Rene Guenon

"Evola and members of the radical fascist group Fasci d'Azione Rivoluzionaria (FAR) were arrested in April 1951 and charged with plotting to overthrow the state. The crackdown was orchestrated by Christian Democratic Interior Minister Mario Scelba in conjunction with SIFAR, Italy's postwar secret service. After six months in jail, Evola was charged with being 'the spiritual father' of FAR. Although ultimately acquitted of the charges, his arrest had clearly been a warning from the Christian Democratic establishment, as well as the CIA, to get in line.

"Two years later Evola published Gli uomini e la rovine (Men Among the Ruins), in which he seemingly abandoned his anti-American stance. He now argued that 'the immediate task is that of "reinforcing the state," while malgre soi [in spite of oneself] keeping it within the Western alliance (malgre soi because American materialism is as much an enemy of traditional values as Russian totalitarian collectivism).'

"What did Evelyn mean by 'reinforcing the state'? And why did he now argue for keeping Italy 'within the Western alliance'? Had he yielded to American pressure? Or did his decision have something to do with the fact that Men Among the Ruins was published in 1953, shortly after Allen Dulles became the new director of the CIA? One clue comes from the man who wrote the introduction to the book, Prince Junio Valerio Borghese, the 'Black Prince' of Italian far-right politics... 

"At the end of the war Borghese opened up contact with the OSS's James Jesus Angleton. Angleton, who later became one of the CIA's most powerful officials, ran the OSS's 'X-2' counterintelligence branch for Italy during the war. He personally saved Borghese from certain partisan execution by dressing him up in an American uniform and driving him south to Rome for interrogation. Although Borghese was convicted of war crimes, the Italian Supreme Court of Appeals ordered him released from jail in 1949. After regaining his freedom, the Black Prince became a hero for MSI hard-liners.

"Borghese was also courted by the American embassy, the Vatican, and the Christian Democrats. All them wanted him to become the leader of the new pro-NATO 'national front' because the MSI was still considered an unreliable 'hotbed of anti-American and anti-Atlantic sentiment' that could hinder Italian integration into the Western alliance 'unless the party's moderates were able to obtain control and enforce internal discipline.' Given his reputation, the CIA believed that Borghese was the perfect candidate to lead the new front. The MSI, however, was terrified of losing him. Some Salo veterans visited his castle at Artena to warn him about 'reactionary forces' behind the 'national front' and begged him to join the MSI. MSI Secretary Augusto De Marsanich even offered to make him the group's honorary president. The Evolians also hoped that he would help in the struggle against the MSI's parliamentary 'softs.' Borghese officially join the MSI in November 1951, and one month later, on 2 December 1951, he became the MSI's honorary president.

"Borghese's importance for the CIA went beyond politics. The CIA-backed SIFAR spy agency began organizing secret squadrons (many composed of ex-officials of the SID, Mussolini's a secret police) for espionage and 'counter-espionage' operations against the left in 1949. The CIA then created an underground army of ex-fascist combat veterans in an operation codenamed 'Operation Gladio' (Gladio being the name for a Roman double-edged sword). Gladio, however, couldn't succeed without Borghese's tactic approval."

(Dreamer of the Day, Kevin Coogan, pgs. 330-332)

"Seen in this context, the fact that Prince Borghese wrote the introduction to Men Among the Ruins takes on special significance. Franco Ferraresi's commentary on Evola's idea of the State as expressed in the book also takes on an added level of meaning:

The notion of using the forces of the 'true Right' for the defense of the State against subversion corresponds to a lasting concern of Evola's. Industrial society has made the State a hostage in the hands of trade unions and organize masses, which can jam the whole machinery with strikes and sabotage. The Army and the police, 'given the level reached in Italy by the communist gangrene,' might not be able to provide an adequate defense. Hence the need, for the right, to gradually organize a close network of task forces, 'ready to quickly intervene against all possible emergencies,' in order first and foremost to uphold 'against the rabble, the State and its authority (even when it's an "empty State").'

"Evola's Gladio-like notion of 'reinforcing the State,' even an 'empty state,' operated on two levels. Networks of fascist loyalist in the armed forces and intelligence services now pushed closer and closer to centers of power, using the imminent danger of communism or terrorism (from either the 'left' or 'right') as justification for their rise. These networks also sponsored far-right paramilitary shock-troops to intervene in crisis situations. The most important of these groups was Giuseppe 'Pino' Rauti's Ordine Nuovo (New Order, or ON), which split from the MSI after its 1956 congress chanting, 'Fewer double-breasted suits and more cudgels.' Rauti's move was ideologically inspired by Evola, whom Rauti worshiped. Rauti also maintained close ties to Italian military intelligence. Organizations like Ordine Nuovo were regularly employed as street fighters against the left; they also engaged in bombings and killings, and helped create a popular climate for more repressive measures against 'anarchy' from either the right or left – a kind of political yen/yang that justified the flourishing of the secret state. As part of the strategy of tension, rightist operatives and police agents used left and anarchist groups that they had created, or legitimate sects that had been infiltrated. By the 1970s the social crisis in Italy had also given rise to an entire independent subculture of armed sects on both the left and the right."

