'IRON MOUNTAIN' PEACE STUDY A HOAX, PENTAGON DECLARES

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01350R000200370004-0
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 12, 2004
• Sequence Number: 4
• Publication Date: November 16, 1967
• Content Type: NSPR

DES MOINES, IOWA
REGISTER
Approved Fjell~a004/11
?S-'237,172
S-5O9,4O5
Iron Mountai*n'l-ecrceStudy.
Of The Reoister's Washington Sureeul
WASHINGTON, D.C. -'The
(.Defense Department declared
Wednesday that an alleged se-
cret government study pub-
1lished as "Report From Iron
ItMOuntain" is a hoax.
Richard Fryklund, d,e p u t y
assistant secretary of "defense,
said, "We have examined this
alleged report -thoroughly and
have made an investigation and
have established conclisively
that it is a hoax."
Excerpts in Magazine
The book-is published by Dial
Press, and 28,000 words from
the book are being carried in
the current. Esquire magazine
under a title: "On the Possibil-
ity and Desirability of Peace;"
Leonard Lewin, a New York
free-lance writer, wrote the
foreword to "Report." In the
foreword, he represents the
book as..a condensation of an
authentic report by a high-level,
15-Man study group that
con- cluded that it would probably
not be in the best interests of
society to achieve peace.
i Lewin claims the report was
given to him,by, a Midwestern,
professor who was a member
of the special study group.
According to Lewin, the group
concluded: ' 'Lasting peace,
while not theoretically impos-
sible, is probably unattain-
ible; even if it ' could-. be
achieved It would almost cer-
tainly not be in the best inter-
ests of a stable, society to
achieve it .19
According to Lewin, he wrote
the foreword and arranged to
have the report published by
'Dial Press because ,in my opin-
ion,. the decision of the special
study group to censor its own
findings was not merely timid
but presumptuous.
"I should state, for the rec-
ord, that I do not share the
attitudes toward war and peace,
life and death, and survival of
the species manifested in the
report," Lewin wrote In the
foreword. "Few readers will. In
human terms, it is an outra-
geous document. But it does
represent a serious and chal-
lenging effort to define an enor-
mous problem."
Saw It Was Hoax
Fryklund said Wednesday that
"after reading no more than ten
pages of the so-called report, I
could tell it was a hoax,"
But, after reading it,, Fryk-
lund said he had it researched
to determine if there was any
study group that had been
established a f.t e r 1963 that
might have fit the description in
"Report From Iron Mountain"
o:r that might have written such
a report.
"There was no -such com-
mittee, and there was no such
report," Fryklund said, "The
evidence was conclusive."
Robert McCloskey, d e p u It y
assistant secretary of state,
said that the Arms Control and
Disarmament Agency had made
a study and.determined that the
report was not authentic,
It was learned from publish-'
ing sources that the purported
"Report" was written by Lewin,
who then wrote a foreword and
represented to Dial Press that it
was an authentic, report.
Review Scheduled
Byron Dobell, editor of Book
World, Published by the Wash-
ington Post and the Chicago
Tribune, said Wednesday that
he knew the so-called report
"was a, hoax from the first time
Approved For Release 2004/11/01,
I read the galley proofs on It."
He said that a review of "Re-
port From Iron Mountain,";
(Sunday in Book Week, was writ-
ten by John Kenneth .Galbraith,
a. professor of economics at
Harvard and former ambassa-'
dor to India, Dob'ell said the
review Is a "tongue-in-cheek re-
view."
Richard Baron, president of
Dial Press, said he did not
know the book was a hoax at
the time he agreed to 'publish
It, "and I don't know that it Is
a hoax now."
"I will concede that the De-
fense Department has' better fa-
cilities for looking into this sort
of thing to determine whether it
is, authentic," Baron said. "I
also know that-the Defense De.
lot of denials on l?Ta'Rers a few'
months ago, and the officials'.,(