William F. Buckley, Jr.

William F. Buckley, Jr.

Pied Piper for
The Establishment
by
John F. McManus
The John Birch Society
Appleton, Wisconsin

Copyright © 2002 by The John Birch Society

All Rights Reserved

Published by
The John Birch Society
Post Office Box 8040
Appleton, Wisconsin 54912
www.jbs.org

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Control Number: 2002107984
ISBN: 1-881-919-06-4

In Memory Of
Lawrence Patton McDonald
Publication of this book has been made possible by the generous gift of Don and Carol Van
Curler and the Van Curler Foundation of Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Their gift is given in memory of Dr. Lawrence P. McDonald, a man whose friendship they began
to enjoy in the early 1960s as a result of their mutual efforts as members of The John Birch
Society. That friendship grew into enormous admiration for Larry McDonald’s courage,
wisdom, principle, and dedication to the American ideal.

Like John Birch who was murdered by Communists in Asia in 1945, Dr. McDonald was
victimized by Communists in Asia when a Soviet fighter attacked the Korean Airlines plane on
which he was traveling. At the time, he was serving both as a U.S. Congressman from Georgia
and Chairman of his beloved John Birch Society.

To those perceptive individuals who saw through the designs of William F. Buckley, Jr. long
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before I did.

To that one man whose correspondence in the early 1960s launched me on a tortuous
reevaluation of both the Establishment's Pied Piper and his frequent target, Robert Welch.

To the late Robert Welch himself, whose fatherly yet firm leadership brought me and so many
others to an awareness of 1) the stark realities in the world around us, and 2) the joy of knowing
what can be built in an atmosphere of freedom.

Contents

Foreword “False Leadership” by Robert Welch ix

Introduction
Fronting for America’s Enemies xix
Chapter 1. Buckley and the Establishment 1
2.Buckley and Neoconservatives 25
3.The Formative Influences 41
4.Two Books Propel Buckley to Prominence.. 51
5.Into the Central Intelligence Agency 69
6.The First Team 91
7.Buckley, Kissinger, and Rockefeller 105
8.Debunking Conspiracy 125
9.Targeting Robert Welch and
The John Birch Society 141
10. Friends and Former Colleagues See
Through Bill 161
11. Undermining Morality 175
12. Buckley’s Harmful Legacy 189
13. The John Birch Society: Alive, Well,
and Growing 199
Appendix Ignoring the Constitution, Promoting
the Establishment, and More 217
Endnotes 231
Index 243
Acknowledgments 257

Foreword

In 1971, John Birch Society founder Robert Welch began writing his own analysis of the life and
works of William F. Buckley, Jr. The many pressures he faced as the leader of a national
organization repeatedly interrupted his plans, with the result that he completed only a small
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fraction of what he intended to publish.

I gained a thorough awareness of Mr. Welch’s attitude regarding the subject of this book
through having worked closely with the Society’s founder for more than a decade. It is entirely
appropriate that some of his unpublished thoughts appear within these pages, and I have,
therefore, chosen a portion of his unfinished manuscript to serve as the Foreword to this book. A
few bracketed comments have been inserted in the text where doing so seemed proper.

Robert Welch passed away in January 1985. In response to questions about Mr. Buckley over
many years, he would often state that he had done what he could to be a friend and an ally but
all he ever received in return was deceitful opposition and abusive ridicule.

— John F. McManus

False Leadership
(An Uncompleted 1971 Assessment of William F. Buckley, Jr.)
By Robert Welch

A Revelation
At least this episode should have been a revelation, even at the time. But it was not until years
later, when the whole affair was seen in retrospect, and in the light of later knowledge, that it
became one. At the time — and undoubtedly to the great inner satisfaction and amusement of the
suavely brazen Mr. Buckley — I ascribed his action to a sincerely mistaken belief which he felt
bound by conscience to support on any occasion and at any cost.

The occasion developed out of unusual circumstances. One of the earliest members of the [John
Birch] Society, and one of the most dedicated members we have ever had, was a Catholic priest,
the Reverend Francis E. Fenton, who is now a member of our Council. In the fall of 1959 he
formed our first chapter in Stamford, Connecticut. At that time Father Fenton was still one of
several priests on the staff of the very large St. Mary’s Parish in Stamford. Among his many
duties was supervision of the Holy Name Society of the parish. Through his good offices I, a
Protestant, had had the honor and opportunity of speaking on the Communist menace to six
hundred members of the Holy Name Society, at their breakfast meeting on Easter Sunday
morning, in the spring of 1960.

A few months after that, however, Father Fenton was given a parish of his own. It was the
Blessed Sacrament Church in Bridgeport, Connecticut, where he still is today. [Father Fenton
left Blessed Sacrament Church in 1973 and passed away in 1995.] This would require his
moving to Bridgeport. He was a very much loved priest in Stamford, however, and his friends
there wanted badly to hold some kind of a dinner or meeting in his honor before he left. But the
Catholic Church — I learned at the time — frowns on such parties in honor of priests who are
leaving one parish for a new one; and no real friend of Father Fenton wanted to do anything
which was contrary to church policy in any way — nor would Father Fenton have been willing
to let them.

So his friends in Stamford hit upon an idea which required my cooperation. They asked if I
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would make a speech in Stamford in July, 1960, which would be open to the public and could be
announced well in advance. Even though there would be the usual charge or “donation” for one
of my speeches, the net proceeds of which would go to The John Birch Society, there was no
doubt that several hundred of Father Fenton’s friends would attend, especially since the word
would be passed around as to one purpose of the meeting. Of course I readily and
enthusiastically agreed. Pretty soon small advertisements concerning my forthcoming speech
began to appear in the Stamford papers, and other advance notices were distributed in the regular
way.

Nothing was said, of course, in any of this publicity, about the intention to honor Father Fenton
at the affair, and I do not know even now whether he learned anything at all about this intention
until the evening in question. Since he was such a strong supporter of the Society and myself, it
was obvious, and soon confirmed, that he would be present and sitting on the platform with me
anyway. But two or three weeks before the speech Bill Buckley, who was a member of St.
Mary’s Parish, got wind of what was being planned and invited himself in. Whether he already
had some idea of how his participation might work out, I don’t know. But since he never has
been a special friend of Father Fenton, either before or after this occasion, he may well have
anticipated the need for him to throw a monkey wrench into the machinery being set in motion
by my anti-Communist messages. Or it may be that Buckley just could not bear the thought of
any wedding in the Stamford area at which he was not the bride.

At any rate, no sooner had he been welcomed by the committee as a member and a secondary
speaker than he began to mold the whole program for the evening to his liking. He invited Father
Fenton and myself and about ten other men who were active in making the arrangements, all to
have dinner at his home in Stamford before the meeting, which we thought was very gracious on
his part, and we all accepted. He also suggested to the committee, however, that — since he had
a strong idiosyncratic preference for always being the last speaker when there was more than
one, and since he knew that his friend, Bob Welch, would not really mind — under these
circumstances the order be shifted so that I would speak first and he would follow me.

A couple of years later I learned that this was a habit on Buckley’s part. The only other occasion
that I remember when I have ever appeared on the same platform with him was in Chicago at
some convention of conservatives, where I had been invited to be the speaker for the final dinner.
Buckley got himself invited to be a secondary speaker at the same dinner and then proceeded —
using exactly the same approach — to get himself in the featured position, with me speaking
first. Actually I didn’t mind, and it has never made the least difference to me when I spoke. For
the Stamford affair the arrangement seemed a little strange, because my speech had by now been
widely advertised as the purpose and business of the meeting. But when I was asked about
Buckley’s request I replied truthfully and without hesitation that I did not mind in the least.

Unknown to me, however, there were people on the committee who were already far more
familiar with Buckley’s wiles than I was. They did not trust him and were not sure what he had
in mind. So they pinned him down as to the subject of his speech. He said it would deal entirely
with the proceedings of the Democratic National Convention, which was right then in session in
Chicago. And it was on this firm condition that Buckley’s rearrangement of the program was
accepted — still with some misgivings which I did not know about.
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As we all finished the excellent dinner at his beautiful home on the water’s edge in Stamford,
and were departing for the hall which had been rented for the evening, Buckley half shouted in
reminder to somebody, who had visibly been impressed into acting as his aide for the evening, to
be sure not to forget to bring along his clipboard. And the mild wonder did flash through my
mind as to what on earth he would be needing a clipboard for, since its only usefulness could be
in making notes for himself while I was speaking and he was going to be talking on a different
subject altogether. But I paid no further attention to the matter, and neither did anybody else.

Eventually we reached the hall, assembled on the platform, the house was full, everybody was
happy, and after the normal preliminaries I was introduced for my speech. It was, of course, on
the menace and the progress of the Communist conspiracy. Actually, it was almost identically
the same speech I had made elsewhere dozens of times before, and of which a transcript, under
the title of “Look at the Score,” now appears as the opening section of The Blue Book. Since the
material had been studiously assembled and carefully arranged, and I had a receptive audience,
the effect was very gratifying. I felt that I had really awakened a few hundred patriotic but
formerly apathetic Americans to the point where they might start at least studying, or even doing
something about, the Communist conspiracy.

Then I sat down, and Buckley was introduced. He had been busily scratching away on the sheets
of paper held by the clipboard on his knee all of the time I was speaking. But if anybody was
puzzled or alarmed by this procedure, they did not say anything and there was hardly any way
they could. Whether or not his topic was announced, as a report on the Democratic National
Convention, at the time he was introduced, I do not now remember. But it would have made little
difference.

For Buckley proceeded, from the very beginning and for the whole half hour allotted to him,
simply to tear my speech to pieces — or to try to — primarily with the weapons of sarcasm and
ridicule. There was no conspiracy, and to believe that there was belonged in the realm of childish
fantasy. To believe that the subjugation of various countries, which I had outlined, was
accomplished by conspiracy and cunning, except as the populations of those countries had been
sold by propaganda and deception on the ideological fallacies of socialism, was nonsense. One
great problem for the real conservatives everywhere, who were trying so hard to stop this
socialist advance by outarguing the proponents of collectivism, was the distortion of everything
by ignoramuses like myself who saw Communists and conspirators under every bed. To hold
that high officials of the United States government had been consciously involved in helping the
Communists to impose their philosophy on China or any other nation was an almost criminal
misinterpretation of their acts and their purposes. He finished with a resoundingly virtuous
declaration that he repudiated everything Mr. Welch has said and all the views Mr. Welch had
expressed. And on that note he sat down.

I arose calmly and asked if — even though this had never been intended as a debate — I could
have one minute. The chairman said yes. I stepped to the podium and told the audience that
everything I had said, including every accusation I had made about the actions of
pro-Communists within our government, had been a matter of plain and fully documented
history; that I still stood by my speech in every particular; and that I simply wanted to go on
1
record as completely repudiating Mr. Buckley’s repudiation. Then I sat down, the chairman
adjourned the meeting, and a very non-plussed crowd, containing many quite angry friends of
both Father Fenton and myself, broke up and went home.

I shook hands with Buckley, thanked him again for the dinner, but told him with a grin that I still
disagreed with everything he had said. He answered affably that he had known I would. And we
parted on the same friendly basis as before. I did not know then, what I came to see quite clearly
a few years later, that his action had been a compulsive necessity under the circumstances. It was
his chosen course to fight the collectivist only and entirely on ideological grounds. Since this is
exactly what the Communists want, and they will go to any length and even subsidize their
opposition, to present the struggle which engulfs the world today between freedom and slavery
as a battle between two opposing philosophies, they never smear or make any real trouble for
anybody like Buckley, who is so ably promoting this idea for them — no matter how vigorously
and even sometimes effectively he may fight against them on the academic level. In fact you can
be sure that if there were no Buckley on the scene the Communists would invent one.

But there is always a tacit understanding that any such battler for conservatism on ideological
grounds must always lend his full weight to suppression and ridicule of what the Communists
have so cunningly labeled “the conspiratorial theory of history.” Otherwise, from his point of
view, he is not keeping the decks clear for the ideological argument. And from the Communist
point of view he is not supplying the quid pro quo which justifies their leaving him alone. But if
he does do his part, and therefore is not subjected to the Communist smears, he can soon acquire
quite a reputation for “respectable” and “responsible” conservatism; and the vast unthinking
citizenry is led to believe that anti-Communists like [Senator Joseph] McCarthy or Fulton Lewis
or myself have such horrible reputations only because we are not restrained enough to oppose
Communism in a “responsible” way, like Buckley. All the various pieces of this strategy fit
beautifully into the mosaic of the Communist program.

We brought in the name of Fulton Lewis above because he experienced a far more effective
undermining of his anti-Communist efforts by Buckley than the comparatively minor foul blow
struck at myself which I have described above. (I am talking about Fulton Lewis, Jr., now dead,
and not his very able and patriotic son, Fulton Lewis III.) It was several years ago, and perhaps
two or three years after my experience in Stamford, that Fulton Lewis began his carefully
planned exposure of that treasonous and pro-Communist monstrosity called Radio Free Europe,
or sometimes identified as the Voice of America.

And if you have any slightest doubt about the justification for my adjectives (despite all of the
able but gullible American businessmen who have been beguiled into giving it their financial
support), let me suggest that you get a copy of The Politician, and read carefully pages 187 to
194 [Chapter 15]. You will find there, although greatly condensed, the true and fully
documented history of this disgraceful means of betraying the anti-Communists of central
Europe, from the time it was founded and staffed by Communists, throughout all of the early
years when Eisenhower, as the head of NATO and then as President of the United States, was
permitting it to be used (while largely financed by American government money) to promote
Communist purposes.

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If you will pardon my saying so, I had done the necessary research, and printed a convincing
exposure of the real role of the so-called Voice of America, years before Fulton Lewis decided to
turn the light on it. But the number of people The Politician could reach, even after it was finally
published by me (in self-defense) on March 10, 1963, was a drop in the bucket compared to
those Fulton Lewis was reaching with his vast radio audience. And besides, there was nothing
Buckley could do about what was already in The Politician, except to aid with his ridicule those
who were trying to smother it. While there was a chance to stop Fulton Lewis in his tracks before
his exposure ever got anywhere.

As soon as Lewis turned his spotlight on Radio Free Europe, therefore, and his programs about it
began getting under way, Mr. Buckley invited himself into that picture with his usual
condescending effrontery. The CIA, of course, had immediately begun denying the Fulton Lewis
charges. They accused him of misstating facts, misinterpreting motives, and seeing conspiratorial
hands at work when there was nothing worse than stupidity or misguided idealism at work. (Just
how the fulsome glorification of Stalin, to the people reached on both sides of the Iron Curtain
by Radio Free Europe, could be justified, would certainly take some disingenuous explaining,
but almost nothing has been beyond the brilliant powers of the CIA when it comes to finding
reasons for their unceasing help to the Communists.)

So Mr. Buckley comes out with a very “responsible” lament about the whole situation. How sad
it was, he proclaimed, to see these two great anti-Communist forces, Fulton Lewis and the CIA,
quarreling between themselves. They should both be fighting the Communists only, and this
simply would not do. Somebody should set things right, and glory be to God that Bill Buckley
was available for the purpose. In fact he had a concrete proposal all ready to be acted on. A
committee should be formed to determine the rights and wrongs between Fulton Lewis and the
CIA over this whole matter, before the public became any further confused. And he, Bill
Buckley, as a great public service, would make the sacrifice of serving as chairman of such a
committee. And one of the other members of the committee, I happen to remember, was to be
Henry Kissinger! (See page 30, May 1958 American Opinion for an early warning about Mr.
Kissinger.)

Of course the CIA jumped at this opportunity. And what could Lewis do? Here was a great
young conservative Lothario, with a reputation as one of the leading conservative intellectuals in
America, and therefore supposedly a friend of Lewis and favorable to his point of view, offering
to be a dispassionate and objective mediator between himself and the CIA [by whom Buckley —
and his sister Priscilla — had been employed; this was not public information when Welch wrote
the above comment], whom Lewis well knew any honest investigation would prove to be a bunch
of pro-Communist liars, about Radio Free Europe as about almost everything else. (As late as
1960 Allen Dulles, as head of the CIA, and with all of the manpower and millions of that agency
at his disposal, was still claiming his inability to discover or to believe that Castro was a
Communist!)

So Lewis fell in line, the wheels of his exposure of Radio Free Europe were temporarily stopped
— and they never started up again. What actually happened, or how this was managed, I never
knew, or at least do not now remember. The mechanics of the stoppage do not matter, but the
public interest in the whole subject (which had been growing rapidly) was simply allowed to
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fade away. Lewis went on to other subjects. And the “responsible” Mr. Buckley had been
responsible for another spike in the movement to expose the Communist conspiracy.

And if, gentle reader, you are hard to convince, then this thought may have occurred to you:
“Well, Welch is wrong about one thing anyway. McCarthy’s whole effort was to expose the
Communist conspiracy, and Buckley certainly helped McCarthy.” In that case may we suggest
that you go back and reread Buckley’s book, McCarthy and His Enemies [a later edition was
published by Regnery and Company in 1996], in the light of all we know today. Of course
Buckley had to be very careful in that situation, in view of his pose as an anti-Communist and as
a friend of McCarthy, and for a number of other reasons. But the man who invented the
expression “damning with faint praise” would have been exhilarated beyond measure on finding,
by reading Buckley’s book, how beautifully this could be done by a real expert at the job. The
book, while pretending to explain and justify McCarthy, is far more industriously concerned with
pointing out what were presented as his errors and his faults — which were made more damning
because they were supposedly seen through the eyes of a friend who was disposed in McCarthy’s
favor. This book, in its subtle way, fitted exactly into the general strategy for destroying
McCarthy. And if you don’t believe us, we insist again that you go back and read McCarthy and
His Enemies now, and judge it for yourself.

Buckley may be a sincere anti-Communist, but only in his own way, and to hell with anybody
who fights them differently. And there can be little question as to how the Communists feel
about it. With a few more enemies like Buckley they would not need so many friends.

Introduction — Fronting for America’s Enemies

Guess the name of the following person: This individual has long advocated the legalization of
marijuana; approved of the Panama Canal giveaway; said he would probably join the
communist-dominated African National Congress if he were a black South African; has
repeatedly called for national service for youth; smeared Pat Buchanan by charging he
committed acts of “anti-Semitism”; pushed for foreign aid giveaways to Russia; favors legalized
prostitution; supports adoption of the Brady Bill gun control measure; and has endorsed “gay
rights” legislation.

Did you guess Norman Lear? Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner? Jesse Jackson? Our mystery
person is actually William F. Buckley, Jr., the mass media’s designated “leader” of the
conservative movement.

An old saying relates that if you acquire a reputation for showing up at work early, you can get
away with arriving as late as you want. The same adage apparently works in politics: If you have
a reputation for conservatism, you can get away with being as liberal as you want.1
— Thomas R. Eddlem

This book has been written to present evidence that William F. Buckley, Jr. is one of America’s
1
slyest deceivers, a clever but supremely duplicitous frontman for a behind-the-scenes cabal
whose operatives have been laboring for generations to steer America into their contrived “new
world order.”

Hardly anyone in recent decades has doubted Buckley’s lofty status as the leader of the nation’s
conservative movement, but very few have questioned what he has made of it. Simply stated,
today’s conservatism is a near-complete departure from what it was when he emerged as a
national figure. Over the years, he managed to turn an entire movement away from the “Old
Right” principles on which he himself was raised.

The dominant canons of the “Old Right” included nonintervention in the affairs of other nations
and the strict limitations on federal power set forth in the U.S. Constitution. In the days leading
up to Pearl Harbor, “Old Right” insistence that America should stay out of World War II
attracted the backing of a huge majority of the American people. And by 1940, even though
Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal had already broken some constitutional chains, resistance to
greater growth of government had not been completely eroded, and the possibility that it would
stage a comeback was real.

The direct opposite of the “Old Right,” even though that phrase has seldom been used in recent
years, is the “new world order,” whose major components are world government and socialism.
The United Nations has long been its foreign policy centerpiece, and the combination of taxation,
regulation, controls, and Big Brother government constitutes its domestic agenda.

As we shall show, Buckley’s support for the new world order’s blueprint began subtly,
progressed steadily, and gradually became more blatantly overt. Over the years, he led many
conservatives to forego the vital resistance they could offer to the encroachments of the new
world order’s promoters.

Nevertheless, the accolades he has received have been both numerous and flattering. In 1981, his
eventual biographer, John Judis, wrote that Buckley “played a leading role in shaping the
American conservative movement.”2 Ten years earlier, middle-of-the-roader John Reddy lauded
him as “conservatism’s most eloquent, tireless and entertaining voice.”3 And in 1972,
conservative Jeffrey Bell described Buckley as “the most eloquent and influential of non-elected
conservatives.”4

Other plaudits demonstrate the extent to which the Buckley mystique has spanned the decades.
Josh Getlin of the liberal Los Angeles Times declared in 1990 that Buckley is “best known for
sparking an intellectual movement that … made conservatism a household word.”5 In a 1992
review of a Buckley novel, Nathan Glazer of the New York Times stated that National Review
had become “the chief journal of opinion of American conservatism.”6 And that same year,
longtime friend and collaborator Marvin Liebman touted Buckley as “the founder of modern
American conservatism and the prime articulator of its philosophy.”7

Liebman’s choice of the word “modern” hints at the effect Buckley has had on the movement.
The conservatism Buckley created is indeed modern, and as we shall see, it departed strikingly
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from its parent. John Judis was correct in pointing to Buckley’s role in “shaping” the
conservative movement. But the shape he made of it, and the tactics he employed to accomplish
the transformation, constitute a story that must be told.

Less than two years after graduating from Yale, only a few months after completing a year of
service with the Central Intelligence Agency, and long before achieving national notoriety,
Buckley signaled his utterly non-conservative inclinations with a revealing article published in
The Commonweal, a Catholic weekly magazine. Fans of conservatism’s “leader” may well be
shocked by the following quotation. That he wrote it in 1952 only intensifies the jolt:

…we have got to accept Big Government for the duration — for neither an offensive
nor a defensive war can be waged, given our present government skills, except through
the instrument of a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores....

And if they deem Soviet power a menace to our freedom (as I happen to), they will have
to support large armies and air forces, atomic energy, central intelligence, war
production boards, and the attendant centralization of power in Washington — even
with Truman at the reins of it all.8

Such an attitude could not be described as “conservative” in 1952, and it certainly deserves no
such label today. But it does help to explain Buckley’s lifelong agenda. Eventually, he took
control of and diluted much of America’s resistance to “Big Government.” While he was
supposedly leading the fight against “the attendant centralization of power in Washington,” he
and the retinue of socialists and internationalists he assembled at National Review not only failed
to impede the acceptance of “Big Government,” they did everything in their power to stifle those
who tried.

A basic Buckley stratagem found him regularly ignoring the nation’s contract for good
government, the U.S. Constitution, and providing, instead, a stream of his own craftily
formulated but deficient opinions. An example of this tactic appeared in his syndicated column
for December 13, 1991, when he wrote: “It’s a bad time to be asking Americans to give money
to foreign countries.”9 He gave this middle-of-the-road attitude at a time when liberals and
internationalists led by Secretary of State James A. Baker III were worriedly predicting dire
consequences for mankind if the U.S. refused to send billions to Russia. And billions were
indeed poured down the Russian rathole.

Anyone holding the Constitution in high regard, however, would have insisted that there is never
a time — good or bad — to give the taxpayers’ money to foreign governments since the
Constitution in no way authorizes such giveaways. But Buckley-style leadership had a different
message that defused opposition to delivering tax dollars into foreign sinkholes.

Buckley employed the same tactic during a 1989 brouhaha over the funding of pornographers
and blasphemers by the National Endowment for the Arts. He merely chided NEA chairman
John Frohnmayer for deficient leadership. “Lacking a central vision, the NEA has been easily
distracted,” he stated.10 Why, it should be asked, wasn’t he pointing to the Constitution to
confirm that endowing the NEA with federal tax dollars should be terminated? The real issue
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was not how the NEA spends its funds, which is what Buckley lamely objected to, it was the
need to abolish the NEA entirely.

Buckley’s deficient leadership had surfaced years earlier. In 1971, the United Nations General
Assembly expelled Nationalist China (Taiwan) and awarded its place in the world body to the
blood-drenched Beijing regime. UN delegates literally danced in the aisles to celebrate this
long-sought-after Communist victory. As sentiment in the U.S. to withdraw from the world body
increased, Buckley advised in a November 1971 column that “the United Nations has its uses,
and the United States would be mistaken recklessly to withdraw from it.”11 Instead, he
recommended refraining from casting any further votes in the General Assembly — as if that
would accomplish anything of substance.

Yes, Buckley had made conservatism “modern,” as Marvin Liebman had indicated. He subjected
its principles to a watering-down process that redefined them in a way that bolstered the agenda
of the nation’s ruling Establishment.

“Old-style” conservatism contends that government is customarily the problem and rarely the
solution. It agrees with our nation’s Founders that a steadfast rule of law, rather than the shifting
and unreliable rule of man, must undergird this nation’s affairs. Without the foundation of the
Constitution, Old Rightists contend, America will be vulnerable to the whims and designs of
ambitious and amoral men who profess that they will rule wisely, but who unquestionably intend
to rule.

Old Right conservatives recognize the wisdom in a classic maxim often attributed to George
Washington: “Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force. Like fire, it is a
dangerous servant and a fearful master.”12

These advocates of constitutionally limited government also champion Thomas Jefferson’s

incisive warning to avoid reliance on fallible man. In perhaps his most widely quoted defense of
the Constitution, Jefferson stated:

It would be a dangerous delusion, were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence
our fears for the safety of our rights; that confidence is everywhere the parent of
despotism; free government is founded in jealousy and not in confidence; it is jealousy,
and not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions to bind down those whom we
are obliged to trust with power; that our constitution has accordingly fixed the limits to
which, and no farther, our confidence may go … in questions of power, then, let no
more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief with the chains
of the Constitution.13

Our nation was guided by such wisdom as it grew to world prominence. Adherence to easily
understood constitutional principles paved the way to national greatness. The Constitution
required no redefinition, no reshaping, no modernization. Were it adhered to today, the size and
cost of the federal government would shrink by at least two-thirds. Instead, fedgov continues to
balloon.

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In the absence of the hard-and-fast rule of constitutional law, the body politic is left twisting in
the wind.

A Curious Selection for Biographer

Buckley biographer John B. Judis has been widely praised for providing an informative and fair
look at his subject in William F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives.14 Wall Street
Journal reviewer Donald Kagan saluted Judis for “writing a clear and interesting account the
fairness and balance of which are especially praiseworthy.”15 The New Republic’s Allan
Brinkley applauded Judis’s examination of the Buckley career for its “striking fairness and
respect.”16 And Mark Feeney of the Boston Globe described it as “consistently fair and
illuminating.”17 But several reviewers expressed surprise that Buckley would willingly make
himself and his files so available to the left-leaning Judis. John C. Chalberg of Chronicles noted:

A still living and breathing William F. Buckley, Jr. has been elevated to sainthood. And
by whom? Not by the pope and not by Buckley’s own flock, but by a man of the left.18

Godfrey Hodgson and Katherine Roberts of the New York Times were similarly perplexed.
Hodgson, who described the book as “solid and thoughtful,” listed several leftist publications in
which Judis’s work regularly appears. He claimed to be puzzled that “Mr. Judis had his subject’s
cooperation in writing this book and has made ample use of interviews, personal papers and the
like.”19 Katherine Roberts was even more astonished by Buckley’s cooperation with a man
widely reputed to be his political adversary. She wrote:

If William F. Buckley Jr. could have chosen his ideal biographer, he might not have
picked John B. Judis, a senior editor at the liberal-to-left magazine In These Times.
Among other things, in 1981 Mr. Judis wrote an uncomplimentary article about Mr.
Buckley in The Progressive.... Mr. Judis was given access to about 500 boxes of
documents at the Yale Library and spent 30 to 40 hours interviewing Mr. Buckley.20

In another review of the Judis book, James Nuechterlein noted that “subject and author make an
awkward fit. Judis is a man of the Left, a senior editor of the socialist journal In These Times and
a contributor to a variety of left-wing magazines ranging from the New Republic to the
Progressive.” Nuechterlein astutely remarked:

The book reads as if the author had come to an agreement with his subject, according to
which, in exchange for access to Buckley’s personal papers and an open door to
interviews with his family and friends, Judis would undertake to offer as impartial and
dispassionate an ideological reading as possible.21

Virtually all who reviewed the book, and certainly John Judis himself, espoused philosophies
that were at odds with Old Right conservatism. Yet they all concurred that Buckley had become
conservatism’s extremely capable leader and, more importantly, its eminently responsible
spokesman. In effect, these individuals added weight to the reputation Buckley eagerly pursued
and has labored to maintain.

1
While painting a distinctly favorable portrait of modern conservatism’s godfather, William F.
Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives includes abundant evidence confirming that
Buckley is, to the contrary, the darling of the liberal internationalist Establishment.

Our Purpose
After arriving on the political scene in the early 1950s, Buckley created a fork in the nation’s
political road. Though few realized he had done so, the new path lured conservatives away from
the Constitution and toward an undefined and shifting standard where attitudes, personalities,
and organizations previously deemed to be anathema gained approval.

Those who followed Buckley failed to comprehend that their conservatism had been gutted and
their once-treasured principles had been cast adrift. Many were led to believe that they had new
allies in an assortment of liberals, neoconservatives, and internationalists they should have
shunned, including: Henry Kissinger; Jeane Kirkpatrick; Allard Lowenstein; Michael Novak;
Irving Kristol; and a swarm of Reagan-era apologists for huge deficits, unconstitutional
bureaucracies, and internationalism.

Leftists had not swung to the Right. The Right was being sidetracked to the Left — to a
vacillating, more docile, and more “respectable” posture that was actually liberalism and
internationalism in disguise.

The chapters that follow detail the career and impact of William F. Buckley, Jr., including his:

• membership in such Establishment and secretive entities as the Council on Foreign Relations
(Chapter 1), Yale University’s Skull & Bones Society (Chapter 3), and the Central Intelligence
Agency (Chapter 5);

• tutelage by a Trotskyite socialist professor at Yale (Chapter 3);

• selection of an array of ex-Communists, Trotskyites, and CIA veterans to staff National Review
(Chapter 6);

• intimate relationship with Henry Kissinger and his incredible recommendation that Kissinger’s
patron, Nelson Rockefeller, be named U.S. secretary of defense (Chapter 7);

• demonization of old-line conservatives and incessant ridicule of the notion of conspiracy

(Chapter 8);

• dishonestly attacking The John Birch Society (Chapter 9); and

• support for abortion while posturing as a faithful Catholic (Chapter 11).

For more than four decades, Buckley has been the liberal Establishment’s Pied Piper, leading the
Right away from its roots. His role has been bolstered by such would-be Buckley clones as
William Bennett, Jack Kemp, Newt Gingrich, George Will, Rush Limbaugh, William Kristol,
and a flock of neoconservatives whose preference for right-wing socialism and internationalism
1
is examined in Chapter 2.

Bill Buckley is indeed a famous author, lecturer, editor, television commentator, columnist, and
political analyst. As the pages that follow seek to demonstrate, however, if conservatism means
strict adherence to the immutable truths and fundamental principles that launched this nation and
made it the envy of the world, he is not its champion.
— John F. McManus
May 2002

Chapter One — Buckley and the Establishment

[If Buckley didn’t exist,] the establishment would have to invent him. Maybe they did.1
— Howard Zinn

In 1971, leftist professor Howard Zinn of Boston University debated William Buckley at a forum
held at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. During the proceedings, Zinn pointedly
suggested, in the remark cited above, that Buckley’s reputation as a combative opponent of “the
Establishment” was fraudulent. His curt assertion generated a huge laugh from the audience,
most of whom despised Buckley’s vaunted conservatism.

Unfortunately, Zinn’s piercing comment, coming as it did from a strident leftist, had little effect
on the political stance of most of those in attendance. But it did resonate with a few
conservatives on the scene, and with others via a newspaper account of the confrontation the next
day. Some had already begun questioning the type of leadership Buckley was offering.

Although Zinn didn’t define what he meant by “the establishment,” he obviously held the view,
prominent among leftists during those Vietnam War days, that it was the seat of well-entrenched
eastern capitalists who were responsible for most, if not all, of the nation’s ills. Buckley was
supposed to be at war with this force, but Zinn didn’t believe it.

Ten years earlier, syndicated columnist Edith Kermit Roosevelt had defined the term. She dared
to put in print what many who agreed with her were unwilling, even afraid, to say. Her detailed
description of “the Establishment” provided sorely needed insight about a power structure that
has been undermining America for decades. The granddaughter of President Theodore Roosevelt
wrote:

The word “Establishment” is a general term for the power elite in international finance,
business, the professions and government, largely from the northeast, who wield most of
the power regardless of who is in the White House. Most people are unaware of the
existence of this “legitimate Mafia.” Yet the power of the Establishment makes itself
felt from the professor who seeks a foundation grant, to the candidate for a Cabinet post
or State Department job. It affects the nation’s policies in almost every area....

1
 What is the Establishment’s viewpoint? Through the Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower
and Kennedy administrations its ideology is constant: That the best way to fight
Communism is by a One World Socialist state governed by “experts” like themselves.
The result has been policies which favor the growth of the superstate, gradual surrender
of United States sovereignty to the United Nations....2

Does Buckley belong to this “legitimate Mafia”? Is he a member of the “power elite … who
wield most of the power regardless of who is in the White House”? Does he support the creation
of a “One World Socialist state”? And does he favor policies leading to “the growth of the
superstate [and] gradual surrender of United States sovereignty to the United Nations”?

Fully a half-century before Miss Roosevelt issued her stinging definition of “the Establishment,”
a soon-to-be-President Woodrow Wilson acknowledged the existence of this same force, though
he never employed the word “Establishment.” Instead, he pointed to a fearsome but hidden
“power” in a book he wrote prior to entering the White House. Published in 1913, Wilson’s The
New Freedom includes this penetrating passage:

Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and
manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so
organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they
had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.3

Again, could such a “power” have influenced William Buckley to the point that he not only
refuses to speak about it, but has joined it and placed himself at its service?

Seeing Through the False Front

In the fall of 1967, Johnson administration heavyweight Richard Goodwin appeared as a guest
on Buckley’s “Firing Line” television program. A holdover from the Kennedy administration,
Goodwin had helped to create the twin socialistic programs known as the New Frontier and the
Great Society. As early as 1961, he had distinguished himself as a far-out leftist when he sought
to have the U.S. dignify Fidel Castro and Che Guevara as the legitimate leaders of Cuba.4

Neither a conservative nor an anti-Communist, Goodwin wasted no time in tossing Buckley a

remarkably revealing bouquet. Time magazine noted his unctuous tribute:

Any society, and particularly the Great Society, needs a responsible force on the right. I
think that all of us are very glad that you are that force. It might have been somebody
who is mean and sharp and nasty and unwilling to debate the issues. As long as you’re
there, it protects the civilities of discourse in a free society.5

Here we have a highly placed emissary of the Establishment acknowledging Buckley’s strategic
importance. If Buckley’s fans were not aware of their hero’s usefulness to the Establishment,
Goodwin was. As early as 1967, he knew that his television host could be counted on to offer no
serious opposition to the Great Society, and Buckley’s subsequent actions did not contradict that
assessment.

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Even before Goodwin’s rosy tribute, Medford Evans (former chief of security training for the
Atomic Energy Commission and, like Buckley, a Yale alumnus) had reached the same
conclusion, though he wasn’t pleased with his discovery. At National Review’s inaugural in
1955, Evans’ name appeared on the list of the magazine’s contributors. A champion of the Old
Right, Evans parted company with the Buckley-led publication in its infancy, believing that it
had drifted from what he had thought were its soundly rooted foundations. He transferred his
loyalty and literary output to American Opinion magazine.

It was in American Opinion, an affiliate of The John Birch Society, that he stated in 1985: “The
reluctant conclusion I have reached is that William F. Buckley Jr. is and has been driven by
vanity, ambition, and greed to seek a place in the Establishment which he professes — or once
professed — to oppose.”6

Evans detested the Establishment precisely for its policies as cited by Edith Kermit Roosevelt.
He had spent a lifetime combating many of the treacherous programs spawned by its highly
placed agents. He didn’t agree with cozying up to and financing Communism, driving the United
States into world government, building socialism, and slandering groups and individuals who
dared expose the Establishment’s unremitting drive for power. He had reached the conclusion
that Buckley was a willing pawn in the sinister game.

The program for National Review’s 40th anniversary celebration on October 13, 1995 provided
further confirmation of Buckley’s place within the Establishment. On that occasion, Dr. Henry
Kissinger, whose standing within the Establishment is virtually second-to-none, noted his long
personal friendship with the magazine’s founder. He delightedly remarked that in whatever
position he himself might take, “I won’t have to look around to know that Bill Buckley and
National Review will be right there beside me.”7

An unvarnished history of the 20th century will confirm that the Establishment has been
disturbingly successful in engineering America’s decline. Personal freedom is under attack;
national sovereignty is being transferred to the United Nations; a “One World Socialist state” is
on the horizon; and a hidden power fearsome enough to silence most opponents is working its
sinister magic. America’s internal enemies have been winning, and their steady advance toward
total power is not happening by chance.

Bill Buckley’s carefully crafted “conservative” image generated an impression that he was
opposed to all of this, but some of his followers had already begun to see through their
once-revered hero. In 1974, his open affiliation with the New York-based Council on Foreign
Relations (CFR) completely shattered his falsely acquired reputation for many more.

The Council on Foreign Relations

In mid-1974, Buckley not only joined the Council on Foreign Relations, he proudly published
that fact in National Review. He thereby provided the Establishment’s most obvious front group
crucial protective coloration. Henceforth, the CFR and its members and associates could cite
Buckley’s affiliation as “proof” that the organization couldn’t possibly be subversive

His invitation had been jointly issued by CFR Chairman David Rockefeller and President
1
Bayless Manning. Buckley’s letter of acceptance, sent to Alton Frye, the group’s director of
membership, and subsequently published in National Review, aired his displeasure at having had
to wait nine years for the honor. (He had first been nominated back in 1965.) A CFR internal
memo written by staff assistant Lorna Brennan in 1974 pointed out that Frye had “mollified him
somewhat by explaining that, although previously he had been perhaps considered a somewhat
controversial figure by some, now, with the Council’s new president and new administration,
there is unanimous wish that he become a member.”8

In his letter to Alton Frye, Buckley stated in part:

Thank you for your kind letter urging me to accept Mr. Rockefeller’s invitation to join
the Council on Foreign Relations, and for the enclosures, which I have looked over.

I am inclined to bow to your courtesy, and accept your kind invitation to join the
Council. But I feel I should say a word or two. The reason for the rather extraordinary
period of my exclusion did not transpire in our discussion. I was nominated for
membership in 1965, and invited to join in 1974. I am required to conclude either that
the opposition to my election was personal, in which case it was presumably expressed
by one or two members with administrative leverage now dissipated; or that it was
ideological, in which case it has apparently been diluted either as a result of a changed
attitude by certain members of the Council toward foreign relations, or a changed
attitude of my own toward foreign relations; or of a changed understanding by certain
members of the Council of my positions towards foreign relations.

… I note that among your members are many of my personal friends, and that with a
few of them, I have practically no political differences.9

Prior to at last being invited into the Establishment’s inner sanctum, Buckley cultivated the
friendship of numerous CFR members through a luncheon group he and Time magazine
executive Richard Clurman formed in 1970. Dubbed “The Boys Club,” regular attendees
included Abe Rosenthal (CFR) of the New York Times, Osborn Elliott (CFR) of Newsweek,
Irving Kristol (CFR) of The Public Interest, John Chancellor (CFR) of NBC News, and journalist
Theodore White (CFR).10 Clurman would join the CFR the following year.11

Whatever the basis for his acceptance by America’s Establishment, Buckley’s alliance with the
CFR said reams about him. He remains a member to this day.

He and all other members are bound by the group’s by-laws, which require secrecy about what
transpires within the organization. As published in the CFR Annual Report, Article II states:

It is an express condition of membership in the Council, to which condition every

member accedes by virtue of his or her membership, that members will observe such
rules and regulations as may be prescribed from time to time by the Board of Directors
concerning the conduct of Council meetings or the attribution of statements made
therein, and that any disclosure, publication, or other action by a member in
contravention thereof may be regarded by the Board of Directors in its sole discretion as
1
 ground for termination or suspension of membership pursuant to Article I of the
By-Laws.12

In short, the CFR operates under a veil of secrecy enabling it to keep the public generally
unaware of its activities and the many unsavory characters who have frequented its chambers.
One disreputable individual regularly welcomed by the CFR was Anatoly Dobrynin, the USSR’s
ambassador to the United States during much of the Cold War. A hard-core Communist and slick
spokesman for the tyrannical Soviet government, he returned to Moscow in 1986 after serving
the Kremlin as its representative in the U.S. for 24 years. In their 1975 book Kissinger on the
Couch, authors Phyllis Schlafly and Retired Admiral Chester Ward (the latter, a former judge
advocate general of the U.S. Navy, who once belonged to the CFR) aptly described Dobrynin as
the “ex officio head of the KGB in the United States.”13

Dobrynin was the beneficiary of a lengthy and laudatory 1984 article by Madeline G. Kalb in the
New York Times Magazine. Kalb noted that the career Soviet diplomat generally avoided
interviews, but that “he keeps in touch with influential journalists and top people at such
organizations as the Council on Foreign Relations.”14 This highly placed agent of a despotic
government that had spilled the blood of millions knew, even if most Americans did not, that the
welcome mat at CFR headquarters was always out. Beginning in 1974, it was also in place for
William F. Buckley, Jr.

The CFR’s Devastating Influence

The footprints left by Buckley’s friends in the CFR are readily detectable in a long succession of
setbacks for this nation.

For instance, more than 40 members of the U.S. delegation to the UN’s 1945 founding
conference either were or would eventually become CFR members. Included among these
prominent internationalists were John Foster Dulles, John J. McCloy, Nelson Rockefeller, Adlai
Stevenson, and Alger Hiss.15 Our nation’s gradual descent into a UN-controlled world
government, which began with their efforts, has been orchestrated by subsequent CFR
operatives.

In the late 1940s, CFR members Owen Lattimore and Dean Acheson arranged for America’s
betrayal of our Nationalist Chinese allies while simultaneously helping Mao Tse-tung and his
murderous band into power.16

From posts in the Truman State Department, CFR members Dean Acheson and Dean Rusk
placed U.S. forces under the control of the United Nations in the no-win, undeclared war in
Korea. They prevented General Douglas MacArthur from achieving victory, and they ushered in
the reign of the Communist Chinese as the dominant military power in the Far East.17

CFR members John Foster Dulles and Allen Dulles served respectively as secretary of state and
CIA director during the administration of CFR member Dwight Eisenhower. They
double-crossed the Hungarian Freedom Fighters in 1956 and helped Fidel Castro grab the reins
of power in Cuba in January 1959.18
1
CFR members Dean Rusk, McGeorge Bundy, and Adlai Stevenson saw to it that the 1961 Bay of
Pigs invasion of Cuba became a miserable failure, a huge black eye for the U.S., and a
tremendous boost in prestige for Castro.19

CFR members Dean Rusk, Robert McNamara, and Henry Cabot Lodge sent U.S. military forces
into Vietnam under the UN’s SEATO pact, then drew up rules of engagement for our troops that
made an American victory impossible.20

CFR members Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger continued the no-win Vietnam War, presided
over America’s capitulation in 1973, shamefully abandoned hundreds of POWs/MIAs, and
allowed North Vietnam to keep 200,000 fully armed troops in South Vietnam after the supposed
end of the war. It was hardly a surprise, then, when South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia were
overrun by Communist forces.21

And this is merely a glimpse of the record compiled by leading members of the organization that
Bill Buckley sought to join in 1965, and was allowed to join in 1974.

Key CFR Members Approve Buckley’s Membership

Buckley could not have been unaware of the CFR’s history. Likewise, CFR officials could
hardly have been ignorant about him and his career. In 1974, Paul C. Warnke, a determined
leftist, chaired the CFR’s Membership Committee. Three years later, Warnke, whose reputation
for tolerating Soviet arms cheating became legendary, would be tapped by President Jimmy
Carter to head the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.22

Buckley’s public image, of course, was that of an intense foe of everything Warnke stood for,
especially disarmament. Yet, as a CFR official, Warnke saw fit to approve Buckley’s
membership. Once again, image and reality were not meshing.

Also serving on the CFR’s Membership Committee at the time were such internationalist
luminaries as Jimmy Carter’s future treasury secretary, W. Michael Blumenthal, and David
Rockefeller’s eventual successor as CFR chairman, Peter G. Peterson.23 It is unlikely that these
individuals were tricked into awarding membership to an opponent of CFR designs.

Within a year of Buckley’s initial affiliation with the CFR, retired U.S. Navy Admiral Chester
Ward issued sharp criticism of the organization. Having been a member himself for 16 years, he
was in a unique position to know what it had been trying to do. In Kissinger on the Couch, Ward
bluntly concluded that the CFR’s goal had long been the “submergence of U.S. sovereignty and
national independence into an all-powerful one-world government.” He claimed that “this lust to
surrender the sovereignty and independence of the United States is pervasive throughout most of
the membership.”24

Admiral Ward explained how the organization operated and how its desires invariably became
U.S. policy:

1
 Once the ruling members of the CFR have decided that the U.S. Government should
adopt a particular policy, the very substantial research facilities of CFR are put to work
to develop arguments, intellectual and emotional, to support the new policy, and to
confound and discredit, intellectually and politically, any opposition.25

Because the admiral’s comments added to growing national awareness about the CFR’s goals, its
leaders found themselves in need of some serious damage control. Buckley came to the rescue!
He approved publication of a four-page whitewash of the CFR in his National Review. Author
Zygmunt Nagorski, a CFR staff official, claimed that the organization was a mere “marketplace
of ideas related to American foreign policy”26 — not a fountain of policy-making.

Denying or ignoring many of the charges laid at the CFR’s doorstep, Nagorski insisted that the
organization was a paragon of bipartisanship. He supported his claim by listing names of CFR
members whose very presence within the group supposedly sealed his case. Not surprisingly, as
proof of a “conservative” element, he cited Bill Buckley. Others he touted as “conservatives”
included Peter G. Peterson, IBM Chairman Frank Cary, Generals Maxwell Taylor and William
Westmoreland, and Paul Nitze. And he parroted the standard CFR line: “Since its inception the
Council has felt free to invite proponents of all views.”

Of course, merely feeling “free” to do something is no guarantee that it will be done!

Buckley allowed Nagorski to give National Review’s readers a sanitized glimpse of the CFR,
avoiding any significant facts about its history and influence. Nagorski then asked rhetorically,
“Does all this suggest a kind of conspiracy?” The conclusion readers were conditioned to reach,
of course, was: “No, it certainly doesn’t.” Based on what Nagorski offered, no one would believe
that the CFR had ever been a part of a plot to subvert American independence. Keeping readers
of National Review in the dark about the CFR’s real intentions was important to Establishment
elitists. And kept in the dark they were — with the assistance of the founder, editor, and chief
spokesman of National Review.

When someone of the caliber of Admiral Ward discovers the CFR’s real goals, he works to
change the organization from within and, failing that, resigns and speaks out about what he has
learned. Unfortunately for America, the CFR hasn’t had to contend with too many Admiral
Wards.

Another CFR member who tried to steer the organization away from its sinister path was career
diplomat Spruille Braden. Frustrated by his unsuccessful attempts to influence the organization,
he eventually walked away from the Council after failing to counter the preachments of one
Herbert Matthews at a CFR gathering.27 A leftist New York Times reporter, Matthews was a
prominent apologist for Fidel Castro during the revolutionary Cuban’s rise to power. Like
Medford Evans, Ambassador Braden then became affiliated with The John Birch Society, where
he knew his efforts and experience would be helpful to our nation.

Perhaps the greatest departure from truth in Nagorski’s National Review article was his claim
that the CFR “is a body that seeks no consensus, no agreed-upon conclusion.” That claim has
become the standard CFR response to criticism. It is a disingenuous dodge.
1
No CFR consensus? No agreed-upon conclusion? Are we to believe that David Rockefeller and
his coterie of internationalists have enthusiastically financed and directed an organization
unconcerned about the extent to which its agenda parallels their own? The CFR does take
positions, does arrive at conclusions, and does have an agenda.

When David Rockefeller announced his retirement as chairman in the 1984 CFR Annual Report,
he revealed the creation of a CFR endowment “to provide an even greater range and scope of
programming for its membership and the nation.”28 Can there be “programming” for the nation
without having first reached conclusions about what it will entail?

Current CFR chairman Peter G. Peterson, David Rockefeller’s immediate successor, has on more
than one occasion let some very telling cats out of the CFR bag. In his “Letter From the
Chairman” in the 1989 CFR Annual Report, Peterson stated that “the Board of Directors and the
staff of the Council have decided that this institution should play a leadership role in defining
these new foreign policy agenda....”29 In the organization’s 1995 Annual Report, Peterson
wrote: “We must help spark and shape the debate about the new foreign policy challenges and
our country’s proper global role in the post-Cold War environment.”30

How can the CFR “play a leadership role in defining these new foreign policy agenda,” or how
can it “shape the debate about the new foreign policy challenges,” without taking a position?
Simply stated, it can’t. The CFR has always taken positions, and perhaps its major
accomplishment has been assuring that only various shadings of its desires are considered within
the high councils of government and by the American people. Its strategically placed members
see to it that any proposal threatening to halt or reverse America’s disastrous slide into world
government is ridiculed or ignored.

For example, the “debate” shaped by CFR members in and out of government gave Americans
the choice of which former Soviet satellite nations should be welcomed into NATO. Completely
absent was the option of having the U.S. withdraw from NATO. Another “debate” dwelled on
possible reductions in the UN’s “bloated bureaucracy” while neglecting the option of withdrawal
from the world body. In yet another managed “debate,” Americans influenced by the CFR
through its near-total domination of the mass media are regularly offered the choice of either
increasing or maintaining current spending levels for socialistic programs. The alternative of
abolishing such programs is never considered.

As Peter G. Peterson openly asserted, the CFR “must … shape the debate.” And Bill Buckley, a
supposed opponent of the Establishment, can usually be found marching in lock step with his
CFR colleagues on the issues they deem important.

With its near dominance over the choice of America’s top political candidates, and its weighty
influence within the mass media, the CFR can even “shape” presidential contests, as in the races
between Dwight Eisenhower and Adlai Stevenson, Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey,
George H.W. Bush and Michael Dukakis, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, etc. The names of
all these individuals have appeared on CFR membership rosters. Other presidential aspirants who
were not CFR members during their candidacies nevertheless sang the CFR’s tune (e.g., John
1
Kennedy), and some (e.g., Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter) joined shortly after leaving the White
House. For decades, those seeking the top rung of American politics while resolutely opposed to
the CFR’s agenda have either been consigned to non-entity status or found themselves the target
of vicious attacks.

If the CFR and those it influences “shape the debate,” the American people are presented with
lose-lose choices. The forces of big government win no matter which of the approved
alternatives is accepted. Yet, even as it continues to define the nation’s agenda and shape the
debate on the key issues, the CFR claims that it offers “no consensus, no agreed-upon
conclusion.” Bill Buckley has for years shielded his followers from the truth about this devious
game.

Occasionally, some truth about the CFR’s pervasive influence appears in unexpected places. In
October 1993, for instance, the Washington Post published an op-ed column by staff ombudsman
Richard Harwood. Entitled “Ruling Class Journalists,” it candidly claimed that CFR members
“are the nearest thing we have to a ruling establishment in the United States.” That observation is
reminiscent of what Edith Kermit Roosevelt stated 32 years earlier. Harwood wrote of this
“ruling establishment”:

The president is a member. So is his secretary of state, the deputy secretary of state, all
five of the undersecretaries, several of the assistant secretaries and the department’s
legal adviser. The president’s national security adviser and his deputy are members. The
director of Central Intelligence (like all previous directors) and the chairman of the
Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board are members. The secretary of defense, three
undersecretaries and at least four assistant secretaries are members. The secretaries of
the departments of housing and urban development, interior, health and human services
and the chief White House public relations man, David Gergen, are members, along
with the Speaker of the House and the majority leader of the Senate....

In the past 15 years, council directors have included Hedley Donovan of Time Inc.,
Elizabeth Drew of the New Yorker, Philip Geylin of The Washington Post, Karen Elliott
House of the Wall Street Journal and Strobe Talbott of Time magazine, who is now
President Clinton’s ambassador at large in the Slavic world. The editorial page editor,
deputy editorial page editor, executive editor, managing editor, foreign editor, national
affairs editor, business and financial editor and various writers as well as Katharine
Graham, the paper’s principal owner, represent The Washington Post in the Council’s
membership. The executive editor, managing editor and foreign editor of the New York
Times are members, along with executives of such other large newspapers as the Wall
Street Journal and Los Angeles Times, the weekly newsmagazines, network television
executives and celebrities — Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw and Jim Lehrer, for example —
and various columnists, among them Charles Krauthammer, William Buckley, George
Will and Jim Hoagland.31

Washington Post staffer Harwood stated that those he listed had accomplished “their ascension
into the American ruling class.”* He did not note how Buckley provides protective cover for the
CFR’s fraudulent we-welcome-all-views claim, but he did cite National Review’s leading light as
1
one who had arrived in the inner councils of the Establishment he once claimed to oppose.

Harwood summarized the impact of the many CFR members who dominate the Fourth Estate,
including Buckley: “They do not merely analyze and interpret foreign policy for the United
States; they help make it.”32 Harwood not only contradicted the false CFR claim that it didn’t
shape U.S. policy, he included Buckley as one of many who “help make it.”

Buckley has occasionally responded to inquiries about his CFR membership with brief letters
claiming that members “take no corporate positions, and I am entirely unencumbered by their
activity.”33 Richard Harwood’s account of the CFR’s pervasive influence in helping to “make”
foreign policy clearly contradicted Buckley’s assertion.

In March 1982, Buckley interviewed CFR President Winston Lord for his “Firing Line”
television program. The subject, as noted in Buckley’s 1989 book On the Firing Line, was “The
CFR and its Critics.” But the CFR was hardly criticized as the two danced around the real
substance of the organization.34

Others Did Expose the CFR

In 1962, former FBI official Dan Smoot published the first substantive exposé of the CFR. The
Dallas-based author and television commentator contended in the foreword to his book, The
Invisible Government, that the CFR had been working from its inception in 1921 “to convert
America into a socialist state and then make it a unit in a one-world socialist system.”
Documenting that assertion with overwhelming evidence, he continued:

I am convinced that the Council on Foreign Relations, together with a great number of
other associated tax-exempt organizations, constitutes the invisible government which
sets the major policies of the federal government; exercises controlling influence on
government officials who implement those policies; and, through massive and skillful
propaganda, influences Congress and the public to support the policies.35

Smoot’s work quickly became a standard reference for the growing number of Americans who
were becoming aware of the existence of the Establishment of which the CFR was the major
player, and of the Council’s dominating influence in government, the media, foundations, and
large corporations. Several books underscoring this message soon followed, including those by
Kent and Phoebe Courtney, Mary M. Davison, and John A. Stormer.36

Then in 1966, Georgetown University professor Carroll Quigley’s ponderous Tragedy and Hope:
A History of the World In Our Time burst onto the scene, supplying important corroboration of
the thesis propounded by Smoot and others — from the inside.

A Harvard-trained historian, Quigley traced the roots of the Council to the 1870 global ambitions
of Oxford University Professor John Ruskin and his star pupil, Cecil Rhodes. He detailed
Ruskin’s passion to eliminate America’s independence and to bring the entire English-speaking
world under the control of British-trained elitists. He showed that with help from Europe’s
Rothschild banking empire, Rhodes built a huge mining operation in Southern Africa and used
his immense fortune to carry out the Ruskin plan. Quigley labeled the fruit of the Ruskin/Rhodes
1
plan “a secret society.”37

Rhodes passed away in 1905. The secret organization he helped form evolved, by 1919, into
England’s Royal Institute of International Affairs, with affiliates in other English-speaking
nations. According to Quigley, the U.S. branch of this secret society “is known as the Council on
Foreign Relations.”38

Quigley outlined the “far-reaching aim” of the CFR and several allied organizations as “nothing
less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the
political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole.”39 The Georgetown
professor added that the “system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by … secret
agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences.”40

He also bared this secret society’s largely ignored determination to have America’s two major
political parties become virtual clones of each other:

The chief problem of American political life for a long time has been how to make the
two Congressional parties more national and international. The argument that the two
parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps, of the Right and the
other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to doctrinaire and academic thinkers.
Instead, the two parties should be almost identical, so that the American people can
“throw the rascals out” at any election without leading to any profound or extensive
shifts in policy.... But either party in office becomes in time corrupt, tired, uninteresting,
and vigorless. Then it should be possible to replace it, every four years if necessary, by
the other party, which will be none of these things but will still pursue, with new vigor,
approximately the same basic policies.41

All three elements of a malign conspiracy are evident throughout Quigley’s study: secrecy; a
coordinated group of individuals; and an evil goal. The professor, however, did not believe that
what he was describing was evil. He never used the word “conspiracy,” preferring instead
repeated references to a praiseworthy “secret society.”

But the term conspiracy aptly fits his account. And it should be apparent to any serious student of
current events that the world is heading precisely in the direction charted by the plotters whom
Quigley lauded.

At one point in his 1,348-page work, Quigley boasted of his own direct familiarity with the plot.
He stated that he had “studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early
1960s, to examine its papers and secret records.”42 He did not, however, say who “permitted”
such an examination, where he journeyed to view those “papers and secret records,” or what they
contained. His only substantive complaint about the “network” he chronicled was that “it wishes
to remain unknown, and I believe its role in history is significant enough to be known.”43

Five years later, investigative writer Gary Allen, combining both Quigley’s revelations and his
own considerable research, produced his blockbuster book None Dare Call It Conspiracy.44
1
Over five million copies found their way into the hands of concerned Americans.

Many who read Allen’s book admitted that it dramatically changed the way they had been
viewing national and world affairs. Allen’s brief but incisive analysis made them aware that a
powerful conspiracy did indeed have a solid grip on our nation.

Allen focused attention on the identity and Marxist leanings of the CFR’s principal founder, the
mysterious Colonel Edward Mandell House, whom President Wilson described as his “alter
ego.” House had detailed his megalomaniacal ambitions in his 1912 novel entitled Philip Dru:
Administrator, where he advocated “Socialism as dreamed of by Karl Marx” and called for a
central bank, an income tax, the repudiation of the U.S. Constitution, and the reuniting of
England and the United States.45

Allen’s small but potent work further revealed that CFR hands were leading the U.S. into
socialism, war, astronomical debt, and world government. Two of his most shocking revelations
were the CFR’s domination of virtually all branches of the mass media and of both major
political parties.

