American Conspiracy: A Chronology in Quotes
"We are born with the schizophrenia of good and evil within us, so that each generation must persevere in self-recognition and in self-control. In ceding to the automatic reassurance of our logic, we have abandoned once more those powers of recognition and of control. Darkness seems scarcely different from light, with the web of structure and logic woven thick across both. We must therefore cut away these layers of false protection if we wish to regain control of our common sense and morality."—John Ralston Saul, Voltaire's Bastards, 1992
"Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. John VIII:32"—Inscription chiseled onto the CIA building in Langley, Virginia
"Being persuaded that a just application of the principles, on which the Masonic Fraternity is founded, must be promotive of private virtue and public prosperity, I shall always be happy to advance the interests of the Society, and to be considered by them a deserving brother."—George Washington, letter to King David's Lodge, No. 1, Newport, Rhode Island, August 22, 1790
"If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."—Thomas Jefferson, letter to Albert Gallatin, 1802
"I candidly confess that I have ever looked on Cuba as the most interesting addition which could ever be made to our system of States. The control which, with Florida, this island would give us over the Gulf of Mexico, and the countries and isthmus bordering on it, as well as all those whose waters flow into it, would fill up the measure of our political well-being."—Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Monroe, October 24, 1823
"I am one of those who do not believe the national debt is a national blessing...it is calculated to raise around the administration a moneyed aristocracy dangerous to the liberties of the country."—Andrew Jackson, letter, April 26, 1824
"In countries where associations are free, secret societies are unknown. In America there are factions, but no conspiracies."
—Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1840
"Our Union is a confederation of independent States, whose policy is peace with each other and all the world. To enlarge its limits is to extend the dominions of peace over additional territories and increasing millions. The world has nothing to fear from military ambition in our Government."
—James K. Polk, inaugural address, March 4, 1845
“Tell mother, tell mother, I died for my country...useless...useless.”—John Wilkes Booth, last words, 1865
"The United States is not a nation to which peace is a necessity."—Grover Cleveland, Annual Message to Congress, December 7, 1896
"The mission of the United States is one of benevolent assimilation."—William McKinley, letter, December 21, 1898
"When great nations fear to expand, shrink from expansion, it is because their greatness is coming to an end. Are we, still in the prime of our lusty youth, still at the beginning of our glorious manhood, to sit down among the outworn people, to take our place with the weak and the craven? A thousand times no!"—Theodore Roosevelt, speech, September, 1899
"I did not feel that one man should have all this power while others have none."—Leon Czolgosz, anarchist & assassin of President William McKinley, 1901
"In the Western hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in flagrant cases of wrongdoing or impotence, to the exercise of an international police power."—Theodore Roosevelt, Annual Message to Congress, December 6, 1904
"What this country needs — what every country needs occasionally — is a good hard bloody war to revive the vice of patriotism on which its existence as a nation depends."—Ambrose Bierce, letter, February 15, 1911
"Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men's views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it."—Woodrow Wilson, 1913
—Woodrow Wilson, Address to Congress, April 2, 1917
"Civilization and profits go hand in hand."
—Calvin Coolidge, 1928
"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."—U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, 1928
"The real truth of the matter is...that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson..."—Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1933
"He may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch."
—Franklin Delano Roosevelt, attributed, referring to Anastasio Somoza of Nicaragua, 1934
"We have undertaken a new order of things; yet we progress to it under the framework and in the spirit and intent of the American Constitution."—Franklin Delano Roosevelt, State of the Union Address, 1935
"We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."—U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, ca. 1936
—Harry S. Truman, radio address, August 9, 1945
"The real rulers in Washington are invisible to exercise power from behind the scenes."—U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, 1952
"[I am] considerably concerned when I see the extent to which we are developing a one-party press in a two-party country."—Adlai Stevenson, 1952
"We must develop effective espionage and counter-espionage services, and must learn to subvert, sabotage, and destroy our enemies by more clever, more sophisticated, and more effective methods than those used against us. It may be necessary that the American people be made acquainted with, understand, and support this fundamentally repugnant philosophy."—Doolittle Report to President Eisenhower, 1954
"These men should be equipped with weapons and should march slightly behind the innocent and gullible participants."—Instructions for assassins in a CIA guerilla warfare handbook, ca. 1954
"The idea that you can merchandise candidates for high office like breakfast cereal — that you can gather votes like box tops — is, I think, the ultimate indignity to the democratic process."—Adlai Stevenson, speech at Democratic National Convention, 1956
"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."—Dwight D. Eisenhower, Farewell Address, January 17, 1961
"Now we have a problem in making our power credible, and Vietnam is the place."—John F. Kennedy, June 1961
Lee Harvey Oswald,
—Lee Harvey Oswald, 1963
"...we might have ridden into an ambush."—JFK aide David Powers, 1964
"We do not want an expanding struggle with consequences that no one can perceive, nor will we bluster or bully or flaunt our power, but we will not surrender and we will not retreat, for behind our American pledge lies the determination and resources, I believe, of all of the American nation."—Lyndon Johnson, news conference, July 28, 1965
