November 10, 2025 • 48 mins
At the height of the Cold War, a "leaked Top Secret Memo" from inside the government proposed a controversial and radical idea: the worst thing that could happen to humanity was worldwide ... peace.
Sources:
https://www.nytimes.com/1999/01/30/us/l-c-lewin-writer-of-satire-of-government-plot-dies-at-82.html
Ghost of Iron Mountain by Phil Tinline
JFK (1991, O. Stone)
https://hvmag.com/life-style/a-history-of-iron-mountain-an-information-storage-facility-in-germantown-ny/
https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/the-many-lives-of-iron-mountain
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/16/iron-mountain-hoax-anti-vietnam-war-satire-conspiracy-theories
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to Hoax, a production of iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Folks.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
It's a huge when us to see you there last.
Welcome to Hoax, a podcast about the lies we wish were.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
True and truths that sound like lies. I'm the ghost
of Danish Wortz and I'm the evil twin of Lizzie Logan.
Welcome to the show, Dana, Oh boy, today's topic. Let
me just say you did.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Say you are a little stressed.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
I'm a little bit stressed because I thought that it
was one thing when I started looking into it, and
then by the time I realized that it was also
some other things. It was too close to when we're
recording to pick a different topic. Great, And I also
(01:00):
I just wanted to say here at the top of
the episode that this episode of Hoax, like all episodes
of Hoax, is based on our research from multiple sources.
But I am drawing a lot of what I know
from Phil tin Lines book Ghosts of Iron Mountain. So
I just wanted to give him a shout out right
(01:21):
up top. Thank you, Phil, Thank you. If this episode
sparks your interest, I would go ahead and purchase or
get from your library a copy of Phil tin lines book. So,
thank you, Phil.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Great.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
So this is about the hoax document report from Iron Mountain.
I'm assuming you don't know what that.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Is to me, Iron Mountain. I'm like, that sounds like
a Mario Kart level. It means nothing to me.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Okay, great, Dana, cast your mind back. We're going back
in time to the Cold War. Yeah, all right. In
his outgoing address to the Nation, President Dwight Eisenhower coins
the frase military industrial complex.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
He was kind of right about that one.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
He was so right on the money about that one.
It is a time of heightened militarization. Yeah, the space
race is on. The nature of power has changed thanks
to the atom bomb. It used to be that the
masses fought the wars with cheap available weapons. So it
(02:24):
was that whoever had the most people and the most
guns won the wars, and the wars were won by
the people. And you know, it was sort of democratized
that way. And now the power to kill arrests in
the hands of a few. You can destroy a whole city,
(02:47):
like one guy can choose to do that from miles
and miles away, and you don't even have to look
a man in the eye to kill him and the
weapons makers seemed to be dictating military strategy.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
And you're banning a picture. This is very vivid.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Indeed, can we trust the government to do the right thing?
Can we even trust what they are saying? The Bay
of Pigs, the Cuban missile crisis, the Gulf of Tonkin.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
It sounds like we're in a serious situation. Everyone is
looking over their shoulder exactly.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
There is an atmosphere of paranoia throughout the nation. People
see communism everywhere. McCarthyism was not so long ago. The FBI, NSA,
and CIA are all newly created within living memory. Has
the CIA been covertly trying to assassinate Castro and Jay Goovara? Yes,
not even that covertly. They're just trying to kill them.
(03:41):
There's this thing called the UN that is also created
within living memory. That's like a global government above all
the governments. And we know now that they're not super
effective at being a global government, but back then we
thought they might be. It's kind of nice, It's it's
not the worst idea. In nineteen sixty three and Kennedy
is shot by some fucking guy.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
And is the government keeping things from.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Us about that? So There's two basic theories about this.
Either the country is totally unstable and like some random
guy can murder the head of state, or there's something
they're not telling us. Nineteen sixty seven, LBJ is president.
The war in Vietnam escalates Agent Orange. They say, we're
(04:27):
not using napalm on kids, but we totally are. There's
something called the missile gap, which is what they're saying
is that the Soviets have way more missiles than us.
So that's why we got a ramp up military spending
so we can get more missiles.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
I bet military companies love that.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
They love that. Also, the missile gap is fake. They
don't have more wos hoax within a hoaxsting hoax, and
that creates something called the credibility gap, which is a
thing that's happening more and more, which is people just
don't believe what the government is saying. You, Dana, Yes,
resident of nineteen sixty seven in New.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
York, Okay.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Head out to your local newstand to pick up a
copy of Esquire magazine.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Sounds good.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
It's the hottest magazine in town. They're doing like real journalism.
This is not just some magazine you leave through this
is like hard hitting stuff.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
And short stories, good fiction and esquire.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Oh yes, and you find that it has a twenty
thousand word excerpt of a twenty eight thousand word book.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
So short book, most of a book? Yeah, really a
short story.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Called Report from Iron Mountain on the Possibility and Desirability
of Peace.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Hmmm.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
And it has a little preface. This report is twenty
eight thousand words in length and so depressing that you
may not be able to take it. But if you persist,
Merry Christmas anyway, and on Earth war ill will toward men.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Whoa more magazine stories. I feel like the magazine crisis
wouldn't be happening right now more stories started with disclaimers
like that. I know, because I would want to read
these twenty thousand words.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Immediately, immediately.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
So what the hell is this? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (06:11):
So the introduction is by a writer named Leonard Lewin,
who explains that he was approached by a friend. He
won't say who, but this friend is very high up
in the government, and his friend, said Leonard. Some years ago,
during the Kennedy days, JFK wanted to figure out what
would happen if worldwide peace broke out, because you know,
(06:36):
we've been preparing for the possibility of war, but we
are unprepared for the possibility of peace.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
That also sort of sounds like a thing like a
freshman would say when they're really high in a dorm room.
We're preparing for war, but are we even preparing for peace?
Speaker 2 (06:53):
That is so exactly the mood of the nation, Like yes,
but also that is the entire country right now, because
this is the thing like think tanks are all the rage,
Like think tanks still exist, but they are so all
the rage during the Cold War because people are trying
(07:15):
to figure out what happens in a nuclear war and
there's never been a nuclear war, so they're spending all
this time, energy and money just being like, I don't know,
game plan it question mark, question mark, do a war game?
Come up with the primitive computer simulation, build a shelter
(07:37):
question mark? Like there, it's the entire country is like
what if this happens?
Speaker 1 (07:46):
They're just making things up and coming up with ideas.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
They're just making things up. So it's totally kind of
plausible that JFK would have been like, I don't know, uh,
what if there's peace, what if there's peace, What if
there's peace. So he commissions a highly secretive, select group
of people to go to an underground bunker okay called
Iron Mountain and work out what would happen if war stopped.
(08:11):
And they wrote up a report that was so incendiary
that the administration buried it.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
That bad things happened at four stopped.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
So controversial, Yes, bad things, I say, I'm interested say more.
But now this friend wants Leonard to tell the people,
so he's leaking it. So this is the report from
Iron Mountain, Okay.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
So that's the preface. And this report published in Esquire
magazine is that buried report.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Is this top from the JFK days, And inside the
report are some truly chilling ideas. This think tank says
that war is the fundamental idea underpinning all of society. Okay,
that if war stopped, the American economy would collapse. Bombs
(09:03):
are the perfect product. They cost a lot to make
and you can only use them once.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Sure, if we stopped even having the possibility of war,
American society would collapse. Maybe all of society would collapse.
We would not have any more borders and therefore no
more countries. There would be no allegiance to your country
and no allegiance to its values. If you don't belong
to anything, what are you a part of?
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Sounds like John Lennon was on to something. Imagine.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
I have a note here in my outline the song
you imagine, the song imagine nothing to kill or die for?
I wonder if you can.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
It's easy if you try.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
They basically they've been in this bunker just imagining the imagine.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
But what would this be like they've been imagining.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Yeah, if we don't have any countries, are we essentially
one super country of planet Earth? And then if one
person rules it? Is that just is there essentially no freedom?
Like is there just one guy ruling the whole earth?
Like whoever is the most powerful man on Earth? Does
he rule the whole Earth?
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Yeah? Because it's like what sort of system would there
be where there's no fighting? Where it's like even if
we were one because we're one country now and there's
plenty of fighting in America.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Sure, but it's if there's no fighting, I mean, our
our weapons sort of the ultimate checks and balances on
no one country becoming too powerful? Like what what would
happen if all the countries stop fighting each other? They
point out that a lot of like scientific advancements have
(10:32):
been made because of the military. That is true, that
would stop, And the report says, you know a lot
of sort of like pro peace people are like, well, okay, yes,
we would stop spending all this money on bombs and stuff,
But wouldn't it be better to spend all that money
on schools and hospitals. And they basically say, like that
wouldn't work economically, like it would sort of stagnate. We
(10:57):
would end up we would all just end up kind
of broke, like the economy would not function that way.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Okay, they were right, this is chilling.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
And also we would end up with overpopulation because war
keeps the population under control. Bleak, and then the report
goes on to suggest that if worldwide peace did break out.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
It's funny to think about peace breaking out.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
We could potentially replace war with some other stuff. Yes,
so we could fight aliens.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
What about like the more Olympics, more more physical feats
of competition.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
They literally have, Like we could do blood games, like
we could do like war games. Basically, we could have
a pollution crisis, which we probably are.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Which we have to.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Yeah, we could explore space like we could sort of
just you know, turn it into space. We could reintroduce
slavery as a way to sort of keep society in check.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Keep team spirit going. Yeah, we could have a class
war that would probably happen.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Or we could just sort of keep inventing crises, like
we could have an earthquake every couple of years, Like
we could you know, have a have a bomb go
off of it. Like we could just keep having crises
that kept the population under control, kept people in a
state of fear. There needs to be some sort of
(12:34):
we can't just live in harmony forever. We would have
to invent some sort of emergency.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
So the conclusion of this report is that a freshman
in college being like, why don't we all just stop fighting?
