Get ready to call your preferred conspiracy theory-loving relative to admit defeat. As of March 27, the Trump administration has declassified documents confirming that birds were replaced by government drones to spy on the American public. This declassification comes after a push from Americans to make the government and their practices more transparent and truthful qualities for which Trump is known for.
The debate about whether birds are real has raged on for years, with both sides making strong arguments and providing proof for their stances. Peter McIndoe has been a front runner in defending his belief that birds are not real and had been replaced years ago by the government to track individuals more closely and covertly. The theory became widespread thanks to McIndoe’s efforts to reveal the truth in 2017 as a counter-protester at a Women’s March in Memphis Tenn.. A video of the speech he unofficially gave was uploaded to the internet and began to open people’s eyes to the lies they had been fed by the government to invade their privacy more than ever before.
The website birdsarentreal.com provides an in-depth explanation as to why the government undertook this operation, claiming the red scare acted as a catalyst for the government to justify spying on civilians, specifically Russian immigrants suspected of espionage. First, they used hidden CCTV, but that wasn’t enough. Allen Dulles, who was appointed director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in 1953, dreamed of putting a camera in the sky that would put all the cameras they currently used to shame. After a meeting with President Dwight D. Eisenhower, Dulles met with his inner circle to create a plan. Their mutual hatred for birds sparked the idea to kill all the birds and replace them with drone look-alikes.
Between 1959 and 1971, the government killed more than 12 million birds using B-52 bombers created by engineers in Area 51. After the engineers completed their assignment, they were sent to the front lines of the Vietnam War so any trace of their work on the project would die with them. The bombers they created held water tanks containing a special bird poison that could be transferred between birds as a virus. The poison would soak into the bird’s bloodstream and kill them, decomposing their bird bodies within 24 hours to cover Dulles’ tracks. The operation commenced on June 2, 1959. According to the author of the website, “Within the next 6 years, 15% of the bird population was wiped out. During these first few years, bird prototypes were released by the hundred million.”
There have been mixed reactions to the news. People who believed the story and participated in the movement when it was still just a theory have rejoiced and shared their triumph all over social media. One user, aptly named @brdz_rnt_rel_libz posted on X, “I KNEW IT! TAKE THAT LIBS! Another win for the superier minds! You couldnt fool me government!”.However, there are still skeptics. William Worm, who looked suspiciously like a couple birds in a trench coat, shared his thoughts in a one-on-one interview. “Of course birds are real, don’t be silly. The government would never lie to the public like that, especially for decades about something as important as their privacy. Just go about your lives as normal and don’t worry about it,” he said.
