by Jesse Walker
49. Quoted in Judy Klemesrud, “Feminists Recoil at Film Designed to Relate to Them,” The New York Times, February 26, 1975.
50. “Top Secret,” My Three Sons, ABC, December 26, 1963.
51. “The Investigation,” Good Times, CBS, January 27, 1976.
52. Clifton Daniel, “The Rockefeller Panel and Its C.I.A. Mission,” The New York Times, January 20, 1975.
53. Quoted in Olmsted, Challenging the Secret Government, 61.
Chapter 8: The Legend of John Todd
1. Quoted in Robert M. Price, “With Strange Aeons: H. P. Lovecraft’s Cthulhu Mythos as One Vast Narrative,” in Third Person: Authoring and Exploring Vast Narratives, ed. Pat Harrigan and Noah Wardrip-Fruin (MIT Press, 2009), 242.
2. Todd’s Chambersburg testimony is transcribed at textfiles.com/occult/jtc1.txt. A slightly different rendition appears in Christopher A. LaRock, John Todd: Beyond the Legend (Lulu, 2011). I have not always followed either transcriber’s punctuation and capitalization.
3. The $1,000 estimate comes from Edward E. Plowman, “The Legend(s) of John Todd,” Christianity Today, February 2, 1979. The same article claimed that about a thousand people attended Todd’s talk, but the church’s then pastor, Dino Pedrone, today estimates that the total was four hundred or five hundred. It is possible that Pedrone’s memory is playing tricks on him, but it is also possible that Plowman confused the number of people the auditorium could seat with the number it seated that day.
4. Quoted ibid.
5. Author’s interview with Dino Pedrone, May 15, 2012.
6. Gary Chartier, e-mail to the author, June 28, 2012.
7. Recordings of Todd’s talks have been posted on several websites; I downloaded them from kt70.com/~jtamesjpn/articles/john_todd_and_the_illuminati.htm. The quotes in this paragraph and the next two paragraphs come from the recording labeled tape 3A. None of the aforementioned sites list dates for the tapes, but a passage quoted from this speech is dated March 30, 1978, in Darryl E. Hicks and David A. Lewis, The Todd Phenomenon: Ex–Grand Druid vs. the Illuminati, Fact or Fantasy? (New Leaf Press, 1979), 23.
8. Todd, tape 1B. According to Hicks and Lewis, this one was recorded in Canoga Park, California, in the summer of 1977.
9. “Spellbound?” The Crusaders 10 (1978). This comic book was produced by Jack T. Chick with Todd’s input. Todd himself appears as a character under the name Lance Collins, an alias he sometimes used; the quoted text is one of Collins’s lines in the comic.
10. Todd, tape 3B. According to Hicks and Lewis, this was recorded in Philadelphia in February 1978. The quotation in the following paragraph comes from the same source.
11. Though Todd claimed that every president since Wilson had been in the Illuminati, he also claimed that the Illuminati had favored George McGovern in the 1972 election and that “Nixon defied the Illuminati when he made peace overtures to Red China,” a country the conspiracy had “slated for total destruction.” Quoted in Hicks and Lewis, The Todd Phenomenon, 43.
12. Todd, tape 1A.
13. Todd, tape 4A. According to Hicks and Lewis, this tape was recorded on March 31, 1978.
14. Quoted in Michael Saler, As If: Modern Enchantment and the Literary Prehistory of Virtual Reality (Oxford University Press, 2012), 146.
15. Todd, tape 3A. This may be the only time a Roger Corman production has been recommended as a guide to the external world.
16. Donahue, WGN-TV, January 1, 1979. The host went on to ask the questioner who the Illuminati were. She replied that they were “the international bankers, Rothschild, the Rockefellers, and all the Bilderbergers.” Donahue took that to mean she thought Rand’s ideas would lead to “capitalist control.”
17. Hicks and Lewis, The Todd Phenomenon, 71–72.
18. Plowman, “The Legend(s) of John Todd.”
19. Ibid.
20. P. E. I. Bonewits, “Official Report of the President to the Board of Directors on His Investigation of the John Todd/Lance Collins Affair in Dayton Ohio,” Green Egg, March 1976.
21. FBI memorandum, Cincinnati, Ohio, March 1, 1976.
22. Bonewits, “Official Report of the President.”
23. Ruth Tomczak and Elmer L. Towns, “Christian Teachers Deny John Todd: Fundamentalists Cautioned of Former Witch,” Journal Champion, December 22, 1978.
24. “John Todd: Dividing the Brethren” (Christian Research Institute, 1978).
