How did America end up trapped in a nightmare of conspiracy theories, in which millions see the government as an evil ‘deep state’? It didn’t begin with Donald Trump, and it won’t end with him.

In Ghosts of Iron Mountain, Phil Tinline traces the roots of today’s fears back to the years after the Second World War, when America was the most powerful nation the world had ever known. He tells, in vivid, entertaining and brilliant detail, the story of a literary hoax that shocked a nation. Its impact – and its astonishing afterlife – reveal America’s fears as you’ve never seen them before.

In 1967, at the height of the war in Vietnam, a group of New York writers cooked up a satirical response to the Dr Strangelove-like thinking prevalent in Washington. They concocted what appeared to be a top-secret government report into what would happen to the USA if permanent global peace broke out.

Report from Iron Mountain claimed that winding down America’s vast war-making machinery would wreck the economy and tear society apart, necessitating draconian controls over the population. It was published as non-fiction – and was frighteningly convincing. Journalists tried to find out who had written it. Worried memos reached right up to the president. It became a bestselling cause célèbre.

Even when the hoax was revealed, many refused to believe it wasn’t real. Denial became proof of truth. The Report was seized on by eager figures on the far right and in the militia movement, who insisted that it revealed terrifying government conspiracies to pollute the environment, enslave Americans and even instigate eugenics. It helped to shape the movie that has done more than any other to revive conspiracy theory: Oliver Stone’s JFK. And it spawned a second hoax, which has helped sustain its bizarre relevance right up to today.

Ghosts of Iron Mountain traces this story through a gallery of vivid characters, from the radical academic C. Wright Mills and the writers E. L. Doctorow, Victor Navasky and Leonard Lewin in 1960s New York, to the Hitler-loving far-right impresario Willis Carto, Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, the conspiracy theorist William Cooper, L. Fletcher Prouty (the ‘Mr X’ of JFK), and the ranting broadcaster Alex Jones.

This is one of the great stories of our time, and an entertaining, compulsively readable narrative that reveals how nightmares about its own government drove America crazy.

Advance praise for Ghosts of Iron Mountain:

“ASTONISHING . . . an account of a brilliantly conceived spoof that has quite unintentionally changed the course of history, feeding a frenzy of conspiratorially minded narratives that have poisoned the electorate and threaten our civic discourse. The spoof would be hilarious if it were not so dangerous.”

—from the Foreword by Kai Bird, Pulitzer Prize-winning co-author of American Prometheus, inspiration for the film Oppenheimer

“DEEPLY REPORTED AND BRILLIANTLY TOLD . . . What a fascinating tale Phil Tinline unspools here.  He’s unearthed a strange, little-known key from the 1960s with which he unlocks America’s descent into conspiracy madness and the dangerous blurring of political fiction and reality. Ghosts of Iron Mountain is unique, illuminating, and important.”

—Kurt Andersen, cofounder of Spy magazine and New York Times bestselling author of Fantasyland and Evil Geniuses

“A TREMENDOUS JOURNALISTIC ACHIEVEMENT, A ROLLICKING PAGE TURNER, AND, ULTIMATELY, A PUBLIC SERVICE . . . Tinline provides the ‘why’ behind today’s most destabilizing extremist conspiracy theories about secret governments and deep states.”

—Gerald Posner, author of the New York Times bestseller and Pulitzer Prize Finalist Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK

“SPELLBINDING, A PROFOUND MEDITATION on a question that America has never figured out quite how to face: can government, for, by, and of the people ever live comfortably side by side with military empire?”

—Rick Perlstein, author of the New York Times bestseller Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America

“A CLEVER, FAST-PACED READ OF DAZZLING ORIGINALITY that ranges from the Kennedy assassination to QAnon.  In his gripping investigation Phil Tinline shows why Americans are so vulnerable to conspiracy theories and sinister hoaxes. Ghost of Iron Mountain is powerfully relevant to our times.”

—William I. Hitchcock, New York Times bestselling author of The Age of Eisenhower

“A SUPERB WORK OF JOURNALISM, HISTORY, AND POLITICAL INSIGHT, a brilliant true story about a brilliant fake story. We must all give thanks to Phil Tinline for exposing this conspiracy of conspiracies, this scheme of schemes—a story so good that, once you see it, you see it everywhere.”