CFR kingpins found themselves facing the problem of countering Allen’s charges. William F.
Buckley, Jr., reputed to be a leading foe of the Establishment, was ideal for the job. During its
first 17 years, National Review had ignored the CFR, and no references to the organization had
appeared in Buckley’s nationally syndicated columns. But the exposure by Allen and others
made Buckley’s silence deafening.

In a brief review appearing in September 1972, National Review discounted and ridiculed
Allen’s indictment. The author, A. Reynolds, disdainfully wrote: “Allen connects the Council on
Foreign Relations with everything but the men’s room at Grand Central Station.”46

In 1976, Gary Allen produced another powerful book focusing on Jimmy Carter, who was being
raised from near obscurity to the status of serious presidential contender. Jimmy Carter, Jimmy
Carter included the salient revelation that Carter was an early member of CFR Chairman David
Rockefeller’s other Establishment creation, the Trilateral Commission:

In the fall of 1973, David invited Jimmy to have dinner with him in London. Over the
hors d’oeuvres, David asked Jimmy to become a member of the Trilateral Commission
— an important new group David was forming to promote world government. By the
time dessert was served, Jimmy had agreed to come on board. The Trilateral
Commission is another CFR front (over half of its 65 North American members also
belong to the CFR)....47

Allen demonstrated that Carter was anything but the outsider he repeatedly claimed to be.
Though Jimmy Carter, Jimmy Carter didn’t equal the enormous impact of None Dare Call It
Conspiracy, its exposé of Carter’s connections to America’s “legitimate Mafia” contained
additional details about the conspiratorial plans of the CFR and its Trilateral offspring.

Coincident with the release of Allen’s critique of Jimmy Carter, National Review publisher
1
William Rusher issued an urgent fund appeal to the magazine’s subscribers. His desperate letter
included this whimpering forecast of imminent ruin: “I still cannot tell you, for sure, whether NR
is going to pull through again....”48

About that time, however, Gary Allen sent National Review a $1,400 check to cover the cost of
an ad for his new book. The check was promptly refused and returned by — William Rusher!49
No exposure of the Establishment or its key organizations and players would appear — even as a
pre-paid advertisement — in the supposedly financially strapped and hardline conservative
National Review.

More Defense of the Indefensible

Continuing his defense of the CFR and his own membership, in 1977 Buckley published a letter
he sent to a reader who asked for his comments about the charges contained in None Dare Call It
Conspiracy. (The Allen book was still having an impact.) In lock-step with the CFR itself,
Buckley parroted the false claim that the CFR takes no positions. He stated:

The Council on Foreign Relations consists, as far as most of its members are concerned,
in a forum for speakers, more often than not from foreign countries. If there is such a
thing, I have never heard the corporate position of the CFR expounded, and certainly it
has never been urged at any meeting I have attended.50

Not content with attaching his name and reputed conservatism to the CFR, echoing the CFR’s
official line of defense, and verbally savaging those who raised questions about the organization,
Buckley devoted his syndicated column to further defending it. In October 1979, he noted with
regret that George Bush (the elder) had just resigned from the CFR. Bush gave as his reason
(confirmed by David Rockefeller but ignored by Buckley) the need to make himself appear more
acceptable to Republicans in the race for their party’s 1980 presidential nomination. Buckley
wrote:

Poor George Bush, at one point a director of the CFR, who knows as well as he knows
the depths of his own patriotism that the CFR is not pro-Soviet, nor in favor of
surrendering U.S. sovereignty, nevertheless feels that resigning his membership is the
expedient thing to do, if only to save the postage required to answer patiently the
number of people who would be denouncing him as a pro-communist or a One Worlder
or an instrument of Rockefeller Interests (the three most frequently leveled charges
against the CFR).51

Note Buckley’s claim that the CFR does not favor “surrendering U.S. sovereignty.” Yet in 1974,
the same year that Buckley joined the organization, prominent CFR member Richard N. Gardner,
a former deputy assistant secretary of state for international affairs, issued his notorious call for
“an end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece” in the CFR’s flagship journal
Foreign Affairs.52

Gardner lamented that expectations of pulling off a single leap into world government were not
realistic. Instead, he listed an array of international entanglements that would help complete the
“end run,” stating that the “case-by-case approach can produce some remarkable concessions of
1
‘sovereignty’ that could not be achieved on an across-the-board basis.”53 Buckley’s contention
that the CFR does not favor the surrender of U.S. sovereignty amounted to a further whitewash
of the CFR’s sinister objectives.

In 1980, Buckley penned an article for Foreign Affairs. In “Human Rights and Foreign Policy: A
Proposal,” he urged the U.S. Congress to establish a Commission on Human Rights made up of
nominees recommended by such left-leaning groups as the International Commission of Jurists,
Amnesty International, and the Anti-Defamation League. He proposed having this commission
supply an annual, nation-by-nation assessment of human rights “using the Universal Declaration
[of Human Rights] of the United Nations as the paradigm.”54

We can only gasp at the audacity of this “respectable” conservative in recommending the UN’s
Universal Declaration as a model for America, since its next-to-last article blatantly states: “In
the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are
determined by law”; and “These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the
purposes and principles of the United Nations.”55 Which means that those who oppose the UN’s
“purposes and principles” have no rights according to the world body’s own litmus test.

A completely opposite model is the “self-evident” assertion in the Declaration of Independence

that “Men … are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” Consistent with this
pronouncement, the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Constitution maintains that “Congress shall make
no law” dealing with an array of unalienable rights.

If Buckley’s recommendation had been adopted, it would have led to a further suppression of the
recognition that rights are God-given, and it would have boosted even further the fraudulent
contention that rights emanate from a government such as the UN, which can suspend them “by
law.”

By December 1980, Buckley was invited to speak at the CFR’s New York headquarters. He has
also occasionally served as a moderator or presider at CFR convocations. His 1980 address at a
“Meeting for Members and their Spouses” supplied his “Early Reflections on the New [Reagan]
Administration.”56

In his “personal documentary” entitled Overdrive, Buckley revealed that, by 1981, he had
ascended to such a height within the CFR that he was now screening potential members. He
wrote:

A youngish man who wants to join the Council on Foreign Relations has one of those
nice-type problems. You see, his roommate at Yale was the current president of the
Council on Foreign Relations. But ever since Watergate and Abscam, things like this
have to be handled with the utmost delicacy and regard for punctilio. So he makes an
appointment to meet me, so that I can size him up, so that I can, after talking to him for
twenty minutes, write a letter to the membership committee, which is, in effect, run by
the president, so that I can inform the president of the Council on Foreign Relations
what his ex-roommate is like.57 [Emphasis in original.]

1
The CFR president at the time was Winston Lord. Like Buckley, Lord spent his senior year at
Yale as a member of the mysterious and secretive Skull & Bones Society. In time, Lord moved
on from the presidency of the CFR to become our nation’s ambassador to Communist China and,
later, to accept a top post in the Clinton State Department.

While Buckley was defending the CFR, Senator Jesse Helms (R-N.C.) was offering a distinctly
opposite view. During remarks given in the U.S. Senate on December 15, 1987, Helms
maintained that a “campaign against the American people” was being waged by “the Department
of State, the Department of Commerce, the money center banks and multinational corporations,
the media, the educational establishment, the entertainment industry, and the large tax-exempt
foundations … to create what some refer to as a new world order.”

Targeting “the eastern establishment,” Helms listed many of its constituent organizations:

Private organizations such as the Council on Foreign Relations, the Royal Institute of
International Affairs, the Trilateral Commission, the Dartmouth Conference, the Aspen
Institute for Humanistic Studies, the Atlantic Institute, and the Bilderberg Group serve
to disseminate and to coordinate the plans for this so-called new world order in powerful
business, financial, academic and official circles.58

With the exception of England’s Royal Institute, all of whose members are British subjects, each
of the entities named by Helms is top-heavy with CFR members. And Buckley has been a key
functionary within this combine for decades: fronting for it, deflecting attention away from its
agenda, and helping to propel this nation toward its world-government goals.**

In 1990, many hundreds of concerned Americans sent evidence documenting the CFR’s jaded
history to individual CFR members, asking why they would belong to such an organization.
Many defended their membership by pointing out that “William F. Buckley, Jr. is a member.”
Merely citing his name was supposed to overcome objections.

Other CFR members parroted the “we never take a position” ruse. Little else was offered in
response to legitimate questions about their membership, or about the CFR itself. Inquiries sent
directly to the CFR’s headquarters elicited a response from a spokesman who sent a copy of
Zygmunt Nagorski’s 1977 National Review article defending the CFR. Buckley to the rescue
once again!

No American relying on Buckley for an understanding of national and world events will learn
the truth about either the conspiracy that is undermining our nation, or the crucial role the CFR
continues to play in promoting its goals. The Establishment needed a William F. Buckley, and he
enthusiastically played the needed role. Indeed, it is possible, as Boston University’s Howard
Zinn whimsically speculated, that the Establishment itself arranged to “invent” him.

*Why did the Washington Post hierarchy allow publication of this article? One reasonable guess
is that it pointed the way for aspirants seeking a place within the Establishment, as it
contained no condemnation of the powerful organization it described.

1
**Eventually, however, Helms softened his strong anti-CFR position to the extent that he
authored “Saving the U.N.” in the September/October 1996 issue of the CFR’s Foreign
Affairs. He called for mere reform of the world organization, rather than U.S. withdrawal.

Chapter Two — Buckley and Neoconservatives

The conference was sponsored by William Buckley’s National Review, and most of those
attending regarded themselves as conservatives first and Republicans second. By the end of the
meeting, a significant reversal had occurred.... [M]ost were Republicans first and conservatives
second.1
— Irving Kristol

Many who attended this May 1991 invitation-only conclave not only shifted their priorities from
conservative to Republican, they had become neoconservative Republicans. And this is why
Irving Kristol, who revels in being acknowledged as the “godfather” of neoconservatism, was so
pleased when he wrote about the event.

As important as the neoconservative boost from this untitled conference may have been, the fact
that the confab was sponsored by “William Buckley’s National Review” is especially revealing.
As Kristol reported, “some two dozen conservative Republicans” had been led away from
conservatism by the nation’s supposed conservative leader.

What, then, is neoconservatism? Kristol himself has supplied the best definition of the movement
he leads. In Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea, he wrote in 1995:

It [neoconservatism] describes the erosion of liberal faith among a relatively small but
talented and articulate group … (which gradually gained more recruits) toward a more
conservative point of view: conservative, but different in certain respects from the
conservatism of the Republican party. We … accepted the New Deal in principle, and
had little affection for the kind of isolationism that then permeated American
conservatism.2

In other words, neoconservatives seek socialistic big government (the New Deal) and champion
American meddling in the rest of the world’s affairs.

The personal histories of neoconservative leaders confirm that many are anti-Stalinist socialists
who despised the brutality inflicted on mankind by Lenin and Stalin, but who nevertheless
endorsed socialism — especially the brand favored by Leon Trotsky. Their preference for having
America become the policeman of the world, intervening in one foreign quarrel after another, is
the stepping-stone toward interdependence and eventual world government, two concepts which
they also enthusiastically favor. They despise “isolationism,” their pejorative term for America’s
original foreign policy of nonintervention in the non-threatening (to the United States) affairs of
other nations.
1
Kristol has never been shy about his preference for socialism. In 1983, neoconservatism’s
godfather claimed unabashedly that “a conservative welfare state … is perfectly consistent with
the neoconservative perspective.”3 The phrase “a conservative welfare state” should have
garnered a prize for the most egregious oxymoron of the decade. It included, he stated in a Wall
Street Journal piece in 1993, such blatantly anti-conservative, welfare-state fare as “Social
Security,” “Medicare,” and “food stamps and Medicaid, as well as a children’s cash allowance”
for the offspring of unwed mothers.4

Charles Krauthammer, another neocon, boldly underscored the movement’s lust for
interventionism in his 1989 article published in Kristol’s journal, The National Interest. He
called for the integration of the U.S. with Europe and Japan to create a “super-sovereign” entity
that is “economically, culturally, and politically hegemonic in the world.” He further urged the
formation of a “new universalism [which] would require the conscious depreciation not only of
American sovereignty but of the notion of sovereignty in general.” “This is not,” he added, “as
outrageous as it sounds.”5

Neocons Turn to George Bush (the Elder)

Though he never identified the “two dozen conservative Republicans” who attended the 1991
Buckley-sponsored conference, Kristol revealed the major conclusion they reached: “President
Bush is now the leader of the conservative movement within the Republican Party.” Not only
had erstwhile conservatives been transmogrified into Republican-firsters and neocons, they had
accepted certified Establishment figure George H.W. Bush as the “leader of the conservative
movement” within the GOP!

Kristol admitted that “foreign policy was simply not mentioned” during the three-day
conference. There was no attempt whatsoever, he clucked, “to revive a version of pre-World War
II isolationism.” “The upshot,” he noted, “is that conservatives have, in effect, entrusted the issue
of foreign policy to President Bush.”6 These freshly-minted, Republican-über-alles neocons now
firmly backed a president whose outrages included sharply increased taxation, across-the-board
expansion of federal controls, and the use of U.S. armed forces in a foreign conflict authorized
by the UN. They had become cheerleaders for the new world order envisioned by President Bush
as he prepared to send U.S. forces into the war against Iraq. Recall Bush’s statements:

1) September 11, 1990: “Out of these troubled times, our fifth objective — a new
world order — can emerge.... We are now in sight of a United Nations that performs as
envisioned by its founders.”7

2) January 7, 1991: “I think what’s at stake here is the new world order … a
reinvigorated United Nations.”8

3) January 9, 1991: “[The Gulf crisis] has to do with a new world order. And that
world order is only going to be enhanced if this newly-activated peacekeeping function
of the United Nations proves to be effective.”9

1
For six months, President Bush had plainly maintained that the underlying purpose of the action
against Saddam Hussein was the enhancement and reinvigoration of the United Nations. Less
than five months later, Bill Buckley used his influence to steer conservative leaders to a
neoconservative conference where they were enticed to accept George Bush’s leadership.

According to Irving Kristol’s June 3, 1991 Wall Street Journal article, abortion was discussed
during the Buckley-sponsored conference. The attendees opted for a “middle ground,” which
Kristol characterized as “modest government restriction.” As for George Bush’s abandonment of
his “no new taxes” pledge, Kristol indicated that the conferees swallowed hard but accepted it.
“What’s done is done,” he insisted while noting that “conservatives are, much to their own
surprise, loyal members of his [Bush’s] constituency.” Such loyalty meant that they had accepted
not only a “reinvigorated United Nations,” but also the bypassing of Congress to achieve UN
authorization for war, a ballooning bureaucracy, and more taxes. They had, in other words,
accepted much of the neoconservative agenda.

Kristol’s revealing article confirmed that the marriage of Kristol-led neoconservatism and
Buckley-led conservatism had been formalized. But it was Kristol who had drawn up the
prenuptial agreement. In his 1995 opus, Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea, he had
summed up the results of the years of effort he and other neocons had expended: “So I deem the
neoconservative enterprise to have been a success, to have brought elements that were needed to
enliven American conservatism and help reshape American politics.”10

But give Buckley his due. His career-long efforts to water down the Old Right’s standards had
eased the way for recasting the Republican Party’s conservative faction. Recall from his 1952
Commonweal article that Buckley recommended “Big Government … a totalitarian bureaucracy
within our shores … and the attendant centralization of power in Washington.”11 That article
was his initial post-Yale foray into the world of political commentary. It was also unadulterated
neoconservatism even before the term had been coined.

During the 1980s, Buckley and Kristol conferred virtual sainthood on Ronald Reagan and the
Reagan administration, despite such deficiencies as enormous deficits, a steady expansion of the
Rooseveltian welfare state, and stepped-up internationalism. Buckley supporters prefer not to be
reminded of Reagan’s pivotal and unexpected 1984 endorsement of the UN’s dangerous
Genocide Convention, which conservatives had long opposed. And Buckley’s fans would rather
not be reminded that their hero had backed this neoconservative-favored pact almost a decade
earlier.

Buckley joined in applauding the so-called “Gingrich revolution,” a reputed return to strict
conservatism that never happened — and was never intended to happen. That revolution, too,
was warmed-over neoconservatism.

Buckley also made it a practice over the years to parade neoconservatives and their views before
his weekly “Firing Line” television audience. Among the many neocons he interviewed and
seldom challenged (some on numerous occasions), were Richard Barnett, Daniel Patrick
Moynihan, Robert Bork, Michael Novak, William Bennett, Jack Kemp, Elliott Abrams, Ben
Wattenberg, Robert Bartley, Midge Decter, Richard Perle, Michael Ledeen, and Richard John
1
Neuhaus.12

Neoconservatism’s Roots
As far back as 40–50 years ago, those who have become today’s neoconservative leaders drifted
away from Trotskyism and began to identify themselves as democratic socialists. They were
eventually able to pull off their theft of the conservative label in large part because William
Buckley had emasculated conservatism’s traditional meaning. In ensuing years, they gravitated
to the liberal wing of the Democratic Party, sauntered into the Republican Party as “moderates,”
took on the name “conservative,” and seized intellectual control of the Republican Party’s right
wing.

But the neoconservative link to Leon Trotsky cannot be ignored. Adherents of the neocon agenda
favor the strategy attributed to the Russian revolutionary who was murdered in Mexico in 1940
by one of Stalin’s henchmen. By 1927, Trotsky had broken with Stalin’s head cracking and
gulags, favoring instead the imposition of Marxist socialism slowly and patiently. Exiled from
Russia in 1928 by his once close comrade, Trotsky and his followers labored to have mankind
choose Marxist world government rather than having it forced on them. So the Trotskyites
discarded their guns and clubs and turned to pens and the podium. In 1995, neocon godfather
Kristol candidly stated, “I regard myself as lucky to have been a young Trotskyite and I have not
a single bitter memory.”13

During the Vietnam War, many neocons attached themselves to the Republican Party and its
conservative wing. Kristol explained why:

In 1972, the nomination of George McGovern, an isolationist and a candidate of the

New Left, signified that the Democratic party was not hospitable to any degree of
neoconservatism. Only a few of us drew the obvious conclusion that we would have to
try to find a home in the Republican party, which had always been an alien entity, so far
as we were concerned. But with every passing year our numbers grew.

The traditional Republican party that was so alien to us was a party of the business
community and of smaller-town America. It … was still campaigning against the New
Deal; and, in foreign policy, its inclination was almost always isolationist.14

As the Southeast Asian conflict intensified, neocons joined others in recoiling at the thought of a
Communist victory and may indeed have been repulsed by the outrageous antics of America’s
anti-war leftists. But labeling CFR member George McGovern an “isolationist” merely for
opposing the war in Vietnam was an enormous stretch. Nevertheless, most anti-Communist
conservatives of that era, unaware of the total neoconservative package and nauseated by
McGovern and the leftists in his entourage, giddily welcomed the neocons with open arms. They
didn’t realize that they were also condoning socialism at home, internationalism at the expense
of national sovereignty, and scorn for those who believe that America should tend to its own
business, not that of other nations.

Irving Kristol later credited neoconservatism for helping to “modernize” the Republican Party,
by which he meant tearing it away from its Old-Right roots. He heaped praise on President
1
Reagan for being “the first Republican president to pay tribute to Franklin D. Roosevelt.”
Claiming that the conservative movement “had little relevance” during the 1960s and 1970s, he
bragged in his 1995 book:

And yet, from the ashes of the Goldwater and Nixon debacles there arose Ronald
Reagan, to become a two-term President only a few years later....

What happened, I would say, were two things. First in time, though certainly not in
order of political significance, was the emergence of an intellectual trend that later came
to be called “neoconservatism.”15

In a way, evidence that neoconservative thinking had gained influence over the Republican Party
surfaced when Ronald Reagan could praise Franklin D. Roosevelt as a great American president
— praise echoed by Newt Gingrich a dozen years later when it was no longer so surprising. The
message was clear: The Republican Party was no longer interested in destroying the welfare
state, but intended rather to reconstruct it along more socialistic and interventionist lines.
Columnist Samuel Francis, a fierce foe of neoconservatism, observed:

As the Cold War wound down, “exporting democracy” and opposing “isolationism”
became the major neoconservative foreign policy goals, reflected in their almost
universal support for NAFTA, the World Trade Organization, and United Nations
“peacekeeping” missions.16

Buckley and National Review supported these neoconservative goals. For instance, in his column
for September 15, 1993, he claimed that “the North American Free Trade Agreement is in
principle a very good thing, economically and politically.”17 While stumping for NAFTA,
Buckley was in lock-step with his close friend Henry Kissinger who, as the date of the vote in
Congress approached, would write that NAFTA “will represent the most creative step toward a
new world order taken by any group of countries since the end of the Cold War.”18

National Review also turned to other writers to promote NAFTA. Examples include a September
20, 1993 article by former Minnesota Republican congressman Vin Weber and one by ABC
News White House correspondent Brit Hume in its November 15, 1993 issue. If Buckley and
National Review foresaw nothing but good in NAFTA, no “conservative” was to believe
otherwise.

When it came to the sovereignty-compromising GATT/World Trade Organization sellout, a

Buckley column noted that Newt Gingrich’s support was critical and that it was “good that Mr.
Gingrich is captain of the Republican team on this question.”19 Buckley’s boost had been
preceded by a more cautious promotion of the measure in National Review by Cornell University
professor Jeremy Rabkin.20 Buckley later defended the WTO’s levying of a fine on the U.S.
because of our oil import policy, claiming that it was not a case of an improper foreign meddling
in American law.21

Regarding UN-organized peacekeeping missions, National Review for March 29, 1993 published
1
CFR member Peter W. Rodman’s conclusion that “the United States and the international
community had … a duty” to intervene with military force in cases of “humanitarian crisis.”22
Such a “duty,” it should be needless to say, is nowhere mentioned or implied in the U.S.
Constitution.

Prior to the decision of the “international community” to utilize NATO forces (mostly American)
for peacekeeping purposes, National Review had prepped its readers to applaud the move. In
February 1994, National Review favored the alliance with a glowing tribute.23 Its author, CFR
member Adrian Karatnycky, neglected to point out that NATO derived its existence from the
United Nations, is required by its Charter to report to the United Nations, and does the work of
the United Nations. When NATO was proposed in 1949, Secretary of State Dean Acheson (CFR)
urged senators to vote for it because “it is an essential measure for strengthening the United
Nations.”24 NATO was sold to the American people as an alliance to defend against possible
Soviet advances to the West. When the Soviet Union dissolved in 1990, and there were no longer
any such threats from the USSR, NATO should also have been dissolved. It has instead, with
Buckley’s support, become the UN’s military arm — and a key component of the drive for world
government.

CFR member and future Foreign Affairs managing editor Fareed Zakaria wrote in the December
11, 1995 National Review that the U.S. had a responsibility to use force to maintain
“international stability.”25 That was a far cry from a constitutional basis for employing military
force, but it dovetailed nicely with the neocon agenda.

In January 1993, Samuel Francis pin-pointed Buckley’s critical role in the neocon theft of the
conservative label:

… the whole concept of “conservatism” in America is virtually devoid of meaning, in

large part because conservatives made the seminal error of allowing dilettantes like Mr.
Buckley to define it for them in the first place.26

Francis always noted the absence of any neocon reliance on the U.S. Constitution, a deficiency
also evident throughout Buckley’s long career. In 1995 he noted:

Almost none of the neo-conservatives showed any interest in American

constitutionalism or federalist and states’ rights issues, and arguments based on
constitutionalism were muted in favor of the “empirical” arguments drawn from
disciplines like sociology and political science in which neo-conservative academics
tended to concentrate.27

Buckley Supports Gingrich’s Neocon Agenda

When the 1994 elections produced stunning Republican congressional victories, Kristol
considered them neocon triumphs and joyously noted that the gains “ratified this change, just as
the person of Newt Gingrich exemplified it.” In tandem with the neoconservatives, Buckley
chimed in with a defense of the Gingrich-led Republican program. In a May 1996 column
describing the House Speaker as “greatly gifted,” Buckley concluded that Gingrich “will be
1
around for a good while, and that is welcome news.”

The Gingrich-led “revolution” applauded by Kristol and Buckley saw the Republican Party
accept America’s change of course: away from limited government under the Constitution; away
from non-intervention in the world’s conflicts; toward more New Deal socialism and globocop
militarism. It amounted to a benchmark neocon triumph. Kristol’s reference to Newt Gingrich as
the exemplar of the transformation may surprise those who believe that the former Speaker of the
House was a genuine conservative. They forget that Gingrich backed federal aid to education,
land controls, foreign aid, NAFTA, GATT, the Mexican bailout, the Export-Import Bank and
almost every conceivable assault on U.S. sovereignty. Bill Buckley had also supported such
measures. While feigning opposition to the reconstruction of the Republican Party, Buckley had
actually greatly assisted in bringing about the change.

Never abandoning their underlying desire for New Deal-style big government, neoconservatives
have quietly and persistently promoted key elements of socialism. Their favorite tactic has them
opposing only the excesses of various welfare-state programs. As Irving Kristol put it, they
desire to “keep increases in government spending below the historical rate of growth of the
economy.”28 In effect, they confer legitimacy on a lengthening list of socialistic enterprises.
Buckley also practices this deceptive strategy.

Surveying the damage done by these socialists and internationalists posing as conservatives,
Llewellyn Rockwell, president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, has written that neocons
“believe in the domineering presidency, the welfare state, and mass democracy, and they seek to
enact these ideas worldwide through U.S. military intervention.” He pointed out that these
fundamental neocon positions are the source of “their social and political power,” and added, “in
its service they have sought, all too successfully, to co-opt the Right.”29

Additional Testimony About Neoconservatism

In The Essential Neoconservative Reader, editor Mark Gerson, a proud and unabashed neocon,
jubilantly observed: “The neoconservatives have so changed conservatism that what we now
identify as conservatism is largely what was once neoconservatism. And in so doing, they have
defined the way that vast numbers of Americans view their economy, their polity, and their
society.”30 Rather than leading the resistance to this transformation, Buckley has worked to
bring it about.*

In addition to Norman Podhoretz and Irving Kristol, prominent neoconservatives Midge Decter,
Ben Wattenberg, Robert Bartley, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Richard Perle, and Elliott Abrams
share membership in the CFR with Buckley. Some have contributed articles to National Review.

Confirmation of much that we have presented about the neoconservative movement can be found
in John Ehrman’s The Rise of Neoconservatism: Intellectuals and Foreign Affairs,31 reviewed in
the July/August 1995 issue of the CFR’s Foreign Affairs. The reviewer, Buckley’s liberal
biographer John Judis, clearly recognized the Trotskyite roots of the major neoconservative
leaders. He wrote:

1
 The other important influence on neoconservatives was the legacy of Trotskyism — a
point that other historians and journalists have made about neoconservatism but that
eludes Ehrman. Many of the founders of neoconservatism including The Public Interest
founder Irving Kristol and coeditor Nathan Glazer, Sidney Hook, and Albert
Wohlstetter, were either members of or close to the Trotskyist left in the late 1930s and
early 1940s. Younger neoconservatives, including Penn Kemble, Joshua Muravchik,
and Carl Gershman, came through the Socialist Party at a time when former Trotskyite
Max Schachtman was still a commanding figure.

What both the older and younger neoconservatives absorbed from their socialist past
was an idealistic concept of internationalism. Trotskyists believed that Stalin, in trying
to build socialism in one country rather than through world revolution, had created a
degenerate workers’ state instead of a genuine dictatorship of the proletariat. In the
framework of international communism, the Trotskyists were rabid internationalists
rather than realists and nationalists.32

The current followers of Trotskyite socialism and internationalism are the neoconservatives.
Over the years, through his syndicated column in some 350 newspapers, Public Broadcasting
System television programs, well-attended lectures, numerous books, and National Review
magazine, Buckley has not only watered down conservatism but has deftly promoted
neoconservative views while hammering away at virtually anyone who objected. As a result, he
has became the darling of neoconservatives — true conservatism’s deadly enemies.

Buckley Expels Flynn

Soon after launching National Review in 1956, Buckley contacted Old Right luminary John T.
Flynn, a well-known leader of the anti-socialist and noninterventionist brand of conservatism. He
asked Flynn to write a review of liberal Arthur Larson’s A Republican Looks at His Party. What
happened next confirms that Buckley had not abandoned his 1952 call for “a totalitarian
bureaucracy within our shores [and] the attendant centralization of power in Washington.” Justin
Raimondo, in his book Reclaiming the American Right, compiled the details about this revealing
incident from old transcripts of Flynn’s radio broadcasts:

But when Flynn submitted a piece attacking militarism as “a job-making boondoggle,”

and denouncing Eisenhower for prolonging the cold war, Buckley rejected the article.
He sent $100 along with the rejection letter, stating that Flynn failed to appreciate the
“objective threat of the Soviet Union,” which, he maintained, poses “a threat to the
freedom of each and every one of us.” Flynn returned the $100, and in a note to Buckley
said that he was “greatly obliged” to him for “the little lecture.”33

The treatment Buckley accorded John T. Flynn was a precursor to the ostracism he has dished
out to other conservative stalwarts. Flynn had been a leading spokesman for the
noninterventionist America First movement that had appealed to Buckley’s father. Those hearty
pre-Pearl Harbor Americans, supported by 90 percent of their fellow citizens according to polls
taken at the time, sought unsuccessfully to keep this nation out of World War II.

In his 1944 book As We Go Marching,34 Flynn had insisted that the nation was being prepared
1
for the emergence of gigantic bureaucracy, government takeover of business, welfare schemes,
deficit spending, and meddling internationalism. And it was war or the threat of war, he claimed,
that would be cited as justification for all of it. He labeled the coming transformation fascism.
Had the term neoconservative been in use at the time, he could have applied it. Summing up
what he saw looming on the horizon, he wrote:

Fascism will come at the hands of perfectly authentic Americans … who are convinced
that the present economic system is washed up … and who wish to commit this country
to the rule of the bureaucratic state; interfering in the affairs of the states and the cities;
taking part in the management of industry and finance and agriculture; assuming the
role of a great national banker and investor, borrowing billions every year and spending
them on all sorts of projects through which a government can paralyze opposition and
command public support; marshaling great armies and navies at crushing costs to
support the industry of war and preparation for war which will become our greatest
industry; and adding to all this the most romantic adventures in global planning,
regeneration, and domination, all to be done under the authority of a powerfully
centralized government in which the executive will hold in effect all the powers, with
Congress reduced to the role of a debating society.35

Who today can doubt that Flynn had correctly forecast the future? Having manipulated the U.S.
into World War II, the forces favoring big government and an interventionist foreign policy
further manipulated the aftermath of the war that transformed Flynn’s predictions into reality.

Flynn didn’t deny that Communism was America’s enemy. But he believed that our leaders
should have ceased their propaganda about a Cold War, gone about the nation’s business, and
watched from afar as the Communist world, deprived of outside help, collapsed from within. He
protested the policy of opposing a foreign enemy by adopting its statist philosophy, which he
claimed was occurring. Justin Raimondo summarized Flynn’s 1944 position: “America’s war
against fascism may be won on the battlefield — and lost on the home front.”36

In 1950, Flynn denounced U.S. entry into the undeclared Korean War. He considered the
unconstitutional deployment of U.S. forces in combat without a congressional declaration of war
another grand excuse to build executive power and hasten America’s descent into socialism and
internationalism. He penetratingly pointed out that the same State Department that was eager to
have our forces fight against a Communist insurgence in an undeclared war in Korea had, only
one year earlier, moved heaven and earth to deliver China to Mao Tse-tung’s Communist
tyranny.37 John T. Flynn was among the last of the nationally known journalists to identify with
and support conservative Republican Senator Robert Taft of Ohio. He also led the unsuccessful
campaign to impede the post-World War II takeover of the Republican Party by Establishment
liberals and internationalists. Gradually, those who still held to the uncompromising
anti-interventionist stands advocated by both Flynn and Buckley’s father found themselves read
out of the revamped conservative movement by none other than the younger Buckley himself.
Flynn predicted dire consequences ahead for America in his 1953 book, The Road Ahead:
America’s Creeping Revolution.38

Were wars and the fear of Communism actually being utilized to pressure the American people
1
into supporting domestic socialism and world government? Yes, indeed. Benjamin Schwarz, a
Senior Fellow at the internationalist World Policy Institute, addressed this issue in the June 1996
Atlantic Monthly:

In “scaring hell out of the American people,” as Senator Arthur Vandenberg said in
1947, the U.S.-Soviet rivalry helped to secure domestic support for Washington’s
ambition to create a U.S.-dominated world order. That same year one of Vandenberg’s
colleagues, the fervently anti-Communist Senator Robert Taft, expressed a strong
suspicion that the supposed dangers to the nation from the USSR failed to explain
America’s new foreign policy. He complained that he was “more than a bit tired of
having the Russian menace invoked as a reason for doing any — and every — thing that
might or might not be desirable or necessary on its own merits.” The former Secretary
of State Dean Acheson put things in proper perspective: describing how Washington
overcame domestic opposition to its internationalist policies in 1950, he recalled in 1954
that at that critical moment the crisis in Korea “came along and saved us.”39

Imagine! One year after the shooting in Korea had ended, Acheson, one of the key architects of
America’s no-win policy, claimed that the internationalism he and his companions were plotting
could not have been “saved” had the U.S. not entered the war. That conflict, of course, cost
55,000 American dead, 200,000 wounded, and thousands of POWs/MIAs left behind. Acheson’s
admission, in this author’s opinion, earns him the posthumous designation of “traitor.”**

Buckley focused on the external communist threat to justify federal encroachment on American
sovereignty and personal freedom. He labored to lead American conservatives away from
noninterventionism and toward a new interventionist standard not found in the Constitution. He
created an undefined and increasingly left-leaning and internationalist departure from
conservatism. And, for all who dared to suggest that a conspiracy was working for such changes,
or who challenged his “conservative” leadership, Buckley sought feverishly to undermine and
isolate them.

As noted previously, most leading neoconservatives belong to the Council on Foreign Relations,
as does Buckley, who was singing the neoconservative song long before the term became
popularized. Yet, he has been portrayed as the nation’s premier conservative. We will now look
more closely at how this curious turn of events came about.

*A steady diet of undisguised neocon views can be found in Norman Podhoretz’s magazine
Commentary and Irving Kristol’s The National Interest. For a watering down of traditional
conservative principles and a diet of neocon views cloaked in conservative rhetoric, turn to
Buckley’s National Review and, more recently, to The Weekly Standard, published and edited
by William Kristol, Irving’s son.

**Secretary of State Acheson, of course, was a member of the CFR.

Chapter Three — The Formative Influences

1
 [Willmoore Kendall] became a follower of Leon Trotsky, the Soviet Socialist exile who had
broken with Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin.1
— John Judis

William Frank Buckley, Jr., the sixth of 10 children, was born on November 24, 1925. Because
the family had two older boys (John and James), it seemed odd to many that the senior Buckley
waited until the birth of his third son before passing on his name. Years later, in The Buckleys: A
Family Examined, Charles Lam Markmann revealed that this was a deliberate decision; it was
“his namesake whom the senior Buckley sought to groom for a public career.”2

Reared in southern Texas in the late 19th century, William Sr. left home in 1910 to build a law
practice with his brothers south of the border. After oil was discovered in Mexico, Will Buckley
invested in oil and real estate, soon accumulating a small fortune.

In the wake of Mexico’s accelerating political unrest, Buckley’s expertise regarding the turmoil
was sought by both the Mexican government and the Woodrow Wilson administration. He
married Aloise Steiner of New Orleans in 1917. By 1921, his unsuccessful effort to organize a
coup to unseat the Marxist government of Alvaro Obregon resulted in his expulsion from Mexico
and the confiscation of much of his fortune. Having learned a great deal about making money in
the oil business, however, he was soon on the road to riches in the United States.

Within a year after leaving Mexico, the Buckleys settled in the town of Sharon in northwest
Connecticut, moving into a mansion called “Great Elm.” The year 1925 marked the arrival of
young Billy, as Bill Jr. was affectionately nicknamed by his parents. While Sharon was his
home, Billy spent many of his formative years in Venezuela or in Europe where family interests
took him.

Disdainful of most educational institutions, the senior Buckley hired private tutors, music
teachers, Mexican nannies, and French and British governesses to assure that his children would
become well-versed in a variety of subjects and fluent in several languages. Billy and his siblings
were also steeped in the Catholic faith to which the Buckleys were strongly committed.

Of all the Buckley children, Billy pleased his father most by becoming proficient in languages,
music, and oratory, and especially by echoing the family patriarch’s political views. He regularly
competed with his brothers and sisters for their father’s favor. In early 1938, Billy and three
siblings were sent off to England for schooling, and they didn’t return to the United States until
1940 when the European war threatened the British Isles.

His experiences in Mexico, his distaste for U.S. participation in World War I, and a strong belief
in America’s constitutional system made the elder Buckley an ardent noninterventionist and Old
Guard Republican. With the family reunited in Sharon by 1940, the Buckley children followed in
their father’s political footsteps and began publishing a small, politically oriented local
newspaper. It served as a voice for the noninterventionist America First movement.

Many readers, most of whom were Eastern-style liberals, reacted with horror at what they
1
considered to be the “isolationism” of the Buckley clan. But such opposition only spurred the
Buckley children to more impassioned defense of their deeply held convictions. Billy, especially,
took great delight in the venture. After Pearl Harbor and America’s entry into the war, however,
the Buckleys — like all patriotic noninterventionists — suppressed their anti-war sentiments.

During 1940–1943, young Bill was sent to Millbrook Academy in Dutchess County, New York,
15 miles from Sharon. He promptly developed a reputation for combativeness about nearly
everything. So contentious was young Bill that his father once instructed him in a letter “to be
more moderate in the expression of your views” in order to “give as little offense as possible to
your friends.”3 Those views continued to include intense noninterventionism, firm opposition to
Soviet Communism, and strong condemnation of the Communists who had ravaged Spain and
targeted that country’s Catholic clergy for persecution during the recently concluded Spanish
Civil War.

Bill completed his studies at Millbrook at age 17, then spent a year in Mexico perfecting his
Spanish before entering the Army in 1944. After basic training, he was accepted for Officer
Candidate School at Georgia’s Fort Benning in January 1945, winning his commission 18 weeks
later. According to John Judis, “Bill’s commanding officers didn’t think that he took his training
as seriously as the other men, some of whom had already served in combat. Once, when leading
a group of men in a training exercise, Bill stopped in order to pick a flower, suspending
maneuvers for ten seconds and costing his group a victory in the competition.”4

Senior officers at Fort Benning doubted Bill’s ability to lead men in battle. The nation was at war
and new Army lieutenants were being sent immediately to the front. Military officials knew that
good leadership qualities and combat-ready proficiency often meant the difference between life
and death for both the new officers and the men under their command. Ultimately, a special
board was convened to rule on Bill’s fitness for a commission. He survived a grueling hearing
and received his lieutenant’s bars in the spring of 1945.

When the European phase of World War II ended in May 1945, and the need for
combat-qualified field lieutenants receded, Bill was assigned duty as an infantry training officer
in Georgia for a brief period. Then his fluency in Spanish earned him a transfer to an army post
in San Antonio, Texas. He arrived at the new assignment on August 14th, the day the Japanese
surrendered. His brief military career winding down, Bill left the Army early in 1946 and
enrolled that September in Yale University.

Yale and Willmoore Kendall

As an early step on his path to personal fame, he joined the staff of the Yale Daily News,
performing the customary minor assignments given to underclassmen. Working his way up the
ladder, he eventually became class chairman of the newspaper. It is no understatement to say that
Buckley’s editorials polarized the campus and were read more diligently than those of his
predecessors.

Buckley also excelled on the debate team. It was here that he formed a close friendship with L.
Brent Bozell, an equally talented debater and orator who later married Patricia Buckley and
became Bill’s brother-in-law. A Nebraskan, Bozell had entered Yale as a member of the World
1
Federalists, but he soon parted company with the world-government crowd and began
championing Buckley-style political views. The two represented Yale in numerous debate
tournaments, and they usually won.

Among Bill’s teachers, none had a more profound effect on him than Professor Willmoore
Kendall, who had arrived at Yale in the fall of 1947 after serving with the Office of Strategic
Services (OSS), renamed the Central Intelligence Agency in 1947. (See Chapter 5 for further
details about these agencies and Kendall’s involvement.)

Though nearly a dozen years apart in age, the two developed a profoundly close relationship.
Markmann noted that the teacher/student relationship changed in later years, with Buckley
becoming the “guru” and Kendall the student. Noting the rift that developed between the two
prior to Kendall’s death in 1967, Markmann wrote in 1973, “Buckley still speaks of him with a
warmth of loyalty and admiration that cannot be discounted, and his influence on Buckley’s style
— intellectual and rhetorical, especially in its more baroque obscurities — is unmistakable.”5

The son of an Oklahoma preacher, Kendall had finished college at age 18 in 1932. He then
enrolled at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar. While in England, Kendall — who would later become a
founding editor of National Review — became a Trotskyite socialist. John Judis explained that
“he studied with philosopher R.G. Collingwood and became a follower of Leon Trotsky, the
Soviet Socialist exile who had broken with Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin.”6 When Kendall
returned to the U.S. from England he was an ardent devotee of the brand of
socialism/Communism advocated by Trotsky.

Continuing his schooling at the University of Illinois, Kendall’s Ph.D. dissertation called for rule
by the majority at the expense of individual rights, including those carefully delineated in the
U.S. Bill of Rights. He dubbed his concept “absolute majoritarianism.” It recommended “public
orthodoxy” in virtually everything. All of this clashed dramatically with the fundamentals
undergirding a free country. Buckley biographer Judis commented on Kendall’s majoritarian
views:

In economics and politics, Kendall was an opponent of laissez-faire philosophies. A

follower of John Maynard Keynes, he didn’t believe that firms, if left to compete freely,
would automatically create prosperity.... In the late thirties, Kendall’s absolute
majoritarianism led him to back Roosevelt in his battle with the Supreme Court.... When
Buckley first met him, Kendall still described himself as “an old-fashioned majority-rule
Democrat.”7

Though the term “neoconservative” had not yet been coined, Kendall was an early devotee of its
major elements. Still a Marxist, he passionately hated Stalin-style Communism and supported
legislation designed to outlaw the U.S. Communist Party. Judis noted that “like Buckley, he
considered himself at the core to be a counterrevolutionary rather than a conservative.”
Markmann recalls that Buckley referred to Kendall as having come to Yale “as somebody who
had been a liberal, or, as you prefer, a man of the Left.”8

Buckley would later claim to have led Kendall away from his Communist/socialist past, excusing
1
the leftist leanings of his close friend by claiming: “He was a conservative all right, but … he’d
have been a revolutionist if that had been required in order to be socially disruptive.”9

Markmann related a rather unflattering and revealing view of Kendall’s conservatism given by
Professor Russell Kirk, another member of the initial team at National Review. Kirk thought that
Kendall had associated with Buckley because he “loved to quarrel with people and essentially to
take the losing side: since the conservatives tended to be the losing side, he determined to join
them.”10

Markmann concluded that during his years at National Review, Kendall’s “complex nature
burgeoned there until his inability to agree long with almost anyone and the zest of his pogroms
against various other chieftains of conservatism sent him once more into the wilderness.”11
Kendall eventually left the magazine’s headquarters, but he continued to submit articles and
allow his name to remain for a time on National Review’s masthead.

Returning to full-time teaching, the former Buckley intimate found employment at Stanford
University, then at Los Angeles College, and finally at the University of Dallas. He completed
the break from National Review in 1963. Following his death, Buckley’s obituary of his former
associate in the magazine completely overlooked Kendall’s Trotskyite, OSS, and CIA
connections.

In Chapter 5, we describe how, at Kendall’s urging, Buckley entered the CIA after graduating
from Yale. It was then that Kendall introduced Buckley to James Burnham, who, after Buckley
himself, would become the most important figure at National Review during the magazine’s
formative years. Like Kendall, Burnham had studied at Oxford and returned to America a
Trotskyite. And he, too, had taken his Trotskyite training into OSS, the CIA — and National
Review. (See Chapter 6 for a glimpse into the background of James Burnham.)

Yale’s Skull & Bones Society

Any review of Buckley’s formative years must include his membership in Yale’s Skull & Bones
Society. For well over a century, this eerie campus organization has served as a training ground
for entry into the Establishment. By becoming Bonesmen, the select few gained high-level
contacts and connections leading to prestigious jobs, including top government posts.

Some of the prominent Skull & Bones members, past and present, include Averell Harriman,
Henry Stimson, and Robert Lovett of the Franklin Roosevelt administration; Supreme Court
Justice Potter Stewart, who was selected by fellow Bonesman George Bush to administer the
then-vice president’s oath of office in 1981; McGeorge Bundy and Winston Lord of more recent
administrations; Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and the late John Chafee (R-R.I.); former
Oklahoma Senator David Boren; Time magazine founder Henry Luce; William F. Buckley, Jr.,
and his son, Christopher.12

While some of the inner activities of this prestigious, secretive society have been bared, a great
deal more remains hidden. From various sources, we know that each spring, the 15 seniors
already enrolled in Skull & Bones (the oldest, richest, and most influential of Yale’s seven secret
societies) select 15 juniors for admission and direct them to “The Tomb,” the name given to the
1
group’s ancient stone building on High Street in the middle of Yale’s New Haven campus. That
night, according to informed sources, an initiation ritual requires each new member to recount
details of his life for the benefit of fellow Bonesmen. Britain’s The Economist explains:
“Membership means adopting a secret name, dining at the club’s ‘tomb’ and taking part in such
rituals as recounting one’s autobiography and — reputedly — sexual history while lying naked
in a coffin.”13

In his 1986 book, America’s Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull &
Bones, former Hoover Institution Research Fellow Antony Sutton listed four steps in the group’s
initiation ceremony: “… the initiate has to lie naked in a sarcophagus … [and] tell the ‘secrets’
of his sex life to fellow initiates. Patriarchs dressed as skeletons and acting as wild-eyed lunatics
howl and screech at new initiates [who] are required to wrestle naked in a mud pile.”14

Bonesmen must solemnly swear to refrain from divulging anything that goes on behind “The
Tomb’s” imposing walls. Ask one of these elitists about the group or its rituals and you’ll find
him honoring a pledge that requires him, at the mere mention of Skull & Bones, to leave the
room.

In 1991, a Connecticut journalist gained access to a portion of the inner sanctum courtesy of a
construction worker. As reported in the Danbury (Conn.) News-Times for October 6, 1991, the
amiable workman simply brought the inquiring individual, with whom he had enjoyed an
outdoor lunch, inside the building when he returned to work. The News-Times reproduced an
eerie photo taken during this unauthorized penetration. Accompanying text described “a
weathered bas-relief of two skeletons facing [one] another. The ghouls’ fingers are pressed to
their lips. They look as though they’re swearing each other to secrecy about the exclusive club.”

Fame magazine reported in 1989 that four women were brought inside “the Tomb” by a
dissident member. Details about a room filled with artifacts from Hitler’s Third Reich remained
embedded in their memories. One told Yale graduate Steven M.L. Aronson, author of the Fame
article:

The most shocking thing — and I say this because I do think it’s sort of important — I
mean, President [George H.W.] Bush does belong to Skull and Bones, everyone knows
that — there is, like, a little Nazi shrine inside. One room on the second floor has a
bunch of swastikas, kind of an SS macho Nazi iconography. Somebody should ask
President Bush about the swastikas in there. I mean, I don’t think he’ll say they’re not
there. I think he’ll say, “Oh, it wasn’t a big deal, it was just a little thing in a little
room,” which I don’t think is true and which I wouldn’t find terribly reassuring anyway.
But I don’t think he’d deny it because it is true. I mean, I think the Nazi stuff was no
more serious than all the bones that were around, but I still find it a little
disconcerting.15

George H.W. Bush’s son, George W. Bush, our nation’s 43rd president, is also a Bonesman.
Traditionally, many of Yale’s most talented and brightest underclassmen have hoped to be
tapped by Bones because special privileges follow. Ron Rosenbaum, another Yale graduate,
related in “The Last Secrets of Skull and Bones,” an article published by Esquire magazine in
1
1977, that Bonesmen have “the contacts and connections” for “a guaranteed job with one of the
Bones-dominated investment banks or law firms.” Drawing on information he’d gathered about
the group’s initiation ceremony, Rosenbaum wrote:

… the Bones initiation ritual of 1940 went like this: “New man placed in coffin —
carried into central part of building. New man chanted over and ‘reborn’ into society.
Removed from coffin and given robes with symbols on it [sic]. A bone with his name on
it is tossed into bone heap at start of every meeting. Initiates plunged naked into mud
pile.”16

Early in 1992, while campaigning in New Hampshire, Republican presidential aspirant Patrick
Buchanan made reference to “George Bush’s Skull and Bones foreign policy.” That remark
immediately stimulated Bonesman Bill Buckley to pen a column excoriating Buchanan and
defending the group.17 Its message could be summed up as, “No one should give a hoot if
George Bush is a member of Skull & Bones.”

Readers of the Buckley column learned little about Skull & Bones other than that the “senior
society at Yale” exists, and that “its proceedings are conducted in secret.” Buckley declined to
address the repeated allegations about its sexual emphasis, Nazi paraphernalia, and weird rituals.
The column admitted nothing while excusing everything.

Toward the end of his senior year (1950), Buckley was offered, then denied, the opportunity to
speak during Alumni Day by Yale secretary Charles Lohmann and Yale president Charles
Seymour. He beefed up the planned speech and had it published as his celebrated book, God and
Man at Yale. It catapulted him to national fame. (See Chapter 4.) Yet both Lohmann and
Seymour were Bonesmen. One wonders if the two influential members of this branch of the
powerful elite were, by barring Buckley’s Alumni Day address, cleverly setting the stage for one
of their own to become an important Establishment asset.

In any case, Skull & Bones does exist and, as long as it remains secret and its members continue
to secure strategically important posts, suspicions about its influence will remain. If a few playful
college students formed a club in order to cavort foolishly behind closed doors, it would largely
be their business. But when high officials of this nation and others holding influential positions
come from a secret organization replete with questionable and even sinister rituals, it’s every
American’s business.

After graduating from Yale, Buckley soon became a nationally known author with both God and
Man at Yale and McCarthy and His Enemies (coauthored with brother-in-law L. Brent Bozell).
Let us now take a look at the contents of and the circumstances surrounding publication of the
two volumes that launched Buckley’s rise to national prominence.

Chapter Four — Two Books Propel Buckley to Prominence

1
 … the publication of God and Man at Yale had made him an overnight national notable.1
— Charles Lam Markmann

After being chosen by his peers for the post of chairman of the Yale Daily News, Bill Buckley
had a prestigious forum for his views. The Buckley-led team assumed control of the newspaper
in the middle of his junior year (February 1949), and he wasted no time in using his columns to
attack godless materialism. He also blasted Communism and Communists while vigorously
defending the Smith Act, which outlawed Communism and gave the government power to
prosecute leaders of the Communist Party USA.* In one editorial, he targeted the hypocrisy of
liberals who were quick to protest the appearance in America of Nazi-approved musicians while
remaining silent about the arrival of those from the Soviet Union.

Attracting immediate campus-wide attention, Buckley created a sensation when he began aiming
his editorial guns at the pronouncements of anthropology professor Raymond Kennedy. The
veteran instructor’s popular sociology course for freshmen and sophomores was consistently
over-subscribed. Buckley himself never formally enrolled, but he attended as a not-for-credit
observer. After listening to Kennedy’s discourses, he wrote that the most popular professor at
Yale “has made a cult of anti-religion,” was guilty of “undermining religion through bawdy and
slap-stick humor,” and had committed an “injustice” to Yale and its students.2

The furor created by that editorial led to a huge outpouring of letters in response. Students,
department heads, and faculty members defended Kennedy, who also submitted his own letter
justifying his views. The controversy sparked a mini-revolt among the newspaper’s editors.
Undaunted, Buckley continued his personal crusade against Communism and atheism, even
employing the word “conspire” when describing what Communist leaders in America were up
to.

Buckley also wrote a series of editorials assailing Yale’s policy of allowing faculty members
academic freedom. He wanted the university not only to champion Christianity, but also to
condemn “communism, socialism, collectivism, and government paternalism inimical to the
dignity of the individual.”

The Buckley year as the newspaper’s chairman ended in February 1950. Detractors and fans
alike agreed that, under his leadership, the Yale Daily News had reached new heights in influence
and readership. University President Charles Seymour had even made a practice of enclosing
some of Buckley’s editorials in response to alumni complaints that the university had become too
liberal. Buckley biographer John Judis casually mentioned another Buckley achievement: “He
had been the first choice of Skull and Bones, the secret senior honor society, many of whose
members went on to high government posts while maintaining their ties with fellow
‘Bonesmen.’”3

Only days after Buckley ended his term at the helm of the paper, college secretary Charles
Lohmann requested that he deliver the student speech at the annual Alumni Day celebration set
for February 22nd. That invitation triggered a series of events that propelled the young Yale
celebrity into the national spotlight.

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The purpose of Alumni Day was no secret: Spur older Yalies to donate to their alma mater. The
entire day’s proceedings were largely a lovefest, but Buckley prepared a speech repeating, even
intensifying, the condemnations of Yale that had already appeared in his editorials. It urged the
administration to require the faculty to foster Christianity and free enterprise, and to discipline
some of the professors he had previously assailed.

A week before the event, Lohmann suggested that Buckley rehearse the speech before a private
group. Suspecting that an attempt to dictate its content was in the works, he declined and then,
two days in advance, sought publicity by giving a copy of his speech to the Yale News Bureau. It
was quickly brought to the attention of Lohmann and Yale President Charles Seymour, both of
whom expressed outrage at what they read.

Alumni Director Carlos Stoddard immediately demanded that Buckley revise his text. Buckley
agreed to do so, but intended only to make cosmetic changes. He informed Stoddard of his
willingness to rework the speech, but threatened that if his changes were not accepted, he would
withdraw entirely from the program. President Seymour promptly accepted the withdrawal offer,
and Buckley never gave the speech. He opted, instead, to expand its subject matter into what
would become God and Man at Yale.

Shortly after graduating in June 1950, Buckley married Patricia Taylor, the daughter of a wealthy
industrialist from Vancouver, British Columbia. The couple returned to New Haven, where he
spent mornings teaching Spanish at Yale, and afternoons and evenings writing God and Man at
Yale.4 He completed the manuscript the following April, and his quest for a publisher ended
when Henry Regnery of Chicago accepted it. Following its release in October 1951, Buckley’s
father paid his son $16,000 for the rights to the book, and Bill promptly sent $10,000 to Regnery
to launch a publicity drive.

In the Foreword, Buckley wrote:

I propose, simply, to expose what I regard as an extraordinarily irresponsible

educational attitude that, under the protective label “academic freedom,” has produced
one of the most extraordinary incongruities of our time: the institution that derives its
moral and financial support from Christian individualists and then addresses itself to the
task of persuading the sons of those supporters to be atheistic socialists....

I myself believe that the duel between Christianity and atheism is the most important in
the world. I further believe that the struggle between individualism and collectivism is
the same struggle reproduced on another level. I believe that if and when the menace of
Communism is gone, other vital battles, at present subordinated, will emerge to the
foreground.

Of Religion Department Professor T.M. Greene, Buckley wrote: “he replies ambiguously when
asked if he believes in the divinity of Christ.”

Of a Professor Schroeder, chairman of the Religion Department, he offered: “Mr. Schroeder does
not seek to persuade his students to believe in Christ, largely because he has not, as I understand
1
it, been completely able to persuade himself.”

Buckley noted that another faculty member of the Religion Department, Professor Erwin R.
Goodenough, had once described himself as “80 percent atheist and 20 percent agnostic.”

And Buckley claimed that Professor Raymond Kennedy “subverted the faith of numbers of
students who, guilelessly, entered the course hoping to learn sociology and left with the
impression that faith in God and the scientific approach to human problems are mutually
exclusive.”5

God and Man at Yale also contained a lengthy chapter crammed with passages from economics
textbooks that were required reading. Buckley presented convincing evidence that the books
promoted socialism, Keynesianism, and other collectivist nostrums while disparaging
individualism, free enterprise, and limited government.

Was Bill Buckley’s main goal the exposure of Yale’s subversion? Was his ardent defense of
Christianity and free enterprise the underlying purpose of his book? Or had he written it
primarily to draw attention to himself and to establish a national reputation?

Since Yale is a private university, it is, as Buckley noted, within its rights to abandon
Christianity and free-market economics. Revealingly, Buckley did not object to the school’s
desertion of its traditions; he merely believed that certain criteria should be met while doing so.
Near the conclusion of the book he wrote:

I cannot repeat too often that I have cause to object to current Yale policies only if there
exists a disparity between the values the alumni of Yale want taught, and those currently
being taught in the field of economics.6 [Emphasis in original.]

But alumni do not establish a school’s policies; its leaders do. Buckley claimed that, as long as
the alumni supported it, he would accept the faculty’s promotion of socialism, Keynesianism,
and collectivism. For that reason, he would also withdraw his complaints about attacks on
Christianity. And as for “the duel between Christianity and atheism,” it wouldn’t be an issue at
Yale, he concluded, if the alumni didn’t care.

In effect, Buckley didn’t defend either free enterprise or Christianity as they pertain to Yale. He
insisted that both should be subject to the whim of alumni opinion. A principled stand would
have condemned Yale outright for teaching socialism and atheism, not agree to accept either if a
majority of alumni agreed.

In the closing pages of God and Man at Yale, Buckley suggested that other Yale graduates ought
to consider breaking with the university. He wrote: “But no one not apathetic to the value issues
of the day, I repeat, can in good conscience contribute to the ascendancy of ideas he considers
destructive of the best in civilization.”7 Far from adhering to his own counsel, however, he sent
his only child, Christopher, into the grasp of Yale’s atheists, socialists, and academic
freethinkers.

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Charles Markmann perceptively noted that the major effect of God and Man at Yale was to make
Buckley “an overnight national notable.” That may have been the book’s main purpose.
Reviewers from the right heaped praise on it. It won surprising acclaim in the Establishment’s
Time and Life magazines and in a host of kindred newspapers. The Buckley name rapidly
became a household word in conservative and liberal circles alike.

