November/December 2009 Issue

Conspiracy Watch: America’s Evilest Airport

Denver’s airport of doom.

Peter Hoey

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The latest installment in our ongoing collection of wonderfully weird (and totally whack) conspiracy theories. Find more Conspiracy Watch entries here.

THE CONSPIRACY: Denver International Airport is the secret hub of the New World Order. Opened in 1995, DIA has six runways that form a swastika, and lots of underground space—not for moving luggage, but for setting up concentration camps. Its terminals are decorated with Masonic symbols and murals that hint at a coming genocide and, for good measure, the Mayan prophecy that the world will end in 2012.

THE CONSPIRACY THEORISTS: Greg Ericson, who runs the website Free Press International, has been on the case for years, hounding DIA for “refusing to translate the writings that are all over the airport” and for the names of who’s on its utopian-sounding New World Airport Commission. YouTube videos such as Denver Airport Conspiracy Theory have also stirred up interest in the facility, and VigilantCitizen.com has added it to its list of “Sinister Sites.” There’s even an 11,500-person Facebook group dedicated to getting rid of the airport’s unpopular, allegedly cursed   statue, a.k.a. the Horse of the Apocalypse or Bluecifer.

MEANWHILE, BACK ON EARTH: An exasperated DIA flack has advised Ericson to “select whatever explanation you choose to believe” for the complex’s supposed secrets. And don’t expect an apocalypse involving major airlines to arrive on time.

Kookiness Rating: Tin Foil Hat SmallTin Foil Hat SmallTin Foil Hat SmallTin Foil Hat SmallTin Foil Hat Small (1=maybe they’re on to something, 5=break out the tinfoil hat!)

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It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

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Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

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