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The Case for War: The Iron Mountain Report - by Stephen Lendman
In his 1966 book, "How the World Really Works," Alan B. Jones included a chapter on the "Report from Iron Mountain: On the Possibility and Desirability of Peace," later published in 1967 by The Dial Press. It became a bestseller, then disappeared. Now few copies are available, but when circulating in the 1960s, it was reported that concerned Johnson administration officials ordered global US embassies to downplay it, saying it had nothing to do with policy. Later accounts doubted the material's authenticity, suggesting it was a hoax. True or false, its findings are reviewed below because they accurately reflect longstanding US policy.
Prepared by unnamed 15-man "Special Study Group, (SSG)" they were commissioned "by some governmental entity which wished to remain unknown" because of the sensitive nature of its assignment, completed after two and a half years work, from August 1963 - March 1966, at a secret Iron Mountain, New York "underground nuclear hideout."
First surfacing in 1961, the idea originated during the Kennedy administration, senior officials Robert McNamara, McGeorge Bundy, Dean Rusk, and others, knowing there was no serious plan for peace at a time the president wanted to end the Cold War. An SSG member only identified as "John Doe" revealed it.
Secrecy wasn't mandated, but all members except Doe wanted no public disclosure or discussion of its:
-- "Letter of Transmittal (saying Report conclusions and recommendations were unanimous)
-- Introduction
-- Scope of the Study
-- Disarmament and the Economy
-- War & Peace as Social Systems
-- The Functions of War
-- Substitutes for the Functions of War
-- Summary and Conclusions (and)
-- Recommendations"
Writer Leonard C. Lewin wrote a foreward, referring to a SSG midwest social science professor, identified only as "John Doe" for reasons his task would clarify:
"to determine, accurately and realistically, the nature of the problems that would confront the United States if and when a condition of 'permanent peace' should arrive, and to draft a program for dealing with this contingency."
