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INTRODUCTION
Be forewarned. If you are perfectly comfortable and satisfied with your own particular view of humankind, religion, history, and the world, read no further.
If you truly believe that humanity has almost reached the peak of its scientific and spiritual fulfillment and that the corporate-owned mass media is keeping you well enough informed, stop here.
But if you are one of those millions who look at the daily news, scratch your head in wonder, and ask, "What in the world is going on?," or if you entertain questions of who we are, where we came from, and where we’re all going, you are in for a joy ride.
This book deals with the secrets of government, hidden history, and clandestine religion; the secrets of wealth, power, and control; the secrets rarely recorded in the history books and never mentioned in the mass media. This material may be disturbing and unsettling to some. But no one has ever gained wisdom by studying material that only reinforced their own predetermined ideas.
Addressed here will be issues many would have us believe occupy only the fringe of knowledge. But how often have fringe issues suddenly become areas of major concern? Older readers might recall that irritating but seemingly inconsequential German radical who gained power in Europe in the 1930s. Then there was that small conflict halfway around the world in an obscure place called Vietnam. Or we might remember that little-noticed burglary of Democratic Party headquarters in 1972.
The book also deals with conspiracy, an activity long decried by the major media despite the fact that the American judicial system regularly convicts people for criminal conspiracy.
Do secret societies truly exist? Is there really a secret government? Is there a worldwide conspiracy bent on the subversion of freedom and democracy? Or is such talk just the irrational ramblings of "conspiracy theorists"?
The answer all depends to whom you choose to listen. And too many people writing about conspiracy—on both sides of the question—have their own particular agenda. It is time we step back and take the broader view of our world and its history.
As the new millennium begins, the American public is becoming more aware of one not-so-secret conspiracy: that for half the year they work for the. Government. About the first six months of any given year is spent making money which disappears into taxes before the worker even gets his or her check. Withholding this invisible tax money has, over the years, caused most citizens to forget just how much tax burden they really carry. And this is not to even mention the daily sales, state, city, and other taxes which openly burden us. The simple British tax on tea said to have precipitated the American Revolution was a pittance by comparison.
Despite assurances of a healthy economy by the skewed statistics of the mass media and politicians, polls indicate the public feel an increasing uneasiness about the direction of our national life.
This may be why more and more thoughtful people are taking a serious look at conspiracies and the secret groups that spawn them. The Internet is filled with Web sites and chat rooms where conspiracy is the watchword. More and more books and periodicals are being published filled with conspiracies ranging from the secrets of the Crusaders to the JFK assassination.
Yet despite the length and breadth of the Information Highway, the average American remains woefully ignorant. That is not to imply they are stupid or mentally challenged. They have simply not been exposed to the information now available. Many thoughtful, educated people in a variety of fields—physicians, lawyers, computer experts, stock brokers, accountants, bankers, merchants, scientists, teachers, etc. —are totally in the dark about a wide variety of issues and the connections between them concerning who truly rules the United States.
Primary causes for such ignorance are the lack of time to educate ourselves and our reliance on a corporate-owned mass media which does not present the information in all its broadest implications. As A. J. Liebling once said, freedom of the press is for those who own the presses ... or the radio and TV stations.
This book deals with these questions. But before there can be answers, the issue of conspiracy must be addressed.
The concept of conspiracy has long been anathema to most Americans, who have been conditioned by the mass media to believe that conspiracies against the public only exist in banana republics or communist nations.
This simplistic view, encouraged by a media devoted to maintaining a squeaky-clean image of the status quo, fails to take into account human history or the subtleties of the word conspiracy.
The word is derived from the Latin conspirare, literally meaning to breathe together, to act or think in harmony. In modern times, conspiracy has taken on a sinister connotation. Most dictionaries now offer two definitions of the word:
One definition is vile, the other less so.
Secrecy is the connecting tissue found throughout man’s past. There are secrets between individuals and groups as well as secrets to be kept by both church and government authorities. There are political secrets, even secrets of finance and commerce.
Obviously, a conspiracy among coworkers to buy the boss a present is not the same level of conspiracy as bank robbers scheming their next job. Likewise, the small merchant who keeps his business plan secret from his competitors is not participating in a conspiracy equal to corporate leaders plotting to fix prices.
The key to an evil conspiracy is the intent of the secrecy.
