Was Ayn Rand a Soviet Spy?

[Jonathan Barlow Gee]

Considering we know the Rockefeller, Ford, Warburg, Carnegie and Rothschild early "Wall Street" tycoons of the era funded the Russian "Red" Revolution of 1917 under Lenin, it might come as no surprise to find many Russian-American immigrants defecting to support "capitalism" and to refute "communism" were actually trained espionage agent-provokateurs, employed under Lenin and Stalin to infiltrate and subvert the "capitalist ideal" from within. I will elaborate on the proofs for this "Angletonian" conspiracy, literally called the "wilderness of mirrors" due to the depth, complexity and longevity of the mission-objective. The plan was to bankrupt "collectivist" statist supply-side "communism" by the arms race, as well as to bankrupt the "individualistic" libertarian laissez-faire "capitalist" concept by credit-based price-inflation and, again, over-spending on international militarism. Essentially, the goal of these ultra-secret Soviet "moles" was to discredit all forms of philosophy, by any means necessary, and to raise above this intellectual wasteland the banner of "survival of the fittest." Their goal was, as long-term covert plants, to de-stabilise and to fragment the developed and developing industrial nations' economies and governments, to pit these all against one another, and then, like a web-troll, to sit back and laugh at the burning anarchy they predict will ensue. This might seem like an absurd "conspiracy theory," so allow me to present my case using only direct quotations: following are some introductory source videos and wiki-facts as a prelude.

John Todd on Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged."

Rand was born Alisa Zinov'yevna Rosenbaum on February 2, 1905, to a bourgeois family living in Saint Petersburg. She was the eldest of the three daughters of Zinovy Zakharovich Rosenbaum and Anna Borisovna Rosenbaum, largely non-observant Jews.

Ayn Rand's "We the Living" clip 7

Rand was twelve at the time of the Russian Revolution of 1917, during which her sympathies were with Alexander Kerensky. [ Kerensky died at his home in New York City in 1970, one of the last surviving major participants in the turbulent events of 1917. The local Russian Orthodox Churches in New York refused to grant Kerensky burial, seeing him as being a freemason and being largely responsible for Russia falling to the Bolsheviks. A Serbian Orthodox Church also refused so Kerensky's body was flown to London where he was buried at Putney Vale's non-denominational cemetery. - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Kerensky ]

Henry Reardon comes home scene from the 2011 adaptation of "Atlas Shurgged."

contact with other intellectuals sympathetic to free-market capitalism. She became friends with journalist Henry Hazlitt and his wife, and Hazlitt introduced her to the Austrian School economist Ludwig von Mises. Despite her philosophical differences with them, Rand strongly endorsed the writings of both men throughout her career, and both of them expressed admiration for her. Once von Mises referred to Rand as "the most courageous man in America," a compliment that particularly pleased her because he said "man" instead of "woman."

Howard Roark's courtroom speech from "The Fountainhead."

Rand's first major success as a writer came with The Fountainhead in 1943, a romantic and philosophical novel that she wrote over a period of seven years. The novel centers on an uncompromising young architect named Howard Roark and his struggle against what Rand described as "second-handers"—those who attempt to live through others, placing others above self. It was rejected by twelve publishers before finally being accepted by the Bobbs-Merrill Company on the insistence of editor Archibald Ogden, who threatened to quit if his employer did not publish it. While completing the novel, Rand was prescribed the amphetamine Benzedrine to fight fatigue. The drug helped her to work long hours to meet her deadline for delivering the finished novel, but when the book was done, she was so exhausted that her doctor ordered two weeks' rest. Her continued use of the drug for a number of years may have contributed to what some of her later associates described as volatile mood swings.

the complete 1949 film adaptation of Ayn Rand's "the Fontainhead"

After several delays, the film version of The Fountainhead was released in 1949. Although it used Rand's screenplay with minimal alterations, she "disliked the movie from beginning to end," complaining about its editing, acting and other elements.

the complete courtroom scene read from "the Fountainhead" audiobook

After the publication of The Fountainhead, Rand received numerous letters from readers, some of whom it had profoundly influenced. In 1951 Rand moved from Los Angeles to New York City, where she gathered a group of these admirers around her. This group (jokingly designated "The Collective") included future Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, a young psychology student named Nathan Blumenthal (later Nathaniel Branden) and his wife Barbara, and Barbara's cousin Leonard Peikoff. At first the group was an informal gathering of friends who met with Rand on weekends at her apartment to discuss philosophy. Later she began allowing them to read the drafts of her new novel, Atlas Shrugged, as the manuscript pages were written. In 1954 Rand's close relationship with the much younger Nathaniel Branden turned into a romantic affair, with the consent of their spouses.

the complete John Galt speech from the "Atlas Shrugged" audiobook.

