Ten Years Later ManyAmericans Are

CALLING ITCONSPIRACYGary Allen is author of None Dare Call It Conspiracy; The Rockefeller File;Kissinger; Jimmy Carter/Jimmy Carter; Tax Target: Washington; and, TedKennedy: In Over His Head. He is an AMERICAN OPINION Contributing Ed itor.

• LAST YEAR marked the tenth anni ­versary of the publication of mybook None Dare Call It Conspiracy ,authored with Larry Abraham. Forreasons that will be made clear at theend of this article, we have decidedto take a look at that pioneer venturein the light of the intervening decade.

But first let us review the phe­nomenon that our little book became.

MARCH, 1983

And it truly was a phenomenon,thanks to the energy, creativity , andenthusiasm of thousands of Ameri­canist activists all over the nationwho turned it into a runaway best­seller. Two million copies were sold inthe first four months, with a strongimpetus coming from the Presiden­tial primaries which were takingplace at the time. This proved a

7

Gary Allen (right) outlines the theme of his1972 book which sold millions and exposed theconspiracies and machinations of the Councilon Foreign Relations and its avatars. The Allenbook was translated for Chinese, German,Spanish, and Swedish editions, and also be­came a best-seller in Australia and South Africa.

mixed blessing as your reporter andhis partner had ordered a huge print­ing of books to be delivered in latespring for use in the fall campaign.We had visions of None Dare Call ItConspiracy becoming another NoneDare Call It Treason, the 1964 politi­cal classic by John Stormer whosetitle had served as a model for ourown.

St.ormer had piggy-backed theGoldwater campaign for a sale ofsixteen million books. We saw this asthe potential size of our market,looking on the George Wallace cam­paign as our version of the Goldwatereffort. For all of his limitations, theAlabama governor was a powerfullyappealing anti-Establishment candi­date, and we had just the anti-Es­tablishment book which we hoped tomake the intellectual sword of a cru­sade to dislodge the Rockydems andRockypubs. Without quite realizinghow right he was, or exactly why,George Wallace had popularized thenotion that "There's not a dime'sworth of difference" between thetwo parties. His was an anti-elitistappeal that for a time seriouslythreatened to win for him the Presi­dential nomination of the Democrat­ic Party or create a third party ofmajor significance.

Unfortunately for the countryand for us, less than a week after our

8

enormous run of books came rollingoff the presses, Arthur Bremerpumped six .38 bullets into the Ala­bama Populist from near point­blank range in a suburban Marylandshopping center. Ironically, thetragedy for Wallace came just oneweek after he had proved himself apotential national winner by takingthe Democratic primary in the north­ern industrial state of Michigan.Bremer's bullets not only cut downthe governor , they finished our hopesfor making a Stormer-style break­through.

Sales plummeted after Wallacewas shot out of the race, but theyleveled at a rate which by any otherstandards was astronomical. To oursurprise, sales did not rise during theAmerican Party's subsequent Schmitz­Anderson campaign; but, to ourgreater surprise, neither did they col­lapse after election day. Indeed theyremained at a high level. None DareCall It Conspiracy, with its argu­ments and proofs that Am:erican pol- e

itics and prosperity are manipulated :1iby a powerful clique of international <§'

bankers, had taken on a life of its §

own, independent of electoral poli- 'Itics. The book continued to sell "Ithrough the last two years of the ~

Nixon Administration, the two-year ~

Ford Administration, four years of ~

Jimmy Carter, and even the first ~

AMERICAN OPINION

Economist Murray Rothbard observes: "Farfrom being a paranoid or a determinist, theconspiracy analyst Is a praxeologlst; that Is, hebelieves that people act purposively, that theymake conscious choices to employ means In or­der to arrive at goals." He calls conspiracy analy­sis "an essential tool for analyzing the world."

year under Ronald Reagan. Then, atage ten, an ancient one for a politicalbook, this old soldier finally began tofade away .

Re-reading the book as prepara­tion for this article, I not only foundit still relevant but an excellentmeans of refreshing my memory onsome most important history. In com­piling None Dare Call It Conspiracy,we meant it to be the equivalent oftwenty books condensed into one.Many still consider it the best con­spiracy primer for neophytes, andeven now we get letters from readerswho have just discovered it and areexcited by its revelations.

The impact of None Dare Call ItConspiracy was in fact international.Hundreds of thousands of copieswere distributed in Australia andSouth Africa, where they had con­siderable influence. The book alsowas translated for Spanish, Chinese,German, and Swedish editions whichwere promptly sold out. In America,our little 148-page volume becamealmost a cult book. It was sometimesused in high-school and college class­rooms and even crossed ideologicallines to become widely read by stu­dent radicals. Hopefully, it helpedsome of them realize how they werebeing used in a game which was muchbigger and far different than theyimagined.

MARCH, l983

Why was None Dare Call It Con­spiracy such a phenomenon? It gotoff quickly because it outlined aninternational conspiracy which manyAmericanists had for several yearsbeen trying to explain to their friendsin bits and pieces. It put the separateparts in a compact package andwrapped it up in a big blue ribbon.Most of the scholarship, of course,was not original. We had assembledthe best thinking and research onmodern political and financial con­spiracy and put them together in aform simple enough to make sense tothe neophyte reader. This is not falsemodesty. We are proud that we wereable to take so complicated a subjectand present it in comprehensibleterms to millions of people.

