Iron Mountain: the conspiracy that duped America

Summary

Episode Summary: "Iron Mountain: The Conspiracy That Duped America"

History Extra Podcast | Host: Immediate Media

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Introduction

In the episode titled "Iron Mountain: The Conspiracy That Duped America," hosted by James Osborne, the History Extra podcast delves into the intriguing story behind the "Report from Iron Mountain." This report, initially a satirical document published in the 1960s, inadvertently seeded a multitude of conspiracy theories that have persisted for decades. Phil Tinline, a renowned journalist and author, is the guest speaker who provides an in-depth analysis of the report's origins, impact, and enduring legacy.

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Setting the Scene: America in the 1960s [02:27]

Phil Tinline begins by outlining the tumultuous political and social climate of the 1960s in America. This era was marked by significant events that eroded public trust in the government:

• Assassination of President Kennedy (1963): This event not only shocked the nation but also planted early seeds of distrust and speculation about governmental transparency.
• Vietnam War Escalation: Initially presented as a mission of sending "advisors," the conflict expanded, leading to American troops being actively engaged on the ground. By 1966, the war had become increasingly controversial, contributing to a growing "credibility gap" between the government and the public. Tinline explains, “[...] by 1966, that is beginning to become somewhat controversial. Not anything like as much as it was in years to come, but it's becoming an issue.”

Additionally, Eisenhower’s warning about the "military-industrial complex" from his 1961 farewell address began to resonate deeply as the Vietnam conflict intensified, highlighting concerns over government overreach and the intertwining of defense contractors with political power.

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The Birth of the "Report from Iron Mountain" [05:08]

In November 1967, the "Report from Iron Mountain on the Possibility and Desirability of Peace" was published by Dial Press. Initially intended as a satirical piece by the satirists behind the magazine Monocall, the report eerily outlined how permanent global peace would be detrimental to the American economy and societal structure. Tinline describes its contents:

• Introduction by Leonard Lewin: Claims of a leaked government study assessing the impact of perpetual peace.
• Main Report: Advocates for measures such as enforced military discipline, eugenics, and fabricated crises (e.g., alien threats) to maintain societal control and economic stability.

The report's dry, think-tank style prose lent it an air of authenticity, making it easily mistaken for a genuine government document.

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Aims Behind the Satire [08:22]

Osborne probes into the motivations of the report's creators. Tinline elucidates that the primary aim was to provoke critical thinking about government policies and the military-industrial complex. “[...] because what that makes you do is say, hang on, do I think that it is possible that this document... do I think it's possible that that could be real?”

The satirical report sought to highlight the absurdity of extreme governmental control under the guise of maintaining peace and economic stability, thereby fostering a culture of skepticism and distrust towards authority.

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Reception and Immediate Impact [10:05]

Contrary to its intended satire, many readers believed the "Report from Iron Mountain" to be an authentic government document. Tinline notes that the report particularly resonated with young men facing the draft for the Vietnam War, who saw it as evidence of governmental manipulation and the inherent flaws in the war effort.

A notable incident involved then-Governor Ronald Reagan at Yale, where he dismissed the report as the "merchants of death myth," juxtaposed against students who genuinely believed in its authenticity. This dichotomy exemplified the report's profound impact on public perception.

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Legacy and Weaponization of the Report [28:37]

After being exposed as a hoax in the early 1970s, the "Report from Iron Mountain" did not fade into obscurity. Instead, it was co-opted by various fringe and extremist groups:

• Far-Right Extremists and Holocaust Deniers: Republished the report without authorization, using it to validate their conspiratorial views of a nefarious government.
• Militia Movements: Adopted the report as evidence of a "deep state" manipulating societal structures.
• Influence on Modern Conspiracies: The report's themes can be seen in movements like QAnon, where it serves as a foundational myth of governmental subterfuge.

