2024 Addendum: I do not have a copy of this book to sell or give away. I don't have a PDF of it. I will ignore all comments/requests which ask for this.
NOTE: This review is going to be
heavy on quotations so you can try and understand the author’s
hard-to-summarize ideas. All numerals in parentheses refer to page numbers in
this edition.
This fairly
obscure book is either paranoia masquerading as dispassionate Systems Analysis,
or the depiction of a Systems Analysts’ descent into paranoia. Perhaps both at once.
The first
ten pages are by the book’s editor/publisher/agent, Hugh Fox. Fox (1932-2011) was an intellectual, an
American novelist, critic, and poet. He
published more than sixty books of poetry, fiction, and anthologies as editor. AND NOW, TO OUR STORY …
Fox says
that he received the present MS on June 20, 1973. The author’s name was given as Thibaut
D’Amiens. The cover letter modestly
informed Fox that this book “may be the most important book written since the
New Testament” (5). Even though Fox was
at this time a publisher of poetry and not political tomes or sociological
works, D’Amiens flattered him with the suggestion that perhaps Fox’s unorthodox
(that is, “artistic”) temperament might make him more likely to have an open
mind and consider the validity of D’Amiens’ thesis.
In turn, Fox tells us
that, if that thesis “is true in any way” (5), then it PROBABLY IS as important
as the author’s claim.
The thesis,
by the way, is that there are unknown powers behind the scenes of the world,
making things turn out the way they want.
I guess editor Fox’s artistic stance must have insulated him from a
predominant feature -- paranoia in modern culture -- for, I don’t know … THE
LAST 100 YEARS OR SO!!!
[deep breath] Continuing Fox’s tale of the mysterious
manuscript, we’re told it was mailed from Fennimore, WI. Fox spends the rest of the Introduction
describing his attempts to track down the author of this insightful little
tome. He traced D’Amiens from Wisconsin to
a teaching position at NYU, where “Borishinski” (real name) taught for a year. (However, in this review I’m going to call
the author by the name he selected.)
Then Fox
explains how he deduced that Borishinski was a Hungarian émigré, but that’s
about as far as Fox’s investigations could get.
The closing
of this Introduction sets the stage, and also shows Fox’s total buy-in to the
Mysterious Powers idea. “The
Invisibles,” as D’Amiens named them in 1973, are “beyond good and evil -- to
them, the Human Race, this planet, are peripheral contingencies subordinated to
THEIR own master plan” (15).
The book is divided into 23
subdivisions with subtitles. They aren’t
numbered, but I’m going to enumerate them, first by page number and then by
which section it is.
16 - ONE:
MY FIRST
ENCOUNTER WITH SYSTEMS ANALYSIS.
Here,
D’Amiens describes just that.
SA, he
explains, is the breaking down of problems into various components.
From there, you examine the branching options
of different proposals to solve bits of the overall problem.
Mucho más details
here. D’Amiens continues, “Nothing was permanent,
everything was variable … and what was more, all factors seemed capable of
being isolated and analyzed”(17 -- ellipsis in original).
18 - TWO: SYSTEMS
ANAYLSIS AS APPLIED TO SOCIO-ECONOMIC STRUCTURES. D’Amiens says that SA could easily be applied
to people. “We the people, in other
words, can be manipulated by changing any of the well-being coordinates in our
lives” (22). Well, duh -- a change in
your life can change your life.
Brilliant, Holmes!
22 - THREE: THE
PRINCIPLE OF DOUBLE-EFECT. This is a
section about the ideas of Double-Think and Double-Double-Think. His point is that “according to the double and double-double-effect
principle, cover-ups can be infinite, there can be an infinite series of
Discoverable Facets presented for
discovery in order to cover up the Central Core of the Undiscoverable -- behind
which the Invisibles ultimately hide” (25).
To which the Cynic replies, if it can’t be done, why do it? As we shall see, no answer to this question
is really given, except that the reader may imply the motivation expressed by
Mr Spock about Vejur, in Star Trek: The Motion Picture: “Curiosity, Mister Decker. Insatiable curiosity.”
