Free The Extinction Code by Dean Crawford

identities.’
    Samuel nodded sombrely, keen to show that he understood the delicacy of their position. ‘The American Defense Intelligence Agency has made great strides in deconstructing our efforts and they have had some victories, but their power will always be limited by the office of their director, General Nellis.’
    ‘Who has the ear of the President,’ a man by the name of Felix pointed out, younger, more hawkish and energetic, the heir to an oil fortune whose mind was every bit as sharp as his father’s had been. ‘That’s significant in itself.’
    ‘Presidents come and go,’ Samuel replied without concern. ‘What one achieves, the next often undoes for nothing more than spite. The current president clearly shares few of our ideals, but he has little power over us. That, my friends, is why the administration is allowed to lead the country: it makes the people think that they can make a difference.’
    The other men nodded in silent agreement.
    ‘We almost took too much from them last time,’ said another man, the owner of one of the world’s largest and yet least known banks. ‘The people suspect, Samuel.’
    ‘The people believe conspiracy theories,’ Samuel countered. ‘That’s why we promote them, one after the other: faked moon landings, UFO sightings, economic crashes, shadow governments…’ Kruger smiled. ‘When they can no longer tell what is true and what is not, the truth remains well hidden within the lies.’
    ‘It was too great a risk,’ said another, the owner of a major shipping company. ‘Look at the Arab Spring, at Syria, Egypt and others. Push the people too hard and they will rebel, violently if necessary.’
    ‘Indeed they will,’ Kruger agreed, ‘against their politicians. Not against us. Most of them barely know we exist, and those that suspect that we do don’t know who we are.’
    Kruger sat down on an ornate chair and folded his hands beneath his chin. He was well aware of the old adage that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely : that was why Majestic Twelve was formed of twelve men and not one. The cabal’s origins in the wake and the rubble of World War Two had been born of more than just the spectacular discoveries made during the time of Einstein and Oppenheimer, for that conflict had resolved in the minds of men made powerful by the sale of weapons that humanity, even democratically governed humanity, simply was not capable of saving itself from tyranny when it appeared. Mankind had lost all sense of the common good, and thus was feeble in the face of violence and greed, traits that Kruger and others before him had encouraged.
    A state of fear was that which best protected both leaders and the led. That had been the conclusion of the predecessors of Majestic Twelve, military industrial figures who pondered the bizarre way in which the Third Reich had risen to power and so completely brainwashed the population of Germany before setting Europe aflame for five long years. Hitler had used a skillful combination of patriotic rhetoric and fearmongering to galvanize the German people into rising against oppressors that in many ways did not exist; blaming the United Nations for the crippling economic reprisals directed against Germany for the First World War under the Kaiser, despite Germany having been the aggressor in that conflict also; blaming the Jews likewise for the ailing economy, targeting them as an enemy of the state while convincing the people that every other country in Europe would continue to oppress them, preventing Germany from ever holding a place on the world stage. In doing so, he took control of the entire country and won the allegiance of a people who had vowed to fight an enemy that technically did not exist.
    In the aftermath of the conflict, Majestic Twelve formed and began planning to emulate the Third Reich’s methods, not with conflict but by guile: to sew fear into the hearts and minds of people, to convince them beyond