Tinline explains, “[...] it now influences Oliver Stone's movie JFK, that very movie inspired by the Kennedy case. And so it starts to metastasize. It starts to spread all through the culture.” The report's unintended permanence highlights the challenges of controlling misinformation once it takes root in public consciousness.

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Fact vs. Perception in Conspiracy Theories [20:30]

A critical discussion point revolves around the distinction between factual truth and perceived truth. Tinline emphasizes that while the report was fictional, its conspiracy-laden narrative resonated with real societal fears, leading people to conflate truth with fiction. “[...] there's a difference between effectively, truth and fact, which is, as I say, tricky to keep an eye on.”

This blend of reality and fiction fuels persistent distrust, making it difficult for individuals to discern legitimate information from fabricated narratives, thereby perpetuating the cycle of conspiracy beliefs.

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Government and Political Reactions [24:01]

The U.S. government’s response to the report was measured yet cautious. Initial reactions involved investigations and denials, but the mere existence of such a document fueled ongoing suspicion among the populace. Tinline details how memos and communications reached President Lyndon B. Johnson, ultimately categorizing the report as a hoax. However, the damage to public trust had already been done, laying the groundwork for future skepticism.

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Connection to Watergate and Beyond [26:57]

Tinline contrasts the fictional conspiracies of "Iron Mountain" with real events like the Watergate scandal. While Watergate involved genuine governmental malfeasance, it inadvertently reinforced the public's readiness to believe in broader conspiratorial narratives. Tinline asserts, “Watergate... is a real conspiracy,” noting that such events can both validate and complicate existing conspiracy theories.

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Modern Implications and Relevance [31:25]

Reflecting on the present, Tinline observes that the rapid spread of information (and misinformation) via the internet has transformed how conspiracy theories proliferate. While easier dissemination can amplify these narratives, increased access to information also fosters greater scrutiny and skepticism. Nonetheless, the fundamental issues of distrust and the allure of simple explanations for complex problems remain pertinent.

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Conclusion

"Iron Mountain: The Conspiracy That Duped America" serves as a poignant exploration of how satire can inadvertently fuel long-lasting conspiracy theories. Phil Tinline's analysis underscores the delicate balance between genuine critique and the potential for misinformation, highlighting the enduring impact of societal fears and the ease with which fiction can be misconstrued as fact.

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Notable Quotes

• Phil Tinline [02:43]: "There is an increased sense of untrustworthiness, of trickery, which is part of this."
• Phil Tinline [08:36]: "What Lewin and the other satirists... are after is to make people think about whether this could be real and what it means about government actions."
• Phil Tinline [20:30]: "People go through a logical process where they say, this is very much like reality... therefore it must effectively be real."

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Final Thoughts

This episode eloquently navigates the complex interplay between satire, societal distrust, and the enduring nature of conspiracy theories. By dissecting the origins and legacy of the "Report from Iron Mountain," listeners gain a nuanced understanding of how historical events and media can shape and perpetuate public belief systems.

Transcript

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[James Osborne]

Before we get into the meat of this story, just to get us into the right mindset for this, can you outline the political and social climate of the 60s for listeners? Because it seems like it's genuinely no exaggeration to say that this might be one of the most tumultuous periods of American history.

[Phil Tinline]

