1974 Interview with Rudy Maxa of the Washington Post

Interview Transcript Following Part 5

INTERVIEWER:
“If I could play the Devilʼs Advocate, I think, you, [with] talking about the
ʻinternational banking conspiracyʼ, they have not lost out,
they simply donʼt want any attention. They donʼt want to...”

QUIGLEY: “Oh, I That's an argument there, that if people are doing something in which they are very successful, they would hope that people would not know how. Like Coca Cola. We're not supposed to know the secret formula that makes that such an attractive drink. So in a sense with the international bankers. I think there is not the slightest doubt -- in fact, I've said this in my book -- that they tried to make banking into a mystery. They tried to make the Gold Standard into something that is very complicated. Yet it really is quite simple when you diagram it.

So we are dealing with two different things here. I don't think this is a conspiracy.This is just secrecy. Because something is a secret doesn't mean that it's also a conspiracy.

There's a lot of things -- we have trade secrets, and I can see where labor unions might violently object to the salaries of their leaders being made known. I never knew what John L. Lewis's salary was at the United Mine Workers (UMW) and, if I did, I'd probably be damned angry. That was a secret, but I don't think keeping that secret was what we'd mean by conspiracy.

 Now, on the other hand, there have certainly in history been conspiracies.They're damned difficult to establish, though. We spent a long, long time trying to figure out whether there was a conspiracy in regards to the assassination of President Lincoln. And there's still debate about it. And I suppose one hundred years from now there'll still be some people debating about Jack Kennedy. And, of course, Martin Luther King, Jr. That's out in the open again.

 So there must be such things as conspiracies. And I can see where a conspiracy could be involved in an assassination or something like that, which is a particular episode. But I cannot accept, or give real consideration to this conspiracy theory of history, which sees conspiracies that go on for decades or even centuries, that are more or less world-wide, that cause everything.

That's because any organization -- take a fraternity or anything. When the personnel change, the thing changes. If I were to go back to Princeton Graduate School -- I had a student apply for admission a few weeks ago, and he told me what it was like. It was totally different from when I was there.

Well, that's not the result of conspiracy. That's the result of the people who were there having retired, or gone elsewhere, and the new people having different values, and so forth. So I think that even if you did initially have a conspiracy going on, or have such things as the Masons, if they are secret and if they are conspiracies (I don't know a thing about them), then it seems to me they're bound to change in the course of time. Some forty or fifty years later they're almost certainly not going to be doing the same thing, in the same pattern, as earlier.

I think, for anybody talking about a conspiracy theory of history, the burden of proof rests on them to produce decisive evidence and not simply odd parallels.

Gary Allen has applied my research to a totally wrong group. I wasn't talking about everybody on Wall Street. As a matter of fact, when he says “Wall Street” he's talking about a very complex structure made up, I suppose, of hundreds of partnerships, companies and corporations. And they're not only trying to screw us (which I think they are) and trying to screw the world (which I'm sure they are), but they also trying to screw each other. So, when he says “Wall Street,” like he has found somebody he'd call “a famous Wall Street man” whom I never heard of, or when he cites some insignificant company's doings, and says “this is part of the conspiracy,” I can only...

I'll put it much more specific than that. Averell Harriman, no, James Forrestal was Brown Brothers. I think. But I don't see Brown Brothers as being part of any conspiracy in which, let us say, J. P. Morgan would be involved, because I've never heard of anything in which those two were jointly working. So, if some-body says here's Jim Forrestal establishing a unified Defense Department by putting the Navy and the Army together and so forth, and was doing that as a part of a Wall Street conspiracy, to me there's at least two links missing: First, was Forrestal doing that because he was a partner in Brown Brothers? Secondly, was this in anyway connected with what J. P. Morgan, or anyone else on Wall Street, wanted?

Of course, this is all irrelevant, because J. P. Morgan was finished by the time James Forrestal did all that, but - no matter - the DuPonts took over some of the Morgan interests and the Rockefellers took over most of them. But the objection remains. You have links that are constantly missing and assumptions that just aren't true: that there was a solid group cooperating together.

I didn't enjoy this attention at all. And I'll be very frank and mercenary about it. As long as I had no book in print to sell, what good did this do me? It blackened my reputation among scholarly historians who are going to say, oh, he's one of those right-wing nuts. And they're likely to say that, because I'm at a Catholic university, where there must be lots of right-wing nuts. People assumed that of Bill Buckley or this brother-in-law of his (who's much more able, I think). They must be right-wing nuts. (They both wrote jointly a book defending Joe McCarthy). A lot of people dismissed them as as just right-wingers because they are Catholic, or that they defended Joe McCarthy because they are all three Catholic. Do you see? And so forth.

It doesn't do me any good, being at a Catholic university, where I'm trying to be an objective historian by saying exactly what happened (if I can find that out) and by giving what I find the proper amount of weight.

Now, this is important. In my book, which is 1348 pages, you've got maybe 20 pages dealing with this Round Table, Milner, Rhodes Trust thing. And that's really about the Atlantic Establishment. Nothing at all to do with what these people are talking about. And they will come up with Shiff and other names, mostly Jewish, who they'll say gave millions of dollars to the Bolsheviks. Yet I don't see the connection here (between Rhodes and Bolsheviks).

I get 'phone calls. Even out at the farm I get calls, always long distance, often from Texas, and they all can talk forever (I suppose they've oil wells paying for it). I've had people call me from California and Texas and Mexico City. From Florida. One once went on and on and on. I was trying to write my book dealing with weapons (my wife always answers the 'phone at home, but at the farm I got caught).

 But this fellow called me, and he talked for about twenty minutes, and I wanted to get back to finish the sentence I was typing, and finally said “I'm sorry, but I just can't go on talking like this. I've got to get back to my work.” He says “I've got one more question.” (This was two years ago [1973]). “Why is Nelson Rockefeller a Communist?” And I said “I don't know. I don't think he is, but if you know he is and you want to know why he is, why don't you call him up and ask him?”

 This is the kind of thing I get, and it's annoying in a way, though it doesn't interfere with my personal life.

Now, when this book Tragedy and Hope does come back into print...

I've got my lawyers to try to find out who is behind the pirated edition. Now, I don't know exactly what he did -- all I know is that the District Attorney out in Southern California apparently stopped publication of the pirated edition of the book. Even my lawyer hasn't told me who this is, but I do know that the GU bookstore here was selling the book and had sent in a check for a re-order and it came back with a note scrawled “I can supply no more until Prof. Qiogley gives me permission. And that shouldn't be hard for you to get, since he is at your university.” This was five or six weeks ago. Maybe two months.

 It was Angriff Press, in Hollywood, CA, Box 2726.

That's all I know.

What I would appreciate is if you would put at the center of what you write about me the holistic approach to solving problems. This is me. And, incidentally, in my book's holistic picture of what happened from 1895 to 1965, comprising seventy years, it is just seventy pages on the Atlantic Community. But you should look up Streit. He's a big noise. He wrote Union Now, calling for union now with Great Britain, and then during the War he also wanted union with Norway, Sweden, The Netherlands and some other places.