Report from Fe Mountain

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The Report was a sophisticated satire on the " problems " of peace.

 

Report from Iron Mountain

 

Highbrow Hoax Mocks National Security Speak

 

by Jon Elliston

Dossier Editor

pscpdocs

 

 

 

It was a classic " black propaganda " operation -- a " top secret " document

ghostwritten to appear as though it was authored by the enemy --

perpetrated with the skill of a CIA psywar specialist. Yet the grand

disinformation effort known as the Report from Iron Mountain was

conceived and written not by some veteran covert operative, but by a

cabal of crafty leftist intellectuals who sought to turn the logic of

the national security state against itself. Though long ago exposed as a

hilarious, highbrow parody of think-tank jargon and realpolitik

reasoning, the Report continues to be viewed in some quarters as a

leaked official document that exposes a secret government scheme to

maintain the " war system " indefinitely.

 

The plot to prepare, and then " leak " to the public, an alleged

government report examining the costs and benefits of shifting the U.S.

economy and political system from its Cold War stance, was hatched in

1966 by Victor Navasky, editor of the political satire rag Monocle, and

writer Leonard Lewin. Navasky and his staff at Monocle noticed a New

York Times story reporting that the stock market had dipped in response

to what was termed a " peace scare. " The business of America, it

increasingly appeared, was war business. The seed of the scheme that

grew to become the Report from Iron Mountain was planted, and Navasky

and a handful of co-conspirators set about producing a sophisticated

satire on the problems of peace, ostensibly authored by a panel of

national security experts secretly convened by the government.

 

Lewin agreed to write the fake study and found a sympathetic publisher

in Dial Press, a division of Simon & Schuster, whose editor, E.L.

Doctorow, agreed to facilitate the hoax by marketing the Report as a

non-fiction book. The cover story begins in Lewin's introduction, where

he claims he was asked to disseminate the Report by an unnamed member of

the Special Study Group (SSG), a panel of 15 experts from diverse

disciplines gathered by the government to examine " the possibility and

desirability of peace. " The SSG, wrote Lewin, was convened in 1963 at a

secret New York facility -- " an underground nuclear hideout for hundreds

of large American corporations " -- known as Iron Mountain.

 

For two and a half years, Lewin wrote, the SSG held secret meetings at

this Strangelovian outpost and other sites around the country, to

brainstorm on " the nature of the problems that would confront the United

States if and when a condition of 'permanent peace' should arrive, and

to draft a program for dealing with this contingency. " The anonymous

specialists took of dim view of a world without war, concluding that

" lasting peace, while not theoretically impossible, is probably

unattainable; even if it could be achieved it would almost certainly not

be in the best interest of stable society to achieve it. "

 

Instead, the Report argued, it is in the " best interest of stable

society " to identify and perpetuate the " essential, non-military

functions of war. " These include the economic stimulus of defense

spending and a host of other war-related factors that favor the

traditional institutions of social and political control. " The basic

authority of a modern state over its people resides in its war powers, "

the Report says, direly predicting that chaos and disorder would result

without the nation-rallying opportunities that armed conflict provides.

Absent the national security priorities that empower the

military-industrial system, the status quo could expect a major shakeup.

 

Writing as the SSG, Lewin explored all the implications of losing " the

important motivational function of war. " Should the United States be

forced to abandon its " war system, " the Report speculated on potential

corrective national policies -- " substitutes for the functions of war. "

The Iron Mountain antidote to peace, should it somehow break out, is to

manufacture " alternate enemies " to maintain a siege mentality among

Americans, leaving them open to continued social engineering by U.S.

elites.

 

The Report posits sinister schemes to mobilize the masses in the absence

of war, such as the creation of " an extraterrestrial menace, " " massive

global environmental pollution, " or " an omnipresent, virtually

omnipotent international police force. " In the event popular passions

are not sufficiently inflamed by these new enemies, the Report suggests

instituting " a modern, sophisticated form of slavery, " or perhaps

" socially oriented blood games, " organized " in the manner of the Spanish

Inquisition and the witch trials of other periods. "

 

Navasky later wrote that the major objective of the hoax was to " put the

unpopular subject of conversion from a military to a peacetime economy

on the national agenda. " And while the Report from Iron Mountain

certainly served that purpose to some extent, much of the initial

attention directed at the book focused on efforts to determine both its

authenticity and the name(s) of its author(s).

 

Debate over whether the report was genuine spilled over into the largest

newspapers in the country, and the media's frenzied search for the

mystery writer rivaled the recent hype over the 1995 best-seller Primary

Colors, also published with an anonymous author. Kirkus Reviews

commented that " if [the Report] is a fraud, it is a clever one ... if

not, it is a chilling case for the necessity of war as policymakers see

it. "

 

For many observers, the Report was regarded as a sign of the times,

whatever its origins. In the fast-shifting political culture of 1968, as

the conflict over U.S. intervention in Vietnam erupted in many

universities and cities and sparked new waves of dissent against

government secrecy, the Iron Mountain document was intriguing and

relevant enough to make its way to the New York Times bestseller list.