Absolutely. I mean, there's a big difference depending on, of course, where you are in the 60s. Obviously you've had the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963, which makes a fairly Big contribution to conspiracy culture in America, as you will know. But the other huge thing that's happened is that the war in Vietnam, the American military intervention in Vietnam, which under Kennedy had been going on, they were called advisors. They weren't really just advisors, but that has begun to expand. There are now American boots on the ground, as the cliche goes. And so by 1966, that is beginning to become somewhat controversial. Not anything like as much as it was in years to come, but it's becoming an issue. And through into 1967, you're beginning to get an increased sense that you can't trust the government on this. There is this phrase that journalists and others start using, credibility gap. There's even a board game called Credibility Gap, which is advertised in magazines like the National Review. And what that refers to is the sense that they are stonewalling, they're not giving a straight answer. So there is a sort of sense that the administration not being clear about why America is in Vietnam, about what it's doing in Vietnam, about the real role of the South Vietnamese government. You know, whether you can really claim in any sense at all that this is a democracy, what exactly they're doing in terms of the bombing of North Vietnam, Communist North Vietnam and so on. And you know, the Kennedy assassination is also playing in the background, the memory of that. There is a guy called Jim Garrison, who's the District Attorney in New Orleans, who around this time is beginning to head towards a legal case where he's trying to investigate whether it really was Oswald who did it, made famous later by the movie jfk. But yeah, there is an increased sense of untrustworthiness, of trickery, which is part of this. And then the other thing that's going along is Eisenhower's idea that he famously warns of in his farewell address in 1961, three days before Kennedy takes power. The idea of the military industrial complex, the idea that the defence companies, so called, and the government are rather too cosy. And particularly as Vietnam hots up, that's also becoming a significant issue.

[James Osborne]

Okay. And so against the backdrop of all of this, in the mid-1960s, this book titled Report from Iron Mountain is published by the Dial Press. Someone who picks that up at the time. What would they have found in its contents?

[Phil Tinline]

It's published in November 1967 and the full title is Report from Iron Mountain on the Possibility and Desirability of Peace. And what they would find is some introductory material by a man called Leonard Lewin, which says, that guy that he knows, a social scientist in the Midwest has contacted him and said that he's been involved under some duress in a top secret government special study group that was tasked by the Kennedy administration with investigating what would happen to America if permanent global peace broke out. And the conclusion is that it would destroy the American economy, it would wreck society, it would undermine the authority of the government, and that therefore terrible things would have to be done to replace the social effects of war, such as what it calls a sophisticated form of slavery to keep young men under the equivalent of military discipline. They would also have to be forced to play blood games. There is talk of introducing eugenics to curb the population and to maintain the sense of unity and conformity. Your population being kind of cowed under government authority, you'd need a new enemy. So you might have to invent fake alien scares or exacerbate the pollution of the environment. And so this is all laid out in this report in a very dry sort of think tanky prose. Think tanks are kind of a new idea at that point point and are much associated with this idea of the military industrial complex, the cold logic of the Cold War and nuclear deterrence and so on. So after the introductory material from Lewin about how this was leaked to him and how he helped this guy publish it, you get the report itself. And as I say, this is published in November 1967 as the War is beginning to go not so well and it causes a sensation. So I should explain what was really going on, which is that in early 1966, as the war is already hotting up, there is a strange set of headlines in the newspaper because it looks for a moment like the Vietnam War is going to come to an early close, that there's going to be a peace settlement. And on Wall street, the response to this is that the price of shares dips. It doesn't go up, it dips. There's what's called a peace scare. And this comes to the attention of a bunch of satirists who've been running a magazine called Monocall, sitting in their office on Fifth Avenue just north of Washington Square park. And they think, hang on a second. Shouldn't people be pleased that war is ending? Maybe shares should go up. But it gives them an idea. It gives them a satirical idea. What if we can cop story of this top secret government report scoping out what would have to happen if permanent global peace broke out and how it would be a disaster and how that report's been suppressed. They then go to see an older writer called Leonard Lewin who writes this kind of weirdly compelling text which takes them 18 months. This sort of, kind of combination of dry think tank prose and then these kind of horrific alternatives, which is, you know, the meat of the report. As I say, it's published in November 67 and their publishers say, yeah, fine, we'll just publish it. It's very, very 60s way to do things, very sort of larky. And yeah, we'll publish it and we won't tell our sales staff that it's not real. So it's going to go out as though it's non fiction. And of course, as we might explore, it also absolutely fits into the kind of paranoid conspiracist culture that's another product of the Cold War and is one of the reasons why this report has its extraordinary afterlife.

[James Osborne]

So you've got this group of journalists who've published this satirical leaked government report that outlines the cost of peace and the benefits of war. Were there any discernible aims here?