Markmann, who made little effort to conceal his distaste for the entire Buckley family, delighted
in pointing to comments given by the book’s leftist critics. For instance, he quoted this blast by
McGeorge Bundy in The Atlantic Monthly: “As a believer in God, a Republican, and a Yale
graduate, I find that the book is dishonest in its use of facts, false in its theory, and a discredit to
its author and the writer of its introduction.”8 Before preparing his review, Bundy spent a full
day with Yale’s new president, A. Whitney Griswold, going over what they thought should be
said. Griswold insisted that the book stemmed from Buckley’s “militant Catholicism,” and that it
advocated “religious controls that we got rid of a couple of hundred years ago.”9

Journalist John Chamberlain, who wrote the book’s introduction and was reproached by Bundy
for having done so, had once been a socialist, but had moved steadily away from the left, and in
1956 helped to found The Freeman (the monthly publication of the free-market Foundation for
Economic Education). A 1925 Yale graduate, Chamberlain did not subscribe to Buckley’s attack
on Yale’s treatment of religion, but he was impressed with the book’s condemnation of
deficiencies in the university’s economics department.

Former Yale Professor Fred Rodell, some of whose students, according to Markmann,
nicknamed him “Fred the Red,” concluded in his review in The Progressive that the book was
“muddled, dishonest, inaccurate, sloppily argued, and dull.”10

Attacks from the Left helped skyrocket Buckley to prominence as a new hero of the Right. Had
Yale and the litany of leftist reviewers ignored God and Man at Yale, (the regular fate of most
conservative books), Buckley would have had to figure out some other way to gain attention.**

Markmann, alternately amused and repulsed by Bill Buckley, observed:

God and Man at Yale is especially important because it was, to mix one’s Biblical
figures though hardly inappropriately, the star in the east that was to lead the wise men
of the Right to the Rose of Sharon, and too because it offered to a broader public than
Yale an insight into not only the fanatically sincere beliefs of its author but also the
reprehensible means by which he was only too ready to further his high moral cause.11

Sincere beliefs? Moral cause? The book did make Buckley a celebrity amongst conservatives,
especially those who espoused Christianity. And it did “lead the wise men of the Right” to him.
But the book wasn’t the stirring defense of Christian values that many claimed it to be. God and
Man at Yale did little harm to the university while generating a remarkable amount of attention
for Buckley.

In 1967, the now-famous editor/author announced his candidacy for a post on the Yale

1
Corporation, which oversees the university. He ran as an opponent of the slate of candidates
already selected by a prestigious nominating committee. Again pointing to the university’s
pronounced “liberal bias,” he further condemned the “almost total lack of conservatives on the
faculty” and complained that the students “don’t have access to the conservative point of view.”

To gain ballot position for the 1968 election, he had to secure the signatures of 250 Yale
graduates, which he quickly obtained. About 30,000 alumni (the most ever) voted, but Buckley
lost to Cyrus R. Vance, who joined the CFR that same year, and served as secretary of state in
the Carter administration.

Buckley’s campaign against Yale never measured up to the reputation he personally gleaned
from the book. Its most notable result was not to change university policy, but to make him a
nationally prominent figure.

* * *

McCarthy Gets the Buckley Treatment

… what he [Senator Joseph McCarthy] did do was set back the anti-communist cause,
and he did that by these very reckless exaggerations that he engaged in....12
— William F. Buckley, Jr.

Buckley worked for a brief period in 1952 at The American Mercury. When an article he wrote
about mushrooming “liberal” dominance over our nation’s affairs was rejected by a senior editor,
he walked out. John Chamberlain, the respected senior editor of The Freeman, immediately
sought to hire him. Having written the introduction to God and Man at Yale, Chamberlain
thought he could attract its increasingly famous author. But Buckley declined the invitation.

In 1952 the nation was becoming increasingly polarized over Wisconsin Senator Joseph
McCarthy’s anti-Communist efforts. Buckley and brother-in-law Brent Bozell decided to submit
an article about McCarthy to The Freeman. The project quickly evolved into a book-length
manuscript. When Henry Regnery agreed to publish it, Senator McCarthy agreed to supply
needed information.

McCarthy and His Enemies finally emerged in 1954.13 While it was one of the few books of its
time (or any era, for that matter) defending McCarthy’s attempts to counter Communist
penetration of the U.S. government, it was nevertheless larded with criticism of the senator.
Members of McCarthy’s staff didn’t care for the manuscript, and the senator himself withheld
endorsing it. Buckley biographer John Judis claimed that Mrs. Jean McCarthy “became furious
at the criticisms of her husband and advised him not to endorse the book.”14 Viewed as a whole,
the book may have been a defense of the government’s right to bar security risks from
government employment and expose their presence in sensitive posts, but it was hardly
pro-McCarthy.

Judis reported that one reviewer found “sixty-three critical references to McCarthy in the
text.”15 Several other reviewers supported “McCarthyism” but did so in a manner that
undoubtedly delighted McCarthy’s detractors. For example, Buckley and Bozell claimed to be
1
firmly in McCarthy’s camp even if, as they put it, the senator’s methods, “out of ignorance or
impetuosity or malice,”16 had led to action being taken against some government official who
had done nothing wrong. But the book cited no such instances. The undocumented criticism
amounted to actual condemnation.

Widely held but erroneous historical mythology holds that Senator McCarthy’s supposedly
“reckless” methods wreaked havoc on a long list of innocent persons. Buckley and Bozell not
only failed to contest that view, they bolstered it. The book was, on balance, welcome grist for
the anti-McCarthy mill. It clearly was not the impassioned defense of McCarthy it has been
frequently touted to be.

Was McCarthy guilty of publicly targeting and harming innocent citizens? As early as February
20, 1950 (he had launched the public phase of his anti-Communist effort 11 days earlier during a
speech in Wheeling, West Virginia), the Wisconsin senator was badgered by fellow senators to
release the names he had been given of suspected Communists in the State Department. His
colleagues implored him to do so during an open session on the Senate floor, where everything
stated would become public knowledge. He vigorously resisted, stating:

The names are available. The Senators may have them if they care for them. I think
however, it would be improper to make the names public until the appropriate Senate
committee can meet in executive session and get them. I have approximately 81 cases. I
do not claim to have any tremendous investigative agency to get the facts, but if I were
to give all the names involved, it might leave a wrong impression. If we should label one
man a Communist when he is not a Communist, I think it would be too bad.17
[Emphasis added.]

This concern for the reputation of others was repeated by McCarthy during numerous other
confrontations. He never harmed any innocent person.

In 1971, John Birch Society founder Robert Welch began expanding his own critique of Bill
Buckley’s career. Numerous interruptions and other pressures forced him to put the project aside,
and it was never finished.18 We repeat Welch’s comments about McCarthy and His Enemies
from this book’s Foreword:

But the man who invented the expression “damning with faint praise” would have been
exhilarated beyond measure on finding, by reading Buckley’s book, how beautifully this
could be done by a real expert at the job. The book, while pretending to explain and
justify McCarthy, is far more industriously concerned with pointing out what were
presented as his errors and his faults — which were made more damning because they
were supposedly seen through the eyes of a friend who was disposed in McCarthy’s
favor. This book, in its subtle way, fitted exactly into the general strategy for destroying
McCarthy.

McCarthy was striving to rid the government of unquestionably disloyal, highly placed
individuals — a task worthy of any elected official. The question should have been then (as
now): How else should he have approached the problem? For several years, he used legitimate
1
authority to expose government employees who were disloyal, and to demand that they be
removed. For that, he received unprecedented vilification.

The pivotal crisis for McCarthy came when he aimed his searchlight at top administration
officials who were working behind the scenes to block his investigation. These included
Attorney General Herbert Brownell, presidential advisor Sherman Adams, Ambassador to the
UN Henry Cabot Lodge, and Assistant Secretary of State William P. Rogers. When he sought to
question them after discovering their determination to sabotage his work, he was stopped cold by
the directive issued by President Dwight D. Eisenhower on May 17, 1954 that established a
bogus claim of “executive privilege.”19 Officials of the executive branch thereafter referred to
the Eisenhower order as justification for refusing to cooperate with McCarthy’s investigation.

In McCarthy and His Enemies, Buckley and Bozell claimed that McCarthy had committed an
egregious blunder in his famous 1950 Wheeling, West Virginia, speech. They even took a swipe
at his lengthy June 14, 1951 Senate address that revealed the previously hidden left-wing and
pro-Communist record of General George C. Marshall. That speech was later published as a
book entitled America’s Retreat From Victory.20 It arguably instigated the wrath of McCarthy’s
pro-Communist and anti-anti-Communist enemies more than anything else the senator ever did.
Marshall was a hero of the leftists and internationalists who already had a powerful grip on
Washington; and they were not happy when the record of one of their own — especially one so
highly placed and highly esteemed — was exposed.

In an appendix to the the original edition of their book, Buckley and Bozell granted that Marshall
deserved to be labeled “America’s most disastrous general,” and that his career “did decisively
aid the Communist cause.” But they insisted that “Marshall’s loyalty is not to be doubted,” and
that “McCarthy deserves to be criticized” for his speech exposing Marshall’s record. They
concluded: “McCarthy’s judgment here was bad.”21

Again, this was hardly a defense of McCarthy. Nor was it a reasonable response to the solid
information he had presented about Marshall. The truth about McCarthy is that the incredibly
excessive venom directed at him wasn’t generated by mistakes on his part. It was provoked,
instead, by the Establishment’s determination to shield Communist-fronters and actual
Communists from exposure by McCarthy’s carefully conducted investigations, and to intimidate
into silence others who might seek to expose Communist subversion.

The most important point about the Buckley/Bozell criticism of McCarthy, however, is that it
came from the Right and enjoyed a degree of respectability within conservative circles that no
leftist could have achieved. McCarthy wasn’t vilified because he was wrong, or mean-spirited, or
reckless. He was targeted because he was correct and because he used his powerful position as a
committee (and subcommittee) chairman to counter internal subversion. Any authentic defense
of McCarthy would have stressed that point.

In 1996, Regnery published a new edition of McCarthy and His Enemies. It included not only an
unabridged reproduction of the original work, but a new eight-page introduction written by
Buckley. This supposed “friend” of McCarthy mentioned without refutation some unnamed
person’s wildly erroneous charges that “McCarthy died of drink, cheated on his taxes, lied in his
1
election campaign, and malingered in the Marines.” Buckley then wrote of the book he had
co-authored in 1954:

It does not pretend to describe McCarthy’s active career, either as a senator or as a

human being. It is a fragmentary inquiry into those particular issues which, among other
things, called McCarthy to the attention [of others]: the issue of security procedures in
the government, of McCarthy’s charges, of the tumult that ensued. It is a study (by no
means uncritical) of the rhetoric used by McCarthy to make his case.22

This 1996 update focused on “the McCarthy problem” as if the senator, not Communist
subversion in government, was the primary matter to be explored. Buckley wondered “whether
McCarthy was morally fit to champion his [own] cause.” He referred to numerous slurs aimed at
the senator and allowed them to stand unchallenged. Then, ever anxious to protect his own image
with those who still despise the very mention of the Wisconsin senator’s name, Buckley
distanced himself from any connection to the grudging bit of pro-McCarthy sentiment contained
in the book by attributing it to his deceased coauthor:

… Mr. Bozell even after advertising shortcomings which had not previously been
acknowledged by his supporters, registered our support of the Senator.23

In other words, whatever meager defense of the senator appears in the book was actually
Bozell’s doing. Translation: “Blame Bozell! I am now part of the Establishment, and as a
condition of remaining in its good graces, I must abandon any hint of support for McCarthy.”

By 1996, however, it had become increasingly easy to document from information gathered both
in America and in the former Soviet Union that McCarthy’s charges had been correct. Buckley
deferentially made this point by reproducing in his 1996 Introduction the comments of a “Yale
scholar” that had originally been published in the May 1995 Yale Alumni magazine. Though
unnamed by Buckley, that scholar is Bruce Fellman, who acknowledged that his own research
left him:

… with the chilling feeling that in one sense, at least, the notorious Joseph McCarthy
was right: Communists marching to a Moscow drummer were abroad in the land and
looking for secrets, including atomic secrets, to pass on to their Soviet sponsors.24

Here again, Buckley cited someone else, not himself, in reluctant support of McCarthy. And he
could have cited several other testimonials confirming that the senator had been on target. For
instance, in his 1989 book Loyalties, Carl Bernstein discussed the Communist Party membership
of his own parents, and his father’s plea that he delete any reference to it in his book because
“You’re going to prove McCarthy right....”25

Similarly, in 1990, University of London researcher Roger Scruton revisited the McCarthy era
and stated in a column published by the Los Angeles Times: “The fact is, however, that
McCarthy was right.”26

Eventually, even the New York Times for October 18, 1998 published “Rethinking McCarthyism,
1
if Not McCarthy,” in which author Ethan Bronner reluctantly admitted that some scholars “have
flirted with the rehabilitation of McCarthy himself.”27

Bronner even quoted Buckley as saying, “McCarthy’s excesses have to be taken in context of the
other work he did.”28 Once again, specific “excesses” alluded to by Buckley were neither
specified nor documented in the article.

During a June 28, 1996 interview on PBS, Buckley was asked by host David Frost if he had any
regrets regarding what he had written about McCarthy. He responded at once, “I do,” then
explained:

The book that Bozell and I wrote concentrated on the [Senator Millard E.] Tydings
hearings, and in our judgment we were correct in saying that he was much more right
than wrong up until then, but what he did do was set back the anti-communist cause, and
he did that by these very reckless exaggerations that he engaged in after that period.29

Frost didn’t ask Buckley for examples of the alleged “reckless exaggerations,” and Buckley did
not volunteer any. But Frost did ask for further affirmation that McCarthy had indeed “damaged
the cause of anti-communism,” to which the usually articulate Buckley responded curtly: “Yeah,
he did.”30

The real story about Joe McCarthy, not found in either the Buckley/Bozell book or in National
Review, reveals that:

• McCarthy was correct in claiming that the U.S. government had been penetrated by
Communists working to subvert the American system.

• He was extremely careful not to question the reputations of persons whose actions and
associations could not be shown to be subversive.

• He was betrayed by Senate colleagues who voted to condemn (not censure) him on two
trumped up charges, neither of which had anything to do with the widely publicized claim that he
repeatedly engaged in “exaggerated accusations.” One of the charges for which McCarthy was
condemned faulted him for failing to respond to a mere “invitation” to appear before a Senate
investigating panel — an “invitation” he hadn’t even received until several days after he was
supposed to appear! The other claimed that he had dishonored the Senate by accusing some of
his Senate colleagues of aiding the Communist cause.

No censure or condemnation of a senator had ever before (or has ever since) been voted for
alleged “disorderly speech.” Indeed, prior to the McCarthy episode, no such proposal to curtail
free speech had ever been offered in the Senate. McCarthy was the target of an unprecedented ex
post facto move to malign his reputation that violated both Senate rules and the spirit and letter
of the First Amendment.

• He was attempting to shift the focus of his inquiry from Communist Party membership to the
far more important Establishment arena where highly placed government officials were
1
protecting Communists and impeding his legitimate investigation.31

The 1996 republication of McCarthy and His Enemies did little to harm Buckley’s reputation
among those who recoil at any mention of McCarthy’s name. Nor did it address many of the
most important issues brought to public attention by the courageous Wisconsin senator. And
coauthor Brent Bozell had passed away and was unavailable for further comments of his own.

While never stated explicitly, the underlying thrust of McCarthy and His Enemies subtly
paralleled Buckley’s 1952 performance in The Commonweal contending that the threat of Soviet
Communism required the creation of a “totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores.” It did
nothing to close the developing gulf between the emerging Buckley-style neoconservative
internationalists and the Old Right noninterventionist stalwarts of the pre-Buckley days, among
whom could be found Garet Garrett, H.L. Mencken, Rose Wilder Lane, John T. Flynn, and the
Chicago Tribune’s Robert McCormick. The importance of the casting aside of the Old Right and
the emergence of the Buckley Right is clearly and devastatingly detailed by Justin Raimondo in
his Reclaiming the American Right.

John T. Flynn had written an accurate account of McCarthy’s record in his 1954 booklet,
McCarthy: His War on American Reds.32 But it never received the attention that the
Buckley/Bozell work attracted.

Flynn labored diligently to convince the American people that a larger concentration of the
enemies of freedom could be found in Washington than in Moscow. He supported McCarthy’s
efforts, and for good reason: He believed that an individual may have a right to be a Communist,
but no Communist had a right “to be employed in the American army, the American State
Department, the radar installations, atomic energy laboratories and other government
departments.” Flynn also championed McCarthy’s crusade because of its “value as a battering
ram against the statist Liberal Establishment.”33

The Redhunter
Early 1999 saw the emergence of Buckley’s The Redhunter,34 a novel about Joseph McCarthy.
It is as adept at character assassination as any volume ever written about the senator.

In The Redhunter, Buckley took liberties that a factual book would never permit. The book
recounts historical incidents in which McCarthy played a central role. But Buckley put words in
McCarthy’s mouth that he never uttered, invented situations that never occurred, and distorted
the events that did take place.

The naming of many real-life individuals gives the book an aura of legitimacy when portraying
its chief character. But Buckley repeatedly mentions McCarthy’s supposed penchant for
“booze,” whether the senator was conducting business, socializing, or vacationing. McCarthy’s
medal-winning service with the Marine Corps during World War II is also mentioned — and
trivialized. Buckley’s depiction of the senator’s first run for elective office is rife with distortion
and falsehood. The novel even has McCarthy cheating on his taxes, an accusation that had been
leveled by the senator’s enemies. But Buckley doesn’t mention that an official investigation of
the matter not only established McCarthy’s innocence, but resulted in a sizable refund to the
1
senator from the IRS. Rather than cheating, he had overpaid!

As might be expected, Buckley’s book reinforced the false claim that McCarthy damaged the
anti-Communist cause. One character concludes that the senator’s supposed recklessness “had as
an enduring result the discrediting of anti-communist activity.” The McCarthy presented by
Buckley isn’t the real Joe McCarthy, but rather a creature whose words and deeds add to the
carefully created caricature of the man the Establishment and its Communist arm were
determined to destroy, and have continued to vilify.

As we have seen, Bill Buckley first gained national attention with God and Man at Yale, and
later acquired an undeserved reputation as a champion of Joseph McCarthy and a principled
opponent of Communism. It was now time to launch National Review. But first, let us take a
look at his ties to the Central Intelligence Agency.

*The Smith Act made it a crime “to advocate and teach the duty and necessity of overthrowing
the Government of the United States by force and violence.” Upheld by the Supreme Court
led by Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson in 1951, it was later gutted by decisions of the Warren
Court.

**It is noteworthy that Yale president Charles Seymour, with whom Buckley tangled as a
student, joined the Council on Foreign Relations at its inception in 1921. And A. Whitney
Griswold, who succeeded Seymour as Yale president in the midst of the stir caused by
Buckley’s book, joined the CFR in 1940. They were both certified members of the very
Establishment that Buckley himself would eventually join.

Chapter Five — Into the Central Intelligence Agency

I’m convinced that the whole National Review is a CIA operation.1

— Murray N. Rothbard

On June 25, 1950, a few weeks after Buckley graduated from Yale, North Korea invaded South
Korea. President Truman promptly committed our nation to its first undeclared war. When
Buckley expressed concern about being called back into the Army, Professor Willmoore Kendall
urged him to apply for a position with the Central Intelligence Agency in order to avoid further
military service. Others were doing it, he said, why not you? Buckley biographer John Judis
described the agency during that period as “a popular haven for Yale and other Ivy League
graduates” who were anxious to stay out of uniform.2

Buckley took to the idea at once, so Kendall contacted James Burnham, one of his old friends
from their days in Trotskyite organizations. (Burnham’s background is detailed in Chapter 6.)
Burnham was holding down a post at the CIA’s Office of Policy Coordination. Buckley met him
in Washington and the two began their long association. Through Burnham, he also met E.
Howard Hunt, an OSS veteran who had become a CIA covert operative and would later achieve
1
unwanted fame as a key figure in the Watergate scandal that lead to Richard Nixon’s downfall.

Burnham explained to Buckley that Hunt was about to be assigned leadership of a CIA operation
in Mexico, and that he and Hunt saw in Buckley a highly intelligent American who was fluent in
Spanish and had even recently resided in Mexico. The two also applauded Buckley’s opposition
to “Stalinism,” a term revealing Burnham’s Trotskyite past. The pair offered Buckley a post
within the CIA, which he accepted, though not at once.

Buckley’s marriage plans and his intention to complete God and Man at Yale stood in the way.
But he agreed to join the CIA team once his book was published. By May 1951, all hurdles had
been overcome, so he and his bride went off to Washington to begin his CIA career. After three
months of training, the Buckleys set up residence in Mexico City. For years, the only information
known about his specific assignment during his year with the agency was Hunt’s revelation to
Judis that both he and Buckley were working “to encourage anti-Communists to challenge
Communists for leadership in the trade unions, professional and artistic organizations, and
student organizations.”3

The CIA: On America’s Side?

To understand the significance of Buckley’s association with the CIA, it is necessary to take a
closer look at the history of both his chief mentor, Willmoore Kendall, and the CIA itself. The
professor had served with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and the CIA prior to joining the
Yale faculty.

Formed in 1947, the CIA is the direct successor to the World War II-era OSS led by Colonel
(later General) William Donovan. Donovan made it his policy to fill the OSS with actual
Communists. His excuse for doing so was that the Reds he chose were better able to work with
Communist groups throughout Europe and Asia and were reputed to be strong opponents of the
Nazis and the Japanese.

In his 1972 book, OSS: The Secret History of America’s First Central Intelligence Agency, R.
Harris Smith reported that Donovan deliberately recruited veterans of the Communist-front
Abraham Lincoln Brigade who had fought alongside the Reds during the Spanish Civil War.
When confronted by the FBI with evidence that some of his men were Communist Party
members, Donovan replied, “I know they’re Communists. That’s why I hired them.”4

The harsh reality about these OSS Communists, however, is that they devoted most of their
efforts to neutralizing and destroying indigenous anti-Communist organizations and individuals
in both Europe and the Far East. OSS personnel did little or nothing to impede the Nazis and
Japanese; the thrust of their activity was described by James Burnham himself in his 1954 book,
The Web of Subversion, as “pro-Soviet, for the defense of the Soviet Union and the world
revolution.” Burnham added that the “comfort, gold, arms, [and] supplies” provided by the OSS
went to pro-Communists in the “resistance, guerrilla and other clandestine groups … [in]
Yugoslavia, in north Italy, in many of the French and German operations, and sporadically
within the confused China situation....”5

In 1954, Robert Welch (who would found The John Birch Society four years later) wrote his
1
small book The Life of John Birch6 detailing the heroic exploits of the missionary who became
the Army Air Corps’ most important intelligence specialist in China. Welch reported that late in
1944, John Birch, while attached to our nation’s 14th Air Force in China, learned that he was
slated for transfer to duty with the OSS. Because he had firsthand knowledge of the questionable
personnel and activities of the OSS, he balked. His objections were more substantive than the
usual complaints about reassignment heard from military personnel. Birch, who was described
by fellow officer Captain William Drummond as “absolutely fearless, completely unselfish,
never thinking of his personal discomfort or danger,” was well-known as an exemplary soldier
who would never question an order for personal motives.

General Claire Chennault, who commanded the American forces in China and whose admiration
for Birch was boundless, responded to Birch’s distaste for the OSS by assigning him the special
status of “on loan” to the OSS, rather than formally transferring him to the agency. Welch related
in his 1954 book that Birch “stated publicly, and officially, that he had rather work as a private
for Chennault than as a colonel for the OSS.”7

Birch obviously had learned about the OSS from his personal experience with some of the
Communists and pro-Communists selected by the agency’s leader, William Donovan. Robert
Welch stated that during World War II, Donovan “frequently threw the weight of American
supplies, arms, money, and prestige behind the Communist terrorist organizations of Europe and
Asia.” He continued:

Almost typical of the selections by Colonel Donovan of high-level personnel for this
agency were the cases of Leonard Mins, Milton Wolff, and George Wuchinick. Mins, a
member of a well-known Communist family, himself trained in Moscow and in
Communist-operated revolutionary schools elsewhere, a former officer in the Abraham
Lincoln Brigade which had been organized by the Soviet secret police to promote
Communist terror in the so-called Spanish Civil War — this man was given the job of
gathering and analyzing information on the Soviet Union for the OSS. Wolff had been a
commanding officer of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade when it had been recruiting
gullible young American idealists to fight in the Communist butcher unit without letting
them know it was a Soviet police instrument. When some of these young American
dupes found out the truth in Spain, and rebelled against the Communist leadership, they
were summarily executed. Wolff has since refused to state under oath whether or not he
took part in these executions of American boys. But as a member of OSS he served as
one the most influential and trusted representatives of the American government in Italy
during the war years. Wuchinick, also a graduate of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade,
found the opportunity as a member of the OSS to work closely with Tito in Yugoslavia
and with the Communists in China.8

It would be comforting to believe that the Communists employed by the OSS were discharged
when the organization became the CIA. But such was not the case according to numerous
authorities, including intelligence specialist Frank Capell. Writing in 1971, Capell pointed to the
Communist background of such key OSS operatives as Carl Aldo Marzani, Irving Fajans, Robert
Talbott Miller III, Philip Keeney, Donald Wheeler, and Jane Foster Zlatovsky. He claimed that
when the organization was renamed, “OSS employees went directly into the Central Intelligence
1
Agency,” which William Buckley joined in 1951.9

When Willmoore Kendall served in both spy organizations, he was still a Trotskyite. However,
not everyone who served in either or both agencies should automatically be deemed disloyal.
Indeed, it is from the testimony of some of these patriotic OSS/CIA veterans that the
pro-Communism of these agencies has been documented. Capell wrote:

Lyle Munson, an anti-Communist who served in both the O.S.S. and the C.I.A., has
observed that the American public “has logically assumed that the operational arm of
the C.I.A. was a hard-hitting and militantly anti-communist organization, since the only
avowed enemies of this country are the communists.” This, he tells us, “has proved to be
a tragic misconception, the truth being that the operational arm of the C.I.A. has been
the haven for more left-of-center dreamers, social climbers, draft-dodgers, do-gooders,
one-worlders and anti-anti-communists than any other single department or agency in
Washington.”10

In his 1970 book Donovan of OSS, Corey Ford identified Allen Dulles and John McCone as
chief Donovan lieutenants.11 Each would later become the director of the CIA. Dulles and
McCone were never Communists, but both also became heavyweights within the Council on
Foreign Relations. Dulles had served on the CFR’s board of directors since 1921 (the year the
Council was founded) and was its president from 1946-1950. Other CFR members who became
CIA directors were Richard Helms, James Schlesinger, William E. Colby, George H.W. Bush,
and Stansfield Turner in the 1970s; William J. Casey, William H. Webster, and Robert M. Gates
in the 1980s; and R. James Woolsey, John M. Deutch, and George J. Tenet in the 1990s. The
CIA became a virtual division of the CFR and the world-government-promoting Establishment.

During the early years of the Eisenhower administration, the CIA’s practice of funding domestic
leftists and out-and-out subversives came to the attention of Army Major General Arthur
Trudeau, our nation’s director of military intelligence. He complained to superiors that the CIA
was helping Communists in America instead of opposing them, and suggested that the agency
ought to be investigated and cleaned up. For his effort, Trudeau was promptly removed from his
post by Eisenhower aides, transferred to the Far East, and effectively silenced.12

Undeterred, the CIA continued to foster and fund subversive activities. Senator Strom Thurmond
(R-S.C.) commented in his April 1967 newsletter that there might indeed be some real
anti-Communists functioning within the agency, but “they have worked under ‘no-win’
guidelines.”

Other chroniclers of the CIA’s history have supplied details about the agency’s attempts to
assassinate anti-Communist leaders Chiang Kai-shek of Free China and Syngman Rhee of South
Korea.13 Additional CIA betrayals of anti-Communist efforts include the failed 1956
Hungarian revolt, the fiasco at Cuba’s Bay of Pigs in 1961, and the no-win Contra effort in
Nicaragua during the 1980s.14

In his 1976 book Kissinger: The Secret Side of the Secretary of State, Gary Allen wrote:
1
 In the early 1950s, it was CIA agents who broke into the offices of Senator Joseph
McCarthy. This came at the time the famous anti-Communist claimed he had been given
evidence of pro-Communist infiltration, corruption, and dishonesty within the CIA
itself....

It was the CIA, you’ll remember, that first declared Fidel Castro was an
anti-Communist; that said the East Germans would never try to build the Wall; that
promoted Ahmed Ben Bella, Achmed Sukarno, Ho Chi-minh, Gamal Nasser, Patrice
Lumumba, and literally scores of other Communist butchers.15

A CIA policy from its inception was that the way to oppose Communism was to support
socialism. That these two “isms” share a common goal of destroying freedom — and differ only
in the route to be taken to achieve that goal — is a fact so patently obvious that CIA backing of
socialists could never have stemmed from mere stupidity.

We have no reluctance in claiming that, in general, the CIA is not and never has been on the side
of a free and independent America. And it was OSS and CIA veteran Willmoore Kendall, with a
Trotskyite past, who profoundly influenced William Buckley during his four years at Yale and
then steered his pupil into the CIA. Kendall later became a key player in launching Buckley’s
National Review magazine.

Buckley would eventually acknowledge his CIA experience in On the Firing Line, a book about
his long-running television program. In commentary sandwiched between transcripts of selected
interviews, he wrote:

It is true that I was in the CIA. I was a “deep cover” agent, which meant that not even
my family (exception: my wife, after she was cleared, which took three months) could
know that the reason I was in Mexico had nothing to do with the ostensible reason I was
there (to inquire into, with the view of possibly resurrecting, commercial interests once
owned by my father). I kept my secret rigorously, never mentioning the CIA to anyone
after my resignation and return to the United States in 1952....

People continue to ask me what I did in the CIA, and I continue to say that what I did is
a secret. I have volunteered only that (a) the training I received was exactly the training
received by my fictional protagonist, Blackford Oakes, in Saving the Queen; (b) I didn’t
kill anybody or do anything exciting; and (c) if I had been captured and tortured, I
would not have been able to give out the name of a single fellow CIA operative other
than that of my boss, Howard Hunt.16

In his 1997 book, Nearer, My God: An Autobiography of Faith, he again discussed the period in
1950 when, after graduating from Yale, he gave Willmoore Kendall a green light to instigate his
CIA employment. After repeating some of his previous revelations, he wrote:

The initial overture from a youngish man whom I met at an off-campus restaurant in
New Haven informed me that if I were accepted, the Central Intelligence Agency would
1
 want me as a deep-cover agent, which meant: no observable traces whatever to the
CIA.... Three or four times during the fall and winter of 1950 I was interviewed or
questioned at odd addresses — “safe houses,” as now designated, usually in New
York.... The schooling I had in Washington as a deep-cover trainee I detailed
twenty-five years later in my novel Saving the Queen. When I left Washington, I didn’t
know the real identity of a single one of the dozen men who trained me.17

All of which strongly suggests that the year Buckley spent in the CIA placed him in an
assignment that was neither routine nor small-time. Would working with Mexican students or
inquiring about his father’s interests merit “deep cover” status?

The Hunts and Buckleys developed a very close relationship while in Mexico. Shortly after the
two began working together, Hunt and his wife Dorothy were granted permission by the
Buckleys to designate them in a will as legal guardians of the Hunt children in the event they
became orphaned or separated from their parents. Hunt reportedly left the CIA 20 years later,
just prior to the Watergate affair. Shortly after details about his role in the famous break-in
became known, Dorothy Hunt was killed in a plane crash while carrying $10,000 in cash on her
person.

Had Hunt actually separated from the CIA? Was Dorothy Hunt herself a CIA operative?
Questions remain as they do about most “deep cover” CIA operatives. In Nearer, My God,
Buckley wrote that after he arrived in Mexico, and after he had become friendly with the Hunts,
“I was not aware that during those months in Mexico I was under rather formal observation by
her.”18 It would seem that Howard Hunt wasn’t the only member of his family working for the
CIA.

Hunt ended up in prison for his role in Watergate, and the Buckleys did indeed become
guardians of the Hunt children. At Buckley’s direction, National Review launched a drive to
assist Hunt financially, and Bill donated personal funds to help his one-time CIA boss and
longtime close friend. When Dorothy Hunt died, Buckley surfaced as executor of her will.

For years, Buckley drew on his knowledge of the CIA to write a series of spy novels featuring
the character Blackford Oakes, thought by many — and hinted at by Buckley — as a
personification of what had been Buckley’s own CIA aspirations. In Saving the Queen, Oakes is
a World War II veteran and Yale graduate who joins the CIA to avoid serving in the armed
forces during the Korean War — exactly paralleling Buckley’s past. But far from Buckley’s own
supposedly unexciting career in the CIA, the fictional Oakes becomes a central figure in an
international plot involving the Queen of England and the theft of America’s nuclear secrets.

In 1995, Buckley released The Blackford Oakes Reader, which profiled 10 characters from his
spy novels. In the Introduction, he provided a revealing motive for having created Oakes:

I thought to attempt to write a book in which it was never left in doubt that the CIA, for
all the complaints about its performance, is, when all is said and done, not persuasively
likened to the KGB.... The point I sought to make, and continued to do so in subsequent
novels, is that the CIA, whatever its failures, sought, during those long years in the
1
 struggle for the world, to advance the honorable alternative.19

Here we have Buckley admitting that he wrote the novels to romanticize the CIA and defend it
from charges that it had long been working against this nation’s best interests, even functioning
as the American equivalent of the Soviet KGB.

After the Agency

Buckley claims he left the CIA in 1952. At that point in his career, God and Man at Yale was
selling well, buttressed by the many reviews it received from both conservatives and liberals.
Demands for speeches were pouring in, as were offers for jobs as editor of The Freeman and The
American Mercury (the latter was the most prestigious of the few conservative journals in
existence at the time). With a year of CIA duty under his belt, the important details of which he
kept under wraps, he headed for New York and editorial duties with The American Mercury.

Meanwhile, Bill’s older sister, Priscilla, was holding down an important post at the European
desk of the CIA in Paris. She, too, would later become a central figure at National Review.20

In On the Firing Line, Buckley claimed that his CIA service first received widespread airing
from Yale University’s Reverend William Sloan Coffin, another CIA veteran. While conversing
with Coffin in 1973, Buckley blurted out that “my boss in the Agency was Howard Hunt.” As a
consequence of what he termed his “slip,” Buckley reported that “Bill Coffin promptly told
someone else about my past and — it became a part of the public record.”21

When Howard Hunt’s Watergate difficulties were in the news in 1974, Buckley’s affiliation with
the CIA became more widely known. Forced to admit that he had served with the agency more
than 20 years earlier, he became the target of widespread charges that he was still doing so. The
Boston Globe, one of our nation’s most passionately liberal newspapers, threatened to attach
mention of his relationship with the CIA to each of Buckley’s op-ed columns appearing in its
pages.22

Even within National Review’s professional family, revelations about Buckley’s CIA connection
caused anxiety. As a young man, Garry Wills had joined the magazine’s staff in the summer of
1957. He and Buckley developed an extremely close relationship until Wills became infatuated
with the civil rights movement and began echoing leftist opposition to the Vietnam War. The two
slowly drifted apart, and Wills began writing his own syndicated column. Their breakup was the
subject of some of Buckley’s columns. When information about his former mentor’s CIA past
became known, Wills attacked both Buckley and National Review in a series of scathing
columns of his own. Referring to Bill and Priscilla Buckley, James Burnham, and Willmoore
Kendall, Wills wrote in January 1995:

Was National Review, with four agents of the CIA on its staff, a CIA operation? If so,
the CIA was stingy; and I doubt it — but even some on the editorial board raised the
question. And the magazine supported Buckley’s old CIA boss, Howard Hunt, and
publicized a fund drive for him.23

Here was a former close Buckley associate openly speculating that the CIA had played a role in
1
establishing, perhaps even controlling, National Review. Like many others, Wills considered
association with the CIA more reprehensible than praiseworthy. He believed that service with the
agency should never be equated with serving in the military. Instead, it was something to be
shunned because of its secrecy, and especially because of its interference in the affairs of other
nations.

Buckley responded in print to Wills’ indictment with surprising ferocity. The incident became
the final straw in the deteriorating relationship between the editor and his erstwhile star pupil.
Others might criticize Buckley about other matters and remain within his circle of friends. But to
suggest that he never actually left the CIA, or that his magazine might be a CIA front, irked him
intensely and prompted unusually sharp rejoinders.

Had Hunt not bared Buckley’s CIA connection, it might never have become widely known.
Buckley himself studiously avoided mentioning it. He was willing and proud to point to other
past connections, including his CFR membership, but he kept his CIA service hidden until it
could no longer be kept quiet.

Murray Rothbard was another early Buckley ally and contributor to National Review. A brilliant
libertarian economist and champion of Old Right values, he broke with Buckley in 1959. John
Judis noted:

Rothbard remains, to this day, suspicious of National Review’s Cold War stance: “I’m
convinced that the whole National Review is a CIA operation,” he says.24

It was while he was in Mexico in early 1952 that Buckley authored his revealing Commonweal
article cited earlier. At the time, the editor of Commonweal was James Burnham’s brother,
Philip. During that era, American conservatives were united in opposition to the Truman
administration; they emphatically loathed Communism; and they rightly feared and detested big
government. Yet, while employed by the CIA, the man who would later shape much of the
conservative movement was telling readers of a small but influential Catholic journal that “Big
Government for the duration” and an accompanying “totalitarian bureaucracy … even with
Truman at the reins of it all” were steps America should undertake. The article was undiluted
Trotskyism. It promoted the idea that the way to combat Soviet Communism was to build an
all-powerful and socialistic executive branch here in the United States. Had Trotsky been alive,
he would undoubtedly have applauded. The slain Russian revolutionary’s American disciples,
Kendall and Burnham, had tutored the young Yale graduate well.

Some of America’s remaining noninterventionists, then as now disdainfully and inaccurately

referred to as “isolationists,” objected vigorously to Buckley’s heresy. Among the most
outspoken was author and Old Right veteran Frank Chodorov. Referring to the escalating Cold
War, Chodorov held that the supposed war against Communism would ultimately transmogrify
into a war to Communize America.25 He had capably summarized Buckley’s Commonweal
recommendations.

The Commonweal article included a revealing example of another Buckley practice: reversing
course after providing reasonably sound perspective. He began it with a strong condemnation of
1
“the State,” which he claimed was the people’s “domestic enemy.” But he then executed a swift
U-turn and called for big government, a totalitarian bureaucracy, centralization of power in
Washington, etc.

The Funding Fathers

On June 28, 1996, the Public Broadcasting Service aired a televised tête-à-tête featuring host
David Frost and guest Bill Buckley. Among other revealing comments, Buckley admitted that
National Review “lost 19 million dollars”26 in its early years. To illustrate what this meant in
current terms, he added: “In constant dollars it comes to about 45 or 46 million.”*

When Frost asked if any of the loss had been made up with his own funds, Buckley responded,
“Not much, a certain amount was,” and he mentioned “speaking fees, that kind of thing.” These,
he acknowledged, brought very little in the way of relief for the magazine’s river of red ink.
Frost didn’t pursue the matter further, so viewers were left to speculate where the millions of
dollars to cover the huge losses came from.

To whom does the youthful owner of an upstart new magazine turn to make up such a sizeable
shortfall? And even more to the point, how could anyone in Buckley’s position incur such losses
without knowing in advance that the astronomical deficits would be covered by others? And
would he not then be beholden to such benefactors?

Who provided the $19 million? Fundraising appeals were repeatedly sent to National Review’s
subscribers, producing many thousands of dollars, but nowhere near $19 million. In the 1950s,
even two or three million dollars would have been an astonishingly large sum for someone to
pour into a special-interest, small circulation magazine. Obviously, National Review’s role was
deemed to be so important that some unknown backer or backers paid handsomely to keep the
magazine alive.

It is now evident that Buckley used his magazine and his attendant celebrity status to pursue
several high-priority Establishment goals. He seized control of the conservative movement,
denied respectability to its Old Right stalwarts, debunked the idea of conspiracy, and worked to
undermine those who espoused either non-intervention in the world’s affairs and/or strict
adherence to the Constitution’s limitations on federal power.

It certainly would have made sense for an Establishment-controlled entity to provide the millions
to keep National Review functioning. So the question must be asked: Did National Review’s
money tree grow in the CIA’s orchard? We may never know, but CIA money did finance other
publications, so the suggestion is eminently plausible.

Thomas W. Braden, an OSS veteran and CFR member, became a high CIA official in 1951, the
same year Buckley joined the agency. According to Braden’s own admissions, his CIA division
set up 20 dummy foundations to funnel money secretly to such leftist outfits as the National
Student’s Association, described by Braden as “a CIA front.”27 In 1967, he revealed that he had
supplied as much as $2 million per year to Jay Lovestone, a founder of the Communist Party
USA and editor of its newspaper, The Communist.28

1
Also in 1967, Braden authored a Saturday Evening Post article, entitled “I’m Glad the CIA Is
Immoral,” in which he proudly admitted that the agency had provided funds through its
foundations to left-wing U.S. labor leader Walter Reuther and socialist labor leaders in Europe.
He boasted that he gave “cash, along with advice, to other labor leaders, to students, professors,
and others,” all of whom were leftists.29

In 1983, years after he had formally left the CIA’s employ, Braden casually remarked during an
appearance on CNN’s “Crossfire” that the agency had also financed the Communist Party
newspaper, Daily Worker.30 The CIA financed favored publications on the left; could it have
also financed some on the right? Could it have helped keep National Review afloat? The money
Buckley needed could readily have been channeled covertly to the magazine through one or
more of the dummy foundations mentioned by Thomas Braden. Could Buckley’s series of
CIA-enhancing novels have been a partial quid pro quo for agency support?

Recall that Buckley’s closest adviser at Yale, Trotskyite/OSS/CIA veteran Willmoore Kendall,
had introduced him to Trotskyite/OSS/CIA veteran James Burnham who then placed him in a
CIA post. Why wouldn’t the CIA back National Review? The agency was poised to steer
America’s conservatives into the arms of Trotskyites who had held key CIA positions, and who
were now top staffers at the Buckley-led magazine.

Buckley’s magazine has also used its influence to heap scorn on those who contend that
conspiracy lies at the root of many of America’s problems. Buckley knew that The John Birch
Society’s Robert Welch had criticized the CIA. Repudiation of both “the conspiracy theory” and
its advocates, including enemies of the CIA, could best be accomplished by someone with
“conservative” credentials. Buckley and his National Review were ideally suited for the job.

National Review would also prove useful in whitewashing the CIA. In its July 12, 1966 issue,
James Burnham groaned that the organization he had served for so many years had been
victimized by “a very bad press.” So he saluted it and insisted that it was “more consistently
anti-Communist” than other government agencies. One of its problems, he maintained, stemmed
from the publicity it received. Advocating total secrecy, he wrote:

From the point of view of effective performance, CIA should have no official press
relations; none of its officers should be publicly identified; nothing should ever be
officially admitted about its activities, whether mistakes or triumphs.... Mum’s the word,
mum’s always the word from headquarters. An effective CIA sort of organization must
be, in short, professional.31

The former CIA officer admitted in this article that “anonymity, concealment and public
ignorance are, however, incompatible with traditional notions of democracy and responsible
government.” But he nevertheless opposed the creation of a “congressional watchdog
committee” being considered by the Senate.

Burnham speculated openly about the possible effect of his recommendations, even questioning
whether the CIA might become an invisible government. Answering his own query, he
concluded: “Of course. There is no escaping the dilemma: either professionalism and secrecy or
1
ineffective performance.” He wanted “professionalism” in both of its assigned duties, which he
described as “the gathering and analysis of intelligence (i.e. information) on the one hand;
special (i.e. clandestine) operations on the other.”32

The CIA establishment must have been delighted to have Burnham persuade conservative
Americans that the organization was capably carrying out its “more consistently
anti-Communist” mission. Burnham had done his bit to burnish the agency’s increasingly
tarnished image for readers of National Review and devotees of Bill Buckley.

While there has been no verification of CIA funding of National Review, a detective
investigating the matter would ask, “Cui bono?” (Who benefits?) Who benefited most when
National Review was kept alive with substantial infusions of cash? What entity, other than the
Establishment of which the CIA is an important part, has been as well-served by the
“no-conspiracy” campaigns carried out by Buckley and National Review?

Angleton, Golitsyn, and Buckley

Soviet KGB official Anatoliy Golitsyn defected to the United States in 1961. Thirty years later,
Bill Buckley wrote a column about his early association with Golitsyn. In it, he offhandedly
revealed further details about his association with the CIA.

Golitsyn had been a high-ranking officer in the Kremlin’s worldwide clandestine service,
spending 15 years in Soviet intelligence work where his lofty position brought him into direct
contact with top Soviet officials, including Josef Stalin. Increasingly disillusioned by the crimes
of the USSR, and armed with information he had received from high Soviet sources about a
long-range strategy designed to defeat its adversaries, he decided to warn the West. But once he
left the USSR and came to the United States, he ran into a wall of opposition from U.S.
intelligence experts at the CIA. So thoroughly was his information discounted and his credibility
questioned that he began to fear for his life. Eventually, he was also repudiated by William
Buckley.

Had it not been for the CIA’s chief of counterintelligence, James J. Angleton, the astonishing
Golitsyn revelations might never have reached the public. Golitsyn sought to convince CIA
officials that there would soon be a complete turnabout in Communist strategy. In 1963, almost
everyone at the CIA scoffed at Golitsyn’s contentions, prompting Angleton to have Golitsyn
transferred to his supervision.

One of Golitsyn’s important revelations claimed that the Sino-Soviet split, a major justification
for massive U.S. aid programs to the USSR, was a cleverly concocted ruse. Was there a split? In
his 1984 book New Lies For Old, he wrote:

The feigned disunity of the communist world promotes real disunity in the
noncommunist world.... False alignments, formed with third parties by each side against
the other, make it easier to achieve specific communist goals, such as the acquisition of
advanced technology or the negotiation of arms control agreements or communist
penetration of Arab and African states. In Western eyes the military, political,
economic, and ideological threat from world communism appears diminished.33
1
Had that analysis received the respect and attention it deserved when Golitsyn first posed it in the
1960s, the Establishment would have been deprived of its key excuse for showering the USSR
with our tax dollars and other largess. There would have been no justification for “bridge
building,” “peaceful coexistence,” “détente,” or whatever else might benefit the supposedly
mellowing Kremlin. Americans would not have been persuaded that, because of the growing
challenge to freedom posed by Red China, it was in our nation’s interest to supply the USSR
with every conceivable form of aid, including missile delivery systems and other strategically
important military equipment and technology.**

Golitsyn also told his CIA handlers that the Soviet government would soon begin a long-planned
scheme he called a false liberalization. It would include a complete reorganization that “would
be spectacular and impressive.” He claimed that “formal pronouncements might be made about a
reduction in the communist party’s role; its monopoly would be apparently curtailed.... The KGB
would be ‘reformed.’” But the West must be wary, he cautioned, because the reorganization
“would be calculated and deceptive in that it would be introduced from above.”34

Other warnings he tried to impart in the 1960s included his predictions that the Berlin Wall
would come down,35 the Warsaw Pact would be dissolved,36 East and West Germany would be
reunited,37 and there would emerge “a younger leader with a more liberal image, who will
continue the so-called ‘liberalization’ more intensely.”38 Perhaps the most important claim made
by this extraordinary individual centered on his repeated insistence that the goal of all of these
tactics was “the establishment of a neutral, socialist Europe.”39

History has confirmed the accuracy of Golitsyn’s predictions. The Berlin Wall did come down;
the Warsaw Pact was dissolved; East and West Germany are reunited; and a younger leader with
a more liberal image emerged in the person of Mikhail Gorbachev. Golitsyn either made some
astonishingly lucky guesses, or he should have been heeded from the day he set foot on U.S. soil.

James Angleton was forced out of the CIA in 1974. Writing in New York magazine, Aaron
Latham speculated that Henry Kissinger was behind the dismissal. As to why CIA Director
William Colby fired the 22-year veteran, Latham wrote: “The answer seems to involve
Angleton’s belief that détente is a trick and that Henry Kissinger had fallen for it.... Directly or
indirectly, Kissinger may have passed the word that Angleton should be phased out.”40

Angleton’s termination occurred partly as a consequence of his unyielding defense of Golitsyn,

but also because he remained convinced that the CIA itself had been penetrated by Soviet agents.
He passed away in 1987. Four years later, the CIA discovered that a high official at the agency’s
Soviet desk, the traitorous Aldrich Ames, had been spying for the KGB for years, and that his
efforts had compromised much of the CIA’s work while endangering its agents. After the Ames
case became known, even the New York Times had to admit that the CIA should have heeded
Angleton.41

After leaving the CIA, Angleton maintained contact with Golitsyn who, because he was still
afraid for his life, remained in seclusion in the United States. Then in 1991, Buckley wrote his
1
column discussing Angleton’s having brought Golitsyn to meet him “about 15 years ago.”42
That would have been about 1976. Buckley explained that the Soviet defector was searching for
someone to help put his voluminous notes into readable English.

Based on the conservative, anti-Communist reputation Buckley had carefully cultivated, and
with Angleton’s recommendation as a consequence, Golitsyn believed that he could trust
Buckley; that Buckley was the man who could do the job he required. In his column, however,
Buckley reported that he had listened to the frightened Russian for three hours, but then refused
the man’s request. He promised instead to find someone else to help Golitsyn, but the unnamed
person he claimed to have chosen also declined the offer. In retrospect, as Buckley admitted in
his column, he provided Golitsyn with no help whatsoever and even contributed to the delay in
having Golitsyn’s voluminous information published.

Buckley scoffed at Golitsyn’s contention that the Sino-Soviet rift was fraudulent, noting that
such a belief was “a sacred article of faith of the John Birch Society.” He ended the August 12,
1991 column by noting that Golitsyn’s “book came out, a few years later, and was widely
unnoticed.”43

Contrary to Buckley’s assertion, however, New Lies For Old was widely noticed, especially by
Establishment figures who were anxious to keep its message from the public. The CFR’s
Foreign Affairs, along with National Review and the Library Journal, portrayed it as worthless.
But in the aftermath of the breakup of the USSR, sales increased dramatically. Buckley
mentioned it in his column but avoided giving its title. Had he done so, many of his readers
might have obtained copies and judged the book for themselves, creating an embarrassment,
even a setback, for Buckley.

More invective was showered on Golytsyn’s thesis in a PBS “Frontline” program and in British
author Tom Mangold’s Cold Warrior. Both portrayed Angleton as an eccentric and disruptive
screwball while savaging Golitsyn and his message. Eventually, however, former CIA official
George A. Carver wrote a well-deserved tribute to Angleton that appeared in the Washington
Times.44

That Golitsyn’s warnings had substance cannot be denied in light of the unfolding events over
the past dozen years. In the wake of the breakup of the Soviet Union, additional huge amounts of
Western aid have flowed to Russia and the nations of Eastern Europe. In each of these nations,
former Communist leaders are now portrayed as “democrats” who have been anointed with what
Golitsyn predicted would be “a more liberal image.” Where is all of this leading? Golitsyn’s
answer: “‘Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals’ would turn out to be a neutral, socialist
Europe.”45

According to his own 1991 account, as far back as 1976, Buckley could have helped spread the
Golitsyn message to the American people. But doing so would have revealed a major strategic
move in the conspiratorial drive to herd all nations together under the twin banners of socialism
and world government. He demurred, opting instead to undercut the Soviet defector.

In that 1991 column, Buckley also chose to describe the post he filled for the CIA during
1
1951–52 as one of “deep cover,” noting that this type of assignment requires agents “never to
reveal what it was they did while in service.” He further noted that he considered his CIA “oath
still binding” 30 years later.

After having kept his CIA service hidden for many years, Buckley began to not only publicize it,
but boast that he had been an “agent” involved in a “deep cover” assignment, not some low-level
bureaucratic task. His use of the term “agent” is significant, since many lower level CIA
employees are never referred to with that term. Further, if his pledge never to reveal details about
his assignment was still binding (Is it still?), has he remained continuously subject to CIA
direction since 1952?

*The 1996 equivalent of $19 million in 1957 would have been approximately $106 million —
far more than the “45 or 46 million” suggested by Buckley.

**Senator William Armstrong (R-Colo.) reported to the Senate on April 13, 1982: “In the last 10
years alone, the United States and other Western nations have sold to the Soviet Union and its
satellites more than $50 billion worth of sophisticated technical equipment the Communists
could not produce themselves. This equipment has been used to produce nuclear missiles,
tanks and armored cars, military command and control systems, spy satellites, and air defense
radars. In addition, the Soviets have been able to purchase entire factories, designed and built
by Western engineers and financed in part by American and Western European banks.”

Chapter Six — The First Team

But National Review’s masthead was heavily weighted with former leftists preoccupied with
fighting communism.1
— John B. Judis

Having studied under Trotskyite/OSS/CIA veteran Willmoore Kendall at Yale, Buckley was
introduced by Kendall in 1950 to Trotskyite/OSS/CIA veteran James Burnham, who was still on
the CIA payroll. Both mentors would help him realize his dream as National Review was born.
Even more than to Kendall, Buckley turned to Burnham for guidance and assistance as the
magazine moved from the drawing board to publication.

At National Review’s 25th Anniversary celebration in 1980, Buckley said of Burnham, “Beyond
any question, he has been the dominant intellectual influence in the development of this
journal.”2 He republished his 1980 comments when Burnham passed away in 1987.

Among other tributes appearing in National Review after Burnham’s death, perhaps the most
relevant came from Sidney Hook, Burnham’s old comrade from their Marxist days. Hook
recalled that while they shared teaching assignments at New York University in the 1930s, “Jim
expressed vigorous criticisms of the existing economic system and strong sympathies for
revolutionary socialism.” Hook continued:
1
 Word of Jim’s political development soon got about among radical students. To my
amazement I discovered that by 1933 he had established some working arrangements
with members of the YCL (Young Communist League) at NYU, to whom I had become
anathema.... So impressed were they with Jim’s grasp of issues that they reported their
find to Earl Browder, Secretary General of the U.S. Communist Party, who was at the
time looking for more reliable and less critical intellectual fellow-travelers.3

Subsequently, Browder invited Burnham to become a cog in the Communist Party machine. The
invitation was rejected. But Burnham did join the Communist-controlled American Workers
Party. From that launching pad, according to Charles Markmann,4 Burnham rose to become a
leader of the Trotskyite anti-Stalinist Left. His preference for Marxism’s relatively slow march
toward totalitarianism led him to condemn Stalin for betraying what Burnham and other
Trotskyites considered to be a great cause.

During the 1930s, Burnham joined many others in believing that Soviet socialism was evil only
because it was led by the likes of Stalin. When the Soviets and Nazis formed an alliance in 1939,
however, Burnham began to have serious doubts about his position, and by 1940 he parted
company with the Trotskyites. He even moved away from Marxism, although he never
developed an affinity for free enterprise. He wrote in his letter resigning from the Workers Party:
“I consider that on the basis of the evidence now available to us a new form of exploitative
society (what I call ‘managerial society’) is not only possible as an alternative to capitalism but is
a more probable outcome of the present period than socialism.”5

Burnham’s 1941 book, The Managerial Revolution,6 developed this theme. He claimed that the
world was becoming dominated by a society of administrators, managers, and middlemen who
alone could be relied upon to make things happen. As Justin Raimondo suggested, “This is the
philosophical legacy of Marxist materialism, which Burnham never abandoned; he merely peeled
off the Marxist veneer.”7

At this stage, Burnham’s ideal managerial state was Hitler’s Germany. It seemed obvious,
however, that he allied himself with whatever movement seemed likely to dominate society.
Raimondo continued:

When collectivism of the Left looked as if it might be winning, he was a Leninist; when
Hitler was the master of Europe, he was awed into reverence for managerialism,
Aryan-style; when the United States stood astride the postwar world, with a monopoly
on nuclear weapons, he called on America to set up a world empire.8

In 1943, Burnham authored his magnum opus entitled The Machiavellians: In Defense of
Freedom.9 In it, he attacked both Marxists and Old Right conservatives, while championing his
own brand of managerialism, which at its core was a sophisticated form of socialism.
Raimondo’s opinion of the book led him to label Burnham “the first neoconservative.” As such,
Burnham never advocated the system of limited government on which the United States had
been founded and on which its prosperity depended. Yet there was no doubt that he was an
1
anti-Communist, as verified by his welcome and enlightening survey of the Communist
penetration of the U.S. government entitled The Web of Subversion.10 This book, however,
couldn’t be classified as a defense of freedom, especially the economic freedom that all
Communists and socialists seek to destroy. It merely confirmed the pervasive extent of internal
Communist subversion without proposing a remedy. As he wrote in the concluding chapter:

I have intended this book to be an orderly review of the recorded facts concerning the
web of governmental subversion, and nothing more. The problem of the cause and cure
of modern subversion, and still the more general philosophical issues to which
subversion is related, are outside of my present range.11

Burnham also excused several presidents and other top government officials who were
responsible for opening the doors and allowing Communists to attain government positions.
Explicitly discounting the view that any were disloyal Americans, he explained:

There is no possible ground for suggesting that Presidents Roosevelt and Truman — or
their Republican appointees such as Frank Knox, John McCloy, William J. Donovan
and Robert Patterson — were in the smallest degree disloyal. However, it is certain that
they, and most of us, have been ignorant of what needs to be known about the
Communist enterprise.12

Burnham claimed that these U.S. leaders were blameless because of their alleged ignorance both
of what the Communists had in mind and of the escalating number of atrocities and other
monstrous crimes they were perpetrating. By defending FDR from any hint of disloyalty,
however, he was also defending the prime architect of the New Deal — the plan for America
supported by the Communists, socialists, and neoconservatives.

Can any sober student of 20th-century America continue to doubt that — though they were not
Communists — FDR and Truman intended to drag our nation into a socialist quagmire of their
own design? Was not this goal, and the coercive manner in which they sought to achieve it,
evidence of disloyalty to our nation? Both the Roosevelt New Deal and the Truman Fair Deal
spawned a maze of big-government controls, increased taxation, and expansion of federal
bureaucracy. These departures from true Americanism added up to socialism with a vengeance.

Both Roosevelt and Truman were also deeply committed to internationalism in general and the
United Nations in particular. The combination of domestic socialism and the steady transfer of
U.S. sovereignty to a world government that marked their administrations were also centerpieces
of the Trotskyite/neoconservative agenda. James Burnham not only condoned this agenda, he
defended those who were working to bring it about.

Burnham also defended both his former OSS/CIA boss, William Donovan, and the premier
Establishment figure of his day, John J. McCloy. We noted earlier the harm attributable to
Donovan during his tenure at the OSS. McCloy, the consummate New York-based
internationalist, was assistant secretary of war during World War II where he approved an order
allowing Communists to become officers in the U.S. Army. He served as a disarmament
specialist during the Kennedy administration and chaired the left-funding Ford Foundation and
1
the internationalist Atlantic Institute. He later won appointment as chairman of the board of the
Council on Foreign Relations.13

The 1970 Annual Report of the CFR included a special tribute to McCloy, who had recently
resigned as its board chairman after 17 years at the helm. Commenting that “his years of
leadership have been years of exceptional fruitfulness for the Council,” the accolade noted that
he was responsible for “new programs” for the organization, such as “the new International
Affairs Fellowships for younger men and women, and the fellowships for the military.”
Burnham’s willingness to overlook McCloy’s lifetime of service to the Establishment (McCloy
joined the CFR in 1939) says a great deal about Burnham’s own worldview.