26 - FOUR: THE
HISS-CHAMBERLAIN-NIXON CASE: THE PATH TOWARD THE INVISIBLES. This episode in recent American history, with
its accusations and cross-accusations of treason and disappearing-reappearing
evidence, is given as an example of double-think and the idea that one surface
intent may mask a deeper cross-intent.
31 - FIVE: A SYSTEMS ANALYTICAL
LONG-VIEW. This explains why D’Amiens
chose the Hiss case as an example.
Perhaps the US’s Red Scare was planned
by the Reds, “ …a much larger Systems Analysis Schemata that seems to point
to some kind of Soviet Masterplan to subvert American (Western) institutions
from within” (34). In other words, maybe
Nixon was catapulted to national prominence as a Commie-hater because the
Commies intentionally gave him some Commies to catch!
[Here begins what is, to me, the most interesting section, concerning
the murders of JFK and RFK, as examined in such an SA fashion.]
35 - SIX: IDENTIFICALNESS
OF GAME-SETS. Yes, that’s how it is
spelled in the book. D’Amiens echoes
many other writes who state that JFK’s position of power as US President made
him a threat to other powerful folks because he played by different rules, or
perhaps even played a different game.
“Although the game Set had not essentially changed between the late
forties and early sixties, however, one important Player was not playing
according to the already pre-established, by now almost ‘traditional’ rules:
JFK” (35).
As
mentioned, other writers have described how President Kennedy riled plenty of
“Establishment” types by moving towards a live-and-let-live stance vis-Ã -vis the USSR. In other words, JFK was a heretic to the
Gospel of the First Strike. “The Cold
War was slowly becoming at least a lukewarm peace. The whole Kennedy impulse was toward
disarmament, international aid and mutual cooperation … and a reorientation of
the economy toward reasonable moderately profitable peaceful production, away
from BOOM TIMES (which always presage Depression) into NORMALCY again” (39 --
ellipsis in original).
39 - SEVEN: INVISIBLE
LINKS IN VISIBLE CHAINS: So, basically,
JFK was doomed because the Powers figured that without the super-commerce
generated by a semiconstant war economy, the country (and the Powers’ bottom
line) would flag. Kennedy apparently
would not dance to the War Machine’s song.
41 - EIGHT: THE GAME PLAN CALLED
COUNTER-REALITY. This section begins by describing
CIA-level smokescreens, and recounting the now-famous and instructive WWII
deception “The Man Who Never Was.” D’Amiens goes on to say “ … It is rather easy
to see how game models could be used to create an Assassination Game with a
series of built-in decoys and false-leads that would lead investigators away
from instead of toward the Counter-Reality that created the Game in the first
place” (42).
Figure 1 is
“a hypothetical supply network” shown on page 43. “Source” = Assassin(s). “Sink”=Victim(s). These steps, or nodes, are the actual
increments or steps taken by whoever was truly behind the death of JFK. The real behind-the-scenes doings, whatever
they are … not the Establishment’s Lone-Nut-Oswald theory.
Figure 3a
is figure 1 with a secondary node-system overlaid -- the original intermediary nodes are left white. “ … By drawing arcs connecting the secondary
system THESE ARCS ALL CROSS ONE OF THE PRIMARY ARCS” (44), sidetracking any
investigators. In fact, D’Amiens says a
bit further on, this is EXACTLY WHAT HAPPENED to New Orleans DA Jim Garrison’s
case. A counter-set of clues can be
laid, leading to confusing or even contradictory dead ends. “When any attempt is made to trace
connections back away from the assassin through the secondary nodal system,
each possible connection is intercepted by the primal network so that not only
does the investigator become lost in the maze of the secondary system, but
never realizes that it is a secondary
system with oblique manipulative connections that can never be followed back to the Master-Planner” (45) -- represented
by the “O,” labeled “Start,” at the left edge of Figure 3a.
