Ghosts of Iron Mountain: The Hoax of the Century, Its Enduring Impact, and What It Reveals About America Today

Investigative journalist Tinline (The Death of Consensus) delivers a searing probe of “a brilliantly conceived spoof that has quite unintentionally changed the course of history.” In 1967, Report from Iron Mountain on the Possibility and Desirability of Peace was published by Dial Press and positioned as an official government document. On its face, the book came from a federal commission established under the Kennedy administration to determine what might happen to the U.S. “when a condition of ‘permanent peace’ should arrive.’ ” It was ostensibly leaked to writer Leonard Lewin by a member of that commission, who was troubled by its findings that war was essential to economic stability. In fact, the book was a hoax, dreamed up by three men—including Victor Navasky, future editor of the Nation—and written by Lewin. But the volume took on a life of its own and was regarded as factual by people of various political ideologies, influencing Oliver Stone, domestic terrorist Timothy McVeigh, and QAnon. Through dogged research, including interviews with Lewis’s children, Tinline astutely examines how belief in the report’s veracity persisted and draws a through line to contemporary attitudes that “if it feels real, it is real.” The results are equal parts fascinating and disturbing. Agent: George Lucas, InkWell Management. (Mar.)