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Report from Iron Mountain
by Philip Coppens

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The “Report from Iron Mountain” was a 1967 publication that claimed to be a leaked, top secret government report. It argued that though world peace was a nice idea, the economy of war was such a vital part of global stability, it was difficult to come up with substitutes. A hoax? Satire? Or the truth? For more than three decades, the Report has been a cornerstone of intelligent debate… sometimes.

In 1967, a major publisher, The Dial Press, released Report from Iron Mountain. The book claimed to be a suppressed, secret government report, written by a commission of scholars, known as the “Special Study Group”, set up in 1963, with the document itself leaked by one of its members. The Group met at an underground nuclear bunker called Iron Mountain and worked over a period of two and a half years, delivering the report in September 1966.

The report was an investigation into the problems that the United States would need to face if and when “world peace” should be established on a more or less permanent basis. Or to quote from the “official” report: “It is surely no exaggeration to say that a condition of general world peace would lead to changes in the social structures of the nations of the world of unparalleled and revolutionary magnitude. The economic impact of general disarmament, to name only the most obvious consequence of peace, would revise the production and distribution patterns of the globe to a degree that would make the changes of the past fifty years seem insignificant. Political, sociological, cultural, and ecological changes would be equally far-reaching. What has motivated our study of these contingencies has been the growing sense of thoughtful men in and out of government that the world is totally unprepared to meet the demands of such a situation.”

The book appeared during the Cold War, but specifically at a time when America was hit by bloody racial riots in its cities and piles of body bags being returned from VietNam. Was the Government really promoting a culture of war? The “Report” was the most talked about book of the year. A number of people believed the Report was authentic. This impression was helped when noted economist John Kenneth Galbraith reviewed the book in The Washington Post, using the pseudonym Herschell McLandress: “As I would put my personal repute behind the authenticity of this document, so I would testify to the validity of its conclusions. My reservations relate only to the wisdom of releasing it to an obviously unconditioned public.”

Still, many, including most other book reviewers, deemed it to be a satire. US embassies were asked to comment and had to disclaim the report, noting it was not an official government report. Still, President Lyndon B. Johnson apparently couldn’t be sure that his predecessor (John F. Kennedy) hadn’t commissioned the report. According to US News and World Report, the President “hit the roof” upon learning of it and ordered that the report be “bottled up for all time”.

But if it was a hoax, who was its perpetrator? Among the accused was Leonard C. Lewin; he had written the report's introduction, as well as a previous book on political satire. Another suspect was John Kenneth Galbraith, because he had written reviews of the hoax in the Washington Post and Chicago Tribune, even though he had used an alias. But why had he used an alias, and not his real name? Though many suspected it was a hoax, no-one had any evidence to back up their allegations.

By 1972, the book had been translated into 15 languages. It was then that Lewin admitted that it had been a hoax, in the March 19 New York Times Book Review. The idea for the Report came from Victor Navasky, who published a satirical magazine, Monocle. Lewin was also helped by Richard Lingeman and Marvin Kitman, both working for Monocle. In 1966, Navasky read an article in the New York Times on a stock market downturn due to a "peace scare". In 1972, he stated how the Pentagon Papers and other documents about the Vietnam War "read like parodies of Iron Mountain rather than the reverse." What was the goal of the hoax? He stated that “what I intended was simply to pose the issues of war and peace in a provocative way. To deal with the essential absurdity of the fact that the war system, however much deplored, is nevertheless accepted as part of the necessary order of things. To caricature the bankruptcy of the think-tank mentality by pursuing its style of scientistic thinking to its logical ends. And perhaps, with luck, to extend the scope of public discussion of ‘peace planning’ beyond its usual, stodgy limits.” In short, it was one thing to have “world peace” as an ambition, but like the beauty pageant queens that long for it, the debate needed to transcend it; the “hope” needed to become an action plan, and it would be there that the various facets of an accepted component of the economy, politics and society would be carefully change-managed.

By 1980, the book was out of print. The controversy seemed forgotten. World peace had not materialised. But in the 1990s, Lewin discovered that bootleg editions of his book were being distributed by and to members of rightwing militia groups who claimed it was an authentic report. His 1972 admission seemed to have bypassed rightwing America. Lewin sued for copyright infringement, though the groups argued it was a public domain document – i.e. an official document – and that Lewin’s name as author was part of the government deception. In short, they argued that the publication was genuine, but, once leaked, the government did damage control and claimed it was a hoax, asking Lewin to admit to it.

Type of Work: Text

Registration Number / Date: TX0004251974 / 1996-05-02

Title: Report from Iron Mountain : On the possibility and disirability of peace / by Leonard C. Lewin ; with introd. by Victor Navasky.