While some secrets may be benign—why spoil the surprise birthday party by telling? —other secrets, such as suppressing cures for cancer or AIDS or fomenting war, would be considered despicable by people of conscience. Those secrets that cost or ruin lives, that prevent people from living together in harmony, and are used for control or undue profit are unacceptable to most people. Therefore, whoever conspires to keep such secrets must be carefully scrutinized by everyone concerned with individual freedom.
Columnist Stewart Alsop once wrote, knowledge is power, and power is the most valuable commodity in government. So whoever knows the secrets controls the knowledge and therefore holds power. Many people today feel that a mere handful of persons and organizations control much of the global knowledge. This knowledge is jealously guarded by secrecy. It turns the old adage "What you don’t know can’t hurt you" right on its head. What you don’t know can hurt you!
The issue of conspiracy also lies at the heart of how one views history. Here there are only two views: accidental or conspiratorial.
The former view is that history is simply a series of accidents, or acts of God, which world leaders are powerless to alter or prevent. One adherent of this view was President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski. Brzezinski, today a member of the executive committee of the secretive Trilateral Commission, said in 1981,
Another supporter of the accidental view of history was journalist and self-described "secular humanist" George Johnson. He wrote that the notion of conspiracies has been "pushed by right-wing extremists since the beginning of the century," indicating "that the paranoid style of American politics didn’t die with Senator Joseph McCarthy."
The conspiratorial view, on the other hand, could more accurately be called the "cause and effect" view. Obviously, accidents occur. Planes, trains, and cars crash. Ships sink. But in history, it is clear that human planning most often precipitates events.
So why haven’t we heard more about such secret planning?
According to conspiracy researchers Jonathan Vankin and John Whalen the American public’s attitudes are shaped by a sanitized "Disney" view of both history and current events. "The ’Disney version’ of history could just as easily be called the “New York Times version” or the ’TV news version’ or the ’college textbook version’ they wrote.
Anthony C. Sutton, a London-born economics professor who was a research fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution, agreed that an "Establishment history" dominates textbooks, publishing, the media, and library shelves.
This refrain was echoed by President Bill Clinton’s academic mentor, Dr. Carroll Quigley. His 1966 book, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time, revealed his insider knowledge of modern secret societies. Quigley said it was withdrawn suddenly by a major New York publisher. "I am now quite sure that Tragedy and Hope was suppressed...," Quigley wrote in the mid-1970s.
Researchers and writers—such as the late Gary Allen, A. Ralph Epperson, G. Edward Griffin, Dr. John Coleman, Jonathan Vankin, Anthony C. Sutton, and Eustace Mullins to name but a few—have written about conspiracies for many years. But these works are nearly always produced by small publishers with limited distribution. These authors charge that the mass media is controlled by corporate America, which has prevented any meaningful exposure of their material.
This concern is echoed even outside the U.S. A French publisher once was quoted as saying,
To this one might add their membership in secret societies.
Many conspiracy authors have written about dark plots to impose a "New World Order" from within modern secret societies such as the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Illuminati, the Committee of 300, and others. Objective researchers point to the absence of libel suits against such writers as lending some credence to their views. Yet the mainstream news media rarely sees fit to discuss—much less investigate—such accusations.
Yet with the arrival of a new millennium, the theme of conspiracy has found its way into every aspect of American life—from books, TV, and film treatment to politics. Even the president of the United States is not immune to the lure of conspiracies.
hi 1991, newly installed President Bill Clinton appointed his close friend and golfing buddy Webster Hubbell associate attorney general of the Department of Justice. In a recent memoir, Friends in High Places, Hubbell wrote that Clinton told him,
The president and his top appointee in the Justice Department can’t get a straight answer? Who’s in charge?
Following Hubbell’s disclosure, Dr. Steven Greer, director of the Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence (CSETI), revealed that in 1993 he gave a three-hour briefing on the reality of UFOs to then-CIA director Admiral James Woolsey. Greer said Woolsey was stymied in his attempts to verify Greer’s information and was unable to obtain the relevant documents in CIA files.
When it comes to this nation’s deepest, darkest secrets, it appears there are powers even higher than the president of the United States and the director of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Conspiracy writers and government officials are not alone in suspecting conspiracies.