These
secondary bits of information, the “false leads,” are the DARK DOTS on the
diagram. If you were talking about the
Warren Commission’s theory of the JFK assassination, then these intersection
points might be labeled “job at Depository” -- “mail-order rifle” -- “Cuban
sympathies” -- “Russian defector” -- “fake ID in wallet” and so on.
45 - NINE: TEMPORARY
POINTS OF VISIBLE INTERSECTION BETWEEN THE PRIMARY AND SECONDARY NETWORKS? In D’Amiens’ view, an example of such a false
lead might be the Dallas Police car that pulled up outside Oswald’s room while
he was in there after the assassination, which tooted its horn several
times. This could have been a
whole-cloth red herring (to mix metaphors), a cop told to pull up to this
intersection and honk a few times, and then leave. He would never know why, and if he ever
figured out his stop in relation to Oswald’s whereabouts, he would keep his
trap shut forever for fear of being innocently dragged into the mess. However, such an “important clue” could
provide almost an endless diversion of resources and time.
“Presumably,
then, we have a REAL task-force doing the killing, decoying the police away
from themselves and directing them in on Oswald (by radio), and a whole almost
magical DECOY task-force, led by Oswald who, up until the time of his
apprehension was really unaware he was a decoy” (46-47). Remember how LHO maintained that he was “just
a patsy”?
“Then, once the Kill
has been effected and the Patsy has been caught, all ‘surfacing’ stops. the links between the Visible and Invisible
disappear … and the maze of misdirection, hints, clues, rumours that surround
the very visible Oswald is surfaced” (47-- -- ellipsis in original).
**********************************
FROM Thomas Buchanan’s Who Killed Kennedy? (Putnam, 1964),
p 77:
Citizens of
the United States, observing that investigators have produced at least four
reinterpretations of the way the shots were fired -- each one irreconcilable
with all the others -- and that they have nonetheless deduced from this
divergent evidence the same, unvarying conclusion, may be pardoned if they
start to wonder whether the machinery of the investigation does not have some
built-in flaw that presupposes it in one direction.
If, as a
statistician, I were solving problems with the aid of a machine and I
discovered that, however the components of my problem altered, the machine
would always give me the same answer, I should be inclined to think that the
machine was broken.
********************************
47 - TEN: INSIDE THE MAZE. This section shows how Jim Garrison’s 1966-1969
investigations fell into just such a mine-laden network of false clues.
Figure 3b has our previous diagram labeled with some of the
objects of Garrison’s inquiries.
[Due to a missing page
in the MS, according to editor Fox, we now take you directly to a discussion of
the RFK assassination, and the evidence of Sirhan’s manipulation.]
As evidence
that Sirhan’s mind had been messed with, D’Amiens notes several times when
Sirhan gave contradictory opinions of Bobby Kennedy: “ … a mass murderer … I really liked him”
(52). Now, this kind of behavior (and
Oswald’s mysterious silences under DPD questioning) can be indicative of
posthypnotic conditioning. D’Amiens
points out that this sort of thing didn’t even become a public idea until much
later.
This
statement is incorrect.
Richard Condon’s
The
Manchurian Candidate was published in 1959, and the film of the same
name was released in 1962.
Perhaps
D’Amiens intends to say that people “of the right sort” certainly did not think
that such things happened “in real life.”
For instance, nobody in the 1960s (or 1976, when this book was
published) knew about the CIA’s mind control program,
MKUltra.
As D’Amiens
says, “No nets or webs on the purely post-hypnotic suggestion level were ever
even postulated. The Invisibles had
moved their technology into a New Age
that was at the same time as old as the occult itself -- only no one in the Old
Age was as yet prepared to follow them” (53).
53 - ELEVEN: “MENTAL
HOSPITAL” AS ASSASSIN-FACTORY. This
section suggests that not only Sirhan and Oswald displayed evidence of
programming, but also LHO’s killer Jack Ruby.