In his 1964 book, Suicide of the West, which he subtitled “An Essay on the Meaning and Destiny
of Liberalism,” Burnham underscored his contention (shared by Buckley) that America’s
problems were in no way the result of a conspiracy. America, both held, was instead being
victimized by stupid liberals who had no underlying intent to destroy freedom. Yet, in The Web
of Subversion, Burnham had applauded actions “taken against other sections of the Communist
conspiracy.”14 In 1964, he was willing to label the enemy a “conspiracy,” but he later denied the
existence of that conspiracy.

His use of the word “suicide” in his 1964 book’s title is curious. Burnham explained why he
chose it:

My intention in using the word “suicide” is purely cognitive. It seems to me an

appropriate and convenient shorthand symbol for dealing with the set of facts I have just
reviewed, the facts showing that: a) Western civilization is contracting rapidly; b) this
contraction cannot be accounted for by the material power of any agency external to
Western civilization; c) it cannot be accounted for by any Western deficiency in
material power or resources; d) it must therefore derive from structural or non-material
internal factors.15

As is obvious, Burnham went to extreme lengths to avoid the conclusion that a conspiracy did
indeed exist. Prior to the publication of Suicide of the West, he had already joined with Buckley
and others at National Review to excoriate Robert Welch and The John Birch Society precisely
because they had concluded that conspiracy lay at the root of America’s problems. Welch
contended that determined leaders of a conspiratorial clique were busily destroying freedom in
America and throughout the world. But Burnham, Buckley, and company did their utmost to
keep such a conclusion from gaining any respectability with their readers.

After scrutinizing 15 years of Burnham’s output in books and National Review articles, Murray
Rothbard commented: “In a lifetime of political writing, James Burnham [showed] only one
fleeting bit of positive interest in individual liberty; and that was a call in National Review for the
legalization of firecrackers!”16

Back in 1953, Burnham had terminated his on-again-off-again 25-year teaching career at New
York University. He had also parted company with the CIA-funded American Congress for
Cultural Freedom he had founded and led.17 His neutrality regarding Joseph McCarthy, whom
1
he did not defend but was unwilling to denounce, likely cost him favor among high CIA
officials. McCarthy’s attempt to investigate the CIA had provoked the agency to institute a purge
within its ranks of anyone who would not openly condemn the Wisconsin senator.

Burnham then moved to northern Connecticut, where he lived in semi-retirement with funds
from investments and a small inheritance. He also continued to write. When Buckley visited
Burnham’s home in 1955 to share plans to start a new magazine, his old friend didn’t hesitate to
express interest in becoming part of the venture.

Frank S. Meyer
Another key individual Buckley sought out to serve on the magazine’s initial editorial board was
Frank S. Meyer, described by Markmann as “another recent defector from the orthodox
Communist Party, in which in the 1930s, he had begun to distinguish himself as a theoretician
and detector of heresies.”18 Meyer had risen within the Party to become a member of its
National Committee and the leader of the “Workers School of Chicago,” one of the Party’s top
training bases for recruits.19

John Judis pointed out that “Meyer had entered Princeton at the same time as had Burnham, but
had left after two years to study at Oxford. While a graduate student at the London School of
Economics in 1932, he had joined the Communist Party. When he returned to the U.S., he
became the educational director of the Communist Party in the Illinois-Indiana region....”20

Of his break with Communism in the 1940s, Meyer said: “I fretted for a dozen years in the
Communist Party because I hated its repressiveness: I went Right for release from
authoritarianism.”21 Markmann claims that Meyer later viewed himself as a “radical
libertarian.” After joining the staff of National Review, he led a rather reclusive life in
Woodstock, New York, and carried out his duties for the magazine via telephone and the mail.

In a tribute to Meyer following his death in 1972, James Burnham noted the deep commitment
his fellow senior editor at National Review had once made to Communism:

Frank was an anti-Communist who had been a Communist. Not a radical or leftist or
sympathizer or fellow traveler or pro-Communist; not a worker who joins the Party
because he has been led to believe it is fighting to improve the lot of the working class
or an intellectual who goes slumming in the revolution for awhile, rather as his
Victorian forebears sowed their oats in the red-light district; not a rank-and-file Party
member or a routine functionary. Frank was a Communist of “the cadre.” What it means
to be that sort of Communist you may learn analytically from Frank’s remarkable study
The Moulding of Communists....22

In The Moulding of Communists, Meyer recounted his deep involvement in Communism (from
1931 to 1945) and a subsequent 15-year period of “reorientation” during which he helped launch
National Review. He wrote:

[This] book reflects fourteen years of active leadership, theoretical and practical, in the
Communist movement, followed by fifteen years of reorientation and deep
1
 consideration of this modern tyranny over the human mind and spirit.23

Burnham’s tribute noted that the “fifteen years of reorientation” were “to continue for another
twelve years into Frank’s last hours.” Obviously, the scars Meyer earned during his years as a
Communist were extensive, yet Buckley always presented him and his writings as
unquestionably reliable, with no hint that Meyer was still trying to find himself.

In The Moulding of Communists, and in Buckley’s 1970 anthology subtitled American

Conservative Thought in the Twentieth Century, Meyer did give some evidence of a sincere
break with his past. In one passage, he insisted upon “an objective moral order as the foundation
of respect for the value and integrity of the individual person and therefore the only firm
foundation of individual freedom.”24 In the tributes that appeared in National Review after
Meyer’s death, both Buckley and Brent Bozell noted his death-bed conversion to Catholicism.

Still, Markmann claimed that “others” weren’t persuaded that Meyer had completely cleansed
himself of his Communist past. To buttress that assessment, he cited a comment from an
unnamed “fellow-Conservative” who said of Meyer, “…he still desires a sort of Communist
Party formation in which there should be discipline, there should be organization. Again, he’s
always looking about for deviates to expel — in part because he does believe that they are
dangerous and in part because it’s a matter of habit.”25

For many years, each issue of National Review carried Meyer’s thoughts in a column captioned
“Principles and Heresies.” He believed it was his calling to be the theoretician of American
conservatism, its definer and guardian. Buckley sanctioned this self-assigned role. Though
Meyer claimed to have fled from “authoritarianism” when he left the Communist Party, that trait
often surfaced in his writings, including his contribution to National Review’s continuous
campaign to deny The John Birch Society “respectable support.” (See Chapter 9.)

More of the Team

Buckley also turned to Willi Schlamm, a former Communist who had come to America after the
1938 Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. Right away, Schlamm began writing for The New
Leader, an influential leftist publication. Like Burnham, he became an anti-Communist while
remaining a leftist. He was eventually hired by Time magazine, where he, former Communist
Whittaker Chambers, and former Trotskyite John Chamberlain comprised a small
anti-Communist circle within Henry Luce’s empire.

Buckley biographer John Judis wrote of Schlamm, “He had little interest in right-wing economic
doctrine, and he had nothing but contempt for the right-wing isolationists and libertarians....”26
In short, he was another neoconservative. Though he wanted desperately to start his own
magazine, Schlamm reluctantly agreed to become part of Buckley’s National Review venture.
Judis added, “Buckley’s willingness to work with Schlamm was significant. By joining forces
with Schlamm … Buckley was turning his back on much of the isolationist and anti-Semitic Old
Right that had applauded his earlier books and that his father had been politically close to.”27

Buckley also trekked with Willmoore Kendall to visit Whittaker Chambers at the Maryland farm
made famous as the hiding place of the famous “Pumpkin Papers” documenting Chambers’
1
association with Soviet spy Alger Hiss. Several return trips led to a request that Chambers, too,
join the staff of the new magazine. Here was another ex-Communist who, like so many of
Buckley’s choices, could properly be labeled a neoconservative. Chambers eventually joined the
National Review board and contributed a few articles to the magazine.

But Chambers soon found himself at odds with his associates over their belief that the USSR was
militarily stronger than the United States. His attempt to influence the National Review staff on
this point failed, mostly because Buckley himself repeatedly promoted the notion that the Soviets
were military giants.

Like most members of the National Review team, Chambers was neither a fan of the free
enterprise system nor an opponent of government controls. Markmann quoted Chambers’
attitude:

History tells me that the rock-core of the Conservative Position, or any fragment of it,
can be held realistically only if conservatism will accommodate itself to the needs and
hopes of the masses — needs and hopes which, like the masses themselves, are the
product of machines.... A conservatism that cannot face the facts of the machine and
mass production, and its consequence in government and politics, is foredoomed to
futility and petulance.... [It will produce] those gigantic yields and that increased
man-hour productivity whose abundance spells bankruptcy and crisis — or controls.28

Chambers’ perspective dovetailed nicely with Kendall’s majoritarianism and Burnham’s

managerialism, with hints of Trotskyite socialism. It did not square with American-style free
enterprise and competitive capitalism.

With his team taking shape, Buckley sought financing. He estimated that it would take $450,000
in addition to the $100,000 pledged by his father to get the magazine off the ground. He and
Schlamm failed to obtain any help from several men whom Judis labeled “the old isolationists
typified by the Chicago Tribune’s Colonel McCormick, and extreme right-wing Texans like H.L.
Hunt.” These Old Right types apparently wanted nothing to do with the internationalists and
anti-Communist leftists with whom Buckley had surrounded himself.

Whirlwind fundraising netted Buckley only about two-thirds of his projected budget. Much of
what he did accumulate came as small donations from individuals who hoped that the magazine
would become an important voice in saving the nation not only from Communism, but from
collectivism and internationalism.

Despite falling short of their announced financial target, Buckley and his associates plunged
ahead. The first issue of National Review appeared on November 19, 1955. CIA veterans on the
staff at NR’s outset included Buckley, Burnham, and Kendall. Most other staffers were former
Communists or socialists. Years later, Judis noted how far the original roster leaned to the left:

But National Review’s masthead was heavily weighted with former leftists preoccupied
with fighting communism. Besides Burnham, Kendall, and Schlamm, the contributors
included Max Eastman, Morrie Ryskind, Ralph deToledano, and former Communists
1
 Frank Meyer, Freda Utley, and Eugene Lyons. Meyer himself would become a senior
editor in 1957. Except for [Frank] Chodorov, who was a Buckley family friend, none of
the right-wing isolationists were included on National Review’s masthead.... [And their
position] would not be welcome, even as a dissenting view, in National Review.29

Charles Lam Markmann also thought it curious that so many former leftists comprised the core
staff. He noted, for instance, that Max Eastman

… had been a leading radical during the First World War, when he was a Socialist and
the editor of The Masses, which was suppressed for its opposition to the war. He had
then founded another radical publication, The Liberator; later he had spent considerable
time in Russia and had returned in disillusion, which grew with time until it sent him as
far Right as the Reader’s Digest, of which he became a contributing editor. But he had
shone on the Left not only as a political publicist but also as a literary critic of
considerable quality, as well as a poet.30

Those who dominated National Review at its inception, therefore, were ex-Communists,
Trotskyites, socialists, and CIA stalwarts who deplored the excesses of Communism but who had
no objection to steering America away from personal freedom and national independence. Yet
this was the magazine that was supposed to provide pivotal opposition to America’s increasingly
dominant Eastern Establishment, whose elitists had long been laboring to undermine our nation’s
independence and erode the people’s freedom!

The premier issue of National Review included a “Publisher’s Statement” signed by Buckley, in
which he noted that 120 investors had supported the launching of the magazine and that, of these,
“over fifty men and women of small means invested less than one thousand dollars apiece in it.”
What were the hopes of those investors? Why did Buckley create the magazine?

Buckley answered by insisting that National Review would be a “vigorous and incorruptible
journal of conservative opinion.” Indeed, he continued:

It stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to
have much patience with those who so urge it.31

He guaranteed that National Review would target many of the harmful attitudes, causes and
programs infecting America. They included, he wrote: “radical social experimentation,”
“socialism,” “centralism,” “relativism,” “the New Deal,” “Liberal orthodoxy,” “the irresponsible
Right,” “the practicing Communist,” “a gigantic, parasitic bureaucracy,” “a thousand different
pressure groups,” and “a cynical contempt for human freedom.”32

All of which was well and good as far as it went, appealing as it did to many concerned and
frustrated Americans. In November 1955, National Review definitely filled a conservative void
in the arena of political opinion.

From the outset, the magazine expressed deep concern about a Soviet threat. It criticized the
Eisenhower administration for entering into negotiations with the Kremlin. It honored Buckley’s
1
pledge by attacking social experimentation, bureaucracy, and growing socialism. Within its
pages, one could also find humor, though much of it was rather sophomoric. Even its most
discerning readers, among them Robert Welch (who would found The John Birch Society three
years later), perceived it as a breath of fresh air in a world being smothered by liberalism. Having
sent a personal contribution of $1,000 to help get the magazine off the ground, Welch responded
to another of Buckley’s pleas for funds two years later with another $1,000 to help keep it alive.

But it wasn’t long before National Review, the “incorruptible journal of conservative opinion,”
began reneging on its founder’s pledges. In 1960, the magazine carried an article by Ernest van
den Haag that found merit in the economic preachments of British socialist John Maynard
Keynes.33 The architect of the Roosevelt administration’s fraudulent contention that a nation
could spend its way into prosperity, Keynes not only helped steer America away from free
enterprise, he led the charge that resulted in the removal of precious metal-backing of the dollar.
Praise of Keynes in National Review was a wake-up call, though few Buckley supporters
recognized its significance at the time.

Though it was unclear to many early readers, hindsight shows that National Review began
performing as should have been expected: It presented warmed-over Trotskyite views featuring
strong anti-Communism, subtle internationalism, and a gradual shift toward acceptance of
socialistic controls.

Buckley and most of his team clearly knew where they intended to take the American
conservative movement.

Chapter Seven — Buckley, Kissinger, and Rockefeller

The appointment of Henry Kissinger by Richard Nixon to his critical post is very good news, say
we.1
— William F. Buckley, Jr.

During 1968, Jeffrey Bell served as a campaign worker for Richard Nixon’s successful run for
the presidency. By 1972, he held a post at the Washington-based American Conservative Union.
And in 1978, he upset liberal Senator Clifford Case in the New Jersey Republican primary but
lost to Democrat Bill Bradley in the general election.

An article by Bell in the July 24, 1972 issue of The Nation noted that “it’s one of the more
interesting untold stories of the Nixon transition that, probably more than any other man,
Buckley was responsible for Kissinger’s appointment.”2 Nixon had appointed Kissinger national
security adviser. In other words, Bell knew what many conservative Americans didn’t know, and
would have been shocked to learn: William Buckley and Henry Kissinger enjoyed a close
relationship. Yet Buckley was widely believed to be the polar opposite of the anti-conservative
Rockefeller Republicans typified by Kissinger.

1
Henry Alfred Kissinger’s family emigrated to the United States from Germany in the 1930s.
Young Henry’s service with the U.S. Army during World War II earned him early citizenship.
By 1950, with financial help from the Rockefeller Foundation’s Fellowship for Political Theory,
he earned his bachelor’s degree from Harvard University. From Harvard, he also earned a
master’s degree in 1952 and his doctorate in 1954.

Along the way, the budding Rockefeller protegé won successive appointments as executive
director of the Harvard International Seminar, associate director of Harvard’s Center for
International Affairs, and director of the center’s Special Studies Project. He received additional
financial support from the Rockefeller Brothers Trust Fund. If ever a man could be said to be a
Rockefeller creation, it is Henry Kissinger.

Gary Allen’s 1976 book, Kissinger: The Secret Side of the Secretary of State, supplied more
details about the Kissinger career. Allen reported that the Kissinger-led Harvard International
Seminar “was later found to be financed by the Central Intelligence Agency.”3 During his days
at Harvard, Kissinger launched Confluence, a magazine which Allen noted “came under the
close scrutiny of the Defense Department because of its pro-Communist bias.” John Judis related
that during this period, the busy Kissinger “invited Buckley to make yearly presentations before
his prestigious international-relations seminar.”4

Buckley himself later wrote about his close association with Kissinger in his 1974 book, United
Nations Journal:

We have been friends for many years. We met in the mid-fifties when he was at
Harvard, and serving also as editor of Confluence, an academic quarterly.... A year or so
later, he asked me to go to Harvard to lecture at his international seminar.... He repeated
the invitation every year.... He was then closely associated with Nelson Rockefeller....5

\Putting it all together, we see that Kissinger was running a CIA-funded program at Harvard
University in the mid-1950s. He invited Buckley, a recent CIA “deep cover” agent, to be one of
its speakers. Kissinger started a magazine that was so pro-Communist that it was monitored by
the Defense Department. Yet Buckley was supposed to be an aggressive anti-Communist. Was
Kissinger being hoodwinked by Buckley? Or Buckley by Kissinger? Or did their mutual ties
with the CIA assure both that their agendas squared?

A member of the CFR since 1956, Kissinger served on its staff, then as a professor at Harvard
University, and later as a top advisor to Nelson Rockefeller. He became a recognized figure
within the Establishment in 1957 when the CFR published his book, Nuclear Weapons and
Foreign Policy.6 All the while, he maintained his close friendship with Bill Buckley.

By 1968, Kissinger had high hopes that his patron, New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller,
would capture the Republican nomination for president. When Richard Nixon prevailed, a
disappointed Kissinger swallowed hard, but immediately contacted Buckley for help in meeting
the victorious nominee. Buckley helped arrange it and, at Kissinger’s later request, also arranged
a second meeting soon after Nixon’s November triumph. With considerable assistance from
Buckley, Kissinger was appointed as assistant to the president for national security affairs (a post
1
commonly known as “national security adviser”), from which he would eventually be elevated to
secretary of state.

Buckley recalled in his 1974 book about his UN experience that he received a telephone message
from Kissinger following his initial appointment. The grateful Rockefeller protegé effused: “You
will never be able to say again that you have no contact inside the White House.”7

Buckley further reminisced in United Nations Journal about his frequent contacts with the
president’s top security advisor:

I met him perhaps a dozen times in the first four years. I remember the very first
meeting. It was the spring of 1969, a Friday. Could I go down to see him? I told him it
would have to be a Sunday, or not again for ten days as I was off on a lecture tour. “I’ll
send a jet for you,” he said. We discussed the details, and I told him I would take the ten
o’clock shuttle back to New York. “No,” he said, “the jet will take you back.” He
paused over the telephone. “This,” he said, “is going to ruin academic life.” My escort
officer, aboard the little White House jet, was an amiable, young-looking colonel —
Alexander Haig.8*

Buckley’s “contact inside the White House” became the primary architect of a U.S. foreign
policy that gave most conservatives fits. In what he termed his “first official act,” Kissinger
addressed the United Nations General Assembly with Buckley in the audience as his special
guest. He informed the UN that the American people “have sometimes been disappointed
because this organization has not been more successful in translating its architects’ hopes for
universal peace into concrete accomplishments.”9

That “disappointment” had actually become complete disillusionment for the many conservatives
who had become convinced that the U.S. ought to withdraw completely from the world body.
They knew that the UN’s architects at the 1945 San Francisco conference included more than a
dozen U.S. Communists led by Alger Hiss, a Soviet delegation led by Andrei Gromyko, and
several score CFR members led by U.S. Secretary of State Edward Stettinius. It was arguably the
greatest collection of internationalists and world government devotees ever assembled under one
roof.10

In his maiden speech as national security adviser, Kissinger told the UN General Assembly:

But, despite our disappointments, my country remains committed to the goal of a world
community. We will continue to work in this Parliament of Man to make it a reality.11

While he employed the euphemistic phrase “a world community,” rather than the more realistic
“world government,” his commitment to the United Nations and its long-range goal of world rule
has never wavered.

Kissinger served as national security advisor from 1969 to 1973, during which time he
completely overshadowed Secretary of State William P. Rogers. The foreign policy team led by

1
Kissinger arranged for:

• The initial opening to Communist China, which led eventually to diplomatic recognition for
that country’s murderous Communist regime and further betrayal of the Free Chinese on Taiwan.

• Assistance to the USSR for construction of its Kama River truck factory. Equipment cleared for
export to this huge facility included machine tools, automated production lines, milling
machines, heat treatment furnaces for metal parts, and both the design of and equipment for an
enormous foundry. Without their knowledge, American taxpayers financed the Kama River
project through loans to the USSR supplied by the U.S. Export-Import Bank. By December
1971, the Commerce Department admitted that the Kama plant had “military potential.”12

• Steady increases in strategic aid and trade to the Soviet Union, enabling the Kremlin to develop
missiles and aim them at U.S. cities. During this period, perhaps the most strategically important
items were machines capable of manufacturing miniature precision ball-bearings. Officials of the
Defense Department attempted to block the granting of an export license for these machines
manufactured by Vermont’s Bryant Chucking Grinder Company and no one else. In 1972,
however, Kissinger overruled the Defense Department and approved the license. The Soviets
were thereby able not only to enhance their ability to place multiple warheads atop their missiles,
but to increase the accuracy of the missiles as well.13

• A monster grain deal that benefitted the USSR while driving up U.S. bread prices.14

• Negotiations with the North Vietnamese that led the way for the Communist takeover of South
Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, and the abandonment of many American POWs known to be
alive in Communist prison camps.15

• Shuttle diplomacy between Middle East adversaries that was so pro-Communist that Soviet
Ambassador to the U.S. Anatoly Dobrynin announced that his good friend Kissinger had
represented both the U.S. and the USSR in the talks.16

• A campaign of “reconciliation” with Cuba, even as Castro was being kept in power by massive
transfusions of economic aid from the USSR, and while the Cuban dictator was repaying his
Moscow patrons by stationing tens of thousands of Cuban soldiers in Angola to protect the
Communist government of that nation.17

• Diplomatic support for the Marxist terrorists who seized control of Rhodesia (now known as
Zimbabwe).18

• Additional steps leading to the eventual delivery of the American canal at Panama to the
Marxist dictatorship in Panama. It was Kissinger who went to Panama in February 1974 to sign
an agreement with Panama’s foreign secretary, Juan Antonio Tack, to cede U.S. sovereignty over
the Canal Zone and the Canal to Panama. Kissinger later played a key role in completing the
arrangements during the Carter administration.19

1
These are some of the major accomplishments of the man who held his strategically important
post after having been recommended for it by the nation’s “premier anti-Communist
conservative”!

Eventually, as Kissinger’s consistently incredible record became known to an increasing number

of Americans, some National Review readers wrote to ask Buckley why he continued to
champion this powerfully placed architect of disastrous U.S. foreign policy. Buckley didn’t
answer the inquiries himself. Instead, he had Publisher William Rusher send a form letter stating
his own opposition to “some” of Kissinger’s deeds, but emphasizing: “I do think he is a patriotic
American.”20

None of Kissinger’s damaging “accomplishments” dissuaded Buckley from continuing to

support his longtime friend. Nor, for most Americans, did they seriously impact Buckley’s
reputation as a conservative.

In 1968, when Nixon named Kissinger as his national security adviser, Buckley lost no time
praising the selection. While principled conservatives expressed anger at Nixon for reaching into
Harvard University for a man with demonstrably strong ties to the Rockefellers and the CFR,
Buckley threw his weight, and that of his magazine, behind Kissinger. Expressing his delight
with the selection, he wrote:

The appointment of Henry Kissinger by Richard Nixon to his critical post is very good
news, say we. Say also a lot of other people, some of them unreliable judges of just what
kind of a man the President of the United States ought to be listening to when it comes
to foreign policy. Let us leave it that Mr. Kissinger is a practiced diplomatist, a finished
scholar, a member of the faculty of the country’s senior university, that he has stood at
the right hand of Nelson Rockefeller: so that the profile is almost universally pleasing.
But Mr. Kissinger is something a little unusual, and we choose to believe that it is this in
him which above all commended him to the attention of Richard Nixon: he is a realist, a
patriot, he sees a problem whole, is sometimes maybe a little dreamy on disarmament
matters — but one cannot walk away from any of his books or articles, or know
something about the history of his contributions to American strategic thinking, and be
less than grateful for his appointment, and confident that he will render great service.21

When President Nixon nominated Kissinger to be secretary of state in September 1973, Buckley
pointed admiringly to Kissinger’s shrewdness while urging Senate confirmation. “I for one do
not doubt the sanity of his intentions,” he stated.22

As far back as May 1958, Robert Welch, whom Buckley would later expend great energy
disparaging, chided the National Review editor for suggesting that Kissinger be appointed to a
minor non-government committee formed to investigate Radio Free Europe. Welch, who would
launch The John Birch Society later that year, was unaware that Buckley was already a close
friend of the Rockefeller protegé when he wrote:

We think the neatest trick of the year was performed by Bill Buckley of National
Review when, on proposing a non-government committee to study what is wrong with
1
 Radio Free Europe, he suggested Henry A. Kissinger as a member of that committee.
We expect any day now to hear that General Douglas MacArthur has suggested to
President Eisenhower that Adlai Stevenson be made chairman of a committee to study
what is wrong with Foreign Aid. It’s a topsy-turvy world....23

In a February 1979 column about the sudden death of Nelson Rockefeller, Buckley approvingly
quoted Rockefeller’s view that “but for the fact that Kissinger was born abroad and therefore
constitutionally disqualified, he would certainly be nominated by acclamation by either of the
national political parties for president.”24

In a March 1982 column that included excerpts from one of Kissinger’s books, Buckley gushed,
“It isn’t often that great historical figures are given the powers to vouchsafe a prose so
penetrating in meaning and noble in tone that it comes near to transfiguring the events
described.”25 As an example of his cherished friend’s prose, Buckley chose Kissinger’s
mournful comments about “the horrible fate of the peoples of Indochina since 1975 — the mass
murders, the concentration camps, the political repression, the boat people....” Never mind that
Kissinger had helped to set the stage in Indochina for those very horrors.

In July 1983, Buckley cheered President Reagan’s appointment of Kissinger to lead a

commission to study conditions in Central America. He acknowledged that most conservatives
opposed naming the former secretary of state to any post, but he insisted that they “have not done
their homework and are coasting on old stereotypes.” Ignoring Kissinger’s track record, Buckley
claimed that anyone who was “familiar with what Henry Kissinger has said and done during the
past 10 years” would be delighted with the president’s choice.26

In September 1988, Buckley defended presidential candidate George Bush’s selection of

Kissinger as one of his campaign advisers. In response to further conservative outrage, he told
his readers: “I was for 25 years in near day-to-day company with the foremost anti-Communist
strategist of our time, the late James Burnham. I rank second only to Burnham the insight, the
skills, the imagination and the constancy of Kissinger. In enlisting the aid of Kissinger, Bush is
doing his country and himself a singular service.”27

Defending Kissinger’s Betrayal of China

In a free-swinging “Firing Line” debate at the University of Mississippi on October 14, 1997,
Kissinger and Buckley teamed with Senator Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and businessman James
Barksdale in a debate about the continuation of Most Favored Nation (MFN) status for China.
Holding the opposing view were the Family Research Council’s Gary Bauer, former California
Governor Jerry Brown, Senator Tim Hutchinson (R-Ark.), and columnist Arianna Huffington.

The high point of the confrontation came when Huffington accused Kissinger of being unwilling
to condemn trade concessions for China because of “your financial interests — after all, you do
have a lobbying and consulting firm … which does represent many businesses, many companies
that do business in China.”28

Kissinger immediately expressed “regret” that the subject had been broached, insisting that his
1
company’s profits from transactions with China were minuscule. Whereupon Huffington then
forced him to admit that he had just concluded an agreement with the Disney Corporation to
represent its interests in China. She further charged Kissinger and other advocates of China trade
with knowing “about the slave labor camps, about the forced abortions, about the torture and
execution of dissidents.” She suggested that the reason men like Kissinger turn a blind eye to
such outrages is “because they value free trade more than they value freedom, commerce more
than justice, and the rule of money more than the rule of law.”

Pinned to the wall, Kissinger reached into the neoconservative bag of tricks and accused his
adversary of “isolationism” and of being an advocate of “aggressive nationalism.” During the
exchange, Buckley backed Kissinger, insisting that continuing MFN status for China was “the
correct decision,” and that the move was supported by “every living ex-president, secretary of
state and national security adviser.” With perhaps one or two exceptions, those individuals
shared membership with him and Kissinger in the Council on Foreign Relations.

Turning to the sort of semantic jujitsu he regularly employs in debates, Buckley stressed that
China had moved from being a “totalitarian state … to the authoritarian state of today.” It is
unlikely that China’s oppressed millions would understand the difference!

The Mississippi “Firing Line” debate was not Kissinger’s first attempt to defend the brutal
Beijing regime. In 1989, after Communist China’s tanks had rolled over the students in
Tiananmen Square, ABC’s television cameras raced to Kissinger’s Connecticut home for his
comments. Without hesitation, he advised, “I wouldn’t do any sanctions.” A few weeks later he
wrote in a newspaper column: “No government in the world would have tolerated having the
main square of its capital occupied for eight weeks by tens of thousands of demonstrators....”29

Kissinger’s commercial ties to China had been noted by the Wall Street Journal several weeks
after the Tiananmen Square slaughter. Journal staff reporter John Fialka revealed details about
Kissinger’s “limited partnership set up to engage in joint business dealings with a ministry of the
Chinese government.”30 China could count on Kissinger to oppose sanctions that might pose a
threat to the former secretary of state’s lucrative business ventures. And Kissinger could count
on Bill Buckley to blunt conservative opposition to those ventures.

In June 1994, Kissinger further revealed his pro-China preference. President Clinton was facing
sharp criticism for seeking to grant an extension of China’s MFN status. Mr. Clinton refused to
link the lucrative trade designation to China’s abominable human rights record, especially its
one-child-per-family, enforced sterilization, compulsory abortion, and slave labor policies.
Without the MFN status, the burgeoning U.S.-China trade would shrink, along with Henry’s
profits. So a syndicated column coauthored by Kissinger and former secretary of state (and
fellow CFR member) Cyrus Vance characterized Kissinger’s blood-soaked profits as “American
commercial interests.” It stated:

President Clinton made a difficult but correct decision in extending most-favored-nation

status to China and to decoupling that status from the objective of promoting better
human rights in China.... If we had cut off MFN, China would surely have retaliated
against American commercial interests.31
1
Perhaps. But those commercial undertakings were benefiting the Beijing regime more than the
U.S. by providing the wherewithal for China to build and modernize its People’s Liberation
Army, and to illegally fund Bill Clinton’s 1996 re-election campaign.

Though few Americans realize it, China is developing plans to defeat the United States
militarily. On September 18, 1997, Dr. Michael Pillsbury of the Pentagon’s National Defense
University testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. An authority on Chinese
military affairs, and a translator of numerous People’s Liberation Army documents, Dr. Pillsbury
noted:

… numerous Chinese books and articles suggest an active research program has been
underway for several years to examine how China should develop future military
capabilities to defeat the United States.... China’s military capabilities in 20 years could
pose major challenges to U.S. forces.32

This distinguished China specialist provided information about previously unknown Chinese
programs to develop laser weapons, anti-satellite weapons, high-powered microwave weapons,
electric rail guns, and other advanced military items. Only a few years ago, impoverished China
could not even dream of amassing such sophisticated weaponry. Now, with huge profits gained
from slave-labor industries whose products are sold in the West courtesy of Henry Kissinger
among others, the Chinese are now able to flex frightening military muscles.

Bill Buckley evidently sees no problem with having his revered friend profit from doing business
with a regime planning “to defeat the United States.”

In Bed with Nelson

Which brings us to what Buckley thought of Kissinger’s patron, Nelson Rockefeller. In a
November 1968 column that appeared a few days after Richard Nixon was elected president, the
nation’s “leading conservative” showered the New York governor with praise, calling him “a
very capable man, and in foreign policy, a very realistic man [with] a firm anti-Communist
commitment”; “an expert administrator [who] profoundly believes in the necessity of national
strength.” Buckley concluded: “In other words, he would make a good secretary of defense.”33

Nelson Rockefeller as secretary of defense? One has to wonder at this point how Buckley could
have maintained any credibility with conservative Americans. Earlier in the year, he had urged
the selection of liberal CFR member John Gardner (Lyndon Johnson’s Secretary of Health,
Education, and Welfare) to be Richard Nixon’s running mate. Rockefeller and Gardner were
ideological clones. Judis wrote that this Buckley suggestion “made Nixon’s jaw drop,”34 and
offered his own version of the developing Buckley-Rockefeller ties:

Under Burnham and Kissinger’s influence, Buckley no longer shared the Right’s enmity
toward Nelson Rockefeller. When Gerald Ford nominated Rockefeller to be his Vice
President in August 1974, Buckley, who had urged him to nominate former U.N.
Ambassador George Bush, nonetheless defended Ford’s choice.... And he defended
Rockefeller against his conservative critics. “Rockefeller likes to be first in all things,
1
 and he is not likely to acquiesce silently in the progressive military debilitation of the
United States,” Buckley wrote in his [August 1974] column.35

Shortly after Nelson Rockefeller’s sudden death, Buckley revealed in a February 1979 column
how he had been brought to meet the powerful New York governor by Henry Kissinger “some
years ago...in 1967–68.” Rockefeller had turned to Kissinger to arrange the meeting because he
knew that Henry and Bill were close friends. Buckley wrote:

Nelson Rockefeller obviously wished to convince me that he was profoundly

anti-Communist. I always believed this true of him.... Kissinger believes he would have
been a great president. I think it is altogether possible that this is true.36

In his “personal documentary” entitled Overdrive, Buckley further describes his close
relationship with both Kissinger and Rockefeller:

I remember greatly resenting it one Saturday a few years ago (before the age of
videocassettes) when Pat [his wife] reminded me we were scheduled that Saturday night
as guests of the Nelson Rockefellers, who were giving a big party at Pocantico in honor
of Henry and Nancy Kissinger. This meant I would miss “All in the Family.” But life is
full of such pitfalls — and at 8:30 on that fabulous terrace, we sat down in our
designated seats; and lo, the man seated next to Pat and me was none other than Carroll
O’Connor — Archie Bunker: who proved a charming dinner companion.37

History shows that Nelson Rockefeller was an arch enemy of true conservatives. He had labeled
them “extremists” during the 1964 presidential campaign, and he had calculatingly undermined
any chance that Barry Goldwater might capture the White House. Rockefeller’s divisive speech
and disruptive antics at that year’s Republican Convention proved to be a dagger in the heart of
the Arizona senator’s prospects. Those who were aware of the Rockefeller pre-1964 past were
hardly surprised.

When New York’s Rockefeller Center was built in the 1930s, Nelson and his mother were given
the task of selecting and installing a mural at the entrance to the main building. The artist they
selected was Diego Rivera, a Mexican Communist, who proceeded to adorn the wall with a
likeness of V.I. Lenin championing the Communist cause.

This brazen indication of anti-Americanism proved too controversial even for the Rockefeller
family. With great reluctance, because he approved of Rivera’s message and feared only the
public’s reaction to it, Nelson had the mural replaced. He sought to have it removed intact so that
it could be displayed at the family’s Museum of Modern Art, but the task proved to be
impractical and the work was destroyed. Nelson’s authorized biographer, Joe Alex Morris, noted,
“It was typical of Rockefeller that he held no resentment against Rivera, although the artist
wouldn’t speak to him for years.”38

Nelson was welcomed into the Council on Foreign Relations in 1936, several years before
younger brother David. Already a committed internationalist, he was appointed assistant
secretary of state for Latin American affairs by Franklin D. Roosevelt.
1
Nelson’s enthusiasm for world government and his chumminess with Communists landed him a
spot on the U.S. delegation to the UN’s 1945 founding conference in San Francisco. In the
mid-1950s, while serving as a presidential special assistant, he helped to prepare the way for the
first summit meeting between President Dwight D. Eisenhower and Nikita Khrushchev that
served primarily to legitimize the Kremlin leader.39

An early advocate of ties with Communist China, Nelson stated in a November 1959 speech in
Oregon that “our contacts with China are not as intimate as ultimately they will have to be.” In
another speech, delivered in Philadelphia on May 26, 1960, he proposed the creation of a “Soviet
role, for example, in the fields of scientific research, from health to weather control and … in
specific projects of economic cooperation in areas of need.”

By January 1967, he and pro-Soviet Ohio industrialist Cyrus Eaton announced an “alliance”
between their newly formed International Basic Economy Corporation (IBEC) and the Soviet
government. Its purpose: To build synthetic rubber and aluminum plants in several
Communist-dominated nations. At the time, our nation was at war with Soviet-supplied North
Vietnam. Helping the Soviet Union and its satellite nations while U.S. forces were being killed
by Soviet-supplied weapons in Southeast Asia ought to have occasioned treason trials for those
involved. Yet, Nelson Rockefeller was the man Bill Buckley believed “would make a good
secretary of defense” or even “a great president.”

Kissinger and the Abandonment of POWs

Buckley has remained close to Kissinger despite the latter’s leading role in abandoning
America’s POWs after the Vietnam War. According to a 1991 Republican Senate Staff report,
immediately after Kissinger and North Vietnam’s Le Duc Tho signed the January 27, 1973 Paris
Peace Accords which ended the fighting in Vietnam, Kissinger hand-carried a secret letter
promising billions in aid to the Hanoi government.40 The very existence of this February 1, 1973
letter, signed by President Nixon, was kept from Congress and the American people. With no
knowledge of this remarkable commitment, and of the fact that the fate of remaining POWs
depended on fulfilling it, Congress passed legislation barring funds for “reparations” to North
Vietnam.41

The Senate staff report further stated that the congressional prohibition against “reparations”
indicated to North Vietnamese leaders that none of the aid promised in the Nixon letter would be
forthcoming. Lt. Col. Stuart A. Herrington served as a military intelligence and liaison officer
with the North Vietnamese and Chinese from 1973 to 1975. He testified that North Vietnamese
officials informed him that POWs would be returned once the promised payments were made. In
his 1983 book, Peace With Honor? An American Reports on Vietnam 1973–1975, Herrington
wrote that U.S. casualties under North Vietnamese control would be accounted for and prisoners
returned if the U.S. will “fulfill its commitment to contribute money to ‘heal the wounds of
war.’” Herrington recalled a frank statement by North Vietnamese POW negotiator Captain To,
who acknowledged: “Of course we have information on many of your MIApersonnel.... [W]e
want to give them back. But why should we give them to you for nothing? Your government …
must pay. That is your obligation....”42 Once Congress forbade “reparations,” the Vietnamese
reneged on their pledges to return many of the POWs and MIAs they were holding.
1
The Defense Department claimed that at least 5,000 men should have been returned, but only
591 actually made it back. The Senate staff report claimed that the others had become
“bargaining chips,” and even referred to them as “hostages.”

On April 13, 1973, without mentioning the letter sent by the president and delivered by
Kissinger, the Defense Department falsely declared: “There are no more prisoners in Southeast
Asia. They’re all dead.”43 The awful truth is that they were indeed as good as dead from that
moment forward. The Nixon letter’s unfulfilled promise had sealed their fate.

This letter’s existence was revealed years later when a group of congressmen visited Hanoi and
were told about it by the Vietnamese. During a September 1978 probe into the still-unresolved
plight of our POWs and MIAs, Representative Frank McCloskey (R-Ind.) scolded
Undersecretary of State Philip Habib (CFR) for his previous denials that any such “secret
memorandum” existed. Habib responded: “I didn’t know of the existence of the letter …
either.”44

For a number of years after the shooting ceased, reports of live sightings of Americans in the
former war zone continued to surface. But no more POWs were ever returned. After forcing our
men to fight under restrictions that guaranteed their defeat, the behind-the-scenes maneuvering
of the Nixon-Kissinger team further guaranteed that most of the captured Americans would
never be repatriated.

Rather than condemning Henry Kissinger’s pivotal role in the abandonment of our POWs,
Buckley eventually wrote a ringing defense of his friend’s conduct. In 1992, Kissinger testified
before a Senate committee investigating the still-unresolved plight of the POWs. Fortunately for
Kissinger, fellow CFR member Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) chaired the committee. The
erstwhile secretary of state’s appearance afforded an opportunity to posture as a champion of the
POW cause, and Senator Kerry made sure that no tough questions were asked. He gave
Kissinger free rein to state his version of the events that were still plaguing POW family
members, veterans groups, and others.

Buckley dutifully parroted Kissinger’s version of the events. Were any MIAs detained by the
North Vietnamese at the close of the war? Buckley’s September 1992 column quoted Kissinger:
“Personally, I have no proof whether Americans … were kept behind by Hanoi.” How about
POWs? “Some prisoners may — I repeat may — have been kept behind by our adversaries. No
prisoners were left behind by the deliberate act or negligent omission of American officials.”45
Buckley’s spin implied that nothing further could be done for the unaccounted-for POWs and
MIAs. The column could have been written by Kissinger himself. As could the Kerry
Committee’s questions that avoided mention of the infamous Nixon letter Kissinger had taken to
Hanoi. It amounted to Buckley saying to his friend, “You lie and I’ll swear to it.”

Buckley and the Bilderbergers

In 1975, columnist Nicholas von Hoffman sought to defend a group known as the Bilderbergers
in an article he penned for the Washington Star. He noted that participants in recent annual
meetings of the group included “David and Nelson Rockefeller, Robert McNamara, Baron
1
Edmond de Rothschild, William Paley, chairman of the board of CBS, Senator William
Fulbright, Cord Meyer of the CIA, William F. Buckley, and George W. Ball....” (Emphasis
added.)46 Von Hoffman went to great lengths to insist that nothing sinister transpired when such
U.S. powerbrokers met secretly with their European counterparts.

The annual Bilderberg confabs derive their unusual name from Oosterbeck, Holland’s Bilderberg
Hotel, the site of the first such meeting in 1954. They bring together 100–150 of the top leaders
of the U.S. and Western European nations for several days of secret discussion at a plush resort
somewhere in the Western world. No press coverage is allowed, and no one is permitted to
reveal what transpires.

Journalist Robert W. Lee has speculated that the Bilderberg movement was launched as a
reaction to the anti-Communist McCarthy movement of the early 1950s. He pointed to a
conclusion reached by Medford Evans that “the essence of McCarthyism is patriotism [while
the] essence of Bilderbergism is internationalism.” Evans believed that the Bilderberg
conferences “were instituted to carry on the work of dismantling American sovereignty which
McCarthy had interrupted.”47

Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands co-chaired the annual sessions with David Rockefeller until
1976, when he was disgraced after being linked to a bribery scandal. After a 1971 Bilderberg
meeting at Laurance Rockefeller’s Woodstock Inn in Vermont, Bernhard told an inquiring
reporter that a topic of discussion during the meeting was “a change in the world role of the
United States.”48 Earlier, he told his authorized biographer, Alden Hatch, that the attendees were
seeking ways to alter the thinking of “people who have been brought up on nationalism to the
idea of relinquishing part of their sovereignty to a supranational body.”49 Bilderbergers have
never relished the idea of an independent United States.

Bilderberg meetings have been attended by such high-ranking U.S. officials as Dean Rusk, J.
William Fulbright, Robert McNamara, Cyrus Vance, Walter Mondale, Zbigniew Brzezinski,
Gerald Ford, Alexander Haig, Peter G. Peterson, Vernon Jordan, and Bill Clinton. Some of the
prominent journalists, past and present, who have participated include C.D. Jackson of Time
Inc.; Max Frankel, James Reston, Thomas L. Friedman, and C.L. Sulzberger of the New York
Times; Katharine Graham and James Hoagland of the Washington Post; Robert L. Bartley and
Peter R. Kann of the Wall Street Journal; Bill Moyers of the Public Broadcasting System;
William P. Bundy of the CFR’s Foreign Affairs; Peter Jennings of ABC News; and columnists
Joseph Kraft, Joseph C. Harsch, George Will and, of course, William F. Buckley, Jr.

After eight years at the highest levels of the Nixon and Ford administrations, Kissinger returned
to the private sector in 1977, but did not abandon the arena of power politics. Having attended
his first Bilderberg session in 1957, he has since attended virtually all of its gatherings. In 1975,
he brought his close friend William Buckley to the conference in Cesme, Turkey. And in April
1977, he and Buckley traveled with CFR Chairman David Rockefeller and Foreign Affairs
Editor William P. Bundy to the 25th annual Bilderberger Conference at the Imperial Hotel in
Torquay, a luxurious seaside resort 140 miles southwest of London.50

As a journalist, Buckley could have revealed interesting details about these get-togethers, but he
1
wrote nary a word about them, opting instead to honor the pledge that participants keep quiet
about what goes on behind the closely guarded doors.

A Reuters dispatch, however, did report a few details about the 1977 Bilderberg gathering:

A hundred of the West’s most powerful men met behind closed doors this weekend to
discuss issues and strategies that could reshape Western policies.

The Bilderberg Conference, often described as “the most exclusive club of the Western
establishment,” met at the English coastal town of Torquay only two weeks before
Western leaders are to hold a summit conference in London.

In an atmosphere of rigid secrecy, with each delegate pledged to secrecy, bankers,

economists, politicians and leading technocrats exchanged views on how to preserve the
Western way of life. Participants included Chancellor Helmut Schmidt of West
Germany, former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger and David Rockefeller,
chairman of the Chase Manhattan Bank.

Delegates are selected by a conference steering committee. Expenses are met from
private funds.... This year’s conference, the 25th, was guided by three main topics —
problems facing the mixed-economy countries, United States-European relations, and
the relations of the West with the third world.51

When U.S. cabinet officials, corporate executives, and prominent media personalities meet in
deep secrecy with European prime ministers, international bankers, and
world-government-advocating journalists to reshape U.S. policies, alter the “world role” of our
nation, and contribute to “relinquishing part of their sovereignty to a supranational body,” it is
hardly extreme to characterize the gathering as conspiratorial.

Over the years, Bilderberg meetings have constituted for aspiring politicians what debutante
balls are for young ladies anxious to move into adult social circles. Ambitious and pliant office
seekers are introduced to the big time of international politics, carefully scrutinized, and selected
for future advancement if they pass muster. That Bill Clinton attended the 1991 meeting at
Baden-Baden, Germany, and soon landed in the White House, should not be considered
coincidental.52 And Bill Buckley’s involvement in this internationalist movement is another
indication that his conservative reputation is fraudulent.

First, Buckley joined Skull & Bones, then the CIA, followed by membership in the CFR and
participation in the clandestine Bilderberger gatherings arranged by David Rockefeller and his
European cronies. He went to one shadowy, secretive, sovereignty-eroding endeavor after
another. And all the while he emphatically denied the existence of a conspiracy, opting instead to
tear down those who disagree while striving to hide or whitewash the conspiratorial deeds of his
Establishment friends.

*Haig joined the CFR in 1974 and served as Ronald Reagan’s first secretary of state.

1
 Chapter Eight — Debunking Conspiracy

None dare call it bull---t.1

— National Review

As mentioned in Chapter 1, Gary Allen’s None Dare Call It Conspiracy sold more than five
million copies. Buckley’s National Review devoted a mere one-third of a page to reviewing this
bestseller in its September 29, 1972 “Books In Brief” section. The review’s concluding sentence
crudely summarized the message Buckley wanted to send: The reviewer wrote, “None dare call
it bull---t.” The vulgarity was fully spelled out in the magazine.

That terse, caustic commentary rejected and ridiculed Allen’s thesis. It emphatically placed the
magazine and Buckley totally at odds with the growing number of Americans who were
concluding that our nation’s continuing descent into a bureaucratically controlled domestic
superstate and a world government threatening to destroy our national sovereignty were the
result of sinister design. Based on evidence supplied by Allen and others, newly awakened
citizens were now daring openly to call America’s problem “a conspiracy,” and were pointing to
the CFR as one of its major seats of power. But National Review had from its outset disputed the
conspiracy view.

Within a year of National Review’s inaugural in 1955, leftist editor John Fischer of Harper’s
magazine accused Buckley of using his new publication to propagate a “conspiracy theory of
liberal control.” He claimed that National Review was not “an organ of conservatism, but of
radicalism.” Fischer’s complaint about “conspiracy” brought an immediate response from
Buckley. John Judis made note of it, but failed to recognize its significance. Buckley wrote in the
August 1, 1956 issue of National Review that the position of his magazine:

… is that our society behaves the way it does because the majority of its opinion
makers, for various reasons, respond to social stimuli in a particular way —
spontaneously, not in compliance with a continuously imposed discipline.2

In other words, Buckley immediately disassociated himself from any belief that a conspiracy was
increasing its grip on our nation. National Review’s attitude was that the harm done to America
and its institutions resulted “spontaneously” and that whoever might be causing it was not acting
under “imposed discipline.”

Over the years, National Review has occasionally referred to “conspiracy,” but only when
pointing to past history, such as horrors emanating from the Soviet Union. There have been few
hints that anything smacking of deliberate treason has taken root within the United States. In
September 1958, the magazine editorialized about the death of French Nobel Prize winner (for
chemistry) Frederic Joliot-Curie. The piece ended by noting that he “died a member of the
Central Committee of the French section of the Communist world conspiracy.”3 The account
implied that Moscow served as headquarters of a world conspiracy, but the key word,
“conspiracy” (the occasional use of which obviously encouraged Robert Welch and others to
1
assist Buckley in his new venture) soon disappeared almost entirely from the magazine, except
when cited to ridicule those who claimed that one existed.

John Fischer’s criticism was soon echoed by such left-wing publications as The Progressive and
Commentary. (Commentary had already become one of the leading neoconservative journals.)
Both portrayed Buckley’s new magazine as a “bore” and even “duller” than the Left’s ponderous
journals. It is curious that leftists bothered to mention National Review at all. Each large or small
brickbat from liberals gave Buckley an opportunity to respond with comments that delighted his
investors while persuading conservative readers that they had at last found someone and
something worthwhile.

The attention Buckley and his publication received from seeming opponents was déjà vu. Had
Yale’s authorities and other prominent reviewers merely ignored God and Man at Yale instead of
loudly denouncing it, Buckley would have had a much steeper climb to becoming a nationally
known enfant terrible and a conservative icon for many concerned Americans.

The matter of conspiracy continued to dog the “incorruptible journal.” There was increasingly
credible evidence that deliberate treachery, extending over many decades, was aggravating our
nation’s problems. Alarm bells were sounding from official bodies and from individuals whose
impressive credentials gave their pronouncements a high degree of credibility. When National
Review arrived on the scene, many expected that those warnings about conspiracy would be
amplified in its pages.

What were some of those warning signs?

1. At the end of the 1940s, many leaders of the Communist Party USA were tried and convicted
for violating provisions of the anti-sedition Smith Act. The act held that the CPUSA was not a
political party in the usual sense, but rather a key part of a conspiracy seeking to destroy this
nation. (Information gleaned from Moscow’s files after the breakup of the Soviet Union
confirmed that millions of dollars in direct payments had been transferred from Stalin’s
government to CPUSA coffers.) After an appeal of this celebrated case, the U.S. Supreme Court
upheld the verdict in a 6-2 ruling in which Chief Justice Fred M. Vinson concurred with the
classification of the Party as a key constituent of a “conspiracy.”4

2. In June 1951, Senator Joseph McCarthy took to the floor of the U.S. Senate to document the
pro-Communist record of General George C. Marshall. Near the conclusion of his 60,000 word
speech (later published in book form) he stated: “This must be the product of a great conspiracy,
a conspiracy on a scale so immense as to dwarf any previous such venture in the history of
man.... A conspiracy of infamy so black that, when it is finally exposed, its principals shall be
forever deserving of the maledictions of all honest men.”5

3. Senator William Jenner (R-Ind.) served on the Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security
during the early 1950s and was its chairman beginning in 1953. Under his leadership, the panel
issued a report entitled Interlocking Subversion in Government Departments, which, based on
extensive hearings, detailed the existence of four Communist espionage networks operating
within the U.S. government. The Subcommittee stated with emphasis that two of these rings had
1
not been exposed. And they never were exposed, because efforts to shed light on them were soon
terminated. The report reached 12 major conclusions, one of which pointed to “Members of this
conspiracy....” (Emphasis added.) It stated further that Communists had “carried on a successful
and important penetration of the United States Government.”6

4. In the “Afterword” to their 1954 book McCarthy and His Enemies, Buckley and Bozell
expressed hope that the spirit generated by Joseph McCarthy would “infuse American foreign
policy with the sinews and purpose to crush the Communist conspiracy.”7

5. In 1956, the House Committee on Un-American Activities published a series of reports

entitled The Communist Conspiracy: Strategy and Tactics of World Communism. Filling nearly
2,000 pages, these documents bluntly labeled the threat to America a “conspiracy.”8

6. In August 1956, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover wrote: “Yet the individual is handicapped by
coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists. The American
mind simply has not come to a realization of the evil which has been introduced into our
midst.”9

While these and other chilling testimonials about the existence of a conspiracy within our
borders generally identified Moscow as its international headquarters, they also raised many
questions about the inability — even the unwillingness — of America’s leaders to mount an
effective counterattack. Such warnings (even the comment about conspiracy by Buckley and
Bozell in their book about McCarthy) were discounted by National Review. There was to be no
suggestion in this journal that an internal enemy was striving to undermine the United States as a
free and independent nation.

In August 1956, at about the same time that FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover was warning of “a
conspiracy so monstrous” that one “cannot believe it exists,” Buckley offered his contrary view
that America’s problems were occurring “spontaneously, not in compliance with a continuously
imposed discipline.” In effect, he was saying, “Don’t listen to Hoover, the House Committee, or
the Senate Subcommittee. Ignore even my own statement in McCarthy and His Enemies. The
bad that happens to our nation is the result of spontaneous stupidity, not orchestrated design.”

Buckley’s magazine did publish some sharp criticism of the Eisenhower administration, but none
of its writers would conclude, as Robert Welch would later emphasize, that Eisenhower’s
misdeeds — and those of some of his predecessors and associates — were part of a
conspiratorial plan. In fact, as the following examples show, virtually any explanation of the
Eisenhower years was tolerated except conspiracy.

On January 11, 1956, National Review published Brent Bozell’s harshly critical survey of the
first three years of the Eisenhower-Dulles foreign policy. He characterized 15 separate incidents
as cave-ins, accommodations, and concessions to the Soviet Union and Communist China.
Included were such treacherous acts as informing South Korean and South Vietnamese officials
that the U.S. would oppose liberation of the Communist-controlled northern halves of their
nations; concealing recently released information about FDR’s betrayals at the Yalta wartime
summit; borrowing the phrase “peaceful coexistence” from Lenin to excuse our nation’s
1
pro-Soviet foreign policy; acquiescing in Soviet rule over the captive nations of Eastern Europe;
and working to silence Chiang Kai-shek’s opposition to UN membership for
Communist-dominated Mongolia.

Could all this have occurred “spontaneously”? Were our nation’s leaders merely blind and
bumbling fools?

National Review’s February 2, 1957 issue included Frank Meyer’s update that he termed the
“betrayal of our allies” and the “bankruptcy of U.S. foreign policy.” He pointed to the
Eisenhower administration’s pathetic response to the takeover of the Suez Canal by Egypt’s
Nasser; the abandonment in 1956 of the Hungarian freedom fighters after they had been assured
that U.S. assistance would arrive; and the implicit green light given the Soviet Union to gain a
strategic foothold in the Middle East. He accused President Eisenhower and Secretary of State
John Foster Dulles (both of whom belonged to the CFR) of basing the nation’s foreign policy on
a pattern of “surrender, surrender, and again surrender.”

But, once again, such deficiencies were portrayed as the result of bad mistakes and/or witless
leadership, and nothing more. There was no suggestion of a deliberate pattern or willful
misconduct.

Shortly after the Meyer article appeared, economist Henry Hazlitt supplemented the list of
Eisenhower administration failings. But in his February 9, 1957 National Review piece entitled
“Timetable To Disaster,” Hazlitt also discounted the possibility of conspiracy, excusing
America’s leaders of culpability because they had acted “unknowingly of course.”

In December 1957, Buckley himself scolded President Eisenhower for his sorry leadership.
During a forum in New York City sponsored by National Review, he excoriated Ike for having
allowed the “problem of internal security” to grow “to a state worse than that under Mr.
Truman.” Insisting that “Mr. Eisenhower must, inevitably, be repudiated,” Buckley lamented that
he didn’t expect anything to be done because “Eisenhower does not take stands, except against
McCarthy and the Bricker Amendment.”* His remarks were later published in National
Review.10

Throughout the nation, however, concern about conspiracy continued to grow despite National
Review’s efforts to scotch it. Fueling the awakening was The John Birch Society, which Robert
Welch founded in December 1958. Welch had concluded as early as 1934 that America was
being made over “into a carbon copy of thousands of despotisms that have gone before.” Years
of additional research led him to the conclusion — which he stated unequivocally — that a
conspiracy was increasing its grip on our nation. He pointed to its effects in and out of
government, maintaining that its ultimate goal was a new world order in which American
independence and personal freedom would be sacrificed on the altar of a totalitarian world
government.11

Welch refused to make excuses for the seemingly stupefied reaction of top government officials
to Soviet advances. Instead, he constantly pointed out that the U.S. government was helping the
USSR as part of “a gigantic conspiracy to enslave mankind; an increasingly successful
1
conspiracy controlled by determined, cunning, and utterly ruthless gangsters, willing to use any
means to achieve its end.”12

As the Birch Society grew, it challenged Buckley’s influence on the thinking of conservative and
anti-Communist Americans. Buckley had clearly signaled his determination to shield his readers
from considering conspiracy, but some were listening to Robert Welch’s contrary view. So
Buckley directly addressed Welch and conspiracy in a March 1963 National Review article
entitled “Quiet Conspiracy At Work.” At its outset, he stated that his purpose was to counter
“Mr. Welch’s fascination with the conspiracy as the operative agent of our decline and fall.”

In this revealing piece, Buckley admitted that the Soviet Union was guilty of conspiracy, since
its agents had acquired our atomic secrets through the efforts of “the Fuchs-Rosenberg
apparatus” and scientists “Martin and Mitchell who eloped to Moscow” and divulged
intelligence gathered after many years working in sensitive American posts.

But those incidents were old news. There was no acknowledgment of contemporary
conspiratorial activity or its influence on our nation. As a sop to those who believed that history
is frequently shaped by conspirators, Buckley pointed to events more than a century old, such as
Thomas Jefferson’s charge that conspirators of his day were trying to scuttle the republic and
create a monarchy; Andrew Jackson’s insistence that a conspiracy lay behind the formation of
the Bank of the United States; and Abraham Lincoln’s claim that conspirators were plotting to
spread slavery. But he intimated that even those ancient assessments were not necessarily
accurate because “conspiracy talk may be naïve and may be deplorable.”