The novel's hero and leader of the strike, John Galt, describes the strike as "stopping the motor of the world" by withdrawing the minds of the individuals most contributing to the nation's wealth and achievement. With this fictional strike, Rand intended to illustrate that without the efforts of the rational and productive, the economy would collapse and society would fall apart.

1959 Mike Wallace full interview of Ayn Rand

Atlas Shrugged became an international bestseller, and in an interview with Mike Wallace, Rand declared herself "the most creative thinker alive."

1961 James McDonnel full interview of Ayn Rand

In 1958 Nathaniel Branden established Nathaniel Branden Lectures, later incorporated as the Nathaniel Branden Institute (NBI), to promote Rand's philosophy. Collective members gave lectures for NBI and wrote articles for Objectivist periodicals that she edited. Rand later published some of these articles in book form. Critics, including some former NBI students and Branden himself, have described the culture of NBI as one of intellectual conformity and excessive reverence for Rand, with some describing NBI or the entire Objectivist movement as a cult or religion. Rand expressed opinions on a wide range of topics, including literature, music, sexuality, even facial hair, and some of her followers mimicked all her preferences, wearing clothes to match characters from her novels and buying furniture like hers. Rand was unimpressed with many of the NBI students and held them to strict standards, sometimes reacting coldly or angrily to those who disagreed with her. However, some former NBI students believe the extent of these behaviors has been exaggerated, with the problem being concentrated among Rand's closest followers in New York.

Tom Snyder interview of Ayn Rand

In 1964 Nathaniel Branden began an affair with the young actress Patrecia Scott, whom he later married. Nathaniel and Barbara Branden kept the affair hidden from Rand. When she learned of it in 1968, though her romantic relationship with Branden had already ended, Rand terminated her relationship with both Brandens, which led to the closure of NBI. Rand published an article in The Objectivist repudiating Nathaniel Branden for dishonesty and other "irrational behavior in his private life." Branden later apologized in an interview to "every student of Objectivism" for "perpetuating the Ayn Rand mystique" and for "contributing to that dreadful atmosphere of intellectual repressiveness that pervades the Objectivist movement."

Ayn Rand from Phil Donahue show about Israel and Arabs

A heavy smoker, Rand underwent surgery for lung cancer in 1974. Several more of her closest associates parted company with her and during the late 1970s her activities within the Objectivist movement declined, especially after the death of her husband, on November 9, 1979. Rand died of heart failure on March 6, 1982, at her home in New York City, and was interred in the Kensico Cemetery, Valhalla, New York.[83] Rand's funeral was attended by some of her prominent followers, including Alan Greenspan. A six-foot floral arrangement in the shape of a dollar sign was placed near her casket. In her will, Rand named Leonard Peikoff the heir to her estate.

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayn_Rand

William Buckley on Ayn Rand and Atlas Shrugged

Branden married Barbara Wiedman in 1953, with close friends Ayn Rand and Rand’s husband Frank O’Connor in attendance. Branden would later state the marriage was unwise, and troubled from the beginning. In the context of these troubles, and Rand’s reported frustrations in her own marriage, Branden and Rand — who had a passionate philosophic bond — developed amorous feelings for each other, and, with the reluctant permission of their spouses, began a love affair in 1954. The affair lasted until the publication of Atlas Shrugged in 1957, after which, according to Branden, Rand became depressed, and the affair, practically speaking, ended. After the publication of Rand’s most explicitly philosophical novel, Atlas Shrugged, and sensing an interest on the part of Rand’s readers in further philosophic education, Branden created in 1958 the Nathaniel Branden Institute (NBI) to disseminate Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism, by offering live and taped lecture courses by Rand, Branden, and a variety of other Objectivist intellectuals (including Alan Greenspan, whom Branden had brought into Rand’s fold).