58 - TWELVE:
INVISIBALISM [sic] AND THE SUPRANATIONAL. Here D’Amiens explains that the trail of
deceit leads a bifurcated path to both the USSR and “U.S. Super-Businesses”
(58). Wait a minute! he says. These are not really enemies at all -- they’re partners. Both of these macro-entities stay in power --
and locked in eternal competition --, he maintains, due to the arms race. “In terms of theoretical economic-growth models,
then, the Soviet Union and the Satellite Countries become -- in an absolute
economic sense -- a supranational company pitted against the Western Bloc
countries which together form (as a business/governmental unit) a second, rival
supranational company with the same productive-growth aims and aspirations”
(62).
62 - THIRTEEN: THE
COMON -- AND THE INVISIBLE -- WEALS.
This section talks about financial theory, specifically a Keynesian
doctrine advocating government “stimulus” of a nation’s economy, by giving
government money, whether by taxation or creation-by-fiat, for public
projects. This would continue regardless
of the effects on the economy.
“Inflation”? No problem! “Defense spending is even less affected by
inflation because it bypasses aggregate demand as such and goes directly to the
‘nation’ as consumer. On the level of
defense-spending the common weal of the Worker as such is not only blithely
ignorable, but given a framework of continued deficit spending, there need be no reference back to the ‘real’
overall national economic climate” (66-67).
From here
to the end, D’Amiens follows this idea, that governments and corporations
follow aims that are independent of the good of society. In fact, he observes with horror, some
apparent goals of the Invisibles are pursued in spite of the cost to human life, or any continued organic life
on Earth.
67 - FOURTEEN: CORP
ORG-THINK AND THE NEEDS OF SPACESHIP EARTH.
“In the supramoral world of CORP ORG-THINK there are not people, but
merely Consumers, no social inequities but merely Solvent or Insolvent Market
Areas, no Planet Earth, but merely Market Space” (68).
“The
planetary logistics of the Invisibles, operating through the supramoral
data-banks of a planetary CORP ORG is to: 1. Exhaust this planet and then 2.
Leave Earth behind in a space-program designed to find new energy-sources not
merely within our solar-system, but far, far beyond. The overthrust of the Invisibles’ Master Plan
is to destroy this planet with its own resources and then simply … more on …”
(69 -- ellipsis in original).
69 - FIFTEEN: DÉTENTE
AND ENERGY VAMPIRISM. The idea of
détente, or de-escalation is, according to D’Amiens, by its very nature antithetical
to the Invisibles’ plans. “The Invisibles,
in a planetary context, are ENERGY-Vampires. … This move toward SPACE as a
LIVING ENVIRONMENT can be correlated with the despoiling of planetary air-water
life-support systems if we postulate that the INVISIBLES IN NO WAY DEPEND ON
WHAT WE CONSIDER TO BE SURVIVAL CONDITIONS FOR THEIR OWN SURVIVAL” (70).
70 - SIXTEEN: THE
ALMOST-INVISIBLES: ON THE THRESHOLD OF INVISIBILITY. This section sums up what
D’Amiens has sketched so far: An unseen
conglomeration of power-holders sows discord to gain and keep control,
regardless of the toll on people and planet.
His next deduction from these observations is that either these rich
guys “must as a group be controlled by a higher power” (74) -- or -- that they
“are not terrestrial at all but merely extra-terrestrials who have assumed
human form as merely one stage in an inter-galactic mission whose purposes
remain totally unknown to us” (74).
74 - SEVENTEEN: THE
ORIGINS OF CORP-ORG THINK: THE PARADIGM OF IMBALANCE. Present Western civilization is, D’Amiens
asserts, a perfect conduit for the Invisibles’ scheme. “The Invisibles, hiding behind the visible White
Man Power Structure, having no color themselves, become partially incarnate in
White Form, so that although their essential nature remains ‘transparent,’ they
are at least seen and represented by Whiteness -- the visible Symbol (on a
worldwide scale) for Invisible Divinity” (78).
79 - EIGHTEEN: THE
ENEMY OF CAPITALISM. Here D’Amiens
enumerates some “industries” kept financially afloat, he says, by racial
unrest: Black-Is-Beautiful Industry;
sales of self-defense/police gear; New Living-Enclave Industry (such as the
boom in gated “communities”); and the Integration Industry, which supports
busing, Head Start and other training programs.
