How legitimate are "Conspiracy Theories"?

Now in last 20+ days until Trump Inauguration - Alex Jones was covering a slew of last-minute chaos being introduced by Obama before he is gone - and in the process of explaining his growing popularity he brought up how much of his success has been due to his coverage and deconstructing of many Government subterfuges and alot of main-stream media complicity for over 20 years.    

I recalled that I began to listen to InfoWars when they disclosed the "Jade Helm" Military Exercise planned for Texas, Southern California, New Mexico and Arizona a couple of years ago where "Red" States were considered "hostile" and "Blue" States "Friendlies".   (Remember that the Republican Party is considered Red and Democratic Party Blue.)  Now it was said NOT to be widely publicized in order to keep the military exercise "realistic" and it was anticipated that it could be kept fairly low-key so as not to scare the local population but it ended up being like something out of old Cold War comedy movie "The Russians are Coming!"  All hell broke loose when Alex Jones revealed it because - to some extent - it crystallized the fear by Americans (and others) of potential military against it's own population and a very important public belief was breached. 

U.S. Army Special Operations Command - http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2015/03/31/why-the-new-special-operations-exercise-freaking-out-the-internet-is-no-big-deal/

Then he mentioned an article written by a prominent supporter Cass Sunstein and covered in Salon Online.

It provides a rather disturbing view into views on Government "Propaganda" and is worth the read.