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathaniel_Branden

Greenspan was born in the Washington Heights area of New York City. His father Herbert Greenspan was of Romanian-Jewish descent and his mother Rose Goldsmith of Hungarian-Jewish descent. In 1945 Greenspan attended New York University where he earned a B.S. degree in economics summa cum laude in 1948 and an M.A. degree in economics in 1950. During his economic studies at New York University, Greenspan worked under Eugene Banks, a managing director at the Wall Street investment bank Brown Brothers Harriman, working in the firm's equity research department. In the early 1950s, Greenspan began an association with famed novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand. Greenspan was introduced to Rand by his first wife, Joan Mitchell. Rand nicknamed Greenspan "the undertaker" because of his penchant for dark clothing and reserved demeanor. Although Greenspan was initially a logical positivist,he was converted to Rand's philosophy of Objectivism by her associate Nathaniel Branden. He became one of the members of Rand's inner circle, the Ayn Rand Collective, who read Atlas Shrugged while it was being written. During the 1950s and 1960s Greenspan was a proponent of Objectivism, writing articles for Objectivist newsletters and contributing several essays for Rand's 1966 book Capitalism: the Unknown Ideal including an essay supporting the gold standard. U.S. economist Michael Hudson once fired Alan Greenspan, in 1966, 21 years before he became chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve; “he was known as a hack that always gave ...his clients what they wanted instead of something actual.” In mid-1968, Greenspan agreed to serve Richard Nixon as his coordinator on domestic policy in the nomination campaign. Greenspan has also served as a corporate director for Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa); Automatic Data Processing; Capital Cities/ABC, Inc.; General Foods; J.P. Morgan & Co.; Morgan Guaranty Trust Company; Mobil Corporation; and the Pittston Company. He was a director of the Council on Foreign Relations foreign policy organization between 1982 and 1988. He also served as a member of the influential Washington-based financial advisory body, the Group of Thirty in 1984. In 1977, Greenspan obtained a Ph.D. degree in economics from New York University. His dissertation is not available from the university since it was removed at Greenspan's request in 1987, when he became Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board. However, a single copy has been found, and the 'introduction includes a discussion of soaring housing prices and their effect on consumer spending; it even anticipates a bursting housing bubble'. Rand stood beside him at his 1974 swearing-in as Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers. Greenspan and Rand remained friends until her death in 1982.

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Greenspan

"Alan Greenspan destorys deregulation in 16 seconds"

Peikoff first met Ayn Rand through his cousin Barbara Branden (then Barbara Weidman) in California when he was 17. Peikoff's first book, The Ominous Parallels, was both an Objectivist explanation of the rise of the Third Reich and the Holocaust, and a warning that America was being led down the road to totalitarianism because of far-reaching philosophical and cultural parallels between Weimar Germany and the present-day United States. In her "Introduction," Rand declared it to be the first book by an Objectivist philosopher other than herself. Peikoff views Objectivism as a "closed system" that consists solely of the philosophical principles Rand herself had articulated, and he considers disagreement with any of these principles a departure from Objectivism. The Ayn Rand Institute (ARI) promotes Peikoff's view of Objectivism. Peikoff upports laissez-faire capitalism, arguing that the role of government in society should be limited to minarchist conceptions of protecting individuals from the initiation of force and fraud. He opposes taxation, public education, welfare, business regulations, etc. He also opposes laws regulating pornography, euthanasia, stem cell research, etc. He is a supporter of abortion rights. He also continues Rand's opposition to libertarianism, remaining sharply opposed to any description of Objectivist political philosophy as "libertarian" and to any collaboration with most libertarian groups. Peikoff claims that Palestinian people prior to the establishment of the State of Israel consisted solely of "nomadic tribes meandering across the terrain," and that "the Arabs" today have no concept of property rights; indeed, that their "primitivist" antagonism to such rights is the root cause of Arab terrorism. He argues that Israel is a moral beacon which should not return any territory to Arabs or even negotiate with them. Peikoff notes that oil properties developed by western interests were confiscated by Middle Eastern regimes beginning with Iran in 1951. He advocates bringing an end to "terrorist states," especially Iran, "as quickly as possible and with the fewest U.S. casualties, regardless of the countless innocents caught in the line of fire," not ruling out the use of nuclear weapons, arguing that moral responsibility for innocent deaths would lie with their governments rather than the United States. Also, in a 2010 podcast, Peikoff explained that he does not support the building of a mosque near the "ground-zero" site in New York City, arguing that property rights are always contextual and that preventing the construction is a wartime necessity.

