Richard E. Sprague, in his 1976 book "The Taking of America, 1 - 2 - 3", laid bare the inner workings of the Secret Government in an unsurpassed fashion, parts of which is related below with his permission:

"The decade of 1963 to 1973 in the United States of America will go down in history for many things. In the long run it will be known through the world as the period which demonstrated that it is possible to fool most of the people all of the time.

Adolph Hitler didn't fool very many people. He cowed them, frightened them, and killed them. But most Germans knew what was happening even though they chose to do nothing about it until it was too late.

The exercise of power to control what happens and to restrict liberties is much more difficult in a Democracy or a Republic. The United States is always held up as the model case in which the guaranteed election of the president every four years and the two party system, will prevent the country from being run by dictators. The people are represented by the Congress and also elect the President.

A person or a group planning a coup d'etat in the U.S. would have a completely different job on their hands than Germany in the 1930's, South American or African countries in the twentieth century, or France in the 1890's or Russia in 1918.

It would be necessary to fool a majority of the American people into believing that they were well represented, and that a democracy still existed, while at the same time the coup group were in reality changing the country to suit their own tastes.

It is the contention of the writer that this is exactly what has happened over a period of time following World War II. The methods used to fool the American people, certainly since 1963 and to some extent also since the end of World War I, have varied slightly as administrations changed. The main thrust however, has been a constant erosion of civil rights, and a swing of government away from the best interests of the people and toward big companies, banks, the military and rich individuals and families. The trend was slowed down only briefly between 1960 and 1963 when Jack Kennedy attempted to alter the situation. He was assassinated because he did so.

To fool the American people is not easy. It requires immense capabilities, tricky, secret methods, hidden resources, great wealth and the equivalent of brainwashing or mind control on a grand scale. Yet that type of resource is precisely what has accomplished the deed. It is probable that, like Germany, the American people will awaken to what has been happening to them and to who has been doing it. It is also very likely, now that the Nixon administration has been restored for four more years, that by 1976 it will be too late. in spite of Watergate.

George McGovern's speech on ABC Television, the evening of October 25, 1972, was a warning for those citizens who were awake, that "it can happen here." It's happening here, was his basic message. Yet, unlike Germany, the people were silent, and fooled. They didn't believe him when he said, "Your liberties are being removed, one by one." The Supreme Court by 1976 will be so packed with Nixon appointees that we will never get our liberties back. McGovern covered most of the areas in which the people have been fooled. The major area he didn't cover was that of assassination. This tool represents only the end of the spectrum of techniques used by those in control to remain in control. It has been used four times very effectively, on both Kennedys, on Martin Luther King, and in the attempt on George Wallace. In the case of Wallace, crippling was sufficient to change the political outcome in 1972.

More important than the use of assassinations has been the ability to fool the American people into believing there were four lone madmen involved--and no conspiracies. The techniques involved in fooling people are more complex and subtle than those involved in the crime itself. In the Watergate case, the original crime was the use of every trick and technique necessary to re-elect Nixon. The people had to be fooled into believing that Nixon and the CIA had nothing to do with Watergate and the broader plan of which it was part.

That the fooling part turned out to be so easy, is due to a long series of conditioning steps taken with the American news media and the people over the preceding years. The Pentagon Papers case reveals how the people were fooled by several (successive CIA) administrations over a long period of time. Efforts against Ellsberg and the press continued in order to prevent further decay of the fooling process.

How is it possible in the 20th century USA--with TV and high levels of communication, with freedom of the press, freedom of speech--to fool most of the people all of the time? Here is how it is done. Five ingredients are required.

INGREDIENT 1. A PATRIOTIC ISSUE. A fundamental issue permeating nearly all conditions of life in the U.S. is needed around which the rest of the fooling can be constructed. The perfect issue since 1947 has been "The Red Menace," or "Communism" or "The Radical Communist Left Conspiracy." No one is more adept at using this issue than Richard Nixon.

