05/02/2006 On aliens, anarchists and axes of evil By: DAVID J. FOSTER   Sometimes they're as bogus as Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan's claim that Navy Seals detonated the levees during Hurricane Katrina to wipe out the poor black neighborhoods of New Orleans. Then there's the netherworld, best represented by the assassination of President Kennedy, where true believers on both sides cherry pick "evidence" to support their view and ig-nore facts even a magic bullet cannot explain away. Conspiracies bud where logic fails us, where facts are incomplete or faulty. But sometimes "the paranoid are onto something," says Brad Steiger. For five decades Steiger has chased down the weird and unexplainable as author and co-author of 150 books and a veteran of broadcast news shows, from Nightline to The NBC Nightly News. His latest, "Conspiracies and Secret Societies: The Complete Dossier" (Visible Ink), written with wife, Sherry, is an encyclopedia of the aliens, anarchists and axes of evil-a mix of the real and delusional-that have haunted us since man put chisel to stone. The Steigers call it a "dossier of the more shadowy visages of human history, the images that appear in the dark mirrors that reflect portraits of chaos, confusion and deceit." And there are shape-shifting reptiles, too.   Operation Paperclip Afraid German scientists had developed technologies beyond our own, the U.S. government skirted a law that banned Nazi Party members from entering post-war America so they could build our Cold War missiles. Called Operation Paperclip, the government confessed in 1973 after we sent men to the moon using the Germans' ingenuity.   Project Spellbinder: Intrigued by German brainwashing experiments, the CIA attempted similar tests us-ing LSD. It peaked in 1966 when Project Spellbinder attempted to create a "Manchurian Candidate" sleeper assassin to take out Fidel Castro. All attempts failed. We'd know more, but in 1972 CIA head Richard Helms destroyed all records of the project.   Maybe they did succeed? Some conspiracy buffs are convinced Mark David Chapman, who killed John Lennon, and Sirhan Sirhan, who shot Bobby Kennedy, were sleeper agents run amok. They refer to Chapman's serene attitude following Lennon's murder. He also claimed voices told him to do it. So did Sirhan Sirhan. Lawyer and journalist Fenton Bresler believes these are the signs of brainwashing. Or maybe they were just nuts.   Who really killed Lincoln? The most widely-debated conspiracy question surrounding the assassination of Abra-ham Lincoln was whether Dr. Samuel Mudd, who set John Wilkes Booth's leg broken during his escape from Ford's Theater, was part of the plot. But who was the puppet master? Would you believe Pope Pius IX? At least that's what some speculated. The shadows stretch back to 1856, when Lincoln hammered a compromise between rebellious priest Charles Chiniquy, charged with slandering the church, and Bishop O'Regan of Chicago. Chiniquy supposedly warned President Lincoln of a Jesuit cabal and later claimed Jesuit hit men trained Booth. A 1963 book tied in Pope Pius IX as instigator of the plot.   The ghostly conspirator When Charles Guiteau gunned down President James Garfield in a Washington rail-road station in 1881, it was the first successful task Guiteau ever completed. Guiteau failed at every grab for fame and fortune, until he acquired a ghostly con-spirator he called Lordy. It was Lordy who suggested Guiteau kill Garfield, barely 100 days into his presidency. Guiteau's past was murky. His father, Luther, was a cultist of John Humphrey Noyes, whose Oneida community was a notorious haven for free love and what Steiger calls "controlled perversity." After finding no females willing to join him in the hedonistic rituals, young Charles Guiteau left "to find himself" and met Lordy along the way. Guiteau was executed on June 30, 1882. Lordy is still at large.   Bob Hope? No! God? Allah? The Freemasons? Nope. The real puppet masters controlling our fate are the Anunnakis, says David Ickes. The Anunnaki are extraterrestrial reptiles who have been spinning the world's myths for thou-sands of years. They also run the Trilateral Commission, probably the Rotary and manage-ment of Wal-Mart. Among the Anunnaki are Bill and Hillary Clinton, Henry Kissenger, of course Presi-dent Bush, and, yes, Bob Hope and Kris Kristofferson. Ickes, a former pro soccer player waylaid by arthritis and spokesperson for the Brit-ish Green Party, unveiled his "discovery" after tracking the English bloodlines back to the Sons of God (the reptile people) and the Hebrew Daughters of Man, and, well... it's all in his book "The Biggest Secret." Maybe that's why Lordy wanted President Garfield shot? The president was a reptile. Or maybe Garfield was human, and Lordy needed him out of the way so Vice President and Anunnaki Chester A. Arthur could take the White House. Who knew conspiracies could be so fun and easy to concoct?     ©Daily Local News 2006