(Dreamer of the Day, Kevin Coogan, pgs. 333-334)

"In another right-wing manual of the period, La lotta politica di Avanguardia Nazionale (1974-75), the so-called black bomber, Stefano Delle Chiaie, portrayed his followers in Avanguardia Nazionale as an Evolian 'elite of heroes.' Moreover, when Clemente Graziani, the leader of the Movimento Politico Ordine Nuovo (MPON), following Pino Rauti's return to the MSI in 1969, sought to defend the need for a truly revolutionary right-wing organization in Italy, he patterned his argument, in Processo a Ordine Nuovo, processo alle idee, on Evolian ideas. The bibliography of this tract was made up almost entirely of books by Evola. Graziani stated succinctly that 'the work of Ordine Nuovo from 1953 to today has been that of transferring Evola's teachings to the political plane.' On the question of violence, he reminded his readers, 'We are not Christians.' No, they were revolutionaries in the civil war that had already erupted would fight: 'we intend to react, in a virile manner, responsibly, but to react....' Graziani did not oppose violence on principle; but then he asked who did. Perhaps not even the bourgeois revolutionaries, who thought violent acts against the established order of their day had founded the modern Italian state, now in its death agony...

"Cavalcare la tigre also made a deep impression on the neofascist generation of 1977 – those youths who believe that only a violent rejection of the status quo would enable Italy to escape a dual enslavement, to Marx and to Coca-Cola. For them Evola was a beacon in the long night of Italy's spiritual crisis, and they turned to him for instruction on how to validate themselves in a worthless age. What they learned, particularly from Evola's final homilies, was the paramount need to do battle against the forces of darkness, the Christian Democrats and Communists. 'Nothing in the system deserves to be saved,' Evola exhorted, and the implications of his exhortations were not very subtle. For example, in 1970 he wrote, 'It is not a question of contesting and polemicizing, but of blowing up everything.' Three years later Evola was warning his followers about the imminent decisive hours as the Left, emboldened by the undoing of Italy's government, prepared to take power. Only armed resistance offered the Right any hope of victory, he counseled 

 "If Salierno's testimony is reliable, we can conclude that all along Evola, in his private audiences with right-wing youths, freely advocated violence without truce. Toward the end of his life, even in his public statements on the question of terrorism, Evola hardly bothered to conceal his true sentiment, that terrorism should be ruled out only when the odds against it success were overwhelming. He added, however, that if 'the person responsible for this contemporary subversion [could be kept] in a constant state of physical insecurity, that would be an excellent thing.' Evola's message here resembled Marx's view of terrorism in The Civil War in France: not to be employed indiscriminately, but only when the authentic revolutionary cause will be served effectively by it. As the German poet Gottfried Benn (1886-1956) had written more than thirty years earlier in an admiring review of La rivolta contro il mondo moderno, Evola appeals to those 'black monks' who await the stroke of midnight; 'when the time is full they will guide the forces of the resurrection.' "

(The Revolutionary Mystique and Terrorism in Contemporary Italy, Richard Drake, pgs. 131-132)

Stefano Delle Chiaie, the infamous Evola acolyte and Gladio asset linked to terrorism throughout Europe and South America

Baron Benoit de Bonvoisin, the "Black Baron"

one variation of the Black Sun

"... Today, the Greek neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn includes his works on its suggested reading list, and the leader of Jobbik, the Hungarian nationalist party, admires Evola and wrote an introduction to his works.

"More important for the current American administration, Evola also caught on in the United States with leaders of the alt-right movement, which Mr. Bannon nurtured as the head of Breitbart News and then helped harness for Mr. Trump.

" 'Julius Evola is one of the most fascinating men of the 20th century,' said Richard Spencer, the white nationalist leader who is a top figure in the alt-right movement, which has attracted white supremacists, racists and anti-immigrant elements. 

"In the days after the election, Mr. Spencer led a Washington alt-right conference in chants of 'Hail Trump!' But he also invoked Evola’s idea of a prehistoric and pre-Christian spirituality — referring to the awakening of whites, whom he called the Children of the Sun...

"A March article titled 'An Establishment Conservative’s Guide to the Alt-Right' in Breitbart, the website then run by Mr. Bannon, included Evola as one of the thinkers in whose writings the 'origins of the alternative right' could be found.

"The article was co-written by Milo Yiannopoulos, the right-wing provocateur who is wildly popular with conservatives on college campuses. Mr. Trump recently defended Mr. Yiannopoulos as a symbol of free speech after demonstrators violently protested his planned speech at the University of California, Berkeley."

Richard Spencer

"Those trying to divine the roots of Stephen K. Bannon’s dark and at times apocalyptic worldview have repeatedly combed over a speech that Mr. Bannon, President Trump’s ideological guru, made in 2014 to a Vatican conference, where he expounded on Islam, populism and capitalism.

"But for all the examination of those remarks, a passing reference by Mr. Bannon to an esoteric Italian philosopher has gone little noticed, except perhaps by scholars and followers of the deeply taboo, Nazi-affiliated thinker, Julius Evola...

"As Mr. Bannon expounded on the intellectual motivations of the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin, he mentioned 'Julius Evola and different writers of the early 20th century who are really the supporters of what’s called the Traditionalist movement, which really eventually metastasized into Italian Fascism.'..

