Talk:John Birch Society

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The following was removed from the main page of this article by CMD Staff for further review:

{{#badges: Nuclear spin|refimprove}} The John Birch Society (JBS) is a conservative U.S. organization that was founded in California in 1958 to fight the threat of Communism.[citation needed]

It represents itself as "a membership-based organization dedicated to restoring and preserving freedom under the United States Constitution." It states that its members come from all walks of life and are active throughout the 50 states as part of local chapters. The Society invites all Americans to explore its website, learn more about the John Birch Society, and consider joining with in its mission to achieve "Less Government, More Responsibility, and - With God's Help - a Better World."[citation needed]

JBS advocates the abolition of income tax, and the repeal of civil rights legislation, which it sees as being Communist in inspiration. For this reason, its opponents characterize it as a white citizens' society dedicated to preventing minorities from gaining political power.[citation needed]

At one time, the John Birch Society was very powerful and members included prominent residents of California including the Knott family. In their early days, Birchers shared a common ideology and some overlapping membership with Fred Schwarz and his California-based Christian Anti-communism Crusade.[citation needed]

Koch Wiki

The Koch brothers -- David and Charles -- are the right-wing billionaire co-owners of Koch Industries. As two of the richest people in the world, they are key funders of the right-wing infrastructure, including the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the State Policy Network (SPN). In SourceWatch, key articles on the Kochs include: Koch Brothers, Koch Industries, Americans for Prosperity, American Encore, and Freedom Partners.

History

Chip Berlet wrote in 2010 that: "It is worth noting that the founder of the Society, Robert Welch, worked as a researcher for the anti-collectivist NAM before setting up the JBS. In 1964 the masthead of the JBS magazine American Opinion read like a Who’s Who of ultraconservatism: Editorial Advisory Committee, Clarence Manion, Ludwig Von Mises, J. Howard Pew, and Robert W. Stoddard; Associate Editors Revilo P. Oliver and E. Merrill Root; Contributing Editors Medford Evans and Hans Sennholz." [1]

The JBS was established in Indianapolis on December 9, 1958 by a group of 12 "patriotic and public-spirited" men led by Robert Welch, Jr., a retired candy manufacturer from Belmont, Massachusetts. A transcript of Welch's two-day presentation at the founding meeting was published as The Blue Book of the John Birch Society and became a cornerstone of its beliefs, with each new JBS member receiving a copy. "According to Welch," writes Political Research Associates in its analysis of the Birchers, "both the US and Soviet governments are controlled by the same furtive conspiratorial cabal of internationalists, greedy bankers, and corrupt politicians known as "the insiders". If left unexposed, the traitors inside the US government would betray the country's sovereignty to the United Nations for a collectivist new world order managed by a 'one-world socialist government.' The Birch Society incorporated many themes from pre-WWII rightist groups opposed to the New Deal, and had its base in the business nationalist sector..."[2]

JBS's objective was to fight communism using communism's own techniques -- organization of front groups, infiltration of other groups and letter-writing campaigns. The society was named in honor of John Morrison Birch, a Fundamentalist Baptist missionary from Georgia, who had served as an intelligence officer in China during World War II and was killed by Chinese communists in 1945 and dubbed "the first American victim of the Cold War" by the Society.

Welch saw "collectivism" as the main threat to western civilization, and liberals as secret communist traitors who provide the cover for the gradual process of collectivism, with the ultimate goal of replacing the nations of western civilization with one-world socialist government. "There are many stages of welfarism, socialism, and collectivism in general," he wrote, "but communism is the ultimate state of them all, and they all lead inevitably in that direction.""[3]

One of the first public activities of the JBS was a "Get US out of UN!" campaign, which alleged in 1959 that the "Real nature of [the] UN is to build One World Government (New World Order)." One Man's Opinion, a magazine launched by Welch in 1956, was renamed American Opinion and became the Birch Society's official publication.

In 1960, Welch advised JBS members to "join your local PTA [Parent Teachers Association] at the beginning of the school year, get your conservative friends to do likewise, and go to work to take it over."