Although the book received a mod­icum of media publicity, and waseventually sold in some commercialbookstores, it began and remainedfor a decade an underground best­seller. Passed hand to hand, it drewmail orders from the unlikeliestplaces imaginable. But this grass­roots triumph may never again berepeated. The reasons are primarilythose of distribution. When NoneDare Call It Conspiracy was pub­lished in 1972, it was priced with avery thin markup, allowing majorquantity discounts to encouragereaders to buy and circulate copies.

11

After 1972, price inflation exploded,tripling printing costs and jacking uppromotional and fulfillment costsnearly five times. Skyrocketing post­age not only greatly increased the costof shipping books by mail, but alsomade it uneconomic to promote alow-margin paperback book by usingmailing lists.

Whatever the merits of the systemof distribution we used, greatly as­sisted as we were by The John BirchSociety and other Americanists, itwas the theme of the book which wasat the root of its success. That thememay be briefly outlined as follows:

1. Our Introduction promised:"After reading this book, you willnever look at national and worldevents in the same way again." Weequated the reading of your newspa­per with the search for "the picturehidden inside the picture" that we allremember from childhood maga­zines. You have to know what you arelooking for because the mass mediaare controlled by the Eastern "Libe­ral" Establishment which has at itsapex the Insiders of internationalbanking.

2. Once upon a time in this coun­try people became millionairesthrough success in the free market.For example, by manufacturing andmass-producing products whichmany needed and wanted to buy.Today, with a nearly omnipotentgovernment, a man might more easilybecome wealthy and powerful bymanipulating government; byobtain­ing special privileges, subsidies, andcontracts, he can loot some part of thevast wealth that has been taken fromhis fellow citizens in the form oftaxes. Those who want power today,we said, follow this advice: "Get intothe government business! Become apolitician and work for political pow­er, or, better yet, get some politiciansto front for you. That is where the

12

real power, and the real money, is."3. The Federal Reserve System is

one of the most destructive con-jobsever imposed on an economically ig­norant or naive people. Prior to theestablishment of the Federal Reservein 1913, if a bank lent more than itcould return on demand, it wentbroke, and the individual depositorsin that bank were ruined, but theentire national economy did not godown the drain as a result. With thecreation of the Federal Reserve Sys­tem, and with the member banksbeing bailed out of whatever troublesthey got themselves into by infusionsof unbacked paper money from theFed, an enormous engine of inflationwas created on a national scale. Thisleads inevitably to an inflationaryprice spiral and then to economicdepressions from which nationsemerge with still more governmentcontrols "to handle the emergency."

4. Less well known is the fact thatthe Federal Reserve is in the hands ofa small number of men who are notresponsible to the electorate; menwho once they are in office are inde­pendent even of the President of theUnited States who appoints them fora fourteen-year term. This is notsurprising since it was bankers work­ing secretly behind the scenes whoengineered the creation of the Fed.The Federal Reserve Board causespanics, depressions, and inflations asit chooses.

We cited the misgivings of leadingSenators and Congressmen at thetime the system was established. Forinstance, Henry Cabot Lodge Sr. saidof the Federal Reserve Bill: "It seemsto me to open the way to a vastinflation" of the currency ... whichwill make it possible to submerge thegold standard in a flood of irredeem­able paper currency." And Represen­tative Charles A. Lindbergh Sr.

(Continued on page seventy-one.)

AMERICAN OPINION

From page twelve .

C'ONSPIRACY .warned: "This act establishes themost gigantic trust on earth . . . .The invisible government by themoney power . . . will be legalized .The new law will create inflationwhenever the trusts want inflation."Decades later, Congressman WrightPatman observed: "In the U.S. todaywe have in effect two governments .. . . We have the duly constituted gov­ernment . . . and then we have anindependent, uncontrolled and unco­ordinated government in the FRS,operating the money powers whichare reserved to Congress by the Con­stitution."

5. Like the Big Banks, Big Busi­ness also saw an opportunity tomanipulate the government for itspurposes. It wanted and secretly agi­tated for controls on the economysuch as the Interstate CommerceCommission, the Sherman AntitrustAct, and many subsequent laws .Gabriel Kolko's book The TriumphOf Conservatism has shown this be­yond any doubt. We quoted Kolko asstating: "Despite the large numbersof mergers, and the growth in theabsolute size of many corporations,the dominant tendency in the Ameri­can economy at the beginning of thiscentury was toward growing competi­tion . [But] competition was unac­ceptable to many key business andfinancial interests." They wantedthe field to themselves; those theycould not put down through competi­tion on the open market they struckdown by passing laws.

New competitors, hamstrung bygovernment regulations which theycould not afford during their forma­tive period, were forced under. Theircreativity and ingenuity were lost inthe face of ever-increasing coercivemeasures by the government. To this

MARCH,1983

was added a graduated income taxwritten to protect moneyed elitistswhile discouraging new capital ac­cumulation. It is almost impossiblenow for newcomers to amass enoughcapital to survive and compete unlessthey are in a new, high-tech field,whereas the big corporations alreadyhave substantial wealth, which theysometimes funnel through tax-freefoundations into causes which ex­pand both government and their ownpower.