25. Hicks and Lewis, The Todd Phenomenon, 22.
26. Tomczak and Towns, “Christian Teachers Deny John Todd.”
27. Quoted in Tom Nuget, “In Search of the Ultimate Conspiracy,” The Sun (Baltimore), October 30, 1978.
28. Quoted in Plowman, “The Legend(s) of John Todd.”
29. Nesta H. Webster, World Revolution: The Plot Against Civilization (Small, Maynard & Company, 1921), 313.
30. Ibid., 310–11.
31. Ibid., 306.
32. Winston Churchill, “Zionism Versus Bolshevism: A Struggle for the Soul of the Jewish People,” Illustrated Sunday Herald, February 8, 1920.
33. William Guy Carr, The Red Fog over America (St. George Press, 1962 [1955]), 3–4.
34. The index to one of Carr’s books includes the entry “Jewry, International, 48–168.” Yes: 121 consecutive pages. William Guy Carr, Pawns in the Game (Omni Publications, n.d. [1955]), 187.
35. “I do not believe the Synagogue of Satan (S.O.S.) is Jewish, but, as Christ told us for a definite purpose, it is comprised of ‘Them who say they are Jews . . . and are not . . . and do lie’ (Rev. 2:9 and 3:9).” William Guy Carr, Satan, Prince of This World (Omni Publications, 1997), 6. (Written in 1959 and published posthumously.)
36. See Joseph W. Bendersky, The “Jewish Threat”: Anti-Semitic Politics of the U.S. Army (Basic Books, 2000), 14.
37. Edith Starr Miller, Occult Theocrasy, vol. 2 (privately published, 1933), 564.
38. Gertrude M. Coogan, Money Creators: Who Creates Money? Who Should Create It? (Omni Publications, 1963 [1935]), 280.
39. Michael Barkun, A Culture of Conspiracy: Apocalyptic Visions in Contemporary America (University of California Press, 2003), 48.
40. G. Edward Griffin, The Capitalist Conspiracy (H. B. Patriots, 1982 [1971]), 58. Griffin’s book consists largely of a transcript of a filmstrip of the same name. The filmstrip was released in 1969.
41. John Todd shared the Birchers’ aversion to the idea of a Jewish conspiracy. Despite that, he denounced the John Birch Society as anti-Semitic, claiming in tape 4A that “its platform and the American Nazi platform and the Klan’s platform are almost identical.” Meanwhile, he was willing to share a platform with Colonel Curtis Dall of the Liberty Lobby, a group that really was anti-Semitic.
Todd also on at least one occasion repeated Carr’s and others’ description of the Illuminati as “the Synagogue of Satan.” Confusingly, he said this in the midst of an attack on anti-Semitism. Though you can take this as a sign of a hidden prejudice against Jews bubbling to the surface, it’s more likely that he just hadn’t thought hard about the implications of the fragments of conspiracy theory he had cobbled together.
42. Gary Allen with Larry Abraham, None Dare Call It Conspiracy (Concord Press, 1972), 39.
43. Marvin S. Antelman, To Eliminate the Opiate (Zionist Book Club, 1974), 143.
44. Sirhan himself scrawled the word “Illuminati” several times in his notebook. His interest was probably mystical rather than political: He also wrote the name “Master Kuthumi,” a reference to one of Blavatsky’s Ascended Masters, and he possessed a copy of Manly P. Hall’s The Secret Destiny of America. Sirhan belonged to the Ancient Mystical Order of the Rosae Crucis, H. Spencer Lewis’s fauxicrucian group, leading Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty to declare after the shooting that Sirhan “was a member of numerous Communist organizations, including the Rosicrucians.”
45. Gale Thorne, “Eighteenth Century Dies Committee,” New Masses, January 9, 1940.
46. Quoted in J. Hoberman, An Army of Phantoms: American Movies and t
he Making of the Cold War (New Press, 2011), 47.
47. Ramparts, September 1969. Jack Chick got in on the environmental doomsaying with a tract that discussed overpopulation, the dying oceans, and other green concerns before informing us that “JESUS predicted these problems.” “Escape!” (Jack T. Chick, 1972).
48. Joseph McBride, What Ever Happened to Orson Welles? A Portrait of an Independent Career (University Press of Kentucky, 2006), 228.
49. Todd’s earlier forecasts were even closer to Smith’s: In his Phoenix days, he had predicted 1981 rather than 1980 as the year it all would end.
50. Key’s book Subliminal Seduction, published in 1973, featured an introduction by the famed Canadian communication theorist Marshall McLuhan. McLuhan had his own history of conspiracy theorizing: For a period of his life he convinced himself that the Freemasons were to blame for the American Civil War, for Vatican II, and for several setbacks in the career of Professor Marshall McLuhan. For more on McLuhan’s interest in Masonic (and Satanic) conspiracies, see Philip Marchand, Marshall McLuhan: The Medium and the Messenger (MIT Press, 1998 [1989]), 111–15.