Imprint: New York : Free Press, c1996.

Description: 152 p.

Copyright Claimant: on afterword; Leonard C. Lewin

Date of Creation: 1995

Date of Publication: 1996-04-02

Other Title: On the possibility and disirability of peace

Names: Navasky, Victor
Lewin, Leonard C.

The judge ruled in favour of Lewin, and all remaining copies were turned over to him. But… In 1993, the book made an appearance in the controversial movie JFK, in such a way that it was one of the most powerful scenes of the movie; a scene that “explained” why there was – could be? – a conspiracy why the “military-industrial complex” would want to kill Kennedy. How did this happens? Because Col. Fletcher Prouty believed the Report was authentic and cited it as such in his book, JFK: The CIA, Vietnam, and the Plot to Assassinate John F. Kennedy -- which was worked into the film script, Fletcher being portrayed by Donald Sutherland, meeting Kevin Costner (Jim Garrison) in Washington – a meeting that never occurred in reality. Stone used a section from Prouty’s book that comes from the Report and worked it into the dialogue: “The organizing principle of any society is for war. The basic authority of a modern state over its people resides in its war powers. . . . War readiness accounts for approximately a tenth of the output of the world's total economy.” For Stone – and many others – it was clear that the government was a co-existence of various interest groups: the oil industry; the pharmaceutical industry; but mainly, the military-industrial complex… warmongers.

In his book, Prouty goes in more detail, writing that the Group’s existence “was so highly classified that there is no record, to this day, of who the men in the group were or with what sectors of the government or private life they were connected.” Still, he claimed to have managed an exclusive interview with a “purported member of the Iron Mountain Special Study Group", who told Prouty he "believes that the group's mission was delineated by McNamara, William Bundy, and Dean Rusk." In 1996, Simon & Schuster reprinted the Report, with a new introduction, underlining that the book was a political satire.

Though a hoax, it is a political satire, and thus not without merit. And whereas many Americans are divided over its status as a genuine report or a hoax, in the end, this should not really matter. Whether someone wrote it for the US government, or Lewin wrote it for the American public, there is a message. Full stop. As Lewin himself pointed out: by 1972, reality seemed to have become based on the Iron Mountain Report… because, in essence, the underlying premise is true: war is part of our economy, and definitely so in the United States, whose economy is partially kept in balance by military expenditure. Lewin wrote that at the time, the "world war industry" accounted “for approximately a tenth of the output of the world's total economy. […]The United States, as the world's richest nation, not only accounts for the largest single share of this expense, currently upward of $60 billion a year, but also ‘... has devoted a higher proportion of its gross national product to its military establishment than any other major free world nation. This was true even before our increased expenditures in Southeast Asia.’” In fact, America’s military spending is often bigger than the total public spending of many nations – specifically so in Africa.

One of the more controversial statements of the book is no doubt this statement: “Wars are not ‘caused’ by international conflicts of interest. Proper logical sequence would make it more often accurate to say that war-making societies require – and thus bring about – such conflicts. The capacity of a nation to make war expresses the greatest social power it can exercise; war-making, active or contemplated, is a matter of life and death on the greatest scale subject to social control.” After the 2003 invasion of Iraq, this statement is largely supported by the world’s population – but was even in the days of Lewin “old news”. Intriguingly, the now notorious “weapons of mass destruction” was a term used in the Report: “The production of weapons of mass destruction has always been associated with economic ‘waste.’”

Lewin argued that war was an important tool, as it created artificial demand, a demand which did not have any political issues: “war, and only war, solves the problem of inventory.” The conclusion of the book is that peace, though extremely unlikely, was actually not in the best interest of society, as war not only served important economical functions, but also social and cultural roles. “The permanent possibility of war is the foundation for stable government, it supplies the basis for general acceptance of political authority.” As well as: “War is virtually synonymous with nationhood. The elimination of war implies the inevitable elimination of national sovereignty and the traditional nation-state.” And: “War has been the principal evolutionary device for maintaining a satisfactory balance between gross human population and supplies available for its survival. It is unique to the human species.”

Lewin proposed that until substitutes for war were developed, “war” needed to be maintained, if not improved in effectiveness. Part of the “genius” of Lewin is in the type of proposed potential substitutes he proposed – some of which may have given various governments some inspiration… or is it just coincidence that “reality” mimics fiction? The Report’s recommendations were:

- a giant space-research programme whose goal was largely impossible to achieve (a black hole, budget-wise and hence able to feed the economy);
- create a new, non-human enemy, e.g. the potential threat of an extra-terrestrial civilisation
- create a new threat to Mankind, e.g. pollution
- new ways of limiting births, e.g. via adding drugs to food or water supply
- create fictitious alternate enemies
- create an omnipresent, virtually omnipotent international police force.