By March of 1961, Welch claimed between 60,000 and 100,000 members--but a more realistic estimate is closer to 10,000--"a staff of twenty-eight people in the Home Office; about thirty Coordinators (or Major Coordinators) in the field, who are fully-paid as to salary and expenses; and about one hundred Coordinators (or Section Leaders as they are called in some areas), who work on a volunteer basis as to all or part of their salary, or expenses, or both." According to its profile by Political Research Associates, JBS "pioneered grassroots lobbying, combining educational meetings, petition drives, and letter writing campaigns. One early campaign against the second Summit Conference between the US and the Soviet Union generated over 600,000 postcards and letters, according to the Society. A June 1964 Birch campaign to oppose Xerox Corporation sponsorship of TV programs favorable to the UN produced 51,279 letters from 12,785 individuals."[4]

The JBS was viewed by mainstream journalists and politicians as an extremist, wing-nut organization of conspiracy theorists. Much of its early conspiracism, according to Political Research Associates, "reflects an ultraconservative business nationalist critique of business internationalists networked through groups such as the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). The CFR is viewed through a conspiracist lens as puppets of the Rockefeller family in a 1952 book by McCarthy fan, Emanuel M. Josephson, Rockefeller, 'Internationalist': The Man Who Misrules the World. In 1962 Dan Smoot's The Invisible Government added several other policy groups to the list of conspirators, including the Committee for Economic Development, the Advertising Council, the Atlantic Council (formerly the Atlantic Union Committee), the Business Advisory Council, and the Trilateral Commission. Smoot had worked at FBI headquarters in Washington, DC before leaving to establish an anticommunist newsletter, the Dan Smoot Report. The shift from countersubversion on behalf of the FBI to countersubversion in the private sector was an easy one. The basic thesis was the same. In Smoot's concluding chapter, he wrote, 'Somewhere at the top of the pyramid in the invisible government are a few sinister people who know exactly what they are doing: They want America to become part of a worldwide socialist dictatorship, under the control of the Kremlin.'" Birchers elaborated on an earlier Illuminati Freemason conspiracy theory, imagining "an unbroken ideologically-driven conspiracy linking the Illuminati, the French Revolution, the rise of Marxism and Communism, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the United Nations"[5]

Republican mainstream unhappiness with the Birchers intensified after Welch circulated a letter calling President Dwight D. Eisenhower a "conscious, dedicated agent of the Communist Conspiracy." Welch went further in a book titled The Politician, written in 1956 and published by the JBS in 1963, which declared that Eisenhower's brother Milton was Ike's superior within the Communist apparatus and alleging that other top government officials were also communist tools, including "ex president Truman and Roosevelt, and the last Sec. Of State John Foster Dulles and former CIA Director Allan W. Dulles." Conservative writer William F. Buckley, Jr., an early friend and admirer of Welch, regarded his accusations against Eisenhower as "paranoid and idiotic libels" and attempted unsuccessfully to purge Welch from the JBS. Welch responded by attempting to take over Young Americans for Freedom, a conservative youth organization founded with assistance from Buckley.

In October 1964, the Idaho Statesman newspaper expressed concern about what it called an "ominous" increase in JBS-led "ultra right" radio and television broadcasts, which it said then numbered 7,000 weekly and cost an estimated $10 million annually. "By virtue of saturation tactics used, radical, reactionary propaganda is producing an impact even on large numbers of people who, themselves, are in no sense extremists or sympathetic to extremists views," declared a Statesman editorial. "When day after day they hear distortions of fact and sinister charges against persons or groups, often emanating from organizations with conspicuously respectable sounding names, it is no wonder that the result is: Confusion on some important public issues; stimulation of latent prejudices; creation of suspicion, fear and mistrust in relation not only to their representatives in government, but even in relation to their neighbors."

The Statesman article went on to charge "that there are many local communities in which the tactics of the extremists have made life miserable for good citizens ... through spying, nocturnal phone calls, economic and social pressures, stoning, even bombings, and other tactics alien to the American way of working out political decisions. … An unchecked increase in this kind of propaganda is degrading the American political dialogue to such a point as to damage our self-respect at home and our reputation for public responsibility abroad. These radical, reactionary positions are undermining American Democracy."

