Report from Iron Mountain

Upon its first appearance in 1967 this best-selling secret government report sparked immediate debate among journalists and scholars with its disturbingly convincing claim: a condition of permanent peace at the end of the Cold War would threaten our nations economic and social stability. Although finally identified as an antimilitarist hoax by writer/editor Leonard Lewin who conceived and launched the book with a consortium of peace movement intellectuals including future Nation editors Victor Navasky and Richard Lingeman novelist E. L. Doctorow and economist John Kenneth Galbraith Iron Mountain would eventually take on a life of its own. Long out of print the Report suddenly reappeared in bootleg editions more than twenty years after the original publication. In a manner never foreseen by the books creators it was now being read as a bible by the militias of the radical right - a bizarre reversal that returns this haunting satire to the spotlight and raises uncomfortable questions about the changing nature of todays political culture.