TRIM, or Tax Reform Immediately, "Lower Taxes through Less Government";

MOTOREDE, The Movement to Restore Decency, "to expose the immoral sex education programs in the schools, and to halt the mushrooming use of narcotics, the steady increase in drunkenness, the pervasive spread of pornography, the growing exhibitionism of filth in mind, body, clothes, and language, and the discarding of all morality in every sound sense of values";

TRAIN, To Restore American Independence Now, "stop foreign aid and Get US Out of the UN";

TACT, or Truth About Civil Turmoil, "very successful in exposing the Communist hands behind the Civil Rights movement"; and

SYLP, Support Your Local Police, "dramatically blocked the Communists' attempt to destroy local police forces through the creation of Police Review Boards, and continually battled Federal government attempts to create a national gestapo."

The funny thing about all of these committees is that none of them list the John Birch Society on any of their bulletins, pamphlets, or organizational material. The Society claims that 90 per cent of the Committees' members are non-Birchers, and that 4 Hill Road only gives impetus and direction to them. But as Gotch told me apologetically as we drove away from the buildings, "The Communists have fronts. We have Ad Hoc Committees."

The John Birch Society and other conspiracy theorists of world history have accomplished at least a consciousness-raising exercise. They were the first to point with alarm at the international power of multinational corporations. They opposed intervention in South Vietnam, arguing that such action was designed by the Communist Conspiracy embedded in the US government to waste American resources in a fruitless cause, to create instability in the American economy, and to divide and polarize American society.

Out in Belmont, however, these issues form a small fraction of the bookshelves. The pride and joy of Society headquarters is the $40,000 mail-stuffing machine, which according to Gotch, can put as many as nine enclosures in a letter, fold, seal, and stamp a computer-typed address on it, and churn 'em out at 50 per minute.