This explains why the Insiders ofhigh finance have embraced collec­tivism. They understand that it is nota movement to redistribute thewealth of the rich downward to thepoor, but a system to redistribute theearnings of the middle class upwardto those who know how the game isplayed. They see socialism not as aneconomic system but as a people-con­trol system.

6. The main theme of the book isthat many of the major historicalevents of our time, such as wars anddepressions, were as accidental andspontaneous as the Rose Parade. Wequoted the late Harvard, Princeton,and Georgetown University historianCarroll Quigley as stating in TragedyAnd Hope : "There does exist, and hasexisted for a generation, an interna­tional . . . network which operates,to some extent, in the way the radicalRight believes the Communists act.In fact , this network, which we mayidentify as the Round Table Groups,has no aversion to cooperating withthe Communists, or any other groups,and frequently does so."

The Round Table Group in theUnited States is the Council on For­eign Relations, abbreviated asC.F.R. , which is now headed bymegabanker David Rockefeller . DanSmoot, former assistant to F.B.I. Di­rector J. Edgar Hoover, rightly calledthe C.F.R. our "invisible government. "

71

Because the international bankerswho run the C.F.R. have their invest­ments scattered all over the world,they quite naturally have a multibil­lion-dollar interest in American for­eign policy. They protect and expandtheir investments by attempting tocontrol both the Democrat and Re­publican parties at the Executive level.

The C.F.R. has dominated everyAdministration, regardless of theparty theoretically in power, fromF.D.R. up to and including that ofRonald Reagan. The President canuse positions like Secretary ofTransportation to payoff his otherpolitical obligations, but there arefive key slots in any Administrationwhich almost invariably go to mem­bers of the C.F .R. They are: Directorof the C.I.A., chief National Secu­rity Advisor , Secretary of State, Sec­retary of Defense , and Secretary ofthe Treasury. The banking crowd in­tends to control money and foreignpolicy. It does, and this C.F.R. con­trol over the Executive branch is whythere " is not a dime's worth of dif­ference " between the Rockypubs andthe Rockydems.

7. The Banking Establishmentwas financially involved in the Bol­shevik Revolution and has cooperatedwith it ever since . Without vasttransfusions of money and technol­ogy, there would be no Soviet threatwhich requires us to spend more than$200 billion a year on national de­fense. The Soviet military-industrialcomplex was made in the U.S.A. Thisis the greatest scandal of the Twenti­eth Century, and while totally prov­able, it has been completely ignoredby the lapdogs of the mass mediawhose investigative hounds were sogood at scouring the nation forWatergate stories.

* * *It is not surprising that a bookbased on these themes wouldn't be

72

everyone 's cup of tea. But one mightassume that a volume which was sell­ing millions of copies and makingsuch astounding charges would besubjected to a large number of re­views, favorable and unfavorable.There were in fact remarkably few.Most of those which did appear werein comparatively small, often week­ly, newspapers.

"Liberal" journals carefully ig­nored the volume; Conservative peri­odicals were divided. By far the nas­tiest appeared in William F. Buck­ley's National Review . Under theBooks In Brief section of Mr. Buck­ley's fortnightly journal, None DareCall It Conspiracy was given eightcolumn inches by reviewer AlanReynolds, who began: "Mr. Allen hasrevived the old Marxist line about theUnited States being neither a repub­lic nor a free economy, but a politicaland economic system dominated byindustrial monopolists and WallStreet financiers. "

What we had said was that con­spirators had subverted the republicgiven to us by the Founding Fathers.That anyone at National Reviewcould claim that we now have a freeeconomy defies plausability. Ofcourse, one could claim that this isnot the work of conspiring bankersand business moguls, but of govern­ment bureaucrats with their millionsof miles of red tape. Never mindthe anti-competitive advantage thegiants gain in embracing whateverharassing regulation comes along tostrangle competition from smallerindependents. Even so, ignoring thatargument, consider this statement bythe late Congressman John Ashbrook,for two decades a leader of Conser­vatives in the House of Representa­tives, shortly before his tragic anduntimely death last year. On pageone of his Washington Report head­lined "Big Business, Ally Of Liberal-

AMERICAN OPINION

Left Causes," Mr. Ashbrook de­clared:

"The most potent force in helpingliberals and leftists achieve theirgoals in this country would not beprofessors or clergymen. Nor would itbe the liberal politicians or the radi­cal activists who want socialisticchange. Nor the news media or eventhe vocal and militant leaders oflarge and powerful American unions.Nothing has been more obvious to meover my years in Congress than thefact of life that, in most issues, themost potent adversary we have isnone other than big business.

"My record is rather clear regard­ing free enterprise, the private sec­tor, socialism and communism, biggovernment, patriotic issues and con­servative issues. I am anything but ananti-business legislator, so my ap­praisal of this foe comes withenough credentials, I believe, to makethe case objectively.

"Big business is an ever-presentalthough quiet and subdued partnerin the iron triangle that runs Ameri­can politics. The closer you study ourAmerican government the more yourealize this silent but firm hand con­trols our destiny. That iron triangle ismade up of the big business types ­mostly eastern and predominantlybanking-investment houses and in­ternational consortium types, whowork side by side with the elitistFoundation and high-powered issuegroups. These closely tie to govern­ment, and, indeed, the ranks of mostinfluential policy makers are madeup of those who go from the Founda­tion and Eastern big business boardrooms to the government and back tothe groups which I have included inthis newsletter. There is an inter­lock."