"The greatest purveyor of violence on earth is my own government."—Martin Luther King Jr., 1967
"I now fully realize that only the powers of the Presidency will reveal the secrets of my brother’s death."—Robert Kennedy, June 3, 1968, two days before he was assassinated
"If people demonstrate in a manner to interfere with others, they should be rounded up and put in a concentration camp."—Richard G. Kleindienst, Attorney-General under Richard Nixon, ca. 1970
"When you get in these people when you...get these people in, say: 'Look, the problem is that this will open the whole, the whole Bay of Pigs thing, and the President just feels that ah, without going into the details...don't, don't lie to them to the extent to say there is no involvement, but just say this is sort of a comedy of errors, bizarre, without getting into it, 'the President believes that it is going to open the whole Bay of Pigs thing up again.' And, ah because these people are plugging for, for keeps and that they should call the FBI in and say that we wish for the country, don't go any further into this case, period!"—Richard Nixon, tape, June 23, 1972
"If a President of the United States ever lied to the American people he should resign."—Bill Clinton, 1974
"Always give your best, never get discouraged, never by petty; always remember, others may hate you. Those who hate you don’t win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself."—Richard Nixon, farewell address, 1974
"The more I have learned, the more concerned I have become that the government was involved in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy."—Victor Marchetti, former Executive Assistant to the Deputy Director of the CIA, quoted in True magazine, April 1975
"We should live our lives as though Christ were coming this afternoon."—Jimmy Carter, 1976
"We do not seek to intimidate, but it is clear that a world which others can dominate with impunity would be inhospitable to decency and a threat to the well-being of all people."—Jimmy Carter, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1977
"An organization must be feared to be effective. It doesn’t mean you do fearful things, but it does mean you must be respected...even agents on the CIA payroll must fear you and feel that you’re omnipresent and that therefore they better not betray you, or you’ll know..."—James Angleton, CIA Chief of Counterintelligence, July 1977
"The two-party system has given this country the war of Lyndon Johnson, the Watergate of Nixon and the incompetence of Carter. Saying we should keep the two-party system simply because it is working is like saying the Titanic voyage was a success because a few people survived on life rafts."—Eugene J. McCarthy, 1978
"The Shah (of Iran) was — despite the travesties of retroactive myth — a dedicated reformer."—Henry Kissinger, 1979
"There is solid evidence...that Hoffa, Marcello, and Trafficante — three of the most important targets for criminal prosecution by the Kennedy Administration — had discussions with their subordinates about murdering President Kennedy. Associates of Hoffa, Trafficante, and Marcello were in direct contact with Jack Ruby, the Dallas nightclub owner who killed the ‘lone assassin’ of the President. Although members of the Warren Commission, which investigated President Kennedy’s assassination, has knowledge of much of this information at the time of their inquiry, they chose not to follow it up."—House Assassination Committee Report, 1979
"We love your adherence to democratic principle, and to the democratic processes."—George H.W. Bush, toasting President Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, 1981
"Vietnam was the first war ever fought without any censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind."—Gen. William C. Westmoreland, 1982
"The defense policy of the United States is based on a simple premise: The United States does not start fights. We will never be an aggressor. We maintain our strength in order to deter and defend against aggression — to preserve freedom and peace."—Ronald Reagan, 1983
"They are our brothers, these freedom fighters...They are the moral equal of our Founding Fathers and the brave men and women of the French Resistance. We cannot turn away from them, for the struggle here is not right versus left; it is right versus wrong."—Ronald Reagan, on the Nicaraguan Contras, 1985
"I never said I had no idea about most of the things you said I said I had no idea about."—Elliott Abrams, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, at Iran-Contra Hearings, 1987
"I will never apologize for the United States of America! I don't care what the facts are!"—George H.W. Bush, 1988
"Facts are stupid things."—Ronald Reagan, 1988
"I am the future."—Dan Quayle, 1988
"The world can therefore seize the opportunity to fulfill the long-held promise of a New World Order where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind."—George H.W. Bush, 1990
"That's the left wing of the CIA debating the right wing of the CIA."—Timothy Leary, discussing CNN's "Crossfire," ca. 1992
"Based on the evidence that I've been shown, I would think that it would be very difficult for something of that magnitude to occur on his [LBJ's] watch and he not be privy to it."—Dexter Scott King, on the Martin Luther King Jr. assassination, 1997
"That depends on what the meaning of 'is' is."—Bill Clinton, 1998
"There ought to be limits to freedom."—George W. Bush, news conference, May 21, 1999
"Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event—like a new Pearl Harbor."—"Rebuilding America's Defenses," Report from the Project for the New American Century, 2000
"This crusade, this war on terrorism is going to take a while."—George W. Bush, September 16, 2001
“I think Skull and Bones has had slightly more success than the mafia in the sense that the leaders of the five families are all doing 100 years in jail, and the leaders of the Skull and Bones families are doing four and eight years in the White House.”—Ron Rosenbaum, columnist for the New York Observer, quoted in CBS News' report on Skull & Bones, June 13, 2004
"You know, one of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to the war on terror."—George Bush, CBS News interview, September 6, 2006