That what if we all just decided at once no
more war? That that would cause the collapse of society
and we would need to invent other activities for spirit
just to keep ourselves from eating ourselves alive.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
I guess yeah, basically so that we don't evolve into
like cannibalism.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
I guess yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
So before we get to what happened next in the story, Dana,
what do you think of these ideas?
Speaker 1 (13:14):
I mean, look, when you say, like this is a
think tank. I can see how a group of people
getting together and like thinking these ideas. I can see
how it's like plausible. Where yes, the military industrial complex
does like keep the economy going, and thinking about how
much money goes to war. It is depressing to think, like, oh,
our economy or the stock market would probably collapse if
(13:37):
war stopped. But I think I'm skeptical. I think even
without war, like nationalism would still exist, and like global
warming is still a problem that we could deal with,
and like Silicon Valley and technology is sort of its
own arms race, like people are trying to get richer,
Like I think there are other systems in place for
(13:58):
human ambition that aren't war. So it feels like an
interesting thought experiment, but it doesn't like ring true to me. Sure, well,
this is also a show called hoax.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Yeah, I mean you're right. Yeah, do you think it's
likely that JFK would have commissioned such a study, that
such a study would have then been written, and that
he then would have suppressed it.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
I mean, look, here's the thing. I know this shows
a hoax. So I know I'm supposed to be all
smart and be like no, this is so fake, Esquire magazine.
They got us all. But like, knowing the shady things
that the government was up to during this period, this
does seem very plausible. Sure, I like I do. It
does seem plausible. I think, like the best hoax is
a hoax that you not want to believe, but like
(14:44):
could believe. And if you told me genuinely that the
government had, you know, a group of economists together to
figure this out, and this was the report they came
up with, I'd be like, well, that's fucked up, but
that that's things were happening in the fifties.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Sure, totally. I mean it's not the most.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
Out there idea.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
I do think that like in groups and out groups
are sort of fundamental to human nature, Like true true equality.
Absolutely everyone is absolutely equal is.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Like not, no, they're cool kids in kindergarten.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Yeah, Like that's not how human civilization arose, and like
we're always going to have laws and like we're always
going to have some sort of tears in society. I
don't know that I would go so far as to
say that like war is the natural. Yeah, Dana's horizon,
(15:43):
she agrees with me, just like that. It's like the
natural state of human nature.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
And so yeah, so I'm like, yeah, I'd buy like
some of these ideas.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
This is also one of those things where it's like
this is also nothing knew, Like well, I also world
War two did end the depression, but also like, yeah,
this is the idea behind the movie The Purge, Like
you know what I mean, Like, this is nothing. This
is nothing like the idea that the government would have
come to this conclusion and then be.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Like what the fuck?
Speaker 2 (16:17):
People would freak out if they knew this.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
I'm like, I would they Like I don't know, Like
would they? Though, Well, here's what I want to clarify.
I don't think the conclusions as you described them to
me and this report sound accurate. I'm like, well, that
sounds a little far fetched, But to me, it does
sound plausible that the government would get a bunch of
economic wonks together and they could come up with something wrong. Sure,
(16:43):
government policy. You know, if you told me that people
in the fifties came up with a wacky idea that
turned out not to be true, that is very plausible. Sure,
So let's go back to the tail, shall we the
detail please?
Speaker 2 (17:00):
So there's sort of three parts to what has now
been revealed. Number one, that top secret officials in the
government are having secret meetings. Number two the findings in
the report, and number three the burial of the report.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Yes, the suppressing keeping it from the people.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
So these are three slightly they're interconnected, but these are
three slightly different ideas that people could react to. So
you might take objection just to the fact that people
are having secret meetings. You might be a person who's
offended mostly that by the idea that the government is
suppressing reports, or you might be a person who is
mostly reacting to the ideas in the report.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Yeah, so it's like government having secret meetings. Get over
at babies. That's that's happening. And I'll just say, get
over at babies. Sure, as Danish worts the conclusions of
this report, which are pretty whatever, but then the suppression
that is very scary.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Yeah, I'm just pointing those out because throughout this people
are going to have different reactions to different parts of that,
and it's all going to be mixed together. But I'm
just saying, like when people talk about censorship, they're not
talking about like, what does censorship have to do with
worldwide peace? It doesn't has to do with bearing of
the reports, so like, these are the things that are happening.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Got it.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
So shortly after the Esquire piece comes out the book,
the Report from.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Twenty eight thousand words.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Yes, the twenty eight thousand word book is published by
dial Press, and it's a big, big hit. It is
flying off the shelves. Teachers are assigning it to their students.
Everybody wants to read it. Big ideas, big ideas. It's
the freakonomics of its day. Is totally the freakonomics of
its day. Every government agency in the country is like, no,
it wasn't us. The White House looks into it. Walt Rostau,
(18:46):
the NSA advisor to LBJ, makes a bunch of calls
because he's like, I know this isn't real. I know
this isn't real, but like I you know, like I
technically wasn't there when Kennedy was in office, so like
I mean, technically I have to check.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
He has to do his due diligence.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
So it takes him five days to confirm because Lbj's like,
we didn't fucking do this right, but no, it's not real.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
He makes all these calls and everybody he gets in
contact with is like, no, it's not real.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
That is so funny to imagine the White House having
this report and being like, we know it's not real,
but we have to make sure.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
We have to make sure. So he calls everybody he
can think of because the press wants to know, and
he can't just be like no, because I don't think so. Yeah,
he has to be like, no, I checked, and it's
not real. Everyone's reaction to the ideas it's very Doctor
Strangelove had come out three years prior. Oh, and it
(19:49):
I think strikes a very similar tone of like what
if you took the illogic of the Cold War to
an extreme and in a sort of arsical way. So people,
this is a this is a this is a conversation
that the country is ready to have.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
Well, here's the big problem. Also, if the White House
is like, hey, this wasn't us White House lying to you,
that's the whole point of the report. It's like, of
course you would lie. This report says you're a liar. Sure, well,
no kidding, Lewin.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
When anyone asks dial press, hey you publish this is
this real or fake? They point to all the footnotes
in the book and there's a lot of footnotes in
the book and they all refer to real things, so
they're like, well, I don't know, check the footnotes. Footnotes
look real, ohotes. Lewin goes on a press tour. He
goes on a book tour, and he's soaking it up,
(20:42):
and whenever people ask him if it's real, he gives
sort of like koy Kgey answers where he's like, well,
the ideas are real, and the government does have meetings,
so like there's truth in the book. So I don't
know what you think, and it's pretty hard to prove
a negative, and most of the speculation is like okay,
(21:06):
so like this is probably fake, but well, who do
you think wrote it? Because it really this is this
is how those government types talk like this, he really
got the voice right, and in like.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
The kind of QAnon like you can't disprove a conspiracy
theory believer. It's kind of that thing where you're like, okay, well,
even if this meeting wasn't true, the ideas that they
present are true, so it's it's coming out somehow. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
They're very like, well but maybe part of it was true,
or like this one quote, doesn't that sound like this
one guy who works in this one department. I feel
like maybe that guy actually said that one time, or
like he really got the voice right. This is totally
how those think tank guys talk, like if it wasn't
this Lewin, Like what the hell is this?
Speaker 1 (21:53):
So people pretty definitively in the culture don't think that
Lewin wrote it.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
I don't know about definitively in the culture. I would
say in the press and in Washington, Yeah, it is
not being investigated as like, uh oh, we've got a
leak high up in the government, Like there's no one
looking into this, like it's a violation of the Espionage Act.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
Yeah, they know it's not like an actual government documently.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
Yeah, yeah, No. Journalists are looking for the leaker and
the I think probably the FBI has opened the file,
but I don't think they're like tailing Lewin. Yeah, readers,
I'm sure there are believers, but yeah, higher ups are
not taking it seriously. But it it's got the smack
(22:41):
of truth too.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
It's got the smack of truth. I as you're describing it,
I'm like, of course people believe this conspiracy because then
it's the whack a mole of conspiracy theories, because even
if you don't believe like pieces of it, you're like,
but the ideas.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
In the nineteen seventies, early nineteen seventy one, the Pentagon
Papers come out. Yes, that revealed that the government has
been lying about the reasons and progress of the Vietnam War.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
And those papers are real.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Those papers are real. And when this happens, Leonard Lewin
is like, I think I'm gonna stop lying about leaking
government papers.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
He realized that it's like he didn't want a boy
who cried wolf something actually important.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
He's just like, you know, this is getting a little
it's getting a little hat in here, it's getting a
little hot in this kitchen. I'm gonna go ahead and
give an interview and say, I wrote the whole thing.
By the way I wrote the whole thing. Didn't have
any co write, but I wrote the whole thing. And
I personally also think it helped that he had a
(23:46):
satirical novel that he was trying to sell, so it
helped to put himself as the sole author of this
best selling book. Yes, So here's what actually happened. In
the nineteen fifties and six, there was a satire magazine
in New York called Monocle. Yeah, and it is as
pretentious as it sounds.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
Do you know I think it still exists.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
It doesn't. Oh no, there is a different publication called Monocle,
but it's not a satire.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Not a satire magazine.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
It's where Nora Efron got her start. Actually, she wrote
a parody of a newspaper that was so good that
the newspaper hired her. That's so funny, And that's how
she got her start in journalism. Lewin was a contributor
at Monocle, and one day the editor, a man named
Victor Navaski, was looking through a newspaper and he saw
(24:34):
an article about how there had been talk of Piece
in some region or some conflict and because of that,
some stocks had actually dipped. And he saw the phrase
peace scare, and he was like, look at this. And
so he and his fellow editors were like, we gotta
do something with this.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Yeah, it is silly and stupid to imagine that when
Piece has declared the economy panics.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Yes, So they brainstormed on these ideas and they were like,
we should do sort of a book about this, and
they hired Lewin to write it.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Oh, all right, it wasn't even his idea.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
It was not his idea. I mean, he contributed a
lot of the ideas in it, but they sort of
just took it to him because he was like a
little older and sort of had a i think a
more serious bent to him that he could get the
voice of these think tankers.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Yeah, clearly he nailed it.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
He was particularly satirizing the logic without emotion thinking that
was very popular in Washington at the time.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Yes, Oh, you might find it ridiculous, but this is
what happens when peace is declared. I'm not getting cloudy
eyed about people dying.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
Yeah, and that they were sort of you know, the
logic of using nuclear bombs is cruel and insane. Yes,
where it's like bombing for peace, it's like you're killing children,
Like what do you what are you talking about?