[Phil Tinline]

Yes, I mean, the aim of the satire was very clear. I think it was to make people think what they wanted to do. I mean, obviously if you release a document like this, it's going to get a lot of attention and it did. And people are going to wonder whether it's a hoax. The New York Times phones the White House and says, is this real? And the White House says, well, we don't know, we'll have to look into it. And there's a five day investigation. I've got the memos going up to President Johnson through the national security adviser. And eventually they say, well, yeah, we think it's a hoax. But you still have officials whispering to journalists. Well, people do kind of think this way in the Pentagon and so on. And so what that does is create this kind of window of uncertainty. And that's exactly what Lewin and the other satirists, Victor Navaski and so on, are after. Because what that makes you do is say, hang on, do I think that it is possible that this document, which advocates a form of slavery and eugenics and all these outrageous things, do I think it's possible that that could be real? And if you ask that, then you're asking yourself questions about the thinking which might have led to that and therefore the thinking which is actually leading to what we know that they're doing. So that's what they want to get people to think about.

[James Osborne]

Okay, so their aim was to really foster more of a culture of distrust in authority and people making decisions. But your book outlines that that's not the only Impact it has. How was this satirical report actually received? How many people read this, and what did they think they were reading?

[Phil Tinline]

Well, so there are people who read it at the time and think that this is real. Quite a few people. And it seems to land particularly hard with young men who are at risk of being drafted and fed into the meat grinder of the Vietnam War, as they're increasingly realizing that it is. There's an extraordinary encounter which is you can actually see online between the then governor of California, one Ronald Reagan, who is visiting Yale and is standing in the billiard room. Well, two people merrily play billiards behind him, I should say, who is arguing with some students, some male students about the Vietnam War at Yale. And one of them says, have you read the report from Iron Mountain? And, you know, they're making the argument that the military companies, the defense companies, basically foster war to make profit. And Reagan says, no, no, this is the merchants of death myth from the interwar period. But there are clearly young men who believe it. It was on university reading lists in certain cases. And so there' of belief. And then eventually Lewin fesses up in 1972 and the Pentagon Papers come out and confirm what a lot of people had already suspected, which is that the government had been less than entirely honest about what they were doing in Vietnam. But then by this point in the 1970s, the problem of a government with so much money it can burn huge amounts of it in war is a good problem to have for America by the 1970s. This is now the time when Vietnam has been lost. They've lost into Vietnam, been humiliated. There's been Watergate expose of the CIA and the FBI as crime, and the economy is going down the toilet. So, you know, it starts to look like the relic of another time. And it goes out of print eventually in 1980, and Lewin tries to get it republished and fails until in 1990, he discovers that it has been republished. It's just. It's been republished by fascists who think it's real, by some of the people who are pioneers of Holocaust denial in America. Now, you talked about questioning the official narrative. Well, the way that Holocaust deniers of these, this stripe were making their case, that's all they were doing. They were just revisionist historians questioning the official narrative. And so suddenly, the idea that there is this report which shows the American government means the public, means the patriots ill, starts to take on a very sinister connotation and obviously entirely unintended by Lewin and Navasky and the other Satirists. And Lewin is horrified by this and spends four years fighting them legally to try and get them to stop, and eventually does. But by this point, it's out in the bloodstream. It influences Oliver Stone's movie jfk, that very movie inspired by the Kennedy case. And so it starts to metastasize. It starts to spread all through the culture. There's a video made called Iron Mountain, Blueprint for Tyranny, which you can still see circulating online, which argues that, you know, this. This shows the evil behind all sorts of things. Environmental policy, Waco, all kinds of stuff. So it's just got completely away from its original intention by this point, despite.

[James Osborne]

The fact that it was fiction. The Report from Iron Mountain is clearly tapping into something under the surface of the culture of the time. How do you explain precisely why it resonated so very strongly?