Birch Society influence on US politics hit its high point in the years around the failed 1964 presidential campaign of Republican candidate Barry Goldwater, who lost to incumbent President Lyndon Baines Johnson. Welch had supported Goldwater over Nixon for the Republican nomination, but the membership split, with two-thirds supporting Goldwater and one-third supporting Nixon. A number of Birch members and their allies were Goldwater supporters in 1964 and some were delegates at the 1964 Republican convention. The Goldwater campaign in turn brought together the nucleus of what later became known as the New Right, many of whom had been groomed by the Birch Society but whose more pragmatic members realized that the group's conspiracism and its affiliation with racism and anti-Semitism were impediments to electoral success. Birch Society members also authored several widely-distributed books that promoted conspiracy theories and mobilized support for the Goldwater campaign:

  • A Choice, Not an Echo by Phyllis Schlafly, suggested that the Republican Party was secretly controlled by elitist intellectuals dominated by members of the Bilderberger banking conference, whose policies were designed to usher in global communist conquest. "A Choice, Not an Echo" became one of Goldwater's campaign slogans.
  • The Gravediggers, co-authored by Schlafly and retired Rear Admiral Chester Ward of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, claimed that U.S. military strategy and tactics were actually designed to pave the way for global communist conquest.
  • None Dare Call It Treason, by John Stormer, sold over seven million copies, making it one of the largest-selling paperback books of the day. It decried "the concurrent decay in America's schools, churches, and press which has conditioned the American people to accept 20 years of retreat in the face of the communist enemy."

In April 1966, the New York Times reported on "the increasing tempo of radical right attacks on local government, libraries, school boards, parent-teachers associations, mental health programs, the Republican party and, most recently, the ecumenical movement. … The Birch Society is by far the most successful and 'respectable' radical right organization in the country. It operates alone or in support of other extremist organizations whose major preoccupation, like that of the Birchers, is the internal Communist conspiracy in the United States."

The Birch Society was organized into cells, imitating Welch's understanding of Communist organizing techniques. "This cell segregation is aimed at preventing infiltration by the 'Communists' or other groups seeking inside information about the society," the Times reported. "Ernest Brosang, the New Jersey regional coordinator, contends that it is virtually impossible for opponents of the society to penetrate its policy-making levels." Its activities included distribution of segregationist literature, attacks on race "mongrelization," agitation against the United Nations, and petitions to impeach liberal U.S. Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren. To spread their message, Birchers held Sunday showings of right-wing documentary films and operated such as "Let Freedom Ring," a nationwide network of recorded telephone messages. They also helped organized the "Minutemen," a paramilitary group training to lead guerrilla warfare once the Communists took over."

A later John Birch Society chairman, US Representative Dr. Larry McDonald, was killed in the 1983 KAL-007 shootdown.

By the time of Welch's death in 1985, the Birch Society's membership and influence had declined, but the the UN role in the Gulf War and President Bush's call for a "New World Order" unwittingly echoed Birch claims about the goals of the internationalist One World Government conspiracy. Growing right-wing populism in the United States helped the JBS position itself for a comeback, and by 1995 its membership had grown again to more than 55,000.

Today the John Birch Society still sees communism as a threat, and sees the collapse of communism in Russia and Eastern Europe as false and "planned" by the Russian/Eastern European governments which it sees controlled by "the insiders". The Society has been active in supporting the audit of and eventual dismantling of, the Federal Reserve System. The current legislation was initiated by Ron Paul. The Birch Society believes that the U.S. Constitution only gave Congress the ability to coin money, and did not intend for it to delegate this power to a banking monopoly, or to transform it into a fiat currency not backed by any precious metals.[6]

The John Birch Society is now based in Grand Chute, Wisconsin. The Society said its membership has doubled in recent years, lately thanks to the policies of the Obama administration. However, it would not provide firm numbers, other than to say it has tens of thousands of members. CEO, Arthur Thompson, explained: "We don't want want to let our enemies know our strengths or our weaknesses." The John Birch Society still holds meetings in living rooms and public libraries, but now also maintains a website inviting users to download literature and join a chapter.[7] In 2009, the site saw a 60 percent increase in traffic. [8] Additionally, the John Birch Society has become a co-sponsor of the upcoming February 2010 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, D.C.

