The passage is a good example of the dishonesty and distortion for which right-wing conspiracy theorists are notorious.
The part about Quigley is just a lunatic's spin on what Quigly actually wrote. According to libertyforum, paraphrasing W. Cleon Skousen, "a highly trained investigator of Communism" in Hoover's FBI, Quigley wrote "in essence" that "international financial groups, exercising power through the creation and control of financial credit on an international scale, had worked closely with Communists for the purpose of creating a New World Order" involving "a conspiratorial control centre higher than either Moscow or Peking." Quigly suppoesedly blew the whistle on the conpiracy, of which he was a "genuine insider." Shifting to Quigley's words, the article points to this damning evidence of conspiracy: <ul type="square"> I know of the operations of this network (of the international power structure) because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted, for two years, in the early 1960's, to examine its papers and secret records.[/list]The same quote appears in "None Dare Call it Conspiracy."
In both cases, the quote is utterly misleading and ripped from a context that undermines the point of view professed by those purporting to have adopted Quigley's "insider" confession.
Here's the context of Dr. Quigley's quote: <ul type="square"> The radical Right version of these events as written up by John T. Flynn, Freda Utley, and others, was even more remote from the truth than were Budenz’s or Bentley’s versions, although it had a tremendous impact on American opinion and American relations with other countries in the years 1947-1955. This radical Right fairy tale, which is now an accepted folk myth in many groups in America, pictured the recent history of the United States, in regard to domestic reform and in foreign affairs, as a well-organized plot by extreme Left-wing elements, operating from the White House itself and controlling all the chief avenues of publicity in the United States, to destroy the American way of life, based on private enterprise, laissez faire, and isolationism, in behalf of alien ideologies of Russian Socialism and British cosmopolitanism (or internationalism). This plot, if we are to believe the myth, worked through such avenues of publicity as The New York Times and the Harold Tribune, the Christian Science Monitor and the Washington Post, the Atlantic Monthly and Harper’s Magazine and had at its core the wild-eyed and bushy-haired theoreticians of Socialist Harvard and the London School of Economics. It was determined to bring the United States into World War II on the side of England (Roosevelt's first love) and Soviet Russia (his second love) in order to destroy every finer element of American life and, as part of this consciously planned scheme, invited Japan to attack Pearl Harbor, and destroyed Chiang Kai-shek, all the while undermining America’s real strength by excessive spending and unbalanced budgets.
This myth, like all fables, does in fact have a modicum of truth. There does exist, and has existed for a generation, an international anglophile network which operates, to some extent, in the way the radical Right believes the communists act. In fact, this network, which we may identify as the Round Table Groups, has no aversion to cooperating with the Communists, or any other groups and frequently does so. I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960’s, to examine its papers and secret records.[/list]In other words, the "higher conpsiracy" theory is a "fairy tale" and "myth" which "like all fables" has only a modicum of truth. That modicum amounts to a "network" of anglophile foreign policy makers. I assume Quigley means the pragmatic pro-business, pro-trade, pro-Europe "realist" foreign policy makers that dominated the scene quite visibly from Cabot Lodge through Dean Acheson. These elites operate "to some extent" the way the radical Right believes the communists act and have "no aversion to cooperating with the Communists," which the right-wing crazies distorted into an admission that they either work for or control all Communism.
In other words, foreign policy is dominated (or was during Quigley's time) by Anglophile elites that comprise a "network." No news, no big deal. Quigley says nothing about a conspiracy, certainly not one that controls communists or communism, and nothing about a "New World Order."
But then Quigley wrote two things that the conspiracy theorists couldn't resist: (1) he referred to this group as a "Round Table Group" and (2) said it had "papers and secret records."
I pulled this quote from a
Dr. Quigley's Smoking Gun and don't have access to the full text, so I don't know what "secret records" he's referring to. But since he's a foreign policy historian I assume he means various classified cables and letters. But that "secret" thing smacks too much of "conspiracy" for the crazies to resist. Also, the "Round Table Group" sounds way too much like the mythical cabal that sits around a big table in their secret hideawy, controlling the planet and planning the New World Order, as they supposedly have in many of the instances that Quigley ridicules.