All this is
designed so that such activities will keep consumers spending, flowing money
through the Invisibles’ agents’ hands.
“Ideally, in terms of Corporate Goals the Black-White confrontation in
the U.S. should be maintained in a state of instability, liquidity,
high-surface-tension, not being allowed to swing over into real revolution and at the same time never really be resolved.
It may seem
too cynical for me to observe this, but: If everybody DID manage to finally get along
better, it would put a lot of people out of work. There are plenty of folks who make “good”
money from race-baiting and from encouraging other people to take offense where
none was intended. While there are
plenty of despicable people out there -- some of whom are racists -- not every
wrongful act is race-related. There are
mean people in EVERY mode of life and society.
On the other hand, you cannot argue with D’Amiens’ observation that without
continued conflict, professional “conflict resolution” people would have to get
a different job!
It’s not
only the Invisibles who stay prosperous through “contained instability”
(82). The next section is D’Amiens’
real-world demonstration of the planned and unplanned results of one attempt to
exploit “instability.”
82 - NINETEEN:
PRIMARY EFFECTS, SIDE EFFECTS AND AFTER EFFECTS: A CASE STUDY ON
SMACK. Of course, “smack” = heroin. This section talks about how the CIA’s
support for, or noninterference with, certain criminal groups has cleared the
path for heroin to become a “new” addiction in the general US population. The effects on the nation of the addiction
and the resulting ripple effects are disregarded or ignored by the powerful
ones who are “above the influence.”
“Drug
Addiction paralyzes political organization, maintains in-group alienation,
encourages a self-isolating turning inward, blocks group-think, group-act, any
type of large-scale group-identity buildup.
At the same time it maintains Apartheid and the whole complex Apartheid
Industry, and keeps the black in a COLONIAL POSITION WITHIN THE U.S. ITSELF SO
THAT WHITE AMERICA BECOMES THE MANUFACTURING-SUPPLIER TO ITS OWN BLACK COLONIAL
POPULATION” (87).
88 - TWENTY: POSITIVE
AND NEGATIVE GOLD-FLOWS: THE OVER-ECONOMICS OF THE INVISIBLES. This section discusses how drugs flow wealth
into the more recently industrialized Orient.
This is all to finance the maximum number of development tracks that
might lead to a way off this lousy planet for the Invisibles. “In a sense, then, the INVISIBLES are
supporting the Red Chinese, the Soviets AND the U.S. … encouraging all three
space-programmed countries with the objective of UTILIZING THE FIRST AND THE BEST
OF THE THREE OVERALL PROGRAMS FOR THEIR OWN ESCAPE PURPOSES!” (90).
This sounds
rather dated now, doesn’t it? I mean,
nowadays the good ol’ USA has to depend on Russia to give our astronauts a lift
into orbit! Was there a secret launch of
Invisible folks that we missed documenting?
Of course, even if the Invisibles left, their “orgs,” systems, and human
agents would remain in place, with a vested interest in maintaining THEIR OWN
power.
90 - TWENTY-ONE: THE PROFIT-MAKING COVERUP: THE PILOT FISH
TECHNIQUE. This section can be summed up
with this sentence: “It would seem, then, that the war in S.E. Asia is
but a continuation of a definite U.S. business-government trend initiated some
eighty or ninety years ago -- THE USE OF WAR TO EXPAND EXISTING MARKETS
(RESOURCE POOLS) AND CREATE NEW ONES” (92).
Of course, this only applies so long as conflict remains fairly
small-scale. D’Amiens might say that the
reason we haven’t had a nuclear war is that such a mess wouldn’t make economic
sense for the Invisibles!
