CHAPTER 6
Rulers Represent Themselves
“Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people [of] that most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean of the characters and conduct of their rulers.”
—John Adams1
In the Declaration of Independence, we find the primary argument for establishing government power: to secure the rights of the people. Without some type of protection mechanism in place, criminals will prey on the population without fear of consequences. They will do as they please to those who are too weak to resist them.
In the exact same document, we find the primary argument for limiting or revoking government power: to secure the rights of the people. Without some type of protection mechanism in place, criminals will gain control of government and use its power to prey on the population. They will do as they please to those who are too weak to resist them. (They will never use the power of government to prosecute and punish themselves.)
The first argument (government can protect us from crime) is still alive and well. In fact, it’s drilled relentlessly into every citizen’s head from a very early age. However, the second argument (government can actually subject us to crime) has practically disappeared from politically correct conversation. This, despite the fact that the threat posed by criminals in government
1 This quote carries a heavy dose of irony. Can there be true “liberty” if elected officials see themselves as “rulers”? And if John Adams truly believed in the concept of liberty, would he have ever signed the Alien and Sedition Acts into law?
far exceeds any threat posed by common criminals. If there is any doubt, consider the following:
Common criminals do not have access to the media, the trust of the masses, or the air of legitimacy given to those who secure a position of authority. They cannot legally seize our money, destroy the purchasing power of our currency, or control the police and military. Common criminals cannot legislate away our rights, or reduce our children to debt slaves. They cannot obstruct an inquiry into their crimes from inside the system. (They cannot seal documents, confiscate and “lose” evidence, or appoint their own investigators.) Common criminals cannot write laws and selectively enforce them. They cannot disarm millions of their would-be victims, round them up and put them in cages, or worse. They cannot take nations to war, profiting financially and politically from the carnage...
Suffice to say, this is why those who created the US government spoke constantly about limiting its power via the Constitution and Bill of Rights. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, too much confidence in our elected leaders’ good intentions is the “parent of despotism everywhere.” It would be a “dangerous delusion,” he warned, for us to trust those who currently hold power simply because they are “men of our choice.”
“In questions of power...let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.”—Thomas Jefferson, Kentucky Resolutions
Members of the Network have spent the past one hundred years doing everything in their power to nurture the “dangerous delusion” that Jefferson warned us about. Before they can have their way with the world, our rulers must break the “chains of the Constitution” that bind them down. They don’t want to exercise limited government power; they want to exercise the opposite.
A War on Freedom
“Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded...War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes...and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few...No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.”—James Madison2
In chapter 1, we briefly covered the 1950s-era investigations into large, tax-exempt foundations. Many were shocked when it was discovered that the capitalist foundations were using their money to support Communism. At first glance, this seems ridiculous. Why would the wealthiest men in the world want to “orient American far eastern policies toward Communist objectives?”3 This seemingly suicidal policy begins to make more sense when you learn how the Network actually operates. It’s important to remember that war, and the threat of war, has enabled them (more than anything else) to inch ever closer to their goal of destroying national sovereignty.
Norman Dodd was the lead researcher for one of the aforementioned investigations4 and, as such, he was chosen to appoint the committee’s staff. By the 1950s, propaganda touting the humanitarian “benevolence” of the tax-exempt foundations was widely accepted and many people, including one of Dodd’s researchers, Katherine Casey, felt that the foundations were beyond reproach. As Dodd put it, Casey was “unsympathetic to the purpose of the investigation. Her attitude...was: ‘What could possibly be wrong with foundations? They do so much good.’”5 But Casey’s trust was soon shattered as she dug into what was, at
2 http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/James_Madison
3 Taken from the final report of the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_of_Pacific_Relations
4 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Reece_Committee
5 Source: Ed Griffin’s interview with Norman Dodd:
http://www.realityzone.com/hiddenagenda2.html
the time, decades-old records of the Network-connected Carnegie Foundation. Dodd explains:
I blocked out certain periods of time [for Casey] to concentrate on, and off she went to New York. She came back at the end of two weeks with the following on Dictaphone tapes:
“We are now at the year 1908...In that year, the trustees...raised a specific question, which they discussed throughout the balance of the year in a very learned fashion. The question is: ‘Is there any means known more effective than war, assuming you wish to alter the life of an entire people?’ And they conclude that no more effective means than war to that end is known to humanity. So then, in 1909, they raised the second question and discussed it, namely: ‘How do we involve the United States in a war?’...Then, finally, they answered that question as follows: ‘We must control the State Department.’ That very naturally raises the question of how do we do that? And they answer it by saying: ‘We must take over and control the diplomatic machinery of this country.’ And, finally, they resolve to aim at that as an objective.”