Would National Review's Rey­nolds also regard Congressman Ash­brook as a purveyor of the Marxist

MARCH,1983

line? Or was the Reynolds review in­fluenced by the fact that his em­ployer, the Establishment's favoriteConservative, was himself markedfor membership in the C.F.R.? I donot mean to suggest that William F.Buckley Jr. is one of The Mob. Noteven a majority of the two thousandor so members of the C.F.R. areactive conspirators. But the hierachyof that group is a different matter,and Buckley and Reynolds have rea­son to know it. As with all secretsocieties, the C.F.R. operates on theprinciple of circles within circleswithin circles. Perhaps Mr. Buckleyis simply being used by Insiders whoknow that he has an ego the size ofthe deck of the U.S .S. Midway. Forwhatever reason, Buckley just can'tadmit he was wrong about conspiracytheory when he set out in the earlySixties to expel its analysts fromConservative circles.

Possibly we should let lying dogssleep, but when Mrs. Mary Virgillowrote to Reynolds spanking him forthe distortions contained in his "re­view" of None Dare Call It Conspir­acy he closed his reply with: "TellMr. A that I'm not finished withhim." I don't now whether that was aphysical or journalistic threat. Forten years now I have been cowering inmy office lest dandy Bill's bullyboydrag me into an alley and go after mewith a whip. Or could it be thatReynolds has a single-shot Derringerhidden in the lace of his cuff? I haveno idea, but I live in dread.

About the time that Alan Reynoldswas smearing us, we received a letterwhich, while not a review, made usfeel very good indeed. It was fromMr. Stanley J. Tracy, retired Assis­tant Director of the F.B.I., whowrote: "If Americans can be awakenedto the progressive loss of their free­doms, None Dare Call It Conspiracyis the book that can open their eyes to

73

the reality of the situation as it ex­ists. " A lot of eyes were opened,though in the absence of word to thecontrary we must presume Mr . Rey­nolds is still using a white cane to getacross the street.

The late William Loeb, the can­tankerous and courageous publisherof the fiercely Conservative NewHampshire Union Leader, editoriallyattacked None Dare Call It Con­spira cy as anti-Semitic when it wasfirst published. Some of the key in­ternational financiers invo lved insetting up the Federal Reserve andbankrolling the Bolshev ik Revolutionwere indeed Jews . But we had explic­itly warned in the book that anti­Semitism is a diversion and a trap .We stated: "Anti-Semites have playedinto the hands of the conspiracy bytrying to portray the entire conspir­acy as Jewish. Nothing could be far­ther from the truth. The traditional­ly Anglo-Saxon J.P . Morgan andRockefeller international banking in­sti tutions have played a key role inthe conspiracy. There is no denyingthe importance of the Rothschildsand their satellites. However, it isjust as unreasonable and immoral toblame all Jews for the crimes of theRothschilds as it is to hold all Bap­tists accountable for the crimes ofthe Rockefeller s."

Later Mr . Loeb reversed himself.It seems he had not actually read thebook when he attacked it . The attackwas made at the entreaty of one ofhis editors, then very much under thespell of William Buckley , who as­sured the New Hampshire publisherthe book was anti -Semitic. Later,West Coast newspaper editor MikeCulbert, a good friend of Bill Loeb,convinced him that the book was animportant one, was not anti- Semitic,and sold him on reading it for him­self. Mr. Loeb quickly became a rag ­in g opponent of t he C.F. R. and

74

turned our thesis into a major issueduring the 1980 New Hampshire pri­maries. Candidate Ronald Reaganpicked up the themes being played inthe Union Leader's fiery front-pageeditorials and soon began denouncingthe influence on the Carter Adminis­tration of the C.F.R. and of its alliedTrilateral Comm ission.

What Loeb started was carriedover into Florida where the head ofthe Florida Conservative Caucusbought advertisements to repeat it inthe major newspapers in the state .Reagan continued to grumble againstthe C.F.R. an d the Trilateral Com­mission , but by then he had a newcampaign manager, William Casey ,who was a member of the Council onForeign Relations. Casey now headsthe C.I.A. After Florida, the C.F .R.­T .C. issue was allowed to die , no wordabout it has since passed Reagan 'slips, and members of those organiza­tions are as thick in the Reagan Ad­ministration as swallows at Capis­trano in April. Even so, the issue hasbecome an important one with bothmainline Conseratives and the NewRight.

In 1972, anyone who thought theC.F.R. was anything more than aluncheon club for American versionsof Colonel Blimp was regarded as inthe same category with members ofthe Flat Earth Society. Over thenext few years, however, the numberof those who recognized that a con­spiracy was operating at the highestlevels of our federal governmentgrew enormously. Among the generalpublic, Watergate helped mightily togive credibility to the thesis of N oneDare Call It Conspiracy. Early on, wehad many letters from Americanstelling us that they could not acceptthe idea that such corruption couldexist at the highest levels of ourgovernment. After Watergate, theybelieved it. If top politic ians were

AM ERICA N OPINION

capable of Watergate, it was rea­soned, they were also capable of thehigh-level political conspiracy withinternational bankers that we haddescribed.

