Yesterday on his Fox News show, while attacking Edward House, an adviser to President Wilson, for his work in establishing the Federal Reserve, Glenn Beck promoted the book Secrets of the Federal Reserve. As we pointed out, the book was written by Eustace Mullins, a reported 9-11 truther who was called “an anti-Semitic conspiracy theorist” by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
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]
Mullins also writes that these groups were the power behind President Jimmy Carter and his Federal Reserve chair, Paul Volcker, whose “course has always been charted for him by his masters in London”:
On July 26, 1979, The [New York] Times commented that Volcker learned “the business” from Robert Roosa, now partner of Brown Brothers Harriman, and that Volcker had been part of the Roosa Brain Trust at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and, later, at the Treasury in the Kennedy administration. “David Rockefeller, the chairman of Chase, and Mr. Roosa were strong influences in the Mr. Carter decision to name Mr. Volcker for the Reserve Board chairmanship.” The New York Times did not point out that David Rockefeller and Robert Roosa had previously chosen Mr. Carter, a member of the Trilateral Commission, as the presidential candidate of the Democratic Party, or that Mr. Carter would hardly refuse to appoint their choice of Paul Volcker as the new Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. Nor is it straining the point to be reminded that this manner of selection of the Chairman of the Board of Governors is directly in the line of royal prerogative going back to George Peabody's initial agreement with N.M. Rothschild, to the Jekyll Island meeting, and to the enactment of the Federal Reserve Act.
The Times noted that “Volcker's choice was approved by European banks in Bonn, Frankfurt and Zurich.” William Simon, former Secretary of Treasury, was quoted as saying “a marvelous choice.” The Times further noted that the Dow market rose on Volcker's nomination, registering the best gains in three weeks for a rise of 9.73 points, and that the dollar rose sharply on foreign exchange at home and abroad.
Who was Volcker, that his appointment could have such an effect on the stock market and the value of the dollar in foreign exchange? He represented the most powerful house of “the London Connection,” Brown Brothers Harriman, and the London houses which directed the Rockefeller empire. On July 29, 1979, The Times had said of Volcker, “New Man Will Chart His Own Course”.
Volcker's background shows that this was nonsense. His course has always been charted for him by his masters in London
[...]
Behind Volcker and Solomon stands Robert Roosa, Secretary of the Treasury in Carter's shadow cabinet, and representing Brown Brothers Harriman, the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderbergers, and the Royal Economic Institute. He is a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation, and a director of Texaco and American Express companies. Dr. Martin Larson points out that “The international consortium of financiers known as the Bilderbergers, who meet annually in profound secrecy to determine the destiny of the western world, is a creature of the Rockefeller-Rothschild alliance, and that it held its third meeting on St. Simons Island, only a short distance from Jekyll Island.” Larson also states that “The Rockefeller interests work in close alliance with the Rothschilds and other central banks.” [Pages 171-173]
Lyndon LaRouche
In advancing several of these conspiracies, Mullins cites the work of Lyndon LaRouche. For example:
LaRouche tells us that on February 5, 1891, a secret association known as the Round Table Group was formed in London by Cecil Rhodes, his banker, Lord Rothschild, the Rothschild in-law, Lord Rosebery, and Lord Curzon. He states that in the United States the Round Table was represented by the Morgan group. [Page 53]
And:
Although the Rothschild plan does not match any single political or economic movement since it was enunciated in 1773, vital parts of it can be discerned in all political revolution since that date. LaRouche points out that the Round Tables sponsored Fabian Socialism in England, while backing the Nazi regime through a Round Table member in Germany, Dr. Hjalmar Schacht, and that they used the Nazi Government throughout World War II through Round Table member Admiral Canaris, while Allen Dulles ran a collaborating intelligence operation in Switzerland for the Allies. [Page 62]
The ADL writes that LaRouche is a “conspiracy theorist” and “leader of a fringe political cult that defies categorization.” Additionally:
LaRouche's organization is built upon a cadre of loyal supporters and publications that promote his conspiratorial world views. LaRouche, 86, has a long record of advancing conspiracy theories linking the AIDS crisis, the drug epidemic and international financial crises to prominent Jews and Jewish organizations. For many years, LaRouche has employed Holocaust imagery to express his opposition to a wide range of political issues.
Carroll Quigley
Mullins also repeatedly cites Carroll Quigley's Tragedy and Hope in weaving his web of conspiracies. For example, referencing the Round Table Group:
Dr. Carrol Quigley refers to this group as “The British-American Secret Society” in Tragedy and Hope, stating that “The chief backbone of this organization grew up along the already existing financial cooperation running from the Morgan Bank in New York to a group of international financiers in London led by Lazard Brothers (in 1901).” [Page 53]
Also:
The collaboration between Benjamin Strong and Lord Montagu Norman is one of the greatest secrets of the twentieth century. Benjamin Strong married the daughter of the president of Bankers Trust in New York, and subsequently succeeded to its presidency. Carroll Quigley, in Tragedy and Hope says: “Strong became Governor of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York as the joint nominee of Morgan and of Kuhn, Loeb Company in 1914.” [Page 131]
Mullins echoes Beck inspiration W. Cleon Skousen, who devoted his 1970 book, The Naked Capitalist, to “a review and commentary” of Quigley's Tragedy and Hope. Skousen called it “a bold and boastful admission by Dr. Quigley that there actually exists a relatively small but powerful group which has succeeded in acquiring a choke-hold on the affairs of practically the entire human race.”
But as Alexander Zaitchik has reported, in a 1971 issue of Dialogue: The Journal of Mormon Thought, Quigley responded to Skousen's work, accusing him of “inventing fantastic ideas and making inferences that go far beyond the bounds of honest commentary.” According to Zaitchik, Quigley actually intended Tragedy and Hope to be a critique of New World Order conspirators.