Speaker 1 (26:04):
You're like fucking for virginity. Indeed, got it have been
so good in the seventies.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
That's the bumper sticker. And the reason it sounded so
real is that he did a bunch of research. Yeah,
and he talked to experts and people in the government
and got their voice right footnotes, and he got real
footnotes E. L. Doctor Oe, the novelist who wrote rag
Time edited the book. He was another Monocle guy.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Yeah, And dial Press was in on it the whole time.
They knew it was fake.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
What about Esquire do we know?
Speaker 2 (26:37):
I actually don't know.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
I wonder. I bet they seems like the magazine people
would have been like having boozy martini lunches. I bet
if it was a Monical team. The Esquire team also knew.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
Yeah, probably probably. Monicle had published satire books before, and
usually with some something on the cover saying like from
the editors at Monocle, But they decided not to for
this one because they thought that if they tried to
make it look real, people would have more of a
discussion about the ideas and America's dependence on the military economically,
(27:14):
and that's a conversation that they were trying to provoke.
So it was less about fooling people and more about
starting a conversation.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Yeah, I mean it's a conversational we should still be having, honest.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Absolutely, Lewin included two fake footnotes, so that was his
little wink wink in case anyone wanted to do like
an insane amount of research that it was fake. And
another tip off in case anyone wanted to fact check
it is that the Iron Mountain Bunker is a real place,
but it was not open at the time that Lewin
(27:48):
said the meeting took place. So just if you wanted
to do a timeline. Technically, the book does contain logical errors, but.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
It's like that's the classic conspiracy theory thinking where then
they're like, well, if they were lying about all of this,
they were lying about when the bunker opened. They weren't
gonna admit that the bunker was open. Do you want
to know about the Iron Mountain Bunker?
Speaker 2 (28:14):
Do we not care?
Speaker 1 (28:15):
I don't. I mean, give me like two sets, like
what is.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
Well, so it is interesting to me. It's in Germantown,
New York, it is right, it's just a hollowed out.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Mountain and it's a real bunker.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
So right now, it's a place that companies used to
store documents that you legally can't destroy, so like point
of sale documents and like birth certificates and death certificates
and stuff. But back in the sixties it was like
corporate bomb shelters.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Wait, is it a government bunker? No, it's just a
private bunker.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Yeah, it's it was at the time like an underground
hotel for like oil executives to ride out the annihilation
of New York. Like it's outside the blast zone of
New York. So the idea was that it had a
copy of all the stuff that you would need to
like run an oil company, and also some apartments. So
(29:12):
if you were high up at Exon and you got
word that a missile was headed to New York, you
could like head up to the bunker with your family
and like wait out the bombing. Wow.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
Yeah, all right, yeah, and that is interesting that existed. Indeed,
it possibly still exists, I guess with all the billionaires
in like New Zealand. Now, Yes, it is a little.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
Like creepy to think about, and it is people aren't
not preparing for the end of the world. Yeah, all right,
So right after I think, I don't quite know the timeline,
this is all happening right at the beginning of the seventies, okay,
but I think right after Lewin reveals himself Watergate happened,
which I think proves a that the government is totally
(29:58):
lying to you, yep, and be the they're not really
smart enough to get away with it. Yes, just circling
back to Nora Ephron because I love to talk about her.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
It's a perfect This is a perfect full circle, perfect
full circle.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Her favorite hobby for the next what forty years getting
drunk at dinner parties telling people who deep for it is?
Speaker 1 (30:16):
Yeah, because she was the then wife then later ex wife.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
Of Carl Bernstein, she knew the whole time. Love to
tell people she's an icon. She kind of how I
find modeled my life. Oh, absolutely, both of our number
one Yeah. Yeah. By the nineteen eighties, the book is
out of print, all right, Hey, yeah, I mean it
was a best seller and then it, you know, sort
of faded.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
Yeah, people knew it was fake. It was a less interesting.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
The Berlin Wall comes down and the Cold War is over,
And if you're interested in knowing more about the CIA
potentially being involved in the Berlin Wall coming down, I
highly recommend the podcast Wind of Change, which is absolutely fascinating.
But it's about did the CIA help write a rock
song to foment youth enthusiasm for the Berlin Wall coming down?
(31:09):
And it's a good it's a good look at what
silly spy stuff is. And it's not that these ideas
aren't still relevant. Yeah, like military spending is obviously very influential.
I do think that, like, you know, we were both
around for like around, we're both alive and cognizant of
(31:31):
the news for like WMDs in Iraq and.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Post nine to eleven warfare.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
No blood for oil, and like why are we really
going to war? And who is it making rich? So
all of those ideas are still worth talking about. But
post Cold War report from Iron Mountain is just not
relevant in the way that it was because like, the
permanent state of worldwide war is not what we have.
(32:00):
We are not stockpiling arms in the same way.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
There are global conflicts, but there's not like an active
arms race that everyone's talking about.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
No, we are not in a state of war readiness
at all times, on the brink of nuclear annihilation at
all times. Like war games are not really a thing.
Like the brinksmanship in Cuba is not really a thing.
So I really wish that that is where the story ended.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
Oh no, and this is the part that I.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
Didn't want to talk about because that was a really
fun hoax.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
Yeah, silly magazine writers having having a laugh, having a
best selling book. Yeah, print media thinking and having a
laugh during the Cold War, trying to get through the day,
trying to get people thinking about the big issues.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
Thinking about the big issues, using satire to make a point.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
Yeah, that's all important, that's all good.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
So I'm going to speed through the rest of it.
Oh no, because this is just not the tone of
our podcast. Report from Iron Mountain has unfortunately sort of
had a second life in conspiracy.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
Say yeah, yeah, you saw this coming out mile away.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Really plausible, I'm shouting into the mic at this point.
There's a lot of people who either think that it's
real or think that the ideas are real enough that
they should just believe it.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
Yeah, And I'm sure telling them that a satire author
wrote them does not get through to these people, because again,
the footnotes footnotes are.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
Real because they get all their news from podcasters who
started as stand ups anyway, So what does the word
satire even mean to them?
Speaker 1 (33:45):
True.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
In the late nineteen eighties, Lewin finds out that copies
of Report from Iron Mountain are being printed and sold
by a small press that purports to be academic but
is actually a fringe group devoted to spreading the theory
that the Holocaust never happened. Who is buying it? Right
wing groups, white nationalists and heavily armed militias. And his
(34:10):
lawyers are like, you can't do this. This is a
book and copyright law exists. Yeah, And their lawyers are like,
government files are in public domain and he's like, it's
not a government file. I said that I wrote it.
And they're like, you said that because the CIA told
you to And he's like, no, see, you never told
(34:31):
me to do that.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
Did he sue them? Did it work?
Speaker 2 (34:33):
He sued them and it worked sort of right in
time for the Internet to make that obsolete. I mean,
you can just pirate books now. But he did win
and they had to stop selling it.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
Yeah, but now it's just on the internet.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
And now it's just everywhere I mean, which is as
long as you know it's a like whatever. I'm not
going to ever say like it's okay to pirate books,
but like, I don't think reading this it's not like
reading Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Like you're allowed
to read this book as long as you know it's
a hoax.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
Also you can I think it's worthwhile even to read
and think about these ideas because the military industrial complex
is still a massive thing and problem, and like it's
it's interesting. This is like to me, as you brought
this up, I'm like, that's like an interesting like college
philosophy thought experiment.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
Absolutely, like this was meant to be read for public consumption,
Like as long as you know that it is very
much like a thought experiment that is making fun of
a particular group's way of thinking.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
It's a modest it's trying to read it is what
it is.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
It absolutely it literally is.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
It's a most proposal, which again people should still read
as long as you know not to eat Irish babies.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
Conspiracy theorists point to Iron Mountain to back up all
sorts of ideas from the government is lying to you,
which is of course sometimes true. To there's a secret
couple running the country, which is not really true and
is almost always anti semitic, yep, to they just want
to keep us at war all of the time, which
is like even if you think that and can find
(36:04):
evidence for that, like you just can't say that every
single world leader thinks that, because like they just don't,
Like that's not a thing that every single world leader thinks.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
No, they're not all in on it. Although, if you
want proof that the government is lying to you, Watergate happened.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
Yeah, and then a bunch of like and then Nixon
had to resign, you know what I mean. Like, there's
just as much evidence that people are trying to oust
conspiracy theorists as there are that everyone's in on the
conspiracy anyway.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
I also, I mean, this is preaching to people listening
to a podcast called Hoax. People aren't that good at things.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
They're dumb. They're dumb as well.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
We can't people can't all get together and like orchestrate
these massive conspiracies. It's just not possible. Have you ever
tried to do a group project. I'm yeah, See, this
is the rabbit hole. We just cannot can't knock it down. It.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
Another argument that people tend to say is that in
the absence of war, there needs to be some kind
of societal enemy, and that the government will create one.
And you can use this argument to call anything a
false flag operation ding Ding ding Ding dangerous. People have
tied report from Iron Mountain to the Oklahoma City bombing,
(37:16):
and it has influenced writing that has influenced QAnon. I'm
not going to get into any of that, but if
you are interested in looking it up for yourself. The
writings to Google are silent weapons for quiet wars. And
Behold a Pale Horse, which I really want to stress,
are writings by and for people not quite in touch
(37:39):
with reality. I am not endorsing those writings. I'm saying
those are the writings that have taken Report from Iron
Mountain out of its proper context.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
And are using it to fuel conspiracy theories.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
Yes, slightly more on the vibe of our podcast, Dana.