Keep in mind, the plans that Casey is reporting on were originally written just a few years before the Network managed to gain control of the “diplomatic machinery” of the country (using Woodrow Wilson and Mandell House). That control was later expanded via the Network-led group of “experts” known as The Inquiry. The Inquiry, in turn, evolved into what is now known as the Council on Foreign Relations. Within twenty years of its founding, the CFR’s enormous power within the State Department was undeniable. (Look no further than the 1939 War and Peace Studies for an excellent example.6) Casey’s report continues:
6 Today, there is a good deal of information available on the CFR-directed War and Peace Studies. However, the project was initially top secret, unknown to all but a handful of CFR members. In Seeds of Destruction, page 102, William Engdahl notes: “the War and Peace Studies Group of the
“Then time passes, and we are eventually in a war, which would be World War I. At that time they record on their minutes a shocking report in which they dispatched to President Wilson a telegram, cautioning him to see that the war does not end too quickly. Finally, of course, the war is over. At that time their interest shifts over to preventing what they call a reversion of life in the United States to what it was prior to 1914 when World War I broke out. At that point they came to the conclusion that, to prevent a reversion, ‘we must control education in the United States.’...They realize that that’s a pretty big task...They then decide that the key to success...lay in the alteration of the teaching of American history.”7
According to Norman Dodd, Casey was so devastated by the information she uncovered during the Reece Committee investigation that she never recovered.
As far as its impact on Katherine Casey was concerned...she never was able to return to her law practice. Ultimately, she lost her mind as a result of it. It was a terrible shock. It’s a very rough experience to encounter proof of these kinds.8
That final sentence is profound. It actually is a very “rough experience to encounter proof” that you’ve been intentionally misled. It is painful to learn that intelligent, manipulative, and arrogant liars have secured your well-meaning trust, only then to play you as a fool. Nobody wants to face that feeling and, as it relates to “our” powerful institutions, that feeling gets worse before it gets better. After discovering the initial betrayal, you come to
New York Council on Foreign Relations, effectively took over all significant post-war planning for
the US State Department. After 1942, most of its members were quietly put directly on the State
Department payroll.”
7 Source: Ed Griffin’s interview with Norman Dodd:
http://www.realityzone.com/hiddenagenda2.html
8 Source: Ed Griffin’s interview with Norman Dodd: http://www.realityzone.com/hiddenagenda2.html
realize that your trust has been betrayed at every turn. You realize that the entire system has been designed to deceive and trap you (along with the rest of the unsuspecting public) in a fabricated reality, in an illusion.
Perhaps worst of all, after some study and serious thought, you begin to comprehend the enormity of the problem. The same institutional propaganda that initially fooled you still holds sway over millions and millions of minds. To unlock those minds, you must convince people to investigate ugly truths that, to them, seem ridiculous and offensive. You have to overcome the fact that most people will be “unsympathetic to the purpose” of any investigation that challenges their deeply held beliefs.
Katherine Casey uncovered a criminal conspiracy that was so inherently immoral, and so at odds with popular perception, that few people would ever believe the story was true. And, since we don’t have access to the documents she saw, healthy skepticism is perfectly reasonable. So, moving forward, let’s assume that all we have to go on is a few general assertions:
-
Members of the Network believe they have a right to rule in secrecy.
-
By controlling policy and public perception, they have the ability to do so.
-
Because of their power within the political system, their crimes are rarely exposed and never properly punished.
Throughout the remainder of this book, I will prove that these three assertions are true.
Operation Northwoods
Like Katherine Casey, my world view changed forever when I stumbled across a document that I was never supposed to read. Coincidently, the secret document I saw also pertained to war; specifically, a plan to involve the United States in a war by convincing its citizens, its government, and its military that the
nation had been attacked. The ugly truth (that the attack was to be an inside job) would be known only to a handful of individuals at the apex of power. Its success, like nearly everything the Network does, would rest on the exploitation of humanitarian impulses and the betrayal of public trust.