The people, to be fooled, have to really believe in the issue, from the heart, from the gut. In a democracy this is the most essential ingredient. In the U.S. many, many people believe it. Some believe it because they have never heard or read anything other than "The Communists are going to take over." Others believe it because they or their parents or relatives came from Europe and "know what it's like to live under Nazism or Communism." (They don't distinguish.)

Some believe because they are religious, and somehow religion is always linked to anti-communism. Others aren't sure, but they think "radical" groups might be Communist controlled. The flag waving, the national anthem, the American Legion, our prisoners of war, the draft of the pest--all of these symbols are linked to the one big issue of "Communism."

There can be several sub-issues of lesser significance than the fundamental issue. Some of these might he related to the main issue. Others may be unrelated. Some are used to appeal to certain segments of the population. They can be carefully exploited and added together with the main issue in a way which enhances it. Some are useful with low intelligence-level people. Others appeal to bigots. Some are fearful issues which people would rather avoid. Others hit the individual right in his pocketbook or his security.

If played one against the other, very carefully, many of these sub issues can be blamed on Communism. Archie Bunker, of the TV series, "All in The Family", was not exaggerating when he blamed his white niece's dancing with a black neighbor boy on "a Communist plot."

Examples of sub-issues used by those controlling the Nixon administration to fool the people include:

The black-white issue The busing issue The young radical issue The law and order issue The national security issue The old-fashioned American work ethic versus poverty and welfare issue

INGREDIENT 2. REACHING THE MINDS OF THE PEOPLE. To fool a majority of the people all of the time, it is necessary to reach into their minds over a relatively long period of time. Make an analysis of what you, the reader, believe today, or disbelieve, along with the mental condition you are in when you enter a polling booth, or write a letter to your Congressman. After some thought, list all of the ways in which information might reach you today. You will list all of the environmental factors, self images, motivations, ego factors and acquired beliefs that make you do what you do, and make you think what you think.

You will realize that your heritage, your schooling, your life's experience, and the present bombardment of information have an impact on how you vote. If your father and grandfather before you were strong Republicans or Democrats, you may well vote the same "pull one lever" way. You might close your mind to any messages of imminent disaster, and think, "I'm better off not knowing and just voting straight Republican." (In 1972)

You might have a strong faith in the "American way of life" and pay no attention to the people, who go around claiming that John Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were all murdered by elements of an invisible government to keep the U.S. on the military, wealthy, conservative track.

You might ignore solid evidence regarding Lee Harvey Oswald’s, James Earl Ray's or Sirhan Sirhan's actions and instead rely on a long-term. well engineered faith that something like that "couldn't happen here."

Go back in time to 1935, if you are over 50, or go back to 1945, if you are over 40, or back to 1955, if you are over 30. Examine your general overall attitudes, beliefs and prejudices as developed over that period of time between then and now. You will discover, that your political beliefs about the U.S., the Presidency, foreign policy, wage and price controls, and your own economic conditions, etc., have been strongly influenced by the various news media.

INGREDIENT 3. CONTROLLING THE NEWS MEDIA. In Chapter 9, the author proves that it has been possible for a very small group of people in power to control or fool nearly all of the major news media in the U.S. about the assassination of John F. Kennedy and subsequent investigations conducted by groups other than the sources of power (Warren Commission, FBI, Secret Service, CIA, Justice Department, the President).

According to polls taken between 1963 and 1970, 50% to 80% of the public at one time or another during this period believed there was a conspiracy. Nevertheless, the major news media took the opposite position. A poll conducted today, would, no doubt, show about one-half of the people believing there was no conspiracy. How did this happen? Is it conceivable that the power sources of two succeeding administrations (Johnson and Nixon) fooled or controlled the news media to that extent?

The problem is not so difficult as it seems. Only sixteen media organizations are involved (middle of the '70s). These sixteen provide each of us with nearly all of the news we either read, see or hear. It is only necessary to control the sixteen men at the very top and that is exactly what happened. The proof contained in Chapter 9 contains specific facts about what happened inside of eleven of the sixteen organizations.