"In his Vatican talk, Mr. Bannon suggested that although Mr. Putin represented a 'kleptocracy,' the Russian president understood the existential danger posed by 'a potential new caliphate' and the importance of using nationalism to stand up for traditional institutions.

" 'We, the Judeo-Christian West,' Mr. Bannon added, 'really have to look at what he’s talking about as far as Traditionalism goes — particularly the sense of where it supports the underpinnings of nationalism.' "

Steve Bannon

"As Mr. Bannon suggested in his speech, Mr. Putin’s most influential thinker is Aleksandr Dugin, the ultranationalist Russian Traditionalist and anti-liberal writer sometimes called 'Putin’s Rasputin.'

"An intellectual descendant of Evola, Mr. Dugin has called for a 'genuine, true, radically revolutionary, and consistent fascist fascism' and advocated a geography-based theory of 'Eurasianism' — which has provided a philosophical framework for Mr. Putin’s expansionism and meddling in Western European politics."

"Golovin, Jamal and (later) Dugin worked on reconstructing Traditionalism from the books they found in the Lenin Library, sometimes attempting to guess the contents of unavailable books from their titles alone. Although Guenon's Symbolisme de la Croix was unavailable (held in the 'closed section' of the library), Evola's Pagan Imperialism (in the revised, more Traditionalist Leipzig edition of 1933) had been placed in the library's open collection when it was acquired in 1957 – whoever was responsible for these decisions obviously looked no deeper than the books' titles. Russian Traditionalists, though taking their lead from Guenon's explanations of modernity, generally reacted to it (after 1991, at least) more on the model of Evola."

(Against the Modern World, Mark Sedgwick, pg. 222)

Alesksandr Dugin

"There were many reports that the Eurasian Movement received generous financial support from branches of associations of retired officers of the SVR and FSB, the foreign intelligence and domestic security agencies into which the Soviet KGB had been divided in 1991. Dugin's second-in-command in the Eurasian movement, Peter Yevgen'evich Suslov, was also a former intelligence officer. After service in the KGB's First Main Directorate, Suslov retired from the SVR as a colonel in 1995. According to one controversial and unconfirmed report, he had specialized in assassinations and was linked with Maxim Lazovsky, a former KGB and FSB officer implicated in allegedly fabricating 'Chechen terrorist' bombings in Moscow in 1994. Support from retired FSB and SVR officers does not definitely indicate the active support of serving officers or of the FSB itself, but it does imply at least a cooperative relationship with the FSB and the Kremlin. Given that President Putin himself had once served in the KGB's First Main Directorate (later the SVR), there was a tendency for intelligent officers to be entrusted with certain delicate tasks – not because those tasks were necessarily related to intelligence work, but because intelligence officers were seen as being trustworthy, reliable, and effective. There is thus a possibility that, in one way or another, Suslov was a Kremlin representative in the Eurasian Movement's leadership."

(Against the Modern World, Mark Sedgwick, pgs. 235-236)

the emblem of the FSB

McCarthy

"On Wednesday, former NSA intelligence analyst John Schindler provided some insight into the reaction of national security officials.

" 'Now we go nuclear,' he wrote on Twitter. '[Intelligence community] war going to new levels. Just got an [email from] senior [intelligence community] friend, it began: "He will die in jail." '

" 'US intelligence is not the problem here,' Schindler added in another tweet. 'The President’s collusion with Russian intelligence is. Many details, but the essence is simple.' "

"The other factor is that domestic political considerations involving money increasingly determined foreign-policy. A visitor from outer space would find it peculiar that Netanyahu, a foreign head of government, has been called the leader of the Republican Party – the same party that habitually flaunts its xenophobic 'America First' patriotism. Senator Graham has gone so far as to say he would follow whatever policies the Israeli prime minister might propose, and arresting statement in light of the senator's oath to the Constitution and the voters he represents. It is all the more strange if one considers that well within living memory the Israeli prime minister and his coreligionists would have been barred from entering many of the social establishments run by the people who were once called 'country-club Republicans.'..."

(The Deep State, Mike Lofgren, pg. 69) 

"When Tom DeLay was House majority leader, I found out that any legislative provisions having anything to do with the Middle East had to be vetted and approved by AIPAC before the bill could move forward."

(The Deep State, Mike Lofgren, pg. 69n) 

"I was told of frequent internecine sabotage: between the Hebrew division and Muslim Arab-origin translator; between the Indian and Pakistani Muslim translators – all were at war with one another, and it sometimes erupted in actual bloodshed. People were accusing one another of being spies: of spies spying on each other. Classified files were stolen, documents went missing, locks were tampered with. Rearranging how these groups were clustered within the unit seem to be the only department response; that and tepid reassurances."

(Classified Woman, Sibel Edmonds, pg. 34)

"With a docile Republican majority in Congress and a demoralized Democratic Party in opposition, the leaders of the Deep State are the most—perhaps the only—credible check in Washington on what Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) calls Trump’s 'wrecking ball presidency.'

"The leaders of these agencies are generally disturbed by Trump’s cavalier treatment of their intelligence findings and particularly worried about contacts between Trump’s entourage and Russian intelligence officials."