To really understand how easy it is for the Network to deceive a trusting public, let’s begin with a thought experiment. Imagine the following hypothetical scenario:
The president of the United States appears on national television and announces that Iran has shot down a civilian airliner filled with two hundred American students. There are no survivors. The only thing that remains of the plane, its passengers, and its crew is the frantic tape of the pilot’s final transmission: “Mayday, mayday, we’re being tailed by an Iranian fighter...We need help up here and fast...Mayday, do you copy?,” followed by the sound of an explosion, frantic screams, and then silence.
As the media plays the chilling audio over and over again (pausing periodically to interview grieving parents who have lost their children), the president assures the horrified and outraged public that the United States will act both swiftly and decisively. “We will not sit idly by as our nation’s children are murdered in cold blood. This crazed and arrogant Iranian regime has been tolerated long enough, and it will now be brought to justice. I have instructed the secretary of defense to have a preliminary course of action prepared and on my desk by morning.”
In this hypothetical scenario, very few people would have any desire whatsoever to stop the looming military confrontation. Quite the contrary—having been properly whipped into an emotional frenzy, they would cheer the “retaliatory” strike every step of the way. Even those who did question the wisdom and potential consequences of a war with Iran would be unlikely to speak up. They’d only be shouted down by an angry media-driven mob if they did. This is all basic human psychology; it is perfectly predictable. Equally predictable are the odds of anyone having any patience for an alternative narrative, especially a narrative that shifts blame from the well-established villain (Iran) to the well-
meaning hero (the US government).
If you doubt this, just imagine some “conspiracy nut” standing
up and stating the following: “It’s all a lie! Iran is innocent! Our government was behind the whole thing! They loaded a civilian airliner with fake passengers, flew the plane to a secret location, unloaded the fake passengers, and replaced the original plane with a remote-controlled drone. They then had a fake Iranian fighter jet (it was really an American fighter painted to look like an Iranian fighter) chase after the remote-controlled drone. Then, they transmitted a fake “Mayday” signal from the drone just before blowing it up! It was all a setup so we could frame and attack Iran!”
What percentage of the trusting public could believe that their government would conspire to do something so utterly ridiculous and insane? Probably zero percent. Unless, of course, the trusting public’s understanding of how “their government” actually operates was revealed to them via some shocking proof—some shocking proof that the “conspiracy nut” was right. Well, substitute Iran for Cuba, and you’ve got a nearly perfect description of the Northwoods Document.9
The Northwoods Document was an official US government plan to manipulate the people into supporting an unnecessary and illegal war. In the document, its authors propose many “pretexts” to achieve their aim: everything from creating a “terror campaign” in the United States to having covert US agents carry out attacks against US targets and then blaming Cuba for the attacks. It even speaks of completely fabricating an attack by using fake planes, fake passengers, remote-control drone aircraft, a faked mayday call, and a faked “shoot down.” Sound unbelievable? It did to me as well, but then I read it for myself.
Here is the related text, excerpted directly from the Northwoods Document:
As requested by Chief of Operations, Cuba Project, the Joint
9 The “Top Secret” Northwoods Document is now declassified and is available for download at the George Washington University website: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/
Chiefs of Staff are to indicate brief but precise description of pretexts which they consider would provide justification for US military intervention in Cuba...all projects are suggested within the time frame of the next few months.
It is possible to create an incident which will demonstrate convincingly that a Cuban aircraft has attacked and shot down a chartered civil airliner...The passengers could be a group of college students off on a holiday or any grouping of persons with a common interest to support chartering a non-scheduled flight.
a. An aircraft at Eglin Air Force Base would be painted and numbered as an exact duplicate for a civil registered aircraft belonging to a CIA proprietary organization...At a designated time, the duplicate would be substituted for the actual civil aircraft and would be loaded with selected passengers, all boarded under carefully prepared aliases. The actual registered aircraft would be converted to a drone.
b. Take off times of the drone aircraft and the actual aircraft will be scheduled to allow a rendezvous south of Florida. From the rendezvous point the passenger-carrying aircraft will descend to minimum altitude and go directly into an auxiliary field at Eglin Air Force Base where arrangements will have been made to evacuate the passengers and return the aircraft to its original status. The drone aircraft meanwhile will continue to fly the filed flight plan. When over Cuba the drone will begin transmitting on the international distress frequency a ‘May Day’ message stating he is under attack by Cuban MIG aircraft. The transmission will be interrupted by destruction of the aircraft which will be triggered by radio signal. This will allow ICAO radio stations in the Western Hemisphere to tell the US what has happened to the aircraft instead of the US trying to “sell” the incident.