Have you seen the film JFK.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
I haven't, well, I will tell you.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
JFK is all about Kevin Costner plays a real guy
trying to investigate the I would say, the who and
the what of the assassination of President Kennedy?
Speaker 1 (38:14):
Does this, say alvar Stone one? Is this the one
where they sort of implied that it was LBJ, They
implied that LBJ was in on it, and they.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
Say that it was the CIA. Oh cool, They out
and out say that it was the CIA.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
Yeah, but this is again a fiction, a fiction movie,
but presenting it like like they did the investigation.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
It's a it's a fiction movie about a real trial.
Oh interesting, So it's a fiction a movie about a
real theory. Yes, so like the the investigating that they do.
I think they actually did, but it is to back
up conclusions that have not necessarily been proven. And they
show conversations and confessions that may or may not have
(38:55):
taken place as depicted. Interesting, and you know Alliver Stones
were allowed to whatever he wants. Yeah, actors, it's a movie.
All of the movie is about the who and the what,
except for a very long scene right in the middle,
which is about the why, in which Coosner goes to
Washington to talk to a character played by Donald Sutherland
(39:16):
who only goes by mister X, and he's like, didn't
you ever wonder why would the CIA want to kill
their own president? And he lays out this whole argument
about they wanted to kill him because he wanted to
end the war in Cuba and they couldn't have that
because war is the natural state of society.
Speaker 3 (39:38):
Oh no.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
And it is a lot of ideas that have come
from many places, including Report from Iron Mountain. And the
character that Donald Sutherland is playing is based on a
real guy, General Proudy, who has definitely read and believe
Report from Iron Mountain.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
But again, Report from Iron Mountain was a satire of
think tank thinking yes and taking an idea from a
satirical text and putting it into the mouth of a
character in a movie who goes by mister X is
like fine, and also Donald Sutherland, who's like an actor
(40:18):
with a real gravitas.
Speaker 2 (40:20):
Yes, and you know who defended that decision is Nora Ephron.
I just wanted to just we had to mention her
a third time. But it just is funny that, like,
you know, Kennedy was killed before this book was even written,
so like it all like.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
But this movie wasn't made before this book was written.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
No, this movie was made in the nineties. Yeah, So
like it all circles back to people will latch onto
any idea that confirms the thing that they want to say,
even if it's just to like make their screenplay better. Yep,
which is fine, because you should make your screenplay better.
(41:00):
But like just always just be careful. Just because it
sounds really good and just because it makes a theory
of the assassination makes sense doesn't mean it's real. And like,
even if that is why the CIA killed Kennedy, that
doesn't mean that war is the natural state of human beings, Like,
(41:22):
even if the director of the CIA believes it and
used it to justify killing Kennedy, that doesn't mean that
you have to sit in your car and believe that
war is the natural state of human beings. I believe
in peace.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
Well, that's also what I was saying. I was like,
even if you believe that the report from Iron Mountain
was a thing that happened, that all these you know,
government thinking people got together and came up with us
people were wrong in the fifties all the time. They
had a bunch of ideas that were wrong.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (41:47):
So it's like, even if you think the thing is true,
that doesn't mean that the report is right. Yes, but
it is a good I mean, I think at this
point in Hoax, I do think it is worthwhile that
we're talking about the ways that conspiracy theory thinking have
become so like dangerous in our public consciousness, that people
latch onto conspiracy thinking to make themselves feel important and
(42:11):
to then be terrible people.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
Yeah, I'll just wrap up now.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
Leonard Lewin died in nineteen ninety nine. His daughter sold
the remaining pirated editions of the report with a big
sticker on him that said, hoax.
Speaker 1 (42:28):
Hoax satire.
Speaker 2 (42:29):
Yeah, I think that report from Iron Mountain should just
live alongside like Hunger Games or Atlas Shrugged as like
political fiction. Yeah, has inspired a lot of real world thinking,
and you can think about it as a thing that
is totally valid to inspire your conclusions, but it is
(42:52):
not real. And I will also just say, like when
government documents are leaked, the government really to make an
example out of the leakers. We know the names of
these people, Chelsea Manning, reality winner, Edward Snowden. When documents
from inside the government leak, you will know about it.
(43:13):
They don't just let that slide. So that's a big
tip off if you're ever wondering if a document has
actually leaked, is someone on trial? No, then it's probably
not real.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
And you know what send their conspiracy thinking against them
where it's like, oh, no, one's on trial. That means
they wanted it to get out. But then don't believe
it because the government wants you to believe it. Indeed, Dan,
I feel like we've already played would you have fallen?
Speaker 2 (43:42):
For this? But like what's your takeaway? I don't know
who would you cast in the movie?
Speaker 1 (43:47):
I mean, would you go to Iron Mountain and talk
about peace. No, I mean Iron Mountain sounds like a
really scary, depressing place that would make me anxious. I
would have fallen for it. I don't think I necessarily
would have believed the conclusion. I like to think I'm
a critical enough thinker where even if I was like, oh,
a bunch of government guys got together and put some
theories in place, I think I would have wanted to
(44:08):
read that critically. But it sounds plausible that a bunch
of government guys got together and wrote something because that
they be doing that.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
Sure, yeah, the government guys would come up with a
document that justifies the need for perpetual war is not
like the most out there idea, and that the government
would then suppress it is also not the most out
there idea.
Speaker 1 (44:34):
But then when you tell me, oh, this was written
by a satire writer with a satire magazine, I'm like, oh, yeah,
they'd be doing that too, satire writers be writing satire. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:43):
And then if you say, like, oh, the government just
wants you to think that, I'm like, no, they would.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
Never work that hard, you know what I mean? Like,
that's that I don't buy.
Speaker 2 (44:51):
I would be like, no, they would never because this
report doesn't contain like the government would only go that
far to cover up a cover up if it was
like facts, yeah, or like like the Kennedy assasset, you
know what I mean. Like they would if a book
came out that accused I don't know, like something freaking
(45:14):
crazy that was about like Lincoln was a pedophile or something,
you know what I mean, and then it was like, oh, no,
that was written as satire. And then someone was like, no,
the CIA made them say that was satire. I'd be like, yeah,
maybe the CIA would go through that trouble because that
would be a real national embarrassment. But just like a
report about ideas, I'm like, I cannot see the government
(45:35):
going through all that trouble to cover up ida O
a weekend brainstorming session. Yeah, or like no, it would
have to be something so embarrassing that accused America of
like having violated the Geneva conventions. Yeah, that would destroy
our national reputation that they would then force a guy
(45:57):
at gunpoint to say he wrote it as satire. For
me to believe that it was a cover up, If
it's just ideas about what might happen in a hypothetical
future that's never gonna come true when there's worldwide peace.
I'm like, yeah, they're never gonna bother covering that up.
The government is so busy.
Speaker 1 (46:16):
They don't care. And again it's an economic analysis of
a hypothetical yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:22):
Or even like a sociological analysis. Yeah, that is spooky
and depressing, but not really a cull to arms.
Speaker 1 (46:32):
No interesting though, you know what, I'm glad that in
the seventies people were thinking about these big ideas. Yeah,
good job, monicle, you got the conversation, you.
Speaker 2 (46:42):
Got the conversation, and look forth still having it.
Speaker 1 (46:44):
Now, Lizzie, where can the people find us?
Speaker 2 (46:48):
The people can find us at Hoax the Podcast, Yes,
on Instagram, on Instagram, Where can they find.
Speaker 1 (46:55):
You, Dana Schwartz with three z's on Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 2 (47:00):
Indeed, they can also email us at Hoax Thepodcast at
gmail dot com.
Speaker 1 (47:05):
Hoax Thepodcast at gmail dot com. We will read your email.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
We will read your email, and I would also say
it is us reading your email. Yeah, so that's a
great way to contact us.
Speaker 1 (47:13):
And Lizzie's cat Matilda will also read your email. Indeed,
my cat can't read you.
Speaker 2 (47:17):
No, sadly.
Speaker 1 (47:18):
Emailing us personally a less good way to contact us. Yeah, no,
you don't.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
Email Hoax The podcast at gmail dot cost easy to remember,
easy peasy, Please rate, review, subscribe If you're listening to
the show, it does help a lot. Spotify, iHeart app,
Apple podcast wherever you are, leave a five stars, and
please please hoax responsibly.
Speaker 1 (47:43):
Yes. If there's one lesson to take away from this episode,
it is Hoax Responsibly.
Speaker 3 (47:48):
Bye.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
Hoax is a production of iHeart Podcasts. Our hosts are
Danish Schwortz and Lizzie Logan. Our executive producers are Matt
Frederick and Trevor Young, with supervising producer Rima L. Kali
and producers Nomes Griffin and Jesse Funk. Our theme music
was composed by Laine Montgomery. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
(48:20):
your podcasts. Thanks for listening.
You're listening to Hoax, a production of iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2 (00:06):
Folks.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
It's a huge when us to see you there last.
Welcome to Hoax, a podcast about the lies we wish were.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
True and truths that sound like lies. I'm the ghost
of Danish Wortz and I'm the evil twin of Lizzie Logan.
Welcome to the show, Dana, Oh boy, today's topic. Let
me just say you did.
Speaker 1 (00:37):
Say you are a little stressed.
Speaker 2 (00:38):
I'm a little bit stressed because I thought that it
was one thing when I started looking into it, and
then by the time I realized that it was also
some other things. It was too close to when we're
recording to pick a different topic. Great, And I also
(01:00):
I just wanted to say here at the top of
the episode that this episode of Hoax, like all episodes
of Hoax, is based on our research from multiple sources.
But I am drawing a lot of what I know
from Phil tin Lines book Ghosts of Iron Mountain. So
I just wanted to give him a shout out right
(01:21):
up top. Thank you, Phil, Thank you. If this episode
sparks your interest, I would go ahead and purchase or
get from your library a copy of Phil tin lines book. So,
thank you, Phil.
Speaker 1 (01:32):
Great.
Speaker 2 (01:34):
So this is about the hoax document report from Iron Mountain.
