Projecting the lines: JBS founder Robert Welch was adept at predicting what the Insiders would do next. The Society has since used his method of "projecting the lines" to stay ahead of the curve.

In the midst of all the weighty topics regularly consuming his hours, John Birch Society founder Robert Welch always maintained a sense of humor. He could at one point deliver a lengthy dissertation explaining that "the increasing quantity of government, in all nations, has constituted the greatest tragedy of the twentieth century." Then in the next breath, he would smile broadly and insist, "I happen to be 30 days older than this century and, therefore, it should listen to me."

Had more Americans listened to Robert Welch, the U.S. and its media would never have aided Fidel Castro in seizing control of Cuba. Lionized during 1957 and 1958 as the virtual reincarnation of St. Francis of Assisi and George Washington, Castro could not have survived any airing of the truth about his past. But it was available. Four months before Castro came to power in Cuba, and 39 months before Castro admitted that he was a Communist, Welch wrote in the September 1958 issue of his small-circulation magazine American Opinion: "Now the evidence from Castro's whole past, that he is a Communist agent carrying out Communist orders and plans, is overwhelming." In subsequent issues of American Opinion. Welch devoted page after page to important facts to back up his charge.

But the 20th century wasn't listening to Welch. It listened instead to the mass media and political leaders, especially President Dwight David Eisenhower, who, in response to a 1963 inquiry two years after he'd left the White House, continued to claim that he had been fooled by Castro. The former president unintentionally paid Welch a high compliment when he stated: "Only a genius and a prophet could have known for sure that Cuban Premier Fidel Castro was a Communist in the 1950s."

Welch was not a prophet, but he was a genius. (For a profile of Welch, see page 25.) He had done his homework, by studying the past and present. He concluded that America's foreign policy blunders were not the result of happenstance or stupidity but design and betrayal. By detecting the conspiratorial design, he was able to predict with uncanny accuracy what the Insiders would do next. When questioned about his predictions being out-of-step with the popular opinions of the day, he would calmly but firmly say that "all one has to do is project the lines." Projecting the lines did not require clairvoyance. Welch could anticipate what would happen because he had studied what had happened earlier.

Three months after first sounding the alarm about Fidel Castro in the pages of American Opinion, Welch founded The John Birch Society, recognizing that merely publishing good information would not, by itself, prevent tragedies like Castro coming to power in Cuba--or the continued erosion of our own freedoms here in America. The published materials also needed to be widely distributed and used as part of a concerted action program.

Robert Welch passed away in 1985, but his legacy, The John Birch Society, continues to "project the lines" regarding Insider plans. Those plans ultimately call for making America a mere province in a global, despotic new world order. Whether those plans come to fruition depends on what patriotic Americans do to expose the Conspiracy and change the course of history.

In the following pages, we present a number of other projections made by The John Birch Society, both during and after Robert Welch's tenure.

Welch Predictions

* World government threat: At the founding meeting of The John Birch Society in December 1958, Welch warned against "the gradual surrender of American sovereignty, piece by piece and step by step, to various international organizations--of which the United Nations is the outstanding but far from the only example." He also explained that "internationalism, as it is conceived and promoted today, is an attempt to impose more government and a more centralized one-world government on all of us everywhere. For that reason it is automatically contrary to everything we stand for, and one of the movements we shall oppose with all the strength we can."

Soon after organizing The John Birch Society, Welch launched the "Get US out! of the United Nations" campaign. When he did so, there was little public understanding that the UN was intended from the beginning to provide the framework for a developing one-world government. There is of course much more awareness today.

* Big government threat: At the founding meeting, Welch warned against "the conversion of the United States into a socialist nation, quite similar to Russia itself in its economy and political outlook, before police state enforcement is ever introduced." He also forecast: "Greatly increased socialistic controls over every operation of our economy and every activity of our daily lives. This is to be accompanied, naturally and automatically, by a correspondingly huge increase in the size of our bureaucracy, and in both the cost and reach of our domestic government."

* Judicial usurpation: Pointing to already rampant judicial activism, Welch initiated the "Impeach Earl Warren" campaign in 1961. He did so while citing the opinion of a respected contemporary that the "easiest place to destroy the Constitution is in the United States Supreme Court." He pointed to the Warren court's precedent-setting decisions that undermined states' rights and favored domestic Communists and their subversive activity. He understood that unless judicial usurpation was curtailed the problem would worsen and would ultimately lead to the destruction of the U.S. Constitution.

In the years since Welch launched the "Impeach Earl Warren" campaign, more recent Supreme Court decisions--banning prayer in the public schools, "legalizing" abortion, striking down state antisodomy laws--have made the threat of judicial usurpation much more obvious.

