i haven't watched and don't know what year this presentation was made, but by your description of it, i would bet that Griffin has had a change of heart. i feel certain that he would not be in favor of the Patriot Acts today.
also, by the following description of his book, Creature from Jekyll Island, where he lays blame for our country's ills isn't communist infiltration. at least that's the impression that i get.
Where does money come from? Where does it go? Who makes it? The money magicians' secrets are unveiled. We get a close look at their mirrors and smoke machines, their pulleys, cogs, and wheels that create the grand illusion called money. A dry and boring subject? Just wait!
You'll be hooked in five minutes. Reads like a detective story - which it really is. But it's all true. This book is about the most blatant scam of all history. It's all here: the cause of wars, boom-bust cycles, inflation, depression, prosperity.
If you get a chance to ask him in detail what he thinks about this, please do. I think it would make a great film or book project for him to explore the topic. I would like to hear how he may have gone from seeing government intelligence and military bureaucracies as being useful bulwarks against external threats like communism, to seeing them as being usurpers of authority. From what I can see, they have actually been imposing the same kinds of oppression those foreign powers were said to be planning for us, and were as far back as the 1840s.
In effect, from my understanding of history and central banking especially, G. Edward Griffin should have known better by the late 1980s. Of course the Soviet empire was a threat then from a strategic perspective, but we know how they had come to power. In many ways, the pro/anti-communist establishments were always both threatening individual liberties for some of the same reasons. Think of conscription imposed on the American people during the Civil War and during WWI. Especially during WWI, it became extremely dangerous to resist the draft. We know why!