To buttress his own denial regarding the existence of a current conspiracy, he applied the
time-worn tactic of condemning both sides: those who emphatically hold that America is
threatened by such a force and those who just as emphatically deem the idea to be rubbish. After
suggesting that “the truth lies somewhere in between” those opposing views, he stated:

I tend to fear not that the pendulum is going too far in the direction of Mr. Robert
Welch, but too far in the direction of nonchalance about the fact that a) conspiracies do
exist, and b) that they do accomplish great purposes.13

Here, Buckley had applied Hegelian dialectics. He discarded both absolute affirmation (thesis)
and absolute negation (antithesis), leaving as the only remaining alternative a compromising
middle ground (synthesis) containing a false or misleading conclusion. Political compromisers
regularly employ this tactic, as do those who espouse situation ethics. They have us living in an
inconclusive “gray area” where virtually nothing is morally certain and no one can speak with
authority.

To summarize Buckley’s position, conspiracies occasionally had existed in the past, but none
existed in 1963. Regular readers of National Review would seldom be energized to take action to
expose and counter the deliberate treachery that was steadily undermining America. After a
steady diet of Buckley’s journal, potential activists would slowly become anesthetized and do
nothing to oppose the organized destruction of their nation. Eventually, Buckley abandoned even
minuscule concessions about any conspiracy.
1
However, after the Soviet Union ceased to exist, he again contended that its leaders, and they
alone, had acted conspiratorially. During the June 1996 PBS interview mentioned earlier, he
stated:

My feeling always about Castro was that he should be regarded as a salient of a global
conspiracy centered in Moscow.14

“Always”? How could Buckley have “always” regarded Castro as “a salient of a global
conspiracy centered in Moscow” when he had so often debunked the very notion of conspiracy?
Before Castro seized control of Cuba on January 1, 1959, and on numerous occasions thereafter,
Robert Welch and his American Opinion magazine had warned emphatically that Castro was the
product of conspiratorial activity emanating both from Moscow and Washington.15 (See Chapter
13 for more information about these warnings.)

A thorough study of what Welch had written about Castro, and about other deliberate
anti-American policies implemented by Washington, convinced many Americans that a
conspiracy was indeed operating and had achieved great influence within our government, the
mass media, and other segments of our society.

Whether or not a conspiracy exists is of crucial importance. What a person concludes about that
issue will determine how he responds to our country’s problems. It will dictate the actions
undertaken, and the leadership to be followed, when taxation, regulations, controls, bureaucracy,
and Big Brother government begin displacing limited government and personal freedom. It will
shape a response when American sovereignty is being transferred piecemeal to a new world
order.

Concluding that willful conspirators rather than mere bumbling do-gooders are at the root of
such problems stimulates activity because of human nature’s most powerful instinct:
self-preservation. Most who decide that the disastrous transformation of America is the work of
deliberate evildoers will do whatever they can to save their country, themselves, and their loved
ones.

But those who become convinced that the damage being done results from well-intentioned
mistakes will do little except grumble. Even while witnessing the ongoing destruction, they will
shrug their shoulders, continue working to keep their heads above water, and naïvely expect
others in government and elsewhere to eventually see the error of their ways and take corrective
action.

Further, as any physician will attest, an accurate diagnosis of a problem is essential before proper
corrective action can be taken. A response to stupidity will differ significantly from a response to
planned treachery. Those who refuse even to consider the possibility of a conspiracy are also
those most prone to be deceived and victimized by it.

At the very time Bill Buckley was leading Americans away from an awareness of conspiracy,
former Eisenhower administration Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson was sounding an
1
alarm and seeking to steer the people of this nation in the opposite direction. Pointing an
accusing finger at Moscow, but expressing even more concern about leaders in government and
society within the U.S., he targeted the Supreme Court for “willfully and disastrously”
undermining the Constitution, the Washington politicians for “openly and brazenly” sending
billions of dollars to avowed Communists, and the president for advancing a policy “to turn over
our own armed forces to the United Nations.” After recounting these and other frightening
developments, he thundered in a December 1963 speech:

Communism is not a political party, nor a military organization, nor an ideological

crusade, nor a rebirth of Russian imperialist ambition, though it comprises and uses all
of these. Communism, in its unmistakable reality, is wholly a conspiracy....16

The underlying thrust of Benson’s message amounted to a call for action, not a pathetic shrug of
one’s shoulders or a frail hope for the best. He called on Americans to “resist the influence and
policies of the socialist-communist conspiracy wherever they are found — in the schools, in the
churches, in governments, in unions, in businesses, in agriculture.”17 He also endorsed The John
Birch Society, repeating an earlier statement in which he had described the Society as “the most
effective non-church organization in our fight against creeping Socialism and godless
Communism.”

Recall that Bill Buckley’s editorial in the inaugural issue of National Review stated that the
magazine “stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to
have much patience with those who so urge it.” But rather than working to stop the conspiracy,
his efforts have been directed at stopping those who would expose and rout it. He has played the
role of a pied piper, leading those under his influence away from the understanding needed to
motivate them to become involved in the fight to save their country.

It wasn’t a group of misguided liberals who met in secret at Georgia’s Jekyll Island in 1910 to
hammer out the details leading to the creation of the Federal Reserve. One of the seven plotters,
Frank Vanderlip of the Rockefeller-controlled National City Bank of New York, likened himself
to a “conspirator” when he wrote about the event 25 years later. In an article entitled “Farm Boy
to Financier,” appearing in the Saturday Evening Post for February 9, 1935, Vanderlip asserted:

Despite my views about the value to society of greater publicity for the affairs of
corporations, there was an occasion, near the close of 1910, when I was as secretive —
indeed as furtive — as any conspirator.... I do not feel it any exaggeration to speak of
our secret expedition to Jekyll Island as the occasion for the actual conception of what
eventually became the Federal Reserve System.18

Conspiracy was, and remains, a key aspect of Ford Foundation financing of left-wing and
Communist groups. The 1953–1954 Special Committee to Investigate Tax-Exempt Foundations
headed by Representative Carroll Reece (R-Tenn.) sent its research director, Norman Dodd, to
interview Ford Foundation president H. Rowan Gaither. In a burst of candor, Gaither admitted
that he was acting under directives “issued by the White House … the substance [of which] was
to the effect that we should make every effort to so alter life in the United States as to make
possible a comfortable merger with the Soviet Union.” When Dodd asked Gaither if he would
1
make those plans a matter of public record, the Ford Foundation leader stated, “This, we would
not think of doing, Mr. Dodd.”19

Courageous Hungarian freedom fighters, urged on by Radio Free Europe broadcasts, rose up
against their Soviet slavemasters in October 1956. Rep. Michael Feighan (D-Ohio) described
what happened:

You will recall the revolution broke out on October 23, 1956, and that by October 28,
the Hungarian patriots had rid their country of the Russian oppressors. A revolutionary
regime took over and there was a political hiatus for five days.

Then the State Department, allegedly concerned about the delicate feelings of
[Yugoslavia’s] Communist dictator Tito, sent him the following cable assurances of our
national intentions in the late afternoon of Friday, November 2, 1956: “The Government
of the United States does not look with favor upon governments unfriendly to the Soviet
Union on the borders of the Soviet Union.”

It was no accident or misjudgment of consequences which led the imperial Russian

Army to reinvade Hungary at 4 a.m. on the morning of November 4, 1956. The cabled
message to Tito was the go-ahead signal to the Russians because any American school
boy knows that Tito is Moscow’s Trojan Horse. It took less than 48 hours for him to
relay this message to his superiors in the Kremlin.20

The Hungarian revolt was crushed. Note that Congressman Feighan pointedly stated that the
action of the State Department “was no accident or misjudgment of consequences.” It was, in
other words, planned to happen as yet another move on the conspiratorial chessboard.

Nor was Professor Carroll Quigley describing the actions of mere liberal ideologues when he
approvingly wrote of the “secret society” to rule mankind in his monumental Tragedy and
Hope.21

Conspiracy-driven betrayals by U.S. leaders delivered China to Mao Tse-tung’s Communists in

1949; prevented U.S. victories in the Korean and Vietnam wars; brought Castro to power in
1959, and solidified his grip in 1961 by abandoning the anti-Castro Cuban freedom fighters at
the Bay of Pigs; and undermined anti-Communist forces in the Belgian Congo, Rhodesia, South
Africa, El Salvador, and Nicaragua. U.S. leaders also strengthened the United Nations and
ignored the U.S. Constitution by arranging for U.S. military forces again to wage war under UN
authority, as in 1991 in Iraq.

Kendall Bares Buckley’s Goal

As noted in Chapter 1, Medford Evans was an early contributor to National Review. He became
closely acquainted with the original Buckley team but soon departed as did several others. In the
October 1973 issue of American Opinion, Evans reviewed Charles Lam Markmann’s book about
the Buckley family. At one point he recounted the details of a revealing conversation he had with
Willmoore Kendall in 1961. The two National Review veterans met in Dallas and visited Army
General Edwin A. Walker, who had recently resigned from the military and announced his intent
1
to devote his time and energy to the fight for “Christian liberty and American independence.”

Walker’s superiors had suppressed his no-nonsense, anti-Communist “Pro-Blue” program for the
troops under his command in Germany. A key aspect of the program focused on exposing
subversion within the U.S. government. Walker’s educational effort didn’t blame moles from
Moscow or some other foreign capital for repeated disastrous decisions. He believed, and did not
hesitate to state, that domestic Communists and pro-Communists had become dominant in some
departments of the U.S. government.

When ordered by officials in Washington to terminate the “Pro-Blue” program, Walker returned
home to do battle with those he claimed were America’s well-entrenched enemies. He didn’t
simply retire; he resigned and forfeited his pension in order to begin his personal crusade
unhindered by government restrictions.

General Walker had asked Evans to be his principal assistant, while Professor Willmoore
Kendall was one of several journalists who journeyed to Dallas to interview Walker and report
his dramatic story. Evans related that after meeting with the general:

Kendall and I, still restless, went to a hamburger joint on Harry Hines Boulevard to
drink coffee, reminisce about the past, and especially speculate about the future. After
some comparatively idle talk Willmoore said to me: “Medford, I don’t suppose there is
any chance you could get Walker to let up in his campaigning against Communism, is
there?” I replied: “No, Willmoore, not a chance. You could stand him up against a wall
and shoot him, but you couldn’t make him quit speaking out against Communism.” (I
thought Willmoore was just testing. He certainly was not jesting.) “I don’t suppose,” he
continued, “there is any chance that you would even advise him to let up, would you?” I
replied: “No, Willmoore, not a chance. You could stand me up against the same wall,
but I would never advise him to quit fighting Communism.”

Then came the shocker. “Then I’m afraid,” said Willmoore Kendall, of O.S.S., Yale,
and National Review, “that Walker is going to lose his respectable support.” I asked:
“What do you mean respectable support?” Kendall was explicit: “I mean National
Review.” At the time it took no bravado for me to reply: “Then that is just too bad for
National Review.”

Later Willmoore wrote me a letter from Oklahoma City, returning his motel key which
he had inadvertently taken away, and expressing his regret that he and I could no longer
be on the same side. Personally, he said, he wished me well (and he said the same of
another former National Review contributor), but as for the great issue, and this is
verbatim: “C’est la guerre.”22

Kendall’s parting comment, of course, translates to “That’s war.” It would later become obvious
that the war to which he was referring was not between anti-Communists and pro-Communists,
but rather over the question of whether the American people should be informed about a
conspiracy’s grip on their nation. The Kendall/Buckley-style war strategy would feature repeated
denial that there was a conspiracy behind Communism, even while portraying the Red menace as
1
nearly invincible. Americans could then be persuaded to accept higher taxation, increasingly
onerous controls, and an array of international alliances leading to world government, all under
the guise of opposing the external Soviet threat.

The National Review team fostered the notion that Communism’s might was immense, yet it
largely ignored the extent to which U.S. aid and trade with the USSR and its satellites had
created the alleged Red monster. Frightened Americans were being persuaded that our nation had
little choice but to submit to a world government as an alternative to nuclear destruction.

In tandem with this propaganda war, CFR member Lincoln P. Bloomfield authored a remarkably
blunt 1962 State Department-funded study entitled A World Effectively Controlled By the United
Nations.** In it, he perhaps unintentionally bared the hidden rationale undergirding aid to the
Soviets, “ … if the communist dynamic were greatly abated, the West might well lose whatever
incentive it has for world government.”23 There has never been any clearer or more succinct
statement about the strategy under which the world-government promoters operated. Nor can any
reasonable person avoid concluding that a conspiracy had arranged all of this.

According to Bloomfield, world Communism was so frightful that a “world effectively

controlled by the United Nations” was an eminently reasonable alternative. He called for the UN
to achieve “a relative monopoly of physical force” and a world where “the nations are disarmed
to police levels.”

In his 1973 review of Charles Lam Markmann’s book about the Buckleys, Medford Evans
recalled a statement by Richard Nixon indicating that Willmoore Kendall’s c’est la guerre threat
on behalf of Buckley and National Review was indeed serious. After Buckley had used his
influence (magazine, newspaper columns, speeches, etc.) to condemn and isolate The John Birch
Society, and after he and Richard Nixon had become allies in the Establishment wing of the
Republican Party, Nixon declared:

Buckley’s articles cost the Birchers their respectability with conservatives. I couldn’t
have accomplished that. Liberals couldn’t have either.24

Evans concluded his 1973 review with this observation: “The basic purpose of National Review
may well be to contain ‘respectable’ conservatives. I’m glad to report that some of us believe in
liberation, not containment.”

Buckley’s relationship with Kendall then gradually deteriorated. Markmann stated that during
Kendall’s years at National Review, his “complex nature burgeoned there until his inability to
agree long with almost anyone and the zest of his pogroms against various other chieftains of
conservatism sent him once more into the wilderness.”25 Kendall eventually left the magazine’s
headquarters, but continued to submit articles, and his name remained for a time on the
masthead.

Returning to full-time teaching, Kendall completely severed his ties with National Review in
1963. Years later, in the magazine’s 25th anniversary issue (December 1980), Buckley recalled
the split:
1
 I had a happy evening with him there [in Los Angeles] in 1963, returning a day or two
later to New York where at one of our periodic editors’ meetings it was suggested that if
Willmoore was really going to have to cut down on his work for NR as drastically as he
had done for two years, he should be re-situated on our masthead as “Contributor”
rather than as “Senior Editor” — a proposal I routinely sent off to Willmoore as
reasonable. He replied with a sundering blast; followed by a silence he maintained right
up until his death (heart) in 1967....26

But Kendall hadn’t been silent in 1961 when he telegraphed Buckley’s resolve to deny
“respectable support” to those conservatives who disagreed with their non-conspiratorial stance
about the source of America’s ills. In keeping with that resolve, Buckley has for decades waged a
war on Robert Welch and The John Birch Society. That war is the subject of the next chapter.

*The Bricker Amendment stated that no treaty entered into by the United States government
could override any provision of the U.S. Constitution.

**“Prepared for IDA in support of a study submitted to the Department of State under contract
No. SCC 28270, dated February 24, 1961.”

Chapter Nine — Targeting Robert Welch and The John Birch

Society

And William Buckley Jr. played the indispensable role of casting out the movement’s Birchers,
haters and conspiracy theorists.1
— Paul A. Gigot

Paul Gigot is a regular columnist for the Wall Street Journal. At the time he penned his praise of
Bill Buckley for “casting out” the Birchers, he held membership in the Council on Foreign
Relations (from 1988–1993). Two of his superiors at the Journal are Editor Robert Bartley and
Chairman and Publisher Peter Kann. Both are also members of the CFR and both have
frequented sessions of the elitist Bilderberger group. Managing Editor Paul E. Steiger and
Deputy Editor Daniel Henninger are additional Journal executives whose names can be found on
the CFR’s membership roster. Why wouldn’t they salute Buckley for playing his “indispensable
role”!

These Establishment-connected Journal figures regularly advance the cause of internationalism

at the expense of national sovereignty. They ardently backed U.S. entry into NAFTA and the
GATT-created World Trade Organization, and they have cheered as America has deepened its
subservience to NATO and the UN. In short, they have long been key players in promoting the
internationalism portion of the neoconservative agenda.

1
Neocon godfather Irving Kristol revealed that Journal heavyweight Robert Bartley contacted
him in 1972 in order to introduce Journal readers to neoconservative views. He described the
beginning of their long relationship in his 1995 book Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an
Idea. Explaining how he and like-minded associates had moved into the Republican Party,
Kristol wrote:

One important agent in this transformation was The Wall Street Journal, a newspaper
that, at the time, few American intellectuals had ever seen, much less read. But it turned
out that a young conservative journalist in their Washington bureau, Robert Bartley, had
been reading The Public Interest and sensed that something of interest to conservatives
— a fresh wind, as it were — was happening. He rang me up for an interview and in
May of 1972 his article about The Public Interest, “Irving Kristol and Friends,”
appeared. It was favorable almost (but not quite) to the point of embarrassment, and
suddenly we had national exposure. A few years later, Bob was appointed editor of the
editorial and op-ed pages, and I became a frequent contributor to those pages. More
important, the editorials themselves began to reflect, in some degree, the mode of
thinking to be found in The Public Interest — analytical, skeptical, and implicitly
ideological in a way we did not ourselves at that time appreciate.2

That “mode of thinking” is neoconservatism, a view chock full of the internationalism that The
John Birch Society has combated since its inception. It explains Paul Gigot’s slur of the Society,
linking the organization with “haters.” And his praise of Buckley for supposedly casting the JBS
out of the conservative movement came as no surprise.

The Attack on Welch

The Buckley team began sniping at John Birch Society founder Robert Welch in 1959, when his
fledgling organization was only five months old. In April of that year, National Review treated
its readers to “Folklore of the Right,” an article written by ex-Communist Eugene Lyons.3

Highly critical of Welch’s published claim that Boris Pasternak’s 1958 novel Doctor Zhivago4
was loaded with sophisticated disinformation, Lyons relied heavily on ridicule. Welch had
earned National Review’s wrath not only because he focused on “conspiracy,” but also because
the Buckley magazine had earlier published a favorable review of Pasternak’s book.

Welch’s comments about Doctor Zhivago had appeared in his own American Opinion magazine
in February 1959.5 He insisted that Pasternak was dangerously wrong in asserting that the only
negative aspect of Communism was the wickedness of its current leaders. He also countered
Pasternak’s claim that Communism was essentially a noble ideal needing only time and some
moral tweaking to realize its inevitable triumph. This was unvarnished Trotskyism (and nascent
neoconservatism). Welch felt that someone had to expose Pasternak’s falsehoods, including the
double standard by which the Russian author condemned Czarist Russia while legitimizing the
ruthless regime ushered in by Lenin.

In his book, Pasternak had one of his characters state:

But what gave unity to the nineteenth century, what set it apart as one historical period?
1
 It was the birth of socialist thought. Revolutions, young men dying on the barricades,
writers racking their brains in an effort to curb the brute insolence of money, to save the
human dignity of the poor. Marxism arose, it uncovered the root of the evil and it
offered the remedy, it became the great force of the century.6

By the late 1950s when Pasternak penned those words, “the great force of the century” had
already murdered tens of millions in Russia and elsewhere and, with brutality unexcelled in all
history, had established police-state tyranny over the nations of Eastern and Central Europe.
Could Pasternak have been unaware of that record? Could Buckley and National Review have
honestly overlooked Pasternak’s inclination to sweep the Communist bloodbath under a rug?

Welch also strenuously objected to Pasternak’s assertion that both the Russian people and the
Soviet armed forces were in 1940 totally loyal to the Communist government, especially when
threatened by Germany’s invasion. Doctor Zhivago included the following passage as if it
represented the typical reaction of the Russian people when Hitler’s forces marched into their
country:

… the war came as a breath of fresh air, a purifying storm, a breath of deliverance....
And when the war broke out, its real horrors, its real dangers, its menace of real death
were a blessing … and they all took a deep breath and flung themselves into the furnace
of the mortal, liberating struggle with real joy, with rapture.7

Welch claimed that this was a monstrous fabrication. He noted that the victims of Soviet tyranny
actually gave Hitler’s army such an enthusiastic welcome that German forces captured Kiev
without firing a shot. He informed his readers that Russian officers had to aim pistols at the
backs of their troops to get them to oppose the German army as it moved toward Stalingrad. And
he pointed to the remarkable defection to the German side of Russian General Andrei Vlasov and
a large number of Soviet troops to fight with Vlasov and the Germans against their countrymen.

Before publishing the Lyons article, Buckley advised Welch that it was about to appear. While
poring over Buckley’s voluminous files, John Judis found Welch’s friendly reply: “I shall not
mind in the least your publishing Gene Lyons’ criticism.”

But the piece by Lyons was more than honest criticism; it was a vicious attack. After seeing it in
print, Welch strongly protested to Buckley that the article “consisted of holding up to complete
and sarcastic ridicule a theme to which we had given careful and considered argument, in which
we still believe future history will prove to have been entirely correct.”8 To which Buckley
responded, “I do not encourage in National Review editorial sniping at other conservatives. I
OK’d Gene Lyons’ project because I believed that its central purpose was the rectification of a
grievous mistake.”9

Welch had made no “mistake.” Only nine weeks later, National Review indirectly supported the
accuracy of his view by publishing the pro-Communist background of a man named Angus
Cameron.10 Cameron was the author of a highly favorable review of Doctor Zhivago that had
appeared in The Promethean Review, a periodical he had launched with known Communist
Albert Kahn. He had earlier distinguished himself as a Communist sympathizer who supplied
1
articles to Communist publications, sponsored Communist front groups, and published
Communist and pro-Communist books. National Review had even suggested that he was a likely
member of the Communist Party. That he had heartily approved the message in Pasternak’s
novel bolstered Welch’s position.

But the Buckley magazine didn’t mention Cameron’s praise for the book, and no apology to
Welch was forthcoming. The Welch indictment of Doctor Zhivago as Communist propaganda
has stood the test of time.

Who Was Robert Welch?

Among individuals with whom Robert Welch was personally and professionally associated, he
had established a solid reputation as a historian, philosopher, successful businessman, and
political realist. Consequently, he had attracted quite a following among the many industrialists
he’d come to know through years of involvement in business associations. After decades of
watching the takeover of America’s institutions by forces bent on socialism and world
government, he launched his own crusade in 1958 to restore and preserve the American system.
He named it The John Birch Society.

Earlier, in his 1952 book May God Forgive Us,11 Welch supplied copious details about the
betrayal of China by the Truman administration’s State Department, the refusal of our leaders to
allow U.S. forces to win the Korean War, and the politically motivated dismissal of General
Douglas MacArthur. That same year, he threw his energy into the unsuccessful
Taft-for-President campaign, where he witnessed firsthand numerous behind-the-scenes power
plays that stole the Republican nomination from Senator Robert Taft and awarded it to former
Democrat and new liberal Republican Dwight Eisenhower. (Though the Council on Foreign
Relations was little known in 1952, Eisenhower had joined it in 1949.)

Welch worked with the pro-McCarthy forces in the 1950s and occasionally shared a speaker’s
platform with the embattled Wisconsin senator. When the Senate unjustly turned on McCarthy,
Welch’s fear that conspiratorial forces were increasing their control over the nation’s affairs
intensified.

His next book, The Life of John Birch (1954), recorded the remarkable deeds of the young
American Army captain who was murdered by Chinese Communists only a few days after World
War II ended in August 1945. It documented the shocking attempt by our government to shield
the Communists from blame for Birch’s death, apparently to help preserve the myth that the
Chinese Communists were merely idealistic agrarian reformers.

Though active in the National Association of Manufacturers, and hard at work running the sales
and advertising divisions of the Massachusetts-based James O. Welch Company, Welch still
managed to carry on the voluminous correspondence that earned him the confidence of many
concerned Americans. In 1956, he started his own magazine, originally known as One Man’s
Opinion (later American Opinion).

Then, in December 1958, he gathered 11 of his best-informed and most supportive followers to
present his plan to create an educational army he would christen The John Birch Society. Since
1
he didn’t expect such busy business leaders to back an undefined venture, he laid out his
program during a meticulously crafted, two-day, book-length speech. He identified three major
threats to human civilization in general, and to the United States in particular: Communism,
collectivism, and a loss of faith that had spawned a plague of amoral men. He stated his deep
understanding of the fundamentals of good government, some economic realities, and a firm
grasp of the importance of solid leadership in any undertaking. He concluded by asking his
friends for their help in the formation of a unique, new organization to promote less government,
more responsibility, and a better world.* They enthusiastically gave it, and The John Birch
Society was born.

Welch meant business. He had no intention of pulling his punches to gain liberal acceptance, and
no thought of playing games in the face of what he clearly believed was a momentous fight for
personal and national survival. He called the enemy what it was then — and still is today — a
“satanic and diabolical conspiracy.” He sought help to fight a “world-wide battle, the first in
history, between light and darkness; between freedom and slavery; between the spirit of
Christianity and the spirit of anti-Christ for the souls and bodies of men.”12

His marathon speech was subsequently published as The Blue Book of The John Birch Society.
Copies were distributed widely, and Americans of all races, colors, creeds, and backgrounds
began rallying to the new movement. Members were promised a steady stream of information
about what was happening in America and elsewhere, and were given an agenda containing
suggested programs that would sound an alarm and ultimately assist their fellow citizens in
choosing principled political leaders. Welch also sought to inspire members and others to
conduct their lives according to enduring principles, and to work as a team that could sway
government officials to abide by the strict limitations contained in the U.S. Constitution.

Among the earliest members of The John Birch Society were William Buckley’s mother and
sister, both of whom obviously saw merit in Robert Welch and his organization.

The Birch Society was something new in America, and possibly in the world. Welch designed it
to be an alternative medium of information, a person-to-person crusade working in the cities and
towns of America. There would be magazines, books, recordings, films, a speakers bureau, and a
continuing monthly agenda. Elected officials were to be encouraged to resist pressures from the
Left and do what was best for America.

Most of all, there would be solid information and meaningful direction supplied by a man who
had demonstrated that he knew what he was talking about and had the energy and talent to
organize and build a grassroots effort. Welch also possessed the rare ability to inspire others to
action.

The Society Becomes Anathema

After the mocking article by Eugene Lyons, for several years Buckley and the team at National
Review mentioned Robert Welch in only a few instances, but always in a petty, nit-picking
manner. Nevertheless, Welch continued to urge members of the JBS to subscribe to Buckley’s
journal. During his two-day oration in 1958, he had stated:

1
 I think that National Review especially, because it is aimed so professionally at the
academic mind, should be in every college library in the United States, and if possible in
every fraternity house.13

During 1959 and 1960, Welch continued to promote National Review to his growing
membership. It included many former political neophytes who had become energized by Welch.
Unlike other groups and publications competing for the already-informed, the Society was
building the conservative and anti-Communist movement by reaching and then recruiting
previously uninvolved grassroots Americans.

But Buckley disagreed with Welch, even resented the competition, and began contending that the
Society’s impact was negative. In a “Dear Bob” letter to Welch on October 21, 1960, Buckley
stated that the differences between the Society and National Review were “very grave indeed.”
He hoped, however, that their “personal friendship” would not “deteriorate.”14 Welch responded
in his characteristically gentlemanly manner by acknowledging that indeed there were
“differences between us,” but he urged the man he thought was a friend “not to fret yourself over
the whole matter.”15

The Society’s April 1961 members’ Bulletin again urged JBS faithful to subscribe to National
Review. But Buckley responded by attacking Welch’s conspiracy views in the April 22, 1961
issue of his magazine. The friendship Welch sought to maintain had clearly become a one-way
effort.

Meanwhile, Robert Welch and his organization attracted increasing national attention, especially
from those internationalists and leftists who recognized that the fledgling group possessed great
potential to upset the plans of their conspiracy to rule mankind. Though comprised of only a few
thousand members as the decade of the 1960s began, the Birch Society’s intent to meld a
confused and largely ill-informed American public into a knowledgeable and determined
pro-American force had marked it for destruction.

The first major broadside was instigated by America’s Communist Party press shortly after the
Society’s second anniversary. The February 25, 1961 issue of the West Coast-based People’s
World featured an article entitled “Enter (from stage right) the John Birch Society.” (Parentheses
in original.) The falsehood-laden smear had little potential by itself to cause the Society any
substantial harm; it appeared in a newspaper that proudly identified itself as an organ of the
Communist Party USA. But it was promptly followed by a blistering array of unfounded but
remarkably similar charges in key segments of the popular mass media.

Significantly, several of the falsehoods that had appeared in People’s World were repeated
within days by American newspapers and magazines, and in radio and television reports. The
People’s World article had referred to the Society’s local chapters as “cells.” So did Time
magazine16 even after its reporter spent several hours interviewing Welch and listening as he
pointed to the factual errors published by the Communists — including their use of the word
“cells.”

People’s World named only four members of the Society’s 26-man national Council. The Time
1
reporter was given the entire roster and informed that one of the four named by the Communists
had resigned for personal reasons several months earlier. But the Time article listed only the
same four Council members, including the one who had resigned. The magazine’s reporter was
given a copy of The Life of John Birch but nevertheless erroneously reported that John Birch had
been a captain in the U.S. Navy, not the Army.

The Time representative emphatically assured Welch during a three-hour interview that he and
his colleagues had already conducted extensive research about the Society. But it became
obvious that most, if not all, of the Time article about the Society had been written before the
reporter ever visited Society headquarters and met Robert Welch.

Still, the original smear in People’s World, and the subsequent torrent of attacks in the
mainstream media, not only failed to reverse the Society’s growth, they brought the organization
to the attention of many Americans who had already become concerned about the direction their
country was taking and the manner in which the news they were receiving from the popular press
was being slanted. Something more had to be done to hamstring, and hopefully destroy, the
Society. What better than to have a well-known conservative, whose ties to the Establishment
weren’t known, join in the attack.

Buckley Targets Robert Welch, Then the JBS

Early in 1962, Buckley gathered his editorial staff for a brainstorming session to determine what
to do about Welch and the Society. He strongly favored launching a frontal assault.

John Judis reported that Publisher William Rusher and Senior Editors Brent Bozell, Frank
Meyer, and William Rickenbacker disagreed. They wanted the magazine to “direct its fire at
Communists and liberals rather than at fellow conservatives.” But, wrote Judis, “with Burnham’s
and his sister Priscilla’s support, Buckley went ahead anyway.” Judis also noted that
Rickenbacker complained in a message to Buckley that “Burnham ‘fiercely desired to annihilate
Welch.’”17

The Buckley plan led to publication of a six-page editorial entitled, “The Question of Robert
Welch.”18

Buckley’s salvo wasn’t an attack on the Society per se, or on its members whom he described as
“men and women of high character and purpose.” Its sole target was Robert Welch. Buckley
insisted that the Society’s founder and leader was “damaging the cause of anti-Communism”
with his conspiracy-laden views. It was the same charge he had leveled against Joseph McCarthy
a decade earlier.

In those six pages, Buckley distorted major positions held both by Welch and the Birch-affiliated
and Welch-led American Opinion magazine. He claimed that Welch, “in words he used publicly
in the summer of 1960,” had stated that “the government of the United States has been ‘under the
operational control of the Communist Party.’”19 From personal and close association with
Welch for more than 15 years, this writer can verify that the Society leader never pointed to the
“Communist Party” as the conspiracy’s controlling force. Instead, he would always refer in such
instances simply to the “Communist conspiracy,” a fundamentally important distinction that a
1
man of Buckley’s experience would surely have understood.

Welch always considered the Communist Party an enemy, but insisted that there was a great deal
more to the Communist conspiracy than the small political arm it had spawned. And, regarding
the degree of control of our government by the master conspiracy itself, American Opinion had
published its estimate that “the degree of control over political and economic life” in our nation
exercised by the Communist conspiracy in 1961 had reached 50–70 percent, far short of the
“total operational control” Buckley claimed.20 Buckley’s repeated denunciations of U.S. policies
seemed to jell with the Welch assessment, except that Buckley always attributed the harm being
done to bumbling liberalism or gross stupidity.

Buckley’s February 1962 editorial also took aim at Welch’s contention that the failed Bay of
Pigs invasion of Cuba “was a plot by Fidel Castro and his friends in the U.S. government … to
make Castro stronger.” But Buckley never once alluded to Welch’s trailblazing reports, both
before and after the bearded revolutionary had seized Cuba, insisting that Castro had been a
Communist all of his adult life and that he had received enormous assistance from highly placed
individuals within the U.S. government.21 His June 1961 comments about the botched Bay of
Pigs invasion, which Buckley sought to ridicule, included:

When all the smoke has cleared away, Fidel Castro will have emerged far stronger than
ever, … not only from having put down a revolt, but as the Communist David who had
defeated the great capitalist Goliath.22

That is precisely what occurred. Welch had simply relied on a pattern of similarly staged events
from other countries.

Buckley also accused Welch of “bearing false witness” about Dwight D. Eisenhower. He wrote:
“Mr. Welch, for all his good intentions, threatens to divert militant conservative action to
irrelevance and ineffectuality.”23 When making that charge, he should have been looking at
himself in a mirror.

In his six-page attack, Buckley focused on Welch’s then-private 300-page manuscript that had
analyzed Eisenhower’s career. Entitled The Politician, Welch decided to publish it in 1963 in
self-defense.24 Buckley had cleverly and deceitfully obtained a copy of the manuscript,
obviously intending to lift a mere passage from it to harm its author.

Throughout 1957 and 1958, as noted earlier, Buckley published a litany of critical commentaries
about Eisenhower and his administration. According to National Review, Ike had betrayed,
among others: 1) constitutionalists within the Republican Party; 2) Senator Joseph McCarthy; 3)
supporters of the Bricker Amendment (which sought to affirm the supremacy of the Constitution
over treaties and executive agreements); 4) the 1956 Hungarian Freedom Fighters; and 5) the
entire Cuban nation that fell victim to Castro, who had then benefited immensely from assistance
rendered by U.S. diplomats and key elements of the Establishment media.

National Review and Buckley also scolded the Eisenhower team for its “passion to federalize
social and economic functions,” and for its willingness to act “as a sounding board for
1
Communist propaganda.”25 Robert Welch agreed, but fell into disfavor with Buckley for
refusing to ascribe what was happening to error and stupidity.

Buckley forwarded his anti-Welch tirade to Senator Barry Goldwater, Senator John Tower,
Ronald Reagan, and others. He then published their letters agreeing with his condemnation of
Welch.26 But his office also received numerous protests from Welch’s supporters, many of
whom had been encouraged to subscribe to National Review by the man Buckley had attacked.
Judis reported:

The immediate effect of Buckley’s attacks against the John Birch Society was a loss in
subscriptions and financial support for the magazine. In a letter to Buckley in
Switzerland, Rusher reported that in all National Review had received 350 letters,
almost all of them critical, including about seventy cancellations and twenty disavowals
of support from $100-plus donors.27

The Buckley biographer added that, nevertheless, the attack on the JBS “was an important step
forward for Buckley, for National Review, and the conservatives who looked to them for
leadership.” In what way was it important? Judis explained:

Buckley’s attack on the John Birch Society also transformed him as a public figure. He
was no longer the pariah of the McCarthy days. He was a public representative of the
new conservatism that television producers and college deans could invite to appear
without provoking an outcry. Whether intentional or not, Buckley’s attack on the John
Birch Society prepared the way for his own celebrity.28

That conclusion is indisputable. But the attack on Welch was dishonest; it cost Buckley and his
magazine some valuable support; and it created a rift in the conservative movement. Did any of
that bother Buckley? Not in the least. What he lost was more than recompensed by his new
acceptance with “television producers and college deans,” and by his becoming a respectable
conservative celebrity whose presence would not provoke “an outcry.”

Yet, unlike Welch’s John Birch Society, Buckley had no grassroots organization, no
letter-writing campaigns, no pamphleteering programs, no book publishing arm, and no credible
strategy for victory. What he did have was a magazine structured for a generation of arm-chair
conservatives conditioned to accept defeat with grace and good cheer.

Buckley certainly succeeded in persuading many fine Americans to shun The John Birch
Society. But he rarely criticized the JBS or its founder for the actual stands they had taken.
Instead, he attacked numerous distorted caricatures he had created. Those waging war on
America from the shadows could count on efforts from Buckley and his magazine to marginalize
and de-legitimize their most effective foes.

Robert Welch on the other hand, true to his determination to keep peace within the growing
conservative movement, responded to Buckley’s stinging attack with a call in the next JBS
Bulletin to fight only the conspiracy. He prefaced his comments about Buckley’s 1962 attack
with four lines from an Edwin Markham poem:
1
 He drew a circle that shut me out —
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout.
But Love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in!29

Again, the main issue motivating Buckley to target Welch was the latter’s emphasis on
conspiracy. Yet, most of National Review’s own luminaries had been involved in clandestine
work, and were steeped in the concept of conspiracy — not in theory, but in practice. Buckley
himself had spent nearly a year in the CIA. Willmoore Kendall had moved from Trotskyite
Communism to the OSS to the CIA. Frank Meyer won a role at National Review after being a
leader in both the British and American Communist parties. James Burnham, like Kendall, went
from Trotskyism to the OSS and the CIA. That each of these individuals would supply enormous
amounts of information about serious government deficiencies, while scoffing at the notion of
conspiracy, was strange indeed.

Unlike Welch, Buckley and his team aimed arrows at mere leftist ideology. They sought to
convince readers that intelligent individuals promoting socialism and pro-Communism were
ignorant of the harm they were doing. Welch, however, was not crusading against ideologues, or
against ideas that remain harmless until implemented. He was determined to expose those who
were doing the implementing. He insisted that America’s most important enemy wasn’t an
amorphous ideology, but an organized conspiracy comprised of real persons.

In 1964, National Review ignored its previous condemnations of the Eisenhower presidency and
published an essay by James Kilpatrick urging that the former president be named Barry
Goldwater’s vice presidential running mate. The epitome of an Establishment Republican,
Eisenhower was well-known as an adversary of virtually anyone who refused to toe the liberal,
internationalist line. National Review had itself documented that fact, but it no longer mattered.
Once the existence of Welch’s critical manuscript about Eisenhower had been published, lauding
Ike and recommending him for additional high office was a subtle way to besmirch Welch.

The Attack Escalates

The Society withstood a flood of negative publicity over the next few months, but continued
growing despite the brickbats. Buckley kept up his sniping, with little additional effect. But he
revved up his anti-Birch engines once again with three August 1965 newspaper columns that
targeted not just Robert Welch, but the entire Society. And the October 19, 1965 issue of
National Review devoted its cover story to a no-holds-barred fusillade captioned, “The John
Birch Society and the Conservative Movement.”

This comprehensive attack began with an editorial, followed by the republication of Buckley’s
three anti-JBS columns. Meyer and Burnham weighed in with their own two-page articles. A
question and answer section, and brief comments by several Buckley friends, rounded out the
piece. The main conclusion claimed that the Society was a detriment to the movement Buckley
insisted was his to lead.

Seeking to debunk the notion of conspiracy, Meyer’s contribution attributed America’s problems
1
to mere “liberalism.” He accused Welch of holding positions that were “less and less represented
by the conservative outlook.” For example, he wrote:

The culmination of this process was signalized in the August (1965) Bulletin of the
Society when the slogan, “Get US out,” was transformed from an anti-UN slogan to a
Get US out of Vietnam slogan, placing the Birch Society alongside SNCC [Student
Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, a deceptively named revolutionary group],
Staughton Lynd, the sit-iners and the draft-card burners....30

Contrary to Meyer’s disingenuous claim, there had been no such transformation of the Society’s
famous anti-UN slogan. Welch had severely criticized the way the Vietnam conflict was being
waged, and had at one point merely speculated that the need might eventually arise to have the
slogan applied to both the UN and Vietnam.

Burnham amplified the Meyer falsehood, even maintaining that Welch had adopted the
“pacifist-Commie line” in calling for the U.S. to pull out of Vietnam. But Welch had never
issued such a call and had even noted that the slogan was being misinterpreted by others, not
altered by the Society. Burnham, however, was even more venomous than Meyer when he
claimed:

It may be added that he [Welch] advances no other proposal with respect to the Vietnam
affair, which is the most critical challenge currently confronted by the United States.31

Scrutiny of what Welch had actually written two months earlier reveals Burnham’s duplicity.
Welch had advised:

The most desirable way of carrying out the exhortation about Vietnam, of course, would
be by winning the war quickly and completely, putting the very few remaining real
anti-Communists of any stature in Vietnam firmly in power, to the great relief and
happiness of the long-suffering Vietnamese people, and coming home after issuing an
ultimatum which would keep the red murderers of Hanoi and Peiping from even looking
in the direction of Saigon.32

Burnham’s assertion that Welch had offered “no other proposal” was, in other words, a willful
lie.

Welch responded to the National Review screed with a pamphlet entitled “Wild Statements,” in
which he noted in passing that the staff of Buckley’s magazine included numerous
ex-Communists. He then pungently observed, “ … it has always puzzled us why some of the
ex-Communists consider themselves so much smarter than those of us who were never dumb
enough to fall for the Communist line in the first place.”33

Addressing Burnham’s flagrant duplicity in ignoring what he had actually recommended about
Vietnam, Welch wrote:

The omission makes crystal clear, of course, that the critic was not concerned with
1
 spreading truth, but only with seeing how much damage he could do to The John Birch
Society. He was obviously hoping that only a few of his readers would ever catch up
with his intellectual crime. Which seems a bit naïve for so brilliant a man when you
consider that fully one-third and perhaps one-half of the present circulation of that
periodical was created for it through the endorsement and efforts of The John Birch
Society.34

Welch added that friends of his who were also friends of Buckley had informed him of the
latter’s pledge: “I am going to destroy The John Birch Society.”35

During the ensuing years, Welch stepped up his efforts to analyze the unfolding tragedy in
Vietnam. In 1967, he wrote two important booklets about the war. In The Truth About Vietnam,
he excoriated President Johnson for conducting a war that “is as phony as a nine dollar bill.” In
that same essay he concluded: “In this writer’s opinion, we should never have become involved
in Vietnam at all. But, regardless of how we got there, or who put us there, we are too deeply
involved today to have any honorable way out except through victory. It should be our
determination not to escalate this war, nor to prolong it, nor to muddle through it, but to win
it.”36 (Emphasis in original.) Later in 1967, in More Truth About Vietnam, he supplied
convincing evidence that “at least eighty percent of the sinews of war are being provided North
Vietnam by Soviet Russia and its European satellites,” and that most of it had originated in the
United States.

As the war continued to escalate, Welch launched a petition drive calling on Congress to halt
U.S. aid and trade to the Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites. Such assistance, as he
repeatedly pointed out, was sustaining North Vietnam’s war effort and thereby killing American
military personnel. Society representatives delivered many bundles of petitions, each bundle
containing 50,000 signatures, to numerous U.S. senators, and similar bundles of 20,000
signatures to dozens of House members. By July 1971, petitions containing a total of 1.7 million
signatures had been delivered to Congress. Welch later directed the petition effort to the White
House, and Society members gathered additional hundreds of thousands of signatures which
were delivered to President Nixon urging him to put a stop to the aid and trade that were
bolstering our Communist enemies.

American Opinion magazine published a steady stream of articles calling attention to the
treasonous policy of allowing U.S. aid to flow to Red countries that served as the arsenal for
North Vietnam, even as our forces were forbidden to win the war. “Vietnam: While Brave Men
Die” appeared in June 1967. In May 1968, American Opinion reported the candid statements of
many U.S. military leaders who protested being hobbled by the administration as they tried to do
their jobs. In January 1969, the magazine published further solid information about the no-win
policies being forced on our troops, and about the increasing aid to the Soviets and their satellites
that was in turn finding its way to Hanoi.

While Robert Welch and The John Birch Society were working to right the wrongs of our
Vietnam policy, Buckley and his colleagues did everything they could to impede those efforts.

At one point in his personal contribution to National Review’s October 1965 attack on Welch
1
and the Society, Buckley wrote:

There are many people we went to school with, people who had been our colleagues on
college faculties, friends and acquaintances of ours who are newspapermen, priests,
merchants, bankers, intellectuals, and non-intellectuals, who favor domestic policies that
we criticize as leading toward socialism, and global measures that we judge may help
Communism rather than, as they contend, enable us to avoid a Third World War. We
can hardly believe, as Mr. Welch’s doctrine would require, that all of these people are
carefully trained Communist hypocrites.37

Wait a minute! Welch never believed or disseminated the viewpoint that “all of these people” are
“carefully trained Communist hypocrites.” He formed The John Birch Society precisely for the
purpose of awakening, informing, and inspiring “all of these people.”

Buckley and his colleagues had obviously been poring over the Society’s publications. They
were doing so, at least in part, as a result of Welch’s generosity. In January 1964, Buckley had
written to Welch: “Dear Bob: I am anxious to continue to read your Bulletins. They used to come
regularly, but don’t any more.... Could I hear from you, or from one of your assistants, on this
subject? With best personal regards, Bill.”38

Even though Buckley had already attacked and belittled Welch, the Society leader sent a cordial
response: “Dear Bill: Under separate cover, today I am mailing you copies of our August,
September, and December (1963) Bulletins.... And I am making an exception to the rule now, by
putting you on a list to receive each Bulletin automatically every month, with our compliments....
Sincerely, Bob.”39

When the October 1965 Buckley-led assault appeared, the Society’s chain of American Opinion
Bookstores carried, among other offerings, a total of 33 books written by 13 individuals whose
names appeared on National Review’s masthead as editors, contributors, etc. Included were
books by William F. Buckley, Frank Meyer, and James Burnham — the same James Burnham
who, in his parting October 19, 1965 shot, insisted that “responsible conservatives” were of the
opinion that “any American who seriously wants to contribute to his country’s security and
well-being and to oppose Communism will have to stay clear of the JBS.”

Then, in March 1968, Buckley expressed his own thoughts about what should be done in
Vietnam:

… we need to hit back with such weapons as we are in position to use which spare us
the most precious commodity we have, the American soldier. If that is not what
Vietnam is all about, then we should get the hell out.40

That, of course, parallels the recommendation made by Robert Welch three years earlier. Yet,
Buckley had allowed his senior colleagues to savage Welch for supposedly failing to offer any
reasonable proposal to end the war successfully — and for suggesting that the time might come
when we might have to, in Buckley’s later words, “get the hell out.”

1
The 1970s and 1980s also found Buckley regularly taking cheap shots at the Society. Then on
October 5, 1990, he stepped aside after 35 years as National Review’s editor. Reporting on the
move, Washington Post staff writer E.J. Dionne wrote:

In looking back, Buckley believes that the magazine’s most important accomplishment
was “the absolute exclusion of anything … kooky” from the conservative movement.
One of National Review’s most notable battles was waged against the John Birch
Society.41

Buckley notwithstanding, The John Birch Society not only survived, but flourished.

*“Less government, more responsibility, and — with God’s help — a better world” would
become the Society’s official slogan.

Chapter Ten — Friends and Former Colleagues See Through Bill

[Buckley] created a cleavage between Republican highbrows and Democratic commoners which
effectively destroyed all prospect of concerted conservative political action. He was rewarded
with liberal acceptance as the spokesman of “conservatism.”1
— General Thomas A. Lane

As William Buckley’s commitment to the Establishment’s internationalist and socialist agenda

became increasingly obvious, many once-close allies and friends parted company with him. The
neoconservative positions he increasingly espoused, the leftists with whom he began to associate
and lionize, and the attacks he leveled against other conservatives became too much for them to
stomach.

Young Americans for Freedom

The repudiation of Buckley by Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) in 1977 was a wake-up
call for many Buckley enthusiasts. YAF had been launched at a September 1960 gathering of
approximately 80 young conservatives at the Buckley family mansion in Sharon, Connecticut. It
set out to organize conservative alternatives to the leftist cadres that dominated many college
campuses. Though its manifesto, entitled “The Sharon Statement,” hadn’t been written by
Buckley, he enthusiastically endorsed it.

The YAF declaration began by stressing the importance of every individual’s “God-given free
will.” It emphatically declared that the purpose of government is merely “to protect” economic
and political freedom. It underscored the fundamental importance of the U.S. Constitution, free
market economics, and national sovereignty. And it not only condemned “international
Communism,” it advocated “victory over, rather than coexistence with, this menace.”

Buckley was viewed as YAF’s ideological leader and policy guru. But that relationship
evaporated in August 1977 during a YAF convention in New York City. With 500 young
1
members convened under a banner proclaiming “Freedom Not Socialism,” YAF’s leaders
blasted their founding host for his lengthening list of indefensible pronouncements and
associations. Their superstar, they concluded, had become a heretic.

YAF’s indictment of its once-revered hero targeted his CFR membership, attendance at
Bilderberg meetings, hobnobbing with and defending Henry Kissinger, calling for the
legalization of marijuana, and supporting the giveaway of the Panama Canal. In contrast to an
array of indefensible positions taken by Buckley, the young activists urged the U.S. to allow
South Africa to work out its own problems free from outside meddling, grant diplomatic
recognition to then-anti-Communist Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), and quit the United Nations
because it was “an apparent tool of International Communism.”2

Buckley was present and witnessed the intensity and disgust of these young conservatives
firsthand. He even poured salt in their wounds by bringing Henry Kissinger to the gathering and
demanding that his close friend be given an opportunity to speak.

Buckley’s conspicuous identification with sundry enemies of conservatism since the 1977 YAF
confab confirms that the YAF’s action was entirely justified. In 1986, the young conservative
group produced and circulated a brief but potent pamphlet outlining the terrorist and
pro-Communist career of South Africa’s Nelson Mandela. Quoting passages from Mandela’s
own statement, “How To Be a Good Communist,” the YAF broadside pulled no punches in
showing that the South African firebrand and his Communist-dominated African National
Congress (ANC) deserved to be shunned rather than backed by the U.S.

Earlier in September 1982, the Senate Subcommittee on Security and Terrorism had reported
that, of the 22 leaders of the ANC, 11 were members of the South African Communist Party and
half of those were also members of its terrorist “Spear of the Nation” military wing.3 Yet
Buckley, during a September 1986 “Firing Line” program, maintained that if he were a black
living in South Africa he would advocate violence to overthrow the government and would even
join the ANC. Pressed by shocked admirers to explain, he claimed that South Africa’s blacks had
“no solid alternatives” other than joining the Communist-led rebellion.4 But there were
alternatives available to black South Africans including the leadership offered by Zulu chief
Mangosuthu Buthelezi.

Buckley’s stand ignored the large numbers of South African blacks who were vehemently
opposed to the pro-Communist agenda of Mandela and the ANC. He also sidestepped the
continuing migration of large numbers of blacks into pre-Mandela South Africa from
neighboring countries. They were only too glad to flee unceasing tribal warfare and its
accompanying deprivations, and were obviously unpersuaded that — for blacks — South Africa
was an unbearable hell hole, Buckley’s remarks notwithstanding.

Kevin Phillips
In 1968, Alabama Governor George Wallace challenged the monopoly enjoyed by America’s
fraudulently sanctified “two party system” by running for president on the American
Independent Party. He surprised the political Establishment by securing ballot position in all 50
states and then carrying five states in the November election. His repeated insistence that “there
1
isn’t a dime’s worth of difference” between top Republicans and Democrats resonated with
millions of Americans.

Even worse from the standpoint of the elitists who dominated both major parties, Wallace clearly
intended to build on his 1968 success for the future. The Establishment needed help in slowing
down, or even stopping, the Wallace bandwagon. Once again, it was Buckley to the rescue. He
interviewed Wallace on his “Firing Line” television program and no sooner had the program
begun than Buckley wanted to know why “two hundred prominent conservatives [harbored] a
surprising hostility toward George Wallace.” Wallace told his host that he spent his time
speaking “to the people … and I don’t [even] know any prominent conservatives.”5

As the Wallace phenomenon gathered momentum, Buckley sought to blunt it with a cover article
in National Review authored by Senator Barry Goldwater. Citing a need to preserve the “two
party system,” the Goldwater piece was captioned “Memo To Conservatives: Don’t Waste a
Vote on Wallace.”6 Goldwater claimed that the formation of another political party “could mean
disaster for America,” and he urged his readers to vote for Richard Nixon.

Journalist Kevin Phillips was one of many who had moved from Buckley ally to Buckley critic.
By the early 1970s, he had established his own reputation as a respected conservative
commentator. After Buckley utilized his magazine to denigrate Wallace, Phillips publicly
charged National Review’s chieftain with having gone soft. Retaliating, Buckley accused Phillips
of the high crime of seeking to bring an unworthy Southerner into the ranks of respectable
conservatism. Phillips responded to Buckley’s arrogance with a column in which he asserted:

Hell, Wallace isn’t going to hook up with Squire Willy and his Companions of the
Oxford Unabridged Dictionary. Nor can we expect Alabama truck drivers or Ohio
Steelworkers to sign on with a politics captivated by Ivy League five-syllable word
polishers.... Most of the “New Conservatives” I know believe that any new politics or
coalition has to surge up from Middle America … not dribble down from Bill Buckley’s
wine rack and favorite philosopher’s shelf.... There was, of course, a time when Bill
Buckley was anti-establishment — back in the long-ago days when he was an Irish
nouveau-riche cheer leader for Joe McCarthy. But since then, he’s primed his magazine
with cast-off Hapsburg royalty, Englishmen who part their names in the middle, and
others calculated to put real lace on Buckley’s Celtic curtains.7

Buckley had indeed become the Establishment’s invaluable house conservative, positioned to
diminish or silence critics of those who were leading the nation into socialism and world
government.

Phillips’ sharply worded barbs about “Squire Willy and his Companions of the Oxford
Unabridged Dictionary,” and his further dig about “the Ivy League five-syllable word polishers,”
pointed to a hugely annoying Buckley trait. Buckley’s snobbish ways hadn’t a ghost of a chance
of building a coalition that might break the Establishment’s grip on America. Many of the
Middle Americans sorely needed to create such a force were indeed repulsed by Buckley’s
patronizing elitism.

1
Consider a passage Buckley wrote describing President Nixon’s economic policies. It caught the
attention of Robert Sherrill, who included it in an article about Buckley in The Nation. Buckley
stated:

His dalliance with and insecure instrumentation of interventionist fiscal economics

reflects nothing more than the regnant confusion among economic theorists, and the
acquiescence even by free market economists in the proposition that it is a political
necessity to talk imperiously in the economic seas, even though we all know that the
President sits on the throne of King Canute.8

If you had trouble trying to decipher Buckley’s meaning, bear in mind the Alabama truck
drivers, the Ohio steelworkers, and the additional millions who make up Middle America. If
these decent people are to become informed and galvanized into action, it won’t result from
Buckley’s ostentatious, polysyllabic gibberish.

General Thomas A. Lane

Retired Army General Thomas A. Lane was a staunch conservative who would at one time have
considered it a compliment to be considered a Buckley ally. In his 1974 book The Breakdown of
Old Politics, General Lane noted that several once-popular liberals who had abandoned their
leftist views found themselves “suddenly ignored, cast into oblivion” by the nation’s elite. As
examples, he cited Malcolm Muggeridge and John Dos Passos. He then wrote:

William F. Buckley, Jr., learned about the obstacles which confront every attempt to
illuminate the liberal shadows. He made his peace with the liberal powers by launching
an attack on the John Birch Society, bracketed with “McCarthyism” as the bogeymen of
the liberals. He created a cleavage between Republican highbrows and Democratic
commoners which effectively destroyed all prospect of concerted conservative political
action. He was rewarded with liberal acceptance as the spokesman of “conservatism.”

The general had trenchantly perceived what other conservatives could not or would not see.
Continuing, he noted that Buckley

… was given a television program by Public Broadcasting Service, nominally to

represent the conservative ethic but actually to interview prominent liberals. Thus he
fulfilled the liberal mission of publishing the liberal philosophy, with only a mild
Buckley dissent. The networks would not of course do the reverse. They would not
commission Howard K. Smith to conduct a program of interviewing conservatives, for
that would put conservative views before the people.9

Medford and Stan Evans

Medford Evans and his son, M. Stanton Evans, were early and eager associates of Bill Buckley.
As noted previously, Medford’s name appeared on National Review’s inaugural masthead under
“Associates and Contributors.” Stan’s name would follow soon after.

Of the two, the elder Evans parted company with Buckley first. Some of his sharply worded
commentary appeared in an earlier passage in this book. Writing in the March 1985 issue of
1
American Opinion, he reflected on his relationships with both Robert Welch and Bill Buckley: “I
may be unique in having been both a fan and a friend of both men, and subsequently having been
disappointed (disillusioned) by the younger of the two — in large measure, though not
exclusively, because of his vicious, prolonged satiric abuse of the elder.”10

Evans pointed to Buckley’s constant harping on Welch’s extensively documented critical

biography of Dwight David Eisenhower, which held, as Evans put it, that Ike “was in effect an
abettor of the Communist Conspiracy … and that the United States government in general was
‘under operational control’ of that conspiracy.”11 Evans agreed, and he resolutely stood shoulder
to shoulder with Welch in believing that the actual Eisenhower record stood in stark contrast to
the popular image of a tough old warrior who always worked for America’s best interests. He
found Buckley’s sneering, disdainful attitude about the matter to be extremely offensive.

Welch’s The Politician offered a mountain of never-refuted evidence to back up his assessment
of the former president. Yet, even while repeatedly scoffing at the book’s inferences and
conclusions, Buckley studiously avoided any attempt to refute its factual content. Indeed, he
wouldn’t even mention the book’s title. After all, anyone curious enough to know why Welch
could have arrived at such a harsh conclusion about Eisenhower, or angry enough to seek to
refute it, might buy the book if they knew its title.

Buckley sought to give the impression that Welch had written a wildly irresponsible attack on a
widely revered American. To the contrary, most of those who actually read The Politician and
judged it for themselves recognized it as a serious, convincing profile of the 34th president. One
such person was Herman Dinsmore, former editor of the international edition of the New York
Times (1951–1960). After reading The Politician, he issued this statement:

Reading The Politician, which I have just done during December [1969], was for me
quite a revealing experience. It is hard for a professional newspaper man to confess that
so many things, which he thought were just happening, were actually being made to
happen by sinister and conspiratorial forces. But in all honesty the confession must be
made. The Politician was a real eye-opener, which causes all kinds of mysterious pieces,
of a puzzle that still bewildered me, to fall rapidly in place. I recommend the book
emphatically to every patriotic American who wants to understand not only what is now
taking place all around him, but also why. This book is the product of historical research
of the first order.12

Evans offered the following unflattering summary of Buckley’s campaign against Welch and the
famous book about Eisenhower:

While this position of Welch’s was too shocking for comprehension by many
Americans, it was understood well enough at National Review, where similar
assessments had often been made in less forthright terms.... My own view is that Bill
Buckley went to war with Robert Welch not because he thought Welch was wrong, but
because he knew Welch was right. If the charge that Eisenhower promoted Communist
interests had been so absurd as to fall of its own weight — which Buckley continually
implied — there would have been no need for an Eisenhower adherent to dignify
1
 Welch’s charges with denial. Yet Buckley, who as a matter of fact was not an
Eisenhower adherent, never ceased to vilify Welch for so directly attacking
Eisenhower.13

Stan Evans was never as close to Robert Welch as was his father. An early Buckleyite, it was he
who wrote the “Sharon Statement” launching Young Americans for Freedom in 1960. A
journalist who at one point in his career served as editor of the respected Indianapolis News, his
work was regularly published in both National Review and its companion National Review
Bulletin. But by 1973, he’d had enough. He resigned from the magazine stating: “I feel
increasingly out of phase with the drift of things at National Review, particularly the book
section and the political coverage.”14

In a separate comment to Buckley’s biographer, Evans said of the man he had once admired: “He
perceived himself as a bridge between us and the [Nixon] administration and not as someone
being in the opposition.”15

Acting as a “bridge” between conservative Americans and the non-conservative Nixon

administration became habitual with Buckley. He continued his type of bridge-building in
subsequent years. One glaring example occurred when the Establishment-favored giveaway of
the Panama Canal and the Panama Canal Zone came before the Senate for ratification. Buckley
dutifully echoed the internationalist position favoring the sellout.