The Nixon Administration wasloaded with C.F.R. members, allworking against the Conservativeissues which the opportunistic Nixonhad trumpeted on his way to the OvalOffice. Dispatched in disgrace to hiscastle in California, Nixon's replace­ment, Gerald Ford, stayed the courseset by Henry Kissinger and otherC.F.R. conspirators. But it was theera of Jimmy Carter which madeNone Dare Call It Conspiracy fullycredible. Carter, you will recall,based his campaign for the WhiteHouse on the claim that he was anoutsider who would bring to Washing­ton "new leadership" from outsidethe Establishment. Once elected,however, he appeared to have takenthe roster of the C.F.R. and the Tri­lateral Commission and used it tostaff his Administration. Indeed,maybe he did . But no one could anylonger argue that it made a "dime'sworth of difference" whether a Re­publican or a Democrat resided in theWhite House. Under Carter, the "in­visible government" became as plainas the nose on Jimmy Durante's face.

Over the decade None Dare Call ItConspiracy came to have an enor­mous impact upon movement Con­servatives, the leaders and activistsof a wide range of organizations run­ning the gamut from those primarilyinterested in promoting Free Enter­prise to the Moral Majority religiousgroups and the fighters against abor­tion . Most of these leaders weresomewhat dubious about the book'stheme when it was first published.Once sensitized to the role of theC.F.R., however, they could not helpbut observe its hold on the levers ofpower in Washington and New York.

MARCH, 1983

When Ronald Reagan loaded hisAdministration with agents of thissame Eastern "Liberal" Establish­ment, the case was made. In adecade, Washington watchers hadobserved two different RepublicanAdministrations, followed by aDemocrat, and then another Republi­can Administration. Through it allthe common thread was that no mat­ter who was sitting in the Oval Of­fice the most important men aroundand beside him all belonged to thesame lodge. Today, the only move­ment Conservatives who pooh-poohthe power of the C.F.R.-T.C. com­bine are on the mastheads of Nation­al Review and Human Events.

We have already explained ourtheory of why the Buckleyites arelame and halt on this issue , but whyare the gentlemen at Human Eventswillfully blind? The Washington­based tabloid sees itself as the voiceof the conservative wing of theG.O.P. When we published NoneDare Call It Conspiracy, the editorsof Human Events had already com­mitted to the Buckley position thatany mention of conspiracy is verbo­ten. In 1972 we tried to buy space inHuman Events for an advertisementfor our book. The advertising depart­ment was very eager to have our ad,and its letter of May 19, 1972, ex­tolled the virtues of advertising ourbook in Human Events. Then we re­ceived another communication,dated May 31, 1972, which stated:"After reading Mr. Allen's book, oureditors found themselves substan­tially in disagreement with its theme.Since we try to restrict advertising,particularly for books, to those morein line with the views of HumanEvents, they have asked me to in­form you that we will not be able toaccept your full page ad."

We bear Human Events no ill will.It had painted itself into a corner

75

with the Buckley people on this sub­ject. Because its Conservatism is sin­cere and its influence is substantialwe hope that its editors soon join therest of the movement Conservativeson thi s issue .

While we are not fanatical aboutdemanding that others use the term" conspiracy," we remain adamant onthe point that that's what it is.It is a conspiracy to use politicalpower for mon opolistic controland immense financial gains. Andthis network is clearly internationalin scope and of long-standing dura­t ion.

The basic principle, to repeat, isvery simple. Whenever any level ofgovern ment intervenes in an indus­try , it always tends to reduce compe­ti tion and benefi t the big, estab­lished firms already on top of themarket by barring or discouragingentry by potential competitors. Themore government intervenes , themore cartelized and monopolized in­dustry becomes. Thus, powerfulvested-interest groups have grown uparound Big Government, promotingand using it for their own benefit atthe expense of everybody else. Themost interventionist political systemis socialism, where the governmentholds total power over the lives andproperties of the people . Because it ist he most interventionist syst em,socialism is also the most monopo­listic. The relationship between so­cialism and monopoly is that youcan 't have one without the other.Socialism is , therefore , t he royalroad to monopoly power for the su­per-rich. To achieve a worldwidemonopoly for controlling world mar­kets, you need a World SocialistSuper-S tate . This is what the Estab­lishment Insiders want.

It is therefore critical to the mo­nopolist-socialist political machinethat the people sanction government

MARCH, 1983

intervention as legitimate, and thatgovernment programs be seen as de­voted to the chimera called "the com­mon good" or "the public interest. "Hence the Establishment's " court in­tellectuals" in the Halls of Poison Ivypreach constantly against Free Mar­ket economics and subtly (or not sosubtly) advocate interventionism andsocialism as the answer to everyimaginable problem. Turning truthon its head, they put forth the claimthat exploitive monopolies are a prod­uct of free markets and that "posi­tive" government action is necessaryto quell the rapacious activities ofcapitalist robber barrons.

In fact, of course , the Rockefel­lers and Rothschilds have gained in­finitely more power and plunderthrough their political manipulationsand government privileges than theyever could have under a Free Marketsystem. The socialist notion that gov­ernment intervention is necessary toadvance the "public good" is eyewashto hide from its victims the monop­olistic nature and purpose of social­ism. Concealed behind the propagan­da stands a powerful special -interestelite - a conspiratorial oligarchyseeking political power and specialprivilege.

