It will be forty years in December since Harold Holt, then Prime Minister of Australia, disappeared while swimming. Only in the last few years did a proper inquiry conclude that he had drowned that day. The conspiracy theories were circulating long before that.
Conspiracy theories are great. The more unlikely and, well, ridiculous they seem to skeptics, the more passionately believers cling to them. And apparently there are still some among my countrymen who are convinced that Mr Holt was picked up by a Chinese submarine and carted off to Peking (as it was then). There are opposing schools on what happened subsequent to his arrival there. Some say he was interrogated for secrets shared with him by US President Johnson. Others insist he had been a Red agent for years, and lived out his final years in Oriental luxury.
The National Archives of Australia have made the Holt disappearance their Find of The Month. You can see a sample of the letters they recieved here at
http://www.naa.gov.au/whats-on/onlin...tember-04.aspx - click on the thumbnails for the full text.
Funny, but nobody mentions aliens and anal probes...