[Phil Tinline]

Well, I think something happened to America as it emerged from the Second World War. And what that is is that America is founded in the 1770s as a republic of small farmers, as a rejection, through successful revolution, of the Leviathan of the British Empire. And that's the whole idea. It's not meant to, as Washington says, get involved with entangling alliances. And for a long time, it manages that. It has an enormous civil war, obviously, but it stays away from the kind of charnel house of Europe with its monarchies and its hierarchies and its huge armies. But then it ends up in the First World War, and. And then it ends up in the Second World War. And when it emerges from the Second World War with the economies of Europe to quite a significant extent in ashes, it's a superpower. It's a superpower. It's kind of the thing that it originally fought against. And it produces the national security state, and it produces huge sort of centralization of power, great military spending, a kind of sense that America is reaching its arms all the way around the world. And this is kind of traumatic for people. This is like not what they've been taught their country was. And so they react against it. And I think that's one reason why the report takes on such resonance, both in terms of its sort of as a satirical exaggeration for some on the left, but then also. And indeed some on the left believing it, but then, particularly in the 90s, because the additional shock of the end of the Cold War kind of exacerbates that America goes from being one of two superpowers to being the only superpower, to dominating the west, to dominating the world economy. And you know, that just increases this sense of size and centralized power, which is very discombobulating. If you are still trying to think of America as the Republic of small.

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[James Osborne]

Okay, so you're saying that the report latched onto existing concerns effectively about the military industrial complex, but perhaps more specifically America's expansion into a centralized security state? How much of the concern about these things was justified? So how much did this satirical report align with the actual attitudes and actual motives of the US Government at the time?

[Phil Tinline]

The key thing is that it is based on some truth, but it is exaggerated to the point of absurdity. And we have to kind of hold both thoughts at once, because what conspiracy theory does is it starts from a degree of truth and exaggerates it and loses sight of that. And the point of the satire is it's is it's expecting a sophistication of you to have in your mind both how things actually are and the real problems that it's taking, and the fact that those are being exaggerated at the point of absurdity. And so you know, it is based in some truth, but we shouldn't put too much weight on that. So it is Certainly true that if you were a young man conscripted into the American military, you did not have a great deal of freedom. And you may very well have recognized, recognize the idea of this being a sort of sophisticated form of slavery or, you know, being made to play blood games or whatever. But it's important to think about the intention. You know, the intention of that was not to make maximum amounts of money for the arms companies. The intention was that Johnson, who really wanted to be spending his money on the big society, thought he couldn't look weak. He thought he had to fight under the domino theory. He had to fight Communism wherever it popped up. He had to kind of show both internally to his enemies at home and to the Soviet Union that he was being strong. And so this is not a kind of a cackling conspiracy. This is a man who's circling down a sort of whirlpool of despair, you know, as he's losing sleep and trying desperately to win this unwinnable conflict. So again, distinguishing between the impression of a sort of perfect plan and sort of perfectly achieved malign intent and basically the cock up versus conspiracy thing, right, the managed chaos that actually was going on is really, really important. But, you know, there is a sense that, as I say, the American state has become something that is rather frightening. And the other thing that's happening actually happens in the year after the report comes out when it's obviously still around and Lewin hasn't come out and said that it's fake. In 1968, you have a series of shocks to America, one of them in particular being the violence in Chicago around the Democratic National Convention. And there's this dual thing that happens which studying this sort of pointed me to, which is that at one, at the same time, the state seems to be losing control and seems weaker. The party of government, the party that has dominated American politics for over a generation, is visibly coming apart at the seams in front of our eyes. You know, its own supporters are demonstrating and protesting outside its supposed coronation of its new candidate. And yet at the same time, what it feels like is the force of that state is getting ever more draconian. And then this continues under Nixon. You know, one. At the same time, Nixon is this behaving this in some ways quite, I won't say dictatorial, but, you know, autocratic way. And yet at the same time, his, his authority is coming to pieces. The FBI and the CIA are exposed as having overdone it and are humiliated by their law breaking. And yet somehow it exacerbates the impression of their nefarious power. So there's this sort of split between the actual state and what we would now call the deep state. And I think that's partly what this keys into. But you have to kind of, as I say, hold both thoughts in place at once.