Meanwhile, misguided populistsand well-meaning reformers, habit­ually preaching socialism and regula­tion , become front men for interestswhich they would never knowinglysupport.

If one understands that socialismis not in practice a share-the-wealthprogram but a scam to consolidatepolitical power and control, stealingthe wealth of others, then the seem­ing paradox of the super-rich pro­moting socialism becomes no paradoxat all. Instead, it becomes clear thatBig Government is the logical, eventhe perfect, tool of power-seekingmonopolists. When some of the most

77

cunning of these men meet privatelyand formulate plans to move towardan illicit goal, they become membersof a conspiracy. There has been atrend for well over a century towardever more centralized and powerfulconcentrations of political control.This trend has been consciously pro­moted by men benefiting from it ­including many who have sworn anoath to uphold the U.S. Constitutionand our limited government. Thesemen are conspirators. There is noother word which describes them sowell.

To duck accountability, politi­cians and "intellectuals" labor topopularize the notions that men andevents are propelled by mysterioustides created by "accident. " Denyingthat men are responsible for theiractions, the determinists and acci­dentalists would have us believe thatascribing major national and interna­tional trends to planning and manip­ulation is "simplistic." They adopta sneering attitude toward the cause­and-effect view of history- whichrecognizes that men will and do con­spire for power.

One of the few major scholarswho openly endorses conspiracytheory is Murray Rothbard, whoearned his doctorate at Columbia, isprofessor of economics at the Poly­technic Institute of New York, and isauthor of such important books asAmerica's Great Depression and Man,Economy, And State. Writing in theApril 1977 issue of Reason magazine,Professor Rothbard defends con ­spiracy analysis in politics as follows:

"Anytime that a hard-nosed anal­ysis is put forth of who our rulersare , of how their political and eco­nomic interests interlock, it is in­variably denounced by Establish­ment liberals and conservatives (andeven by many libertarians) as a 'con­spiracy theory of history,' 'paranoid, '

MARCH,1983

'economic determinist,' and even'Marxist.' These smear labels are ap­plied across the board, even thoughsuch realistic analyses can be, andhave been, made from any and allparts of the economic spectrum,from the John Birch Society to theCommunist Party. The most commonlabel is 'conspiracy theorist,' almostalways leveled as a hostile epithetrather than adopted by the 'conspir­acy theorist' himself.

"It is no wonder that usually theserealistic analyses are spelled out byvarious 'extremists' who are outsidethe Establishment consensus. For itis vital to the continued rule of theState apparatus that it have legiti­macy and even sanctity in the eyes ofthe public, and it is vital to thatsanctity that our politicians and bu­reaucrats be deemed to be disem­bodied spirits solely devoted to the'public good.' Once let the cat out ofthe bag that these spirits are all toooften grounded in the solid earth ofadvancing a set of economic intereststhrough the use of the State, and thebasic mystique of government beginsto collapse."

The distinguished economist goeson to explicate this point by taking aneasy example: "Suppose we find thatCongress has passed a law raising thesteel tariff or imposing importquotas on steel. Surely only a moronwill fail to realize that the tariff orquota was passed at the behest oflobbyists from the domestic steel in­dustry, anxious to keep out efficientforeign competitors. No one wouldlevel a charge of 'conspiracy theorist'against such a conclusion. But whatthe conspiracy theorist is doing issimply to extend his analysis to morecomplex measures of government:say, to public works projects, the es­tablishment of the ICC, the creationof the Federal Reserve System, or theentry of the United States into a war.

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In each of these cases , the conspiracytheorist asks himself the question cuibono? Who bene fit s from this mea­sure? If he finds that Measure Abenefits X and Y, his next st ep is toinvestigate the hypothesis: did X andY in fact lobby or exert pressure forthe passage of Measure A? In shor t ,did X and Y rea lize that they wouldbenefit and act accordingly?

"Far from being a paranoid or adeterminist , the conspiracy analyst isa praxeologist ; that is, he believesthat people act purposively, that theymake conscious choices to employmeans in order to arrive at goals.Hence, if a steel tariff is passed, heassumes t hat the steel industrylobbied for it; if a public worksproject is created, he hypothesizesthat it was promoted by an allianceof construction firms and unionswho enjoyed public works contracts,and bureaucrats who expanded theirjobs and incomes. It is the opponentsof 'conspiracy' analysis who professto believe that all events - at least ingovern ment - are random and un­planned, and that therefore peopledo not engage in purposive choice andplanning. "

Observing that "v irt ually the en­t ire top leadership of the [then ] newCarter Administration, from Carterand Mondale on down, are membersof the small, semi-secret TrilateralCommission," Rothbard points outimportant ques tion s that must beasked - questions ignored by theEstablishment's journalisticcommu­nity. He writes : "Do we say thatDavid Rockefeller's prodigious ef­forts on behalf of certain statistpublic policies are merely a reflec­tion of unfocused altruism? Or isthere pursuit of economic interest in­volved? Was Jimmy Carter named amember of the Trilateral Commissionas soon as it was founded becauseRockefeller and the others wanted to

MARCH, 1983

hear the wisdom of an obscure Geor­gia governor? Or was he plucked outof obscurity and made Pre sident bytheir support? Was J. Paul Austin,head of Coca-Cola, an early sup ­'port er of Jimmy Carter merely outof concern for the comm on good?Were all the Trilateralists and Rocke­feller Foundati on and Coca-Colapeople chosen by Car ter simply be­cause he fel t t hat they were t heablest possible people for the job? Ifso, it 's a coincidence that boggles themind. Or are there more sinister po­litical-economic interests involved? Isubmit that the naifs who stubbornlyrefuse to examine the interplay ofpolitical and economic interest ingovernment are tossing away an es­sential tool for analyzing the world inwhich we live."