Some of these options are obviously quite difficult to achieve – and the world has never seen them come true. Other contributing factors to our present world, such as the Internet and technology as a whole, were obviously not envisioned by the author, living in the 1960s as he was. Still, many of the ideas of the Report have come true, and we can only wonder whether they are “created” or genuine problems – and if they are created, whether the idea originated from the Report, or whether the myth was already created before.

The Race to the Moon, at the time when the Report was written in 1967, could well have been seen as a black hole, definitely if it was followed by a Mars project, and further missions to outer space. Series like Star Trek and other series definitely wetted and showed that there was a public appetite for “going where no-one had gone before”. Still, despite this interest, in the early 1970s, America had lost interest in the various Moon landings – and the government seemed to take this as its cue to descope the space programme. If anyone was pushing that agenda, he wasn’t too good on keeping the public hooked on the “space drug”.

As to the creation of a non-human, extra-terrestrial enemy: that idea was well-known in science fiction and in the 1930s, Welles had created mass hysteria – at least in some corners – with the radio hoax of an alien invasion. Furthermore, the ET menace was part of the UFO myth, a phenomenon largely kept alive and controlled by the US government – which actively promoted the belief in an alien presence on Earth. That story ran out of power in the late 1990s, shortly after the 50th anniversary of the mythical Roswell crash. Of course, unknown “things” remain to be seen in the sky and the potential to use the phenomenon remains and can be picked up at any time, almost taking up where it was left a decade ago. For a brief moment, in the mid 1990s, it seemed that the new enemy was going to be “non-intelligent”: the possibility that comets and meteors were out there, and were set to strike us. Astronomers asked not money to search for ET, but to search for objects that could kill us, like they had killed the dinosaurs more than 60 million years ago. But that idea once again has not resulted in any clear financial commitment… and if anyone wanted to unite the world because we were facing a global annihilation, it only worked in Armageddon and Deep Impact.

Another new threat has been created, and again we find it listed as a potential remedy to cure the world of the war infection: humanity itself. Not only is there AIDS, bird flu and other killer diseases that make their way in and out of the news, there is also our onslaughts on natural resources, abuse of oil, the threat of sea level and weather changes, etc. Largely, pollution and the environment have been used by governments as an excuse to raise extra taxes, to fill unforeseen gaps in the government’s budgets. Intriguingly, those governments that need extra money most, are the first to embrace the “Green Agenda”. So even though the Report was right in the sense that pollution and the environment could drive the economy, so far, governments have only used it as a supportive economic and social measure – and it seems clear that at the moment, it may miss its global potential, if only because many governments are already redefining the need and use of nuclear energy as an economic requirement – whether it is desirable or not. And that is where “war” remains too: though seen as undesirable by most, it is a part of the economy, it is a part of our life. Some wars are deemed to be “required”, others carefully created, some desired and the excuse defined only later – Iraq 2003 being a primary example of that. But war is also the solution to economic problems: Iraq 2003 being again a prime example: to keep the economy going, the West needs oil – and America needs oil more than most. This is a problem. It is a “fact” that wars need to be fought to keep the war economy going. Iraq 2003 combined the two, in the hope to come up with a winning formula. In truth, it was a “win-win” situation, for war itself was positive for the economy, and if the war resulted in more oil, two goals were achieved.

Still, “war” as a currency was vastly different in 1966 than e.g. 1996. In 1966, the Cold War provided an excuse in the need to build up and maintain – i.e. spend money – on the instruments of war, even though war itself did not need to be fought as such. With the collapse of the East Bloc in the late 1980s, this status quo had to be abandoned. In short, the American military once again needed to fight wars, or a new enemy, which required a military deterrent, had to be found – or created.