[James Osborne]

Okay, so it's built on these small grains of truth, but obviously in an incredibly exaggerated way. I'm going to play devil's advocate for a second. Do you think it matters that it was a hoax? Because I can imagine someone saying, I don't care if it's a hoax or not. I don't care if it's satire, it's true.

[Phil Tinline]

Well, you've put your finger on something very important. That is exactly what people do say at the time. And subsequently they say, as you said, this speaks to a truth, and therefore it does not matter whether this document is authentic or not. Now, up to a point, that's fair enough. If it was acknowledged as fiction and then we said, ah, but it speaks the truth, that would be fine. But what you see happening again and again is that people go through a sort of logical process where they say, well, this is very much like reality. Then they say, this exactly matches reality. Then they say, that can't be a coincidence. This must have caused that reality, and therefore it must effectively be real, or it's coming from something that is so real that it makes no difference. And that is where we cross the line. And it's almost invisible, this line. But it is crucial. This is so much part of how we've got ourselves into the mess. And perhaps America, more than Britain's got itself into the mess that it's currently in, about shared trust in truth and the nature of continuing democracy and so on. Because. Because there is a world of difference, if you think about it, between saying this fiction expresses a truth and this fiction is factual evidence. 1984 absolutely expresses a truth, but everybody acknowledges it's a novel, except the people who effectively behave as though there really is a Big Brother, there really is. Thought police and so on use these terms as though they are political terms, not bits of fiction. So we don't want to overdo that and say, well, 1984 is based on nothing at all. It was just invented by George Orwell out of whole cloth. Of course not. But there is a difference between effectively, truth and fact, which is, as I say, tricky to keep an eye on.

[James Osborne]

That difference, though, between something that is literally fact and something that is speaking the truth. That's quite a subtle difference, isn't it?

[Phil Tinline]

Hugely. And that's why people cross this line. Because the really important thing about this, which I really try to do in the book, is not to go, oh, you silly people. Fundamentally, it's important to understand why people end up thinking like this. And it's not just that there's a sort of logical subtlety to what I've just been talking about. It's also why you are thinking about power like this in the first place. And you know, one way to think about conspiracy theory is it is the red flashing warning light on the dashboard of democracy. It is not just something that people do because they're foolish. It is a response to feeling disempowered. It's a response to feeling humiliated politically. It's a response to shock, defeat. And it's not something that's confined to the left and the right. And so if you understand why people are looking for stories which are true, ish, which explain why they have been treated this way, then what that points you to is that the way to tackle this stuff is not to kind of scold them or even to fact check them. Simply it's to go back one step in the kind of causal process and say, right, what can we do in society to make people feel less disempowered? So these stories are less attractive in the first place.

[James Osborne]

I want to rewind briefly. You mentioned lbj and as you say, he's under immense pressure from all these competing factions in the late 60s. Do we know precisely what his reaction to the report from Iron Mountain was before it was exposed as a hoax? And can you just detail the specific reaction of his government to the report?

[Phil Tinline]