The crusading journalists of theC.B.S. network's "Sixty Minutes"program, for instance, have assidu­ously ignored these questions and thewhole C.F.R.-Rockefeller-T.C. issue.One asks why? Then one notes thatWilliam Paley, the longtime chair­man of C.B.S. , and at least fivedirectors on its corporate board, aswell as many of its leading commen­tators, are members of the Councilon Foreign Relations. The same istrue of the New York Times and theWa shington Post and Time andN ewsweek and everyone of the massmedia. Need one be " paranoid" toask if this has anything to do withtheir evasion on this issue?

In his Reason article, ProfessorRothbard acknowledges that there"are, of course, good conspiracyanalysts and bad conspiracy analysts,just as there are good and bad histo­rians or practitioners of any disci­pline ." In None Dare Call It Conspir­acy we warned against bad conspir­acy analysis when we observed:" Some conspiratorialists do indeedoverdraw the picture by expanding

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the conspiracy (from the small cliquewhich it is) to include every localknee-jerk liberal activist and govern­ment bureaucrat. Or, because of ra­cial or religious bigotry, they will takesmall fragments of legitimate evi­dence and expand them into a con­clusion which will support their par­ticular prejudice, i.e., the conspiracyis totally 'Jewish,' 'Catholic,' or'Masonic.' These people do not helpto expose the conspiracy; but, sadly,play into the hands of those whowant the public to believe that allconspiratorialists are screwballs."

Professor Rothbard goes on to ob­serve : "The bad conspiracy analysttends to make two kinds of mistakes,which indeed leave him open to theEstablishment charge of 'paranoia.'First, he stops with the cui bono; ifmeasure A benefits X and Y, hesimply concludes that therefore Xand Y were responsible. He fails torealize that this is just an hypothesis,and must be verified by finding outwhether or not X and Y really did so."None Dare Call It Conspiracy, forexample, showed that the same peo­ple who benefited from centralbanking were also those responsiblefor its enactment and creation.

Rothbard continues: "Secondly,the bad conspiracy analyst seems tohave a compulsion to wrap up all theconspiracies, all the bad guy powerblocs, into one giant conspiracy. In­stead of seeing that there are severalpower blocs trying to gain control ofgovernment, sometimes in conflictand sometimes in alliance, he has toassume - again without evidence ­that a small group of men controlsthem all, and only seems to sendthem into conflict." Again, while wemaintained in our book that this con­spiracy was international in scope, wetook pains to point out that all theevil plots in the world are not under asingle locus of control. Such a view

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would amount to a form of deter­minism in which every addlepatedcollectivist one meets is "one ofthem."

It doesn't work that way, ofcourse . Many individuals, havingnothing to do with conspiracy or anyknowledge of one, can and often aredrawn unwittingly into serving theaims of Establishment Insiders byembracing carefully promoted intel­lectual or social fads which leadthem to advocate and push for lawsand regulations that play into thehands of conspiring interest groups.People act freely to do the craziestthings as a result of a system of re­wards (grants to scholars pursuingcertain lines of research, for exam­ple) and punishments (getting passedover for a teaching position at aprestigious university for having the"wrong" opinions). The point is thatwe are not looking under every bed, assome charge. The international con­spiracy about which we have beenwriting is not omnipotent, omnipres­ent, omniscient, or infallible; it iscomposed of power-hungry but quitemortal men. Like everyone else, theysometimes make mistakes, see theirplans backfire, and experience seri­ous setbacks. They are far from in­vincible, and their success is assured­ly not written in the stars.

But they have had terrible suc­cesses. An important thesis in NoneDare Call It Conspiracy was that"Communism" is not a movement ofthe down-trodden masses but a move­ment created, manipulated, and usedby power-seeking billionaires to gaincontrol over the world - first byestablishing socialist governments inthe various nations and then by con­solidating them through a "GreatMerger" into that ultimate monop­oly, a World Government. A crucialelement in the process of taking overand collectivizing a nation has always

AMERICAN OPINION

involved gaining monopolistic controlover its money system. The mostlucrative and highly valued of all gov­ernment-granted monopolies has there­fore been that of central banking ­an exclusive charter for legalizedcounterfeiting. Through central bank­ing, observed Reginald McKenna,president of the Midlands Bank inEngland , "Those that create and issuethe money and credit direct the poli­cies of government and hold in theirhands the destiny of the people ."

We also reminded our readers thatsuch political control over money andbanking has been a key ingredient inthe program advocated by the Com­munists. It is in fact the fifth plankof the Communist Manifesto. AndLenin remarked that the establish­ment of a central bank is ninetypercent of capturing a country. Letus meet Professor Rothbard's stan­dards for good conspiracy analysishere by briefly reviewing the ac­count, related in our 1972 book, ofthe development of one particularcentral bank - our own country'sFederal Reserve System. The crea­tion of the Federal Reserve monopolyis a textbook case of conspiracy - astudy in scarlet.