Documents Contained at the Anti-Environmental Archives
Documents written by or referencing this person or organization are contained in the Anti-Environmental Archive, launched by Greenpeace on Earth Day, 2015. The archive contains 3,500 documents, some 27,000 pages, covering 350 organizations and individuals. The current archive includes mainly documents collected in the late 1980s through the early 2000s by The Clearinghouse on Environmental Advocacy and Research (CLEAR), an organization that tracked the rise of the so called "Wise Use" movement in the 1990s during the Clinton presidency. Access the index to the Anti-Environmental Archives here.

Personnel

Accessed February 2008:[1]

Council

Contact Information

Resources and articles

Related Sourcewatch articles

References

  1. ↑ Leadership, John Birch Society, accessed February 3, 2008.

External links

Note: Portions of this article were adapted from the John Birch Society article on Wikipedia.

Books

Critiques of the Society

  • Grove, Gene. (1961). Inside the John Birch Society. Greenwich, CT: Fawcett.
  • Janson, Donald & Eismann, Bernard. (1963). "The John Birch Society" pages 25–54 from The Far Right, New York: McGraw-Hill.
  • "Birch Society Investigated," Idaho Statesman, October 9, 1964.
  • Broyles, J. Allen. (1964). The John Birch Society: Anatomy of a Protest. Boston: Beacon Press.
  • Ronald Sullivan, “Foes of Rising Birch Society Organize in Jersey,” New York Times, April 20, 1966, pp. 1, 34.
  • Epstein, Benjamin R., and Arnold Forster. (1966). The Radical Right: Report on the John Birch Society and Its Allies. New York: Vintage Books.
  • De Koster, Lester. (1967). The Citizen and the John Birch Society. A Reformed Journal monograph. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans.
  • Grupp, Fred W., Jr. (1969). “The Political Perspectives of Birch Society Members.” In Robert A. Schoenberger (Ed.), The American Right
  • Moore, William V. (1981). The John Birch Society: A Southern Profile. Paper, annual meeting, Southern Political Science Association, Memphis, TN.
  • Johnson, George. (1983). Architects of Fear: Conspiracy Theories and Paranoia in American Politics. Los Angeles: Tarcher/Houghton Mifflin.
  • Berlet, Chip. (1989). “Trashing the Birchers: Secrets of the Paranoid Right.” Boston Phoenix, July 20, pp. 10, 23.
  • Kraft, Charles Jeffrey. (1992). A Preliminary Socio-Economic and State Demographic Profile of the John Birch Society. Cambridge, MA: Political Research Associates.
  • Hardisty, Jean V. (1999). Mobilizing Resentment: Conservative Resurgence from the John Birch Society to the Promise Keepers. Boston: Beacon.
  • Stewart, Charles J., "The master conspiracy of the John Birch Society: from communism to the new world order", Western Journal of Communication, Vol 66 (4), (Fall 2002): p424(24).
  • Turner, William W. Power on the Right. Berkeley CA: Ramparts Press, 1971. [10]
  • Eckard V. Toy, Jr., "The Right Side of the 1960s: The Origins of the John Birch Society in the Pacific Northwest," Oregon Historical Quarterly, 105 (2), Summer 2004.

The following was removed from the main page of this article by CMD Staff for further review:


End Page Excerpt

June 24, 2014

Old Membership Estimates

The claim in this article that by March 1961 the JBS had 60,000-100,000 members is an utter falsehood. In reality, the JBS had approximately 13,250 members.

In September 1960, Robert Welch told his National Council that the JBS had 324 chapters and 5300 members.

In the December 1960 JBS Bulletin, page 4, Robert Welch declared that "we have been doubling in size approximately once every four months" (i.e. 25% per month) which seems fairly accurate considering that in April 1960, the JBS had 150 chapters and 2800 members according to JBS National Council meeting minutes.

