Ghosts of Iron Mountain

A Times History Book of the Year

How did America end up trapped in a nightmare of conspiracy theories, in which millions see the government as an evil ‘deep state’?

In 1967, at the height of the Vietnam War, a group of New York writers concocted what appeared to be a top-secret government report into what would happen to the USA if permanent global peace broke out. Report from Iron Mountain claimed that winding down America’s vast war-making machinery would wreck the economy and tear society apart, necessitating draconian controls over the population. It was published as non-fiction – and was frighteningly convincing. Journalists tried to find out who had written it. Worried memos reached right up to the president. It became a bestselling cause célèbre.

Even when the hoax was revealed, many refused to believe it wasn’t real. The Report was seized on by eager figures on the far right and in the militia movement, who insisted that it revealed terrifying government conspiracies to pollute the environment, enslave Americans, and even instigate eugenics. And its legacy lives on today.

Ghosts of Iron Mountain traces this story through a gallery of vivid characters, from the radical academic C. Wright Mills and the writers E.L. Doctorow, Victor Navasky, and Leonard Lewin in 1960s New York, to the far-right impresario Willis Carto, Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, conspiracy theorist Milton William Cooper, L. Fletcher Prouty (the inspiration for ‘Mr X’ in the film JFK), and ranting broadcaster Alex Jones.

This is one of the great stories of our time and reveals how nightmares about its own government drove America crazy.