The Report from Iron Mountain was a satirical hoax - a very good...

The Report from Iron Mountain was a satirical hoax - a very good and meaningful one.

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/iron.html

"The mystery of who had written the report was revealed in 1972 when Lewin declared in an article in the New York Times that he had penned the entire report. In other words, there was no Special Study Group and no government plot to maintain a state of war. The entire report had been a hoax. More details of the creation of the hoax were given in 1996 when Simon & Schuster reprinted the Report with a new introduction.

Apparently, the genesis of the report occurred in 1966 when Victor Navasky, editor of the Monocle, a magazine of political satire, noticed a New York Times article reporting that the stock market had dipped because of a 'peace scare.' Navasky mentioned this to Lewin who then wrote the report. The two of them presented the report to E.L. Doctorow, editor of the Dial Press. Doctorow agreed to publish the work as nonfiction.

Navasky claimed that the purpose of the hoax had been "to provoke thinking about the unthinkable—the conversion to a peacetime economy and the absurdity of the arms race.""