Esquire magazine reprinted a 28,000 word excerpt, and dozens of

publications ran commentaries on the issues raised in the Report. Many

people discussed the Report with the perspective that whether or not it

is an actual government plan for dominating the populace, the logic and

strategies it contains deserve serious contemplation.

 

In 1972, Lewin tried to put speculation about the document's authorship

to rest, declaring in a New York Times feature that " I wrote the

'Report,' all of it. " Decades after this public debunking, Report from

Iron Mountain was resurrected by ultra-rightwing groups like the Liberty

Lobby, who still considered the document a genuine official study. The

Lobby, which was founded by Willis Carto (the notorious anti-Semitic

activist who also launched the Institute for Historical Review, a major

force in the holocaust denial movement), issued their own reprint of the

document. A Lobby publishing outlet, Noontide Press, continued to pitch

the Report as Lewin had done at the outset of the hoax, as a secret

government work.

 

Once Lewin discovered that his work had been stolen by the Liberty

Lobby, he sued Carto's group for copyright infringement. Though the

Lobby's lawyers initially argued that Lewin's charges were specious,

given that the Report was in fact a government-produced document, the

suit was resolved with an out-of-court settlement in which the Lobby

agreed to pay Lewin an undisclosed sum and give him the remaining copies

of their version of the Report.

 

In 1996 the Simon & Schuster division Free Press published an updated

version of the report, supplemented with an appendix of major media

coverage of the " Iron Mountain Affair. " The new edition includes an

introduction by Navasky, who is now publisher and editorial director of

The Nation magazine, in which he weighs the results of the hoax he

initiated:

 

" The Report was a success in that it achieved its mission, which in this

case was to provoke thinking about the unthinkable -- the conversion to

a peacetime economy and the absurdity of the arms race. But it was a

failure, given that even with the end of the cold war we still have a

cold war economy (which makes the report all the more relevant today). "

 

Navasky also notes that despite their best efforts, the Iron Mountain

hoaxers have failed to convincingly expose their own scam. Some militia

activists and conspiracists continue to say confidently that the Report

is the genuine article, a suppressed government master plan for

instituting tyranny after the Cold War. George Eaton, publisher of the

Arkansas-based Patriot Report, told the Wall Street Journal in 1995 that

the Report " was an official document, done by the will of the President

and secreted away so that it wouldn't be released to the public. " Easton

said the Report " shows that there is a conspiracy against citizens. "

 

Samuel Sherwood, founder of the U.S. Militia Association, voiced a

similar view of the Report: " A group of people got together and said,

'Here is our blueprint for America.' It has caused a great deal of

alarm. " Retired Air Force Col. L. Fletcher Prouty, a key consultant for

Oliver Stone's JFK who authored a book alleging that a " secret team " of

U.S. military and intelligence officials were responsible for the

assassination of President Kennedy, has cited the Report to back up some

of his claims.

 

Unauthorized transcripts of the Report still appear frequently on the

Internet, and Simon & Schuster said letters threatening lawsuits were

necessary to persuade the operators of seven web sites to cease

distributing the book in electronic form. Chip Berlet, an analyst for

Boston-based Political Research Associates who tracks right-wing

movements, says countering the deep-set suspicions about the Report is

" like trying to get rid of mildew in your shower -- Report from Iron

Mountain will never die. "

 

The renewed belief in the Report represents a mutation of the American

political landscape and a bizarre turn of events that Lewin and his

colleagues could not have anticipated in 1966. Yet one passage from the

beginning of the Report now reads like an amazingly prescient

foretelling of the rebirth of the Iron Mountain myth. In a perfect

parody of official pomposity, Lewin's SSG warned that releasing the

Report " would not be in the public interest, " in light of the " clear and

predictable danger of a crisis in public confidence which ultimately

publication of this Report might be expected to provoke. The likelihood

that a lay reader, unexposed to the exigencies of higher political or

military responsibility, will misconstrue the purpose of this project,

and the intent of its participants, seems obvious. "

 

© Copyright 1996 ParaScope, Inc.

 

Sources Used in This Report:

 

(1) Doreen Carvajal, " Onetime Political Satire Becomes a Right-Wing Rage

and a Hot Internet Item, " New York Times, July 1, 1996, p. D7.

 

(2) Michael Santa Rita, " '60s Spoof Taken Seriously Among Militias; Book

'Reports' Government Plots, " Washington Times, May 14, 1996, p. A2.

 

(3) Robert S. Boyton, " A Lefty Reunion, " New Yorker, May 13, 1996, pp.

36-37.

 

(4) Kirkus Reviews, " Report from Iron Mountain On the Possibility and

Desirability of Peace, " February 1, 1996.

 

(5) Deborah Amos, " Report from Iron Mountain a Hoax, National Public

Radio's All Things Considered, August 18, 1995, transcript no. 1943-5.

 

(6) Leonard C. Lewin, Report from Iron Mountain On the Possibility and

Desirability of Peace (Free Press, 1996).

 

(7) Robert Tomsho, " A Cause for Fear: Though Called a Hoax, 'Iron

Mountain' Report Guides Some Militias, " Wall Street Journal, May 5,

1995, p. A1.

 

 

 

http://www.parascope.com/articles/1296/ironsource.htm