Some of them maintained an editorial position oriented toward the possibility of conspiracy for several years. The last ones to convert because of high level command decisions (at the *owner* level--not the editorial level) did not do so until 1969, 5 1/2 years after the assassination. Several of the eleven conducted their own independent investigations and discovered conspiracy, evidence sufficient to take that stand. Among these were CBS, Life Magazine, and "The New York Times."

The sixteen media organizations are:

1. NBC-TV and Radio 2. CBS-TV and Radio 3. ABC-TV and Radio 4. Associated Press 5. United Press International 6. Time-Life 7. McGraw Hill - Business Week 8. Newsweek 9. U.S. News and World Report 10 New York Times and their news service 11. Washington Post and their news service 12. Metromedia News Network TV and Radio 13. Westinghouse Radio News Network 14. Capital City Broadcasting Radio Network 15. North American Newspaper Alliance 16. Gannett News Service

Controlling the news media to that extent in order to fool the people is an extreme act. It is a last resort in an extremely serious situation. Such a situation arose when it became obvious to those in power that Jim Garrison was going to expose the truth about the assassination in court He had to be destroyed and he was, by fooling the news media as well as the people.

Control of the press by the power group slipped a little with the Pentagon Papers, the Mylai episode, the Green Berets, the FBI use of spying, and the Watergate caper. But effective control over the fooling of the people nevertheless remains. With Watergate, people fooling shifted from controlling the news media, which suddenly awakened a little too late, to the control of the the legal system

INGREDIENT 4. CONTROLLING THE LEGAL SYSTEM. Perhaps the most important long-range ingredient in fooling the people of America is the control and influence over the legal system. The U.S. in the post-war era has reached the stage where, in case of doubt on a major issue, the people will wait to see how it is resolved by the courts. The American people in general have always had tremendous faith in their own legal system.

With the exception of the South taking issue with the Warren court over black rights, the American people tend to believe that the Supreme Court will eventually right any wrongs. This faith goes much further than adjudication of crimes or disputes. People have come to rely on the legal system to tell them where the truth lies on a major issue when two sides differ completely on the facts. They believe that the adversary procedure and the perjury penalty system will ferret out the truth.

Thus, to fool the people, and make them believe lies, it is essential to control the legal system. The Nixon and Johnson administrations and the Invisible Government lying underneath or off to one side of both administrations became very adept at controlling the legal system. It can be done, and has been done in several ways. Nixon, of course, loaded the Supreme Court. That is important. The complete control of the Justice Department and the FBI is also obvious. Not so obvious is the need to control Federal judges throughout the land. Truth might leak out in a trial at a local level, so U.S. courts in each area must be controlled.

The Federal grand jury scheme worked out by Nixon, Mitchell and Robert Mardian is a beautiful way to guide, direct and control the legal system. It more than proved its worth in fooling the people in cases involving classified documents, the Black Panthers and other situations where the truth had to be obscured.

Control over the American Bar Association and individual lawyers and district attorneys is another method used, And finally, it is often useful to control local and state police, either individually or in groups.

The exercise of control is important. It may be desirable to suppress truth in a court situation during a trial or hearings. The judge can do this very effectively. It may also be desirable to delay a trial or a hearing in which the truth might be exposed. Judges and lawyers can do this quite easily. It may be desirable to entirely shut off a trial or an appeal where truth could be exposed. Nixon was able to do this to perfection.

Lies and fake cases may be presented as truth in court, while truth is attacked as being falsehood. This technique has been very successful.

All of this takes both money and power. Judges and lawyers must either be paid a lot of money, or frightened about their career and health. The CIA conduits used for espionage financing have been used extensively in controlling the legal system. Power has been used to control lower courts and local police or district attorneys from the highest source of power in America, the invisible government.

A few examples will suffice to demonstrate how the legal system is used to fool the people.

The 1972 election demonstrated that two-thirds of the people either did not associate Mr. Nixon with the Watergate affair and the Chapin- Segretti sabotage project, or else they didn't know about it or didn't care.