The Clinton Administration partially resolved this problem, by setting up the US Army as a “global police force” (another recommendation of the Report) that was for hire – which the European Union took up to resolve problems in Eastern Europe in the late 1990s. However, when Bush came into office, he stated that America would look “inwards” and focus on its internal economy. He did not want to see his army used as a “Global Police Force”. Though extremely ambitious and noble, Bush ran into the very problem that the Report had underlined: war was an economic component. Bush, it seemed, simply did not address it – he seemed to ignore the problem. In his approach, the US military were surplus to requirements… there, but not used. It is clear that troops could not be set loose on the streets of America – though the New Orleans disaster of 2005 came close. As such, September 11 offered a great solution. The Bush Administration realised that the promise they had made in 2000, to bring economic prosperity to America by focusing on its economy and not on war, was far more difficult than they thought. It suggests that before 2000, the Bush Administration had not read the Report… for it had no plan for economic change that excluded war. As a consequence, the Bush Administration embraced Project New American Century, which in short is a variation on the Clinton policy. It argued that America would bring world peace about… by military force… and by creating regime change in countries that held back world peace. But rather than have the US military as a contract resource for hire, the Project wanted America to lead and control this process. In this approach, the US continued to use the military as an “in-house resource” and thus easily plotted into economic models, rather than put it out “for hire”, not knowing whether countries will use it – or will even pay for them (which was part of the European use of the troops for the Balkan). It seems that contributors to Project New American Century have read the Report… and have come up with a new potential solution…

THE PENTAGON RECONSIDERS
by Charles Carreon

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[The Report From Iron Mountain is a philosophical expose, and who wrote it is not very important. Indeed, it's hard to believe anyone really thought it had been written by a team of 15 Dow-Jones certified blue-blood business brahmins. Somehow, the tone just isn't what I'd expect from such a crew.

The Report from Iron Mountain reminds me of the way I pushed the envelope in The Pentagon Reconsiders, for More Than Food, during the Reagan era. Railing against nuclear warheads, a "farsighted" general tells his colleague: "the point is to keep fighting, not to end it. If we wanted to do that we could go march in a peace parade." Equating peace with nuclear extinction, and life with continued war -- that was my version of black humor directed at the Reagan death cult. I think the Report from Iron Mountain authors were pursuing a similar objective.

But ironically, as Dice and Coppen have noted, this "satirical" document has done a great job of predicting the future. Why? Because the stark statement that society has taken on a warlike shape that it cannot alter without risking societal collapse is true. This does in fact explain the US's persistent courting of disaster in foreign policy and the endless pursuit of police actions around the globe. Rather than risk exposing a nation of janissaries to sudden decommissioning, the poobahs have chosen to keep 'em flying! -- CC 12/11/15]

[I now look back fondly on the Reagan Era, remembering the playful character of Papa Ron. He was so fatherly, he could make sending welfare mothers out to work, leaving their kids at home to sell crack, sound like tough love. Actually, now that I think about it, there wasn't much crack then, but the CIA got busy and fixed that problem in a hurry. When I heard Reagan's rich, resonant voice booming through my cheap radio, I knew he was a President before Carter lost. And I knew I had damn well get on the right side of the fence, the educated, lawyerly side of the fence, because pickens were going to be mighty slim back on the old food stamp commune. So Reagan inspired me to be a lawyer, something I like to shove in every Republican's face. What do they call it, "the law of unintended consequences?" One more Democratic administration and I might've disappeared into the woods forever, now they can't get rid of me. Not to digress, however. There was a time when I thought badly of Ron, thinking that his humongous defense buildup would saddle us with enormous debt, and in conjunction with the S&L bailout, would leave the nation in hock for generations. That's when I penned this little humorous and nostalgic view of why all-out war and macho militarism just don't mix. As a final aside, I once believed that the word "Reagan," would someday assume the same importance as "Caesar," such that King Bush may someday crown himself Reagan The Second, but he's probably too stupid to do anything that artistic. -- CC 05/03]

Certainly we never thought the day would come when the bomb would be repudiated by the Pentagon generals themselves, and yet, reliable sources in Washington assure us that just such a development may be in the works. You may of course be sure that any such action, originating from the Citadel of Paranoia, would not be motivated by a desire to insure world peace or any other such sentimentalism. Around there, war is a pleasant business, and some of the high brass have begun to consider the drawbacks of an enterprise which might annihilate most of their clientele. A brief excerpt from a telephone conversation between G. Jim Hollowpoint and Lt. Col. Ed Witherfire may serve to illustrate the surprising dialogue which is beginning to animate that big five-angled building.

Lt. Col. Witherfire: Well, it looks as if we finally got an administration that'll hold hands with us in public. Too bad we lost the MX racetrack system out west, huh?

Gen. Hollowpoint: Maybe it's better this way. We've been tramping over the same ground so long with that damned MX anyway, it's an open secret it'll be obsolete before the overruns are tallied.

Lt. Col. W: Jim, you always were a killjoy -- I didn't even see you smile at the last budget meeting. What's bugging you these days?

Gen. H: If you want it straight I'll tell you. I'm sick of the whole ICBM system, the B-1 is boring, and I've had it with graphs, charts and computers. I didn't get into uniform to be a bookkeeper. This isn't even like war anymore!

Lt. Col. W: I see. Well how'd you start thinking like this?