Yes. There are rumours swirling around Washington that there is this extraordinary document about to be published. And so the White House get hold of it and they get being told about it from different angles. And the kind of. The core point here structurally is the National Security advisor, Walt, roster enthusiast for the bombing of North Vietnam for strategic reasons, but also very influential development aid economist. So a kind of a centrist defense intellectual. And it's on his death that this lands. He asks a guy called Edward Freed to investigate who is a, you know, very senior figure. There's a guy called Marvin Watson who is the kind of, as chief aide to the President, if I remember rightly, he's also involved in this correspondence and eventually it appears to go to LBJ and there's a memo written on it. Walt, call me. Which in what I think is definitely, as I can possibly tell, both in terms of the kind of logic of the Internal structure. And in terms of the handwriting, Johnson's handwriting. Now, there is also a rumour, which cannot be true, that Johnson hit the roof about this report in order to be suppressed. That is effectively part of the COVID story, part of the sort of shtick. But there is also some evidence, Walter Cronkite reports this in his CBS radio show, for example, that American embassies have been told to just sort of put the kibosh on this, just to deny it, or I think, possibly even not talk about it, not because it's real, but because it could be very unhelpful in terms of America's reputation at a time when its reputation is already under some pressure because of Vietnam. So that's kind of how it lands in official circles that we can see in the memos. There's also, as I say, what you see in journalism, which is that lots of people saying, well, people kind of think like this. Now, the person who really picks up on that later is a conspiracist who had worked in the Pentagon until just after Kennedy's death, a guy called Fletcher Prudy, who is a former airman pilot and who is the basis of the Donald Sutherland character in jfk, the movie. And he, more than anybody later, says, ah, this just sounds exactly like the people I used to talk to. But if you actually prod at that, if you take the name of the person he particularly names, he's making this case in the 80s and 90s. That guy doesn't sound like he makes those sorts of arguments at all. He sounds agonized by the Cold War, not gleeful. So I think it's very easy to say, ah, this sounds just like reality. But if you really kind of juxtapose it, then, you know, you can see the differences. And people did at the time moving.

[James Osborne]

From LBJ to his successor, Nixon. Some historians would argue that the culture of paranoia and conspiracy of the 60s leeches over to the 70s and really reaches a crescendo with the Nixon presidency and with Watergate. I wondered if you see any direct echoes from the report from Iron Mountain that then cross over into Watergate and connect to it.

[Phil Tinline]

The thing about Watergate is that it's a real conspiracy. That's the key thing about Watergate. You know, Report From Iron Mountain is. I mean, actually isn't even fictionally a conspiracy. It's a committee doing a report. But it can be read as secretly plotting to subvert democracy or manipulate the population or brutalise them or whatever the reason. Watergate, as you quite rightly, say has an impact is because it is a real conspiracy. And I think that's the thing to hang on to, is that just because Watergate reveals a specific conspiracy, which was largely plotted in one building, in the Executive Office Building, by a very small bunch of people who are highly connected with each other and then have connections to the President, that is not showing us like a sort of generalized, nefarious web of dark, sinister power stretching across Washington and through all the agencies, which explains Kennedy and explains anything else you like. It's a bunch of men who are making a shabby decision and eventually getting caught out for it. And again, it seems to suggest, as I said before, it seems to suggest this sort of enormous power, but actually it suggests weakness. Finally. I mean, you know, the only reason it happens, you could argue, is they don't have enough confidence in themselves to think they're going to win the election fair. That is not the work of satanic cabals.

[James Osborne]

So, moving on from the 60s and the 70s, a lot of your focus in the book is on the Legacy Report and how it was subsequently weaponised. Can you explain who would go on to use this report for their own aims and why it was such an effective tool for them?

[Phil Tinline]