Surely, you say, a traditional American patriot would not vote for a man who did all of the things the Watergate 7 and Cbapin-Segretti and company, did. But wait! The situation as of January 1973 had not yet reached the courts. Except for Bernard Barker's conviction for falsely using his notary public seal to stamp a check from Kenneth Dahlberg in Florida, no court actions had taken place.

Wasn't that lucky for the Republicans, you say. It wasn't luck. The Watergate arrests took place in June 1972. By successfully delaying a whole series of trials and court actions, Mr. Nixon, through control of the courts, kept the truth away from the people until after the election on November 7. Perhaps some of the people who voted for him had doubts, but if court cases had been conducted before November 7, and conducted fairly by uncontrolled judges, the truth would have been exposed in all of its glory.

Now that he had a powerful mandate from the people, it was likely that other forms of control would be used to continue fooling the people about Watergate. Some of these were covered in the prior chapters. Executive privilege has been used to a major extent.

Clay Shaw was actually defended and Garrison, in effect, was put on trial through CIA money and CIA lawyers. Garrison's attempts to bring Shaw to trial for perjury were successfully blocked by Federal courts and judges. Sirhan Sirhan's trial for the murder of Robert Kennedy was controlled by the Nixon administration in order to hide the truth from the people. The case involved controlling the judge at the trial, the district attorney, the lawyers for Sirhan, the Los Angeles police, the FBI, and some of the officials of the state of California. The control exercised has continued to prevent Sirhan from receiving a new trial based on new evidence of what happened in the assassination.

THE FIVE BIG EVENTS. The five events since World War II about which the power control group must continue to fool the American people, are the assassinations of John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the attempted assassination of George Wallace, and the Watergate episode. (In 1973, the truth about Chappaquiddick and its importance, together with the threats against Jackie Kennedy, Ethel Kennedy, Ted Kennedy and all of the Kennedy children, had not been exposed. Chappaquiddick is the sixth big event).

All other things this group has done since 1947 fade into insignificance compared to these five. The reason is that the American people may accept such things as the Pueblo incident, the Gulf of Tonkin fake, the Mylai incident, the Pentagon Papers, the Kent State killings, the frame- ups of the Black Panthers and their murders, and even the whole Viet Nam war, but they would rise up in wrath if the truth about any one or all of those five events were exposed.

Thus, Mr. Hanson for Sirhan, Mr. Fensterwald for James Earl Ray, Mr. Lawrence O'Brien and the Watergate suit--anyone opposing the findings of the Warren Commission with national prominence and success--and anyone who begins to pry too much into George Wallace's brush with death, will be opposed with all the power those in control can muster. Each will be dealt with if he comes too close, just as Jim Garrison was dealt with by both the Johnson and Nixon administrations. Garrison managed to beat out the Nixon-controlled Justice Department in his own trial in September 1973. The jury in New Orleans found him innocent in spite of the fact that the prosecuting attorney, the judge, the key witness, Pershing Gervais, and the news media were all controlled by Nixon and Mitchell. By late 1973 it was becoming a little more difficult to fool the people.

INGREDIENT 5. PAID COLUMNISTS OR LACKEYS. Control of the news media includes controlling or hiring selected columnists, newsmen, commentators and lackeys. Sometimes these people are called "spokesmen for the administration." Many of them are supposedly independent. Their importance in the process of fooling the people has increased as the number of independent news media organizations has decreased and the number of organizations relying on syndicated, national columnists or commentators has increased.

The Nixon administration managed to corral a great many more of these types than did the administrations of Johnson, Kennedy or Eisenhower. In the newspaper field, there were four to five times as many columnists writing "fool the people" type news for Nixon as against Nixon. Alsop was at one extreme. More subtle were writers like C.L. Sulzberger in the "New York Times" and Gary Wills in various conservative papers. On radio, the Westinghouse network used four commentators who appeared to be liberal at first glance, but who adhered to the party line when the time came to get at the truth about the five key events mentioned earlier. These four were Peter Lisagor, Rod McCleish, Simeon Booker and Irwin Cannon.