Gen. H: I just got to thinking about what it'd be like if we go all-out with the Soviets. Damn, Ed, if we started at eight we'd be over by five, and after that what? Wheat thins and canned caviar for one to five years in an underground bunker. Not my idea of a soldier's life.

Lt. Col. W: You're being selfish? What about national security?

Gen. H: I tell you what, just between friends, let's cut the crap. If peace is our business then war is our life, because without war we're both useless as tits on a boar, and moreover the art of war is dying; battlefield experience is a thing of the past, and in fifteen years every general will be an armchair general. They'll replace us with a computer programmed to be aggressive and blow up the world at the stroke of twelve. Courage, strategy, risk, all gone. And where's the thrill?

Lt. Col W: So you want to go back to fighting on horseback?

Gen. H: Wrong. I just want to reintroduce the human element, the risk, the excitement that made me get into this damn business in the first place.

Lt. Col W: But Jim, the point of war is to win, not to have a good time. You know, "things got tough -- we got tougher." The H-bomb's the biggest bruiser on the block.

Gen. H: So what's to win, radioactive acreage in Siberia? That's not conquest, it's ridiculous!

Lt. Col W: OK, granted I accept your considerations, which I'm in sympathy with, but one question. What'll we do with all the hardware? Shall we use up some of it in a limited engagement somewhere, say in Europe?

Gen. H: Despite the pleasure it might give Secretary Haig, I would say no. I've just bought a small castle in Bavaria, and personal considerations aside, there's a PR problem, because once our citizens get a look at Paris after a two-hundred kiloton flash, they might not like what they see. The only way to keep their cooperation is to keep them in the dark, and once the cat's out of the bag, that's pretty hard to do.

Lt. Col W: Good point ...

Gen. H: Ed, your problem is tunnel vision. You're fixated on the idea of nuclear engagements, but there's no need for it. We've got laser tanks, supersonic warbirds, automatic and chemical weapons that do the old tricks in such fine style. But there they are, sitting on the shelf, because people are getting lazy, they just don't want to get out there and pull the trigger, do the work they're paid for. I don't think that's healthy.

Lt. Col W: I'm beginning to see your point. Perhaps we've gotten a little sentimental about the big blast.

Gen. H: Sentimental is right! It's certainly not logical. Just think, the way these peace movements are proliferating, if we sit on this thing much longer people are going to wise up, and then the game'll be over for you and me, my friend.

Lt. Col W: Well, it's certainly something to think about.

Gen H: Good. It can't hurt to stir up a little thought in that empty head of yours. And by the way, don't think I mean to say that nuclear technology is all bad. We just need more control --- particle beam weapons, say ... now then we could have a war. Tell your men, "Vaporize that," and it's done, "Raze that hill," and it's gone.

Lt. Col W: I can see you've done some original thinking.

Gen. H: Well, in an expanding field you've got to, and I tell you, these big bombs are not the way. After all, the point is to keep fighting, not to end it. If we wanted to do that we could go march in a peace parade.

Lt. Col W: You know, I think I begin to hear you! I've got an itch to fight that's about to kill me, but something keeps holding me back, and now I see what it is -- it's my conscience. I can't have my war, because it would be the last one, and that would deprive generations of soldiers still unborn of the right to taste the joy of combat. In fact, a world without people would be a world without war -- kinda makes me cold just to think about it.

Gen. H: You've got it. We have a duty to all humanity to preserve the sacred tradition of war. Nuclear war could endanger that mission.

Lt. Col W: You know, I think we've got some work to do. Let's get together at that place of yours in Bavaria and talk this through over a glass of Jack Daniels.

Gen. H: It's a date.

Lt. Col W: Good, I'll see when Emily's free next week and get back to you. Now, what were you saying about particle beam weapons ...

(March,1982, Issue 38, "More Than Food," Ashland, Oregon)

L. C. Lewin, Writer of Satire Of Government Plot, Dies at 82
By JOHN KIFNER
January 30, 1999

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Leonard C. Lewin, whose Vietnam-era satire of a supposed secret Government study on the dangers of peace, ''Report From Iron Mountain,'' resurfaced nearly 30 years later as proof of Government conspiracies for right-wing paramilitary groups, died on Thursday at Yale-New Haven Hospital. He was 82 lived in Guilford, Conn.

''Report From Iron Mountain,'' supposedly the work of a topsecret 15-member study group that concluded that even if lasting peace ''could be achieved, it would almost certainly not be in the best interests of society to achieve it,'' caused a sensation when it was published in the fall of 1967. By the next year, it was on the best-seller list of The New York Times.

