PROLOGUE
As Todd related his experiences in the occult and named names of those leaders who secretly worshiped Lucifer, I was mesmerized. Todd revealed that the French Rothschild banking family occupied the most powerful position in the Illuminati, but their American counterparts, the Rockefellers, held a similarly lofty position in the hierarchy, with David, not the more public Nelson, wielding the most influence.
I didn’t doubt a word of Todd’s testimony until he shifted his focus from politics to the Illuminati’s influence in show business. I could believe that every recording artist signed to a major label was initiated into witchcraft as part of the deal (though I would suspect it’s done covertly enough that the initiates would not be aware of what was truly happening). Having come of age in an era when pop songs were said to be riddled with secret messages (often when a record was played in reverse), I could also accept that the “silver girl” in Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water” represented heroin.
But I had more difficulty accepting Todd’s claim that “You Light Up My Life,” the syrupy ballad that Debbie Boone turned into a number one smash in 1977, was written in praise of Lucifer. Todd said the song’s composer admitted as much. Unfortunately, Todd claimed the composer was Didi Cohn, the actress who played a fictional composer in the film in which the song was introduced. In fact, the song was written by Joseph Brooks, who also wrote and directed the movie, and won an Oscar for composing the song. Of course, if you can believe that the CFR and Trilateral Commission are “fronts” for the Illuminati, you might also accept that Didi Cohn was a front for Joseph Brooks, but since Brooks was as obscure as Cohn, what reason would either have for participating in such deception, especially when the song in question is so innocuous? Besides, Todd never referred to Brooks. He simply accepted the fiction he saw on screen as fact.
Todd made other charges that seemed less than credible (Simon and Garfunkel not only praised heroin in “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” they were also homosexual lovers), and by the time I rewound the final cassette of his lecture, I was skeptical.
Still, I couldn’t dismiss everything Todd said. The all-seeing-eye hovering above the pyramid on the reverse of the U.S. one dollar bill, which Todd identified as the Illuminati’s symbol, was certainly creepy, and like much of the Illuminati’s alleged activities, it was hidden in plain sight. The eye and pyramid had appeared on the one dollar bill since 1935 when President Franklin Roosevelt ordered its placement opposite the more familiar eagle, but I had not noticed it until Todd pointed it out. It struck me as a peculiar symbol to represent our country. An all-seeing-eye seems more appropriate for a totalitarian police state than the country known far and wide as the land of the free. A little independent research confirmed that the symbol had its origins in the occult. The eye belongs to Horus, the son of the Egyptian god Osiris and Isis, not the God of the Old and New Testament.
A year later, in 1979, I read Gary Allen’s None Dare Call It Conspiracy, a controversial underground bestseller that exposed the plans of a ruling elite to merge the world into a global dictatorship, and any doubts I had about the truth of Todd’s general thesis all but vanished.
Allen was saying the same things as Todd, but from a secular perspective. Allen made only one reference to the Illuminati, focusing instead on the more prominent but still clandestine Council on Foreign Relations. It’s possible that Allen intentionally avoided any reference to the conspiracy’s occult origins because he hoped to expose and overthrow it, and knew that any mention of Lucifer would blow his case in an increasingly secular world that dismissed most notions of the supernatural.
Allen pointed his accusing finger squarely at the Rockefeller clan. The famous financial and philanthropic dynasty was the true power in our so-called democracy, and they pulled the strings on presidents of both parties. The roster of the Rockefeller controlled CFR reads like a who’s who of politics, business, and the media. It was through the CFR and its journal, Foreign Affairs, that the foot soldiers received their marching orders, but the Rockefellers assaulted the U.S. Constitution from every angle. Through their tax-free foundations, their influence was, and remains, immense, and there is no area in which they do not hold sway: education, government, the food industry, health, the environment, science, the arts.
The Rockefellers were not alone, however. Other foundations and super elitists also funded what Allen claimed they referred to as a “New World Order,” a phrase introduced to the general public by President George H.W. Bush in a 1990 address to the United Nations, and which his son, President George W. Bush, has repeated.
By the time Bush Sr. uttered that phrase in public for the very first time, I was no longer a skeptic. Johnny Todd may have gotten some of his facts wrong (and may have done so deliberately as part of a disinformation campaign orchestrated by the very powers he was exposing), but his framing of the big picture rang true. In the introduction, Allen wrote:
“Most of us have had the experience either as parents or youngsters, of trying to discover the ‘hidden picture’ within another picture in a children’s magazine. Usually you are shown a landscape with trees, bushes, flowers and other bits of nature. The caption reads something like this: ‘Concealed somewhere in this picture is a donkey pulling a cart with a boy in it. Can you find them?’ Try as you might, usually you could not find the hidden picture until you turned to a page further back in the magazine which would reveal how cleverly the artist had hidden it from us. If we study the landscape we realize that the whole picture was painted in such a way as to conceal the real picture within, and once we see the ‘real picture,’ it stands out like the proverbial painful digit”
In 1979, I noticed the “proverbial painful digit” after the American embassy in Tehran was seized by the fanatical followers of the Ayatollah Khomeini. The resulting hostage crisis was instrumental in Jimmy Carter’s defeat to Ronald Reagan in the 1980 presidential election.