If one uses the formula stated by Welch (i.e. 100% every 4 months), then actual JBS membership would be approximately as follows:

9/60.......5300

01/61......10,600

Thus, the JBS was increasing its membership by about 1325 per month between September 1960 and January 1961 -- which would produce the following member estimates:

9/60......5300

10/60.....6625

11/60.....7950

12/60.....9275

01/61.....10,600

02/61.....11,925

03/61.....13,250

Interestingly, the 1960 financial statement of the JBS declares that it received $198,719 in member dues during all of 1960. At that time, annual dues were $24 for men and $12 for women. If one uses an average of $18 that would mean there should be about 11,039 members as of the end of December 1960 -- which is very close to the 10,600 extrapolation shown above for 1/61.

Response on Old Membership Estimate

I have made an addition to reflect the dispute. Lisa Graves

Other Discussion

Debating a Birch Society member or sympathizer is often very difficult because Birchers (a) use language as a weapon in service of their dogma (such as when they seek to conflate liberalism, socialism, and communism) and (b) because Birchers typically engage in lowest-common-denominator reasoning (such as assigning evil, sinister, subversive intentions to someone whose position on some matter might parallel a position taken by the Communist Party.) and (c) because Birchers often cite persons who were associated with the FBI (as informants or Special Agents) or who testified, under oath, before legislative committees --- thus giving JBS assertions an aura of being supported by "experts".

A newly revised and expanded 65-page edition of my JBS Report is posted on-line at:

http://ernie1241.googlepages.com/jbs-1

It is based, primarily, upon FBI documents and files but also incorporates material from military intelligence, the House Committee on Un-American Activities, private correspondence by JBS officials, and other sources.

Other JBS-related reports at: http://ernie1241.googlepages.com/home

Anyone wishing additional information may contact me at: Ernie1241@aol.com

Chapter titles are as follows:

1. FBI Evaluations of Robert Welch and the John Birch Society

2. FBI vs. JBS on Internal Security Status of the U.S.

3. FBI vs. JBS on Communist Infiltration of Clergy and Religious Institutions

4. FBI vs. JBS on Communists in the Department of Health, Education & Welfare

5. FBI vs. JBS on Dr. Harry A. Overstreet as a Communist sympathizer or dupe

6. FBI vs. JBS on civil rights movement [Alan Stang's 1965 book It's Very Simple: The True Story of Civil Rights published by the Birch Society; and Highlander Folk School described by the JBS as a "Communist Training School".]

7. FBI vs. JBS on Persons JBS Claims To Be “Experts” on Communism.


12:23, 6 Oct 2005 (EDT)12:23, 6 Oct 2005 (EDT)12:23, 6 Oct 2005 (EDT)12:23, 6 Oct 2005 (EDT)12:23, 6 Oct 2005 (EDT)12:23, 6 Oct 2005 (EDT)12:23, 6 Oct 2005 (EDT)12:23, 6 Oct 2005 (EDT)12:23, 6 Oct 2005 (EDT)12:23, 6 Oct 2005 (EDT)12:23, 6 Oct 2005 (EDT)12:23, 6 Oct 2005 (EDT)12:23, 6 Oct 2005 (EDT)12:23, 6 Oct 2005 (EDT)12:23, 6 Oct 2005 (EDT)172.193.169.16 12:23, 6 Oct 2005 (EDT)

Good stuff but the info is over 40 years old!!

I love some of that info from the F.B.I. but the reports and assessments are at least over 40 years old and collected during the presidential administration of a powerful anti-anti-communist president, namely that of "JFK". So, if you have anything more current, I would really like to see it. Reading a report that Hoover didn't think that the goals of communists have not been implemented made me laugh considering how many of their goals have at this point in history been achieved. Too bad Hoover isn't alive now to see how things have changed for the worse.

While it's true the Birch Society has some odd and unsubstantiated ideas, at the same time most of their facts are right on target and usually collated from other news sources. So I tend to collect the facts and reach my own conclusions.

