Leroy Fletcher Prouty served as Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President John F. Kennedy. A colonel in the United States Air Force, he retired from military service to become a bank executive. He subsequently became a critic of U.S. foreign policy, particularly the covert activities of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which he believed was working on behalf of a secret world elite.
The first of these schemes derives from the fact that the generally accepted “flat earth” was, all of a sudden, proved to be a sphere by the voyage of Magellan’s ships around the world.
Being a sphere, it therefore had to be a finite object, with a finite—that is, limited—surface area. With this awakening the ideas of world trade and related colonial proprietary rights were born.
It is not so much that certain educated men had not already theorized that Earth was round, but that with the return of the first ship Victoria the expedition’s wealthy financial backers had visual evidence that ships could circumnavigate the world and that because they could, Earth had to be a sphere.
It may be postulated that this single bit of physical awareness brought about the greatest change in the mind of man since the dawn of creation.
Before Magellan’s time, mankind had simply accepted as self-evident the fact that there was always more property “out there” over the horizon and that it was not essential that anyone think seriously about the ownership of land, particularly open land. This general idea ended with the return of the good ship Victoria.
The real power structures [are] always the invisible ones behind the visible sovereign powers.” The power elite is not a group from one nation or even of one alliance of nations. It operates throughout the world and no doubt has done so for many, many centuries.
This power elite is not easy to define; but the fact that it exists makes itself known from time to time. Concerning the power elite, R. Buckminster Fuller wrote of the “vastly ambitious individuals who [have] become so effectively powerful because of their ability to remain invisible while operating behind the national scenery.” Fuller noted also, “Always their victories [are] in the name of some powerful sovereign-ruled country.
