Aberration in the Heartland of the Real: The Secret Lives of Timothy McVeigh

by Wendy S. Painting

Cultural commentator Jodi Dean wrote that the growing popularity of the AIDS conspiracy coincided with speculations during this same period that the CIA introduced crack cocaine into the black community. Both conspiracy theories, said Dean, had roots in the Tuskegee syphilis experiments, other “unethical medical practices” and genocidal practices historically and systematically employed by the U.S. government to oppress black Americans. In 2005, journalist Margaret Cook reported on a study conducted by the University of Oregon, which found that over half of the African-American population believed that HIV was man-made and had been intentionally spread within their community by the government as a form of genocide. According to this lore, HIV was created in chimpanzees by the CIA in the 1950s and first introduced to the public via polio vaccines and later, within the gay population, through experimental Hepatitis vaccines.