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The Report from Iron Mountain

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The Report from Iron Mountain
LanguageEnglish
Published1967
PublisherDial Press
Publication placeUnited States

The Report from Iron Mountain is a 1967 anti-war satire written by Leonard C. Lewin.[1] The book purports to be a leaked report authored by a Special Study Group tasked by the Kennedy Administration to plan the transition from a wartime economy and assess the potential social impacts of a "condition of general world peace."[1] It details the analyses of the panel, which concludes that world peace could cause the United States to collapse; war, or some alternative outside threat, is necessary for social stability, the Study Group finds, and recommends the establishment of "a permanent War/Peace Research Agency" to improve "the effectiveness of [war's] major stabilizing functions" and to plan substitutes for war should "a viable general peace" emerge.[1] The book became a New York Times bestseller and has been translated into fifteen languages.

Publishing history

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The idea for the report came from Victor Navasky and other editors of Monocle, an American political satire magazine, after reading a newspaper account about a stock market decline attributed to a "peace scare."[2] Leonard Lewin wrote the book with the help of the economist John Kenneth Galbraith and three Monocle editors Marvin Kitman, Richard Lingeman, and Victor Navasky.[3] E. L. Doctorow, who was then editor-in-chief at Dial Press, agreed to publish the book as non-fiction.[4] To lend credibility to the hoax, Galbraith wrote a review of the book under the pen name Herschel McLandress, "former professor of Psychiatric Measurement at the Harvard Medical School and now chief consultant to the Noonan Psychiatric Clinic in Boston," the title character of Galbraith's earlier 1964 satire, The McLandress dimension.[5][6] The Report from Iron Mountain went out of print in 1980.

The book subsequently began circulating on the Internet among militia groups.[7] Buccaneer Books, a small publisher of out-of-print books, brought out an edition in 1993.[citation needed] In the early 1990s, Liberty Lobby with the Noontide Press, a publisher notable for its many antisemitic and white supremacist texts, released an edition, claiming that it was a U.S. government document, and therefore inherently in the public domain, as is conventional for works created by the federal government. Lewin sued them for copyright infringement, which resulted in a settlement in 1994.[7] According to The New York Times, "Neither side would reveal the full terms of the settlement, but Lewin received more than a thousand copies of the bootlegged version."[4]

In response to the bootleg editions, Simon & Schuster brought out a new hardcover edition in 1996 under their Free Press imprint, authorized by Lewin, with a new introduction by Navasky and afterword by Lewin both insisting the book was fictional and satire, and discussing the original controversy over the book and the more recent interest in it by conspiracy theorists.

A new paperback edition was published in 2008.[8]

Synopsis

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The book is named for Iron Mountain, a decommissioned iron mine near Germantown, New York, in the Hudson Valley, which houses an enormous storage facility mostly holding important documents but also government records, musical instruments, antiques, and other valuables, as well as fallout shelters for executives of large oil corporations.[9] The book's forward describes how the Special Study Group's last meeting before drafting the final report was held at Iron Mountain (hence the name).[1]

The book is a satiric parody of Rand Corporation project which summarizes the results of a two-and-a-half-year study and recommends maintaining a state of permanent war. The first part of the book deals with its scope. The second is a review of previous studies considering the effects of disarmament on the economy. ("The first factor is that of size. The "world war industry, ... accounts for approximately a tenth of the output of the world's total economy."[10]) The third assesses various "disarmament scenarios" that have been proposed. The main part of the book examines the non-military economic, political, sociological, cultural, and scientific functions of war and the problems that these raise for the transition to peace. These include war's role in regulating the economy's inevitable boom and bust cycles, defining any given "nation's existence vis-a-vis any other nation,"[11] rationalizing "nonmilitary killing" by habituating people to "pay a blood price for institutions," such as the sacrifice of 40,000 people per year to automobiles,[12] and so on. The report next suggests some substitutes for the non-military functions of war, including medical research, health care for all citizens, improved education, housing, public transportation, poverty reduction, and so forth, but ultimately notes that these do not answer the need for an external threat to maintain social stability. The report suggests some alternative enemy could be manufactured, such as hostile space aliens or the threat of environmental pollution, which, the authors say, is not yet dire enough yet but could be "increased selectively for this purpose."[13] The report ultimately concludes "that the war system cannot responsibly be allowed to disappear." The report suggests the establishment of a "permanent War/Peace Research Agency" tasked, in part, with better rationalizing war to better address its non-military functions and developing a "quantification of existing application of the non-military functions of war."[14]