Peace would be catastrophic, the report said in deadpan bureaucratese, unless there was extensive planning to replace the many benefits of war. It was possible that a ''sophisticated form of slavery,'' together with ''blood games'' might have to be introduced.

Deliberately poisoning the atmosphere, the parody went on, ''in a politically acceptable manner'' or inventing enemies from another planet might be necessary to maintain social cohesion. The end of war would require some other form of wasteful spending to support the economy, possibly an unlimited space program aimed at reaching unreachable points in space.

The hoax that would not die began one day in 1967 when Victor Navasky and a few other editors of Monocle, a humor magazine that is now defunct, noticed a short newspaper report describing how the stock market had tumbled because of a ''peace scare.''

It was the height of the Vietnam War. Savoring the Swiftian implications, Mr. Navasky, now the editor of The Nation, and the others began tossing around the idea that Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara and the other famously hard-nosed intellectuals brought into Government by President John F. Kennedy had commissioned one of their studies -- research organizations like the Rand Corporation and the Hudson Institute were all the vogue then -- on the threat of peace.

Mr. Lewin, an accomplished political satirist, produced the supposed report, complete with footnotes, most of them from other reports by the Government or research organizations, and a tribute to the ''methods'' of Herman Kahn of the Hudson Institute that allowed thinking about war without ''getting bogged down in questions of morality.''

Other plotters included E. L. Doctorow, then an editor at Dial Press, later the author of ''Ragtime'' and other novels, and the publishing house's president, Richard Baron, who listed the 109 page work as nonfiction and was to turn aside questions about its authenticity by citing the footnotes.

Debate immediately raged about whether the ''Report From Iron Mountain'' was real.

''One informed source confirmed,'' U.S. News and World Report said in its Nov. 20, 1967, issue, ''that the 'Special Study Group,' '' as the book called it, was set up by a top official in the Kennedy Administration. The source added that the report was drafted and eventually submitted to President Lyndon B. Johnson, who was said to have 'hit the roof' -- and then ordered that the report be bottled up for all time.''

Trans-Action, an influential journal of the period, devoted an entire issue to the debate over the book. Esquire published a 28,000-word excerpt. John Kenneth Galbraith got into the act with a book review in The Washington Post under a pseudonym vouching for the book's authenticity and the validity of its conclusions but expressing reservations about releasing it ''to an obviously unconditioned public.''

But in 1972, Mr. Lewin finally confessed that he had made up the report. The ''Pentagon Papers,'' the secret history of the Vietnam War, had been published, Mr. Lewin wrote in The New York Times Book Review, and were ''as outrageous, morally and intellectually'' as his own invention.

''The charade is over,'' he wrote. ''Some of the documents read like parodies of Iron Mountain, rather than the reverse.''

Mr. Lewin, a graduate of Harvard University, came to writing after stints as a labor organizer in New England and work in his father's sugar refinery in Indianapolis.

His marriages to Iris Zinn Lewin and Eve Merriam, a poet, playwright and children's book author, ended in divorce. He is survived by his daughter, Julie Lewin of West Hartford, Conn., a son, Michael Z. Lewin of Frome, England, and his longtime companion, Lorraine Davis of Manhattan.

''Report from Iron Mountain'' went out of print in 1980, but a few years ago Mr. Lewin was startled to get a request from a white supremacist group in Arkansas wanting to buy any old copies. Then he discovered that the Liberty Lobby, a far-right group, was offering copies of the book as a genuine Government report. His insistence that he had written the book only reinforced the belief among the paramilitary groups that it was a real secret document.

Mr. Lewin successfully sued the Liberty Lobby, which asserted that that there was no copyright for the book because it was a Government document. Neither side would reveal the full terms of the settlement, but Mr. Lewin received more than a thousand copies of the bootlegged version.

Pirated copies -- some of a new edition published by Simon & Schuster's imprint, Free Press -- are still in circulation, along with a six-hour videotape version. Simon & Schuster has been trying to stop right-wing groups from posting versions of the book on their Internet sites under the guise of a Government document.

Photo: Leonard C. Lewin (Lorraine Davis, 1981)

The Report From Iron Mountain, an Analysis
by Mark Dice

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In 1967 a book was published titled, The Report from Iron Mountain which was allegedly a leaked document containing the analysis of a government funded think tank which argued the case that perpetual war was needed to fuel the United States economy, and that if a state of world peace would ensue, that it would be devastating for the economy and society. If peace were to happen, the document suggested several actions to ensure a constant state of war would continue.