Immediately prior to the proposal above, the document suggests having US military pilots threaten civilian aircraft with
fake “MIG type aircraft.” (This presumably would make a later “shoot down” that much more believable.)
An F-86 properly painted would convince air passengers that they saw a Cuban MIG, especially if the pilot of the transport were to announce such fact...reasonable copies of the MIG could be produced from US resources in about three months.
As noted, these plans were drafted in support of the larger Cuba Project, which was essentially a CIA-directed covert operation against Cuba. The Cuba Project contained many other equally immoral and dishonest proposals. One such proposal involved having the United States attack Jamaica and then blame the attack on Cuba.
Included in the nations the Joint Chiefs suggested as targets for covert attacks were Jamaica and Trinidad-Tobago. Since both were members of the British Commonwealth, the Joint Chiefs hoped that by secretly attacking them and then falsely blaming Cuba, the United States could incite the people of the United Kingdom into supporting a war against Castro.10
A plan was even put forward that suggested bribing a Cuban commander to launch an attack against the US military base at Guantanamo Bay. As James Bamford notes: “The act suggested— bribing a foreign nation to launch a violent attack on an American military installation—was treason.”11
It’s imperative to understand that covert operations of this nature rely on the ignorance of both the public and the vast majority of government and military personnel. (The whole point of a covert operation is to deceive; to get away with something you would otherwise be unable to get away with.) Regarding these and
10 Wikipedia, Operation Northwoods: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods 11 James Bamford, Body of Secrets, page 89
other proposals, a Department of Defense report stated clearly:
If the decision should be made to set up a contrived situation it should be one in which participation by U.S. personnel is limited only to the most highly trusted covert personnel. This suggests the infeasibility of the use of military units for any aspect of the contrived situation.12
As part of the Cuba Project, Operation Northwoods was approved through the highest chain of command all the way up to the president of the United States. Fortunately, President Kennedy’s opinion of the CIA and its tactics had already soured by the time the document hit his desk, and he rejected it. If he hadn’t, this plan would have no doubt led to an unnecessary war and the death of many thousands based on total lies. Even worse, it could have easily led to a nuclear exchange with Russia and millions dead, based on lies.
Side Note: Kennedy’s negative opinion of the Network-created CIA is summed up nicely in the following quote: “I want to splinter the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the winds.”13 Many people, for good reason, believe the CIA played a direct role in both the murder of JFK and the cover-up that followed. That topic is beyond the scope of this book. However, just for reference, books like JFK and the Unspeakable do an excellent job of revealing the power struggle that emerged between Kennedy and his foreign policy “advisors” once he began moving the nation’s foreign policy in an unapproved direction.
When I first read Operation Northwoods, I was still like Katherine Casey—terribly naïve. In my imaginary world, any individual who conspired to facilitate terrorist attacks against the
12 Body of Secrets, page 89
13 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_Kennedy_assassination_conspiracy_theory
United States14 would be viewed as a terrorist and punished severely. Any group of public servants who set out to frame another nation for a crime it didn’t commit, kill innocent people, and deceive the nation into an illegal war would be brought up on charges and thrown in prison for a very long time. But as I searched for information on how these conspirators were held accountable, I found nothing: no charges, no trials, no punishment.15 It was as if deception, murder, and even treason were all acceptable just so long as the crimes were committed at the behest of the most powerful members of society. It didn’t look anything like the “justice, freedom, and democracy” that I learned about in school. And as I dug deeper, it only got worse...much worse.
In 1998, Daniele Ganser was looking for a PhD research topic, and, against the advice of his friends and professors, he decided to tackle the gigantic task of unraveling “Operation Gladio.” Beginning with a single document that proved the CIA and NATO created a secret terrorist army in Italy, he embarked on a four-year investigation that uncovered an additional fifteen secret armies in NATO countries and four more that were created in neutral countries.