Yes, it played different roles for different people. And so, as I mentioned, the really far right republish it without Lewin's permission because they think it's real, which means it's out of copyright, because government reports on copyright. They publish it because it affirms their nefarious view of the American government and power. And you can imagine who they think are the people who are really plotting at the heart of power and is then used in other ways by people who I wouldn't want to overly associate with far right extremists and Holocaust deniers. And then, as I say, there's the militia movement and they embrace it because it offers them an explanation which is not, not the same as the way that a few far right extremists see things, but in broad terms, the sense that there is current nefariousness in the heart of power, and part of that is about the environment. Part of that is because the report appears to offer an explanation for why rather discombobulating environmentalist policies are being imposed on the American people. But then there's a whole other aspect to this, which is that there is another document which is produced by a conspiracy theorist called Silent Weapons for Quiet wars. And this is the operations manual that the kind of deep state implied in Report from Iron Mountain would obviously have needed to have in order to successfully manipulate the sheeple. And this guy puts this together on the basis of trying to sort of deduce logically what would be in it, and then says, well, look, I've written it, so it's real. And this has influenced Alex Jones. It's influenced QAnon. Q of QAnon note has sort of talked about the Silent War continuing. And in particular, it's published by this guy called Milton William Cooper, who is a Vietnam vet and has had terrible problems with alcohol and so on, gets very into UFO ideas in the 1980s, but then decides, and of course, this accords exactly with the report from Iron Mountain, decides that UFO scares are a trick by the government, that he spent 10 years obsessed with a trick, an illusion, and that actually you can understand the government and its nefarious intent much better. Through Silent Weapons of Quiet wars, which is the first chapter of this compilation book, he puts together Behold the Pale Horse. And to some extent through Iron Mountain, which he also excerpts. I should say he also excerpts the Protocols of the Elders of Zion pretty horrifically with the anti Semitic smear. Just says that by the Jews the document really means the Illuminati, which is not really an excuse. But anyway, this book is very influential. This book does not in those terms, but influences through the idea of silent weapons, influences the X Files, it influences rappers. There's even a rapper who calls himself William Cooper. And you can imagine how it was revived during COVID Q of QAnon fame sort of blesses. This book, says this book is important and it goes up the Amazon bestseller charts. So the way to think about it, I think, is that it sort of dilutes and spreads further and further. People make of it what they want in all sorts of different ways.

[James Osborne]

Yeah, I think it's stunning how this single satirical report grows to have this sprawling legacy of paranoia and stands as an almost archetypal story of conspiracy. It seems intuitive that it's much easier to spread disinformation today. I wonder, have you seen any examples from the past few years that you think have had a similar level of uptake and impact?

[Phil Tinline]

Well, I'm not sure. I mean, I think one of the downsides, obviously, of the way the Internet works is it spreads this stuff much faster. But the upside is that it's also harder to keep a secret. It's harder to do what they did. In some ways, you might have a greater believability and faster spread, but you might also have more exposure and more skepticism. So I'm not sure things work in quite the same way.

[James Osborne]

Okay, so just finally it's your opinion then that the report was actually a kind of lightning in a bottle moment unique to its time that couldn't be replicated today?

[Phil Tinline]

I think in the form that it was done, I think it would be very difficult. But I do think that the habits of mind and the responses that it provokes, such as it doesn't matter whether it' authentic or not because it feels real, absolutely speaks to where we are now and is fundamentally of relevance and I think has helped certainly help me think more clearly about, you know, how to manage the information space that we're surrounded with.

[Advertiser]

That was the journalist and author Phil Tinline speaking about his new book, Ghosts of Iron Mountain. In a recent article for us at History Extra, Phil also explored how Donald Trump Trump wasn't the first president to.

[Phil Tinline]

Wield the slogan make America great again.

[Advertiser]

If you're curious to find out who that was, then head over to historyextra.com to find out. Thanks for listening. This podcast was produced by Daniel Kramer Arden. This episode is brought to you by bluehost. You might not be a tech genius, but you want the website for your business to crush. Thankfully, bluehost makes it easy. Customized, optimized and monetized everything exactly how you want. With AI, your site can be up within minutes and the search engine tools even help you get more site visitors. Whatever your passion project is, set it up with Bluehost. With our 30 day money back guarantee. What have you got to lose? Head to bluehost.com to start now. This is history's heroes. People with purpose, brave ideas, and the.

[Phil Tinline]

Courage to stand alone.

[Advertiser]

Including a pioneering surgeon who rebuilt the.

[Phil Tinline]

Shattered faces of soldiers in the First World War.

[Advertiser]

You know, he would look at these men and he would say, don't worry, sonny. You'll have as good a face as any of us when I'm done with you. Join me, Alex von Tunzelman for History's Heroes. Subscribe to History's Heroes wherever you get your podcasts.