Shortly after The Report from Iron Mountain was published in the form of a book, it made the New York Times bestseller list and created quite a stir particularly within militia groups and those suspicious of corruption within the government. The Pentagon Papers, which were a top-secret history of the United States involvement in Vietnam, were released shortly after which added to peoples fears.

U.S. News and World Report wrote that an unnamed government official had confirmed the authenticity of the documents, and that President Johnson had “hit the roof” when word of the report was made public. The article reported that orders were sent to U.S. embassies around the world saying that the book had nothing to do with U.S. government polices.[1]

Several years later in a 1972 edition of the New York Times Book Review, Leonard Lewin took credit as the actual author, saying, “I wrote the “Report,” all of it. (How it came about and who was privy to the plot I’ll have to discuss elsewhere.) But why as a hoax? What I intended was simply to pose the issues of war and peace in a provocative way. To deal with the essential absurdity of the fact that the war system, however much deplored, is nevertheless accepted as part of the necessary order of things. To caricature the bankruptcy of the think-tank mentality by pursuing its style of scientistic thinking to its logical ends. And perhaps, with luck, to extend the scope of public discussion of “peace planning” beyond its usual, stodgy limits.”[2]

Decades later in 1996 Jon Elliston published a book titled, Report from Iron Mountain: Highbrow Hoax Mocks National Security Speak, which detailed the evolution of the report and the ensuing speculation after its publication.

Some believe the idea for writing it came from Victor Navasky who was the editor of the left wing magazine The Nation from 1978 until 1995. Navasky was also the editor of a satirical newspaper called the Monicle until it ceased publication in the mid 1960s.

Harvard professor John Kenneth Galbraith added fuel to the controversy when he wrote a book review for the Washington Post using the pseudonym “Herschel McLandress,” where he said, “As I would put my personal repute behind the authenticity of this document, so would I testify to the validity of its conclusions. My reservations relate only to the wisdom of releasing it to an obviously unconditioned public.”[3]

While it is officially classified as a hoax, The Report from Iron Mountain contains some chillingly accurate information and predictions about what the future would hold. Keep in mind, the book was published in 1967. If it actually is a hoax, the author had a tremendous amount of knowledge and foresight as you can see by reading an excerpt below which talks about creating a fake alien threat to unite the world, and to push the idea of ecological destruction as a terrible danger and threat to mankind.

(Excerpt from The Illuminati: Facts & Fiction by Mark Dice - Available on Amazon.com, Kindle and Nook.)

The Report reads, “It has been hotly argued that such a menace would offer the “last, best hope of peace,” etc., by uniting mankind against the danger of destruction by “creatures” from other planets or from outer space. Experiments have been proposed to test the credibility of an out-of-our-world invasion threat;…nevertheless, an effective political substitute for war would require “alternate enemies,” some of which might seem equally farfetched in the context of the current war system. It may be, for instance, that gross pollution of the environment can eventually replace the possibility of mass destruction by nuclear weapons as the principle apparent threat to the survival of the species. Poisoning of the air, and of the principal sources of food and water supply, is already well advanced, and at the first glance would seem promising in this respect; it constitutes a threat that can be dealt with only through social organization and political power. But from the present indications it will be a generation to a generation and a half before environmental pollution, however severe, will be sufficiently menacing, on a global scale, to offer a possible basis for a solution.”[4]

While the idea of an actual alien threat may be far fetched, or the idea of manufacturing one to appear as if it is real equally far fetched, the technology of Project Blue Beam would allow just that to happen using high-tech projection systems to create enormous three dimensional holograms in the sky.[5] Also, decades after The Report from Iron Mountain was published, President Ronald Reagan would make a similar remark. On September 21, 1987, he told the United Nations General Assembly, “In our obsession with antagonism of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity. Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world.”

If The Report from Iron Mountain is indeed authentic, then the best and pretty much only strategy the government would have to counter its release would be to pay someone to claim authorship and say it was a hoax.

If the document is a hoax, the author had the rare knowledge of the use of false flag terrorist attacks and the strategy of creating enemies and events so that political or military actions may be taken. The report reads, “However unlikely some of the possible alternate enemies we have mentioned may seem, we must emphasize that one must be found, of credible quality and magnitude, if a transition to peace is ever to come about without social disintegration. It is more probable, in our judgment, that such a threat will have to be invented rather than developed from unknown conditions.”[6]

Leonard Lewin, who claimed authorship and said it was a hoax, sued several individuals who believed the report was authentic and had reprinted it and were selling it themselves as a way to make money and spread the word about this diabolical plan. Lewin technically had the copyright and was legally entitled to the ownership of the text. Such an action is suspicious if in fact the document was authentic because one may think Lewin would want the document to become public domain and spread to as many people as possible. However, some suspect that the legal action was taken as a way to intimidate patriots who were spreading awareness of the report and that Lewin’s supposed admission that he was the author was not the truth, and was instead an attempt at damage control to disarm the public and persuade them the report was a hoax, when in reality it was authentic.