Reception

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When it was first published, controversy surrounded the book over the question whether it was a hoax or real. A U.S. News & World Report claimed in its November 20, 1967, issue to have confirmation of the reality of the report from an unnamed government official, who added that when President Johnson read the report, he 'hit the roof' and ordered it to be suppressed for all time. Additionally, sources were said to have revealed that orders were sent to U.S. embassies, instructing them to emphasize that the book had no relation to U.S. Government policy.[15] On November 26, 1967, the report was reviewed in the book section of The Washington Post by Herschel McLandress, the pen name for Harvard professor John Kenneth Galbraith. McLandress wrote that he knew firsthand of the report's authenticity because he had been invited to participate in its creation; that although he was unable to be part of the official group, he was consulted from time to time and had been asked to keep the project secret; and that while he doubted the wisdom of letting the public know about the report, he agreed totally with its conclusions. He wrote: "As I would put my personal repute behind the authenticity of this document, so would I testify to the validity of its conclusions. My reservation relates only to the wisdom of releasing it to an obviously unconditioned public."[16] Six weeks later, in an Associated Press dispatch from London, Galbraith went even further and jokingly admitted that he was a member of the conspiracy.[17] The following day, Galbraith backed off. When asked about his 'conspiracy' statement, he replied: "For the first time since Charles II The Times has been guilty of a misquotation... Nothing shakes my conviction that it was written by either Dean Rusk or Mrs. Clare Boothe Luce".[18] The original reporter reported the following six days later: "Misquoting seems to be a hazard to which Professor Galbraith is prone. The latest edition of the Cambridge newspaper Varsity quotes the following (tape recorded) interchange: Interviewer: 'Are you aware of the identity of the author of Report from Iron Mountain?' Galbraith: 'I was in general a member of the conspiracy, but I was not the author. I have always assumed that it was the man who wrote the foreword – Mr. Lewin'."[19]

In an article in the March 19, 1972, edition of The New York Times Book Review, Lewin said that he had written the book.[20] The book was listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the "Most Successful Literary Hoax."[citation needed] Some people claim that the book is genuine and has only been called a hoax as a means of damage control.[citation needed] Trans-Action devoted an issue to the debate over the book.[citation needed] Esquire magazine published a 28,000-word excerpt.[4] In an article published in New York in 2013, Victor Navasky confirmed that Galbraith was indeed McLandress, and that he was "in on the hoax from the beginning."[21]

Some conspiracy theorists reject the statement made in 1972 by the author that the book was satire and that he was its author.[22]

In a remembrance of E. L. Doctorow published in 2015 in The Nation, Victor Navasky asserted his involvement in creating Report from Iron Mountain, naming Leonard Lewin as the main writer with "input" from economist John Kenneth Galbraith, two editors of the satirical magazine Monocle (Marvin Kitman and Richard Lingeman) and himself.[23]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ a b c d Lewsin, Leonard C. (1967). Report from Iron Mountain on the possibility and desirability of peace. Dell Pub. Co. ISBN 978-0-440-57366-1.
  2. ^ Robert S. Boynton (May 13, 1996). "A Lefty Reunion". The New Yorker. p. 36.
  3. ^ "So Long, E.L. Doctorow, It's Been Good to Know Yuh". The Nation. July 30, 2015.
  4. ^ a b c Kifner, John (January 30, 1999). "L. C. Lewin, Writer of Satire Of Government Plot, Dies at 82". The New York Times. p. A.11. Archived from the original on January 28, 2017. Retrieved February 13, 2017.
  5. ^ Mark Epernay (pseudonym of John Kenneth Galbraith) (1964). The McLandress dimension. Hamish Hamilton.
  6. ^ Lake, Ellen (December 4, 1963). "Prof. McLandress: The McLandress Dimension, by Mark Epernay Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., $3.75". The Harvard Crimson.
  7. ^ a b Carvajal, Doreen (July 1, 1996). "Onetime Political Satire Becomes a Right-Wing Rage and a Hot Internet Item". The New York Times.
  8. ^ Report From Iron Mountain. Simon & Schuster. 28 July 2008. ISBN 9781439123119.
  9. ^ Rothman, Joshua (October 9, 2013). "The Many Lives of Iron Mountain". New Yorker. Archived from the original on 2014-11-09.
  10. ^ Report from Iron Mountain. 1967. p. 18.
  11. ^ Report from Iron Mountain. 1967. p. 39.
  12. ^ Report from Iron Mountain. 1967. pp. 45–6.
  13. ^ Report from Iron Mountain. 1967. p. 67.
  14. ^ Report from Iron Mountain. 1967. p. 98.
  15. ^ '"Hoax of Horror? A Book That Shook White House", U.S. News & World Report, November 20, 1967
  16. ^ "News of War and Peace You're Not Ready For", by Herschel McLandress. Book World, in The Washington Post, November 26, 1967, p. 5.
  17. ^ "The Times Diary", The Times, February 5, 1968, p. 8.
  18. ^ "Gailbraith Says He Was Misquoted", The Times, February 6, 1968, p. 3.
  19. ^ "Touche, Professor", The Times, February 12, 1968, p. 8.
  20. ^ Leonard Lewin, "Report From Iron Mountain, 'The Guest Word'" Archived 2008-11-22 at the Wayback Machine, The New York Times Book Review, March 19, 1972
  21. ^ Navasky, Victor (November 15, 2013). "Conspiracy Theory Is a Hoax Gone Wrong". New York Magazine. Retrieved June 26, 2021.
  22. ^ Goldman, Andrew (November 22, 2012). "Oliver Stone Rewrites History". The New York Times. Archived from the original on June 26, 2017. Retrieved February 13, 2017.
  23. ^ Navasky, Victor (2015). "E.L. Doctorow, 1931-2015". The Nation. 301 (7&8): 4. Archived from the original on August 12, 2015. Retrieved August 11, 2015.
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