The Canal Zone was sovereign U.S. territory and the Canal had been American-built,
American-operated, and American-owned during its entire existence. Beyond its strategic value
during any future war, its importance stemmed from the fact that its major users were
commercial vessels which either began or terminated their voyages in the United States. The
battle lines were quite clearly drawn: Conservatives committed to retaining U.S. control of the
vital waterway and protecting our nation’s sovereignty versus Establishment internationalists
anxious to further water down U.S. military capability and independence.

While supposedly trying to make up their minds about the two pacts (two related treaties were
involved), Buckley and James Burnham were given an inspection tour of the Canal Zone by
Henry Kissinger. Soon thereafter, Buckley announced his support for the giveaway in an April
1977 column. Stan Evans, who had strongly opposed ratification, later commented:

One can argue that Buckley’s participation in the Panama Canal debates might have
been the critical factor in getting those treaties passed, because it gave a shelter to the
[Senator] Howard Bakers who otherwise would have had pretty rough going. They
would have been in a very exposed position, carrying Jimmy Carter’s and Henry
Kissinger’s position, and the fact that so prominent a conservative as Bill Buckley was
in favor of those treaties gave them cover.16

The Senate eventually ratified each of the treaties in March 1978 by a razor-thin vote of 68–32
(67 “yea” votes were required for passage). The deal included $400 million for the Panamanian
government, which was then headed by the America-hating Communist dictator Omar Torrijos.

1
Buckley would later provide similar cover for other moves favored by his close friend Henry
Kissinger or by the entire Establishment of which he and Kissinger were very much a part.

The List Grows

Henry Paolucci was a stalwart member of the Buckley-backed Conservative Party of New York
State. A college professor who published and distributed his own newsletter, he was persuaded
by the party leaders to be their nominee for the U.S. Senate in 1964. That poorly financed effort,
however, managed to attract only 200,000 votes in the heavily populated state. Once a certified
Buckleyite, he eventually found himself abandoned by the man he expected would lead the
nation away from liberalism and internationalism.

In the March 1973 issue of his “State of the Union” newsletter, Paolucci wrote: “But now the
dikes are down. Almost every issue of National Review these days, for instance, carries an abject
editorial apology for Nixon policies which must make its author blush to write it.”

The disillusioned professor expressed further disagreement when he found the names of Walt W.
Rostow (CFR) and Henry Kissinger (CFR) on Buckley’s roster of “hardliners.” Applying that
term to Kissinger especially rankled Paolucci, who wrote:

Conservative acquiescence in the appointment of Henry Kissinger to make foreign

policy for the Nixon administration is the most tragic thing that has happened to our
union since the Civil War. Had he served in his present post under a Rockefeller, or
Kennedy, or Humphrey administration, Kissinger would have been as bad as Rostow;
but at least we would have had a united Conservative front to oppose him. William F.
Buckley himself would long since have denounced the man as chief architect of the
no-win war doctrine that has been our ruin in Vietnam.... To this day, Kissinger remains
virtually immune from serious criticism from “respectable” Republican
Conservatives.17

It is worth noting that Walt Rostow, whom Buckley had also labeled an anti-Communist
“hardliner,” had been denied a security clearance three times during the Eisenhower
administration. His subsequent nomination for a post in the Kennedy administration was blocked
for cause by State Department security chief Otto Otepka. But Robert Kennedy and Secretary of
State Dean Rusk engineered the forced retirement of Otepka and eased Rostow into the post by
issuing a waiver.18

Prior to his appointment, Rostow had been a professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology,
where he authored a CIA-funded book entitled The United States in the World Arena. One of its
conclusions stated:

It is a legitimate American national objective to see removed from all nations —

including the United States — the right to use substantial military force to pursue their
own interests. Since this residual right is the root of national sovereignty … it is
therefore, an American interest to see an end to nationhood as it has been historically
defined.19

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Buckley described this man as a “hardliner.” Evidently, the litmus test for Buckley was past
association with the CIA, current membership in the CFR, and/or a willingness to sacrifice
American sovereignty on the altar of world government.

For his forthrightness, Henry Paolucci was cast adrift by the Buckley-led conservatives in New
York.

Murray Rothbard was another whose name appeared on the early roster of contributors to
National Review. A free-market economist, he had written numerous valuable books including
America’s Great Depression (1963), What Has Government Done To Our Money? (1981), and
The Mystery of Banking (1983).

A strong noninterventionist and fiery opponent of big government, he contended that the flood of
propaganda about Soviet military might was serving as an excuse for liberals to build a leviathan
government in Washington. He parted company with National Review in the early 1960s and
became a sharp critic of Buckley. In January 1992, while rejoicing over what he saw as the
rebirth of the “Old Right” in the presidential candidacy of Patrick Buchanan, he stated during a
speech to the John Randolph Club:

… what happened to the original Right, and the cause of the present mess, is the advent
and domination of the right wing by Bill Buckley and National Review. By the mid
1950s, much of the leadership of the Old Right was dead or in retirement. Senator Taft
and Colonel McCormick had died, and many of the right-wing congressmen had retired.
The conservative masses, for a long time short on intellectual leadership, [were] now
lacking in political leadership as well. An intellectual and power vacuum had developed
on the right, and rushing to fill it, in 1955, were Bill Buckley, fresh from several years
in the CIA, and National Review, an intelligent, well-written periodical staffed with
ex-Communists and ex-leftists eager to transform the Right from an isolationist
movement into a crusade to crush the Soviet God that had failed them....

And so, with almost Blitzkrieg swiftness, by the early 1960s, the new global crusading
conservative movement, created and headed by Bill Buckley, was almost ready to take
power in America. But not quite, because first, all the various heretics of the Right,
some left over from the original Right, all the groups that were in any way radical or
could deprive the new conservative movement of its much desired respectability in the
eyes of the liberal and centrist elite, all these had to be jettisoned. Only such a
denatured, respectable, non-radical, conserving Right was worthy of power.20
[Emphasis in original.]

Rothbard also described Buckley as “the prince of excommunication, the self-appointed pope of
the conservative movement.” One after another, this “pope” and his publication sought to
anathematize all the non-respectables who were, in fact, the authentic conservatives.

Howard Phillips (no relation to Kevin Phillips) was one of the young conservatives present at
the founding of Young Americans for Freedom. A fixture in Washington-based conservative
circles for more than three decades, he was a solid Buckley booster in his early days. But he, too,
1
winced as he witnessed his hero become ever more deeply entrenched in the Establishment.

In Thunder on the Right, Alan Crawford quoted Phillips as saying:

Buckley, for all the good work he has done, is simply not on the cutting edge of
America’s politics anymore. His positions on legalizing marijuana and passage of the
Panama Canal treaties were a great disappointment. He really isn’t with us anymore.21

Journalist and author Ralph de Toledano was also listed as a “Contributor” in the early days of
National Review. He, too, drifted from the magazine and, by 1970, felt compelled to remind
Buckley “how in 1960 it was me against National Review on Nixon and now today National
Review, in the words of a friend, seems to have become an administration house organ.”22

Daniel Oliver had been National Review’s executive editor. As the magazine became an
increasingly predictable mouthpiece for, rather than critic of, Establishment politics, he became
disenchanted, commenting:

I think what people miss is its being anti-establishment, but it can’t be because Bill’s
establishment now.23

Don Feder, a staff editorialist for the Boston Herald, joined the ranks of nationally syndicated
columnists in the late 1980s. A lifelong conservative, he would at one time have labeled himself
a Buckleyite. But he also eventually recognized the change in the man he had lauded as “a
founding father of modern conservatism.”

Feder’s December 20, 1995 column was headlined “Bill Buckley’s no conservative.” A strong
defender of the cultural aspects of conservatism, Feder claimed that his former hero “is drifting
into other orbits.” He took issue with Buckley’s calls for legalizing marijuana, licensing
prostitution, and defending “some of the goals” of the homosexual rights movement. Noting that
Buckley had started labeling himself a libertarian (Buckley’s recent collection of essays carried
the subtitle “Reflections of a Libertarian Journalist”), Feder concluded:

William F. Buckley Jr. is many things — always witty and often insightful (when he
isn’t ostentatiously obfuscating). A conservative, he’s not.24

These are only a few of the many individuals who have condemned Buckley’s steady
abandonment of principle-based conservatism. While some became aware of the trend earlier
than others, they all agree that “America’s premier conservative” does not merit that title.
Indeed, some now contend he never did.

William Buckley should be re-classified as an Establishment minister of deception — a pied

piper bent on leading conservatives into confusion and irrelevance.

1
 Chapter Eleven — Undermining Morality

National Review could have an important role here, once again guiding conservatives toward
the more enlightened path.1
— Marvin Liebman

William Buckley has been portrayed as the guardian of mainstream conservatism. That portrayal
amounted to granting him the equivalent of a blank check since he has never spelled out what he
himself means by the term “conservative.”

In 1961, according to his approved biographer John Judis, Buckley signed a contract with a
well-known publisher to produce “an untitled book on conservatism.” But the book never
materialized. Judis speculated that Buckley balked at completing it because he “became willing
to take positions on specific issues that appeared to contradict” the stands virtually everyone
expected of him.2

Not only was Buckley willing to take political and economic stands contradicting his
conservative image, he also began walking away from the moral standards associated with
conservatism, including those traditionally upheld by the Catholic Church to which he belongs.

In his review of William F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives, Harvard University
Professor Alan Brinkley accepted without question all that Buckley had claimed about himself,
including his championing of strict moral values. Brinkley took note, however, that Buckley
never clearly enunciated what those values were. He wrote:

The purpose of the public world, Buckley believed, was not simply to protect individual
freedom; it was also to foster a sense of civic virtue and religious morality. A good
society must stand for something larger than the selfish interests of its individual
members; it must embrace a set of moral and intellectual values and defend them against
their enemies. Buckley never clearly defined what those values should be (other than
opposition to communism, an affirmation of Catholic morality, and a recognition of the
value of intellectual elites); and that failure defined his limits as a political thinker.3

Numerous stands taken by Buckley have often placed him at odds not only with traditional
“Catholic morality,” but even with the more generalized mores of Western civilization. Consider
for instance the contrasting attitudes held by Buckley and the Birch Society’s Robert Welch
regarding the “girlie” magazine Playboy.

In the late 1960s, a Playboy official offered Welch what was then the relatively princely sum of
$5,000 for an interview. Welch’s response to the offer, without hesitation, was that he would not
consider lending his name to a magazine he abhorred. And that was that! On the other hand,
Buckley jumped at the chance on numerous occasions to write for Playboy.

There are many reasons for our nation’s precipitous moral decline in recent decades, one of
1
which has been the enormous distribution, and increasing acceptance, of bawdy magazines.
When Playboy first arrived on the scene in the early 1950s, national moral standards were far
more strict than today. Playboy’s pioneering success led to a flood of similar publications, some
even more degrading of women. In addition to pornographic depictions, most such magazines
also editorialize heavily in favor of what they term “liberating America from puritanical
morality.” While they cannot be held totally responsible for the erosion of our nation’s moral
principles, their impact has been significant.

Robert Welch recognized and was alarmed by what was happening. Inquisitive reporters or
curious friends often asked him to identify America’s single greatest problem. Most expected
him to point to the advance of Communism, the United Nations, the Federal Reserve,
mushrooming federal regulatory powers, usurpations by the Supreme Court, or other political or
economic threats.

But his response never changed. “Moral decline is the greatest enemy we face,” he would insist.
He explained that the loss of moral fiber made an individual less able and/or less willing to speak
out against evil and take action to oppose it. It also weakened the resolve to resist temptations to
cooperate with or even participate in conspiratorial steps taken to undermine our nation’s
institutions.

Welch frequently summarized his view with a poignant statement by 19th-century British
historian James Anthony Froude: “Morality sees further than intellect.” Welch employed this
observation as the theme of the first editorial, in the very first issue, of his magazine One Man’s
Opinion (later American Opinion). Books could be written on that powerful concept. Welch also
believed that “America needs good men, not smart men.” For good men, he insisted, would
always try to do what is right, while men who were merely smart could use their mental prowess
for evil purposes.

The statistics in just one area of our culture should alarm every American. Divorce and the
resulting breakup of families was relatively rare and widely subject to social stigma only a few
decades ago. But America is now notorious for its crumbling family structure. Figures compiled
by the U.S. government show that one-third of births are to unmarried mothers, and abortion still
claims over one million victims every year.4

The hedonistic lifestyle based on sexual “liberation” (promoted among men by such magazines
as Playboy and among women by Cosmopolitan and other avant-garde periodicals — as well as
by movies and television) has contributed dramatically to driving a wedge between husbands and
wives and trivializing the institution of marriage. Yet, like an adolescent schoolboy in a locker
room, Bill Buckley often went out of his way to emphasize his association with Playboy. During
a 1981 interview with the conservative newsweekly Human Events, he was asked if he could
point to any shortcomings or regrets about what he had accomplished over the past 25 years. He
responded:

I said 10 or 12 years ago — I think in the Playboy interview in 1970 — that I was
disappointed by the shortage of good writers....5

1
Why did he bother to mention Playboy? He was being presented as the premier conservative
leader. Human Events told its readers that he “carried the conservative banner in battle against
the Liberal Establishment.” By referring so matter-of-factly and unnecessarily to Playboy, he
enhanced that magazine’s image among conservatives.

In 1985, Buckley again went out of his way to favorably mention Playboy while addressing his
audience at the 30th anniversary celebration of National Review. Citing a visit he once had with
President Nixon, he recalled:

“My novel sensual sensation,” I told Playboy, “is to have the President of the United
States take notes while you are speaking to him.”6

He had reasons to mention the magazine. Playboy had just paid him handsomely for the right to
publish an excerpt from Who’s On First?, one of his novels.7 In 1969, the pornographic
publication published George Gilder’s complimentary portrait of Buckley wherein Gilder
referred to the National Review editor as “the asp-tongued scourge of the left and liberal
establishment.” A former Nixon speech writer, Gilder told Playboy’s five million readers that
Buckley has “much to say that the liberals badly need to hear.”8

In his book about the Buckley family, Charles Lam Markmann didn’t overlook Buckley’s
Playboy connection. He noted that as a result of a “Firing Line” interview with Playboy founder
Hugh Hefner, “thousands of television watchers were easily persuaded by Buckley that Playboy
and its publisher, Hugh Hefner, sought to destroy religion.” But Markmann then added the
telling indictment: “Buckley did not mention the fact that he very gladly accepted Hefner’s
checks for articles that Buckley wrote for Playboy, whose hypocrisy, however, he was busily
denouncing.” One of those checks amounted to $3,500 for a single article.9

In his July 1985 column entitled “Playboy Needs Your Help,” Buckley discussed a letter he had
received from the magazine’s editorial director seeking the use of his name to blunt a boycott of
stores selling Playboy. Buckley didn’t inform his readers of his decision regarding the request.
But, with somewhat macabre humor, he acknowledged:

I add this, that I have frequently written for Playboy, as I would write for any journal
that addressed five million readers. And I gave a straightforward answer to the question
why I did this, feeling as I do, in a Playboy interview published fifteen years ago. I write
for Playboy, I said, because it is the fastest way to communicate with my
seventeen-year-old son.10

And make no mistake: Buckley was well aware of the implications of dignifying lewd
magazines. In a 1986 article he authored for the New York Times Magazine, he stated that “social
sanctions against disgusting behavior — disgusting? — lose vigor if they go uncodified, and
even then they lose vigor if the ethos that supports the laws is attenuated.... The rediscovery of
sin would cause us to look up and note the infinite horizons that beckon us toward better
conduct, better lives, nobler visions.”11

1
The urge to rediscover sin was obviously meant for others. Buckley has also included Penthouse
magazine, which is even sleazier than Playboy, in his repertoire of outlets.

In 1982, Buckley produced the spy novel Marco Polo, If You Can, featuring his fictional CIA
agent Blackford Oakes. A lengthy excerpt appeared in Penthouse magazine sandwiched in
amongst the magazine’s visual fare of explicit photos, suggestive cartoons, and advertisements
for products targeting the sexually obsessed.

The subtitle Penthouse selected for its pages reveals why the magazine was interested in the
Buckley piece: “Amanda Gaither and Blackford Oakes were CIA agents and sometime lovers....”
The excerpt included Buckley’s lurid details about a sexual overture by Oakes, Amanda
Gaither’s acquiescence, and their ensuing illicit liaison.12

An earlier Blackford Oakes novel, Saving the Queen, placed Buckley’s chief character in bed
with England’s queen. Even John Judis noted Buckley’s penchant for “peppering his [Oakes]
politics liberally with easy sex.”13 This is hardly the sort of fare that will, in Buckley’s words,
“beckon us toward better conduct, better lives, nobler visions.” Nor is it consistent with the
moral principles taught by the Catholic church to which Buckley claims adherence.

Playboy’s officials were first attracted to Buckley soon after a famous 1962 Buckley-Norman
Mailer debate. The magazine published the entire confrontation in early 1963. From then on,
Buckley’s work repeatedly appeared in the pages of the morally debased magazine.

In 1982, he was interviewed about his taste in suits, ties, and shoes for Playboy Fashion. And in
1985, he wrote an article for Playboy entitled “Redefining Smart.”14 All of this while seeking to
become America’s “respectable” conservative by, among other things, bashing Robert Welch,
who adamantly spurned invitations to profit from those who were undermining America’s moral
fiber.

Respecting Homosexuality
In 1992, after describing Buckley as his friend and fellow activist for 35 years, and dubbing him
“the founder of modern American conservatism and the prime articulator of its philosophy,”15
Marvin Liebman confessed that he had been a lifelong homosexual. In the prologue to his book,
Coming Out Conservative, Liebman described his longing to have Buckley promote the
homosexual “lifestyle” to conservative Americans as “mainstream.”

Liebman’s book appeared two years after he confessed his homosexuality in a “Dear Bill” letter
published in the July 9, 1990 issue of National Review. The letter subsequently appeared as an
appendix in Coming Out Conservative, where it was followed by Buckley’s short “Dear Marvin”
response to his friend’s plea for a degree of tolerance that would keep homosexuals from
becoming “victims of small-mindedness, prejudice, fear, or cynicism.”16

Liebman, another leftist on the original National Review team, had been from “1938 to 1945 … a
devout member of, successively, the Young Communist League and the Communist Party,
resigning in protest at what he regarded as the unjust expulsion of Earl Browder, who had long

1
been the party’s leader.”17 As a political strategist and fundraiser, he worked intimately with
Buckley on numerous projects favored by conservatives, including National Review, Young
Americans for Freedom, the American Conservative Union, and the Committee of One Million
Against the Admission of Communist China to the United Nations. His out-of-the-closet book
stressed that he and Buckley shared a close social life in addition to their professional
relationship. Referring to Buckley and his wife, Liebman stated: “I had spent almost every
weekend of the past thirty years with them — almost a lifetime!”18

National Review provided the main forum for Liebman’s “coming out” and, in so doing, afforded
homosexuality an aura of acceptance. Liebman claimed that his condition “is how I was born;
how God decreed that I should be,” and that “sexuality isn’t a belief, it’s a factor of birth.”19
Refusing to take a firm stand for traditional moral standards, Buckley raised only the possibility
that Liebman had distorted reality, claiming in his response: “There is of course argument on the
question whether homosexuality is in all cases congenital.” Buckley added that there is a need
for “exercising toleration and charity towards homosexuality and homosexuals.20

Liebman had good reason to expect sympathetic treatment from Buckley because National
Review had years earlier opened its pages to other arguments favoring “gay rights.” In 1974, it
published an appeal for acceptance of homosexuality authored by David Brudnoy and Ernest van
den Haag.21 And the September 12, 1986 issue included an article-length letter captioned,
“Letter From a Friend: A Conservative Speaks Out for Gay Rights.”22 Therein John Woolman
(a pseudonym) claimed: “… the first theory we must reject is the traditional view that the
purpose of sex is procreation.” Yet was it not the Lord God Himself who told Adam and Eve to
“be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth”?

Woolman further declared, “The persecution of homosexuals is deeply rooted in the

Judaeo-Christian tradition,”23 and he sought to refute Joseph Sobran’s article entitled “The
Politics of AIDS” published in National Review in May 1986.24 After the Woolman missive
appeared, syndicated columnist John Lofton noted the budding controversy and pointed out that
Sobran — a senior editor of National Review at the time — had not been alerted by his
colleagues at the magazine about the forthcoming publication of the article-length “letter.”25

Sobran’s article had noted that homosexuals were seeking “to use the power of the state to
compel social acceptance” of their behavior. But homosexual behavior, he claimed, had already
led to serious consequences:

Nobody died at Three Mile Island, but an accident there brought down strict controls —
and moral opprobrium — on the nuclear-power industry. Thousands have died of AIDS,
and more thousands are going to die of it, but no serious restraint or even censure has
been placed on sodomite promiscuity.26

In August 1992, after Buckley had retired as editor and become editor-at-large (though still its
commander-in-chief as the magazine’s sole stockholder), National Review published British
homosexual Matthew Parris’ favorable reviews of two books promoting the homosexual
“lifestyle.” The thrust of each was a demand for laws granting equal rights to homosexuals.27
1
Buckley added his personal call for special laws protecting homosexuals in a September 1992
column. He stated:

These should include professional security for gays in all public employment, and in
private employment except those occupations in which teachers are expected to act as
role models: specifically, in schools for children.28

Thus the Establishment-favored leader of the conservative movement urged using the force of
government to coerce employers to hire or retain homosexuals. Such a stand constitutes a
decided attack on the fundamental right to select one’s own employees as well as a refusal to
condemn morally repugnant practices.

Buckley also took aim at our nation’s centuries-old prohibition against homosexuals in the
military, asserting: “Surely common sense and experience call for eliminating the discriminatory
provisions that now hypothetically keep gays out of the military and out of the sensitive
agencies.”29

His stand is partly based on the absurd notion that everyone has a right to serve in the nation’s
armed forces. But the military legitimately excludes persons who fail to meet standards for
height, weight, age, physical condition, even mental competence. In other words, service in the
military is a privilege to be earned, not a right to be demanded. The question, then, is: Does the
military have any substantive reason to exclude homosexuals? And the answer is that official
U.S. policy has held that it unquestionably does, and has since the country’s founding (until the
Clinton administration). That policy, still on the books after 200 years, appears in Department of
Defense Directive 1332.14, which states:

Homosexuality is incompatible with military service. The presence in the military of

persons who engage in homosexual conduct or who, by their statements, demonstrate a
propensity to engage in homosexual conduct, seriously impairs the accomplishment of
the military mission.

This clearly enunciated policy was formulated because experience had shown that the presence
of homosexuals destroys unit cohesiveness. Anyone who has served in the military knows that
the need for men to work close together in small detachments is a key to success in battle. Any
breakdown in the willingness of military personnel to perform as a team, including putting one’s
life on the line for other members of the unit, will diminish the unit’s effectiveness and make its
members more prone to becoming casualties.

Beyond that crucial objection, however, there is another predictably deleterious effect of opening
the military to homosexuals. The very possibility of being thrown into close contact with
sodomites, in circumstances where individuals live and work together in tight quarters with little
or no privacy, would dampen the desire of many Americans to serve, and would drive from the
military some who are already serving. Parents holding traditional beliefs would undoubtedly
suggest other careers for their youngsters, and most clergymen would steer young parishioners
away from the services. After all, would not homosexuals tend to gravitate to a profession where
1
prospects for seduction abound?

Opening up the military to homosexuals would effectively weaken our nation’s ability to defend
itself, and would undoubtedly diminish the proficiency and morale of our armed services.

These are only a few of the considerations Buckley dismissed as he added his name to the list of
those who claim that keeping homosexuals out of the military is unwise and unfair.

In December 1992, Buckley’s syndicated column attacked the Defense Department’s

long-standing contention about the incompatibility of homosexuality with military service. He
claimed, “This would appear on the face of it to be simply wrong.” Regarding the Department’s
assertion that the mere presence of those who “demonstrate a propensity to engage in
homosexual conduct seriously impairs the accomplishment of the military mission,” he seemed
astonished, asking “How, exactly?”30

Buckley’s position regarding homosexuality has helped to weaken national — especially

conservative — revulsion to a degrading practice that corrodes moral standards, has cut short an
untold number of lives, and threatens to weaken national defense.

Buckley has also called for the legalization, not only of marijuana, but of all drugs,31 and has
also openly urged that prostitution be legalized.32

In March 1966, nearly seven years before the Supreme Court’s odious Roe v. Wade pro-abortion
decision, Buckley suggested in a column that “the Catholic Church should reconsider its
position” regarding laws against abortion.33 National Review had also published Claire Boothe
Luce’s call for permissive abortion laws. Like Buckley, Luce is a Catholic. When prominent
self-proclaimed Catholics oppose the strict anti-abortion position of their church, they give the
pro-abortionist cause a huge boost. Buckley and his fellow “Catholic conservative” colleagues
may well have emboldened the Supreme Court to render its fateful 1973 ruling.

In response to Buckley’s pro-abortion column, Brent Bozell (Buckley’s brother-in-law and

one-time coauthor) sent a sharp letter to National Review insisting that the column “reeks of
relativism” and that “Mr. Buckley writes in this instance as though he had never heard of the
natural law.”34 By 1971, Bozell would state in an interview that “it is a hindrance to be William
Buckley’s brother-in-law, because people are under the assumption that I share his views. I do
not. He is the right-wing establishment. I consider myself outside the establishment.”35

Patricia Bozell, Buckley’s sister, expressed her own outrage at what Buckley had done. She
insisted that “the awesome responsibility for the change in moral attitudes [in America] can be
laid in significant part to the likes of Mrs. Luce and her Catholic friends at National Review who
play the democratic game, the secular game, and the pluralistic game in violation of their
faith.”36 Even members of his own family castigated him for abandoning traditional morality.

In his April 10, 1990 column, Buckley left the question of a woman’s “right” to abort her fetus
open to argument. After positing the incredible falsehood that “Theology teaches that the
1
conscience is supreme,” he stated, “If abortion is objectively wrong, a society may nevertheless
wish to abide by the woman’s right to pursue her own conscience and proceed to abort.”37

Buckley declined to mention which “theology” teaches that conscience is supreme. In truth, it is
neither Catholic theology nor, for that matter, the theology of many other faiths. Neither Catholic
theology nor our secular laws condone the notion that serious crimes are not crimes if the
perpetrators’ consciences say they are not. Believing that “conscience is supreme” is akin to
sanctioning the “do your own thing” situation ethics that infects our culture.

A passage in his 1981 book Overdrive: A Personal Documentary sought to assure Buckley’s
readers that he remains a faithful Catholic. He tells of driving “to St. Catherine of Siena in
Riverside” to attend “a most beautiful service there” one Sunday morning.38 But the same book
contains the following passage, which is hardly consistent with traditional Catholic tenets:

The character in my novels, Blackford Oakes, has in him a streak of self-indulgence of a

most masochistic character. I confess I have it too. I remember as a young adult reading
The Postman Always Rings Twice. There is a scene there where the man and girl, fleeing
the cops in their car, have an accident, crawl out of the wreck in the woods, the police
not ten minutes away and closing in; and suddenly his lust overwhelms him and he says
to himself, I must have her, I simply don’t care what the consequences are.39 [Emphasis
in original.]

Nearer, My God
Late in 1997, Doubleday released Buckley’s Nearer, My God: An Autobiography of Faith.40
After a lifetime of professing the Catholic faith, Buckley felt an urge to tell the world why.

But Nearer, My God didn’t live up to its title. It was in no way an autobiography of the author’s
faith, since it fails even to summarize his beliefs. It was, instead, another exercise in anecdotal
posturing and name-dropping. Buckley gushed about his affinity for Catholicism, but repeatedly
turned to others for their attitudes about fundamental points of Catholic doctrine, avoiding
confessions of his own.

In a review published widely in Catholic newspapers, Fr. J. Michael Buckley (no relation to
William F. Buckley) noted the same deficiency:

Nowhere in this effort does the author reveal anything about his own relationship with
God. He professes belief, yes, but he does not reveal anywhere how that belief has
guided his daily life or affected his major life decisions.41

Buckley supplied the comments of such Catholic converts as Richard John Neuhaus, George
Rutler, Russell Kirk, Jeffrey Hart, Ernest van den Haag, and Wick Allison on such matters as
women priests, divorce, birth control, and remarriage. But he avoided the topic of
homosexuality, perhaps because he is already on record with an attitude about it that is
completely at odds with Catholic teaching.

He did include a short footnote reiterating his disdain for the unwavering Catholic prohibition
1
against abortion, stating sarcastically, “The demand to baptize abortion is very rare, the general
position among Catholic dissenters being that those who abort, or collude in bringing about an
abortion, are yes sinners, but so is your old man.”42 In other words: Everybody does it, so you
might as well join the crowd. Of the church’s condemnation of birth control and contraception,
Buckley remained skeptical, claiming an “incomplete understanding.”

Martin Luther King

At one point in Nearer, My God, Buckley praised the “specifically Christian commitment” of Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. Yet he knows full well that King consorted with known Communists,
condemned this nation, and was an out-and-out philanderer. King also championed the cause of
the Viet Cong during a period when the remains of 500 U.S. soldiers per week were being
shipped home to grieving families.

Buckley’s own publications in the 1960s strongly condemned King’s deeds and statements. The
April 25, 1967 edition of National Review Bulletin, for instance, revealed that King had “linked
himself into a virtual united front with the Communists” in his opposition to the Vietnam War. It
also cited King’s April 5, 1967 New York City speech where he compared the U.S. government
to the Hitler regime, while claiming that the U.S. was “the greatest purveyor of violence in the
world.” Even Life magazine would describe that speech as “a demagogic slander that sounded
like a script for Radio Hanoi.”43

King’s earlier dealings with known Communists and Communist fronters were such a poorly
kept secret that the FBI sought and obtained permission from Attorney General Robert Kennedy
to maintain surveillance on King’s offices, hotel rooms, and telephones. The resulting evidence,
and testimony of persons close to King, filled 14 file cabinets. A court challenge resulted in a
federal court order that all of the tapes and transcripts remain sealed in the national archives for
50 years (until 2027).44

During the debate over making King’s birthday a national holiday, Buckley threw his support
behind the idea with both a syndicated column and a National Review editorial. In contrast, as
the debate reached a peak in 1983, the conservative Washington newsweekly Human Events
published a lengthy report entitled “The Radical Record of Martin Luther King.” It noted that
King had portrayed U.S. troops in Vietnam as “foreign conquerors and oppressors” and had
termed North Vietnam’s Communist dictator Ho Chi Minh as “a national leader and the innocent
victim of American aggression.”45

Ignoring King’s sordid record in Nearer, My God, Buckley instead penned a flattering
characterization describing King as a leader possessed of “great eloquence and great courage.”
He called for “King’s sanctification” and claimed that his utterances sprang from “Christian
dogma.” Amidst the gushing, there appears this historically obtuse assertion: “Thomas More was
everything Martin Luther King was, except that his skin was white.”46

Incredible! The great English jurist, long revered as “Saint Thomas More” by a grateful Catholic
Church, was beheaded by King Henry VIII after a life that did not include debauchery and was
not marked by secretly consorting with his country’s enemies. Buckley’s crass comparison
revealed more about himself than about either More or King.
1
 Chapter Twelve — Buckley’s Harmful Legacy

If he had not done a considerable amount of good, he could never have done so much harm.1
— Medford Evans

When he began the climb to national attention, Buckley definitely filled a void. He brought an
intellectual verve to the conservative side of the political debate and spiced it with wit. He
offered a welcome life preserver to young Americans on college campuses who were being
swamped by a rising tide of liberalism.

Early on, Buckley skillfully addressed the concerns of many on the Right, both young and old.
He and his colleagues targeted President Eisenhower’s deficiencies, intensely opposed
Communism, saluted the efforts of congressional investigatory bodies working to rid our
government of subversives, and derided the ineptitude and subversion in the Kennedy
administration. Even though Buckley and National Review weren’t telling the whole story, it
seemed to many that they had not left anything of importance out. Readers believed that
increasingly wider distribution of the magazine would somehow reverse the statist and defeatist
course being followed by our national government.

But, as Medford Evans sadly concluded in 1979, because Buckley had initially done “a
considerable amount of good,” he had positioned himself to do a great deal of harm. The tactic of
gaining credibility in order to betray the cause one feigns to advocate is not without historical
precedent.

For one example, consider the revelations of Anatoli Granovsky, who served the Kremlin as one
of its most highly regarded agents during the 1940s. He eventually defected to the West when he
could no longer stomach working for a criminal regime. His gripping 1962 autobiography, I Was
an NKVD Agent, is the case history of a Soviet agent placed in the enemy camp as a pretended
opponent of Communism who was thereby positioned to do great harm to the anti-Communist
side. (We do not mean to suggest that Buckley ever received directions from Soviet officials.)

Granovsky described how he received intensive training in Moscow prior to being sent into
Germany as a supposed defector from Communism. His orders directed him to convince German
authorities in his host country that he was a determined foe of the USSR. If he succeeded in
gaining that reputation, his mentors knew that he would be well situated to undertake
strategically important assignments. But his NKVD instructors not only told him how to proceed,
they let him know what would happen if he failed to follow orders. He was given the following
warning:

When you talk publicly against the Soviet Union, follow the same harmless line as
fanatically as possible. Talk of purges, prisons and the Cheka. But do not draw political
conclusions opposed to the Marxist-Leninist philosophy. If you do that you are finished,
1
 finished for good.2

The ground rules given Granovsky by his Communist masters were of the same type Buckley
either received from Establishment “handlers,” or he chose to follow of his own accord. National
Review’s founder stridently opposed the Soviet Union, but refused to point out the Western
(mostly U.S.) source of its vaunted power. He protested the suicidal actions and policies of U.S.
leaders, but never labeled them part of an intentional plan. He ridiculed American liberals, but
religiously avoided any suggestion that conspiratorial hands were applauding, encouraging and,
in many instances, financing them behind the scenes. And he was especially forceful in attacking
those who recognized a powerful and well-entrenched conspiracy at work and were laboring to
expose and rout it.

During the post-World War II years, a constant flow of sustenance moved from this nation to the
criminal regime headquartered in the Kremlin. But no amount of evidence about the shipment of
equipment, technology, money, and credit could induce Buckley and his colleagues to apply the
word “treason” to the ongoing process. In like manner, the USSR’s string of broken treaties,
combined with the repeated spectacle of U.S. leaders begging the Soviets to sign more pacts,
failed to convince National Review that an element of conspiracy was at the root of America’s
seeming stupor.

Undoubtedly Buckley knew, as Granovsky claimed to have been instructed by his mentors, that
he would have been “finished, finished for good” if he dared to step beyond certain boundaries
set by those who relied on him to be the “respectable” conservative leader.

Having achieved a wide and growing audience, Buckley set himself up as the guardian of the
conservative gate and chief debunker of any suggestion of conspiracy. Once his credentials as
spokesman for the conservative, anti-Communist, even anti-Establishment movements became
etched in stone — with pivotal help from Establishment figures themselves — he proceeded to
blackball anyone who dared to suggest that willful treachery was a key factor in our nation’s
setbacks, embarrassments, and frustrations. He has guarded the conservative gate and protected
the conspiracy from exposure with an intensity far exceeding his disapproval of doctrinaire
liberalism.

This writer was among those who were initially elated with Buckley’s modus operandi. My
personal delight with National Review and its increasingly famous editor faded in the early
1960s, however, after I discovered that Robert Welch and his John Birch Society had a far more
credible explanation for national and world events. (A fuller description of this writer’s personal
odyssey is provided in Chapter 13.) I also found myself agreeing with Secretary of Defense
James Forrestal’s penetrating observation about the cause of America’s continuing decline. In
May 1949, while he was preparing to purchase a New York newspaper to combat America’s
internal enemies — and just prior to his untimely and suspicious death3 — he stated:

Consistency has never been a mark of stupidity. If the diplomats who have mishandled
our relations with Russia were merely stupid, they would occasionally make a mistake
in our favor.4

1
To explain America’s setbacks, Buckley regularly pointed to or implied nothing more than gross
stupidity. Gradually for some, then overwhelmingly, that explanation no longer satisfied; there
had to be a calculated plan.

Summarizing, let us list sundry Buckley “achievements” that have earned him the plaudits of the
Establishment, but merit the condemnation of principled Americans.

1. He substituted an undefined “conservatism” for the explicit definition of good

government found in the U.S. Constitution.

Using his influence, Buckley managed to alter, or at least erode, the political and economic
standards of many Americans. His brand of conservatism led millions away from the timeless
principles embodied in the Constitution. Instead of strictly limited government and undiluted
national independence, Americans who looked to Buckley grudgingly accepted big government
and internationalism as if they had no alternative.

Because so many Americans relied on Buckley’s emphasis on mere conservatism, national

leaders found it easier and less worrisome to disregard the Constitution. Buckley often shielded
members of Congress from deserved wrath by supplying cover for their transgressions. Not
content with ignoring the Constitution, he has even called for a constitutional convention where
the venerable document could be emasculated.

Had Buckley focused on the unconstitutionality of an array of federal programs, he would have
helped to slow down, maybe even stop, the rush toward total government and the flight from
national independence. But, like many of the liberals he supposedly scorned, he has treated the
Constitution as if it were a quaint but meaningless antique. In the process, he has enticed
conservatives to grudgingly accept the socialistic inroads of the New Deal, Fair Deal, Great
Society, and their progeny.

2. He shielded the conspiracy by denying its existence and targeting its foes.

From the outset of his public career, Buckley employed every means at his disposal to keep his
fellow Americans from knowing about the existence of the conspiracy that is aggravating and
creating our national problems. Awareness of such deliberate treachery produces a determination
to become involved in programs of education and action to expose and eventually defeat the
plotters. But Buckley targeted for virtual extinction anyone who carefully and competently
exposed and attacked the conspiracy. He has spent a lifetime working to accomplish the
conspiracy’s very first and most important goal: widespread belief that it does not exist.

3. By accepting membership in the Council on Foreign Relations, he supplied dignity and

cover to a key element of the conspiratorial apparatus.

Buckley certainly knew that extensive exposure of the scheming history and destructive goals of
the Council on Foreign Relations would severely impede realization of the conspiracy’s designs.
Yet he opted instead to furnish the CFR with sorely needed legitimacy among conservatives by
publicly joining it, providing space in his magazine for its spokesman to mask its poisonous
1
agenda, and writing for its journal, Foreign Affairs. In the wake of his affiliation, his fellow
elitists within the organization began pointing to the Buckley name on the CFR membership
roster as proof that none of the charges leveled against them or the Council could possibly be
true.

4. He has spread lies and distortions about Robert Welch and The John Birch Society.

Buckley and his National Review colleagues produced a stream of distortions, lies, and ridicule
to keep concerned Americans from soberly evaluating the perspective of Robert Welch and The
John Birch Society. By doing so, they kept untold numbers of their readers from gaining access
to information and documentation sorely needed for a proper understanding of world and
national affairs, to say nothing of the Society’s specific action program to expose and rout the
conspiracy.

5. He supported individuals and positions favored by the conspiracy, thereby sowing

confusion in conservative ranks.

Buckley worked to provide conservative legitimacy for Nelson Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger,
Richard Nixon, John Gardner, Allard Lowenstein, Helmut Sonnenfeldt, George Bush, Newt
Gingrich, and numerous other neoconservatives and internationalists. He elevated an array of
conspiracy-favored initiatives from deserved opprobrium, including the Panama Canal giveaway,
the UN’s Genocide Convention, the UN itself, South Africa’s African National Congress,
anti-gun legislation, and aid to the Soviet Union.

6. He has contributed to the undermining of the nation’s morality. While posturing as a

believer in religious principle, he has wallowed in pornographic magazines, defended
homosexuality, and issued a stream of trashy novels. In like manner, he has furnished an aura of
legitimacy for harmful political moves and supplied dignity to sundry forms of immoral behavior
that are battlegrounds in the ongoing culture war.

7. He led Americans away from involvement in the type of principled activism our nation
sorely needs. Many concerned citizens, captivated by Buckley’s magazine, columns, television
appearances, books, etc., have remained comfortable in their armchairs, soaking up his pompous
intellectualism and frat-level humor, rather than becoming activists with a vision of victory.

Fostering Defeatism
In March 1989, a clear-thinking Tennessean sent an incisive letter to Buckley at National
Review’s headquarters. It came as no surprise to Dr. Herman Crowder that his thoughts were
never published. He did, however, share a copy of his letter with this author. He, too, contended
that Buckley’s efforts had aided “establishment liberals.” But the perceptive Tennessean also
contended that Buckley had fostered defeatism. He wrote:

Most of the time your magazine is a beguiling delight to read. It is written with such wit,
style and verve that the unsuspecting reader does not realize he is gradually being
conditioned to accept the idea that conservatives should be content to lose gracefully
and without rancor while establishment liberals walk away with the prize. My suspicion
1
 is that National Review’s plan for conservatives in the U.S. is basically the same as the
U.S. plan for Contras in Nicaragua: They are a token opposition to be kept alive and
occasionally encouraged, but not allowed to make significant progress toward political
power or the reconstruction of constitutional government.5

Dr. Crowder’s suspicions were well-founded. For nearly a half century, Buckley has indeed
“conditioned” conservatives to lose to big government and internationalism.

During National Review’s earlier years, conservatives lost when:

• Barry Goldwater was overwhelmed at the polls by Lyndon Johnson;

• the Great Society’s socialistic programs became law;

• our nation’s soft-on-Communism leaders denied U.S. forces any possibility of victory in
Vietnam;

• aid and trade streamed from America to the USSR where it was used to maintain Communist
tyranny and kill Americans in Southeast Asia; and

• the Free Chinese were betrayed by Richard Nixon who journeyed to Beijing to bestow gifts and
honors on history’s bloodiest murderers.

In more recent years, conservatives suffered additional setbacks when:

• national indebtedness soared to new heights and Americans found themselves paying more for
interest on debt than for national defense;

• the U.S. military became the policemen of the world for the United Nations;

• government’s near-complete takeover of education and medicine sent the quality of both down
as the cost of both escalated;

• immersion into NAFTA and GATT/WTO chipped away at national sovereignty; and

• an impotent Congress allowed its authority to be usurped by a power-hungry executive branch.

National Review declined to report any pattern to these developments, and even lauded some.
But whenever Buckley and his team did admit defeat, they did so with “wit, style and verve.”

As we have sought to demonstrate, Buckley provided critically important support for those who
are working to achieve world government at the expense of an independent United States of
America.

The years may have caught up with him, but Buckley’s influence continues as others seek to pick
up where he is leaving off. Soon after arriving in New York, radio commentator Rush Limbaugh
became the willing recipient of Buckley’s attention. He would eventually inform his millions of
1
listeners, “If I am ever reincarnated, I hope to be given William Buckley’s brain.”

Limbaugh once described the “wonderful experience” of having spent a weekend at the Buckley
home, where he enjoyed a conversation with Henry Kissinger prior to a musical program. The
famous talk-show host related that he and Kissinger compared notes about the unfairness of the
press. Limbaugh reported that the former secretary of state whined about “the terrible things
being said by liberals about conservatives like us.” (Emphasis added.) Limbaugh, who can hardly
be unaware of Kissinger’s career, and how he himself is being used, has done his best to perform
for the Establishment à la Buckley. He, too, has done considerable good and is, therefore,
positioned to do much harm.

Another example of someone whom liberals point to as one of their conservative adversaries is
former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Yet his support for NAFTA, GATT/WTO, MFN for
China, UN use of America’s military, and numerous other harmful initiatives supplied the
margins of victory when these proposals were considered by Congress.

But it is Buckley who has led the way. That others have followed in his wake should come as no
surprise. It is our hope that the warning we have raised will minimize any future harm that he
and others like him might attempt.

The Truth Must Not Be Suppressed

In his celebrated speech of March 23, 1775, Patrick Henry chided his fellow Virginians for
allowing mere hope to influence their actions. His message seems pertinent to those who may be,
as this author once was, under the sway of William F. Buckley, Jr. Addressing his fellow
Virginians, Henry thundered:

It is natural for man to indulge in the illusion of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes
against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into
beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty?
Are we disposed to be the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and having ears,
hear not the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part,
whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the
worst and provide for it.6

Our portrait of America’s “respectable conservative” leader may be rejected by some who prefer
“to shut [their] eyes against a painful truth.” After all, as stated by the 17th century’s Patrick
Henry, there are “none so blind as those who will not see.”

But see we must. For a candid evaluation of the Buckley record has, sadly, become an imperative
element of the truth that Holy Scripture claims can make us free.

William Buckley sought to destroy The John Birch Society. In our final chapter, the reader is
invited to discover just how badly he failed.

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 Chapter Thirteen — The John Birch Society: Alive, Well, and
Growing

If there had been even one chapter of the John Birch Society in Havana prior to 1959, working
to expose Castro as [John Birch Society founder] Robert Welch was at the time, Cuba would not
have fallen to Communism.1
— Major Pedro Diaz Lanz
Former chief of Fidel Castro’s air force

I am going to destroy The John Birch Society.2

— William F. Buckley

Major Pedro Diaz Lanz paid the above tribute to Robert Welch and The John Birch Society after
defecting to the United States in mid-1959. Like many other Cubans, he once believed in Fidel
Castro. So much so, in fact, that he transported supplies to Castro’s guerrilla army and became
chief of his small air force, a position he continued to occupy after Castro seized control of Cuba.

And why shouldn’t he have embraced Castro? Wasn’t the bearded one a modern-day Robin
Hood who wanted to end the exploitation of the poor by the rich? Wasn’t he the George
Washington of Cuba? Didn’t he (in the words of Herbert L. Matthews of the New York Times)
possess “strong ideas of liberty, democracy, social justice, the need to restore the Constitution, to
hold elections”?3 And weren’t he and his fellow revolutionaries (again, in Matthews’ words)
fighting “for an ideal and for their hopes of a clean, democratic Cuba”?4

Major Diaz certainly thought so. And so did many others, both in Cuba and the United States,
whose only knowledge about Castro came from the media. Matthews’ account was particularly
significant, not only because he wrote for the Times but because he had clandestinely visited
Castro while the revolutionary was holed up in Cuba’s Sierra Maestra mountains.

Castro a “Communist”? As far as the major media were concerned, the notion was preposterous,
not only prior to Castro’s coming to power on January 1, 1959 but for many months afterward.
In July 1959, for example, Times correspondent Matthews still claimed: “This is not a
Communist revolution in any sense of the word and there are no Communists in positions of
control.”5 That attitude was so pervasive that years later, during a 1963 press conference, former
President Dwight David Eisenhower claimed, “It would have taken a genius of prophecy to
know that Castro was a Communist when he took control of Cuba.”6

But Robert Welch warned that Castro was a Communist as early as September 1958 — three
months before launching The John Birch Society, four months before Castro rode triumphantly
into Havana, and 39 months before Castro boasted to the world that he was a Communist in a
televised speech. In that same speech, Castro acknowledged that he had kept his Communism
hidden from public view “because otherwise we might have alienated the bourgeoisie and other
forces which we knew we would eventually have to fight.”7
1
Those forces included many beguiled Cubans. They even included some of Castro’s fellow
revolutionaries, such as Pedro Diaz Lanz. Ordinary Cubans, like ordinary Americans, didn’t have
a clue about Castro’s evil intent. They had no awareness of Castro’s Marxism-Leninism as
presented in the September 1958 issue of American Opinion, wherein Welch wrote: “Now the
evidence from Castro’s whole past, that he is a Communist agent carrying out Communist orders
and plans, is overwhelming. The evidence from his method of operation is even more so.”8 Nor
did they know that in December 1958, at the founding meeting of The John Birch Society, Welch
warned: “if you have any slightest doubt that Castro is a Communist, don’t. If he is successful,
time will clearly reveal that he is an agent of the Kremlin.”9

The latter statement soon appeared in print in The Blue Book of The John Birch Society, the
transcript of Welch’s two-day presentation that led to the Society’s founding. But very few
Americans, and virtually no Cubans, were aware in 1958–1959 of Welch’s warnings, or the
evidence upon which those warnings were based. On the other hand, the American people were
aware of what the New York Times and other major media organs were saying. The Times,
Matthews boasted, is “the most powerful journalistic instrument that has ever been forged in the
free world.”10 True enough. And if the Times had told the truth about Castro (if Welch, a private
citizen, knew, isn’t it reasonable to believe the Times was aware?), its message would have
reached Havana through the Cuban people’s many American friends.

A Winning Strategy
Robert Welch built The John Birch Society to provide the organized means to circumvent the
major media, to inform and activate the American people, and to resist the conspiratorial drive to
destroy freedom. “We do not have to be too late, and we do not have to lose the fight,” he said at
the founding meeting. “Communism has its weaknesses, and the Communist conspiracy has its
vulnerable points. We have many layers of strength not yet rotted by all of the infiltration and
political sabotage to which we have been subjected. Our danger is both immense and imminent;
but it is not beyond the possibility of being overcome by the resistance that is still available. All
we must find and build and use, to win, is sufficient understanding.”11

What kind of understanding? Welch recognized that more than a rudimentary grasp of ideology
was required. In Cuba prior to Castro, Major Diaz and others had already recognized that
Communism was bad, but that amount of understanding did not save them. Obviously, if the
age-old fight between freedom and slavery were limited to an ideological contest conducted on a
level playing field, freedom would win every time. But there was no level playing field in Cuba
or anywhere else where tyranny had already triumphed.

Despots like Castro must rely on deception to accomplish their evil ends. The same is true for the
Insiders who sponsor them. They must deceive since no one wants to be enslaved. This is why
shining the light of exposure on conspiracy is so necessary. As Medford Evans explained in
American Opinion shortly after Robert Welch’s passing, “Welch insisted, over and over, that the
danger was not a body of ideas (important as those are) so much as a body of men, particularly a
group of individually capable men in league with each other — a powerful conspiracy seeking
ever greater power.”12

1
In fact, the top Insiders undoubtedly do not themselves believe in Communist philosophy or, for
that matter, in any of the other “snake oil” ideologies they peddle. Their intent is to acquire
power, and ideology for them is nothing more than a smoke screen to hide their true purpose, the
widespread knowledge of which would derail their plans.

Welch also recognized that an organized conspiracy cannot be effectively exposed unless good
people are also organized. This is true even when accurate information is disseminated to counter
the bad. In the April 1969 JBS Bulletin, Welch cited several examples of the “important part” the
written word has played in various battles between freedom and slavery throughout history,
including Julius Caesar’s Commentaries on the Gallic Wars versus the works of Cicero, the
writings of Voltaire and Rousseau versus those of Robison and Abbé Augustin Barruel, and the
works of Karl Marx versus those of Adam Smith. Yet Welch emphasized that “these various
battles have not been decided by the books themselves. You will note that the above authors on
the side of individualism lost their fight despite the moral and literary superiority of their works.
The reason for their defeat is quite simple — but extremely important. The books by the
collectivists were used as part of an organized campaign — they were part of an action program
— whereas the individualists tragically thought that by simply bringing out their books victory
would be theirs. They were terribly mistaken.”13

Welch continued:

The point here is that simply publishing good books, articles, and pamphlets, and even
getting them distributed, is not, by itself, enough to win this battle. This literature must
be read, it must be put to use, and it must be a part of an overall, concerted plan of
action. And this is exactly what The John Birch Society has been doing, and must
continue to do in the future....

The members of the society have performed a Herculean task in the volume of books
and pamphlets they have put into the hands of awakening Americans. But the success of
this work is not in the numbers distributed and would have had no permanent value but
for the fact that these various printed works fitted into an important part of the program
of The John Birch Society. And herein lies an accomplishment of which to be
immensely proud and one of great significance.... The discipline of the Society has done
much to unify the Americanist forces and to guide them down the line of concerted
action.14

The organization Welch created to expose the collectivist conspiracy — and, later, to advance
the Society’s long-range goals of “less government, more responsibility, and — with God’s help
— a better world” — was not confined to a central headquarters. Nor was it based on a political
quick fix, such as trying to elect an appealing candidate. Without first creating sufficient
understanding, trying to elect a good candidate in the face of a hostile media would be futile. On
the other hand, even leftist and opportunistic politicians will respond favorably when pressured
to do so by well-informed constituents.

Welch recognized that needed understanding could develop only through grassroots
organization. And this is why the JBS is organized in chapters from coast to coast. He
1
understood that what happened in the living rooms of America would eventually determine what
would happen in the halls of Congress.

Yes, the Society does have a central office. But that office — located in Appleton, Wisconsin,
and staffed by about 45 employees — is set up, not to relieve the American people of their
responsibilities in the freedom fight, but to supply those who join the JBS with the necessary
tools and direction so that they can win the freedom fight themselves. That is, in fact, the only
way this fight will be won.

In the July 1977 JBS Bulletin, Welch explained the importance of relying on grassroots
organization and membership:

The John Birch Society set out early to build up a properly staffed educational army
which was to create the only form of opposition that the Insiders of a Master Conspiracy
did not know how to overwhelm or to destroy. This growing opposition consisted of
exposing the background, methods, purposes, and progress of that Conspiracy so as to
generate more public understanding of what was taking place, and a resulting
grass-roots resistance to many of its projects. To some extent our activities have
constituted primarily a continuation of the effort begun by Joe McCarthy. But with one
vital difference. McCarthy had no grass-roots organization for implementing his
arguments or extending his reach. And without such permanently organized popular
support he and his whole effort could be, and were, completely destroyed in the six
years of 1951 through 1956.

But our operation was based on the membership formula. Nor do we mean a temporary
and tenuous membership in some political action group; or in some academic
propaganda organization where the members’ contact with headquarters was only by
mail. The basic features of our organizational pattern have been continuous, palpable,
and real. We required regular periodic meetings and specific activities that were
carefully planned and coordinated. And the cost of supplying able officers, whom we
call our field staff, for inspiring, guiding, and supervising these several thousand
platoons or chapters, has been so great that not a single other American organization in
this fight against the Conspiracy has even attempted to maintain a paid and professional
field staff. Yet this very sound and solid core of all our effort is what caused the Insiders
to be so disturbed and frightened by The John Birch Society that they set out almost at
once to destroy it.15

This organizational concept undergirding the Society is both effective and simply grasped. After
defecting to this country, Major Pedro Diaz Lanz had the opportunity to observe that
effectiveness firsthand. At the end of a Society-arranged speaking tour, he wrote to Robert
Welch: “I have seen with my own eyes the magnificent work you accomplished all over this
beautiful land, in alerting thousands of people through the organized effort of the John Birch
Society.... Thanks with all my heart for letting me work with all of you in this magnificent
task.”16 He even told an acquaintance that “If there had been even one chapter of the John Birch
Society in Havana prior to 1959, working to expose Castro as Welch was at the time, Cuba
would not have fallen to Communism.”17 To fully appreciate the value he attached to the kind of
1
informed, organized opposition he saw in the JBS, it must be kept in mind that a single chapter
seldom consists of more than a few dozen members.

A Personal Odyssey
The remainder of this chapter is best written in the first person. I have been a member of The
John Birch Society since 1964 and a member of the staff since 1966. Like Major Diaz, whom I
came to know, I have observed firsthand the organization’s effectiveness. But the similarity
between his experiences and my own does not end there. Prior to our involvement in the JBS, we
were both beguiled by a supposed champion of freedom whose actions undermined the cause of
freedom. In Diaz’ case that man was Fidel Castro; in my own case it was William F. Buckley.

I do not mean to suggest, of course, that Buckley was ever a third world dictator, or a mass
murderer, or even a Communist. Yet if it is true that the pen is mightier than the sword, the effect
that Buckley’s words have had in the ongoing struggle between freedom and slavery should not
be ignored. Castro had a military arm, and he seized political power. Buckley commands no
army and has never held public office. Yet he played a pivotal role in diverting mainstream,
conservative Americans away from constitutional principles and limited government, and toward
more government and more internationalism. The path he has blazed can only lead, ultimately, to
the kind of total and absolute government Castro enjoys in Cuba, though on a global scale. The
fact that the end result most likely will not be called “Communism” will not make it any more
tolerable or benevolent.

Buckley has also harmed the cause of freedom by declaring war against The John Birch Society.
He has not destroyed the JBS as he had intended to do. Yet every chapter not formed because of
his efforts meant less resistance against encroaching tyranny. Moreover, he was undoubtedly far
more effective than any liberal journalist could have been at stunting the growth of the JBS since
he ostensibly held the same core beliefs as the conservative constituency the JBS set out to reach
and organize.

I was a part of that constituency before I had heard of either the JBS or Buckley. After leaving
the Marine Corps in 1960, I started employment with an electronics firm in Massachusetts. A
friend at work introduced me to Buckley’s National Review before the year ended, and I loved it.
The conservatism I’d been reared on (my Dad was a fan of John T. Flynn, Joseph McCarthy,
Westbrook Pegler, George Sokolsky, and Robert Taft) enjoyed a revival after several years of
lying dormant.

Early in 1961, like all Americans of that period, I learned of the existence of The John Birch
Society. The mass media informed me and every other American that it was a secret, fascist,
un-American collection of crazies who threatened the American dream. My own reaction to what
I heard and read was sorrow that such an organization could ever have been formed in my
country.

The radio, television, newspapers, and magazines continued to lambaste the JBS throughout the
entire year. But Buckley and National Review said nothing, and I wondered why. Finally, in
February 1962, the magazine published a six-page editorial attacking Robert Welch.18
According to Buckley, Welch was a dangerous screwball who was unworthy of the many good
1
people who had signed on with the Society.

