Kennedy's Iron Mountain Report, Truth or Hoax?

To quote directly from the cover letter of this report: (paragraph three) "Because of the unusual circumstances surrounding the establishment of this Group, and in view of the nature of its finding, we do not recommend that this Report be released for publication...such actions would not be in the PUBLIC INTEREST (emphasis mine)..a lay reader, unexposed to the exigencies of higher political or military responsibility, will misconstrue the purpose of this project, and the intent... We urge that the circulation of the Report be closely restricted to those who's responsibilities require that they be apprised of its contents..." Those who responsibilities require they know? Would this be the people who will be working to bring us into a New world Order?

However, it was not until five years later that the work was confirmed to be a hoax. In 1972, fretting how the Pentagon Papers and other documents about the Vietnam War "read like parodies of Iron Mountain rather than the reverse"[1], Lewin confessed in the March 19 New York Times Book Review that he had written the entire report. It was even listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the "Most Successful Literary Hoax."

Even after his admission, however, there are those who believe the so-called hoax is indeed a real government work and was called a hoax to discredit the report. In 1991, Oliver Stone used a quote from the hoax in the movie, JFK; one of Stone's story consultants, former Intelligence officer L. Fletcher Prouty, believed the hoax was real. Many believers cite the Hegelian Thesis model as a theory behind its disclosure.

On November 26, 1976, the report was reviewed in the book section of the Washington Post by Herschel McLandress, which was the pen name for Harvard professor John Kenneth Galbraith. Galbraith, who also had been a member of the CFR (Council on Foreign Relations), said that he knew firsthand of the report's authenticity because he had been invited to participate in it. 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 a secret. Furthermore, 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 relate only to the wisdom of releasing it to an obviously unconditioned public.'[2]

Still, President Lyndon B. Johnson apparently couldn’t be sure that his predecessor (John F. Kennedy) hadn’t commissioned the report. According to US News and World Report, the President “hit the roof” upon learning of it and ordered that the report be “bottled up for all time”.