* Police state threat: In 1963, Welch launched the "Support Your Local Police" campaign. At the time, many Americans wondered why such a project was needed, since policemen were already highly respected by their fellow citizens. That, of course, was before the civil turmoil that rocked the country during the Vietnam Win" era. But Welch understood even then that the "thin blue line" would have to be vilified as a stepping stone to supplanting independent, local police forces accountable to the communities they served with a national police state accountable to a central government in Washington. In 1967, he added "And Keep Them Independent!" to the already famous slogan he had coined.

* Betrayal in Vietnam: In the August 1965 JBS Bulletin, Robert Welch warned that the plan lot the incipient Vietnam War was to turn it "into a larger and longer and more infamous Korea." "Does anybody think that there has been any lessening of the power or ruthlessness of the Communist influences in Washington since 1953?" he asked. "Or that the Communists do not use so successful a formula again and again? Or that any war carried on against the Communists by [Secretary of Defense] Robert Strange McNamara or [Secretary of State] Dean Rusk is going to be any different from the one they sponsored in the Congo--or more recently in the Dominican Republic--where the net result was the destruction or demoralization of as much as possible of the native anti-Communist strength?"

Regarding the planned debacle by our own policymakers, Welch also asked, "What on earth would you expect? For twenty years we have been taken steadily down the road to Communism by steps supposedly designed, and always sold to the American people, as a means of opposing Communism. Will we never learn anything from experience?" "There is nothing at all new in history about the government of any nation deliberately fomenting war with another nation, primarily to serve various purposes at borne," he added. Those purposes included, of course, the increase in government that wars always justify.

As our involvement in Southeast Asia increased, Welch argued that we should not cut and run as the Left was demanding, or continue fighting a limited war with mounting casualties, but to win the war and then get out. But our fighting men were betrayed, and the war worked to the benefit of the Communists, just as Welch had feared.

* New world order: Welch warned repeatedly that the Insiders of a global conspiracy intended to establish a "new world order." In September 1972, for instance, Welch wrote in the JBS Bulletin: "This plan is to establish--very soon--the first stages of a 'new world order.' This will be the very novus ordo seclorum for which a self-perpetuating inner circle of Conspirators has been working and scheming relentlessly during some six generations...." At the time very few Americans were familiar with the phrase--though the architects of world order had long used the phrase as a euphemism for world government. But public recognition of the phrase made a quantum jump on September 11, 1990, when President George H.W. Bush repeatedly referred to a "new world order" as a reason for sending American troops to the Persian Gulf. On that date, Bush (the elder) stated: "Out of these troubled times, our fifth objective--a new world order--can emerge.... We are now in sight of a United Nations that performs as envisioned by its founders."

Post-Welch Projections

* Fall of Communism: Prior to the apparent demise of Communism, the November 1989 JBS Bulletin, written and released in October, warned:

   Just as the West is moving toward
   Communism and socialism, the Communist
   nations appear to be moving
   toward the West.... The gap between
   the Communist and non-Communist
   worlds is being significantly narrowed
   in preparation for the merger.
   Presumably, East and West will meet
   on a "socialist" middle ground.

      As part of the game plan, Communist
   nations that have always operated
   under the name of Communism
   might even give up, or at least de-emphasize,
   that name. Should they
   do so, however, they would in effect
   be giving up nothing since they have
   always been and would still remain
   totalitarian socialists. The Communists
   might even tear down the Berlin
   Wall and lift the Iron Curtain for the
   purpose of reuniting Western and
   Eastern Europe. Such a significant
   event would win the Communists
   much Western support. Yet, if Western
   Europe continues its progression
   toward socialism and interdependence,
   the only real winners would be
   the leaders of the supranational world
   government.

The November 1989 Bulletin was already in the hands of JBS members when, on the ninth of that month, East Germany shocked the world by announcing the opening of the Berlin Wall. Informed Birchers were not shocked, since they understood that the Communist threat would have to be abated fur the planned merger of nations in a new world order to proceed.

* European government: The cover story articles in the April 10, 1989 issue of THE NEW AMERICAN warned that the European Community, or Common Market, was intended by its architects to become a European government, eventually controlling the political and economic fates of the once-independent nations of Europe.

At the time this warning was sounded, both Europeans and Americans mistakenly believed the propaganda line that the Common Market's purpose was to facilitate the free flow of goods and services among European countries. A regional government? The notion struck many people, including those who considered themselves well informed, as silly. These days, of course, the emerging regional government now known as the European Union--possessing its own central bank and currency, and increasingly imposing its regulations on European states--is too obvious to be denied.