I'm assuming you don't know what that.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Is to me, Iron Mountain. I'm like, that sounds like
a Mario Kart level. It means nothing to me.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Okay, great, Dana, cast your mind back. We're going back
in time to the Cold War. Yeah, all right. In
his outgoing address to the Nation, President Dwight Eisenhower coins
the frase military industrial complex.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
He was kind of right about that one.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
He was so right on the money about that one.
It is a time of heightened militarization. Yeah, the space
race is on. The nature of power has changed thanks
to the atom bomb. It used to be that the
masses fought the wars with cheap available weapons. So it
(02:24):
was that whoever had the most people and the most
guns won the wars, and the wars were won by
the people. And you know, it was sort of democratized
that way. And now the power to kill arrests in
the hands of a few. You can destroy a whole city,
(02:47):
like one guy can choose to do that from miles
and miles away, and you don't even have to look
a man in the eye to kill him and the
weapons makers seemed to be dictating military strategy.
Speaker 1 (03:01):
And you're banning a picture. This is very vivid.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Indeed, can we trust the government to do the right thing?
Can we even trust what they are saying? The Bay
of Pigs, the Cuban missile crisis, the Gulf of Tonkin.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
It sounds like we're in a serious situation. Everyone is
looking over their shoulder exactly.
Speaker 2 (03:21):
There is an atmosphere of paranoia throughout the nation. People
see communism everywhere. McCarthyism was not so long ago. The FBI, NSA,
and CIA are all newly created within living memory. Has
the CIA been covertly trying to assassinate Castro and Jay Goovara? Yes,
not even that covertly. They're just trying to kill them.
(03:41):
There's this thing called the UN that is also created
within living memory. That's like a global government above all
the governments. And we know now that they're not super
effective at being a global government, but back then we
thought they might be. It's kind of nice, It's it's
not the worst idea. In nineteen sixty three and Kennedy
is shot by some fucking guy.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
And is the government keeping things from.
Speaker 2 (04:06):
Us about that? So There's two basic theories about this.
Either the country is totally unstable and like some random
guy can murder the head of state, or there's something
they're not telling us. Nineteen sixty seven, LBJ is president.
The war in Vietnam escalates Agent Orange. They say, we're
(04:27):
not using napalm on kids, but we totally are. There's
something called the missile gap, which is what they're saying
is that the Soviets have way more missiles than us.
So that's why we got a ramp up military spending
so we can get more missiles.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
I bet military companies love that.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
They love that. Also, the missile gap is fake. They
don't have more wos hoax within a hoaxsting hoax, and
that creates something called the credibility gap, which is a
thing that's happening more and more, which is people just
don't believe what the government is saying. You, Dana, Yes,
resident of nineteen sixty seven in New.
Speaker 1 (05:00):
York, Okay.
Speaker 2 (05:01):
Head out to your local newstand to pick up a
copy of Esquire magazine.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Sounds good.
Speaker 2 (05:05):
It's the hottest magazine in town. They're doing like real journalism.
This is not just some magazine you leave through this
is like hard hitting stuff.
Speaker 1 (05:14):
And short stories, good fiction and esquire.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
Oh yes, and you find that it has a twenty
thousand word excerpt of a twenty eight thousand word book.
Speaker 1 (05:24):
So short book, most of a book? Yeah, really a
short story.
Speaker 2 (05:29):
Called Report from Iron Mountain on the Possibility and Desirability
of Peace.
Speaker 1 (05:35):
Hmmm.
Speaker 2 (05:35):
And it has a little preface. This report is twenty
eight thousand words in length and so depressing that you
may not be able to take it. But if you persist,
Merry Christmas anyway, and on Earth war ill will toward men.
Speaker 1 (05:51):
Whoa more magazine stories. I feel like the magazine crisis
wouldn't be happening right now more stories started with disclaimers
like that. I know, because I would want to read
these twenty thousand words.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
Immediately, immediately.
Speaker 1 (06:07):
So what the hell is this? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (06:11):
So the introduction is by a writer named Leonard Lewin,
who explains that he was approached by a friend. He
won't say who, but this friend is very high up
in the government, and his friend, said Leonard. Some years ago,
during the Kennedy days, JFK wanted to figure out what
would happen if worldwide peace broke out, because you know,
(06:36):
we've been preparing for the possibility of war, but we
are unprepared for the possibility of peace.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
That also sort of sounds like a thing like a
freshman would say when they're really high in a dorm room.
We're preparing for war, but are we even preparing for peace?
Speaker 2 (06:53):
That is so exactly the mood of the nation, Like yes,
but also that is the entire country right now, because
this is the thing like think tanks are all the rage,
Like think tanks still exist, but they are so all
the rage during the Cold War because people are trying
(07:15):
to figure out what happens in a nuclear war and
there's never been a nuclear war, so they're spending all
this time, energy and money just being like, I don't know,
game plan it question mark, question mark, do a war game?
Come up with the primitive computer simulation, build a shelter
(07:37):
question mark? Like there, it's the entire country is like
what if this happens?
Speaker 1 (07:46):
They're just making things up and coming up with ideas.
Speaker 2 (07:48):
They're just making things up. So it's totally kind of
plausible that JFK would have been like, I don't know, uh,
what if there's peace, what if there's peace, What if
there's peace. So he commissions a highly secretive, select group
of people to go to an underground bunker okay called
Iron Mountain and work out what would happen if war stopped.
(08:11):
And they wrote up a report that was so incendiary
that the administration buried it.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
That bad things happened at four stopped.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
So controversial, Yes, bad things, I say, I'm interested say more.
But now this friend wants Leonard to tell the people,
so he's leaking it. So this is the report from
Iron Mountain, Okay.
Speaker 1 (08:34):
So that's the preface. And this report published in Esquire
magazine is that buried report.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Is this top from the JFK days, And inside the
report are some truly chilling ideas. This think tank says
that war is the fundamental idea underpinning all of society. Okay,
that if war stopped, the American economy would collapse. Bombs
(09:03):
are the perfect product. They cost a lot to make
and you can only use them once.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
Sure, if we stopped even having the possibility of war,
American society would collapse. Maybe all of society would collapse.
We would not have any more borders and therefore no
more countries. There would be no allegiance to your country
and no allegiance to its values. If you don't belong
to anything, what are you a part of?
Speaker 1 (09:27):
Sounds like John Lennon was on to something. Imagine.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
I have a note here in my outline the song
you imagine, the song imagine nothing to kill or die for?
I wonder if you can.
Speaker 1 (09:36):
It's easy if you try.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
They basically they've been in this bunker just imagining the imagine.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
But what would this be like they've been imagining.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
Yeah, if we don't have any countries, are we essentially
one super country of planet Earth? And then if one
person rules it? Is that just is there essentially no freedom?
Like is there just one guy ruling the whole earth?
Like whoever is the most powerful man on Earth? Does
he rule the whole Earth?
Speaker 1 (10:03):
Yeah? Because it's like what sort of system would there
be where there's no fighting? Where it's like even if
we were one because we're one country now and there's
plenty of fighting in America.
Speaker 2 (10:12):
Sure, but it's if there's no fighting, I mean, our
our weapons sort of the ultimate checks and balances on
no one country becoming too powerful? Like what what would
happen if all the countries stop fighting each other? They
point out that a lot of like scientific advancements have
(10:32):
been made because of the military. That is true, that
would stop, And the report says, you know a lot
of sort of like pro peace people are like, well, okay, yes,
we would stop spending all this money on bombs and stuff,
But wouldn't it be better to spend all that money
on schools and hospitals. And they basically say, like that
wouldn't work economically, like it would sort of stagnate. We
(10:57):
would end up we would all just end up kind
of broke, like the economy would not function that way.
Speaker 1 (11:02):
Okay, they were right, this is chilling.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
And also we would end up with overpopulation because war
keeps the population under control. Bleak, and then the report
goes on to suggest that if worldwide peace did break out.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
It's funny to think about peace breaking out.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
We could potentially replace war with some other stuff. Yes,
so we could fight aliens.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
What about like the more Olympics, more more physical feats
of competition.
Speaker 2 (11:40):
They literally have, Like we could do blood games, like
we could do like war games. Basically, we could have
a pollution crisis, which we probably are.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
Which we have to.
Speaker 2 (11:54):
Yeah, we could explore space like we could sort of
just you know, turn it into space. We could reintroduce
slavery as a way to sort of keep society in check.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
Keep team spirit going. Yeah, we could have a class
war that would probably happen.
Speaker 2 (12:13):
Or we could just sort of keep inventing crises, like
we could have an earthquake every couple of years, Like
we could you know, have a have a bomb go
off of it. Like we could just keep having crises
that kept the population under control, kept people in a
state of fear. There needs to be some sort of
(12:34):
we can't just live in harmony forever. We would have
to invent some sort of emergency.
Speaker 1 (12:40):
So the conclusion of this report is that a freshman
in college being like, why don't we all just stop fighting?
That what if we all just decided at once no
more war? That that would cause the collapse of society
and we would need to invent other activities for spirit
just to keep ourselves from eating ourselves alive.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
I guess yeah, basically so that we don't evolve into
like cannibalism.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
I guess yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
So before we get to what happened next in the story, Dana,
what do you think of these ideas?
Speaker 1 (13:14):
I mean, look, when you say, like this is a
think tank. I can see how a group of people
getting together and like thinking these ideas. I can see
how it's like plausible. Where yes, the military industrial complex
does like keep the economy going, and thinking about how
much money goes to war. It is depressing to think, like, oh,
our economy or the stock market would probably collapse if
(13:37):
war stopped. But I think I'm skeptical. I think even
without war, like nationalism would still exist, and like global
warming is still a problem that we could deal with,
and like Silicon Valley and technology is sort of its
own arms race, like people are trying to get richer,
Like I think there are other systems in place for
(13:58):
human ambition that aren't war. So it feels like an
interesting thought experiment, but it doesn't like ring true to me. Sure, well,
this is also a show called hoax.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
Yeah, I mean you're right. Yeah, do you think it's
likely that JFK would have commissioned such a study, that
such a study would have then been written, and that
he then would have suppressed it.
