By Tom DeWeese

It’s a sad commentary when an organization suddenly, and without warning, launches a vicious attack on the credibility of an assumed ally. In fact, it’s not only sad, it’s dangerous. The only result can be a weakened movement. So you can imagine my shock upon opening the October issue of the John Birch Society’s magazine, The New American, only to find myself and the American Policy Center (APC) to be the target of such an attack.

The article, written by Senior Editor William Norman Grigg, accused APC of "embellishing the UN threat." The attack focused on the lead article in APC’s June issue of the Insider’s Report, entitled "The UN’s Charter for Global Democracy…the ‘Final Solution’ for American Independence." My article sought to shine a very bright spotlight on the September UN Millennium Summit and the UN’s increasing drive toward global governance and was actually written in May, 2000, some four months before the Summit was to convene.

As we researched documents for the event, the most prominent was the Charter for Global Democracy, (also called Charter 99.) The Charter was written by non-government organizations (NGO’s) closely affiliated with the UN. APC focused on the Charter as a threat for two main reasons. First, it mirrored almost to the letter, proposals issued in the 1995 report of the UN’s Commission on Global Governance, titled, Our Global Neighborhood. That Commission was chaired by Maurice Strong, today, the number two man at the United Nations. The report called on the UN to implement its recommendations by the year 2000. Second, almost every other document being considered for the Millennium Summit echoed the same themes as the Charter, including the official Summit report issued by Secretary General Kofi Annan. Clearly, efforts were being coordinated between officials of the UN and the NGO’s to bring these ideas to the forefront at the Millennium Summit where almost all of the world’s heads of state would be in attendance. That fact was the main purpose for APC’s fevered activity to expose what the UN was up to.

When dealing with the United Nations, getting to the facts can be a difficult task. I spent a full week reading Kofi Annan’s report to the Summit and comparing it to the ideas detailed in the Charter for Global Democracy. Though much of Annan’s ideas were written in a diplomat’s mish-mash, often making it hard to decipher his true meaning, in almost every case, Annan’s report expressed the same goals and ideas on global governance as outlined in the Charter for Global Democracy. (A detailed comparison accompanies this article.)

As APC’s efforts to expose this threat progressed throughout the summer we began to get a clearer picture of what would actually take place at the Millennium Summit. It became obvious that the Charter for Global Democracy would not actually be voted on, as APC had originally reported. Instead, a special "declaration" was drafted for consideration at the Summit. We were one of the first organizations to publish the actual Declaration on the APC web site. On a countless number of radio programs and in print interviews, I began to explain this progress in UN Summit activity.

Regardless of the outcome, APC’s purpose was to make the public aware of the UN’s Summit, as it was being virtually ignored by the news media. We succeeded in that, culminating in a national news conference on Capitol Hill, held during the week of the Millennium Summit. The purpose of the news conference was to build support for Congressman Ron Paul’s bill to get us out of the UN (H.R.1146). At the news conference APC delivered more than 350,000 petitions in support of the Paul Bill.

But the John Birch Society chose to ignore all of these APC efforts and, instead, decided to deliver what can only be described as a "hit piece" against the American Policy Center. Worse, they did so without ever confronting APC with their concerns over our statements or tactics. I considered JBS head John McManus to be a friend and ally (in the fight against the UN, anyway). He has even been to the APC offices. Yet he never once called to air his disagreements or to clarify my position. Likewise, the phone call I received from author Grigg mentioned none of this. He simply asked me what I thought would happen at the Millennium Summit. My answer reflected what I had learned about the pending acceptance of the new Declaration rather than the Charter for Global Democracy. Grigg used this change as a spin to accuse me of "backing away" from earlier APC reports on the Charter. I backed away from nothing. I simply reported with more detail than I had possessed three months earlier.

However, The New American article even went so far as to quote a UN official, saying he had never heard of the Charter for Global Democracy. Can this be one of the same UN officials who have, for fifty years, denied the JBS claim of a conspiracy of world domination by the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) the Trilateral Commission and the Illuminati? This is, of course, the conspiracy theory on which the John Birch Society has staked almost its entire reason for existence, claiming a massive international plot to control government, private foundations, the media and industry. But now, after fifty years of UN denial that such a conspiracy exists, apparently the JBS considers these same UN spin masters to be their moral compass, suiting their purpose to discredit the American Policy Center.

In response, I offer another quote from a prominent UN official which defines the UN’s purpose for the Millennium Summit, provides its version of the outcome of the gathering, and supports APC’s charge that the Charter/Declaration was a document designed to make global governance the official agenda of the UN. John Ruggie, Assistant Secretary-General of the UN said in a September 28, 2000 letter to the editor to The Washington Times that the Millennium Summit Declaration is being used by the General Assembly and the UN Secretariat, from Secretary-General Kofi Annan on down… "to implement the political commitments the world’s leaders made at the summit – which is precisely how it works." That’s just what APC said in alerting the nation to the dangers of the Millennium Summit. Whether the document used was the Charter For Global Democracy, as first reported by APC, or the final Summit Declaration, the warnings of APC’s alert are justified and verified. The true purpose of the Millennium Summit was to set the agenda for global governance.

What, then, can be the real reason the John Birch Society chose to attack the American Policy Center? Several APC allies have expressed their belief that it is really a thinly veiled and petty turf war. Over the past few years, the American Policy Center has been instrumental in helping to bring the UN issue to the forefront, involving hundred’s of thousands of Americans and uniting with a wide range of other groups to lead the fight. Perhaps the JBS feels APC is stealing its thunder as the sole, but lonely, opponent of the United Nations. If so, how sad. Such silly jealousy can only set back the whole movement.