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Peikoff

[Jonathan Barlow Gee]

a little more about the "Wilderness of Mirorrs" theory:

trailer for the 2006 film "The Good Shepherd" directed by Robert DeNiro.

James Jesus Angleton (December 9, 1917 – May 12, 1987) was chief of the CIA's counterintelligence (CI) staff from 1954 to 1975. His official position within the organization was "Associate Deputy Director of Operations for Counterintelligence (ADDOCI)". During the Second World War, Angleton served under Pearson in the counter-intelligence branch (X-2) of the Office of Strategic Services in London, where he met the famous double agent Kim Philby. Angleton was chief of the Italy desk for X-2 in London by February, 1944 and in November was transferred to Italy as commander of SCI [Secret Counterintelligence] Unit Z, which handled ULTRA intelligence based on the British intercepts of German radio communications. By the end of the war he was head of X-2 for all of Italy. He remained in Italy after the war, establishing connections with other secret intelligence services and playing a major role in the victory of the US-supported Christian Democratic Party over the USSR-supported Italian Communist Party in the 1948 elections. Angleton's "success partnering with organized crime, right-leaning former fascists and the Vatican not only marginalized Italy’s homegrown Communist Party, it also encouraged Congress in the creation of the Central Intelligence Agency." 

[Jonathan Barlow Gee]

Returning to Washington, he was employed by the various successor organizations to the OSS, eventually becoming one of the founder-officers of the Central Intelligence Agency. In May 1949, he was made head of Staff A of the CIA’s Office of Special Operations, where he was responsible for the collection of foreign intelligence and liaison with the CIA’s counterpart organizations. Beginning in 1951 Angleton was responsible for liaison with Israel's Mossad and Shin Bet agencies, "the Israeli desk," crucial relationships that he managed for the remainder of his career. In 1954 Allen Dulles, who had recently become Director of Central Intelligence, named Angleton head of the Counterintelligence Staff, a position that Angleton retained for the rest of his CIA career. Under the heading of foreign intelligence, there was the Israeli desk, the Lovestone Empire, and a variety of smaller operations. It is quite possible that there were other foreign intelligence activities for which Angleton was responsible, for example, in Southeast Asia and in the Caribbean. Secret intelligence agencies have two primary functions: obtaining secrets, often from other secret intelligence agencies, which is intelligence work per se, and protecting secrets and preventing penetration, which is counterintelligence. Angleton's primary responsibilities as chief of the counterintelligence staff of the CIA have given rise to a considerable literature focused, in particular, on his efforts to identify any Soviet or Eastern Bloc agents working in American secret intelligence agencies. As such agents have come to be called "moles", operations intended to find them have come to be called "Molehunts".  A handful of CIA employees had their careers frozen after coming under the suspicion of Angleton and his staff. The CIA later paid out compensation to three to whom no reasonable explanation could be offered in mitigation of actions taken affecting their careers, under what Agency employees termed the "Mole Relief Act". One hundred twenty employees are said to have been placed on review, fifty investigated, and sixteen considered serious suspects by Angleton's staff.

[Jonathan Barlow Gee]

In 1964, Yuri Nosenko, a KGB officer working out of Geneva, Switzerland, was allowed to defect and made two controversial claims: that Golitsyn was not a defector but a KGB plant, and that he had information on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy by way of the KGB's history with Lee Harvey Oswald during the time that Oswald lived in the Soviet Union. More controversially, former New York congressman and lawyer, Mark Lane, alleged that Angleton might have been directly involved in the conspiracy to murder Kennedy. It was known, according to Lane, that under Angleton's counterintelligence staff was a team of assassins under the command of a U.S. Army colonel named Boris Pash (*). This assassination team would be employed to deal with counterintelligence threats that could not be tried in an open legal proceeding due to security risk and sensitivity. Regarding the first claim, Golitsyn had said from the beginning that the KGB would try to plant other defectors in an effort to discredit him. Regarding the second claim, Nosenko told his debriefers that he had been personally responsible for handling Oswald's case and that the KGB had judged Oswald unfit for service due to his mental instability. Nosenko claimed that the KGB had not even attempted to debrief Oswald about his work on the U-2 spy plane during his service in the United States Marine Corps. Although other KGB sources corroborated Nosenko's story, he repeatedly failed lie detector tests. Judging the claim of not interrogating Oswald about the U-2 improbable, given Oswald's familiarity with the U-2 program, and faced with further challenges to Nosenko's credibility (he also falsely claimed to be a lieutenant colonel, a higher rank than he in fact held), Angleton did not object when David Murphy, then head of the Soviet Russia Division, ordered Nosenko held in solitary confinement for approximately three-and-a-half years.