"President Trump plans to assign a New York billionaire to lead a broad review of American intelligence agencies, according to administration officials, an effort that members of the intelligence community fear could curtail their independence and reduce the flow of information that contradicts the president’s worldview.

"The possible role for Stephen A. Feinberg, a co-founder of Cerberus Capital Management, has met fierce resistance among intelligence officials already on edge because of the criticism the intelligence community has received from Mr. Trump during the campaign and since he became president. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump blamed leaks from the intelligence community for the departure of Michael T. Flynn, his national security adviser, whose resignation he requested.

"There has been no announcement of Mr. Feinberg’s job, which would be based in the White House, but he recently told his company’s shareholders that he is in discussions to join the Trump administration. He is a member of Mr. Trump’s economic advisory council.

"Mr. Feinberg, who has close ties to Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s chief strategist, and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, declined to comment on his possible position. The White House, which is still working out the details of the intelligence review, also would not comment.

"Bringing Mr. Feinberg into the administration to conduct the review is seen as a way of injecting a Trump loyalist into a world the White House views with suspicion. But top intelligence officials fear that Mr. Feinberg is being groomed for a high position in one of the intelligence agencies.

 "Mr. Bannon and Mr. Kushner, according to current and former intelligence officials and Republican lawmakers, had at one point considered Mr. Feinberg for either director of national intelligence or chief of the Central Intelligence Agency’s clandestine service, a role that is normally reserved for career intelligence officers, not friends of the president. Mr. Feinberg’s only experience with national security matters is his firm’s stakes in a private security company and two gun makers."

Stephen A. Feinberg

"Through Cerberus, his private equity company, Mr. Feinberg has strong ties to the government contracting industry. Cerberus owns DynCorp International, which has had a wide array of large contracts providing security to the State Department and other agencies. DynCorp is now locked in a major legal dispute over the fate of a $10 billion State Department contract that it previously held to provide air support for counternarcotics operations overseas.

"John F. Kelly, the new Homeland Security secretary, was paid $166,000 a year as a DynCorp adviser until he was named to the new administration.

"Cerberus also owns Remington Outdoor, a major firearms manufacturer."

"Some close to Pence report that he was “blindsided” and “frustrated” by the misleading information. Pence was said to have urged Flynn to publicly apologize instead of resigning, however. It was the White House that found what Flynn did to be unacceptable and took action. After Pence, chief of staff Reince Priebus and White House counsel Don McGahn had a conversation with Flynn, Pence decided the former lieutenant general should go.

"According to the Post, Pence and Priebus were both troubled by the conversation, 'expressed dismay both with Flynn’s answers and the dawning reality that Flynn had deceived Pence.'

"White House officials told the Post that keeping Pence out of the loop wasn’t intentional, rather it was a result of confusion. Despite a long relationship with McGahn, the White house counsel briefed Trump, Priebus and Steve Bannon, assuming that they would pass the information on to the vice president if he needed to know."

Mike Pence

"Against this backdrop, Mr. Trump has appointed Mike Pompeo, a former Republican congressman from Kansas, to run the C.I.A., and former Senator Dan Coats, an Indiana Republican, to be the director of national intelligence (he is still awaiting confirmation). Both were the preferred choices of the Republican congressional leadership and Vice President Mike Pence and had no close or longstanding ties to Mr. Trump. In fact, they each endorsed Senator Marco Rubio of Florida for president during the 2016 Republican primaries."

"Certain Trump picks point to a religious-criminal cabal preparing for a Pence presidency. What do Vice President Mike Pence, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, and certainly not least, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, have in common? Membership in ‘The Fellowship’, a quasi-religious organization-unregistered lobby with fingerprints all over past USA international crimes sprees. These three significant personalities all are under the ‘spiritual’ tutelage of Doug Coe, leader of ‘The Family’ where if you are ‘chosen’ there is a different standard, an unaccountable standard, where everything up to and inclusive of child rape is excused..."

Dan Coats (top) and Jeff Sessions (bottom)

"A lot of their key men in a country would be the intelligence officers in the American embassy. Throughout their correspondence, that's the kind of guy they would like to have involved. They always had a lot of Army intelligence guys involved, Pentagon guys. 

"Doug Coe in the early 70's was touring the frontlines in Vietnam with intelligence officers and South Vietnamese generals. That's the level of connections they are talking about, like the Salvadoran general Carlos Eugenios Vides Casanova [convicted by a Florida jury for the torture of thousands] and Honduran general Gustavo Alvarez Martinez [a minister also linked to the CIA and death squads]. They are the people who brought those people in. They said you need to meet this person. That's how it works."

"...This was est (Erhard Sensitivity Training), the organization founded in 1971 by Werner Erhard, a former Scientologist – and used car salesman – who decided to exploit and adapt some of Scientology's concepts and techniques for his own self-improvement system. The now notorious est held seminars that attracted such celebrities as Buzz Aldrin, Yoko Ono, John Denver and the future UFO abduction researcher John Mack, but it wasn't long before est became a dirty word. Attendees were disturbed by the fascistic regime and zombielike demeanor of the members, as well as Erhard's own dictatorial control of the organization. Media disapproval was intense, and soon est was relegated to the scrapheap of dangerous cult. Erhard himself fled from the United States after press revelations about his private life and financial affairs. He is now believed to be somewhere in Russia.