Speaker 1 (14:23):
I mean, look, here's the thing. I know this shows
a hoax. So I know I'm supposed to be all
smart and be like no, this is so fake, Esquire magazine.
They got us all. But like, knowing the shady things
that the government was up to during this period, this
does seem very plausible. Sure, I like I do. It
does seem plausible. I think, like the best hoax is
a hoax that you not want to believe, but like
(14:44):
could believe. And if you told me genuinely that the
government had, you know, a group of economists together to
figure this out, and this was the report they came
up with, I'd be like, well, that's fucked up, but
that that's things were happening in the fifties.
Speaker 2 (14:59):
Sure, totally. I mean it's not the most.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
Out there idea.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
I do think that like in groups and out groups
are sort of fundamental to human nature, Like true true equality.
Absolutely everyone is absolutely equal is.
Speaker 1 (15:18):
Like not, no, they're cool kids in kindergarten.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
Yeah, Like that's not how human civilization arose, and like
we're always going to have laws and like we're always
going to have some sort of tears in society. I
don't know that I would go so far as to
say that like war is the natural. Yeah, Dana's horizon,
(15:43):
she agrees with me, just like that. It's like the
natural state of human nature.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
And so yeah, so I'm like, yeah, I'd buy like
some of these ideas.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
This is also one of those things where it's like
this is also nothing knew, Like well, I also world
War two did end the depression, but also like, yeah,
this is the idea behind the movie The Purge, Like
you know what I mean, Like, this is nothing. This
is nothing like the idea that the government would have
come to this conclusion and then be.
Speaker 1 (16:16):
Like what the fuck?
Speaker 2 (16:17):
People would freak out if they knew this.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
I'm like, I would they Like I don't know, Like
would they? Though, Well, here's what I want to clarify.
I don't think the conclusions as you described them to
me and this report sound accurate. I'm like, well, that
sounds a little far fetched, But to me, it does
sound plausible that the government would get a bunch of
economic wonks together and they could come up with something wrong. Sure,
(16:43):
government policy. You know, if you told me that people
in the fifties came up with a wacky idea that
turned out not to be true, that is very plausible. Sure,
So let's go back to the tail, shall we the
detail please?
Speaker 2 (17:00):
So there's sort of three parts to what has now
been revealed. Number one, that top secret officials in the
government are having secret meetings. Number two the findings in
the report, and number three the burial of the report.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
Yes, the suppressing keeping it from the people.
Speaker 2 (17:21):
So these are three slightly they're interconnected, but these are
three slightly different ideas that people could react to. So
you might take objection just to the fact that people
are having secret meetings. You might be a person who's
offended mostly that by the idea that the government is
suppressing reports, or you might be a person who is
mostly reacting to the ideas in the report.
Speaker 1 (17:41):
Yeah, so it's like government having secret meetings. Get over
at babies. That's that's happening. And I'll just say, get
over at babies. Sure, as Danish worts the conclusions of
this report, which are pretty whatever, but then the suppression
that is very scary.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Yeah, I'm just pointing those out because throughout this people
are going to have different reactions to different parts of that,
and it's all going to be mixed together. But I'm
just saying, like when people talk about censorship, they're not
talking about like, what does censorship have to do with
worldwide peace? It doesn't has to do with bearing of
the reports, so like, these are the things that are happening.
Speaker 1 (18:14):
Got it.
Speaker 2 (18:15):
So shortly after the Esquire piece comes out the book,
the Report from.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
Twenty eight thousand words.
Speaker 2 (18:21):
Yes, the twenty eight thousand word book is published by
dial Press, and it's a big, big hit. It is
flying off the shelves. Teachers are assigning it to their students.
Everybody wants to read it. Big ideas, big ideas. It's
the freakonomics of its day. Is totally the freakonomics of
its day. Every government agency in the country is like, no,
it wasn't us. The White House looks into it. Walt Rostau,
(18:46):
the NSA advisor to LBJ, makes a bunch of calls
because he's like, I know this isn't real. I know
this isn't real, but like I you know, like I
technically wasn't there when Kennedy was in office, so like
I mean, technically I have to check.
Speaker 1 (19:03):
He has to do his due diligence.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
So it takes him five days to confirm because Lbj's like,
we didn't fucking do this right, but no, it's not real.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (19:15):
He makes all these calls and everybody he gets in
contact with is like, no, it's not real.
Speaker 1 (19:19):
That is so funny to imagine the White House having
this report and being like, we know it's not real,
but we have to make sure.
Speaker 2 (19:27):
We have to make sure. So he calls everybody he
can think of because the press wants to know, and
he can't just be like no, because I don't think so. Yeah,
he has to be like, no, I checked, and it's
not real. Everyone's reaction to the ideas it's very Doctor
Strangelove had come out three years prior. Oh, and it
(19:49):
I think strikes a very similar tone of like what
if you took the illogic of the Cold War to
an extreme and in a sort of arsical way. So people,
this is a this is a this is a conversation
that the country is ready to have.
Speaker 1 (20:06):
Well, here's the big problem. Also, if the White House
is like, hey, this wasn't us White House lying to you,
that's the whole point of the report. It's like, of
course you would lie. This report says you're a liar. Sure, well,
no kidding, Lewin.
Speaker 2 (20:20):
When anyone asks dial press, hey you publish this is
this real or fake? They point to all the footnotes
in the book and there's a lot of footnotes in
the book and they all refer to real things, so
they're like, well, I don't know, check the footnotes. Footnotes
look real, ohotes. Lewin goes on a press tour. He
goes on a book tour, and he's soaking it up,
(20:42):
and whenever people ask him if it's real, he gives
sort of like koy Kgey answers where he's like, well,
the ideas are real, and the government does have meetings,
so like there's truth in the book. So I don't
know what you think, and it's pretty hard to prove
a negative, and most of the speculation is like okay,
(21:06):
so like this is probably fake, but well, who do
you think wrote it? Because it really this is this
is how those government types talk like this, he really
got the voice right, and in like.
Speaker 1 (21:21):
The kind of QAnon like you can't disprove a conspiracy
theory believer. It's kind of that thing where you're like, okay, well,
even if this meeting wasn't true, the ideas that they
present are true, so it's it's coming out somehow. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:34):
They're very like, well but maybe part of it was true,
or like this one quote, doesn't that sound like this
one guy who works in this one department. I feel
like maybe that guy actually said that one time, or
like he really got the voice right. This is totally
how those think tank guys talk, like if it wasn't
this Lewin, Like what the hell is this?
Speaker 1 (21:53):
So people pretty definitively in the culture don't think that
Lewin wrote it.
Speaker 2 (21:58):
I don't know about definitively in the culture. I would
say in the press and in Washington, Yeah, it is
not being investigated as like, uh oh, we've got a
leak high up in the government, Like there's no one
looking into this, like it's a violation of the Espionage Act.
Speaker 1 (22:16):
Yeah, they know it's not like an actual government documently.
Speaker 2 (22:20):
Yeah, yeah, No. Journalists are looking for the leaker and
the I think probably the FBI has opened the file,
but I don't think they're like tailing Lewin. Yeah, readers,
I'm sure there are believers, but yeah, higher ups are
not taking it seriously. But it it's got the smack
(22:41):
of truth too.
Speaker 1 (22:41):
It's got the smack of truth. I as you're describing it,
I'm like, of course people believe this conspiracy because then
it's the whack a mole of conspiracy theories, because even
if you don't believe like pieces of it, you're like,
but the ideas.
Speaker 2 (22:57):
In the nineteen seventies, early nineteen seventy one, the Pentagon
Papers come out. Yes, that revealed that the government has
been lying about the reasons and progress of the Vietnam War.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
And those papers are real.
Speaker 2 (23:09):
Those papers are real. And when this happens, Leonard Lewin
is like, I think I'm gonna stop lying about leaking
government papers.
Speaker 1 (23:20):
He realized that it's like he didn't want a boy
who cried wolf something actually important.
Speaker 2 (23:24):
He's just like, you know, this is getting a little
it's getting a little hat in here, it's getting a
little hot in this kitchen. I'm gonna go ahead and
give an interview and say, I wrote the whole thing.
By the way I wrote the whole thing. Didn't have
any co write, but I wrote the whole thing. And
I personally also think it helped that he had a
(23:46):
satirical novel that he was trying to sell, so it
helped to put himself as the sole author of this
best selling book. Yes, So here's what actually happened. In
the nineteen fifties and six, there was a satire magazine
in New York called Monocle. Yeah, and it is as
pretentious as it sounds.
Speaker 1 (24:06):
Do you know I think it still exists.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
It doesn't. Oh no, there is a different publication called Monocle,
but it's not a satire.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
Not a satire magazine.
Speaker 2 (24:13):
It's where Nora Efron got her start. Actually, she wrote
a parody of a newspaper that was so good that
the newspaper hired her. That's so funny, And that's how
she got her start in journalism. Lewin was a contributor
at Monocle, and one day the editor, a man named
Victor Navaski, was looking through a newspaper and he saw
(24:34):
an article about how there had been talk of Piece
in some region or some conflict and because of that,
some stocks had actually dipped. And he saw the phrase
peace scare, and he was like, look at this. And
so he and his fellow editors were like, we gotta
do something with this.
Speaker 1 (24:53):
Yeah, it is silly and stupid to imagine that when
Piece has declared the economy panics.
Speaker 2 (25:00):
Yes, So they brainstormed on these ideas and they were like,
we should do sort of a book about this, and
they hired Lewin to write it.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Oh, all right, it wasn't even his idea.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
It was not his idea. I mean, he contributed a
lot of the ideas in it, but they sort of
just took it to him because he was like a
little older and sort of had a i think a
more serious bent to him that he could get the
voice of these think tankers.
Speaker 1 (25:27):
Yeah, clearly he nailed it.
Speaker 2 (25:29):
He was particularly satirizing the logic without emotion thinking that
was very popular in Washington at the time.
