate today with lodges worldwide.
• OrgonePurported universal life energy proposed by psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich in the 1930s, claimed to be collectible by devices called orgone accumulators, a theory rejected by mainstream science and prohibited by U.S. federal injunction in 1954.
• Orion Correlation TheoryTheory proposed by Robert Bauval that the three Giza pyramids were deliberately arranged to mirror Orion's Belt constellation as it appeared around 10,500 BCE, disputed by mainstream Egyptologists and astronomers.
• OSWALD, Lee HarveyOswald, Lee Harvey, former Marine identified as President Kennedy's assassin, was shot by Jack Ruby before standing trial.
• Ouija BoardBoard game marketed for spirit communication since 1890, whose apparent supernatural responses result from the ideomotor effect—unconscious muscle movements by users rather than external spiritual forces.
• Out-of-Body Experience ClaimsOut-of-body experience claims describe a subjective sensation of one's consciousness or perception separating from and observing the physical body from an external vantage point, reported both spontaneously and through deliberate induction techniques, a phenomenon studied by parapsychologists as evidence of a separable consciousness and by mainstream neuroscientists as a product of disrupted bodily self-perception.
• Out-of-Place ArtifactsArchaeological objects claimed to demonstrate anachronistic technology or knowledge, used by alternative historians to argue for lost civilizations or ancient astronaut visitation.
• Owlman of MawnanThe Owlman of Mawnan is a large owl- or bird-like humanoid figure reported near the church at Mawnan, Cornwall, beginning in 1976, a British cryptid sighting cluster sometimes compared to Mothman and never substantiated by physical evidence.