"Tellingly, Erhard's real name was Jack Rosenberg, but it is said that he changed his name 'to replace Jewish weakness with German strength'. (His father was Jewish, but he converted to Episcopal Christianity.) Erhard had close links with Esalen Institute and gave funds to SRI's remote viewing project..."

(The Stargate Conspiracy, Lynn Pickneet & Clive Prince, pg. 235)

Werner Erhard

"... Earlier in the year, a friend had handed Erhard a science fiction novel called est: The Steersman Handbook, written by an author named L. Clark Stevens. In his book, Stevens wrote that 'est' stood for 'electronic social transformation,' and heralded the arrival of 'est people' bent on transforming society. Erhard was excited about Steven's message and made sure other staff members read the book. It wouldn't be long before he borrowed 'est' to fit his own needs."

(Outrageous Betrayal, Steven Pressman, pg. 40) 

"Launched in the Bay Area only a few months earlier, Mind Dynamics was the hybrid creation of Alexander Everett, a former English schoolmaster whose own fascination with mind-cure principles had begun in the 1950s, when he worked in Kansas City for one of the Unity Schools of Christianity, a mind-cure offshoot. From there Everett had wandered down to Texas, where he found work as an assistant principal at an exclusive private school in Fort Worth. It was in Texas that Everett ran across a man named José Silva who years earlier had concocted something called Mind Control that purported to teach its adherents over the course of four twelve-hour sessions how to relax and harness the power of their minds. By controlling the brain's alpha waves, Mind Control held out the promise of extraordinary results, from waking up without an alarm clock to ridding the body of dangerously addictive habits.

"By the late 1960s Everett had created a similar mental exercise program called Mind Dynamics. After a few courses in Texas, he soon realized that California with its free-spirited environment, might provide a more hospitable climate for his metaphysical theories about brain waves. Everett settled in San Francisco in the early spring of 1970. Not long after he began selling for $200 a thirty-two-hour course on controlling the brain's alpha waves. By mastering Mind Dynamics, students supposedly could achieve almost any goal they set, from improving their IQs and ending insomnia to curing cancer while learning to avoid other life-threatening illnesses.

(Outrageous Betray, Steven Pressman, pg. 34)

possibly Alexander Everett

Jose Silva

"To reach more people, Everett needed a better marketing plan than simply the promise of untapped human potential. He found one in William Penn Patrick, a ruggedly handsome and self-confidence master salesman, who presided at the time over a worldwide pyramid-sales network of companies that sold products ranging from motor oil additives to banana-flavored body lotion. Patrick, a former door-to-door salesman in Illinois, was impressed with Everett's seeming ability to motivate people and quickly realized that Mind Dynamics could play a part in expanding his own business empire. Together he and Everett created the unlikely marriage of mass-marketing sales techniques and the human potential movement.

"Six years earlier, at the age of thirty-three, Patrick had begun a pyramid-sales company called Holiday Magic that ostensibly sold a line of fruit-flavor cosmetics. Holding out the tantalizing promise of handsome profits, Patrick sold distribution franchises to thousands of men and women for coast to coast. More often than not, the hapless distributors ended up with basements or garages stacked to the ceiling with jars of avocado face cream or cases of Sta-Pro motor oil additive while they vainly searched for other 'distributors' to keep the endless chain letter of marketing in motion. At the top of the pyramid stood Patrick, who amassed a fortune estimated at $200 million and lived on a 6,000-acre ranch north of San Francisco, where he pursued his hobby of restoring and flying vintage military airplanes. 

"Patrick's decision in 1970 to add Mind Dynamics to his stable of pyramid-sales companies came at a time when other pieces of his enterprise were coming under increasing legal attack. By then the California attorney general's office had received a rash of complaints about Patrick's business methods at Holiday Magic. Around the time he met Alexander Everett, Patrick had added an even more bizarre new program called Leadership Dynamics, which eventually created additional legal headaches. The four-day 'sensitivity' course put participants through a physically and mentally abusive regime in the name of offering them a 'more creative and constructive life.'

(Outrageous Betrayal, Steven Pressman, pgs. 34-35)

"Leadership Dynamics Institute was formed on the principles outlined in a booklet entitled 'Happiness and Success Through Principal' written in 1967 by William Penn Patrick, the founder and corporate king of Holiday Magic, Inc., and apparent co-owner of LDI. The foremost principle set forth by Patrick is honesty, complete and total honesty, both toward yourself and others. Another attribute stressed is courage, courage to stand up and fight for what you believe.

"A further major principle put forth by Patrick is the necessity to differentiate between selfishness and greed. Selfishness is a normal and necessary human quality that everyone has and uses. If we, as individuals, were not selfish we would never have anything. Selfishness to Patrick means that you want something and are willing to work to get it. Greed, on the other hand, is an extension of selfishness to the point of wanting something for nothing." 