Having already been accused of being “one of those Birchers” by co-workers who heard me
protesting the liberalism coming out of Washington, I developed an antipathy toward the JBS.
This organization, I thought, had given liberals an opportunity to tarnish any conservative. So I
read those six pages more than once, embraced Buckley’s attitude, and wrote a short note
thanking him for his explanation.

I was truly surprised when my letter appeared in the magazine.19 The very day it was delivered
to my home, a letter also arrived from a JBS member who obviously had seen the magazine a
day or so earlier. By simply noting my city and state appearing along with my name, he found
my address easily enough in the telephone book. His letter essentially asked a simple question:
Was I basing my attitude about Robert Welch because of what he had stated, or because of what
others had stated about him?

Good question, I thought. Other than quotes appearing in the mass media, and the few selections
chosen by Buckley, I had never seen anything written by Welch. So, I wrote back to the JBS
member and offered to look at whatever he thought I ought to see. My intention at that point was
to show him how wrong both Welch and he were. But I found the requested information to be
well-written, reasonable, tasteful, and somewhat compelling. Still, I wasn’t convinced that Welch
was right and Buckley was wrong. I decided to do some more digging.

I soon found out what being a JBS member means. The man who wrote to me kept in contact. He
invited me to a meeting, and I attended with two curious friends. The meeting wasn’t anything
special, but we chipped in to buy a set of the “One Dozen Candles,” the paperbound, out-of-print
books Welch had republished. Among these, I found John T. Flynn’s While You Slept, Arthur
Bliss Lane’s I Saw Poland Betrayed, George Racey Jordan’s From Major Jordan’s Diaries, and
other truly important books I had never come across. As I read these, I felt gratitude that Robert
Welch had made them available. When I read others, both my gratitude and my concern for my
country rose in tandem.

But I also wondered about Welch’s condemnation of Dwight Eisenhower. Hardly any criticism
of the Society failed to mention Welch’s startling conclusion about the former president. “What
did Welch actually say?” I asked when next contacted. And I was told that he’d written a
300-page letter that hadn’t been published. I wondered silently if it hadn’t been published
because it couldn’t be defended. So I asked a further question: “Why would you affiliate with a
man who strongly condemned the former president without knowing exactly what he said or why
he said it?” And the answer to that piqued my curiosity even more. The JBS member on the
phone responded, “I already know enough about Eisenhower to know that the image he has been
given doesn’t match his performance.”

I had served for three years as a Marine officer while Ike was in the White House. He had been
my commander in chief. Now I was being asked to conclude that I had been seriously
ill-informed about what had been occurring during those years and several before. Even though I
had by now read some of those out-of-print books and become increasingly concerned about
much of what they related, I decided at that point to let the Birchers go their way, and I’d go
1
mine. But the plucky JBS member gave me a copy of The Blue Book of The John Birch Society
and, after I read it, my concerns for my country grew more intense. Nevertheless, the Eisenhower
issue held me back.

In the fall of 1963, another JBS member called to inform me that Robert Welch’s book about
Eisenhower, entitled The Politician, was now available. “How can I get a copy?” I asked. “It
costs eight dollars,” came the response. I honestly could not afford an extra eight dollars.
(Remember, this was 1963.) I had a wonderful wife, three babies, a mortgage, and a car payment.
We were a very happy family, but we were living on the edge. So I told him I’d get back to him
soon.

Several months later, the two-dollar version of The Politician became available. I met still
another JBS member, bought a copy from him, read it over the next few evenings, and decided
right then and there that 1) Robert Welch wasn’t a screwball; 2) Buckley was dead wrong about
Welch; 3) I’d been deceived about Ike; and 4) I wanted to join The John Birch Society.

JBS Accomplishments
Over the ensuing three decades plus, my appreciation for Robert Welch and the crusade he
launched has soared. Having been a part of the organization for most of my adult life, I am
firmly convinced that Major Diaz was not exaggerating when he said that a single JBS chapter
could have stopped Castro from coming to power. I also believe that we would be living in
slavery today if Robert Welch had not founded the JBS and tens of thousands of members had
not rallied to the cause, sometimes exhibiting the dedication usually associated with martyrs.
And I believe the JBS today is the only force on Earth capable of preserving our freedoms. I
cannot prove these things in the same way that a mathematician can prove a mathematical
formula. But I believe them nonetheless. My belief has been shaped over many years of
observing members in action. I know what Birchers can accomplish. I know that the only
ingredient the organization needs in order to rout this “Master Conspiracy” (as Robert Welch
identified it) is more members.

These statements will undoubtedly seem strange to anyone who hasn’t seen the Birch Society at
work as I have. After all, the major media says little about the JBS these days, and when they do,
they oftentimes dismiss it as an artifact of a bygone era. But press coverage should not be
equated with accomplishment, particularly when the press views the JBS as something to be
ignored, even scorned. In fact, treating the JBS as insignificant is merely a sophisticated
extension of the smear campaign leveled against the organization in the 1960s. From the point of
view of the smear artists, one problem with giving the JBS any attention is that some people may
examine the group and decide its worth for themselves, just like I and many others did during the
’60s. The smear artists’ solution: Treat the JBS as if Buckley really did kill it! Or, when it is
mentioned, pretend that it never had any real impact and is now a ghost of its former self.

Occasionally some truth about the organization’s cumulative accomplishments seeps out. Some
of it can be found even in mainstream media articles intended to smear the organization. Such
was the case when the May 13, 1996 Christian Science Monitor published a rant by Ira Straus
entitled, “When Conspiracy Theory Replaces Thought.” Straus should know something about
how the world works, since he was once executive director of the Establishment-spawned
1
Association to Unite the Democracies (which seeks a federation of democracies, a stepping stone
to world government). In his Monitor article, he complained:

For decades, the John Birch Society has spread word of the Conspiracy: The
international bankers who pull all the strings. The ones who really control both the
Communist conspiracy and the United States government. The Trilateral Commission.
The Federal Reserve, which is ruining our money. The Council on Foreign Relations
— psst, they’re out to destroy the Constitution, take away our guns, and enslave us in a
United Nations One-World Communist government. Their code words: “New World
Order.”

So runs the Birchist fantasy, spun out in dozens of books distributed in millions of
copies. An estimated 5 million to 10 million Americans believe this stuff. Tens of
millions more are under its influence.20

Straus’s estimate of JBS effectiveness could be grossly understated. The same year his article
appeared, the University of Virginia and the Gallup Organization produced a joint study entitled,
The State of Disunion: 1996 Survey of American Political Culture. The study included
face-to-face interviews with a national sampling of more than 2,000 adults. According to its
conclusions, 77 percent of Americans agree that “the government is pretty much run by a few big
interests looking out for themselves.” The survey additionally found that “one quarter of the
population do repeatedly express the conviction that the government is run by a conspiracy; and
one in ten Americans strongly subscribes to this view.”21

In his article, Straus disparaged Americans who hold such a viewpoint as “paranoids,”
“crackpots,” and even “dangerous — capable of blowing up federal buildings.” He fumed:
“Conspiracy theory is doing America real harm. Long incubating underground, it has grown into
the greatest enslaver of human minds since communism. It irrationalizes thinking on every issue.
It kills. It turns millions of Americans against their own country.”22

This vicious diatribe stands in sharp contrast to the University of Virginia/Gallup survey, which
found: “[Their viewpoint] does not lead ‘strong conspiracy’ types to reject the American system
as a whole or to withdraw from political participation altogether.... Not only are those who
suspect an elite conspiracy likely to vote, but they are actually more engaged politically than
other Americans, if writing letters and discussing politics is considered political engagement.”
Moreover, they “are as likely as anyone to say that the U.S. is the greatest country in the
world.”23 Unfortunately, not enough of these good Americans are involved in an organized,
concerted-action program to expose the Conspiracy, or the problem would already have been
solved. Buckley has always worked to keep these individuals away from The John Birch Society.

The Society has played a crucial role in creating understanding about the existence, objectives,
and modus operandi of the Conspiracy for global control. The Conspiracy’s key objective is to
create a world government under the United Nations, ostensibly for the benefit of all mankind
but in reality for the benefit of the Insiders who would rule the world. The UN threat is not in
competition with the Communist threat but is in fact another route to the same end. It is no
exaggeration to say that a UN-controlled world would be a Communist-style world (in substance
1
if not in name). Under the UN, the Iron Curtain that once divided Europe would, in effect, engulf
the entire planet.

During the height of the Cold War, many good Americans could easily detect the external threat
of Communism but not the internal threat of betrayal by leaders who supposedly had America’s
best interests at heart. But only our leaders can surrender American sovereignty to the UN.
Welch saw the danger early on, warning at the JBS founding meeting in 1958 that part of the
conspiratorial plan “is to induce the gradual surrender of American sovereignty, piece by piece
and step by step, to various international organizations — of which the United Nations is the
outstanding but far from the only example....”24 Soon thereafter he launched the Society’s “Get
US out! of the United Nations” campaign — a campaign that has not only continued to the
present day but has recently been intensified.

During the 1970s and ’80s, the JBS delivered to Congress over 11 million petition signatures
seeking to Get US out! of the UN. The process of collecting those signatures included the
creation of much-needed understanding. It is impossible to measure the cumulative impact of the
Society’s decades-long Get US out! campaign on public opinion, but it must be profound.
Undoubtedly, the Society’s campaign has been responsible for millions of Americans rejecting
the dangerous notion that the UN is “mankind’s last, best hope for peace” and concluding instead
that the U.S. should withdraw.

This awakening has also had a major impact on Congress. There was a time when the UN was so
widely trusted that no more than a congressman or two would have dared called for U.S.
withdrawal from the world body. But attitudes have changed. In 1997, the Get US out! campaign
won a limited victory when, for the first time in the history of our nation’s involvement in the
world organization, Congress voted on a measure calling for our nation to withdraw. Fifty-four
members of the House voted for it.25 Then, in 1999, Congress voted on a measure that would
have cut off U.S. funding to the UN, thereby effectively ending U.S. participation. This time, 74
congressmen voted yea.26 Both measures were introduced by Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas),
who commented in 1998 that “the beneficial educational impact of the John Birch Society over
the past four decades would be hard to overestimate.”27

It would take many pages to document all the accomplishments of the JBS since its founding in
1958. Because of space limitations, a couple examples from recent years will have to suffice:

• Killing Anthony Lake’s nomination: After President Clinton nominated Anthony Lake to be
director of the Central Intelligence Agency in 1996, The New American (our Birch-affiliated
magazine) published an important article exposing his subversive background, including his
connections to the KGB-linked Institute for Policy Studies.28 Birchers swung expeditiously into
action, alerting others about Lake’s background, especially key members of the House and
Senate. The result was the scuttling of the nomination, and the Birch effort did not go unnoticed
in the Establishment press. During the height of the campaign, a January 17, 1997 New York
Times lead editorial sought to salvage Lake’s selection. It noted: “The John Birch Society and
other opponents are busily assembling a Lake dossier — widely circulated on the Internet — that
depicts him as a dangerous radical.”29 Then, an op-ed piece by Douglas Brinkley in the
1
February 10th New York Times complained: “After Mr. Lake was nominated for Director of
Central Intelligence, the John Birch Society and other anti-government fringe groups launched a
smear campaign.... In an error-ridden article in The New American … William F. Jasper …
found a pattern of anti-Americanism.... The diatribe would not be worth mentioning except that
its ludicrous charges have been picked up, in slightly milder fashion, by mainstream conservative
publications like The Washington Times....”30

• Impeaching President Clinton: The Society launched its “Impeach Clinton Now!” campaign in
November 1998, months before the scandal involving Monica Lewinsky surfaced. The Society’s
network of A.C.T.I.O.N. (Activate Congress To Improve Our Nation) committees focused on the
impeachable offense of bribery. A.C.T.I.O.N. provided solid evidence that the president had
accepted funds for his re-election campaign from the Chinese regime and its American high-tech
collaborators. In response, Mr. Clinton arranged for shipments to Beijing of militarily sensitive
equipment in a scandal known as “Chinagate.” Although Clinton was not impeached for
Chinagate, it is likely he wouldn’t have been impeached at all without the Birch effort.

Shortly before the House voted to impeach Bill Clinton, the Washington Post noted that “early
impeachment activists” included “the leaders of the John Birch Society,” and that, “together,
their success is a demonstration of how a determined and ideologically committed group can
change the course of history....”31 Congressman Bob Barr (R-Ga.), one of the early voices
calling for impeachment, noted: “I don’t think we would have even gotten an impeachment
inquiry vote without the efforts of A.C.T.I.O.N. and other grassroots mobilization efforts.”32
Although Clinton was acquitted by the Senate, his impeachment sent a powerful message
regarding abuse of power.

Both these successes were achieved decades after the Establishment fired its big guns at the JBS,
supposedly leaving it for dead. The Establishment’s number one gunner was Buckley, who had
told friends: “I am going to destroy The John Birch Society.”33 How successful was Buckley?
Not terribly — not when the organization he targeted for destruction is given credit for
impeaching an elected president for the first time in American history.*

The JBS is now focusing most of its efforts on getting the U.S. out of the UN. To those who
scoff that this is an unrealistic goal, I say, “That’s exactly what the naysayers were claiming with
regard to our efforts to impeach President Clinton.”

Looking Ahead
When I joined The John Birch Society, I was still puzzled as to why William F. Buckley would
attack such a worthwhile organization. It took me many years to conclude that Buckley knew
exactly what he was doing. He attacked the JBS not because of its weaknesses but because of its
strengths. He attacked it because it stood in the way of the internationalism and statism he was
ushering in from the Right. He attacked it because it offered a genuine alternative to the
controlled debate provided by Establishment liberals and conservatives. That controlled debate
presents Americans with lose-lose choices that will lead, ultimately, to total government and
world government.

Buckley is now in the twilight of his life. He has done most of the damage he could ever hope to
1
do. Yet the counterfeit conservatism he has minted is now being circulated by others, including
William Bennett, Rush Limbaugh, William Kristol, and George W. Bush. The stakes in the
struggle haven’t changed, even though many of the participants have. Many years ago, in his
Commonweal article, Buckley recommended “a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores … and
the attendant centralization of power in Washington” as the means to fight Communism during
the Cold War.34 Today’s neoconservatives are calling for police state powers at home and a
coalition of nations under the UN in order to win the war against terrorism. As the French say:
“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose” (“The more things change, the more they remain the
same”).

Unlike Buckley, the JBS may still be in the early morning hours of a long life, with its most
productive years in the future. The organization struggled to survive after Robert Welch passed
away in 1985, but over the past decade a new leadership team has strengthened its vitality and
spurred it on to significant growth with a lengthening list of notable victories.

I am proud to be a part of that team. The key to ultimate success is not to “reinvent the wheel”
but instead to focus on the organizational and philosophical principles Robert Welch established
for The John Birch Society in the first place. By creating a principle-centered organization,
Welch fully intended that the Society would thrive for decades if not centuries after his death,
and that it would remain faithful to the purposes that attracted the early generations of Birchers.

The principles on which the JBS is based have given the organization tremendous resiliency and
have kept it on course. As in Robert Welch’s day, the JBS has the potential to expose the
Conspiracy and to reverse America’s slide into slavery. Yet that potential will only be realized if
enough good Americans join the organization and become involved while freedom still exists.

Ironically, the top conspirators may recognize The John Birch Society’s potential more than
some JBS members do. The top Insiders know what a dedicated few can accomplish; they know
what the JBS has already accomplished; and they know how much more the JBS could
accomplish if it were to double, triple, or quadruple in size.

As the enemies of freedom move closer to their final destination, their true intent will become
more obvious and more Americans will realize that something is wrong at the top. The Society
stands poised to gather these individuals into its midst, deepen their newly acquired
understanding, and enlist them in the Society’s action program.

I invite readers to contact The John Birch Society. As Robert Welch often said, “Come join us in
our proud companionship and in our epic undertaking.”

* Andrew Johnson was impeached, but was not an elected president. He filled the vacancy
created by the assassination of Abraham Lincoln.

Appendix — Ignoring the Constitution, Promoting the

1
Establishment, and More

During his long career, William Buckley has led a sizable segment of American conservatives
away from adherence to both the supreme law of the land and our nation’s traditional ethical and
moral standards. He has eased the way for liberals and internationalists, and for agents of a
conspiracy whose existence he essentially denies, to skirt the Constitution, wage a corrosive
culture war, and speed the nation along the path to a new world order.

Government officials are required to swear a solemn oath to uphold the Constitution. The first
test for any politician as he considers any legislative proposal should be: Does it fall within the
strictly defined boundaries established by the Constitution? Sadly, however, a chasm exists
between what is constitutional — and what has been labeled conservative by Buckley and those
who have been enticed to follow his lead.

Recall that Establishment spokesman Richard Goodwin lauded him in 1967 for being the Great
Society’s “responsible force on the right.” Time magazine quoted Buckley’s supposedly startled
reply: “I’m going to dissolve at this rate. I’m not used to being treated so kindly.”1

Also in 1967, Larry L. King wondered in Harper’s magazine: “Why is Bill Buckley the social
darling of so many Establishment liberals?”2 He named such leftist luminaries as Norman
Mailer, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Murray Kempton. They told King that they liked Buckley
for his wit, his willingness to parry with them, and above all, the “responsible” way he conducted
himself.

Buckley Defines Conservatism

As long ago as October 21, 1964, Buckley mused philosophically about conservatism in a speech
delivered at the New York Conservative Party’s anniversary dinner. He proclaimed:

A conservative is concerned simultaneously with two things, the first being the shape of
the visionary or paradigmatic society towards which we should labor; the second, the
speed with which it is thinkable to advance towards that ideal society and the
foreknowledge that any advance upon it is necessarily asymtotic; not, at least until the
successful completion of the Society for the Abolition of Original Sin.

Many in his audience must have winced for at least two reasons: 1) his musings were ethereal to
the point of being devoid of understanding; and 2) his message, for those who understood it,
portrayed conservatism as a hopelessly quixotic, never-to-be-realized dream. He continued:

How this movement, considering the contrary tug of history, has got as far as it has got,
is something that surpasses the understanding of natural pessimists like myself. Even so,
I am guilty of yielding, from time to time, to the temptation to overstress the ideal, often
at moments when the prudential should weigh most heavily. I urge you to join with me
in trying to resist the temptation.3

Buckley’s approved biographer, John Judis, always wavered between sympathy for Buckley’s
1
brand of conservatism and his own preference for doctrinaire liberalism. But he believed that this
speech announced Buckley’s willingness to abandon principle:

These two insights — that conservatism, even on the eve of Goldwater’s humiliation,
was on the rise, but that conservative politics, to succeed, must mediate between the
ideal and the prudential — would inform Buckley’s politics over the next decades and,
through his writings, would influence a great many conservative politicians. Buckley’s
speech to the New York Conservatives marked his final break with his own radical and
pessimistic past.4

Continuing, Judis attributed Buckley’s new course to his “becoming a public figure for whom
the conservative movement was merely one audience among several.” But he failed to offer an
opinion about the identity of who those other audiences might be. While no one would disagree
that Buckley had indeed become “a public figure,” some would take issue with Judis about the
timing of Buckley’s departure from “the ideal,” believing that he had never adhered to any
rock-solid standard.

Response to the Soviet Threat

America’s internal enemies have unrelentingly labored for a vast expansion of federal power, the
watering-down and eventual nullification of the Constitution, and a transfer of national
independence to a one-world, UN-controlled supra-government. History teaches that similar
goals have frequently been attained during war, or in response to either a credible or contrived
foreign threat. In Essay No. 8 of The Federalist, Alexander Hamilton warned:

Safety from external danger is the most powerful director of national conduct. Even the
ardent love of liberty will, after a time, give way to its dictates. The violent destruction
of life and property incident to war, the continual effort and alarm attendant on a state of
continual danger, will compel nations the most attached to liberty to resort for repose
and security to institutions which have a tendency to destroy their civil and political
rights. To be more safe, they at length become willing to run the risk of being less free.5

Faced with peril from a U.S.-fed Soviet monster following World War II, the American people
of our country were persuaded to accept increased taxation, burgeoning federal controls, foreign
entanglements, and steady contravention of the Constitution. This is precisely what Buckley had
urged in 1952: “Big Government for the duration,” “a totalitarian bureaucracy,” and
“centralization of power in Washington.” These were his early responses to a Soviet threat; and
he continued to offer them.

Still, Buckley and his agenda faced a daunting problem: The Soviet Union could not be
presented as a credible menace to our nation if the American people became aware that the West,
especially the United States, was its chief benefactor. Robert Welch and The John Birch Society
began arguing that the way to combat Soviet sabre-rattling and subversion was to stop helping
the Communist regime, thereby allowing it to collapse from its inherent shortcomings. From
hindsight, it is not surprising that Buckley launched the full-scale attack on Welch and the
Society we described in Chapter 9.

1
Indefensible Positions
Buckley’s career is replete with compromises, departures from the Constitution, support for the
UN, protection of pseudo-conservatives as they implement the liberal agenda, and affronts to
traditional moral norms. We have already presented many examples of his departures from the
conservatism of his father. Here, in chronological order, we offer some additional selections:

July 1962 syndicated column:

In response to the Supreme Court decision banning prayer in public schools,

Buckley recommended “adopting a constitutional amendment clarifying the
difference between an established religion (which no one wants) and established
non-religion (which is the end-meaning of the court’s secularist breakthrough).”6

Such a position implies that the High Court had authorization to rule as it did, that the
Constitution and not the Court was deficient, and that the federal government should involve
itself in education. All three assumptions are seriously flawed from a conservative and
constitutional perspective.

January 1969 syndicated column:

Buckley lauded the “heroism” and “idealism” of Norman Thomas and referred to
him as a “genial, talented, opinionated American.”

A six-time presidential candidate of the Socialist Party, Norman Thomas espoused scores of
projects launched by the Communist Party USA from its founding in 1920 until his death in
1969. On the occasion of Thomas’s 80th birthday, Communist Party leaders Gus Hall and Henry
Winston praised him in the official party newspaper, The Worker, for his lifetime of work for
“socialism, our common goal.”7 But Buckley singled him out for praise.

January 1971 syndicated column:

President Richard Nixon had recently startled ABC-TV newsman Howard K.

Smith by claiming during an interview: “I am now a Keynesian in economics.”8

Buckley sought to defuse the resulting uproar and defend Nixon from the charge leveled by
many conservatives that the President had admitted he was a socialist. He even disagreed that
anyone should be upset because Nixon had identified himself with Keynes, whose policies had
led to a profound leftward shift during the Franklin Roosevelt administration. Buckley admitted
in this column that Keynes was “the apostle of central economic management.” He further
contended: “Mr. Nixon’s remark to Mr. Smith is not quite so striking a declaration of heresy....”
In defending Nixon, Buckley was echoing the position of his very close friend and decades-long
skiing partner, leftist Harvard Professor John Kenneth Galbraith (CFR at the time). Galbraith, a
devoted Keynesian, had earlier enthused about Mr. Nixon’s “great new thrust to socialism.”9

July 1971 syndicated column dealing with the possibility of federal imposition of wage and price
controls:
1
 Buckley wrote: “The classicists insist it wouldn’t work, that indeed it would cause
great harm. I wonder, mightn’t it be worth trying?”10

To suggest that government should establish controls over wages and prices is to condone the
notion that government should dominate business transactions, including each employee’s wage
and benefit compensation. It constitutes abandonment of any pretense of conservative principle.

Buckley’s involvement in Starr Broadcasting, 1971:

Several of Starr’s radio stations were broadcasting a continuous stream of “acid

rock” music presented by disk jockeys who applauded the drug culture and
condemned any call for a U.S. victory in the Vietnam War.

A 1971 New York magazine article by Richard Reingold pointed out that Buckley, the chairman
of Starr Broadcasting, “employed hippie disk jockeys and turned-on disk jockeys and announcers
who, when not advertising head shops and skin flicks, read editorials deploring the war in
Vietnam.”11 In his book Cruising Speed, Buckley revealed his close relationship with Peter
Starr: “My family apart, I am as fond of Peter as of any human being. Indeed I feel for him that
special affection I reserve for anyone who has made me a million dollars.”12 Starr was the key
person behind the promotion of drugs, pornography, and anti-Vietnam rhetoric emanating from
the Buckley-chaired broadcasting company.

November 1971 syndicated column:

In the immediate aftermath of the UN General Assembly’s vote to expel Nationalist

China (Taiwan) and admit Communist China, Buckley advised that “the United
Nations has its uses, and the United States would be mistaken recklessly to
withdraw from it.”13

The UN, whose supporters claim that it is a guardian of peace and human rights, confirmed the
contrary when it welcomed the bloody-handed Communist Chinese government and booted out
the Free Chinese. The move was another reason why the U.S. should withdraw from the world
body, but Buckley recommended instead merely refraining from casting votes in the General
Assembly. What that move might have accomplished, he didn’t say.

National Review September 1, 1972:

“The editors of National Review prefer the re-election of Richard Nixon and Spiro
Agnew next November.”14

During his first term, President Nixon had greatly increased government’s cost, imposed wage
and price controls on business and industry, completely severed the U.S. dollar from its historic
link to gold, expanded treasonous aid and trade going to the Kremlin, visited Communist China,
boasted “I’m an internationalist” when questioned if he were a conservative or a liberal, glorified
the United Nations, and followed a liberal and world-government-promoting agenda virtually
1
without deviation. By endorsing the Nixon re-election bid, Buckley placed his stamp of approval
on all of this.

Buckley’s 1974 book United Nations Journal:

At the request of CFR member John Scali, permanent representative of the United
States to the United Nations, Buckley accepted appointment as a delegate to the
General Assembly. He served as the U.S. representative on the Human Rights
Committee.

Buckley described Scali’s motivation behind the request: “ … he told me that the UN was not
very newsworthy, and not very important, but that it could be made more important, and more
important to the United States and the West, and that people who had given up on it shouldn’t
give up on it, they should learn something more about it, and its uses — its strengths as well as
its weaknesses. Meanwhile, he said, it needs a higher public visibility.”15

Acceptance of the UN post, and the book he wrote about his experience, gave a boost to the
organization, especially among conservatives beguiled by Buckley. Amidst mild,
non-threatening and minor criticism of the world body, Buckley concluded that the UN serves a
worthwhile purpose and that our nation should not withdraw.

April 1977 syndicated column:

Buckley went on record favoring Senate ratification of the UN’s dangerous

Genocide Convention.

This Convention was first proposed in 1948. By 1977, it had been ratified by 75 nations,
including the Soviet Union, which had no fear of its being used against the Kremlin because the
Convention addresses only crimes against “national, ethnic, racial or religious groups.” Soviet
crimes of a genocidal nature had been classified as “political” by the Soviet leaders, a category
not included in the Genocide Convention. The Convention has the potential for targeting anyone,
including Americans, who might be falsely accused of genocide (the term is defined so broadly
that it covers even “mental anguish”) against ethnic, racial or religious groups. Bolstered by
Buckley’s support in several columns16 and President Reagan’s backing, the Senate ratified this
Convention in 1986, and the implementing legislation was approved two years later by Congress.

March 1980 syndicated column:

Buckley scoffed at criticism of the Trilateral Commission and defended

Trilateralist Jimmy Carter, who had filled top posts in his administration with
fellow Trilateralists.

Founded by David Rockefeller (CFR) in 1973, the Commission was first proposed by Zbigniew
Brzezinski (CFR) in his 1970 book, Between Two Ages. The Columbia University professor
praised Marxism, claimed that America was becoming obsolete, appealed for central planning,
and recommended the formation of a “community of the developed nations … through a variety
1
of indirect ties and already developing limitations on national sovereignty.” Brzezinski then
called openly for “the goal of world government.”17 The result? With Brzezinski at his side in
1973, Rockefeller enlisted close to 300 members for the new Trilateral Commission whose goal,
paralleling that of the Council on Foreign Relations, calls for nations to merge into the world
government sought by Brzezinski and Rockefeller. President Carter, one of the first members of
the Commission, selected Brzezinski as his Director of National Security. Yet Buckley saw no
reason to be concerned about the Trilateralists.

September 1983 column:

Buckley agreed with the official U.S. and USSR responses to the downing by a
Soviet fighter pilot of Korean Air Lines 007. Its 269 passengers and crew, never
seen again, included Congressman Larry McDonald, then chairman of The John
Birch Society. He wrote: “The only thing we know for absolute sure that has come
out of this is that never again will a Korean airliner carelessly overfly Russian
territory. And that, ladies and gentlemen, was the point the Soviet Union sought to
make. It has made it.”18

By so writing, Buckley cavalierly excused an act of extreme barbarism.

Knight Ridder News Service dispatch, April 1986:

“Five of America’s most prominent authors have told a federal pornography

commission that attempts to curb sexually explicit passages in this country’s
literature would infringe on the freedom of writers to portray the truth.” One of
the five writers who testified against curbing the use of sexually explicit writing
was William Buckley.

Buckley might legitimately have questioned where the Constitution authorizes the federal
government to establish a commission on pornography, but instead chose to fight a different
battle, that of defending “eroticism.” In his letter to the commission, cited in the Knight Ridder
dispatch, Buckley argued: “Sexual union as described pornographically is a corruption of
eroticism,” implying that eroticism in literature (such as appears in his own novels) is
acceptable.19

August 1987 syndicated column:

Buckley called for a constitutional convention for the purpose of limiting federal
spending.

Even after expressing awareness about the threat to the entire Constitution should there be such a
convention, Buckley concluded with a plea to “get on with it … and we’ll give them [the
Constitution’s opponents] a nice new Constitution.” But there is no need to amend the
Constitution to limit federal spending; Congress can curb spending whenever a majority of its
members have enough backbone to do so. Were a constitutional convention held, the
congressional power to limit spending (and all other congressional powers) could be transferred
1
to the executive branch, and all other limitations on power could be eliminated. Indeed, the entire
Constitution as we know it could be scrapped. Buckley expressed concern about such threats in
his column, but called for a convention and “a nice new Constitution” anyway.20

Buckley’s 1990 book, Gratitude: Reflections on What We Owe to Our Country, called for
compulsory national service. He wrote:

“Now, if you accept the notion of compulsory schooling, then you’re saying that
society has a certain role alongside parents in qualifying somebody to act as a
citizen. Who said that should be confined to learning arithmetic and
geography?”21

The notion of compulsory schooling is itself alien to the principles of liberty which undergirded
the formation of this nation. And Buckley’s proposal for national service amounts to an
oxymoronic “mandatory voluntarism” — a key element of the socialism practiced in Hitler’s
Germany and Mussolini’s Italy. It would force productive citizens into government-created
projects. Backed by liberals Bill Clinton, Michael Dukakis and Jimmy Carter, who were
delighted to have the support of “a major conservative thinker,” the cost to taxpayers for
implementing this completely unconsitutional boondoggle is estimated to reach $30 billion per
year, another detail ignored by Buckley.

April 1991 syndicated column:

Buckley campaigned for a federal program that would “induce 80,000 Americans,
on entering college, to pledge four years in the Police Corps in return for financial
aid toward their college education.”22

Serious students of history know that there is grave danger in federal control of police work.
Germany’s Gestapo, Soviet Russia’s KGB, Communist China’s state security force, and other
centrally controlled enforcement agencies have always provided the muscle that keeps
totalitarian regimes in power. If the federal government is allowed to supply 80,000 police to
departments across the nation, it will have taken a huge step toward gaining control of the police,
and a huge step on the road to totalitarian control of our own nation.

March 1992 syndicated column:

Buckley urged the U.S. government to provide Russia with direct foreign aid
giveaways, a rescheduling of debt, and “tens of billions of dollars for currency
stabilization through the International Monetary Fund.”

He admitted that “the American people are against foreign aid” but maintained that their
resistance had to be overcome. He ignored such issues as constitutional authorization for any
form of foreign aid (there is none), the near certainty of adding more red ink to the already
enormous federal debt, and the questionable reliability of Boris Yeltsin and other recycled
Bolsheviks. Buckley helped to neutralize conservative opposition to these proposals, all of which
were implemented during the Bush and Clinton administrations.
1
April 1992 syndicated column:

Buckley called for the legalizing of prostitution, claiming, “Surely the reasonable
approach is to license the activity.”23

America was built on a system of laws, but also on a system of moral and cultural standards that
do not countenance public approval of prostitution.

July 1992 syndicated column:

Buckley advocated passage of a new federal restriction on the right to keep and
bear arms. He wrote: “It is time that conservatives gave up fanatical
interpretations of the Second Amendment.”24

It has been rightly stated that any government fearing arms in the hands of its citizens is a
government that should itself be feared. Here, Buckley further reveals his disdain for the
Constitution and the God-given rights it protects. The first sentence of Article I of the
Constitution states: “All legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress....”
(Emphasis added.) Clearly, Congress has no law-making power other than what has been “herein
granted” in the Constitution. There is nothing in the body of that document authorizing the
federal government to make laws relating to the private ownership of firearms. The Second
Amendment underscores the absence of any such authorization. And, as Senior Fellow at the
Virginia-based Future of Freedom Foundation Sheldon Richman has written, “Gun control runs
aground on this simple fact: People who would use guns to break laws would break laws to use
guns.”25

December 1997 syndicated column:

“Conservatives must not dig in on the assumption that any great program about
which Bill Clinton is enthusiastic is flighty or dangerous or both. The Kyoto
Protocol will be very costly and very inconvenient in ways not even discerned. But
this is the moment at which conservatives should exhibit two traits we like to think
of as our own: the one being fortitude; the other, optimism.”

The Kyoto Protocol, hammered out in 1997 at a UN-sponsored conference and subsequently
agreed to by the Clinton administration, has (as we write) yet to be ratified by the Senate. It
would force drastic reductions in the use of fossil fuels within the U.S. for industrial and personal
purposes, ostensibly to combat alleged “global warming.”

According to Wharton Econometric Forecasting Associates at the University of Pennsylvania’s

Wharton School, implementation of the proposal would the cost the U.S. 1.8 million jobs by
2010. Weather and climate researcher Dr. Hugh Ellsaesser, a retired official with the
Atmospheric Science Division at California’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, claims
that because it exempts 140 developing nations, the Kyoto Protocol would involve “transfers of
trillions of dollars from the developed to the developing world” via various UN agencies.26
1
In addition to objections based on economic considerations, a growing army of atmospheric
scientists has continued to insist that the Earth is not warming, so there is no need for this
draconian treaty. Dr. Frederick Seitz, a past president of the National Academy of Sciences,
stated such a view in the foreword to Dr. S. Fred Singer’s Hot Talk, Cold Science.27 But “Mr.
Conservative” once again urged conservatives to support a proposal that will, if implemented,
harm the U.S. dramatically, bring our nation more in line with the world government aspirations
of UN partisans, undermine the Constitution, and diminish the freedom of Americans.

Endnotes

Introduction

1. Thomas R. Eddlem, “Did You Know?” The New American, October 19, 1992, p. 38.
2. John Judis, “William F. Buckley, Jr., The Consummate Conservative,” The Progressive,
September 1981, p. 25.
3. John Reddy, “Bill Buckley: Blithe Spirit of the Right,” Reader’s Digest, September 1971,
p. 116.
4. Jeffrey Bell, “Mr. Nixon’s Sometime Friends,” The Nation, July 24, 1972, p. 46.
5. Josh Getlin, “King of the Right,” Los Angeles Times, November 11, 1990, p. E1.
6. Nathan Glazer, “The Enmity Within,” New York Times Book Review, September 27,
1992, p. 3.
7. Marvin Liebman, Coming Out Conservative (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1992), p.
11.
8. William F. Buckley, Jr., “The Party and the Deep Blue Sea,” The Commonweal, January
25, 1952, pp 392–393.
9. William F. Buckley, Jr., Republished in Happy Days Were Here Again: Reflections of a
Libertarian Journalist (New York: Random House, 1993), p. 212.
10. Ibid., p. 124.
11. Los Angeles Times, November 3, 1971.
12. Jacob M. Braude, Life-Time Speaker’s Encyclopedia (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice
Hall, 1962); and G. Edward Griffin, The Fearful Master: A Second Look at the United Nations
(Belmont, Mass., Western Islands, 1964).
13. Jefferson’s draft of the Kentucky Resolutions. See The Republic of Letters: The
Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and James Madison 1776–1826, Vol. II (New York:
W.W. Norton and Co., 1995), p. 1083.
14. John B. Judis, William F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives (New York:
Simon and Shuster, 1988).
15. Donald Kagan, “The Revitalization of the Right,” Wall Street Journal, May 20, 1988, p.
17.
16. Allan Brinkley, “The Conservative At Sea,” The New Republic, May 30, 1988, p. 27.
17. Mark Feeney, “Gadfly and Godfather of Conservatism,” Boston Sunday Globe, May 1,
1988, p. 121.
1
18. John C. Chalberg, “Patron Saint,” Chronicles, November 1988, p. 32.
19. Godfrey Hodgson, “‘I Don’t Stoop. I Merely Conquer.’” New York Times Book Review,
May 15, 1988, p. 12.
20. Katherine Roberts, “500 Boxes at Yale,” New York Times Book Review, May 15, 1988, p.
12.
21. James Nuechterlein, “William F. Buckley, Jr.,” Commentary, June 1988, p. 31.

Chapter 1
Buckley and the Establishment

1. Jeremiah V. Murphy, “It Was Friendly But Not For Long,” Boston Globe, January 12,
1971, p. 20.
2. Edith Kermit Roosevelt, “Elite Clique Holds Power in U.S.,” Indianapolis News,
December 23, 1961.
3. Woodrow Wilson, The New Freedom (New York: Doubleday, 1913), pp. 13–14.
4. Francis X. Gannon, Biographical Dictionary Of The Left, Vol. I (Belmont, Mass.:
Western Islands, 1969), p. 34.
5. “William F. Buckley: Conservatism Can Be Fun,” Time, November 3, 1967, p. 72.
6. Medford Evans, “Welch & Buckley,” American Opinion, March 1985, p. 90.
7. “National Review Hits 40,” National Review, December 11, 1995, p. 105.
8. Council on Foreign Relations “File Memorandum — re: William F. Buckley, Jr.,” July
12, 1974, Robert Welch University archives.
9. “Notes & Asides,” National Review, August 2, 1974, pp. 854–855.
10. John B. Judis, William F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives (New York:
Simon and Shuster, 1988), p. 326.
11. Council on Foreign Relations Annual Report, 1976, p. 125.
12. Council on Foreign Relations Annual Report, 2001, p. 84.
13. Phyllis Schlafly and Chester Ward, Kissinger on the Couch (New Rochelle, N.Y.:
Arlington House, 1975), p. 751.
14. Madeline G. Kalb, “The Dobrynin Factor,” New York Times Magazine, May 13, 1984, p.
75.
15. Robert W. Lee, The United Nations Conspiracy (Belmont, Mass.: Western Islands,
1981); and William F. Jasper, Global Tyranny … Step by Step (Appleton, Wis.: Western Islands,
1992).
16. Robert Welch, May God Forgive Us (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1952); and
John Stormer, None Dare Call It Treason (Florissant, Mo.: Liberty Bell Press, 1964).
17. G. Edward Griffin, The Fearful Master: A Second Look at the United Nations (Belmont,
Mass.: Western Islands, 1964).
18. For two superb analyses of the foreign policy betrayals of the Eisenhower administration,
see: Robert Welch, The Politician (Belmont, Mass.: Belmont Publishing Company, 1964); and
Alan Stang, The Actor: The True Story of John Foster Dulles (Belmont, Mass.: Western Islands,
1968).
19. Mario Lazo, Dagger in the Heart: American Policy Failures in Cuba (New York: Funk
& Wagnalls, 1968).
20. Hilaire du Berrier, Background to Betrayal: The Tragedy of Vietnam (Belmont, Mass.:
Western Islands, 1965); and John F. McManus, Changing Commands: The Betrayal of
1
America’s Military (Appleton, Wis.: The John Birch Society, 1995).
21. Republican Staff, U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, An Examination of U.S.
Policy Toward POW/MIAs, May 23, 1991.
22. Rep. Larry McDonald, “The Senate Should Not Confirm Paul Warnke,” Congressional
Record, March 1, 1977, pp. E1045–E1046.
23. Council on Foreign Relations Annual Report, 1975, p. 101.
24. Schlafly and Ward, Kissinger on the Couch, op. cit., pp. 146, 150.
25. Ibid., p. 151.
26. Zygmunt Nagorski, “A Member of the CFR Talks Back,” National Review, December 9,
1977, pp. 1416–1419.
27. Dan Smoot, The Invisible Government (Dallas, Texas: Dan Smoot Report, Inc., 1962),
pp. 158–159.
28. Council on Foreign Relations Annual Report, 1984, p. 9.
29. Council on Foreign Relations Annual Report, 1989, p. 12.
30. Council on Foreign Relations Annual Report, 1995, p. 6.
31. Richard Harwood, “Ruling Class Journalists,” Washington Post, October 30, 1993, p.
A21.
32. Ibid.
33. Form letter from Buckley to Mrs. Myrna Workman, October 16, 1989; Robert Welch
University archives.
34. William F. Buckley, Jr., On the Firing Line (New York: Random House, 1989).
35. Smoot, The Invisible Government, op. cit.
36. Kent and Phoebe Courtney, America’s Unelected Rulers: The Council on Foreign
Relations (New Orleans: Conservative Society of America, 1962); Mary M. Davison, The
Profound Revolution (Omaha: The Greater Nebraskan, 1962); and John A. Stormer, None Dare
Call It Treason, op. cit.
37. Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World In Our Time (New York:
The Macmillan Company, 1966).
38. Ibid., p. 132.
39. Ibid., p. 324.
40. Ibid.
41. Ibid., pp. 1247–1248.
42. Ibid., p. 950.
43. Ibid.
44. Gary Allen, None Dare Call It Conspiracy (Seal Beach, Calif.: Concord Press, 1971).
45. Edward Mandell House, Philip Dru: Administrator (Appleton, Wis.: Robert Welch
University Press, 1998).
46. “Books in Brief,” National Review, September 29, 1972, p. 1071. (See further discussion
in Chapter 8.)
47. Gary Allen, Jimmy Carter, Jimmy Carter (Seal Beach, Calif.: ’76 Press, 1976), p. 74.
48. Fundraising letter entitled “N.R. Newsletter,” dated June 1973, from Robert Welch
University archives.
49. William P. Hoar, “The Right Answers,” The Review Of The News, September 8, 1976,
pp. 67–68.
50. “Notes and Asides,” National Review, April 1, 1977, pp. 375-376.
51. Buckley column, “CFR Isn’t Subversive,” Arkansas Democrat, October 7, 1979, p. 8A.
1
52. Richard N. Gardner, “The Hard Road to World Order,” Foreign Affairs, April 1974, p. 558.
53. Ibid, p. 563.
54. William F. Buckley, Jr., “Human Rights and Foreign Policy: A Proposal,” Foreign
Affairs, Spring 1980, pp. 793–794.
55. Human Rights: A Compilation of International Instruments, Vol. I (First Part) (New
York: United Nations, 1994), p. 7.
56. Council on Foreign Relations Annual Report, 1981.
57. William F. Buckley, Jr., Overdrive: A Personal Documentary (Garden City, N.Y.:
Doubleday & Company, 1983), p. 163.
58. Congressional Record, December 15, 1987, p. S18146.

Chapter 2
Buckley and Neoconservatives

1. Irving Kristol, “The Conservatives Find a Leader,” Wall Street Journal, June 3, 1991, p.
A14.
2. Irving Kristol, Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea (New York: The Free
Press, 1995), p. x.
3. Irving Kristol, Reflections of a Neoconservative (New York: Basic Books, 1983), p. 76.
4. Irving Kristol, “A Conservative Welfare State,” Wall Street Journal, June 14, 1993; cited
in Mark Gerson, Editor, The Essential Neoconservative Reader (Reading, Mass.:
Addison-Wesley, 1996), pp. 283–287.
5. Charles Krauthammer, “Universal Dominion: Toward A Unipolar World,” The National
Interest, Winter 1989-1990.
6. Kristol, “The Conservatives Find a Leader,” op. cit.
7. Address before Joint Session of Congress, Congressional Record, September 11, 1990, p.
H7415.
8. U.S. News & World Report, January 7, 1991, p. 24.
9. Weekly Compilation of Presidential Documents, January 14, 1991, p.26.
10. Kristol, Neoconservatism, op. cit., p. 40.
11. William F. Buckley, Jr., “The Party and the Deep Blue Sea,” The Commonweal, January
25, 1952, pp. 392–393.
12. William F. Buckley, Jr., On the Firing Line (New York: Random House, 1989), pp.
469–508.
13. Kristol, Neoconservatism, op. cit., p. 13.
14. Ibid., pp. x–xi.
15. Ibid., pp. 378–379.
16. Samuel Francis, “Neo-Con Invasion,” The New American, August 5, 1996, p. 28.
17. Buckley column reprinted in National Review, October 18, 1993, p. 78.
18. Henry Kissinger, “With NAFTA, U.S. Finally Creates a New World Order,” Los Angeles
Times, July 18, 1993, p. M2.
19. Buckley column, National Review, September 12, 1994, p. 94.
20. Jeremy Rabkin, “Trading in Our Sovereignty?” National Review, June 13, 1994, pp. 34,
36, 73.
21. Buckley column, National Review, February 26, 1996, pp. 70–71.
22. Peter W. Rodman, “Intervention and Its Discontents,” National Review, March 29, 1993, p.
1
28.
23. Adrian Karatnycky, “Another Chance For NATO?” National Review, February 7, 1994,
pp. 57–59.
24. Dean Acheson speech, Congressional Record, July 8, 1949, p. 9113.
25. Fareed Zakaria, “Back to the Future,” National Review, December 11, 1995, p. 56.
26. Samuel Francis, “In Search of Impulses,” Chronicles, January 1993, p. 11.
27. Francis, “Neo-Con Invasion,” op. cit., p. 28.
28. Kristol, Neoconservatism, op. cit., p. 36.
29. Llewellyn H. Rockwell, “Paleos, Neos, and Libertarians,” The New American, February
26, 1990, p. 5.
30. Gerson, Editor, The Essential Neoconservative Reader, op. cit., p. xvi.
31. John Ehrman, The Rise of Neoconservatism: Intellectuals and Foreign Affairs (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1995).
32. John B. Judis, “Trotskyism to Anachronism,” Foreign Affairs, July/August 1995, p. 125.
33. Justin Raimondo, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative
Movement (Burlingame, Calif.: Center For Libertarian Studies, 1993), p. 112.
34. John T. Flynn, As We Go Marching (New York: Doubleday, 1944).
35. Ibid., pp. 252-253. (For an excellent summary of Flynn’s many warnings, see Raimondo,
Reclaiming the American Right, op. cit., Chapter IV.)
36. Raimondo, Reclaiming the American Right, op. cit., p. 109.
37. John T. Flynn, While You Slept (New York: Devin-Adair, 1958). Originally published by
Devin-Adair in 1951.
38. John T. Flynn, The Road Ahead: America’s Creeping Revolution (New York:
Devin-Adair, 1953).
39. Benjamin Schwarz, “Why America Thinks It Has To Run the World,” Atlantic Monthly,
June 1996, p. 94.

Chapter 3
The Formative Influences

1. John B. Judis, William F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives (New York:
Simon and Shuster, 1988), p. 60.
2. Charles Lam Markmann, The Buckleys: A Family Examined (New York: William
Morrow & Company, 1973), p. 47.
3. Ibid, p. 47.
4. Judis, Patron Saint, op. cit., p. 48.
5. Markmann, The Buckleys, op. cit., p. 58.
6. Judis, Patron Saint, op cit., p. 60.
7. Ibid., pp. 60-61.
8. Markmann, The Buckleys, op. cit., p. 56.
9. Judis, Patron Saint, op cit., p. 61.
10. Markmann, The Buckleys, op. cit., p. 112.
11. Ibid., p. 58.
12. Antony C. Sutton, An Introduction to the Order (Phoenix, Ariz.: Research Publications),
1983.
13. “Skull and spare ribs,” The Economist, November 2, 1991, p. 28.
1
14. Antony C. Sutton, America’s Secret Establishment (Billings, Mont.: Liberty House Press,
1986), p. 201.
15. Steven M.L. Aronson, “Secret Society,” Fame, August 1989, p. 89.
16. Ron Rosenbaum, “The Last Secrets of Skull and Bones,” Esquire, September 1977, pp.
87, 150.
17. William F. Buckley, “Pat Buchanan v. Skull & Bones,” National Review, March 16,
1992, p. 54.

Chapter 4
Two Books Propel Buckley to Prominence

1. Charles Lam Markmann, The Buckleys: A Family Examined (New York: William
Morrow & Company, 1973), p. 88.
2. Yale Daily News, March 9, 1949; cited in John B. Judis, William F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron
Saint of the Conservatives (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1988), p. 67.
3. Judis, Patron Saint, op. cit., p. 76.
4. William F. Buckley, Jr., God and Man at Yale (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company,
1951).
5. Ibid., pp. xv-xvii, 7–9, 17.
6. Ibid., p. 47.
7. Ibid., pp. 195–196.
8. Markmann, The Buckleys, op. cit., p. 91.
9. Judis, Patron Saint, op. cit., p. 93.
10. Markmann, The Buckleys, op. cit., p. 91.
11. Ibid., p. 90.
12. Talking With David Frost, PBS Transcript, June 28, 1996.
13. William F. Buckley, Jr., and L. Brent Bozell, McCarthy and His Enemies (Chicago:
Henry Regnery Company, 1954).
14. Judis, Patron Saint, op. cit., p. 108.
15. Ibid., p. 105.
16. Buckley and Bozell, McCarthy and His Enemies, op. cit., p. 335.
17. Major Speeches and Debates of Senator Joe McCarthy: Reprint From The Congressional
Record (Washington: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1951), p. 17.
18. See the Foreword to this book for a portion of Welch’s research.
19. W.H. Lawrence, “McCarthy Hearing Off a Week as Eisenhower Bars Report: President
Orders Aides Not to Disclose Details of Top-Level Meeting,” New York Times, May 18, 1954, p.
1.
20. Joseph R. McCarthy, America’s Retreat From Victory (New York: Devin-Adair
Company, 1951).
21. Buckley and Bozell, McCarthy and His Enemies, op. cit., pp. 390–392.
22. Buckley and Bozell, McCarthy and His Enemies, 1996 edition (Washington: Regnery,
1996), p. xii.
23. Ibid.
24. Bruce Fellman, “Inside the Russian Archives,” Yale, May 1995, p. 37.
25. Carl Bernstein, Loyalties (New York: Simon and Shuster, 1989), pp.78–79.
26. Roger Scruton, “McCarthy Was Right on the Red Menace,” Los Angeles Times,
1
December 27, 1990, p. 137.
27. Ethan Bronner, “Rethinking McCarthyism, if Not McCarthy,” New York Times, October
18, 1998.
28. Ibid.
29. Talking With David Frost, PBS Transcript, June 28, 1996.
30. Ibid.
31. James J. Drummey, “The Real McCarthy Record,” The New American, September 2,
1996.
32. John T. Flynn, McCarthy: His War on American Reds (New York: America’s Future,
1954).
33. Justin Raimondo, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative
Movement (Burlingame, Calif.: Center For Libertarian Studies, 1993), p. 112.
34. William F. Buckley, Jr., The Redhunter (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1999).

Chapter 5
Into the Central Intelligence Agency

1. John Judis, “William F. Buckley, Jr., The Consummate Conservative,” The Progressive,
September 1981, p. 28.
2. John B. Judis, William F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives (New York:
Simon and Shuster, 1988), p. 80.
3. Ibid., p. 91.
4. R. Harris Smith, OSS: The Secret History of America’s First Central Intelligence Agency
(Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 1972), p. 11.
5. James Burnham, The Web of Subversion (New York: John Day, 1954), pp. 118–119.
6. Robert Welch, The Life of John Birch (Belmont, Mass.: Western Islands, Americanist
Library Edition, 1965).
7. Ibid., p. 32.
8. Ibid., p. 82.
9. Frank A. Capell, “No Intelligence: A Worried Look at the C.I.A.,” American Opinion,
January 1971, pp. 49–51.
10. Ibid.
11. Corey Ford, Donovan of OSS (Boston: Little Brown, 1970).
12. Robert Welch, The Politician (Belmont, Mass.: Belmont Publishing Company, 1964), pp.
227–228.
13. Ralph de Toledano, “CIA Attempt to Kill Chiang Recounted,” Copley News Service, c.
1965; and de Toledano, “Were U.S. Allies in CIA Sights?” Insight magazine, February 15, 1999,
p. 31.
14. John Stormer, None Dare Call It Treason (Florissant, Mo.: Liberty Bell Press, 1964), pp.
57–63; and William Norman Grigg, “Nicaragua Betrayed — Again,” The New American, March
22, 1993, pp. 19–22.
15. Gary Allen, Kissinger: The Secret Side of the Secretary of State (Seal Beach, Calif.: ’76
Press, 1976), p. 119.
16. William F. Buckley, Jr., On the Firing Line (New York: Random House, 1989), p. 401.
17. William F. Buckley, Jr., Nearer, My God: An Autobiography of Faith (New York:
Doubleday, 1997), pp. 218–219.
1
18. Ibid, p. 219.
19. William F. Buckley, Jr., The Blackford Oakes Reader (Kansas City: Andrews and
McNeel, 1995), p. xv.
20. Charles Lam Markmann, The Buckleys: A Family Examined (New York: William
Morrow & Company, 1973), p. 49. First listed under “Associates and Contributors,” then as one
of the more prestigious “Associates,” Priscilla Buckley rose to become “Managing Editor.”
21. Buckley, On the Firing Line, op. cit., p. 401.
22. Judis, Patron Saint, op. cit., p.358.
23. Ibid, p. 359.
24. Judis, “The Consummate Conservative,” op. cit., p. 28.
25. Frank Chodorov, “A War to Communize America,” The Freeman, November 1954, pp.
171–174.
26. Talking With David Frost, PBS Transcript, June 28, 1996, p. 3.
27. James J. Drummey, The Review Of The News, December 21, 1983.
28. “Ex-Official of C.I.A. Lists Big Grants to Labor Aides,” New York Times, May 8, 1967,
p. 36.
29. Thomas W. Braden, “I’m Glad the C.I.A. Is Immoral,” Saturday Evening Post, May 20,
1967, pp. 10–14.
30. Transcript, “Crossfire,” September 15, 1983.
31. James Burnham, “The Not So Silent Service,” National Review, July 12, 1966, p. 667.
32. Ibid.
33. Anatoliy Golitsyn, New Lies For Old (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1984), p.
182.
34. Ibid., p. 339.
35. Ibid., p. 349.
36. Ibid., p. 341.
37. Ibid., p. 341.
38. Ibid., p. 350.
39. Ibid., p. 334.
40. Aaron Latham, “Politics and the C.I.A. — Was Angleton Spooked by State?” New York
magazine, March 10, 1975. See also Buckley’s August 12, 1991 column noting that Angleton
had recently been “fired from the CIA by Director William Colby.”
41. Philip Taubman, “Mr. Angleton and Mr. Ames,” New York Times, December 17, 1995, p.
12-E.
42. Buckley column, “Encountering the ultimate spy,” Appleton, Wis., Post-Crescent, August
12, 1991, p. A4.
43. Ibid.
44. George A. Carver, Jr., “The vindication of James Jesus Angleton,” Washington Times,
March 9, 1994, p. A19.
45. Golitsyn, New Lies For Old, op. cit., p. 342.

Chapter 6
The First Team

1. John B. Judis, William F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives (New York:
Simon and Shuster, 1988), p. 130.
1
 2. Republished in National Review, September 11, 1987, p. 31.
3. Ibid., p. 32.
4. Charles Lam Markmann, The Buckleys: A Family Examined (New York: William
Morrow & Company, 1973), p. 57.
5. Justin Raimondo, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative
Movement (Burlingame, Calif.: Center For Libertarian Studies, 1993), p. 17.
6. James Burnham, The Managerial Revolution (New York: John Day, 1941).
7. Raimondo, Reclaiming the American Right, op. cit., p.18.
8. Ibid, p. 19.
9. James Burnham, The Machiavellians: In Defense of Freedom (New York: John Day,
1943).
10. James Burnham, The Web of Subversion (New York: John Day, 1954).
11. Ibid., p. 191.
12. Ibid., p. 198.
13. Francis X. Gannon, Biographical Dictionary Of The Left, Vol. I (Belmont, Mass.:
Western Islands, 1969), pp. 445–447.
14. Burnham, The Web of Subversion, op. cit., p. 209.
15. James Burnham, Suicide of the West (New York: John Day, 1964), p. 25.
16. Murray N. Rothbard, The Betrayal of the American Right, unpublished manuscript; cited
by Raimondo, Reclaiming the American Right, op. cit., p. 25.
17. Burnham, The Web of Subversion, op. cit., p. 209.
18. Markmann, The Buckleys, op. cit., p. 110.
19. Ibid, p. 183.
20. Judis, Patron Saint, op. cit., p. 146.
21. Markmann, The Buckleys, op. cit., p. 319.
22. James Burnham, National Review, April 28, 1972, p. 470–471.
23. Frank S. Meyer, The Moulding of Communists (New York: Harcourt, Brace and
Company, 1961), p. 3.
24. William F. Buckley, Jr., Editor, Did You Ever See a Dream Walking: American
Conservative Thought in the Twentieth Century (New York: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1970), p.
87.
25. Markmann, The Buckleys, op. cit., p. 319.
26. Judis, Patron Saint, op. cit., p. 115.
27. Ibid., p. 117.
28. Markmann, The Buckleys, op. cit., pp. 111-112.
29. Judis, Patron Saint, op. cit., p. 130.
30. Markmann, The Buckleys, op. cit., p. 57.
31. “Publisher’s Statement,” National Review, November 19, 1955, p. 5.
32. Ibid.
33. Ernest van den Haag, “Must Conservatives Repudiate Keynes? No,” National Review,
June 4, 1960, pp. 361–364.

