At the beginning of his discussion of House, Beck urged his audience, “I ask you to do your own homework on this, don't take anything I say as truth just because I say it. Do your own homework. Find out if it's true. Read original sources.” And so we did.

The ADL calls Secrets of the Federal Reserve “a re-hash of [Mullins'] anti-Semitic theories about the origins of the Federal Reserve.” Based on our review, that description seems accurate.

Secrets was commissioned by and dedicated to an American Hitler sympathizer who attacked the Allied governments in World War II-era broadcasts for Italy's Fascist government. The book tells the tale of how a sinister conspiracy of international financiers, led by a family of Jewish bankers to whom “the most powerful men in the United States were themselves answerable,” established the Federal Reserve as part of their centuries-old plot to control the country.

Ezra Pound

Ezra Pound, the American Modernist poet, provides the introduction to Secrets; the book is also dedicated to him. And for good reason -- a forward Mullins wrote for the 1991 edition of the book explains that Pound was intimately involved in the book's creation. Mullins writes:

In 1949, while I was visiting Ezra Pound who was a political prisoner at St. Elizabeth's Hospital, Washington, D.C. (a Federal institution for the insane), Dr. Pound asked me if I had ever heard of the Federal Reserve System. I replied that I had not, as of the age of 25. He then showed me a ten dollar bill marked “Federal Reserve Note” and asked me if I would do some research at the Library of Congress on the Federal Reserve System which had issued this bill. Pound was unable to go to the Library himself, as he was being held without trial as a political prisoner by the United States government. After he was denied broadcasting time in the U.S., Dr. Pound broadcast from Italy in an effort to persuade people of the United States not to enter World War II.

Mullins further wrote that Pound funded his research and made editorial suggestions and that the book was eventually published by “two of Pound's disciples.”

Why does it matter that Pound basically came up with the idea for Mullins' book? Isn't he just a poet?

Did you catch the bit there about how Pound was a “political prisoner” because he tried to “persuade people of the United States not to enter World War II”? Here's how that looks from a less biased source:

From 1941 to 1943, in broadcasts for the Italian government, [Pound] sang the praises of Mussolini and Hitler, while denigrating the Allied powers.

His main theme was invariably anti-Semitic: “That Jew in the White House... the kike and the unmitigated evil... the United States has been invaded by vermin.”

[...]

Nevertheless, interned in a camp for army criminals, Pound managed to write his award-winning Pisan Canto, regarded by many critics as one of his finest achievements.

Back in the United States, though, Pound was declared unfit to stand trial.

He was confined for nearly 13 years in Washington's chief psychiatric institution, St Elizabeth's Hospital, where he entertained Stephen Spender and other visitors, acquiring two more mistresses among them.

[...]

Ezra Pound himself, who greeted his release from custody with a Fascist salute and blamed his bad press on papers such as the “Jew Pork Times”, reflected toward the end of his life: “I have tried to write paradise. Let those whom I love forgive what I have written.”

That's who proposed the book Beck promoted yesterday.

The Rothschild Conspiracy

The crux of Mullins' book is its fifth chapter, titled “The House of Rothschild,” which details how that family of German Jewish bankers was the secret hand behind the plot to establish the Federal Reserve.

Mullins writes:

The success of the Federal Reserve Conspiracy will raise many questions in the minds of readers who are unfamiliar with the history of the United States and finance capital. How could the Kuhn, Loeb-Morgan alliance, powerful though it might be, believe that it would be capable, first, of devising a plan which would bring the entire money and credit of the people of the United States into their hands, and second, of getting such a plan enacted into law? [Page 47]

Mullins' answer? That's how the Jews wanted it. After referencing a 1911 magazine article detailing how “Seven men in Wall Street now control a great share of the fundamental industry and resources of the United States,” Mullins wrote of its author:

What John Moody did not know, or did not tell his readers, was that the most powerful men in the United States were themselves answerable to another power, a foreign power, and a power which had been steadfastly seeking to extend its control over the young republic of the United States since its very inception. This power was the financial power of England, centered in the London Branch of the House of Rothschild. The fact was that in 1910, the United States was for all practical purposes being ruled from England, and so it is today. [Pages 47-48]

Mullins then writes that the major U.S. banks “take their direction from London,” i.e. the Rothschilds, who “are interesting solely in money and power.”:

Although these firms are ostensibly American firms, which merely maintain branches in London, the fact is that these banking houses actually take their direction from London. Their history is a fascinating one, and unknown to the American public, originating as it did in the international traffic in gold, slaves, diamonds, and other contraband. There are no moral considerations in any business decision made by these firms. They are interested solely in money and power. [Page 48]

The ADL writes of the “Classic Anti-Semitic Myth” of “Jewish 'Control' of the Federal Reserve”:

In the literature of bigots, the name Rothschild is a trigger for the most explosive of anti-Semitic tremors, and it usually sets off a litany of other Jewish names.

The Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderbergers and the Trilateral Commission

The Rothschilds are only one of a web of New World Order-type groups that Mullins portrays as central to how the Fed was established and retains power, including the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Bilderbergers. The ADL writes of such conspiracies in an article on the Bilderbergers:

Various far-right extremists and conspiracy theorists, however, charge that the group is a shadowy force seeking to control world events, exerting allegedly dominating powers of international influence to promote a “new world order” under their control. The extremists claim that Presidential candidates of both major U.S. political parties are controlled by the Bilderberg group; among those often mentioned in such conspiracy-oriented propaganda are David Rockefeller, the Clintons and Henry Kissinger. Other Bilderberg leaders are said to be members of the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations -- groups which themselves are often central players in far-right conspiracy theories of secret efforts at domination of the world's political and financial institutions and the press. Such charges about the Bilderberg group were a regular feature in The Spotlight, the recently-defunct weekly tabloid of the far-right, anti-Semitic Liberty Lobby.

Mullins writes that local business leaders have “set up regional councils, on orders from New York, of such groups as the Council on Foreign Relations, The Trilateral Commission, and other instruments of control devised by their masters”:

The shareholders of these banks which own the stock of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York are the people who have controlled our political and economic destinies since 1914. They are the Rothschilds, of Europe, Lazard Freres (Eugene Meyer), Kuhn Loeb Company, Warburg Company, Lehman Brothers, Goldman Sachs, the Rockefeller family, and the J.P. Morgan interests. These interests have merged and consolidated in recent years, so that the control is much more concentrated. National Bank of Commerce is now Morgan Guaranty Trust Company. Lehman Brothers has merged with Kuhn, Loeb Company, First National Bank has merged with the National City Bank, and in the other eleven Federal Reserve Districts, these same shareholders indirectly own or control shares in those banks, with the other shares owned by the leading families in those areas who own or control the principal industries in these regions. The “local” families set up regional councils, on orders from New York, of such groups as the Council on Foreign Relations, The Trilateral Commission, and other instruments of control devised by their masters. They finance and control political developments in their area, name candidates, and are seldom successfully opposed in their plans. [Page 34-35]

He writes of the “secret association” known as the Round Table:

After World War I, the Round Table became known as the Council on Foreign Relations in the United States, and the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London. The leading government officials of both England and the United States were chosen from its members. In the 1960s, as growing attention centered on the surreptitious governmental activities of the Council on Foreign Relations, subsidiary groups, known as the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderbergers, representing the identical financial interests, began operations, with the more important officials, such as Robert Roosa, being members of all three groups. [Page 54]