* Overblown Y2K threat: During the months leading up to the year 2000, many of the financial newsletter writers, and even some voices in the major media, claimed against evidence and reason that the Y2K computer bug was an unsolvable problem and that the consequences on January 1st would be catastrophic. Some even claimed that a collapse of our computer-driven society would provide then-President Clinton with the pretext for declaring martial law and imposing dictatorship.

The John Birch Society, however, viewed the computer bug problem as solvable and did not believe the American people were ready to accept martial law. More than a year before the supposed catastrophe, the September 14, 1998 issue of THE NEW AMERICAN published a cover story by Dennis Behreandt warning: "While the Millennium Bug is a real problem, fear of it is a much greater problem. True conservative Americans must not allow themselves to fall prey to the hyperbole and dire predictions of fearmongers and doomsayers lest they be neutralized in the quest to preserve the Republic."

* Terrorist threat: Years prior to the 9-11 tragedy, the JBS and THE NEW AMERICAN offered specific warnings of the impending terrorist assault, many of which have been tragically vindicated. A March 3, 1997 cover story on the 1993 World Trade Center bombing observed: "The leaders of the radical Islamic network responsible for the bombing ... were given financial aid and training by the CIA. Furthermore, at several critical junctures where the conspiracy could have been exposed and its leaders arrested, federal law enforcement either ignored that network or actually provided crucial help to it.... American citizens will pay the price for evils nurtured by a government that poses as their protector." Osama bin Laden, a key player in the nurtured terrorist threat, appeared on the cover of THE NEW AMERICAN for October 12, 1998, almost three years before 9-11.

George W. Bush: The JBS and THE NEW AMERICAN magazine repeatedly warned, both before and after the 2002 presidential election, that George W. Bush was no conservative, and that he was beholden to the same Insider cabal that had pulled the strings behind previous presidents, both Democrat and Republican. In the JBS Bulletin for February 2001, for instance, current JBS Chief Executive Officer G. Vance Smith warned:

   It does not take a prophet or a genius
   to predict the course of the incoming
   administration, any more than it requires
   a gifted individual to predict
   that dogs will bark or ducks will
   quack. That is the nature of the creatures.
   Candidate Bush did not receive
   severe treatment from the Insider-controlled
   media or the "liberal" wing
   of the Republican party anywhere
   near as caustic as that meted out to
   Barry Goldwater or even Dan Quayle.
   If the Insiders had perceived him as a
   real threat, rather than a fully cooperating
   employee, they could have employed
   any number of means to derail
   his candidacy. And with CFR members
   Richard Cheney as Vice President,
   Colin Powell as Secretary of
   State, Christie Todd Whitman heading
   the EPA, and Condoleezza Rice
   as National Security Adviser, we can
   peruse the administration's blueprints
   each quarter in Foreign Affairs [the
   journal of the Council on Foreign Relations],
   right along with the Insiders.
   Let us not kid ourselves: If we were
   to waste valuable time waiting for the
   new administration to "prove" itself,
   all we would accomplish would be to
   give the promoters of big government
   at home and internationalism abroad
   a running head start to pursue their
   anti-constitutional agenda.

* Iraq and UN empowerment: The JBS has warned that our Iraqi deployment would work to the benefit of, not to the detriment of, the United Nations. Although President Bush's stated reason for going to war against Iraq was to enforce UN Security Council resolutions (a fact we pointed out time and again), the public perceived Bush as operating contrary to the UN and in support of U.S. interests. Consequently, a U.S. "failure" in Iraq would provide impetus for the internationalist argument that the U.S. must not try to police the world alone and must not act unilaterally. Never mind that the U.S. should not be policing the world in the first place!

In our June 30, 2003 issue, THE NEW AMERICAN'S William Norman Grigg predicted that our Iraqi deployment would result in "a steady and worsening hemorrhage of national power, wealth, and prestige.... Ultimately, those costs will prove too much for our nation to bear alone. In such fashion does swaggering imperialism set the stage for compelled interdependence.... It's reasonable to imagine a not-too-distant time when American servicemen and their families, weary of the burden of empire, would eagerly embrace transferring that burden to the UN."

Major Pedro Diaz Lanz, former chief of Castro's air force, paid the JBS a great compliment when he said: "If there had been even one chapter of the John Birch Society in Havana prior to 1959, working to expose Castro as Robert Welch was at the time, Cuba would not have fallen to Communism." Major Diaz was very familiar with both Castro and the JBS; he had been chief of Castro's air force prior to fleeing Cuba in mid-1959, and after defecting he had spoken nationally for the JBS.

The new world order the JBS has warned against is not inevitable. All that is needed to expose the architects of world order and to change the course of history is for more patriots to get involved in the freedom fight through The John Birch Society. The 20th century may not have listened to Robert Welch, but that is only because the organization he created to magnify his and other like-minded voices was not yet large enough to get the job done.