Men from the brotherhood of in­ternational banking, including PaulWarburg, Frank Vanderlip, and Ben­jamin Strong, met in utter secrecy onthe estate of J.P. Morgan on JekylIsland, Georgia, in the year 1910.There they conspired to have the U.S.Government set up a central bankfor them, and prepared to sell thescheme as a "people's bill" allegedto thwart the power of Wall Street.They drew up a plan which threeyears later became the basis for thelegislation enacted by Congress thatestablished the Federal Reserve. Thestory of this clandestine meeting andthe political machinations used to getthe measure adopted has been told in

MARCH,1983

more detail elsewhere. We know thatit is true because Frank Vanderlip,one of the principal participants,boasted of it years later in an articlepublished in the Saturday EveningPost , and the essential points havebeen confirmed independently byothers. *

Realizing their own unpopularity,the banking Insiders erected a smoke­screen of phony opposition to theproposal while pushing for it behindthe scenes. It was strictly a case ofBr'er Rabbit begging not to be throwninto the briar patch. The Wall Streetfinanciers denounced what was infact their own bill. This drew supportfor it from misguided populists andthe usual do-gooders . As Vanderlipboasted nearly twenty-five yearslater: "Now, although the AldrichFederal Reserve Plan was defeatedwhen it bore the name Aldrich [Sen­ator Nelson Aldrich was the maternalgrandfather of Nelson Aldrich Rocke­feller], nevertheless its essentialpoints were all contained in the planthat finally was adopted."

The myth that the "money trust"had been defrocked should have beenexploded when Paul Warburg (theactual author of the original draft)was appointed to the first FederalReserve Board - a board picked bythe notorious conspirator "Colonel"Edward Mandell House, a founderof the C.F .R., to represent the inter­ests of the Wall Street banksters.Moreover, the man who served aschairman of the New York FederalReserve Bank during its early criticalyears was the same Benjamin Strongof the Morgan interests who had ac­companied Warburg, Davison, Van-

"See Frank Vanderlip, " Farm Boy To Finan­cier," Saturday Ev ening Post, February 9,1935; Stephen Birmingham, Our Crowd, DellPublishing, New York, 1967; Gabriel Kolka,Th e Triumph Of Conservatism , QuadrangleBooks, Chicago, 1967.

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derlip, et al., to Jekyl Island. Thechairman of the Federal Reserve hasalways been someone congenial to theinterests of the international bank­ers. The pattern continues to _thisday, with Paul Volcker - formerlyan official with David Rockefeller'sChase Manhattan Bank - serving asFed chairman.

How useful has the Fed been tothe conspirators who put it in place?Since its creation in 1913, America'sNational Debt has mushroomed athousand-fold, from $1 billion towell over '$1.1 trillion. The totalamount of interest paid since thattime to the international bankers,who hold much of that debt, hasbeen staggering. Interest on the Na­tional Debt, now the third-largestitem in the federal Budget, is run­ning at $126 billion a year and stillclimbing, compared to $20 billion an­nually in the year we published NoneDare Call It Conspiracy. So the bank­ing elite has grown even richer bymanipulating inflation and publicdebt, the two corollaries of a man­aged money system.

My point is that the conception,birth, and history of the Federal Re­serve fully demonstrates the pres­ence of a powerful conspiracy, andone which is a crucial part of a widerconspiracy. Those special financialinterests who secretly pushed for theFed were also the ones that haveprimarily benefited from its disas­trous policies which have robbed the

rest of us. They planned it that way!It was no accident.

The ultimate solution to this scan­dal is not more government regula­tions, but a policy of "hands off"our money and all voluntary activi­ties of production and exchange.With government constitutionallyprohibited from meddling in the pri ­vate affairs and economic dealingsof the people, no conspiracy ofwould-be monopolists or special-in­terest hustlers could use politicalpower as a legal tool to obtain specialprivileges and to plunder. Withoutgovernment intervention, they wouldlose their power base and have tocompete in a free market. That iswhy they oppose laissez faire with allthe ardor with which the werewolffears silver bullets.

Americanists have in a decademade considerable progress in expos­ing these conspirators, but there ismuch to do if they are to be stopped.Which is why your correspondent andLarry Abraham have decided to do asequel to update our 1972 book and toexplain what Americans can do nowto expose and defeat those conspiringagainst our liberties. To be entitledCall It Conspiracy, it will be availableby late 1983.

Meanwhile, we will next monthreview in these pages some of theavalance of new evidence which hasborne out the contentions we made inNone Dare Call It Conspiracy over adecade ago.••

CRACKER BARREL------------• Honey found in the tombs of Egyptian pharaohs has been tasted by archaeolo­gists and found edible.• One cannot drown in the Dead Sea. It is twenty-five percent salt, which makesthe water very heavy.• Only eleven percent of Texas' workers are organized in labor unions , and wagesand employment there are among the highest in the United States.• From H.L. Mencken: " Don't overestimate the decency of the human race ."• Never take anything for granted, advised Benjamin Disraeli .• Wall Street proverb: Buy on the rumor; sell on the news .• The penculine titmouse of Africa builds its home in such a sturdy manner thatMasai tribesmen use the nests for purses and carrying cases.

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