In small-town Wisconsin, looking for the roots of the modern American conspiracy theory

News Snapshot:

Tim Sullivan, The Associated Press APPLETON, Wis. (AP) — The decades fall away as you open the front doors. It’s the late 1950s in the cramped little offices — or maybe the pre-hippie 1960s. It’s a place where army-style buzz cuts are still in fashion, communism remains the primary enemy and the decor is dominated by American flags and portraits of once-famous Cold Warriors. At the John Birch Society, they’ve been waging war for more than 60 years against what they're sure is a vast, diabolical conspiracy. As they tell it, it’s a plot with tentacles that reach from 19th-century...