You're listening to Hoax, a production of iHeart Podcasts.

Folks.

It's a huge when us to see you there last.

Welcome to Hoax, a podcast about the lies we wish were.

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.

Say you are a little stressed.

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 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 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.

Great.

So this is about the hoax document report from Iron Mountain.

I'm assuming you don't know what that.

Is to me, Iron Mountain.

I'm like, that sounds like a Mario Kart level.

It means nothing to me.

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.

He was kind of right about that one.

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 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, 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.

And you're banning a picture.

This is very vivid.

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.

It sounds like we're in a serious situation.

Everyone is looking over their shoulder exactly.

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.

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.

And is the government keeping things from.

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 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.

I bet military companies love that.

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.

York, Okay.

Head out to your local newstand to pick up a copy of Esquire magazine.

Sounds good.

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.

And short stories, good fiction and esquire.

Oh yes, and you find that it has a twenty thousand word excerpt of a twenty eight thousand word book.

So short book, most of a book?

Yeah, really a short story.

Called Report from Iron Mountain on the Possibility and Desirability of Peace.

Hmmm.

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.

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.

Immediately, immediately.

So what the hell is this?

Yeah?

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, we've been preparing for the possibility of war, but we are unprepared for the possibility of peace.

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?

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 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 question mark?

Like there, it's the entire country is like what if this happens?

They're just making things up and coming up with ideas.

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.

And they wrote up a report that was so incendiary that the administration buried it.

That bad things happened at four stopped.

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.

So that's the preface.

And this report published in Esquire magazine is that buried report.

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 are the perfect product.

They cost a lot to make and you can only use them once.

Yeah.

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?

Sounds like John Lennon was on to something.

Imagine.

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.

It's easy if you try.

They basically they've been in this bunker just imagining the imagine.

But what would this be like they've been imagining.

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?

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.

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 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 would end up we would all just end up kind of broke, like the economy would not function that way.

Okay, they were right, this is chilling.

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.

It's funny to think about peace breaking out.

We could potentially replace war with some other stuff.

Yes, so we could fight aliens.

What about like the more Olympics, more more physical feats of competition.

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.

Which we have to.

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.

Keep team spirit going.

Yeah, we could have a class war that would probably happen.

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 we can't just live in harmony forever.

We would have to invent some sort of emergency.

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.

I guess yeah, basically so that we don't evolve into like cannibalism.

I guess yeah.

So before we get to what happened next in the story, Dana, what do you think of these ideas?

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 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 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.

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.

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 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.

Sure, totally.

I mean it's not the most.

Out there idea.

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.

Like not, no, they're cool kids in kindergarten.

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, she agrees with me, just like that.

It's like the natural state of human nature.

And so yeah, so I'm like, yeah, I'd buy like some of these ideas.

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.

Like what the fuck?

People would freak out if they knew this.

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, 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?

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.

Yes, the suppressing keeping it from the people.

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.

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.

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.

Got it.

So shortly after the Esquire piece comes out the book, the Report from.

Twenty eight thousand words.

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, 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.

He has to do his due diligence.

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.

Yeah.

He makes all these calls and everybody he gets in contact with is like, no, it's not real.

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.

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 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.

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.

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, 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, 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.

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.

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?

So people pretty definitively in the culture don't think that Lewin wrote it.

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.

Yeah, they know it's not like an actual government documently.

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 of truth too.

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.

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.

And those papers are real.

Those papers are real.

And when this happens, Leonard Lewin is like, I think I'm gonna stop lying about leaking government papers.

He realized that it's like he didn't want a boy who cried wolf something actually important.

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 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.

Do you know I think it still exists.

It doesn't.

Oh no, there is a different publication called Monocle, but it's not a satire.

Not a satire magazine.

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 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.

Yeah, it is silly and stupid to imagine that when Piece has declared the economy panics.

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.

Oh, all right, it wasn't even his idea.

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.

Yeah, clearly he nailed it.

He was particularly satirizing the logic without emotion thinking that was very popular in Washington at the time.

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.

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?