51. Wilson Bryan Key, Media Sexploitation (Prentice Hall, 1976), 140. Allen’s thoughts on “Hey Jude,” and on popular music in general, can be found in Gary Allen, “That Music: There’s More to It than Meets the Ear,” American Opinion, February 1969. Allen’s basic approach to rock criticism was to take “Back in the U.S.S.R.” literally while assuming that everything else had a hidden meaning.
52. Key, Media Sexploitation, 146.
53. To see some attempts to read the entire backward recording of “Stairway to Heaven” as a long Satanic incantation, go to YouTube; several competing interpretations can be found there.
54. Quoted in Jon Trott and Mike Hertenstein, Selling Satan: The Tragic History of Mike Warnke (Cornerstone Press, 1993), 101.
55. Mike Warnke, “Foreword,” in Hicks and Lewis, The Todd Phenomenon, 9.
56. Warnke was hit hard by the revelations of the early 1990s, but he continues to perform as a Christian standup comic today. He still insists that his story is essentially true, though he has admitted inventing some of the details.
57. Richard Hofstadter, The Paranoid Style in American Politics and Other Essays (Harvard University Press, 1965), 34–35.
58. “Angels?” (Jack T. Chick, 1986).
59. “Dark Dungeons” (Jack T. Chick, 1984).
60. “Bewitched?” (Jack T. Chick, 1972).
61. Quoted in David Waldron, “Role-Playing Games and the Christian Right: Community Formation in Response to a Moral Panic,” Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, Spring 2005.
62. Quoted in Michael A. Stackpole, “The Pulling Report” (1990), rpgstudies.net/stackpole/pulling_report.html.
63. Tipper Gore, Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society: What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Children from Sex and Violence in the Media (Abingdon Press, 1987), 118.
64. Quoted in Nuget, “In Search of the Ultimate Conspiracy.”
65. Quoted in Hicks and Lewis, The Todd Phenomenon, 93.
66. Sheila Todd’s letter is reprinted online at holysmoke.org/jtcsheil.txt. According to Hicks and Lewis, Todd sometimes tried to pass off Sheila as his previous wife, Sharon. But they are not the same person.
67. The angry mail is mentioned in “John Todd’s Record Confirmed,” Journal Champion, February 9, 1979.
68. Quoted in “Cornerstone’s Near-Miss Interviews with Madalyn Murray O’Hair and John Todd,” Cornerstone 48 (1979).
69. Quoted in Jess Walter, Every Knee Shall Bow: The Truth and Tragedy of Ruby Ridge and the Randy Weaver Family (Harper Paperbacks, 1996), 53. My description of Todd’s behavior during the talk draws on Alan W. Bock, Ambush at Ruby Ridge: How Government Agents Set Randy Weaver Up and Took His Family Down (Dickens Press, 1995), 38.
70. Kerry Noble, Tabernacle of Hate: Seduction into Right-Wing Extremism, 2nd ed. (Syracuse University Press, 2010), 77, 81.
71. Witchcraft and the Illuminati (CPA Book Publisher, 1981), 42–43, 45, 78. The book was published anonymously, but Noble identified himself as its author in Tabernacle of Hate, 119.
72. Quoted in Jessica Stern, Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill (HarperCollins, 2003), 21.
73. Todd may have helped inspire another would-be terrorist in 1997, when a bank was robbed and an adult bookstore bombed in Damascus, Oregon. (No one was injured.) Fritz Springmeier, a conspiracy theorist heavily influenced by Todd, was among the people eventually charged with the crimes, and he served time from 2003 to 2011. Springmeier maintains that the Illuminati framed him.
74. For a balanced discussion of those early attempts to estimate the number of missing children in general and stranger abductions in particular, see Joel Best, “Missing Children, Misleading Statistics,” The Public Interest, Summer 1988.
75. Jello Biafra, “Tales from the Trial,” on High Priest of Harmful Matter, CD, Alternative Tentacles, 1989.
76. Debbie Nathan and Michael Snedeker, Satan’s Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt (Basic Books, 1995), 86.
77. Quoted ibid., 88.
78. Quoted in Sam Howe Verhovek, “Death in Waco,” The New York Times, April 20, 1993.
79. Joel Best, Threatened Children: Rhetoric and Concern About Child-Victims (University of Chicago Press, 1990), 2.
80. “The Devil Worshippers,” 20/20, ABC, May 16, 1985.
81. There is a hint of sophistication in the argument here: Though the filmmakers who shot The Exorcist wanted to make a Christian movie, it is certainly possible for someone who views it to ignore their intentions and identify with the Devil. Of course, if you accept this, you also have to accept the converse—that people who listen to a “Satanic” metal band don’t necessarily take the lyrics at face value either.