—Nathan Hill, New York Times bestselling author of The Nix and Wellness

“THOUGHTFUL, PROVOCATIVE, UNIQUE, AND SMART are just a few of the adjectives that describe Phil Tinline’s engrossing and highly readable Ghosts of Iron Mountain. You have to read this book to understand the roots of Trumpism in America today. Highly recommended.”

—Steven M. Gillon, author of America’s Reluctant Prince and 10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America

“A BRILLIANTLY RESEARCHED HISTORY written in prose that has the acid kick of a well-mixed gimlet. Tinline brings to life an extraordinary story of secret government maneuverings, deep paranoia, and some of the most brilliant satirists of 1960s America to tell us, in a way we’ve never heard before, about the era of JFK and Vietnam—and the dark tendrils reaching out from then to now.”

—Rana Mitter, ST Lee Chair in U.S.-China Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School and author of Forgotten Ally: China’s World War II, 1937-1945

“A GRIPPING, BEAUTIFULLY WRITTEN, REAL-LIFE HISTORICAL THRILLER that convincingly links modern incarnations of America’s destructive conspiracy theory culture—from Donald Trump to InfoWars—to a fascinating but forgotten 1960s hoax. Roller-coastering from past to present, Ghosts of Iron Mountain reveals why many among us clutch at yarns about evil cabals and shadowy powerbrokers, and it finally answers the crucial question: why do so many Americans cling to the stubborn belief that if something feels real, it is real?”

—Brian Klaas, Contributing Writer at The Atlantic and author of Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters

“PERSPECTIVE-SHIFTING . . . Ghosts of Iron Mountain tells a story that subverts expectations of a perfectly polarized leftwing and rightwing mindset in the US. The fabricated document at this narrative’s centre has, since the 1960s, felt true to both sides, helping to explain why it continues to ping between satire and gospel across the political spectrum – and to this day remains distressingly relevant.”

—Whitney Phillips, co-author of The Shadow Gospel: How Anti-Liberal Demonology Possessed US Religion, Media, and Politics

“A PAGE-TURNING, RIPPING GOOD READ . . . It is, in fact, a true story about us, our beliefs and fears, our political choices, and our paranoia about power. Read it and be awakened.”

—Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine and author of Conspiracy: Why the Rational Believe the Irrational

“DEEPLY INSIGHTFUL . . . The conspiratorial narratives that threaten society often come without warning, like a shock weather event. Or so it seems. Here, Phil Tinline reveals the actual truth—that fears about colluding forces are a quite predictable reaction to the centralization of state power and abuses by those who wield it. As half-truths and simple misunderstandings work on the conspiratorial imagination, the real becomes warped. Ghosts of Iron Mountain is a masterly account of how post-World War II America succumbed to a paranoia that still has many of its citizens chasing extremes.”

—James Ball, author of Post-Truth: How Bullshit Conquered the World

“PACEY AND ENGAGING . . . Tinline retells the story of the hoax government study that declared permanent war indispensable to societal stability . . . Both the immediate response to the Report and its enduring legacy reveal the extent of Americans’ suspicions of and alienation from their government and help make sense of the apparent insanity of QAnon and other deep-state conspiracy theories.”

—Laura Beers, author of Orwell’s Ghosts: Wisdom and Warnings for the Twenty-First Century

“UNPUTDOWNABLE. This superb story of a runaway hoax peels back like an onion.  By the time you get to the deepest layer, everything you thought you knew about politics is transformed.  I didn’t intend to read Ghosts of Iron Mountain in one day, but I couldn’t stop myself.”

—Bradley Garrett, author of Bunker: What It Takes to Survive the Apocalypse

“Phil Tinline’s STARTLING book about the weird legacy of a brilliant anti-war hoax is not just an illuminating deep dive into offbeat history. It is an essential read for anyone trying to understand the tragicomic nature of contemporary politics. Itself both hilarious and profoundly serious, it helps us grasp how laughter has turned so deadly.”

—Fintan O’Toole, author of We Don’t Know Ourselves