(The Pit, Gene Church & Conrad D. Carnes, pg. 2)

The Pit was later adapted into the above film, also known as Circle of Power

"... the Leadership Dynamics course had become the target of lawsuits brought by participants who had signed up only to find themselves the unwitting victims of cruel physical and emotional abuse during the sessions. In some cases instructors ordered participants into closed coffins. Others were hung onto large wooden crosses for hours at a time. Still others were forced to take off all their clothes while fellow participants taunted them with cruel insults. In one session, a man was forced to perform fellatio on an artificial penis while women attending a separate Leadership Dynamics class were brought in to watch...

"In depositions and other court documents, Patrick and other Leadership Dynamics officials acknowledged the accuracy of some of the charges leveled against them in several lawsuits that stemmed from the brutality of the courses. Asked about simulated sex with an artificial penis, Patrick responded: 'Well, to put it bluntly, there are a lot of men that come to class that have forgotten how to use theirs in their marriage.' Patrick also admitted that it was common practice to hit people during the sessions. 'I slap my children from time to time. It serves a useful function,' he told lawyers during his deposition. The lawsuits eventually settled out of court, and Leadership Dynamics soon after when out of business."

(Outrageous Betrayal, Steven Pressman, pg. 41)

"Leadership Dynamics Institute (LDI) was a required seminar for anyone wishing to take a managerial position with the Holiday Magic organization.

"Though not then employed by Holiday Magic, I had not strayed for long from the Holiday Magic family. Earlier in my life I had been a distributor for their home care and cosmetic products, and now I was involved in another Holiday Magic affiliate, Mind Dynamics. It had been make clear to me by my superiors within Mind Dynamics that Leadership Dynamics Institute would be an important rung in my personal ladder of success..."

(The Pit, Gene Church & Conrad D. Carnes, pgs. 1-2)

Clearly Patrick seems to have had a much greater influence on est than is generally acknowledged. But who was this mysterious businessman who inserted himself via capital investments into the Human Potential Movement just as it was gaining mainstream acceptance?

Naturally very little is known about Patrick's doings until the mid-1960s, after he had established Holiday Magic as a viable source of income. But once the big bucks began rolling in Patrick wasted no time in become active in politics. And would you be surprised to learn, dear reader, that his politics appear to have been to the right of Joseph McCarthy?

Prior to becoming involved with Everett and Mind Dynamic, Patrick had forged ties with Robert DePugh, founder of the Minutemen. The Minutemen in turn were the first large scale right wing paramilitary network of the Cold War era. And not long after DePugh got the Minutemen off the ground, he was approached by Colonel William Potter Gale, a former military intelligence officer and Christian Identity minister who would go on to establish the Posse Comitatus.

Gale would establish his own paramilitary outfit, the California Rifles, not long after DePugh got the Minutemen off the ground. There was much overlap between Gale and DePugh's organizations in the early years, but DePugh broke with Gale in the mid-1960s after he became concerned that Gale was co-opting his organization and working for some branch of US intelligence.

Just how serious the break was is highly debatable, as Gale and DePugh appeared to have patched things up by the mid-1970s, after DePugh was released from prison for arms smuggling charges. They appear to have remained in contact up until the time of Gale's death in 1988. This bizarre chain of events was addressed on this blog before here.

At some point during DePugh's break with Gale he hooked up with Patrick while in the midst of trying to launch the "Patriot Party." At a 1967 convention of said party Du Pugh endorsed Patrick as the veep on a ticket headlined by George Wallace.

"One of the more intriguing facets of this convention was the role – or non-role – of William Penn Patrick, the cosmetics tycoon from San Rafael, California. A transplanted southerner, Patrick made a name for himself in ultraright circles by a quixotic campaign in the 1966 Republican gubernatorial primary against an idol of the respectable right, Ronald Reagan. After this debut, he helped finance recall effort against liberal Senator Frank Church of Idaho. DePugh envisioned as an ideal ticket Wallace for president with moneybags Patrick as his running mate. Patrick actually flew to Kansas City for a conference with the Patriotic Party brass, and at the convention the ticket was endorsed. Two months later, however, DePugh told his membership that Patrick would have to be dropped, explaining that Patrick had been recommended in the first place 'because he had promised to provide the money necessary to keep the Patriotic Party alive, to open Patriotic Party headquarters throughout most of the major cities in the United States, and to finance the printing, the transportation, the telephones, and all the other expenses.' But not a red cent have been forthcoming."

(Power on the Right, William Turner, pgs. 79-80)

George Wallace

Frank Church

Dan Smoot

William Penn Patrick

Welcome to the eight installment in my epic examination of the involvement of the far right in "high weirdness." Over the course of this series I have used "high weirdness" as a catchall for a host of arcane topics ranging from psi, psychedelics, UFOs, human potential and the occult. As for the far right, I have largely examined them through the lens of think tanks closely aligned to the American military-industrial complex such as the Committee on the Present Danger Mach I (CPD) and the infamous American Security Council (ASC). 

With the first installment of this series I briefly considered the bizarre Sikh temple shooting of 2012, the high weirdness of the 2016 US presidential election and the differences between the far right and the traditional conservative establishment centered around the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the like. Part two moved on to the origins of the military-industrial complex, which resided with a clique of middle managers brought into government by Bonesman and Secretary of War Henry Stimson and the merging technocratic class personified by Vannevar Bush. 