William Safire, Evans and Novak, Mary McCarthy, and occasionally Jack Anderson also fall into the "fool the people" column. The impact of these columnists on the American people has not really been measured. Alsop's and Evans and Novak's columns appear in Republican and right wing newspapers all across the U.S. The election poll that indicated over 700 newspapers supported Nixon while fewer than 50 supported McGovern, provides some estimate of how influential these papers and columnists can be. With the exception of two or three stories by Jack Anderson about Robert Kennedy and plots to assassinate Castro, none of the evidence about the truth pertaining to the assassinations has ever appeared in any of these columns. Yet the American people read these columns more faithfully than they read the front page.

HOW THE PEOPLE HAVE BEEN FOOLED. Now that the ingredients for fooling the people have been discussed, let's examine the net results over the past twenty-five years. Between 1957 and 1972, there was a culmination in the use of these ingredients, many of which were developed with the end of World War II.

Through a succession of presidencies and political party administrations from Truman to Nixon, a mixture of wealthy, military and espionage individuals developed a power base and used the five ingredients to fool the people. Except for John Kennedy, none of the presidents tried very hard to resist this power. The book "Farewell America" (by James Hepburn--a pseudonym--Frontiers Press), which has been reprinted in sections in "Computers and Automation" (1973) shows clearly what kind of power JFK tried to resist and how it resulted in his death.

The American people aren't familiar with this book any more than they are familiar with a movie made from the book with the same title. And as long as the group remains in power, the book and movie will be banned from the United States, just as "Z" was banned in Greece."

We are all indebted to Richard E. Sprague and need only follow up with a few examples illustrating his thesis. When Oliver Stone was filming his JFK movie in 1991, the powers that be were in a panic. Movies can have an enormous impact, and decisions were made to minimize the impact as much as possible. A campaign of vilification was launched in the media in order to discourage all right thinking patriots from seeing the movie.

A man by the name of Perry Russo had testified in the trial of Clay Shaw that he had been present at a meeting where the murder of President Kennnedy was planned. Clay Shaw had been identified as the most important player in the meeting. Here is Perry Russo in his own words.(PR is Perry Russo. WR is the interviewer, the transcript is from a radio interview).

PR:

"OK, over the years the press for whatever its own reasons, whether it was...it had its own agenda, whether it was government sponsored, whether it was government leaked or whether these people who wrote these articles had various ways to get at Garrison and of course one way is to attack me and my credibility. Recently the 1968 article of Time Magazine listing me as a drug addict when I never even smoked marijuana, did serious damage to anybody believing that Perry Russo could possible speak anything about something factual because he was a known drug addict. 1970 US News and World report says that Perry Russo is a very dapper dresser. However, there's always a "however", However, he associates with a strange crew of weirdoes and over the years has done so. That's not libelous but you get into just a slanting of that particular article. Who would trust a person that hangs around with a strange assortment of weirdoes. Then you have the Times Picayune, which is a notorious champion here in New Orleans of anything that is anti-Garrison over the years. Times Picayune newspaper publishing company which publishes two newspapers, comes out with an article on the twentieth anniversary of the Kennedy assassination, saying that convicted burglar, Perry Raymond Russo, which I'm not a convicted burglar. They ...we go into court on that and they...we don't go into court, but we go into discussions and they settle out of court with a retraction. Seventeen weeks later, on the 55th page of something of the Sunday newspaper whereas the first statement came with my photograph and " convicted burglar statement right underneath it." So now over the years I have thought to be by myself and not read any of the articles, or read any of the newspapers clippings, when Oliver Stone contacted me, asking me to sign on and do technical work. I thought that was satisfactory. I continue not to read the articles that were written even at that time. However, there was one that was written in the January issue of "Gentlemen's Quarterly" and for this reason I have come to talk to you people who have asked for an interview. It's an opportunity to set the record straight. Nicholas Lehman wrote an article in GQ analyzing the movie which hadn't yet at this time come out. And so he wrote an article and in the article he savaged Garrison and savaged me. The article states that Stone's basing his movie upon Garrison, who is basing his conspiracy theory upon testimony of Perry Raymond Russo, Baton Rouge insurance salesman cum grifter. That would seem like a very innocent remark except I looked up the definition, and it means a convicted swindler. I have never had any convictions for anything except traffic. And yet this news outlet GQ thinks it can take a cheap shot. I didn't ask for the publicity. I have never asked for one interview ever, by anybody. I have not taken any money for interviews and GQ takes this cheap shot. A person reading this article in another area would read a grifter, isn't he a scam artist, isn't he a con man, isn't he a swindler or a dishonest... yes that's what grifter means and GQ said it. Nicholas Lehman was deposed in this particular case which is in Federal Court now. Was deposed.. The essence of his deposition when asked why he would label Perry Russo a grifter was ...his answer was that he was hired...he did not want to label him as he had been historically labeled as "Baton Rouge insurance man." He wanted to give a different twist, a different light upon that person. And he was hired to savage the movie. And he said that's exactly what he did in the article and he had no regrets about it whatsoever. He savaged it and the best route to savage it was to savage Garrison and to savage Garrison's witnesses."