You're like fucking for virginity.

Indeed, got it have been so good in the seventies.

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.

Wow.

Yeah, And dial Press was in on it the whole time.

They knew it was fake.

What about Esquire do we know?

I actually don't know.

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.

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, and that's a conversation that they were trying to provoke.

So it was less about fooling people and more about starting a conversation.

Yeah, I mean it's a conversational we should still be having, honest.

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 said the meeting took place.

So just if you wanted to do a timeline.

Technically, the book does contain logical errors, but.

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?

Do we not care?

I don't.

I mean, give me like two sets, like what is.

Well, so it is interesting to me.

It's in Germantown, New York, it is right, it's just a hollowed out.

Mountain and it's a real bunker.

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.

Wait, is it a government bunker?

No, it's just a private bunker.

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 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.

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.

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 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.

It's a perfect This is a perfect full circle, perfect full circle.

Her favorite hobby for the next what forty years getting drunk at dinner parties telling people who deep for it is?

Yeah, because she was the then wife then later ex wife.

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.

Yeah, people knew it was fake.

It was a less interesting.

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?

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 the news for like WMDs in Iraq and.

Post nine to eleven warfare.

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.

We are not stockpiling arms in the same way.

There are global conflicts, but there's not like an active arms race that everyone's talking about.

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.

Oh no, and this is the part that I.

Didn't want to talk about because that was a really fun hoax.

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.

Thinking about the big issues, using satire to make a point.

Yeah, that's all important, that's all good.

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.

Say yeah, yeah, you saw this coming out mile away.

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.

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.

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?

True.

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 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 me to do that.

Did he sue them?

Did it work?

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.

Yeah, but now it's just on the internet.

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.

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.

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.

It's a modest it's trying to read it is what it is.

It absolutely it literally is.

It's a most proposal, which again people should still read as long as you know not to eat Irish babies.

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 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.

No, they're not all in on it.

Although, if you want proof that the government is lying to you, Watergate happened.

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.

I also, I mean, this is preaching to people listening to a podcast called Hoax.

People aren't that good at things.

They're dumb.

They're dumb as well.

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.

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, 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 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.

And are using it to fuel conspiracy theories.

Yes, slightly more on the vibe of our podcast, Dana.

Have you seen the film JFK.

I haven't, well, I will tell you.

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?

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.

Say that it was the CIA.

Oh cool, They out and out say that it was the CIA.

Yeah, but this is again a fiction, a fiction movie, but presenting it like like they did the investigation.

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 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 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.

Oh no.

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.

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 with a real gravitas.

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.

But this movie wasn't made before this book was written.

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.

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, 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.

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.

Absolutely.

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 to then be terrible people.

Yeah, I'll just wrap up now.

Yeah.

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.

Hoax satire.

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 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.

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.

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?

For this?

But like what's your takeaway?

I don't know who would you cast in the movie?

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 read that critically.

But it sounds plausible that a bunch of government guys got together and wrote something because that they be doing that.

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.

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.

And then if you say, like, oh, the government just wants you to think that, I'm like, no, they would.

Never work that hard, you know what I mean?

Like, that's that I don't buy.

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 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 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 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.

They don't care.

And again it's an economic analysis of a hypothetical yeah.

Or even like a sociological analysis.

Yeah, that is spooky and depressing, but not really a cull to arms.

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.

Got the conversation, and look forth still having it.

Now, Lizzie, where can the people find us?

The people can find us at Hoax the Podcast, Yes, on Instagram, on Instagram, Where can they find.

You, Dana Schwartz with three z's on Instagram and TikTok.

Indeed, they can also email us at Hoax Thepodcast at gmail dot com.

Hoax Thepodcast at gmail dot com.

We will read your email.

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.

And Lizzie's cat Matilda will also read your email.

Indeed, my cat can't read you.

No, sadly.

Emailing us personally a less good way to contact us.

Yeah, no, you don't.

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.

Yes.

If there's one lesson to take away from this episode, it is Hoax Responsibly.

Bye.

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.

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Thanks for listening.