94 - TWENTY-TWO:
PROGRAM AND PROGRAMMER: THE AUTONOMY OF AUTOMATA. This section confuses me some. But I think D’Amiens’ main drift is that,
even with all the aforementioned “control” programs in place, humans are a
messy and inconsistent lot. A desired
stage would be “TOTAL CONSUMER CONTROL, WHEREBY THE CONSUMER IS NOT GIVEN A
CHOICE OF PRODUCTS/LIFE-STYLE, BUT HIS ENTIRE ENVIRONMENT IS DETERMINED BY
PRODUCT CONTROL THAT SERVES MERELY TO MAINTAIN HIS STATUS AS A CONSUMER WITHOUT
ANY REFERENCE TO HIS PHYSICAL, PSYCHOLOGICAL OR MORAL GOOD” (97). Actually, that sounds a lot like Madison
Avenue on some of its more mercenary days!
In other
words, as stated previously, all of this wealth and power were accumulated
solely to raise human technology to a point that the Invisibles can leave
Earth. We’ve reached the point that many
things can be done by apps and computer-controlled devices. “Now they merely wait until the MEGAMCHINE
MANIPULATES PLANETARY DYNAMICS TO THE COMPLETION OF ITS LAST ‘PROJECT’ --
PROJECT EARTH-ESCAPE” (99).
[And now, the final
section of the book/MS.]
100 - TWENTY-THREE:
THE NIGHTMARE OF CENTER CONTROL I: A PERSONAL CONFESSION. Here D’Amiens wraps things up by recounting
the stages of his awareness/paranoia concerning the Invisible and their agenda.
It began when he noticed a few strange
connections in society that led to the inklings of the beginnings of his
present “catch-all” theory of the Invisibles.
“ … Slowly I became aware of a PRESENCE, A
FORCE WATCHING ME AND WHAT I WAS DOING … AND THE CLOSER I CAME TO THEIR SYSTEM,
THE STRONGER THE SENSE OF BEING IMPEDED CAME” (100 -- ellipsis in original).
D’Amiens talks about an involuntary out-of-body experience
that reminds me of the one narrated by
Albert
K Bender in
Flying Saucers and the Three Men.
In each case the observer is stolen right out
of his body and forced to confront horrific “truths.”
In
D’Amiens’ case, the locale seemed to be like Ozymandias’ arctic retreat
Karnak in
Watchmen,
a huge room filled with video displays of
mystifying content.
Eventually D’Amiens
lost consciousness and woke up in bed, asking his wife to get him to a
hospital.
Now he says
that, given what he knows, he can’t figure out why he’s still around to spill
the Cosmic Beans. The suspense is
driving him crazy (!). “Has the whole
history of Man on Earth been merely a sub-plot of some larger cosmic drama?”
(104).
He
theorizes that “the complete lack of any appearances by ‘God’ in the last five
hundred plus years” (104) means that divine intervention in human society might
be unnecessary, now that technology can take up the slack of running the show
of human consciousness. I don’t know
whence this theory, since many folks will concur that God is not silent, even
nowadays.
This book
of mixed mania and insight ends on a most Lovecraftian note. “If anyone holds this book in his hands, and
reads it, be sure the so-called DAY OF JUDGMENT IS AT HAND, THE SECOND AND LAST
COMING … PRAY TO THE INVISIBLES THAT YOU MAY BE SAVED, INCLUDED IN THEIR FIRST
AND FINAL INTER-GALACTIC ARK!” (105-- ellipsis in original).
-- Well,
gentle reader, what do you think? Is
this book deservedly semi-obscure? I
have gone into such depths because I haven’t seen any other review or summary
or ANYTHING online about this book. You
can find it listed for sale, but there is little clue as to its content.
Now I hope
you can chew on some of these ideas and decide for yourself. Personally the section about the trails of
false clues in the Kennedy killings seems very plausible.
Here’s
another valid point. If as D’Amiens says, all trails that “lead upward” are
salted with fake clues and false leads, then why should he (or we) have any
assurance that he has tracked the CORRECT bread-crumb trail?
’Tis a
puzzlement that one can relish considering, without expecting to solve it.
Have YOU any ideas or
comments to share?
2024 Addendum: I do not have a copy of this book to sell or give away. I don't have a PDF of it. I will ignore all comments/requests which ask for this.