The third installment traced the merger of the military-industrial complex and the far right to a clique of military officers who had served under/along side General Douglas MacArthur in either Pacific Theater of World War II or Korea. "Coincidentally," many of these military officers would play a key role in establishing the American Security Council as well frequently turning up in the literature concerning the Roswell incident. Part four expanded upon the ties of the ASC and these military officers to Roswell, as well as my theory concerning what really happened. 

Part five delved into the extensive overlap between the ASC and the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), for years the premier civilian UFO organization. The sixth installment moved along to the ASC's role in distributing the Hangar 18 mythos/disinformation as well as the role it played in publishing the early works Jacques Vallee, J. Allen Hynek and other UFOlogy who developed rather arcane and mystical takes on the phenomenon.

famed UFOlogists J. Allen Hynek (left) and Jacques Vallee (right)

The seventh installment was a bit of a departure. Up to this point I had primarily been concerned with UFOlogy and the involvement of the far right in such things via think tanks like the ASC. But with part seven I considered the far right's influence on the human potential movement via Werner Erhard and his notorious est sessions. There it was noted that one of Erhard's greatest influences was the mysterious businessman known as William Penn Patrick. Prior to becoming involved in the human potential movement Patrick had been deeply active in far right politics and the ASC network. His Leadership Dynamics, which likely had a considerable influence on Erhard, may well have been a behavior modification experiment he was carrying out for unknown backers.

Eugenics and UFOs

After digressing into the bizarre pursuits of Patrick with the prior installment I would once again like to consider the activities of the ASC, or at least one particular member, in the same time frame (late 1960s/early 1970s). This individual was one Stefan T. Possony, a major deep state player who does not receive remotely as much attention as his nefarious career warrants. 

Possony was an Austrian emigre that arrived in the United States around 1941 after fleeing the Nazis in Austria, Czechoslovakia and finally France. Despite his opposition to Nazism, he appears to have been quite comfortable with many of the party's tenets. Possony embraced a form of nationalism and eugenics and attacked the US's efforts to integrate African Americans during the Cold War years on the basis of their intellectual inferiority. He also denounced the dismantlement of Colonialism on this basis as well. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Shortly after arriving in the United States, Possony found himself employed simultaneously by Princeton's Institute for Advanced Studies and the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI). After the war he also became an intelligence adviser to the Air Force and likely the CIA as well. He was apparently a co-founder of the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), a think tank long linked to the CIA and which has recently reemerged as a critic of "fake news." The FPRI also played a key role in establishing the ASC and the military-industrial complex on the whole. And Possony was right in the center of things.

"Although the ASC began as an antilabor operation with support from Sears... and other businesses, it soon became involved in foreign policy issues. It cosponsored a series of annual meetings from 1955 to 1961 called National Military-Industrial Conferences in which elements of the Pentagon, National Security Council, and organizations linked to the CIA discussed cold war strategy with leaders of many large corporations, such as United Fruit, Standard Oil, Honeywell, U.S. Steel, and of course, Sears Roebuck. Robert Wood was the key organizer of these events. One conference 'cooperating organization' was the CIA-linked Foreign Policy Research Institute.

"The Institute's foreign policy thesis during this period was spelled out in a book, A Forward Strategy for America by Robert Strausz-Hupe, William R. Kintner, and Stefan T. Possony. In discussing nuclear-option scenarios in a hypothetical expanding U.S.-Soviet conflict, the book makes the following statement:

Even at a moment when the United States faces defeat because, for example, Europe, Asia and Africa have fallen to communist domination, a sudden nuclear attack against the Soviet Union could at least avenge the disaster and deprive the opponent of the ultimate triumph. While such a reversal at the last moment almost certainly would result in severe American casualties, it might still nullify all previous Soviet conquests.

(Old Nazis, New Right, and the Republican Party, Russ Bellant, pgs. 33-35)

Having the weapons capability to destroy the planet many times over would become a major obsession of Possony's, as we shall see. As might be expected, the ASC liked what they saw in Possony's thesis and he would officially become a member of the ASC's National Strategy Committee in 1962. This association would last for decades. 

A little before Possony's propaganda efforts for the military-industrial complex began in earnest, he became involved in the UFO question. In early 1953 Possony participated in the infamous Robertson Panel, a CIA-Pentagon committee that debated the UFO question for several days before recommending a massive disinformation campaign concerning UFOs. Also present was J. Allen Hynek, who as noted in part six also has indirect links to the ASC. The CIA was largely represented by personnel from the Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI), which was also deeply involved in Project ARTICHOKE during this time. 

The OSI was headed by H. Marshall Chadwell, a close associate of Vannever Bush who had worked with him in the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) during WWII. Howard P. Robertson, who headed the panel and gave it its name, had also worked with Bush and Chadwell in the NDRC. As was noted in part two, Bush played a key role in establishing the military-industrial complex. He would become an unabashed cheerleader of it with the Committee on the Present Danger Mach I, members of which later join alliances with the ASC by the late 1970s. Possony, an academic who ended up working in Ivy League circles after the war, appears to be one of the earliest links between Bush's technocrats and the far right. Interestingly, Possony would go on to work closely with another Bush lieutenant, Edward Teller, in the ASC. But more on that later.