As far as Julia Brown is concerned, she is attacked by authors on this site because of having a ghost writer and her own personal issues. Wow. I wonder if these authors hold their left-wing leaders to such a high degree of morality. I know they don't so it's important to ignore that kind of nonsense. Anyway, following is an article by Julia that I found after a internet search:

An Anti-Communist Negro Makes This Appeal: Please Don't Help Glorify Martin Luther King by Julia Brown Presented by the nationwide network of TACT Committees, to help spread the Truth About Civil Turmoil

Mrs. Julia Brown spent more than nine years as a member of the Communist Party in Cleveland, Ohio, serving as an undercover operative for the Federal Bureau of Investigation. She "surfaced" in 1962, to testify in Washington about her experiences and to describe how the Communists plan to use Negroes as "cannon fodder" in their program of racial agitation. Today, she continues to risk her life on coast-to-coast speaking tours, exposing the Communist-led revolutionaries who pose "a clear and present danger" to Americans of every race.

Heavens to Purgatory! It just wouldn't have been been true blue American Pie if those commies would have successfully used America's Negros for cannon fodder to advance the Red horde, when the US government had a much better idea for their Negros utilisation; canon fodder in an immoral SE Asian war.

Of course, all that the US and Hoover would have had to do to end the vastly overstated miniscule probability of communism's victory in the USA was to honestly try to bring about a free and equal American society, irrespective of skin color, but Edgar was much too busy dressing in drag for his lifelong soulman, and creating gargantuan files on dangerous citizens, such as Benjamin Spock.

What garbage, irrespective of the skin color of its purveyor. Guess what? It is generally the underclass that is used as cannon fodder in any political struggle; in any war. That's probably a plus too when one finds themselves a part of the batter in some godforsaken omellete fixings cooked up by evil bastards. It a nightmare having to share a foxhole with inbred prisses afflicted with uncontrollable bowels and incontinence. --Hugh Manatee 18:32, 6 Oct 2005 (EDT)

Mr. J. Edgar Hoover, the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, once called Martin Luther King "the most notorious liar in the country." I agree with him. But I also believe that Mr. King was one of the worst enemies my people ever had.

I know that it is considered poor taste to speak ill of the dead. But when someone served the enemies of our country while alive, and his name is still used by his comrades to promote anti-American activities, shouldn't people who know the truth speak out?

I learned many surprising, things while I served in the Communist Party for the FBI. Communist leaders told us about the demonstrations that would be started, the protest marches, the demands that would be made for massive federal intervention. Every Communist was ordered to help convince American Negroes that we are no better off than slaves. Wherever we went and whatever we did, we were to promote race consciousness and resentment, because the Communists know that the technique of divide and conquer really works.

We were also told to promote Martin Luther King, to unite Negroes and whites behind him, and to turn him into some sort of national hero. We were to look to King as the leader in this struggle the Communists said, because he was on our side!

I know they were right, because while I was in the Communist Party I learned that Martin Luther King attended a Communist training school. I learned that several of his of his aides and assistants were Communists, that he received funds from Communists and that he was taking directions from Communists.

Most Americans never look at the Communist press in the country. If they did, they would learn that the Communist love Martin Luther King. He was one of their biggest heroes. And I know for a fact the Communists would never have promoted him, financed him, and supported him if they couldn't trust him. He carried out their orders just as slavishly as Party members in Cleveland, Ohio.

Martin Luther King may never have carried a Communist Party membership card. That's not important. Most of the people that Communists counted on to further their work were not official members of the Communist Party. But I am as certain as I can be, that he knew what he was doing! And I am just as certain that the drive to glorify him now is just as much a Communist project. Through it, the Communists expect to raise millions of dollars to help further their programs, to gain even wider acceptance for their campaign of civil turmoil, and to further divide the American public.

But none of this has to happen. Although many Americans are still deceived about Martin Luther King, more and more are learning the truth. I want to assure every reader that what I've said here is the truth. I urge everyone to investigate this crucial issue further. Please make sure of the truth. For it is only through honest information and sincere efforts that the problems this country faces can be solved.

[reproduction of a check from the Southern Conference Educational Fund, Inc., payable to Dr. Martin Luther King in the amount of $167.74.]

This check, from an official Communist front and signed by two identified Communists, is just one of many payments to Martin Luther King from the sworn enemies of our country.