There are many well-worn lies about the nature of our “leaders” and what they’re capable of. The most obvious lie (to those who are paying attention) is that they respect national sovereignty, democracy, and “the will of the people.” Nothing could be further from the truth, and Operation Gladio provides an excellent case in point. Gladio also underscores two key arguments that I’ve put forward in this book, which are:
1. The Network has mastered the art of pursuing its
14 We could develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities
and even in Washington.”—Operation Northwoods
15 Some have argued that the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Lyman Lemnitzer, lost his job
because of Operation Northwoods and therefore was “punished.” But if Lemnitzer was being
punished by our government for conspiring to carry out false-flag terror operations, it’s odd that he
was appointed “Supreme Allied Commander” of NATO. Hardly a demotion, his new post provided
the opportunity to “fight communists” exactly the way he wanted. (Reference Operation Gladio in
chapter 8 for more details.)
sovereignty-destruction project while maintaining the
illusion of democracy, and
2. Its members operate above the moral and legislative laws
that others are expected to abide by.
To address these points properly, we must first expand on some of the Network’s handiwork prior to its implementation of Gladio following World War II. Unfortunately, because there is so much ground to cover, Gladio is going to have to wait until chapter 8.
World War I, the League of Nations, and Debt Traps
By manipulating the election of 1912, the Network brought Woodrow Wilson to power and effectively gained control of the “diplomatic machinery” of the United States. If, as Katherine Casey reported, the ultimate aim was to maneuver the United States into a war capable of altering “the life of an entire people,” the Network was well on its way. All it needed now was the war itself, and, as luck would have it, Europe was already a powder keg that was primed and ready to explode. Henry Kissinger explains the political climate that preceded World War I this way:
The astonishing aspect of the First World War is...that it took so long for it to happen...The statesmen of all the major countries had helped to construct [a] diplomatic doomsday mechanism.16
The unholy mix of general political alliances and hair- trigger military strategies guaranteed a vast bloodletting...Foreign policy...now consisted of gambling on a single throw of the dice. A more mindless and technocratic approach to war would have been difficult to imagine.17
16 Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy, page 201 17 Diplomacy, page 206
In June 1914, the so-called Black Hand18 reached into Europe and set the “doomsday mechanism” into motion by assassinating Franz Ferdinand. The “vast bloodletting” followed shortly thereafter and, low and behold, the Network had its war. Now it was simply a matter of dragging the war on long enough for their carefully selected puppet (Woodrow Wilson) to sell “his” divinely inspired plan for US intervention and a New World Order.
With the carnage of World War I as a backdrop and with the father of propaganda, Edward Bernays, at his side,19 Wilson began stirring support for the League of Nations that he’d been writing about since at least 1887.20 Following “his” plan, the world would be led into a new and peaceful era where all nations, great and small, would be protected from unjust aggression and the violation of their sovereignty. Touting American principles, Wilson declared in May 1916:
We believe these fundamental things: First, that every people has a right to choose the sovereignty under which they shall live...Second, that the small states of the world have a right to enjoy the same respect for their sovereignty and for their territorial integrity that great and powerful nations expect and insist upon. And, third, that the world has a right to be free from every disturbance of its peace that has its origin in aggression and disregard of the rights of peoples and nations.21
This lofty rhetoric, coupled with the outrage of a recent
18 The Black Hand was a secret society, established in the early 1900s
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Hand_(Serbia)
19 “Bernays, working for the administration of Woodrow Wilson during World War I, was
influential in promoting the idea that America’s war efforts were primarily aimed at ‘bringing
democracy to all of Europe.’” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bernays
20 “Wilson himself had first written about world federation in 1887...he had contemplated ‘a wide
union...of governments joined with governments for the pursuit of common purpose.’” As quoted in
To End All Wars, page 12
21 Woodrow Wilson, address delivered at the First Annual Assemblage of the League to Enforce
Peace, May 27, 1916.http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=65391
“surprise” attack on the “passenger liner” Lusitania22, allowed the Network to steadily move the United States toward entering the European conflict. As it had done with the Federal Reserve System and income tax, the Network skillfully manipulated public opinion until it overcame the nation’s strong antiwar sentiment. World War I, the people were assured, was a war that would end all wars. It would “make the world safe for democracy” and lead mankind into a new era of respect for the rights of man. It was the duty of every liberty-loving citizen of the United States to support it, because no moral human could possibly oppose such ends.
