Ventura“I’ve heard things that’ll blow your mind,” says former Gov. Jesse Ventura in the promo for his new TV show, “Conspiracy Theory,” which debuts Wednesday night on Tru.tv. “I’ve been on the inside, and now I’m ready to talk.”

While the show will look at “global cover-ups, mind control, secret societies,” as Ventura snarls, here’s one insider’s view that might come as a surprise: He claims he was “silenced” at his last TV gig, the short-lived 2003 MSNBC show “Jesse Ventura’s America,” because he opposed the war in Iraq.

Ventura told the Los Angeles Times yesterday that the MSNBC gig was “awful.” After a bidding war between networks, he wound up with NBC’s cable arm, where he was being “groomed for a five day-a-week TV show.”

Then, all of a sudden, weird phone calls started happening: “Is it true Jesse doesn’t support the war in Iraq?”

After that show ended, his contract prevented him from doing other shows for a period: “So in essence I had my silence purchased.”

Ventura’s not yet entirely sure “Conspiracy Theory” — which will likely cover a recurring Ventura theme, that the government isn’t being forthright about the 9/11 terrorist attacks — will ever be broadcast, he says. Suggesting that the content of the show will be too hot to handle, he tells the Times he’s learned to believe that a Hollywood project will happen only after the check clears at the bank: “I’ve had a gentleman’s bet with my crew that these shows would never air.”

Via Comedy Central’s Indecision.