NATO, The Draft & 9/11: All Signed Under A Child Abduction Carving, produced and presented by Rich of Rich Does Politics, records his conversation with Peter Duke, founder of The Duke Report, about the Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium and the mythological figures carved across its pediment. Duke connects the building’s imagery with ceremonies involving military conscription, NATO, NAFTA, the 9/11 Commission and Donald Trump’s artificial-intelligence agenda.
The Andrew W. Mellon Auditorium
The auditorium stands at 13th Street and Constitution Avenue in Washington, D.C. Officials originally called it the Departmental Auditorium. Duke dates its opening to 1934 and the completion of its monumental limestone pediment to the following years. Sculptors carved approximately 150 tons of limestone in place, seven stories above street level.
Duke encountered the pediment on January 5, 2021, while working as the official photographer for Stop the Steal. As he surveyed locations for the next day’s events with his assistant Pat Moyes, whom Duke describes as knowledgeable about occult and esoteric subjects, Moyes identified the central figure as Baphomet. Duke photographed the sculpture with a long lens and later began studying its figures, history and institutional setting.
Zeus, Bia and Kratos
The central figure combines male and female attributes and holds a torch. Duke interprets the sculpture as a composite of Zeus, Kratos, and Bia, drawing on Aeschylus’s Prometheus Bound, where Kratos personifies strength, and Bia personifies force. Bia remains silent as Hephaestus binds Prometheus under Zeus’s command.
Duke associates the torch with the fire that Prometheus delivered to humanity. He also connects it with the torch held by the Statue of Liberty. Washington guides identify the auditorium figure as Columbia, the female personification of the United States. Duke treats Columbia as a modern symbolic construction assembled from older Greco-Roman elements.
Ganymede and the Eagle
Beside the central figure, an eagle appears near a naked youth whom Duke identifies as Ganymede, the Trojan prince whom Zeus desired as his cupbearer. According to the myth discussed in the interview, Zeus assumed the form of an eagle, abducted Ganymede, and carried him to Olympus. Duke interprets the carving as a representation of that abduction and the sexual possession that followed it.
This imagery shapes Duke’s reading of the American eagle. He traces the military eagle through Rome, later European states, and the United States, arguing that its use signifies state power over young people. Rich links this interpretation to their central question: how does a government claim authority to conscript the children of its citizens and send them into war?
Europa and the Bull
The opposite side of the pediment contains a woman riding a bull. Duke identifies her as Europa, daughter of the king of Tyre. In the myth, Zeus assumes the form of a white bull, approaches Europa as she gathers flowers, and carries her across the sea to Crete. Zeus then resumes his divine form and rapes her.
Duke therefore reads the complete pediment as a paired representation of the abductions of Ganymede and Europa. Rich asks why federal architects selected these myths for a major civic building associated with American power. Their discussion treats the choice of subject, placement and scale as deliberate decisions made by architects, sculptors and federal commissioners.
The Draft, NATO and 9/11
The building’s ceremonial history gives Duke’s interpretation its institutional focus. In 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson conducted the lottery for America’s first peacetime military draft inside the auditorium, more than a year before the United States entered World War II.
Representatives also signed the North Atlantic Treaty there, creating NATO in 1949. The alliance later returned for its 10th, 25th, 50th and 75th anniversaries. Duke identifies the auditorium as a site connected with the signing of NAFTA, the presentation of the 9/11 Commission Report, subsequent 9/11 legislation and Donald Trump’s artificial-intelligence initiative. These recurring ceremonies lead him to view the building as a stage where political leaders publicly commit populations, resources and future generations to state programs.
Liberty and the Length of the Chain
The conversation expands to the British royal coat of arms, where a chained unicorn stands beside a lion. Duke defines liberty as freedom granted by an authority and summarizes the relationship as “liberty is the length of your chain.” A grantor determines the available range and retains the power to shorten it.
He applies this distinction to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. In his analysis, the Declaration grounds rights in a creator, whereas the Constitution promises the “blessings of liberty” through a political structure. The chained unicorn therefore becomes another example of how heraldic details encode relationships between rulers, institutions, and citizens.
Missing Records and Altered Figures
Duke reports finding extensive Fine Arts Commission correspondence about neighboring federal pediments, including discussions of nudity and fig leaves. Records concerning the Mellon Auditorium sculpture contain only 26 words, despite visible differences between the sculptor’s model and the finished carving. The completed version adds a fig leaf to Ganymede and adjusts the pose of another nude figure.
Duke also says the architects and sculptors came from San Francisco and had connections with Bohemian Grove. He closes by directing attention toward the surviving stonework itself: commissioned figures, altered details, sparse official records, and a building that continues to host ceremonies at the center of American power.
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so is this a forum for east and west waste disposal, protestant reformation and paper for bibles, anathema of paper fouling fish water health, and the fbi's pederasty framing? i thot not, hey yawls, take care.