Speaker 1 (25:39):
Yes, Oh, you might find it ridiculous, but this is
what happens when peace is declared. I'm not getting cloudy
eyed about people dying.
Speaker 2 (25:48):
Yeah, and that they were sort of you know, the
logic of using nuclear bombs is cruel and insane. Yes,
where it's like bombing for peace, it's like you're killing children,
Like what do you what are you talking about?
Speaker 1 (26:04):
You're like fucking for virginity. Indeed, got it have been
so good in the seventies.
Speaker 2 (26:09):
That's the bumper sticker. And the reason it sounded so
real is that he did a bunch of research. Yeah,
and he talked to experts and people in the government
and got their voice right footnotes, and he got real
footnotes E. L. Doctor Oe, the novelist who wrote rag
Time edited the book. He was another Monocle guy.
Speaker 1 (26:30):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Yeah, And dial Press was in on it the whole time.
They knew it was fake.
Speaker 1 (26:34):
What about Esquire do we know?
Speaker 2 (26:37):
I actually don't know.
Speaker 1 (26:38):
I wonder. I bet they seems like the magazine people
would have been like having boozy martini lunches. I bet
if it was a Monical team. The Esquire team also knew.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
Yeah, probably probably. Monicle had published satire books before, and
usually with some something on the cover saying like from
the editors at Monocle, But they decided not to for
this one because they thought that if they tried to
make it look real, people would have more of a
discussion about the ideas and America's dependence on the military economically,
(27:14):
and that's a conversation that they were trying to provoke.
So it was less about fooling people and more about
starting a conversation.
Speaker 1 (27:20):
Yeah, I mean it's a conversational we should still be having, honest.
Speaker 2 (27:24):
Absolutely, Lewin included two fake footnotes, so that was his
little wink wink in case anyone wanted to do like
an insane amount of research that it was fake. And
another tip off in case anyone wanted to fact check
it is that the Iron Mountain Bunker is a real place,
but it was not open at the time that Lewin
(27:48):
said the meeting took place. So just if you wanted
to do a timeline. Technically, the book does contain logical errors, but.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
It's like that's the classic conspiracy theory thinking where then
they're like, well, if they were lying about all of this,
they were lying about when the bunker opened. They weren't
gonna admit that the bunker was open. Do you want
to know about the Iron Mountain Bunker?
Speaker 2 (28:14):
Do we not care?
Speaker 1 (28:15):
I don't. I mean, give me like two sets, like
what is.
Speaker 2 (28:18):
Well, so it is interesting to me. It's in Germantown,
New York, it is right, it's just a hollowed out.
Speaker 1 (28:24):
Mountain and it's a real bunker.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
So right now, it's a place that companies used to
store documents that you legally can't destroy, so like point
of sale documents and like birth certificates and death certificates
and stuff. But back in the sixties it was like
corporate bomb shelters.
Speaker 1 (28:46):
Wait, is it a government bunker? No, it's just a
private bunker.
Speaker 2 (28:51):
Yeah, it's it was at the time like an underground
hotel for like oil executives to ride out the annihilation
of New York. Like it's outside the blast zone of
New York. So the idea was that it had a
copy of all the stuff that you would need to
like run an oil company, and also some apartments. So
(29:12):
if you were high up at Exon and you got
word that a missile was headed to New York, you
could like head up to the bunker with your family
and like wait out the bombing. Wow.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
Yeah, all right, yeah, and that is interesting that existed. Indeed,
it possibly still exists, I guess with all the billionaires
in like New Zealand. Now, Yes, it is a little.
Speaker 2 (29:37):
Like creepy to think about, and it is people aren't
not preparing for the end of the world. Yeah, all right,
So right after I think, I don't quite know the timeline,
this is all happening right at the beginning of the seventies, okay,
but I think right after Lewin reveals himself Watergate happened,
which I think proves a that the government is totally
(29:58):
lying to you, yep, and be the they're not really
smart enough to get away with it. Yes, just circling
back to Nora Ephron because I love to talk about her.
Speaker 1 (30:07):
It's a perfect This is a perfect full circle, perfect
full circle.
Speaker 2 (30:10):
Her favorite hobby for the next what forty years getting
drunk at dinner parties telling people who deep for it is?
Speaker 1 (30:16):
Yeah, because she was the then wife then later ex wife.
Speaker 2 (30:20):
Of Carl Bernstein, she knew the whole time. Love to
tell people she's an icon. She kind of how I
find modeled my life. Oh, absolutely, both of our number
one Yeah. Yeah. By the nineteen eighties, the book is
out of print, all right, Hey, yeah, I mean it
was a best seller and then it, you know, sort
of faded.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
Yeah, people knew it was fake. It was a less interesting.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
The Berlin Wall comes down and the Cold War is over,
And if you're interested in knowing more about the CIA
potentially being involved in the Berlin Wall coming down, I
highly recommend the podcast Wind of Change, which is absolutely fascinating.
But it's about did the CIA help write a rock
song to foment youth enthusiasm for the Berlin Wall coming down?
(31:09):
And it's a good it's a good look at what
silly spy stuff is. And it's not that these ideas
aren't still relevant. Yeah, like military spending is obviously very influential.
I do think that, like, you know, we were both
around for like around, we're both alive and cognizant of
(31:31):
the news for like WMDs in Iraq and.
Speaker 1 (31:35):
Post nine to eleven warfare.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
No blood for oil, and like why are we really
going to war? And who is it making rich? So
all of those ideas are still worth talking about. But
post Cold War report from Iron Mountain is just not
relevant in the way that it was because like, the
permanent state of worldwide war is not what we have.
(32:00):
We are not stockpiling arms in the same way.
Speaker 1 (32:03):
There are global conflicts, but there's not like an active
arms race that everyone's talking about.
Speaker 2 (32:09):
No, we are not in a state of war readiness
at all times, on the brink of nuclear annihilation at
all times. Like war games are not really a thing.
Like the brinksmanship in Cuba is not really a thing.
So I really wish that that is where the story ended.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
Oh no, and this is the part that I.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
Didn't want to talk about because that was a really
fun hoax.
Speaker 1 (32:40):
Yeah, silly magazine writers having having a laugh, having a
best selling book. Yeah, print media thinking and having a
laugh during the Cold War, trying to get through the day,
trying to get people thinking about the big issues.
Speaker 2 (32:52):
Thinking about the big issues, using satire to make a point.
Speaker 1 (32:55):
Yeah, that's all important, that's all good.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
So I'm going to speed through the rest of it.
Oh no, because this is just not the tone of
our podcast. Report from Iron Mountain has unfortunately sort of
had a second life in conspiracy.
Speaker 1 (33:14):
Say yeah, yeah, you saw this coming out mile away.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Really plausible, I'm shouting into the mic at this point.
There's a lot of people who either think that it's
real or think that the ideas are real enough that
they should just believe it.
Speaker 1 (33:29):
Yeah, And I'm sure telling them that a satire author
wrote them does not get through to these people, because again,
the footnotes footnotes are.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
Real because they get all their news from podcasters who
started as stand ups anyway, So what does the word
satire even mean to them?
Speaker 1 (33:45):
True.
Speaker 2 (33:46):
In the late nineteen eighties, Lewin finds out that copies
of Report from Iron Mountain are being printed and sold
by a small press that purports to be academic but
is actually a fringe group devoted to spreading the theory
that the Holocaust never happened. Who is buying it? Right
wing groups, white nationalists and heavily armed militias. And his
(34:10):
lawyers are like, you can't do this. This is a
book and copyright law exists. Yeah, And their lawyers are like,
government files are in public domain and he's like, it's
not a government file. I said that I wrote it.
And they're like, you said that because the CIA told
you to And he's like, no, see, you never told
(34:31):
me to do that.
Speaker 1 (34:32):
Did he sue them? Did it work?
Speaker 2 (34:33):
He sued them and it worked sort of right in
time for the Internet to make that obsolete. I mean,
you can just pirate books now. But he did win
and they had to stop selling it.
Speaker 1 (34:47):
Yeah, but now it's just on the internet.
Speaker 2 (34:49):
And now it's just everywhere I mean, which is as
long as you know it's a like whatever. I'm not
going to ever say like it's okay to pirate books,
but like, I don't think reading this it's not like
reading Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Like you're allowed
to read this book as long as you know it's
a hoax.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
Also you can I think it's worthwhile even to read
and think about these ideas because the military industrial complex
is still a massive thing and problem, and like it's
it's interesting. This is like to me, as you brought
this up, I'm like, that's like an interesting like college
philosophy thought experiment.
Speaker 2 (35:21):
Absolutely, like this was meant to be read for public consumption,
Like as long as you know that it is very
much like a thought experiment that is making fun of
a particular group's way of thinking.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
It's a modest it's trying to read it is what
it is.
Speaker 2 (35:35):
It absolutely it literally is.
Speaker 1 (35:37):
It's a most proposal, which again people should still read
as long as you know not to eat Irish babies.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
Conspiracy theorists point to Iron Mountain to back up all
sorts of ideas from the government is lying to you,
which is of course sometimes true. To there's a secret
couple running the country, which is not really true and
is almost always anti semitic, yep, to they just want
to keep us at war all of the time, which
is like even if you think that and can find
(36:04):
evidence for that, like you just can't say that every
single world leader thinks that, because like they just don't,
Like that's not a thing that every single world leader thinks.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
No, they're not all in on it. Although, if you
want proof that the government is lying to you, Watergate happened.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
Yeah, and then a bunch of like and then Nixon
had to resign, you know what I mean. Like, there's
just as much evidence that people are trying to oust
conspiracy theorists as there are that everyone's in on the
conspiracy anyway.
Speaker 1 (36:33):
I also, I mean, this is preaching to people listening
to a podcast called Hoax. People aren't that good at things.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
They're dumb. They're dumb as well.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
We can't people can't all get together and like orchestrate
these massive conspiracies. It's just not possible. Have you ever
tried to do a group project. I'm yeah, See, this
is the rabbit hole. We just cannot can't knock it down. It.
Speaker 2 (36:56):
Another argument that people tend to say is that in
the absence of war, there needs to be some kind
of societal enemy, and that the government will create one.