[Jonathan Barlow Gee]

As Golitsyn helped Angleton identify sections within the CIA's Soviet Russia Division that were leaking information to the Soviets, Angleton pressed Golitsyn on KGB techniques and strategy for planting information at the CIA. Golitsyn's indication was that the KGB was orchestrating a larger campaign to understand how the CIA analyzed information, supporting a larger goal of manipulating the CIA to unwittingly assist the KGB in its objectives. Angleton extrapolated from this his theory of a "wilderness of mirrors" (the term is thought to be a reference to T. S. Eliot's poem "Gerontion"), which proposed that the KGB was capable of manipulating the CIA to believe what it desired, and that the CIA could neither identify nor defend itself from this manipulation. Angleton became increasingly convinced that the CIA was compromised by the KGB. Golitsyn convinced him that the KGB had reorganized in 1958 and 1959 to consist mostly of a shell, incorporating only those agents whom the CIA and the FBI were recruiting, directed by a small cabal of puppet masters who doubled those agents to manipulate their Western counterparts. When Golitsyn defected, he claimed that the CIA had a mole who had been stationed in West Germany, was of Slavic descent, had a last name which may have ended in "sky" and definitely began with a "K", and operated under the KGB codename "Sasha". Angleton believed this claim, with the result that anyone who approximated this description fell under his suspicion. 

[Jonathan Barlow Gee]

He went so far as to speculate that Henry Kissinger might be under KGB influence. During this period, Angleton's counter-intelligence staff undertook a most comprehensive domestic covert surveillance project (called Operation CHAOS) under the direction of President Lyndon Johnson. The prevailing belief at the time was that the anti-war and civil rights movements of the 1960s and 1970s had foreign funding and support. None was found by them. Angleton was also responsible for an illegal operation that screened international mail and telegrams. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s Angleton privately accused various foreign leaders of being Soviet spies. He twice informed the Royal Canadian Mounted Police that he believed Prime Minister Lester Pearson and his successor Pierre Trudeau to be agents of the Soviet Union. In 1964, under pressure from Angleton, the RCMP detained John Watkins, a close friend of Pearson and formerly Canadian Ambassador to the Soviet Union; Watkins died during interrogation by the RCMP and the CIA, and was subsequently cleared of suspicion. Angleton accused Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, West German Chancellor Willy Brandt, and British Prime Minister Harold Wilson of using their access to NATO secrets to benefit the USSR. Brandt resigned in 1974, after one of his aides was found to be a mole from the East German secret police. Angleton came to suspect Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who commented wryly that even the most brilliant and loyal officers should not spend their entire career in such pressurized and paranoid fields. Angleton also privately accused numerous members of Congress and President Gerald Ford of treason. Angleton's notorious pursuit of the "5th Man", who he believed had penetrated a secret agency in Washington, was solved, he believed, when DCI William Colby fired him. Golitsyn was considered discredited within the CIA even before Angleton's ousting, but the two did not appear to have lost their faith in one another. They sought the assistance of William F. Buckley, Jr. (himself once a CIA man) in authoring New Lies for Old, which advanced the argument that the USSR planned to fake its collapse to lull its enemies into a false sense of victory. Buckley refused but later went on to write a novel about Angleton, Spytime: The Undoing of James Jesus Angleton. Edward Jay Epstein is among those who have argued that the positions of Ames and Hanssen—both well-placed Soviet counter-intelligence agents, in the CIA and FBI respectively—would enable the KGB to deceive the American intelligence community in the manner that Angleton hypothesized. The 2006 film The Good Shepherd is loosely based on Angleton's life and his role in the formation of the CIA.