A 1997 Scripps-Howard News Service poll in conjunction with Ohio University resulted in these remarkable statistics:
Reacting to this poll, the executive director of the Washington Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, Curtis Cans, lamented, "Paranoia is killing this country."
But is it truly paranoia? Is there really no one out there conspiring to gain wealth and power? An old wheeze reminds us, "Just because you are paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you!"
It is a growing belief that certain individuals with vast wealth and power, not generally known to the public, are the real masters in the United States and the world. "Power is a fact of life in America, but most Americans are far removed from it. Secrecy is power’s chief tool. Government seems distant, yet somehow domineering. We are increasingly isolated from one another—stuck in front of computer and television screens, prisoners behind windshields. There is a frustrating feeling of disconnection to modern American life.... Conspiracy theories try to put the pieces back together," wrote Jonathan Vankin, a journalist who has studied a wide variety of conspiracy theories involving the U.S. government.
Conspiracy theories are an attempt to grasp the "big picture" of history.
Less reflective in his thinking was author Johnson, who set the tone for the Reagan years with the 1983 publication of his book Architects of Fear: Conspiracy Theories and Paranoia in American Politics, an outgrowth of a series of articles he wrote as a reporter for the Minneapolis Star. Johnson stated that a large number of Americans simply cannot accept the idea that "there are a number of ways to interpret events," adding confidently, "there is not a single all-embracing system." Johnson said paranoid Americans "build elaborate systems explaining all the world’s troubles as part of a conspiracy" to rationalize their fear and hatred rather than accept what he described as a "pluralistic" view of history, economics, and politics.
Having said that, Johnson was forced to admit that "neither the historical nor the sociological analysis explains why so many conspiracy theorists construct such strikingly similar worldviews. Furthermore, he failed to note that those who sincerely believe that conspiracies don’t exist only benefit those who may be conspiring.
"Elites, not masses, govern America," concluded academics Thomas R. Dye and L. Harmon Zeigler in their book The Irony of Democracy.
The idea that a small, wealthy ruling elite—an oligarchy—controls America appears to be well supported by the facts. A disproportionate amount of America’s resources is controlled by a handful of its 265 million population. According to a 1983 study by the Federal Reserve Board, a mere 2 percent of U.S. families control 54 percent of the nation’s wealth, and only 10 percent of the people own 86 percent of the net financial assets. The majority of American families—55 percent—have zero or negative net worth. This study excluded the net worth of institutions, most of which are owned or controlled by the above-mentioned 2 percent.
This cycle of the rich getting richer while the poor get poorer has been accelerating since the 1960s through both Republican and Democratic administrations. It gained more momentum in the 1990s, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. From 1992 to 1994, the wealthiest 5 percent’s share of the national income rose 14 percent, nearly twice that of everyone else’s gain during the previous twenty-five years.
Current figures are even more gruesome. The average worker’s median pay in 1998 — adjusted for inflation — is one full dollar below the 1973 hourly rate. During the past twenty years, the income gap between males with a college education and those with none has grown from 42 percent to 89 percent. Union jobs have borne the brunt of this "downsizing." In 1970, the unions representing steel and auto workers counted nearly three million members. Today, membership is below one million.
"We have evolved into a two-tier society where people in the knowledge industries prosper, and those without a college education or technical skills fall by the wayside," noted U.S. News & World Report’s editor-in-chief Mortimer B. Zuckerman. Many are now questioning if this winnowing of the American, middle class is truly natural evolution or conscious planning for a "New World Order”
It is widely reported that the United States uses the world’s natural resources far out of proportion to its percentage of the planet’s population. It is also an uncontested fact that as the new millennium dawns, the United States stands alone as the world’s preeminent power.
So who really controls the United States and, hence, the world?
Everyone’s heard how "they" own the vast majority of resources, manipulate stocks, control prices, and avoid taxes. "They" also maintain over energy, medicine, armaments, and manufacturing by suppressing new technologies.
And "they" wield undue influence over the news media and world governments with their control of multinational corporations as well as private organizations such as England’s Royal Institute of International Affairs, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Trilateral Commission.
"They" also belong to secret societies such as the Illuminati, Skull and Bones, Knights of Malta, and the inner circles of Freemasonry.