WR:

"Did he say who he was hired by?"

PR:

"He didn't say."

Here is journalist Douglas Valentine reporting on a trial involving MLK:

On Dec. 8, a jury in Memphis, Tenn., deliberated for only three hours before deciding that the long-held official version of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination was wrong.

The jury's verdict implicated a retired Memphis businessman and government agencies in a conspiracy to kill the civil rights giant.

Though the trial testimony had received little press attention outside of the Memphis area, the startling outcome drew an immediate rebuttal from defenders of the official finding: that James Earl Ray acted alone or possibly as part of a low-level conspiracy of a few white racists.

Leading newspapers across the country disparaged the December verdict as the product of a flawed conspiracy theory given a one-sided presentation. The Washington Post even lumped the conspiracy proponents in with those who insist Adolf Hitler was unfairly accused of genocide.

"The deceit of history, whether it occurs in the context of Holocaust denial or in an effort to rewrite the story of Dr. King's death, is a dangerous impulse for which those committed to reasoned debate and truth cannot sit still," a Post editorial read. "The more quickly and completely this jury's discredited verdict is forgotten the better." [WP, Dec. 12, 1999]

Another example is William F. Pepper's experience with his book "Orders to Kill." While books that celebrate James Earl Ray (or Lee Harvey Oswald) as the assassin get a lot of play in the media, not one of the elite media institutions in the United States would review the book, a treatment that Pepper is not the first one to fall victim of. I vividly remember running into a copy of Robert D. Morrow's book "First Hand Knowledge" in my bookstore in 1992. I of course purchased it and waited eagerly for a review in my newspaper, the venerable "Chicago Tribune." I am still waiting, but not holding my breath any longer. Books like Morrow's just don't get reviewed in order to minimize the number of people exposed to the truth!

At this point I had to agree, that there were a certain amount of truth in a statement made in 1953 by the Chief of Staff for The New York Times, John Swinton. At a New York Press Club meeting he astonished the other guests with this outspoken speech:

"There is no such thing, at this date of the world's history, in America, as an independent press. You know it, and I know it. There is not one of you, who dares to write your honest opinions, and if you did, you know beforehand, that it would never appear in print. I am paid weekly for keeping my honest opinion out of the paper I am connected with. Others of you are paid similar salaries for similar things, and any of you who would be so foolish as to write honest opinions would be out on the streets looking for another job. If I allowed my honest opinions to appear in one issue of my paper, before twenty-four hours, my occupation would be gone.

The business of the journalists is to destroy the truth, to lie outright, to pervert, to vilify, to fawn at the feet of Mammon, and to sell his country and his race for his daily bread. You know it and I know it, and what folly is this toasting an "independent press?"

We are the tools and vassals of rich men behind the scenes. We are the jumping jacks, they pull the strings and we dance. Our talents, our possibilities and our lives are all the property of other men. We are intellectual prostitutes."