What triggered that event?
The Shah of Iran had fled the country in the midst of the revolution, and the insurgents were enraged that the U.S. had given him temporary shelter. But who encouraged the U.S. to harbor the man who the Iranians, at least those given a soapbox by the media, accused of having ruled the country with a barbaric iron fist?
You have to use a fine tooth comb and a magnifying glass when reading the official news reports of the time to learn that the culprit was David Rockefeller.
When it came to the activities of the Rockefellers and the CFR, the mainstream media was silent, suspiciously so considering the CFR’s members included the anchors of each of the big three network newscasts, but their conspiratorial aims were gaining increased notoriety in 1979. Thanks to an underground network of books and periodicals, a small but vocal segment of the American populace was wising up.
When George H.W. Bush, a former director of the CIA and member of both the CFR and Trilateral Commission, ran for president in 1980 against Ronald Reagan, the dam burst, and both organizations became a topic of discussion on late night talk radio.
In those days before the rise of Rush Limbaugh and his “ditto heads,” most talk radio was locally produced. It was freer and less likely to be censored by network gatekeepers. But talk of conspiracy even snuck its way onto the national airwaves via Larry King who hosted a national radio show in the wee hours before being recruited by CNN to conduct some of the shallowest interviews in television history.
But give King his due. Though he mocked the callers to his show who expressed concern about the CFR and Trilateral influence in world affairs by playing dramatic organ music whenever either organization was mentioned, he let the callers have their say and even invited the author of a book critical of the Trilateral Commission to debate a member of the group on his show. The questions and comments from callers clearly demonstrated that there are many “conspiracy theorists” among the general public, although most of them are intimidated into silence, and only express their controversial opinions in forums that guarantee anonymity. After all, who wants to be a “conspiracy theorist” when such a designation is synonymous with being a “kook” and a “nut”?
I am a conspiracy theorist, and proud of it. I have no choice in the matter because I refuse to question my judgment when I know it to be accurate. To do so would make me something far worse than a nut. I would be a pod. If the reference to a “pod” doesn’t ring a bell, see Invasion of the Body Snatchers, the 1956 science-fiction classic based on a short story by Jack Finney. In the film, aliens from an unspecified planet overtake the population of earth with seed pods that absorb the earthling’s personality while he sleeps. When he awakes, his appearance is unaltered, but his emotions are gone, and his ability to think independently has disappeared.
In reality, the enemies of humanity don’t need pods. They have the media. Television’s power cannot be underestimated. It not only shapes our view of the news, but of our culture as a whole. It tells us what our neighbors are thinking (or what they want us to believe our neighbors are thinking), and tries to influence what we think. More significant is what it doesn’t tell us.
No matter how vast and powerful the conspirators seem to be, they are mortal and fallible. They use their great wealth and power to appear invulnerable, but exposure is their Achilles heel. As long as the world continues to doubt or fear their existence, they will succeed in their efforts to enslave the world. But the Illuminati is like the Wizard of Oz. The wizard appeared to be fearsome, but he was an illusion created by an old man hiding behind a curtain flimsy enough to be pulled away by Toto, Dorothy’s dog. Once exposed, the wizard wasn’t nearly so scary.
The Illuminati Zone is not a history of the conspiracy, although I will touch on its inglorious past in the following pages. Instead, the emphasis is on certain corners of the frame that those who focus on the big picture may overlook. If it’s the big picture you seek, you can find it in other books, including Rule by Secrecy by Jim Marrs, and the works of the late Gary Allen. Unfortunately, these works tend to overlook the corrupt spiritual beliefs that drive the conspiracy and fail to recognize its ultimate goal. The Illuminati Zone is meant to fill that considerable void.
For the most part, this book preaches to the choir. The Illuminati Zone is not likely to convince skeptics that the Illuminati exists or that it wields such power over our lives. Those who laugh at conspiracy theories will likely continue to laugh, and may even laugh more heartily than before. I would only advise them to approach the subject objectively and to put aside the preconceived notion that conspiracy theories are for “nuts” and “kooks.” The facts, when properly researched and examined with an open mind, are indisputable. There’s a signpost up ahead. Your next stop -
The Illuminati first came to my attention in 1978 through an audio-taped lecture by a man calling himself Johnny Todd. A self-described former witch, Todd claimed to be a renegade member of the Illuminati which he identified as a powerful occult organization devoted to establishing a one-world government. This nefarious organization’s members included United States presidents, prime ministers, congressmen, business leaders, high-ranking members of the military, scientists, theologians, college professors, and some of the leading lights in the entertainment industry. The Illuminati operated secretly and accomplished its goals through various front groups: the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderbergs, and such secret societies as the Masons and Yale’s Skull and Bones. That’s only scratching the surface. Todd claimed to have descended from a long line of witches, and was known as Lance Collins before his conversion to Christianity.