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Jesus_Angleton

[Jonathan Barlow Gee]

(*) Boris Theodore Pash (20 June 1900–11 May 1995) was born in San Francisco, California, on June 20, 1900. His father was Rev. Theodore Pashkovsky (would become Most Reverend Metropolitan Theophilus from 1934–1950), a Russian Orthodox priest who had been sent to California by the Church in 1894. Because his father had been recalled to Russia, the entire family returned to Russia in 1912. Boris attended Seminary school and graduated in 1917. During the Russian Revolution, he served in the White movement navy. In 1920, he married Lydia Ivanov, and chose to return to the United States when the Bolshevik consolidation of power became apparent. He was able to secure employment with the YMCA in Berlin [Germany] where his son (Edgar Constantine Boris Pashkovsky; aka Edgar C.B. Pash) was born on June 14, 1921. Upon returning to the United States with his family, he attended Springfield College, in Springfield, Massachusetts, where he graduated with a B.A. in physical education. It was during this time that he changed the family name from Pashkovsky to Pash. Before World War II, Pash taught at Hollywood High School in Los Angeles. He continued his education, and received an M.A. from the University of Southern California. A reserve officer, he was called to active duty in 1940. He was a security officer for the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos, and, toward the end of the war, the military leader of the Operation Alsos. Its purpose was to determine how far the Axis had progressed toward developing nuclear weapons, and to secure atomic material and capture the scientists working on the Nazi atomic project. After the war, Pash served in various military intelligence positions. He served under General Douglas MacArthur in Japan (1946–47). From 1948-51, he served as a military representative to the Central Intelligence Agency, and during this time, he was in charge of a controversial CIA program PB/7, also known as Operation Bloodstone which involved recruiting former German officers and diplomats who could be used in the covert war against the Soviet Union. This included former members of the Nazi Party such as Gustav Hilger and Hans von Bittenfield. He also served in Austria (1952–53), and in Washington, D.C. (1953–57) and in 1954, he testified in the Dr. Robert Oppenheimer security investigation. He would also appear before the Church Committee in 1975. He retired from the Army in 1957. He died on May 11, 1995 in Greenbrae, California. Colonel Pash is a member of the Military Intelligence Hall of Fame.

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Pash

[Jonathan Barlow Gee]

WHO IS JOHN GALT?

John Galt musical theme from the 2011 "Atlas Shurgged" OST.

The book's opening line "Who is John Galt?" becomes an expression of helplessness and despair at the current state of the novel's fictionalized world. Before finding the real John Galt, Dagny Taggart hears a number of legends of Galt. In one legend Galt seeks the lost island of Atlantis. In another he discovers the Fountain of Youth. During the main storyline of the book, Galt has secretly organized a strike by the world's creative leaders, including inventors, artists and businessmen, in an effort to "stop the motor of the world" and bring about the collapse of the collectivist society. While working incognito as a laborer for Taggart Transcontinental railroad, he travels to visit the key figures that he has not yet recruited, systematically persuading them to join the strike. This strike is not revealed immediately within the story, but forms the backdrop of the novel as a mystery which protagonist Dagny Taggart seeks to uncover, with Galt as her antagonist. Dagny Taggart named her line the "John Galt Line" which surprised many people. She was asked "Who is John Galt?" to which she replied, "A name I'm tired of hearing."

Author Justin Raimondo has found parallels between Atlas Shrugged and The Driver, a 1922 novel by Garet Garrett. Garrett's novel has a main character named Henry M. Galt. This Galt is an entrepreneur who takes over a failing railway, turning it into a productive and profitable asset for the benefit of himself and the rest of the nation. The general population and government turn against him instead of celebrating his success. Raimondo also notes that in The Driver, some characters ask, "Who is Henry M. Galt?", similar to the question "Who is John Galt?" that plays an important role in Atlas Shrugged. Rand is not the only famous author to invent a character with this name. Pulp fiction author Robert E. Howard, creator of heroes such as Conan the Barbarian, used a villain named John Galt – also a man of mystery missing for a long time and possessed of great wealth, trying to manipulate his world from the background – in the tale "Black Talons" in 1933, more than twenty years before Atlas Shrugged was published.

- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Galt