In 1996 the book was released again with an Afterward written by Leonard Lewin where he discussed how he was surprised that word continued to spread about the report decades after its initial release. This new edition also includes several articles that were written about the report when it was first released. The Forward to the 1996 book was written by Victor Navasky where he explains how he and Lewin allegedly concocted the idea for money, believing the book would sell due to the controversy it would cause.

Whatever the truth is regarding The Report from Iron Mountain, some its contents turned out to be chillingly accurate in regards to what the future would hold even though it was written over forty years ago. There are already plenty of authentic declassified documents, government white papers, and mainstream reports which confirm similar or even more sinister operations than the ones found in The Report from Iron Mountain. So the authenticity of the report isn’t that important, but when one is presenting information about false flag terrorism or fear mongering surrounding climate change, one is best advised to use confirmed and reputable sources, instead of The Report from Iron Mountain.

(Excerpt from The Illuminati: Facts & Fiction by Mark Dice available on Amazon.com, Kindle or Nook.)

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Notes:

[1] U.S. News and World Report Hoax or Horror? A Book that Shook the White House November 20, 1967

[2] NY Times Book Review The Guest Word Mach 19, 1972 by Leonard Lewin

[3] The Washington Post News of War and Peace You’re Not Ready For by Herschel McLandress November 26, 1967, p. 5.

[4] Lewin, Leonard – The Report from Iron Mountain page 66-67

[5] Washington Post When Seeing and Hearing Isn’t Believing By William M. Arkin Feb. 1, 1999

[6] Lewin, Leonard – The Report from Iron Mountain page 67

Conspiracy Theory Is a Hoax Gone Wrong
By Victor Navasky
Nov 17, 2013

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The year was 1967; Vietnam loomed large; and one morning the Times featured a news item about how the stock market had tumbled because of what the article called a “peace scare.” At the time, I naïvely believed that the prospect of peace would be as welcome on Wall Street as it was in the low-rent Greenwich Village offices where I worked as the editor of Monocle, an impecunious journal of political satire (our motto: “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”)

Talking about this with my fellow editors, Marvin Kitman and Richard Lingeman, the idea for The Report From Iron Mountain was born: Suppose, we fantasized, that the president had appointed a task force of experts to plan the transition from a wartime economy, and the task force had concluded that we couldn’t afford it because our entire economy was based on military spending.

Our purpose: to focus attention on the reliance of the U.S. economy on war or the threat of war. Our method: Concoct a literary hoax, a purported account of the government’s secret machinations. To give it credibility, we would need an ultrarespectable publisher willing to play along. Luckily for us, at the Dial Press we found a maverick publisher, Richard Baron, who was ready to list the book as fact rather than fiction, and whose editor-in-chief was one E. L. Doctorow.

We had equal luck with our choice of author: Monocle contributor Leonard Lewin, who took the not unreasonable position that in order to write the story of the quashing of a report, there had to be a report to be quashed, so he proceeded to write it, along the way parodying think-tank jargon and taking care that virtually all of the footnotes referred to real, if esoteric, sources.

The result: When the book was published, the Times ran a front-page story entertaining the possibility that this hoax was a real government report. Iron Mountain hit the best-seller list and was republished in fifteen languages; and when the economist John Kenneth Galbraith (in on the hoax from the beginning), reviewed it under a pseudonym for the Washington Post, he testified to “the validity of its conclusions,” adding, “My reservations relate only to the wisdom of releasing it to an obviously unconditioned public.” The consequence: Galbraith was outed as the author of the review. Accused of having written the report, he said, “It could only have been written by one of two people—Dean Rusk or Clare Boothe Luce.” None of this hurt sales.

Five years later, Lewin wrote an essay for The New York Times Book Review confessing all, and that, we thought, was that. Until Lewin discovered in the mid-eighties that the right-wing Liberty Lobby had reprinted and disseminated thousands of copies without his permission, thinking the report was an authentic government document. Lewin sued, alleging copyright infringement, and won a settlement, the result of which was that thousands of copies of the bootleg edition ended up in his living room. Later, in 1995, The Wall Street Journal ran a front-page story about how members of the Michigan militia and other far-right groups regarded the book as “a sort of bible.” And when Lewin or myself or my fellow Monocle editors were asked about it and affirmed for the umpteenth time that the book was a hoax, the true believers cited our denials as “proof” that we were indeed part of the conspiracy.