ob Marley has been quite the influential voice during the 20th century. Whilst the world was facing certain wars in every corner of the world, Marley was using his Rastafarian beliefs and reggae music to promote peace and to denote the western world for its corrupt way of ruling the world. During the 1970s at the brink of the Cold War, any person that was talking about the western system (specifically referring to America) would sooner or later receive a visit from the Central Information Agency (CIA).

Chased in a Rat Race

Marley became the biggest Reggae superstar around the world and his music was reaching every corner of the world which showed the CIA that his influence was quite dangerous, especially during the combat of a psychological war present during the Cold War. Since May 11, 1981, when Marley died at the young age of 36 from cancer, there have been a large number of conspiracies that are arguing Marley was killed by the CIA.

The major problem that the CIA saw was that most of Marley’s songs referred to the masses’ uprising against those that are controlling society. The last thing that America needed at that time was a revolution or even a civil war during the high tensions that were faced with contemporary crises and political events.

Marley mentions it in many of his songs, such as “Rat Race” that the CIA is trying to stop him from achieving his goal of spreading peace or equality through revolution. Another important reason why the CIA had been involved in all this was that Marley had a strong influence over third world nations across the Caribbean and Africa.

Unofficial reports mention that the CIA was big on smuggling weapons into Jamaica to fuel increased political violence that Marley sang about in his song “Three O’Clock RoadBlock”. Since his career in music had blown around the world, there have been a number of assassination attempts on Marley. The most famous was in Kingston Jamaica on December 3, 1976, when seven armed men raided Marley’s house and shot him, but the wound was not fatal.

Did the CIA finish the job?

An old article from The guardian published in 1981 states that in 1979 Marley had been shot in the chest following appearances at public rallies in support of the then Prime Minister, Michael Manley. From this theories have been created that the only people of interest to kill him would have been the CIA. On the other hand, if we take into consideration a hypothetical scenario where Marley would sing a song with the message “let’s dethrone the king” I would imagine many revolutions taking place around the world.

Another theory that has been debunked many times, yet people still believe is that Marley was actually injected with cancerous cells in his body by the CIA and that is why he died of cancer. The cancer from which Marley died is called melanoma which is a type of skin cancer that develops from the feed and rises up to the head. Melanoma is quite rare and strange to see if develops at such a young age. Another interesting thing is that this type of cancer develops very quickly and if not treated early, there is no chance of survival, or at least there wasn’t in 1981.

After his assassination attempt in 1976, Marley tried to stay hidden from the public and away from danger. This made it more difficult for the CIA to plan an assassination attempt. Therefore Marley was injected with a strong strain of cancer by way of a sharp piece of metal deliberately embedded into a pair of runners that were presented to him by a CIA operative posing as a freelance photographer who sought him out in hiding after the assassination attempt.

Once again this is only a theory, but it does sort of make sense. Even Cancer Research UK had taken an interest in the medical case of Bob Marley and they find it strange that he had developed this strain of cancer. There were even scientific tests done that showed that the genetic faults in acral melanoma are very different from other types of skin cancer.

There had been another theory discussed by USA Today News which states that an ex-CIA agent had confessed on his death bed that he played a role in the death of Bob Marley. Once again no names were mentioned and you would not have much of a motive. However, the theory has been debunked, saying that there is no agent nor any death bed confession, but that still does not result in certainty.