And you can use this argument to call anything a
false flag operation ding Ding ding Ding dangerous. People have
tied report from Iron Mountain to the Oklahoma City bombing,
(37:16):
and it has influenced writing that has influenced QAnon. I'm
not going to get into any of that, but if
you are interested in looking it up for yourself. The
writings to Google are silent weapons for quiet wars. And
Behold a Pale Horse, which I really want to stress,
are writings by and for people not quite in touch
(37:39):
with reality. I am not endorsing those writings. I'm saying
those are the writings that have taken Report from Iron
Mountain out of its proper context.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
And are using it to fuel conspiracy theories.
Speaker 2 (37:53):
Yes, slightly more on the vibe of our podcast, Dana.
Have you seen the film JFK.
Speaker 1 (37:58):
I haven't, well, I will tell you.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
JFK is all about Kevin Costner plays a real guy
trying to investigate the I would say, the who and
the what of the assassination of President Kennedy?
Speaker 1 (38:14):
Does this, say alvar Stone one? Is this the one
where they sort of implied that it was LBJ, They
implied that LBJ was in on it, and they.
Speaker 2 (38:22):
Say that it was the CIA. Oh cool, They out
and out say that it was the CIA.
Speaker 1 (38:26):
Yeah, but this is again a fiction, a fiction movie,
but presenting it like like they did the investigation.
Speaker 2 (38:31):
It's a it's a fiction movie about a real trial.
Oh interesting, So it's a fiction a movie about a
real theory. Yes, so like the the investigating that they do.
I think they actually did, but it is to back
up conclusions that have not necessarily been proven. And they
show conversations and confessions that may or may not have
(38:55):
taken place as depicted. Interesting, and you know Alliver Stones
were allowed to whatever he wants. Yeah, actors, it's a movie.
All of the movie is about the who and the what,
except for a very long scene right in the middle,
which is about the why, in which Coosner goes to
Washington to talk to a character played by Donald Sutherland
(39:16):
who only goes by mister X, and he's like, didn't
you ever wonder why would the CIA want to kill
their own president? And he lays out this whole argument
about they wanted to kill him because he wanted to
end the war in Cuba and they couldn't have that
because war is the natural state of society.
Speaker 3 (39:38):
Oh no.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
And it is a lot of ideas that have come
from many places, including Report from Iron Mountain. And the
character that Donald Sutherland is playing is based on a
real guy, General Proudy, who has definitely read and believe
Report from Iron Mountain.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
But again, Report from Iron Mountain was a satire of
think tank thinking yes and taking an idea from a
satirical text and putting it into the mouth of a
character in a movie who goes by mister X is
like fine, and also Donald Sutherland, who's like an actor
(40:18):
with a real gravitas.
Speaker 2 (40:20):
Yes, and you know who defended that decision is Nora Ephron.
I just wanted to just we had to mention her
a third time. But it just is funny that, like,
you know, Kennedy was killed before this book was even written,
so like it all like.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
But this movie wasn't made before this book was written.
Speaker 2 (40:39):
No, this movie was made in the nineties. Yeah, So
like it all circles back to people will latch onto
any idea that confirms the thing that they want to say,
even if it's just to like make their screenplay better. Yep,
which is fine, because you should make your screenplay better.
(41:00):
But like just always just be careful. Just because it
sounds really good and just because it makes a theory
of the assassination makes sense doesn't mean it's real. And like,
even if that is why the CIA killed Kennedy, that
doesn't mean that war is the natural state of human beings, Like,
(41:22):
even if the director of the CIA believes it and
used it to justify killing Kennedy, that doesn't mean that
you have to sit in your car and believe that
war is the natural state of human beings. I believe
in peace.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
Well, that's also what I was saying. I was like,
even if you believe that the report from Iron Mountain
was a thing that happened, that all these you know,
government thinking people got together and came up with us
people were wrong in the fifties all the time. They
had a bunch of ideas that were wrong.
Speaker 2 (41:46):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (41:47):
So it's like, even if you think the thing is true,
that doesn't mean that the report is right. Yes, but
it is a good I mean, I think at this
point in Hoax, I do think it is worthwhile that
we're talking about the ways that conspiracy theory thinking have
become so like dangerous in our public consciousness, that people
latch onto conspiracy thinking to make themselves feel important and
(42:11):
to then be terrible people.
Speaker 2 (42:13):
Yeah, I'll just wrap up now.
Speaker 1 (42:15):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
Leonard Lewin died in nineteen ninety nine. His daughter sold
the remaining pirated editions of the report with a big
sticker on him that said, hoax.
Speaker 1 (42:28):
Hoax satire.
Speaker 2 (42:29):
Yeah, I think that report from Iron Mountain should just
live alongside like Hunger Games or Atlas Shrugged as like
political fiction. Yeah, has inspired a lot of real world thinking,
and you can think about it as a thing that
is totally valid to inspire your conclusions, but it is
(42:52):
not real. And I will also just say, like when
government documents are leaked, the government really to make an
example out of the leakers. We know the names of
these people, Chelsea Manning, reality winner, Edward Snowden. When documents
from inside the government leak, you will know about it.
(43:13):
They don't just let that slide. So that's a big
tip off if you're ever wondering if a document has
actually leaked, is someone on trial? No, then it's probably
not real.
Speaker 1 (43:28):
And you know what send their conspiracy thinking against them
where it's like, oh, no, one's on trial. That means
they wanted it to get out. But then don't believe
it because the government wants you to believe it. Indeed, Dan,
I feel like we've already played would you have fallen?
Speaker 2 (43:42):
For this? But like what's your takeaway? I don't know
who would you cast in the movie?
Speaker 1 (43:47):
I mean, would you go to Iron Mountain and talk
about peace. No, I mean Iron Mountain sounds like a
really scary, depressing place that would make me anxious. I
would have fallen for it. I don't think I necessarily
would have believed the conclusion. I like to think I'm
a critical enough thinker where even if I was like, oh,
a bunch of government guys got together and put some
theories in place, I think I would have wanted to
(44:08):
read that critically. But it sounds plausible that a bunch
of government guys got together and wrote something because that
they be doing that.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
Sure, yeah, the government guys would come up with a
document that justifies the need for perpetual war is not
like the most out there idea, and that the government
would then suppress it is also not the most out
there idea.
Speaker 1 (44:34):
But then when you tell me, oh, this was written
by a satire writer with a satire magazine, I'm like, oh, yeah,
they'd be doing that too, satire writers be writing satire. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:43):
And then if you say, like, oh, the government just
wants you to think that, I'm like, no, they would.
Speaker 1 (44:47):
Never work that hard, you know what I mean? Like,
that's that I don't buy.
Speaker 2 (44:51):
I would be like, no, they would never because this
report doesn't contain like the government would only go that
far to cover up a cover up if it was
like facts, yeah, or like like the Kennedy assasset, you
know what I mean. Like they would if a book
came out that accused I don't know, like something freaking
(45:14):
crazy that was about like Lincoln was a pedophile or something,
you know what I mean, and then it was like, oh, no,
that was written as satire. And then someone was like, no,
the CIA made them say that was satire. I'd be like, yeah,
maybe the CIA would go through that trouble because that
would be a real national embarrassment. But just like a
report about ideas, I'm like, I cannot see the government
(45:35):
going through all that trouble to cover up ida O
a weekend brainstorming session. Yeah, or like no, it would
have to be something so embarrassing that accused America of
like having violated the Geneva conventions. Yeah, that would destroy
our national reputation that they would then force a guy
(45:57):
at gunpoint to say he wrote it as satire. For
me to believe that it was a cover up, If
it's just ideas about what might happen in a hypothetical
future that's never gonna come true when there's worldwide peace.
I'm like, yeah, they're never gonna bother covering that up.
The government is so busy.
Speaker 1 (46:16):
They don't care. And again it's an economic analysis of
a hypothetical yeah.
Speaker 2 (46:22):
Or even like a sociological analysis. Yeah, that is spooky
and depressing, but not really a cull to arms.
Speaker 1 (46:32):
No interesting though, you know what, I'm glad that in
the seventies people were thinking about these big ideas. Yeah,
good job, monicle, you got the conversation, you.
Speaker 2 (46:42):
Got the conversation, and look forth still having it.
Speaker 1 (46:44):
Now, Lizzie, where can the people find us?
Speaker 2 (46:48):
The people can find us at Hoax the Podcast, Yes,
on Instagram, on Instagram, Where can they find.
Speaker 1 (46:55):
You, Dana Schwartz with three z's on Instagram and TikTok.
Speaker 2 (47:00):
Indeed, they can also email us at Hoax Thepodcast at
gmail dot com.
Speaker 1 (47:05):
Hoax Thepodcast at gmail dot com. We will read your email.
Speaker 2 (47:07):
We will read your email, and I would also say
it is us reading your email. Yeah, so that's a
great way to contact us.
Speaker 1 (47:13):
And Lizzie's cat Matilda will also read your email. Indeed,
my cat can't read you.
Speaker 2 (47:17):
No, sadly.
Speaker 1 (47:18):
Emailing us personally a less good way to contact us. Yeah, no,
you don't.
Speaker 2 (47:24):
Email Hoax The podcast at gmail dot cost easy to remember,
easy peasy, Please rate, review, subscribe If you're listening to
the show, it does help a lot. Spotify, iHeart app,
Apple podcast wherever you are, leave a five stars, and
please please hoax responsibly.
Speaker 1 (47:43):
Yes. If there's one lesson to take away from this episode,
it is Hoax Responsibly.
Speaker 3 (47:48):
Bye.
Speaker 2 (47:58):
Hoax is a production of iHeart Podcasts. Our hosts are
Danish Schwortz and Lizzie Logan. Our executive producers are Matt
Frederick and Trevor Young, with supervising producer Rima L. Kali
and producers Nomes Griffin and Jesse Funk. Our theme music
was composed by Laine Montgomery. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
(48:20):
your podcasts. Thanks for listening.
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