Chapter 7
Buckley, Kissinger, and Rockefeller

1. William F. Buckley, Jr., “Mr. Kissinger,” National Review, December 17, 1968, p. 1251.
1
 2. Jeffrey Bell, “Mr. Nixon’s Sometime Friends,” The Nation, July 24, 1972, p. 45.
3. Gary Allen, Kissinger: The Secret Side of the Secretary of State (Seal Beach, Calif.: ’76
Press, 1976), p. 19.
4. John B. Judis, William F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives (New York:
Simon and Shuster, 1988), p. 300.
5. William F. Buckley, Jr., United Nations Journal (New York: G.P. Putnam & Sons,
1974), p. 54.
6. Henry A. Kissinger, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (New York: Harper for the
Council on Foreign Relations, 1957).
7. Buckley, United Nations Journal, op. cit., p. 57.
8. Ibid., p. 57.
9. Ibid., p. 58.
10. G. Edward Griffin, The Fearful Master (Belmont, Mass.: Western Islands, 1964), pp.
89–91; and Robert W. Lee, The United Nations Conspiracy (Belmont, Mass.: Western Islands,
1981), pp. 10–16.
11. Buckley, United Nations Journal, op. cit., p. 58.
12. Antony Sutton, The Best Enemy Money Can Buy (Billings, Mont.: Liberty House Press,
1986), pp. 22–24.
13. Ibid., pp.104–111.
14. Susan L.M. Huck, “The Grain Steal,” American Opinion, December 1972, pp. 19–32.
15. Republican Staff, U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, An Examination of U.S.
Policy Toward POW/MIAs, May 23, 1991.
16. Allen, Kissinger, op. cit., p. 78.
17. Ibid, pp. 81–86.
18. Official policy speech given by Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in Lusaka, Zambia,
April 27, 1976.
19. John F. McManus, Panamania (a film production), (Belmont, Mass.: The John Birch
Society, 1976); and G. Russell Evans, The Panama Canal Treaties Swindle (Carboro, N.C.:
Signal Books, 1986), pp. 41, 74–75.
20. Letter sent from National Review by William A. Rusher, April 5, 1972.
21. Buckley column, “Mr. Kissinger,” op. cit., p1251.
22. Buckley column, “Fulbright vs. Kissinger,” Los Angeles Times, September 13, 1973.
23. Robert Welch, “We Pause To Remark,” American Opinion, May 1958, p. 30.
24. Buckley column, “Some men are simply superior,” Los Angeles Times, February 12,
1979.
25. Buckley column, “Heed these words from a great man,” Los Angeles Herald Examiner,
March 8, 1982, p. A11.
26. Buckley column, “Kissinger’s commission deserves its commission,” Los Angeles
Herald Examiner, July 23, 1983.
27. Buckley column, “Kissinger had right diplomatic skills,” San Antonio Light, September
15, 1988, p. C9.
28. “A Firing Line Debate,” October 14, 1997, transcript published by Producers
Incorporated for Television, Columbia, S.C.
29. Henry Kissinger, “The Caricature of Deng as a Tyrant Is Unfair,” Washington Post,
August 1, 1989, p. A21.
30. John J. Fialka, “Mr. Kissinger Has Opinions on China — and Business Ties,” Wall Street
1
Journal, August 15, 1989, p. A1.
31. Henry A. Kissinger and Cyrus R. Vance, “The Right Decision on China,” The
Washington Post, June 6, 1994.
32. Testimony of Dr. Michael Pillsbury before the U.S. Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence, “Chinese Views of Future Warfare,” September 18, 1997.
33. Buckley column, “Nixon Cabinet: 2 Aye, 2 Nay,” Los Angeles Times, November 18,
1968.
34. Judis, Patron Saint, op. cit., p. 295.
35. Ibid., pp. 368–369.
36. Buckley column, “Three Triumphs: Nelson Rockefeller, RIP,” National Review, March
2, 1979, p. 319.
37. William F. Buckley, Jr., Overdrive: A Personal Documentary (Garden City, N.Y.:
Doubleday & Company, 1983), pp. 54–55.
38. Joe Alex Morris, Nelson Rockefeller — A Biography (New York: Harper, 1960).
39. Gary Allen, “Rockefeller, The Millionaire and the Reds,” American Opinion, January
1976, pp. 1–6, 65–80.
40. Republican Staff, POW/MIAs, op. cit., p. 5.
41. Ibid., pp. 5–6.
42. Stuart A. Herrington, Peace With Honor? An American Reports on Vietnam 1973-1975
(Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1983).
43. Republican Staff, POW/MIAs, op. cit., p. 5–4.
44. Ibid.
45. Buckley column, “The MIA Brawl II,” National Review, October 19, 1992, pp. 70–71.
46. Nicholas von Hoffman column, Washington Star, July 24, 1975.
47. Robert W. Lee, “Bilderbergers: A Deadly Alliance,” The New American, August 24,
1992.
48. Rutland (Vt.) Herald, April 20, 1971.
49. Alden Hatch, Bernhard, Prince of the Netherlands (New York: Doubleday, 1962), p. 249.
50. Hilaire du Berrier, HduB Reports, July– August 1996, p. 6.
51. “Western Policies the Topic at Meeting of Elite,” New York Times, April 25, 1977, p. 5.
52. “Arkansas Governor Attends Secret Meeting,” News-Times, Danbury, Conn., June 30,
1991.

Chapter 8
Debunking Conspiracy

1. A. Reynolds, “Books In Brief,” National Review, September 29, 1972, p. 1071.

2. National Review, August 1, 1956.
3. “R.I.P.,” National Review, September 13, 1958, p. 175.
4. Rosalie M. Gordon, Nine Men Against America (New York: Devin-Adair Company,
1958), p. 130.
5. Joseph R. McCarthy, America’s Retreat From Victory (New York: Devin-Adair
Company, 1954).
6. Subcommittee to Investigate the Administration of the Internal Security Act and Other
Internal Security Laws, U.S., Interlocking Subversion in Government Departments, July 30,
1953, pp. 3, 49.
1
 7. William F. Buckley, Jr., and L. Brent Bozell, McCarthy and His Enemies (Chicago:
Henry Regnery Company, 1954), p. 340.
8. Committee on Un-American Activities, U.S. House of Representatives, “The Communist
Conspiracy: Strategy and Tactics of World Communism,” 1956.
9. J. Edgar Hoover, Elks Magazine, August 1956.
10. William F. Buckley, Jr., “The Tranquil World of Dwight D. Eisenhower,” National
Review, January 18, 1958, pp. 57–59.
11. Robert Welch, The Blue Book of the John Birch Society, new edition for the 24th printing
(Appleton, Wis.: Western Islands, 1992).
12. Ibid., p. 21.
13. William F. Buckley, Jr., “Quiet Conspiracy at Work,” National Review, March 12, 1963,
pg. 188.
14. Talking With David Frost, PBS Transcript, June 28, 1996.
15. See the September 1958, February 1959, and April 1959 issues of American Opinion.
16. Ezra Taft Benson, December 13, 1963; text appears in Jerreld L. Newquist, Prophets,
Principles and National Survival (Salt Lake City: Publishers Press, 1964), p. 273.
17. Ibid., p. 261.
18. G. Edward Griffin, The Creature From Jekyll Island (Westlake Village, Calif: American
Media, 1994); and John F. McManus, Financial Terrorism: Hijacking America Under the Threat
of Bankruptcy (Appleton, Wis.: The John Birch Society, 1993).
19. William H. McIlhany II, The Tax-Exempt Foundations (Westport, Conn.: Arlington
House, 1980), pp. 62–63.
20. Congressional Record, August 31, 1960, p. 17407.
21. Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time (New York: The
Macmillan Company, 1966).
22. Medford Evans, “De Libris,” American Opinion, October 1973, p. 81.
23. Lincoln P. Bloomfield, A World Effectively Controlled by the United Nations
(Washington: Institute for Policy Analyses, 1962; prepared under a contract with the U.S. State
Department), pp. 4, 12, 15.
24. John Reddy, “Bill Buckley: Blithe Spirit of the Right,” Reader’s Digest, September 1971,
p. 116.
25. Charles Lam Markmann, The Buckleys: A Family Examined (New York: William
Morrow & Company, 1973), p. 58.
26. National Review, December 31, 1980, p. 1638.

Chapter 9
Targeting Robert Welch and The John Birch Society

1. Paul A. Gigot, “Pat Buchanan Puts Conservatism Back in a Pup Tent,” Wall Street
Journal, December 13, 1991.
2. Irving Kristol, Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea (New York: The Free
Press, 1995), p. 32.
3. Eugene Lyons, “Folklore of the Right,” National Review, April 11, 1959, pp. 645–647.
4. Boris Pasternak, Dr. Zhivago (New York: Pantheon Books, 1958).
5. Robert Welch, “If You Want It Straight,” American Opinion, February 1959, pp. 25–38.
6. Pasternak, Dr. Zhivago, op. cit., p. 460.
1
 7. Ibid., pp. 507–508.
8. John Judis, “William F. Buckley, Jr., The Consummate Conservative,” The Progressive,
September 1981, p. 195.
9. Ibid.
10. “Will a Communist Edit for Knopf?” National Review, June 20, 1959, pp. 137–138.
11. Robert Welch, May God Forgive Us (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1952).
12. Robert Welch, The Blue Book of the John Birch Society, new edition for the 24th printing
(Appleton, Wis.: Western Islands, 1992), p. 28.
13. Ibid., p. 67.
14. Robert Welch University archives.
15. Ibid.
16. “Organizations: The Americanists,” Time, March 10, 1961, pp. 21–22.
17. John B. Judis, William F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives (New York:
Simon and Shuster, 1988), p. 199.
18. “The Question of Robert Welch,” National Review, February 13, 1962, pp. 83–88.
19. Ibid.
20. American Opinion, July–August 1961, pp. 1, 5.
21. “Some Truths About Castro,” American Opinion, February 1959, pp. 57–60.
22. The John Birch Society Bulletin, June 1961, p. 5.
23. “The Question of Robert Welch,” op. cit.
24. Robert Welch, The Politician, (Belmont, Mass.: Belmont Publishing Company, 1964).
25. Buckley, “The Tranquil World of Dwight D. Eisenhower,” National Review, January 18,
1958, pp. 57–59.
26. “To the Editor,” National Review, February 27, 1962, pp. 140–143; and “To the Editor,”
National Review, March 13, 1962, p. 177.
27. Judis, Patron Saint, op. cit., p .200.
28. Ibid.
29. The John Birch Society Bulletin, March 1962, p. 1.
30. Frank S. Meyer, “The Birch Malady,” National Review, October 19, 1965, p. 919.
31. James Burnham, “Get US out!,” National Review, October 19, 1965, p. 925.
32. The John Birch Society Bulletin, August 1965, p. 20.
33. Robert Welch, “Wild Statements,” booklet (Belmont, Mass.: American Opinion, 1965),
pp. 27–28.
34. Ibid., p. 27.
35. Ibid., p. 28.
36. The full text of “The Truth About Vietnam” is posted at www.jbs.org/vietnam/no_win/
truth_about_vietnam.htm.
37. National Review, October 19, 1965, p. 928.
38. Buckley letter, January 22, 1964, Robert Welch University archives.
39. Welch letter, January 24, 1964, Robert Welch University archives.
40. Buckley column, March 1968.
41. E.J. Dionne, “Buckley Retires As Editor,” Washington Post, October 6, 1990.

Chapter 10
Friends and Former Colleagues See Through Bill

1
 1. Thomas A. Lane, The Breakdown of Old Politics (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House,
1974), p. 263.
2. F. Paul Fromm, “Y.A.F. Says Farewell to the Buckley Artifice,” The Review Of The
News, October 12, 1977, pp. 39–44.
3. John W. Robbins, “Charity For Enemies, Malice Toward Friends,” The Review Of The
News, September 4, 1985.
4. Reed Irvine, “ANC’s Latest Recruit: William F. Buckley, Jr.,” The New American,
November 10, 1986, p. 23.
5. William F. Buckley, Jr., On the Firing Line (New York: Random House, 1989), p. 162.
6. National Review, October 22, 1968, p. 1060–1061.
7. John B. Judis, William F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives (New York:
Simon and Shuster, 1988), p. 379.
8. Robert Sherrill, “Squire Willie,” The Nation, June 11, 1988, p. 833.
9. Lane, The Breakdown of Old Politics, op. cit., pp. 263–264.
10. Medford Evans, “Welch & Buckley,” American Opinion, March 1985, p. 91.
11. Ibid., p. 91.
12. The John Birch Society Bulletin, January 1970, pp. 13–14.
13. Evans, “Welch & Buckley,” op. cit., p. 91.
14. Judis, Patron Saint, op. cit., p. 350.
15. Ibid., p. 261.
16. Ibid., p. 401.
17. Henry Paolucci, State of the Nation newsletter, March 1973.
18. Frank A. Capell, Treason Is the Reason (Zarephath, N.J.: Herald of Freedom, 1965).
19. Walt Whitman Rostow, The United States in the World Arena (New York: Harper &
Brothers, 1960), p. 549.
20. Murray Rothbard, Speech published in William F. Buckley, Jr., In Search of
Anti-Semitism (New York: Continuum Publishing Company, 1992), pp. 154–155.
21. Alan Crawford, Thunder on the Right (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), p. 177.
22. Judis, Patron Saint, op. cit., p. 305.
23. Ibid., p. 439.
24. Don Feder column, “Bill Buckley’s no conservative,” Boston Herald, December 20,
1995, p. 31.

Chapter 11
Undermining Morality

1. Marvin Liebman, Coming Out Conservative, (San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 1992), p.
260.
2. John B. Judis, William F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives (New York:
Simon and Shuster, 1988), p. 219.
3. Alan Brinkley, “The Conservative at Sea,” The New Republic, May 30, 1988, pp. 29–30.
4. Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1999, U.S. Department of Commerce, p. 75.
5. James C. Roberts, “An Interview with William F. Buckley,” Human Events, March 7,
1981, p. 216.
6. William F. Buckley, Jr., Happy Days Were Here Again: Reflections of a Libertarian
Journalist (New York: Random House, 1993), p. 463.
1
 7. William F. Buckley, Jr., “Who’s On First?” (excerpted), Playboy, February 1980, pp.
125–126, 134, 202–210.
8. George F. Gilder, “God’s Right Hand,” Playboy, May 1969, reprint edition.
9. Charles Lam Markmann, The Buckleys: A Family Examined (New York: William
Morrow & Company, 1973), pp. 199, 254.
10. Buckley, Happy Days Were Here Again, op. cit., pp. 109–111.
11. William F. Buckley, Jr., “Thou Shalt Not,” New York Times Magazine, April 6, 1986, p.
36.
12. William F. Buckley, Jr., “Marco Polo, If You Can” (excerpted), Penthouse, February
1982, pp. 84–88, 175–178.
13. Judis, Patron Saint, op. cit., p. 375.
14. William F. Buckley, Jr., “Redefining Smart,” Playboy, January 1985, pp. 94–96,
222–224.
15. Liebman, Coming Out Conservative, op. cit., p. 12.
16. Ibid., p. 260.
17. Markmann, The Buckleys, op. cit., p. 103.
18. Liebman, Coming Out Conservative, op. cit., p. 15.
19. Ibid., pp. 258, 260.
20. Ibid., p. 261.
21. David Brudnoy and Ernest van den Haag, “Reflections on the Issue of Gay Rights,”
National Review, July 19, 1974, pp. 802–803.
22. John Woolman, “Letter From a Friend: A Conservative Speaks Out for Gay Rights,”
National Review, September 12, 1986, pp. 28–31, 58–59.
23. Ibid., p. 28–29.
24. Joseph Sobran, “The Politics of AIDS,” National Review, May 23, 1986, pp. 22–26, 51–52.
25. John Lofton, “A Postscript to ‘Dear Bill,’” Washington Times, September 5, 1986, p. 2E.
26. Sobran, “The Politics of AIDS,” op. cit., p. 52.
27. Matthew Parris, “Birth of a Queer Nation,” National Review, August 31, 1992, p. 65–66.
28. Buckley column, “When closet doors open on the right,” Washington Times, September
15, 1992, p. F1.
29. Ibid.
30. Buckley column, “Homosexuality and its outer limits,” Washington Times, December 18,
1992, p. F3.
31. Buckley column, “Marijuana Laws Should Be Eased,” Los Angeles Times, March 31, 1972;
and National Review, February 12, 1996.
32. Buckley column, “The obvious benefits of licensing prostitution,” Appleton, Wis.,
Post-Crescent, April 24, 1992, p. A4.
33. William F. Buckley, “The Catholic Church and Abortion,” National Review, April 5, 1966, p.
308.
34. “Letters,” National Review, May 3, 1966, p. 390.
35. Pittsburgh Post Gazette, April 24, 1971; cited in Markmann, The Buckleys, op. cit., p.
321.
36. Markmann, The Buckleys, op. cit., p. 148.
37. Buckley, Happy Days Were Here Again, op. cit., p. 114.
38. William F. Buckley, Jr., Overdrive: A Personal Documentary (Garden City, N.Y.:
Doubleday & Company, 1983), pp. 215–216.
1
39. Ibid., p. 200.
40. William F. Buckley, Jr., Nearer, My God: An Autobiography of Faith (New York:
Doubleday, 1997).
41. Father J. Michael Buckley, “Buckley’s autobiography offers no windows to his soul,”
The Florida Catholic, February 12, 1998.
42. Buckley, Nearer, My God, op. cit., p. 181.
43. “Dr. King’s Disservice to His Cause,” Life, April 21, 1967, p. 4.
44. Evans-Raymond Pierre, “The Secret File on Martin Luther King,” The New American,
January 13, 1986, pp. 7–10.
45. Sen. Jesse Helms, “The Radical Record of Martin Luther King,” Human Events,
November 12, 1983, p. 959.
46. Buckley, Nearer, My God, op. cit., p. 38.

Chapter 12
Buckley’s Harmful Legacy

1. Unfinished manuscript authored by Medford Evans in 1979, John Birch Society archives.
2. Anatoli Granovsky, I Was An NKVD Agent (Belmont, Mass.: Western Islands Pocket
Edition, 1965), p. 149.
3. Cornell Simpson, The Death of James Forrestal (Belmont, Mass.: Western Islands,
1966).
4. James Perloff, The Shadows of Power (Belmont, Mass.: Western Islands, 1988), p. 98.
5. John Birch Society archives.
6. The Proceedings of the Virginia Convention in the Town of Richmond on the 23rd of
March 1775, Copyrighted in 1927 by Robert Lecky, Jr., Richmond, Virginia.

Chapter 13
The John Birch Society: Alive, Well, and Growing

1. William F. Jasper, “Forty Years for Freedom,” The New American, December 7, 1998, p.
10.
2. Robert Welch, “Wild Statements,” booklet (Belmont, Mass.: American Opinion, 1965),
p. 28.
3. Herbert L. Matthews, “Cuban Rebel Is Visited in Hideout,” New York Times, February 24,
1957, front-page article continued on p. 34.
4. Herbert L. Matthews, “Rebel Strength Gaining in Cuba, But Batista Has the Upper Hand,”
New York Times, February 25, 1957, front-page article continued on p. 11.
5. Herbert L. Matthews, “Cuba Has a One-Man Rule And It Is Called Non-Red,” New York
Times, July 16, 1959, front-page article continued on p. 2.
6. Jim Denyer, “The Brothers Eisenhower,” Los Angeles Herald-Examiner, April 27, 1963.
7. UPI, “Castro Says He Hid Belief,” New York Times, December 3, 1961, p. 4.
8. Robert Welch, “We Pause To Remark …,” American Opinion, September 1958, pp. 16–17.
9. Robert Welch, The Blue Book of The John Birch Society, new edition for the 24th printing
(Appleton, Wis.: Western Islands, 1992), p. 11.
10. Herbert L. Matthews, The Cuban Story (New York: George Braziller, 1962), p. 308; cited in
Mario Lazo, Dagger in the Heart: American Policy Failures in Cuba (New York: Funk &
1
Wagnalls, 1968), p. 113.
11. Welch, The Blue Book, op. cit., p. 160.
12. Medford Evans, “Welch & Buckley,” American Opinion, March 1985, p. 101.
13. Robert Welch, “Foreword,” The John Birch Society Bulletin, April 1969, pp. 5-6.
14. Ibid., pp. 6-7.
15. Robert Welch, “Foreword,” The John Birch Society Bulletin, July 1977, pp. 9-10.
16. Jasper, “Forty Years for Freedom,” op. cit., p. 11.
17. Ibid., p. 10.
18. “The Question of Robert Welch,” National Review, February 13, 1962, pp. 83–88.
19. John F. McManus, “To the Editor,” National Review, March 13, 1962, p. 177.
20. Ira Straus, “When Conspiracy Theory Replaces Thought,” Christian Science Monitor,
May 13, 1996, p. 19.
21. James Davidson Hunter (Project Director) and Carl Bowman (Director of Survey Research),
The State of Disunion: 1996 Survey of American Political Culture, Vol. 1 (The Post-Modernity
Project, University of Virginia with fieldwork conducted by the Gallup Organization, Inc.,
1996), pp. 69–70.
22. Straus, “When Conspiracy Theory Replaces Thought,” op. cit.
23. Hunter and Bowman, The State of Disunion, op. cit., p. 73.
24. Welch, The Blue Book, op. cit., p. 20.
25. Congressional Record, June 4, 1997, pp. H3335-H3336, H3343.
26. Congressional Record, July 20, 1999, p. H5855.
27. Jasper, “Forty Years for Freedom,” op. cit., p. 10.
28. William F. Jasper, “Security Risk for CIA,” The New American, January 20, 1997, pp.
23–27.
29. “The Dossier on Anthony Lake,” New York Times lead editorial, January 17, 1997.
30. Douglas Brinkley, “The Right Choice for the C.I.A.,” New York Times, February 10, 1997.
31. Thomas B. Edsall, “From the Fringe to the Center of the Debate,” Washington Post,
December 15, 1998.
32. “Let the Impeachment Begin!,” Watchdog (newsletter of the National Impeach Clinton
A.C.T.I.O.N. Committee sponsored by The John Birch Society), December 1998, p. 1.
33. Welch, “Wild Statements,” op. cit.
34. William F. Buckley, Jr., “The Party and the Deep Blue Sea,” The Commonweal, January 25,
1952, pp. 392–393.

Appendix
Ignoring the Constitution, Promoting the Establishment, and More

1. “William F. Buckley: Conservatism Can Be Fun,” Time, November 3, 1967.

2. Larry L. King, “God, Man, and William F. Buckley,” Harper’s, March 1967, p. 53.
3. J. Daniel Mahoney, Actions Speak Louder (New York, Arlington House, 1968); cited by
John B. Judis, William F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives (New York: Simon and
Shuster, 1988), p. 232.
4. Judis, Patron Saint, op. cit., p. 232.
5. Alexander Hamilton, The Federalist, No. 8 (New York: Mentor Books Edition, 1961), p.
67.
6. Buckley column, July 8, 1962.
1
 7. Francis X. Gannon, Biographical Dictionary Of The Left, Vol. I (Belmont, Mass:
Western Islands, 1969), p. 563.
8. Richmond News Leader, “Nixon Says ‘Keynesian’ on Economy,” January 20, 1971.
9. John Kenneth Galbraith, “Richard Nixon and the Great Socialist Revival,” New York
magazine, September 21, 1970, p. 25.
10. Buckley column, Washington Star Syndicate, July 29, 1971.
11. Richard Reingold, “Bill Buckley: Covert King of Rock Radio,” New York, June 14, 1971.
12. William F. Buckley, Jr., Cruising Speed, (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1971), p. 119.
13. Buckley column, November 1971.
14. National Review, September 1, 1972.
15. William F. Buckley, Jr., United Nations Journal (New York: G.P. Putnam & Sons,
1974), p. 11.
16. William F. Buckley, Jr., A Hymnal, pp. 43–45, from syndicated column, March 3, 1977.
17. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages (New York: Viking Press, 1970), pp. 296, 308.
18. William F. Buckley, Jr., Right Reason (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1985), p. 103.
19. “Five authors defend eroticism in literature,” Los Angeles Daily News, April 18, 1986, p.
20.
20. Buckley column, “Balancing Act,” Arizona Republic, August 25, 1987, p. A11.
21. William F. Buckley, Jr., Gratitude: Reflections on What We Owe to Our Country (New
York: Random House, 1990).
22. Buckley column, “Civilian Police Corps idea overdue,” Boston Herald, April 6, 1991.
23. Buckley column, “The Obvious Benefits of Licensing Prostitutes,” Appleton, Wis.,
Post-Crescent, April 2, 1992, p. A4.
24. National Review, August 31, 1992, p. 79.
25. Sheldon Richman, “What Gun-Control Advocates Fail to See,” Human Events, May 22,
1998, p. 499.
26. William Norman Grigg, “Eco-Agenda Heating Up,” The New American, December 8,
1997, pp. 13–18.
27. S. Fred Singer, Hot Talk, Cold Science: Global Warming’s Unfinished Debate (Oakland,
Calif.: Independent Institute, 1997).

Index

ABC News, 32, 114, 122, 221

Abortion, xxvii, 184-185, 187
Abraham Lincoln Brigade, 70, 72
Abrams, Elliott, 29, 35
Acheson, Dean, 8, 39-40
Adams, Sherman, 60
African National Congress, xix, 162-163, 194
Agnew, Spiro, 223
AIDS, 182
Alabama, 164
1
Allen, Gary, 17-20, 74, 106, 125
Allison, Wick, 187
America First, 37, 42
American Congress for Cultural Freedom, 96
American Conservative Thought in the Twentieth Century, 98
American Conservative Union, 105, 181
American Mercury, The, 58, 78,
American Opinion, xvii, 4, 133, 137, 143, 150-151, 158, 167, 177, 200, 202
American Workers Party, 92
America’s Great Depression, 172
America’s Retreat From Victory, 61
America’s Secret Establishment, 47
Ames, Aldrich, 87
Amnesty International, 21
Angleton, James J., 85-88
Angola, 109
Anti-Defamation League, 21
Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, U.S., 9
Armstrong, William, 86
Army, U.S., 94, 149
Aronson, Steven M.L., 48
As We Go Marching, 37
Asia, 70-71
Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies, 23
Atlantic Institute, 23
Atlantic Monthly, The 39, 56
Atomic Energy Commission, 3

Baden-Baden, Germany, 124

Baker, Howard, 169
Baker, James A. III, xxii
Ball, George W., 121
Barksdale, James, 113
Barnett, Richard, 29
Barr, Bob, 214
Barruel, Abbe Augustin, 202
Bartley, Robert, 29, 35, 122, 141-142
Bauer, Gary, 113
Bay of Pigs, 8, 74, 136, 151
Beijing, xxiii, 213
Belgian Congo, 136
Bell, Jeffrey, xx, 105
Ben Bella, Ahmed, 74
Bennett, William, xxvii, 29, 215
Benson, Ezra Taft, 134
Berlin Wall, 86
1
Bernhard, Prince of the Netherlands, 122
Bernstein, Carl, 63
Between Two Ages, 224
Bilderberg Group, 23, 121-124, 162
Big Brother, xx, 133
Bill of Rights, 21
Birch, John, 71, 149
Blackford Oakes Reader, The, 77
Blessed Sacrament Church, x
Bloomfield, Lincoln P., 139
Blue Book of The John Birch Society, The, xiii, 147, 200-201, 208
Blumenthal, W. Michael, 9
“Books In Brief,” 125
Boren, David, 47
Bork, Robert, 29
Boston Globe, xxiv, 78
Boston Herald, 174
Boston University, 1, 24
“Boys Club, The,” 6
Bozell, L. Brent, 44, 50, 58–59, 61-62, 64, 98, 128-129, 150, 185
Bozell, Patricia, 44, 185
Braden, Thomas W., 82
Braden, Spruille, 11
Bradley, Bill, 105
Brady Bill, xix
Breakdown of Old Politics, The, 165
Brenna, Lorna, 5
Bricker Amendment, 130, 152
Bridgeport, Conn., x
Brinkley, Alan, xxiv, 175
Brinkley, Douglas, 213
Brokaw, Tom, 14
Bronner, Ethan, 63
Browder, Earl, 91-92, 181
Brown, Jerry, 113
Brownell, Herbert, 60
Bryant Chucking Grinder Company, 109
Brzezinski, Zbigniew, 122, 224
Brudnoy, David, 181
Buchanan, Patrick, xix, 49, 172
Buckleys: A Family Examined, The, 41
Buckley, Christopher, 47, 55
Buckley, Fr. J. Michael, 186
Buckley, Patricia Taylor, 53
Buckley, Priscilla, xvii, 78, 79, 150
Buckley, William, Sr., 41
1
Buckley, Mrs. William, Sr., 41
Bunker, Archie, 117
Bundy, McGeorge, 8, 47, 56
Bundy, William P., 122-123
Burnham, James, 69, 71, 79-80, 83-84, 91-97, 99-101, 112, 116, 150, 155-157, 160
Burnham, Philip, 80
Bush, George, H.W., 13, 20, 26-28, 47-48, 73, 112-113, 116, 194
Bush, George W., 48, 215
Buthelezi, Mangosuthu, 163

Caesar, Julius, 202

Cambodia, 8, 109
Cameron, Angus, 144-145
Capell, Frank, 72-73
Carter administration, 110
Carter, Jimmy, 9, 13, 18-19, 170, 224, 226
Carver, George A., 88
Cary, Frank, 10
Case, Clifford, 105
Casey, William J., 73
Castro, Fidel, xxii, 3, 8, 11, 74, 109, 132-133, 136, 151-152, 199-202, 205-206, 209
Catholic Church, 175, 180, 188
CBS, 121
Center For International Affairs, 105
Central America, 112
Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), xvi-xvii, xxi, xxvi, 44, 46, 69-89, 91, 94, 102, 106, 121, 124,
171-172, 179, 213
Cesme, Turkey, 123
Chafee, John, 47
Chalberg, John C., xxiv
Chamberlain, John, 56, 58
Chambers, Whittaker, 99-100
Chancellor, John, 6
Cheka, 190
Chennault, Claire, 71
Chiang Kai-shek, 74, 129
Chicago, Ill., xi
Chicago Tribune, 65, 100
China, xiv, 71
China, Communist, 8, 22, 85, 108, 113-115, 118, 129, 181, 196, 222, 223, 227
China, Nationalist (Free), xxiii, 8, 74, 108, 136, 145, 222
Chinagate, 214
Chodorov, Frank, 80, 101
Christian Science Monitor, 210
Chronicles, xxiv
Cicero, 202
1
Clinton, Bill, 13-14, 114-115, 122, 124, 213, 226, 228
Clurman, Richard, 6
CNN, 82
Coffin, William Sloan, 78
Colby, William, E., 73, 87
Cold War, 31, 38, 80, 212, 215
Collingwood, R.G., 44
Columbia University, 224
Coming Out Conservative, 180
Commentaries on the Gallic Wars, 202
Commentary, 35, 126
Commonweal, The, xxi, 28, 65, 80, 215
Committee of One Million, 181
Committee to Investigate Tax-Exempt Foundations, 135
Communist Conspiracy, The: Strategy and Tactics of World Communism, 128
Communist Party USA, 45, 51, 82, 91, 97-98, 126, 145, 149, 181, 221
Communist, The, 82
Confluence, 106
Conservative Party of New York State, 170, 217–218
Constitution, see U.S. Constitution
Constitutional Convention, 225-226
Contra Movement in Nicaragua, 74, 195
Cornell University, 32
Cosmopolitan, 177
Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), xxvi, 5-24, 40, 73, 79, 82, 95, 106-108, 110, 114, 118,
120,122, 125, 130, 141, 145, 162, 171, 193, 210, 221, 223, 224; CFR Annual Report, 11-12, 95
Courtney, Kent and Phoebe, 16
“Crossfire” television program, 82
Crawford, Alan, 173
Crowder, Herman, 194-195
Cruising Speed, 222
Cuba, 3, 8, 11, 74, 109, 133, 151, 199-201, 205-206
Czechoslovakia, 99

Daily Worker, 82
Dallas, Texas, 137
Dallas, University of, 46
Danbury (Conn.) News-Times, 48
Dartmouth Conference, 23
Davison, Mary M., 16
Declaration of Independence, 21
Decter, Midge, 29, 35
Defense, Department of, U.S., 106, 109, 120, 183
Democratic National Convention, xii-xiii
Democratic Party, 29-30
Department of Defense Directive 1332.14, 183
1
de Rothschild, Edmond, 121
de Toledano, Ralph, 101, 173
Deutch, John M., 73
Diaz Lanz, Pedro, 199-201, 205, 209
Dinsmore, Herman, 167
Dionne, E.J., 160
Disney Corporation, 113
Dobrynin, Anatoly, 7, 109
Doctor Zhivago, 142-145
Dodd, Norman, 135
Donovan, Hedley, 14
Donovan, William, 70-71, 93
Donovan of OSS, 73
Dos Passos, John, 166
Doubleday, 186
Drew, Elizabeth, 14
Dukakis, Michael, 13, 226
Dulles, Allen, xvii, 8, 73
Dulles, John Foster, 8, 130
Dutchess County, N.Y., 42
East Germans, 74
Eastern Europe, 158
Eastman, Max, 101
Eaton, Cyrus, 118
Economist, The, 47,
Eddlem, Thomas R., xix
Egypt, 129
Ehrman, John, 35
Eisenhower administration, 2, 8, 73-74, 129
Eisenhower, Dwight, xvi, 13, 61, 111, 118, 129-130, 145, 152, 167-168, 189, 200, 208
El Salvador, 136
Elks Magazine, 238
Elliott, Osborn, 6
Ellsaesser, Hugh, 229
England, 18, 42, 44-45
Esquire, 48
Essential Neoconservative Reader, The, 35
Establishment, the (defined), 2
Europe, 26, 41, 70-71, 82, 88
Evans, M. Stanton, 166, 168-170
Evans, Medford, 3, 11, 122, 137-140, 166-168, 189, 202
Export-Import Bank, U.S., 34. 109

Fair Deal, 94, 192

Fajans, Irving, 72
False Leadership, x
1
Fame, 48
Family Research Council, 113
“Farm Boy to Financier,” 135
Far East, 8, 70, 74
Fascism, 38
FBI, 70, 128
Feder, Don, 174
Federalist, The, 219
Federal Reserve, 176, 210
Feeney, Mark, xxiv
Feighan, Michael, 135-136
Fellman, Bruce, 63
Fellowship for Political Theory, 105
Fenton, Rev. Francis E., x-xi
Fialka, John, 114
“Firing Line” television program, 3, 15, 29, 113-114, 163, 178
Fischer, John, 125-126
Flynn, John T., 36-39, 65-66, 206-207
“Folklore of the Right,” 142
Ford, Corey, 73
Ford Foundation, 135
Ford, Gerald, 13, 116, 122
Foreign Affairs, 21, 23, 33, 35, 88, 122-123, 193
Foreign aid, xxii, 227
Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, 13
Forrestal, James, 191
Fort Benning, Ga., 43
Foundation for Economic Education, 56
Francis, Samuel, 31, 33
Frankel, Max, 122
Freeman, The, 56, 58, 78
Friedman, Thomas, L., 122
Frohnmayer, John, xxvi
From Major Jordan’s Diaries, 207
Frost, David, 64, 81
Froude, James Anthony, 177
Frye, Alton, 5
Fuchs-Rosenberg apparatus, 131
Fulbright, J. William, 121-122
Future of Freedom Foundation, 228

Galbraith, John Kenneth, 217, 221

Gaither, H. Rowan, 135
Gallup Organization, 210
Gardner, John, 116, 194
Gardner, Richard N., 20-21
1
Garrett, Garet, 65
Gates, Robert M., 73
GATT, see World Trade Organization
“Gay rights,” xix, 181
Genocide Convention, 29, 194, 224
Georgetown University, 16
Germany, 86, 92, 123
Gershman, Carl, 36
Gerson, Mark, 35
Gestapo, 227
Getlin, Josh, xxi
Geylin, Philip, 14
“Get US out!” slogan, 156, 212
Gigot, Paul, 141-142
Gilder, George, 178
Gingrich, Newt, xxvii, 29, 31, 33-34, 194, 196
Glazer, Nathan, xxi, 36
Global warming, 228
God and Man at Yale, 49, 51-57, 78, 126
Goldwater, Barry, 31, 117, 152, 155, 164, 195, 218
Goliath, 152
Golitsyn, Anatoliy, 84-88
Goodenough, Erwin R., 54
Goodwin, Richard, 3, 217
Gorbachev, Mikhail, 86
Graham, Katharine, 14, 122
Grand Central Station, 18
Granovsky, Anatoli, 189-191
Gratitude, 226
“Great Elm,” 41
Great Society, 3, 192, 195, 217
Green, T.M., 54
Griswold, Whitney, 56
Gromyko, Andrei, 107
Guevara, Che, 3
Gun control, 194
Gun ownership, 228

Habib, Philip, 120

Haig, Alexander, 107, 122
Hall, Gus, 221
Hamilton, Alexander, 219
Hanoi, 120, 157
Harper’s, 125, 217
Harriman, Averell, 47
Harry Hines Boulevard, 137
1
Harsch, Joseph C., 122
Hart, Jeffrey, 187
Harvard International Seminar, 105-106
Harvard University, 16, 105-106, 175, 221
Harwood, Richard, 13-15
Hatch, Alden, 122
Havana, 200, 205
Hazlitt, Henry, 130
Hefner, Hugh, xix, 178
Hegelian dialectics, 132
Helms, Jesse, 22-23
Helms, Richard, 73
Henniger, Daniel, 141
Henry VIII, 188
Henry, Patrick, 196
Herrington, Stuart A., 119
Hiss, Alger, 8, 99, 107
Hitler (or Hitler’s Third Reich), 48, 92-93, 144, 188, 226
Hoagland, James, 14, 122
Ho Chi-minh, 74, 188
Hodgson, Godfrey, xxv
Holland, 121
Holy Name Society, x
Hook, Sidney, 36, 91
Homosexuality, 174, 180-184
Hoover, J. Edgar, 128-129
Hoover Institution, 47
Hot Talk, Cold Science, 229
House Committee on Un-American Activities, 128
House, Edward Mandell, 18
House, Karen Elliott, 14
“How To Be a Good Communist,” 162
Huffington, Arianna, 113
Human Events, 177-178, 188
“Human Rights and Foreign Policy,” 21
Human Rights Committee, UN, 223
Hume, Brit, 32
Humphrey, Hubert, 13
Hungarian Freedom Fighters, 8, 74, 129, 135-136, 152
Hunt, Dorothy, 76-77
Hunt, E. Howard, 69, 75-76, 78
Hunt, H.L., 100
Hussein, Saddam, 27
Hutchinson, Tim, 113

I Saw Poland Betrayed, 207

1
I Was an NKVD Agent, 189
IBM, 10
Illinois, University of, 45
Impeach Clinton Now!, 213
Imperial Hotel, 123
In These Times, xxv
Indianapolis News, 168
Indochina, 112
Institute for Policy Studies, 213
Interlocking Subversion in Government Departments, 127
International Affairs Fellowships (CFR), 95
International Basic Economy Corporation, 118
International Commission of Jurists, 21
International Monetary Fund, 227
Invisible Government, The, 15
Iron Curtain, xvi, 211
IRS, 66
Italy, 71, 226
Ivy League, 69, 164

Jackson, Andrew, 131

Jackson, C.D., 122
Jackson, Jesse, xix
James O. Welch Company, 146
Japan, 26
Jasper, William F., 213
Jefferson, Thomas, xxiii, 131
Jekyll Island, 135
Jenner, William, 127
Jennings, Peter, 122
Jimmy Carter, Jimmy Carter, 18
John Birch Society, The, x, xvii, 4, 11, 60, 71, 96, 99, 103, 111, 130-131, 134, 139-160, 191,
193, 197, 225; JBS Bulletin, 148, 156, 159, 202-204
John Randolph Club, 172
Johnson administration, 3
Johnson, Andrew, 214
Johnson, Lyndon, 116, 157, 195
Joliet-Curie, Frederic, 126
Jordan, George Racey, 207
Jordan, Vernon, 122
Judis, John, xx-xxi, xxiv-xxv, 35, 43, 45, 69, 79, 91, 97, 99, 101, 106, 116, 125, 159, 153, 180,
218, 219

Kagan, Donald, xxiv

Kahn, Albert, 145
Kalb, Madeline G., 7
1
Kama River, 109
Kann, Peter, R., 122, 141
Karatnycky, Adrian, 32
Keeney, Philip, 72
Kemble, Penn, 36
Kemp, Jack, xxvii, 29
Kempton, Murray, 217
Kendall, Willmoore, 41, 43-46, 69-70, 73, 75-76, 79-80, 83, 91, 99, 101, 137-140, 189
Kennedy administration, 2-3, 95, 171
Kennedy, John, 13
Kennedy, Raymond, 51-52, 54
Kennedy, Robert, 188
Kerry, John, 47, 120-121
Keynes, John Maynard, 45, 103, 221
Keynesian economics, 54-55, 103, 221
KGB, 7, 77, 84, 86, 87, 213, 227
Khrushchev, Nikita, 118
Kiev, 144
Kilpatrick, James, 155
King, Larry L., 217
King, Martin Luther, 187
King Canute, 165
Kirk, Russell, 45-46, 187-188
Kirkpatrick, Jeane, xxvi
Kissinger, Henry, xvii, xxvi-xxvii, 4, 8, 32, 87, 105-117, 119-121, 162, 169-171, 194, 196
Kissinger on the Couch, 7, 9
Kissinger: The Secret Side of the Secretary of State, 74, 106
Knight Ridder News Service, 225
Knox, Frank, 93
Korea, (or Korean War), 8, 38-40, 74, 136, 145
Korean Airlines Flight 007, 225
Kraft, Joseph, 122
Krauthammer, Charles, 14, 26
Kremlin, 7, 103, 109, 118, 189-190, 200
Kristol, Irving, xxvi, 6, 25-28, 30-31, 33-34, 35, 141-142
Kristol, William, xxvii, 35, 215
Kyoto Protocol, 228-229

Lake, Anthony, 213

Lane, Arthur Bliss, 207
Lane, Rose Wilder, 65
Lane, Thomas A., 161, 165-166
Laos, 8, 109
Larson, Arthur, 36
“Last Secrets of Skull and Bones, The,” 48
Latham, Aaron, 87
1
Lattimore, Owen, 8
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, 229
Lear, Norman, xix
Ledeen, Michael, 29
Le Duc Tho, 119
Lee, Robert W., 122
Lehrer, Jim, 14
Lenin, V.I., 26, 129
Lewis, Fulton, Jr., xv-xxiii
Lewis, Fulton, III, xv
Lewinsky, Monica, 213
Liberator, The, 101
Libertarians, 174
Library Journal, 88
Liebman, Marvin, xxi, xxiii, 175, 180-181
Life, 55, 188
Life of John Birch, The, 71, 146, 149
Limbaugh, Rush, xxvii, 196, 215
Lincoln, Abraham, 131
Lodge, Henry Cabot, 8, 60
Lofton, John, 182
Lohmann, Charles, 49, 52-53
London School of Economics, 97
London, University of, 63
“Look at the Score,” xiii
Lord, Winston, 15, 22, 47
Los Angeles College, 46
Los Angeles Times, xxi, 14
Lott, Trent, 113
Lovett, Robert, 47
Lovestone, Jay, 82
Lowenstein, Allard, xxvi, 194
Loyalties, 63
Luce, Claire Booth, 185
Luce, Henry, 47
Ludwig von Mises Institute, 34
Lumumba, Patrice, 74
Lynd, Staughton, 156
Lyons, Eugene, 101, 142, 144, 148

MacArthur, Douglas, 8, 111, 145

Machiavellians, The, 93
Mafia, 2, 19
Mailer, Norman, 180, 217
Managerial Revolution, The, 92
Mandela, Nelson, 162
1
Mangold, Tom, 88
Manning, Bayless, 5
Mao Tse-tung, 8, 38, 136
Marco Polo, If You Can, 179
Marijuana, 162, 174, 184
Marine Corps, U.S., 66, 206
Markmann, Charles Lam, 41, 44-45, 55, 56, 97, 100-101, 137, 178
Marshall, George C., 61, 127
Martin and Mitchell, 131
Marx, Karl, 18, 202
Marxism, 30, 92
Marxist-Leninist, 190, 200
Marzani, Carl Aldo, 72
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 171
Masses, The, 101
Matthews, Herbert, 11, 199-201
May God Forgive Us, 145
McCarthy, Mrs. Jean, 58
McCarthy, Joseph, xv, xvii, 58-67, 74, 96, 122, 127-128, 130, 146, 152, 164, 204, 206
McCarthy and His Enemies, xviii, 50, 58-66, 128-129
McCarthy: His War on American Reds, 65
McCloskey, Frank, 120
McCloy, John J., 8, 94-95
McCone, John, 73
McCormick, Col. Robert, 65, 100, 172
McDonald, Larry, 225
McGovern, George, 30
McNamara, Robert, 8, 121-122
Medicare, 26
Medicaid, 26
Mencken, H.L., 65
Mexican Bailout, 34
Mexico, 29, 41, 43, 69-70, 75. 76, 80
Meyer, Frank S., 96-99, 129-130, 150, 155-156, 160
MIA, see POW/MIAs
Middle East, 109, 129
Millbrook Academy, 42-43
Miller, Robert Talbot III, 72
Mins, Leonard, 72
Mississippi, University of, 113
Mondale, Walter, 122
Mongolia, 129
More, St. Thomas, 188
More Truth About Vietnam, 158
Moscow, 126, 131-132, 134
Most Favored Nation (MFN), 113-115, 196
1
Moulding of Communists, The, 97-98
Moyers, Bill, 122
Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, 29, 35
Muggeridge, Malcolm, 166
Munson, Lyle, 73
Muravchik, Joshua, 36
Mussolini, Benito, 226
Mystery of Banking, The, 172

Nagorski, Zygmunt, 10, 24

Nasser, Gamal, 74, 129
Nation, The, 105
National Academy of Sciences, 229
National Association of Manufacturers, 146
National City Bank, 135
National Defense University, 115
National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), xxii
National Interest, The, 26, 35
National Review, xxi, xxii, xxvii, 4-5, 10-11, 18-19, 24-25, 32, 35, 36, 44, 46, 64, 78, 79, 81,
83-84, 88, 91-103, 110-111, 125-134, 137-140, 142-145, 148, 152, 154-160, 164, 166, 168-173,
178, 181-185, 188-191, 193-196, 206, 223
National Review Bulletin, 168, 187
National Student’s Association, 82
NATO, xvi, 12, 32-33, 141
Navy, U.S., 149
Nazi shrine, 48
NBC News, 6
Nearer, My God: An Autobiography of Faith, 75, 186-188
Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea, 25, 28, 141
Neuhaus, Richard John, 29, 187
New American, The, 213
New Deal, xx, 25-26, 30, 93, 102, 192
New Freedom, The, 2
New Haven, Conn., 47, 53
New Leader, The, 99
New Left, 30
New Lies For Old, 85-86, 88
New Orleans, La., 41
New Republic, The, xxiv-xxv
New York City, 162, 187
New York magazine, 87
New York Times, xxi, xxv, 6, 11, 14, 63, 87, 122, 167, 199-201, 213
New York Times Magazine, The, 7, 179, 222
New York University, 91, 96
New Yorker, 14
Newsweek, 6
1
Nicaragua, 74, 136, 195
Nitze, Paul, 10,
Nixon administration, 169, 170
Nixon, Richard, 8, 13, 31, 69, 105, 107, 110-111, 116, 119-121, 139, 164-165, 170, 173, 178,
194-195, 221, 223
NKVD, 189-190
Nobel Prize, 126
None Dare Call It Conspiracy, 18-19, 125
North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 31-32, 34, 141, 196
Novak, Michael, xxvi, 29
Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, 107
Nuechterlein, James, xxv

Oakes, Blackford, 75, 77, 179

Obregan, Alvaro, 41
O’Connor, Carroll, 117
Office of Policy Coordination of the CIA, 69
Office of Strategic Services (OSS), 44, 46, 70-73, 75, 82, 91, 94, 138
Ohio, 118
Ohio Steelworkers, 164
Oliver, Daniel, 173
One Dozen Candles, 207
One Man’s Opinion, 146, 177
On the Firing Line, 15, 75, 78
Oregon, 118
OSS: The Secret History of America’s First Central Intelligence Agency, 70
Oosterbeck, Holland, 121
Otepka, Otto, 171
Overdrive, 22, 117, 186
Oxford Unabridged Dictionary, 164-165
Oxford University, 16, 44, 97

Paley, William, 121

Panama Canal, xix, 110, 162, 169-170, 173, 194
Paolucci, Henry, 170-172
Paul, Ron, 212
Paris Peace Accords, 119
Parliament of Man, 108
Parris, Matthew, 182
Pasternak, Boris, 142-145
Patterson, Robert, 93
Peace With Honor? An American Reports on Vietnam 1973-1975, 119
Pearl Harbor, xx, 37, 42
Pegler, Westbrook, 206
Peiping, 157
Pennsylvania, University of, 228
1
Penthouse, 178-179
People’s World, 149-150
Perle, Richard, 29, 35
Peterson, Peter G., 9, 11-12, 122
Philadelphia, Pa., 118
Philip Dru: Administrator, 18
Phillips, Howard, 173
Phillips, Kevin, 163-165
Pillsbury, Michael, 115
Playboy, xix, 176-180
Playboy Fashion, 180
Podhoretz, Norman, 35
Police Corps, 227
Politician, The, xv-xvi, 152, 167-168, 208
Pornography, 225
POW/MIAs, 8, 40, 119-121
Princeton University, 97
Pro-Blue Program, 137
Progressive, The, xxv, 56, 126
Promethian Review, 145
Prostitution, 174
Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), 36, 64, 81, 88, 122, 132, 166
Public Interest, The, 6, 35, 141
Pumpkin Papers, 99

“Quiet Conspiracy At Work,” 131

“Question of Robert Welch, The,” 150
Quigley, Carroll, 16-17, 136

Rabkin, Jeremy, 32
“Radical Record of Martin Luther King, The,” 188
Radio Free Europe, xv-xvii, 111, 135
Radio Hanoi, 188
Raimondo, Justin, 36-37, 65, 92-93
Rather, Dan, 14
Reader’s Digest, 101
Reagan adminstration, 28
Reagan, Ronald, 28, 31, 107, 112, 152, 224
Reclaiming the American Right, 36, 65
Reddy, John, xx
Redhunter, The, 66-67
Reece, Carroll, 135
Reflections of a Libertarian Journalist, 174
Regnery, Henry, 53-58
Regnery and Company, xviii, 62
Reingold, Richard, 222
1
Republican (or Republican Party), 25-31, 34, 39, 139, 141, 152
Republican Looks at His Party, A, 36
Reston, James, 122
Reuters, 123
Reuther, Walter, 82
Reynolds, A., 18
Rhee, Syngman, 74
Rhodes, Cecil, 16
Rhodes Scholar, 44
Rhodesia, 110, 136, 162
Richman, Sheldon, 228
Rickenbacker, William, 150
Rise of Neoconservatism: Intellectuals and Foreign Affairs, The, 35
Rivera, Diego, 118
Road Ahead, The, 39
Roberts, Katherine, xxv
Robin Hood, 199
Robison, John, 202
Rockefeller Brothers Trust Fund, 108
Rockefeller Center, 117
Rockefeller, David, 5, 9, 11, 19-20, 118, 121-124, 224
Rockefeller Foundation, 105
Rockefeller, Laurance, 122
Rockefeller, Nelson, xxvii, 8, 106-107, 111-112, 116-119, 121, 194
Rockwell, Llewellyn, 34
Rodell, Fred, 56
Rodman, Peter W., 32
Roe v. Wade, 184
Rogers, William P., 60, 108
Roosevelt administration, 2, 221
Roosevelt, Edith Kermit, 1-2, 4, 13
Roosevelt, Franklin D., xx, 31, 45, 93, 118, 129
Roosevelt, Theodore, 1
Rosenbaum, Ron, 48
Rosenthal, Abe, 6
Rostow, Walt W., 170-171
Rothbard, Murray, 69, 79, 96, 171-172
Rousseau, 202
Royal Institute of International Affairs, 16, 23
“Ruling Class Journalists,” 13
Rusher, William, 19, 110, 150
Rusk, Dean, 8, 122, 171
Ruskin, John, 16
Russia, xix, xxii, 29, 101, 143
Rutler, George, 187
Ryskind, Morrie, 101
1
Saigon, 157
St. Catherine of Siena Church, 186
St. Mary’s Parish, x-xi
San Antonio, Texas, 43
Saturday Evening Post, 82, 135
Saving the Queen, 75-77
Scali, John, 223
Schachtman, Max, 36
Schlafly, Phyllis, 7
Schlamm, Willi, 99-101
Schlesinger, James, 73
Schmidt, Helmut, 123
Schroeder, Professor, 54
Schwarz, Benjamin, 39
Scruton, Roger, 63
SEATO, 8
Second Amendment, 228
Seitz, Frederick, 229
Senate, U.S., 22, 65, 127, 214, 224
Senate Committee on Security and Terrorism, 162
Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, 115
Senate Subcommittee on Internal Security, 127
Seymour, Charles, 49, 52-53
Sharon, Conn., 41-42, 161
“Sharon Statement,” 161-162, 168
Sherrill, Robert, 165
Singer, Dr. S. Fred, 229
Sino-Soviet split, 85
Skull & Bones Society, xxvi, 22, 46-50, 124
Smith, Adam, 202
Smith, Howard K., 166, 221
Smith, R. Harris, 70
Smith Act, 51, 126
Smoot, Dan, 15-16
SNCC, 156
Sobran, Joseph, 182
Social Security, 26
Socialist Party, U.S., 221
Sokolsky, George, 206
Sonnenfeldt, Helmut, 194
South Africa, 162
South African Communist Party, 162
Soviet Union, 7, 33, 71, 84-86, 88, 109, 126, 129, 131-132, 158, 190-191, 195, 220, 224-225
Spain, 43, 72
Spanish Civil War, 43, 70, 72
1
Squire Willy, 164-165
Stalin, Josef, 26, 29, 36, 41, 44, 84, 92
Stamford, Conn., x-xii, xv
Stanford University, 46
Starr, Peter, 222
Starr Broadcasting, 222
State, Department of, U.S., 23, 38, 59, 66, 136, 139, 145
State of the Union, 170
Steiger, Paul E., 141
Steiner, Aloise, see Buckley, Mrs. William, Sr., 41
Stettinius, Edward, 107
Stevenson, Adlai, 8, 13, 112
Stewart, Potter, 47
Stimson, Henry, 47
Stoddard, Carlos, 53
Stormer, John A., 16
Straus, Ira, 210-211
Suez Canal, 129
Suicide of the West, 95-96
Sukarno, Achmed, 74
Sulzberger, C.L., 122
Supreme Court, 47, 51, 126, 134, 177, 184, 220
Sutton, Antony, 47
Switzerland, 153
Tack, Juan Antonio, 110
Taft, Robert, 39, 145, 172, 206
Taiwan, xxiii, 108
Talbott, Strobe, 14
Tax-Exempt Foundations, Special Committee To Investigate, 135
Taylor, Maxwell, 10
Tenet, George J., 73
Thomas, Norman, 221
Three Mile Island, 182
Thunder on the Right, 173
Thurmond, Strom, 74
Tiananmen Square, 114
Time, 3, 6, 14, 55, 99, 122, 149-150, 217
Tito, Josep Broz, 72, 136
To, Captan, 119
“Tomb, The,” 48
Torquay, England, 123
Torrijos, Omar, 170
Tower, John, 152
Tragedy and Hope, 16-17, 136
Trilateral Commission, 19, 210, 224-225
Trotsky, Leon, 26, 29, 41, 44-45, 80
1
Trotskyism, 29-30, 35-36, 44, 46, 80, 102
Trudeau, Arthur, 74
Truman administration, 2, 80, 145
Truman, Harry S., xxi, 69, 93
Truth About Vietnam, The, 157
Tufts University, 1
Turner, Stansfield, 73
Tydings, Millard E., 64

United Nations, 2, 4, 21, 27, 31-33, 93, 108, 118, 129, 136, 141, 162, 176, 181, 194, 196,
210-212, 214, 219, 222-224, 229
United Nations Journal, 106-107
Universities, see university name
U.S. Constitution, xx, xxii-xxiv, xxvi, 18, 21, 33-34, 134, 147, 192, 217, 219-220, 226, 228, 229
U.S. government agencies, see agency name
U.S. military, see branch name
United States in the World Arena, The, 171
USSR, see Soviet Union
Utley, Freda, 101

Vance, Cyrus, 57, 114, 122

Vancouver, British Columbia, 53
Vandenberg, Arthur, 39
van den Haag, Ernest, 103, 187
Vanderlip, Frank, 135
Venezuela, 41
Vietnam (or Vietnam War), 8, 30, 78, 109, 119, 136, 156-158, 188, 195, 222
“Vietnam: While Brave Men Die,” 158
Virginia, University of, 210
Vinson, Fred M., 51, 126
Vlasov, Andrei, 144
Voice of America, xv
Voltaire, 202
von Hoffman, Nicholas, 121

Wage and price controls, 221-222

Walker, Edwin A., 137
Wallace, George, 163-164
Wall Street Journal, xxiv, 14, 26, 28, 114, 122, 141-142
Ward, Chester, 7, 9-10
Warnke, Paul, 9
Warren Court, 51
Warsaw Pact, 86
Washington, George, xxiii, 199
Washington Post, 13-14, 122, 160, 214
Washington Star, 121
1
Washington Times, 88, 213
Watergate, 77
Wattenberg, Ben, 29, 35
Weber, Vin, 32
Web of Subversion, The, 71, 93, 95
Webster, William H., 73
Weekly Standard, The, 35
Welch, Robert, ix-xxviii, 60, 71, 83, 96, 103, 111, 126, 140-160, 167-168, 176-177, 180, 191,
193, 199-205, 207-209, 212, 215-216, 220, 231, 234-235, 237-239, 241-242
Westmoreland, William, 10
Wharton Econometric Forecasting Associates, 228
What Has Government Done To Our Money?, 172
Wheeler, Donald, 72
Wheeling, W.Va., 59, 61
White House, 107-108, 124, 158
White, Theodore, 6
Who’s On First?, 178
“Wild Statements,” 157
Will, George, 14, 122
William F. Buckley, Jr.,: Patron Saint of the Conservatives, xxiv, xxvi, 175
Wills, Garry, 78-79
Wilson, Woodrow, 2, 41
Winston, Henry, 221
Wohlsletter, Albert, 36
Wolff, Milton, 72
Woodstock Inn, Vt., 122
Woodstock, N.Y., 97
Woolman, John, 181-182
Woolsey, R. James, 73
Worker, The, 221
Workers School of Chicago, 97
World Effectively Controlled By the United Nations, A, 139
World Federalists, 44
World Policy Institute, 39
World Trade Organization (WTO), 31-32, 34, 141, 196
World War I, 42, 101
World War II, xx, 27, 37-39, 43, 66, 93, 190, 219
Wuchinick, George, 72
Yale Alumni magazine, 63
Yale Daily News, 44, 52
Yale News Bureau, 53
Yale University, xxi, xxvi, 4, 22, 43, 46-57, 69, 75, 126, 138
Yalta, 129
Yeltsin, Boris, 227
Young Americans for Freedom, 161-162, 168, 181
Young Communist League (YCL), 91, 181
1
Yugoslavia, 71, 72, 136

Zakaria, Fareed, 33
Zimbabwe, 110, 162
Zinn, Howard, 1, 24
Zlatovsky, Jane Foster, 72