82. This was a theme of the first comic book Todd made with Jack Chick. See “The Broken Cross,” The Crusaders 2 (1974).
83. Quoted in David Alexander, “Giving the Devil More Than His Due,” The Humanist, March–April 1990.
84. “Devil Worship: Exposing Satan’s Underground,” The Geraldo Rivera Specials, NBC, October 25, 1988.
85. Kenneth V. Lanning, “Satanic, Occult, Ritualistic Crime: A Law Enforcement Perspective,” The Police Chief, October 1989.
86. holysmoke.org/wicca/wicca-letters-hoax.htm.
87. Quoted in Kurt Kuersteiner, The Unofficial Guide to the Art of Jack T. Chick: Chick Tracts, Crusader Comics, and Battle Cry Newspapers (Schiffer, 2004), 24.
88. Quoted in Danny C. Flanders, “Jury Deliberating John Wayne Todd’s Fate in Rape Case,” The State, January 22, 1988.
89. John Todd, “John Todd’s Testimonial While in Prison,” February 26, 1991, kt70.com/~jamesjpn/articles/john-todd-from-prison.html.
90. Quoted in Roy Livesey, “The Church Versus the New World Order: Examples from South Carolina Are Lessons for Us All,” New Age Bulletin, July 1994.
91. Kollyns v. Gintoli, U.S. District Court, District of South Carolina, Columbia Division, August 12, 2005.
92. Kollyns v. Hughes, U.S. District Court, District of South Carolina, Columbia Division, September 22, 2006.
93. youtube.com/watch?v=qMYrSPuEYTk.
Chapter 9: Operation Mindfuck
1. Quoted in Scott Thill, “Grant Morrison Talks Brainy Comics, Sexy Apocalypse,” March 19, 2009, wired.com/underwire/2009/03/mid-life-crisis/.
2. Paul Eberle, “The Minutemen,” The East Village Other, July 23, 1969.
3. “Current Structure of Bavarian Illuminati Conspiracy and the Law of Fives,” The East Village Other, June 4, 1969.
4. Thomas M. Disch, The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of: How Science Fiction Conquered the World (Touchstone, 1998), 29. In the same passage, Disch described an encounter with Robert Anton Wilson: “I saw him once, after a book signing in Los Angeles, gravely romancing a would-be true believer, throwing out dark hints, then lapsing into winks and giggles. Did he experience cognitive dissonance?”
5. Mark Dery, “Kraken Rising: How the Cephalopod Became Our Zeitgeist Mascot,” May 24, 2010, hplusmagazine.com/2010/05/24/kraken-rising-how-cephalopod-became-our-zeitgeist-mascot.
6. Michael Kelly, “The Road to Paranoia,” The New Yorker, June 19, 1995.
7. Charles Fort, The Book of the Damned (Boni and Liveright, 1919), 163.
8. Charles Fort, Wild Talents (Claude Kendall, 1932), 240.
9. John A. Keel, Disneyland of the Gods (Amok Press, 1988), 101–2.
10. John A. Keel, The Mothman Prophecies (I-Net, 1991 [1975]), 123–24.
11. This was a man, after all, who in the 1980s spoofed the UFO buffs with a poker-faced publication that claimed “the National Zoo and the Smithsonian have been lying to the press for years in their campaign to hide the fact that unicorns really exist.” “The Great Unicorn Conspiracy,” The Unicorn Review, n.d.
12. Quoted in John C. Sherwood, “Gray Barker’s Book of Bunk: Mothman, Saucers, and MIB,” The Skeptical Inquirer 26, no. 3 (May–June 2002).
13. Keel, The Mothman Prophecies, 173.
14. Ibid., 240–41.
15. Quoted in Sherwood, “Gray Barker’s Book of Bunk.”
16. Quoted ibid. Moseley described several of his UFO hoaxes in James W. Moseley and Karl T. Pflock, Shockingly Close to the Truth! Confessions of a Grave-Robbing Ufologist (Prometheus Books, 2002). Despite his hoaxing—and unlike Barker—Moseley did think that there might be something real to some saucer stories. Or at least he said he did; maybe he meant it, and maybe it was another gag. Once you start down that road, it’s easy to get lost: At one point, Moseley wrote, he was temporarily taken in by a story that turned out to be an echo of one of his own pranks, thus ever so briefly hoaxing himself.
17. The letter is reprinted at johnkeel.com/?p=489.
18. Keel, The Mothman Prophecies, 55–56.
19. Some call this a prelude to the underground press. I call it a prelude to the Internet.
20. “Tricky Dick Rides Again,” The Realist, Fall 1991.
21. Quoted in Paul Krassner, Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut: Misadventures in the Counterculture, 2nd ed. (New World Digital, 2010), 150.