[Photo of Martin Luther King at a Communist training school]

This photograph was taken at a Communist training school in Tennessee. shows: (1) Martin Luther King, (2) Abner Berry of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, (3) Communist Aubrey Williams of the Southern Conference Educational Fund, and (4) school director Myles Horton.

Lastly, the fact that MLK was in fact a plagarist and deserves to lose his doctorate for fraudulent submission of his thesis is widely ignored by the left-wing.


===================

Hi Ernie, I never knew you were in the encyclopedia business. Say, I was also rummaging around PRA a bit. Verrrrrrry interesting. Also, the Left wing forum in Pittsburgh. You are a man about town, to be sure.

===========

9/22/08 = Links to updated versions of all my reports and articles pertaining to the JBS, Dan Smoot, Julia Brown, and many related subjects are available at: http://ernie1241.googlepages.com/home

12/4/04 reply by Ernie1241@aol.com to comments made above:

Writer states he/she isn't impressed by data "over 40 years old". Well, historical research is often more productive than contemporary accounts because, among other reasons, we have the benefit of documents that were not available when the events originally took place---such as, for example, private papers of deceased parties who have left their papers to some institution.

With respect to the FBI, Hoover and the JBS: It is important to understand that both Robert Welch and the JBS assured us repeatedly and emphatically that Hoover and the FBI during his tenure were our nation's most knowledgeable, authoritative, and reliable source of information about the Communist Conspiracy. In addition, both Welch and the JBS assured us that Hoover was a man of impeccable character, integrity, and patriotism. Therefore, Birchers now have an opportunity for a "reality check" to compare their dogma against the evaluations and judgments made by Hoover's FBI.

SUCCESS OF COMMUNISTS: You express your opinion but the factual information developed by the FBI during the course of its investigations and from information obtained from other intelligence agencies (such as G-2, ONI, OSI, etc) plus contacts with local and State law enforcement agencies and thousands of informants, frequently refuted JBS premises and conclusions!

For example: the Bureau maintained a Security Index to list persons they considered actually or potentially dangerous to our national security. In fact, SI subjects were subject to detention during time of national emergency. The great majority of the 12,000 persons listed were Communists or Communist sympathizers. However, at the very time the Birch Society was claiming massive infiltration of our Federal government by Communists, the FBI Security Index reflected 15-20 known or suspected Communists working in the entire U.S. government. Similarly, see my original posting for FBI conclusions which rejected Birch hallucinations regarding Communist penetration of the Dept of Health, Education, and Welfare.

Your choice, therefore, is between the fevered imagination of a retired candy manufacturer versus the full scope of knowledge available to the FBI.

12/12/05:

JULIA BROWN -- A RELIABLE SOURCE?

With reference to the person above who quotes extensive comments by Julia Brown:

There is a huge dilemma with respect to Birch Society speakers such as Julia Brown and Lola Belle Holmes.

The dilemma is this: which Julia Brown or Lola Belle Holmes should we believe?

Number 1 = The person that testified under oath before a Congressional committee and/or the Subversive Activities Control Board? OR

Number 2 = The person that later became a paid speaker for the Birch Society?

In both cases, #2 contradicts #1!

See my 91-page JBS report and my 19-page report on former FBI Special Agent Dan Smoot for details:

JBS Report: [11]

Smoot Report: [12]

Also see how Birch Society endorsers and speakers (such as former FBI Special Agent W. Cleon Skousen) misrepresented their FBI background to claim expertise which they did not have -- and which, even today, is being promoted by people like Glenn Beck:

[13]

Links to all of my reports: http://ernie1241.googlepages.com/home

Additional details from: Ernie1241@aol.com Ernie1241 11:37, 7 October 2009 (EDT)ernie1241

Relocate from article page - will add ref to main article page --Bob Burton 23:11, 1 May 2005 (EDT)


4/29/05: For interested parties, the FBI HQ main file on the John Birch Society [JBS] is 62-104401 and it consists of about 12,000 pages.

J. Edgar Hoover or his top subordinates referred to the JBS in FBI memos and reports as "extremist", "irrational", "irresponsible" and "lunatic fringe".

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