Of course, if the utopian carrot wasn’t enough, the Network also had a stick in its back pocket that it used to great effect. One week after a German torpedo sunk the Lusitania, killing nearly all Americans onboard, Professor Knock informs us:
Americans barely had the chance to digest this assault [when] the British government released an official report on German atrocities, bearing the name...of Viscount James Bryce, the esteemed former Ambassador to the United States. [Bryce was a member of what Quigley referred to as the second generation of the Network’s “Cecil Bloc.”23] The crescendo of a systematic propaganda campaign to overcome American neutrality, this document catalogued in the most lurid detail some 1,200 alleged acts of barbarism and cruelty committed by German soldiers, primarily against Belgians—including the crucifixion and decapitation of prisoners of war, the gang rape and sexual mutilation of women, the hacking off of children’s fingers for souvenirs, and the bayoneting of infants. Although much of it was later proved to be fictional...Germany would never fully recover
22 In violation of international neutrality treaties, the Lusitania was being used to transport war materials while masquerading as a simple passenger liner. (The passengers were never informed of this fact.) We’ll cover the case of the Lusitania in greater detail in the final chapter. For more information, see also: http://joeplummer.com/the_lusitania.html
23 The Anglo-American Establishment, pages 30–31
from the revulsion that swept the United States.24
This carrot-and-stick propaganda campaign produced the desired result. The United States eventually entered the war, and a constitutional abomination known as the Espionage Act was used to silence any remaining skeptics and dissenters. (Apparently, making the world “safe for democracy” meant demonizing and jailing US citizens who continued to voice their opposition. Opposition disrupted the campaign to establish “patriotic conformity,”25 and so it could not be tolerated.) But the skeptics and dissenters were inevitably vindicated. At the war’s end, the reality of power politics reared its ugly head. Quigley explains:
The peoples of the victorious nations had taken to heart their wartime propaganda about the rights of small nations, making the world safe for democracy, and putting an end both to power politics and to secret diplomacy. These ideals had been given concrete form in Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points...the defeated powers had been promised...that the peace settlements would be negotiated and would be based on the Fourteen Points. When it became clear that the settlements were to be imposed rather than negotiated...that the terms of the settlements had been reached by a process of secret negotiations from which the small nations had been excluded and in which power politics played a much larger role than the safety of democracy, there was a revulsion of feeling against the treaties.26
24 To End all Wars, page 60
25 On page 133 of To End all Wars, Knock discusses some of the “ludicrous” aspects of the
government’s “campaign for patriotic conformity.” For instance, German measles were renamed
“Liberty measles,” sauerkraut was renamed “Liberty cabbage,” and German shepherds were
renamed “police dogs.” This snowballed into the banning of Brahms and Beethoven from concert
halls, the removal and burning of German literature from some schools and public libraries, and even
calls (by men like Theodore Roosevelt) to prohibit the teaching of the German language.
26 Tragedy and Hope, page 268
Though the “peoples of the victorious nations” might have felt betrayed, members of the Network had plenty of reasons to celebrate. Up to this point, they had achieved nearly every one of their aims: from the Wilson coup in 1912 to the Federal Reserve System and income tax; from maneuvering the United States into war, to creating a League of Nations that they would ultimately control. However, it was on this final point, the League of Nations, where the Network came up short.
When Wilson was forced to admit that the United States would have to cede sovereignty in order for the League to work, opposition within the US Senate began to grow.27 In an attempt to overcome this opposition, he delivered yet another one of his messianic speeches in July 1919. The League of Nations, Wilson declared, was:
The indispensable instrumentality for the maintenance of the new order...Dare we reject it and break the heart of the world?...The stage is set, the destiny disclosed. It has come about by no plan of our conceiving, but by the hand of God who led us into this way. We cannot turn back. We can only go forward, with lifted eyes and freshened spirit, to follow the vision. It was of this that we dreamed at our birth. America shall in truth show the way. The light streams upon the path ahead, and nowhere else.28
But no amount of lofty rhetoric or appeals to emotion would suffice. The League would clearly undermine US sovereignty, and Wilson was unable to rally enough support within the Senate to overcome this objection. In November 1919, after months of debate, the US Senate voted not to join.29 However, this isn’t to suggest that the Network’s efforts had been in vain. A great deal of money had been made during the war, competing empires had been destroyed, power had been consolidated, and dozens of
27 To End All Wars, pages 232, 233
28 To End All Wars, pages 251, 252
29 http://www.senate.gov/reference/reference_item/Versailles.htm
nations had joined the League. The Network simply had some more work to do within the United States, and “more work” it did. Aside from increasing its control over government using the Inquiry, the CFR, and other well-connected instruments, it also began increasing its financial control with its new monetary weapon, the Federal Reserve System.