But who exactly are "they"? Who are the men — few women seem to be included—that may well control the destiny of planet Earth? Why do they act in secrecy and why are they attracted to secret organizations? What secrets do they possess that allow them to assume the role of a ruling elite? More important, what are their goals and agendas?
Many people have heard of the modern secret societies named above. But few have had the opportunity to learn of the details of their origins, intentions, and connections. Therefore it is natural to question just how much influence or control these groups may have over real events.
This book is a study of these secret societies—both modern and ancient—and their role in world history, an attempt to uncover their secrets, to search for the true meaning of their mysteries.
What becomes clear to even the most casual researcher is that secret societies not only do exist but have played key roles in world affairs over the centuries. What is unclear is exactly who they are and how many are involved. And what are the connections between these groups? After all, they are secret societies.
In 1909, Walter Rathenau of General Electric in Germany, said, "Three hundred men, all of whom know one another, direct the economic destiny of Europe and choose their successors from among themselves." Rathenau’s figure may have provided the basis for conspiracy author Dr. John Coleman’s claim that a "Committee of 300" controls a "secret, upper-level parallel government that runs Britain and the U.S."
Joseph P. Kennedy, sire of the famed Kennedy family, once remarked, "Fifty men have run America and that’s a high figure."
In describing who rules the United States today, David Wallechinsky and Irving Wallace, authors of the popular The People’s Almanac, echoed high school civics classes by listing the president, two-house legislature, and the nine-member Supreme Court. They also mentioned state, county, and city governments but correctly noted that "most of their laws can be voided by the federal government."
But what about hidden power and control? In a section entitled "Who REALLY rules?" these authors stated,
Okay, but who controls this "military-industrial complex"?
It has not only been fringe conspiracy theorists who have spoken out about hidden control in the world.
British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli as far back as 1856 told the House of Commons,
President Woodrow Wilson, who, as will be seen, was intimately connected with conspiratorial power, wrote,
U.S. Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter once revealed, "The real rulers in Washington are invisible, and exercise power from behind the scenes."
In a letter dated November 23, 1933, newly elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote to President Woodrow Wilson’s top adviser, Colonel Edward House, "The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson."
Roosevelt’s son Elliot wrote, "There are within our world perhaps"! only a dozen organizations which shape the courses of our various des- I tinges as rigidly as the regularly constituted governments."
Warnings about a secret government in the United States have been voiced by many people over the years. Former New York mayor John F. Hylan stated in 1922,
Colonel L. Fletcher Prouty (retired) served as a Focal Point liaison officer between the Pentagon and the CIA from 1955 to 1963. From his vantage point, Prouty was able to witness the control mechanisms over both intelligence and the military.
Writing in 1973, Prouty said the United States is run by a "Secret Team," an "inner sanctum of a new religious order" answerable only to themselves.
Prouty wrote,
The skeptic should note how these same names will continually crop up in connection with modern secret societies.
The great innovative thinker R. Buckminster Fuller also came to understand that the United States is ruled by powerful men behind the scenes. "The USA is not run by its would-be ’democratic’ government," he wrote shortly before his death in 1983.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt, himself closely connected to many of the prominent members of the secret societies, once remarked, "In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way."
Another insider who confirmed that a plot was afoot was America’s first secretary of defense, James Forrestal, who may have paid with his life for his forthrightness. Beginning in 1947, Forrestal voiced his concern that government leaders were consistently making concessions to the Soviets. He had amassed more than three thousand pages of notes, which he told a friend would be turned into a book to expose the real motives of his superiors.
Forrestal, who was privy to many secrets—he was listed as an original member of a super secret group in charge of the UFO issue according to the controversial MJ-12 documents—resigned his office at the request of President Truman on March 2, 1949. Two months later, again at the request of Truman, Forrestal entered Bethesda Naval Hospital for a routine examination. A doctor assured his brother that Forrestal was well but refused to allow either the brother or the family priest to see him. On the day that his brother came to take him from the hospital, Forrestal’s body was found on a lower floor of the hospital with a rope around his neck. Officials claimed Forrestal had committed suicide, but many people— both then and now—disbelieved this verdict. His notes and diaries were taken and held by the government for more than a year before a sanitized version was finally released to the public.
Although various officials claimed Forrestal was insane at the time, his unbalanced state must have provoked an ability to see into the future. Just before leaving for Bethesda, Forrestal told a friend that American soldiers would soon be dying in Korea. This statement came fifteen months before the North Koreans launched a "surprise" attack on the South.