Stealing Gold and Creating Debt
After World War I, the Federal Reserve began artificially inflating the US dollar supply. Quigley informs us that this was done, in large part, to allow gold to be drained from the United States (for Britain’s benefit) without triggering a corresponding reduction in the number of US dollars in circulation.30 The newly printed Fed money flowed into the stock market, inflated the bubble of the Roaring Twenties, and inevitably led to the stock market crash of 1929 and the economic devastation of the Great Depression. (This too helped to “alter the life of an entire people.”)
Making economic matters worse, Britain went off the gold standard completely in 1931, and this predictably intensified the depletion of US gold. (Nations that could no longer redeem their paper receipts for gold in Britain now turned to the United States.) Since the US was “the only gold standard country with gold coins still circulating,” gold poured out of the country. Additionally, concerned US citizens began redeeming large quantities of their dollars for gold too, and “the US banking system began to collapse.”31
This pressure on the banking system continued until 1933 when the Network convinced President Roosevelt (FDR) to confiscate US citizens’ gold and hand it over to the Federal Reserve.32 By making it illegal for US citizens to redeem their dollars in gold, the Federal Reserve (in cooperation with policy
30 Tragedy and Hope, page 342
31 Tragedy and Hope, pages 349, 350
32 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102
makers within the federal government) could now begin printing ever-larger piles of debt money while increasing their own power in the process. As covered in chapter 4, a heavily indebted government is much easier to control than one that is financially sound. Even Quigley admits that making gold illegal in the United States was not necessary. He states that it was done “in order to pursue a policy of price inflation...it was not made necessary by the American international financial position.”33 It’s also worth noting that Mandell House, more than twenty years after advising Woodrow Wilson, was an advisor to FDR as well.
If the Network always seeks to trap nations in debt (it does), then a review of the growth in US federal debt should be instructive (and it is). In the twenty years prior to Wilson’s election, the amount of debt the federal government owed increased by just $1.3 billion. In the twenty years after Wilson’s election, the amount of debt the federal government owed increased by nearly $20 billion.34 (This massive increase in debt occurred despite the additional revenue provided by the 1913 personal income tax.) But even this $20 billion increase was just a drop in the bucket; fast forward to just after FDR’s presidency, and the federal debt had increased by more than $240 billion. And in 2012, it had increased by more than $16,000 billion.
This information on government debt is vitally important because it plays a major role in the Network’s destruction of national sovereignty. Financial warfare is essential, and the basic recipe for conquering a nation financially can be summed up in two simple steps:
-
Create shortfalls in government revenue. (Either by increasing the amount of money a government spends, decreasing the amount of money a government collects, or both.)
-
Create loans out of thin air to “help” the “leaders” cover their spending shortfalls without correcting the underlying
33 Tragedy and Hope, page 350
34 http://www.usgovernmentdebt.us
financial imbalance.
As payments on mounting debt create greater and greater shortfalls, and as annual spending continues to increase unabated, larger and more frequent loans become necessary to bridge the gap. This accelerates the rate at which the national debt grows and, before long, even powerful nations will find themselves utterly dependent on a constant flow of newly borrowed funds to cover their expenses.
Once a nation has been trapped in this way, the Network can simply adjust the financial spigot according to the level at which its desires are being met. If a government wants to maintain vital services, social order, and ultimately its own power, it will do what the Network wants (regardless of the will of the people). If the government refuses, the flow of money will be cut and won’t be restored until “more acceptable” leaders assume control. And as we’ll cover in the next chapter, “acceptable” has nothing to do with how the new leaders treat the citizens that live beneath them.
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