Another crazy man who voiced a prophetic vision of war was Senator Joseph McCarthy, who mistook evidence of a worldwide conspiracy as support for his own prejudice against Communism.
McCarthy, who caused such misery in his misguided and zealous attack on Communism, nevertheless was on track in his assessment of the conspiracy to promote war for profit. He charged that the Yalta agreements of 1945 between Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin were behind the conflicts of the postwar world. The secret agreements between these world leaders—among them the ceding of Eastern Europe to Stalin, the Middle East to Britain, and the Pacific and Southeast Asian region to America were confirmed in the mid-1970s by the release of some of Churchill’s papers and correspondence.
On September 23,1950, McCarthy stated,
McCarthy moved on to an inglorious end because he could not—or would not—look past the specter of a worldwide "communist" conspiracy. Fortunately, over time it became possible to discredit his reckless and inflated accusations. Unfortunately, the demise of "McCarthyism" left the secrets intact.
Were all these people deluded conspiracy theorists? Or did they all, in their own incomplete and limited way, try to reveal the secret agendas behind the facile history fed to the public?
Commentators like Noam Chomsky and Gore Vidal have spoken out against the "national security state" from the Left. The late Senator Barry Goldwater and evangelist Pat Robertson have spoken out from the Right. Even mainstream centrists like commentator Bill Moyers and attorney Gerry Spence have warned of a "secret government." When historical figures along with concerned citizens from opposite ends of the political spectrum all say the same thing, it is time to start paying close attention to what’s going on in the nation today.
Authors David Wise and Thomas B. Ross wrote of such matters in the early 1960s in their book The Invisible Government, which the CIA attempted to suppress. They warned that secret government agencies had financial connections to foundations and universities and that they used American businesses as cover for their operations, in direct violation of their charters. More recently these authors wrote, "Nothing has happened ... to persuade us that the danger of an invisible government in an open society has in any way diminished."
In Rule by Secrecy will be found new information and new ways to view history. An attempt will be made to tie together the loose ends of our collective knowledge, to make sense of a long trail of conspiratorial leads and evidence.
There is no guarantee that all of the information presented here is absolute ground truth. But to get a grasp on truth requires as much data as possible. Nothing should be dismissed out of hand. All information, no matter how seemingly outlandish or inconsequential, should be considered and evaluated.
While there seems to be any number of secret societies—both political and religious—operating in the world, only those that appear to have the greatest impact upon the public are considered here. Splinter sects and odd cults—such as the Avengers, Beati Paoli, the Order of the Peacock Angel, Heaven’s Gate, etc.—only distract from researching the truly effective organizations.
At this point permit me to make one thing very clear: Nothing presented here is intended to intrude on anyone’s religious beliefs. Freedom of religion is one of the greatest aspects of American life. Every person should be permitted the comfort of their own beliefs as long as those beliefs don’t adversely impact on another person.
But in researching history and the secret societies, one finds that religion and politics, particularly in the past, have been inextricably intertwined. To exclude religious matters would be a failure to tell half the story. This material must be intellectually considered. How it may fit into one’s worldview should be determined by each reader, depending upon their own religious views and level of intellectual sophistication.
The immense wealth of information on secret societies, most of it written long ago, is filled with names, dates, and events that are meaningless to the modern reader. Therefore, judicious editing and space limitations make this study somewhat cursory by necessity. It is my hope that just enough detail has been retained to support this account of secret society activity while still providing ease of reading over a very complex and controversial subject.
The secretive nature of these groups makes any attempt to discover absolute proof of their methods and ultimate objectives very nearly impossible. Just like law enforcement agencies investigating organized crime, researchers often must look for patterns of behavior and personal links between people and organizations. While the evidence usually speaks for itself, guilt by association must be considered and avoided. All secret society members are not conspirators. The entire scope of the various issues must be examined thoroughly with a watchful eye for subterfuge and deceit. Much historical information is incomplete or distorted by conventional chroniclers.
What then are the secrets that link the Council on Foreign Relations and Freemasonry back to Egypt’s Great Pyramid and beyond?
Set preconceptions and conditioning aside and join the attempt to uncover the history and goals of those who rule by secrecy.
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