Edward Teller (left) and his former boss in the NDRC, Vannevar Bush (right)

Possony's involvement in UFOs appears to have predated even the Robinson Panel, however. During the early 1950s he apparently ran a "Special Study Group" out of the office of General John Samford, then-director of Air Force Intelligence. Samford would eventually become the head of the National Security Agency in 1956 and would hold the post until his retirement in 1960. Project Blue Book was initiated during his time directing Air Force Intelligence. As such, he is often mentioned in UFO literature.

The "Special Study Group" is one of the most enigmatic UFO study groups from this era. Very little is known about, though it appears Possony was representing the Special Study Group when he appeared before the Robertson Panel. Here are some more details:

"Although not well documented, there are just enough fragments of information to make it legitimate at least to mention another Pentagon figure and his activities around this period. This man was Stefan Possony, and he ran a 'Special Study Group' right inside General Samford's office. This group was quite involved with UFOs. What was this all about? How could a special study group be going on in the highest office of the Air Force Intelligence?...

"In 1951 Possony was regularly involved at very high levels the intelligence community. Late in that year, he was in General Samford's office as the brain trust behind something called the Special Study Group. The exact purpose of the group is not known for certain, but it may have been exactly as stated in a Memorandum for Record (anonymously written by Possony or Lt. Col. E Sterling, the military chief) of April 29, 1952. This is an astonishing memorandum of 5 1/2 pages entirely about Special Study Group thinking and why Sterling and Possony should go to Europe to assess certain possible threats to national security.

"The memo states that the Air Force is pursuing technology at an accelerating pace and the Soviets will be doing so as well. The main area of unpredictability is not the weapons themselves but the types and effectiveness of their delivery systems. Because of the pace of advances, we cannot be sure of where the Soviets are. Then it says this:

The Special Study Group has undertaken a comprehensive study of Russian capabilities in the field of advanced aerial delivery systems, the strategic implications, and probable timetables as to development and operational availability. As an important side product, it is hoped that some much needed light can be shed on the vexing 'flying saucer' problem. 

"The text goes on to enumerate the technologies that Sterling and Possony would investigate. The list included 'flying saucers,' and addressed them specifically:

In connection with flying saucers, the Group is attempting to develop a proper framework for fruitful analysis. The Air Force cannot assume that flying saucers are of non-terrestrial origin, and hence, they could be Soviet.

"The rest of the memorandum was an extended set of reasons why the working hypothesis that the saucers were a nascent Soviet delivery system must not be ignored. In the narrative, one case example was utilized to make the argument that, whereas the behavior of the objects was beyond U.S. capability, it was not beyond theoretical capability, and therefore could have been an advanced terrestrially produced device. This argument was based on the sightings reported to Commander McLaughlin by Charles Moore and the General Mills balloon team. Possony used this case study with explicit faith in the reality of its details, including the velocity estimates at slightly greater than gravitational escape velocity, which he found significant. Possony and Sterling believed such sources were not from outer space, based on the testimony of astronomers that indicated that the astronomers would have seen the objects coming.

"Possony and Sterling returned from Europe in about five weeks and had become convinced that the discs were not Soviet, after all. Possony, however remained interested in the phenomenon. He, according to Ruppelt, attended many relevant Pentagon meetings and always severely challenged persons dismissive of the reality of the incidents. He asked his civilian assisting, Les Rosenweig, to bring together materials for desktop studies on topics such as the possible propulsion systems used by the disks, and potential methods to contact him. Possony often put ideas in Major Fournet's ear and may have played a role in his 'motion study' of flying disc maneuverability, from which Fournet concluded that the flight capabilities of UFOs were well beyond terrestrial technology..."

(UFOs and Government: A Historical Inquiry, Michael Swords & Robert Powell, pgs. 150-152)

Stefan T. Possony

On the whole then Possony appears to have been deeply involved in the UFO question at high levels of the intelligence community from very early on. As was noted above, Possony found himself recruited into the Ivy League and the ONI shortly after moving to the United States and by the late 1940s was also working for Air Force Intelligence. By at least the mid-1950s he had likely been recruited into the CIA, as evidenced by his work with FPRI. By the end of the decade he was actively working with the ASC in the National Military-Industrial Conferences, and would officially join the National Stratgegy Committee in 1962. There he would have found himself in the company of numerous "former" high ranking military officers with a keen interest in UFOs, many of whom have been linked to Roswell. Possony surely would have felt right at home after his time in the "Special Study Group."

MRU

But UFOs may not have been Possony's only brush with high weirdness. Much of the following information is highly speculative, but I thought it was compelling enough to warrant inclusion here. It is alleged that at some point in the mid-1970s Possony became involved with a curious New York-based outfit known as Mankind Research Unlimited (MRU). MRU apparently began as a subsidiary of Systems Consultants Inc (SCI), a defense contractor that allegedly received much of its funding from the Navy, in 1966. By 1973 MRU had apparently severed its ties to SCI, though this has been hotly debated.

MRU and its potential ties to the CIA were first exposed in 1980 by A.J. Weberman in an article entitled "Mind Control: The Story of Mankind Research Unlimited, Inc" (which can be found here) that initially appeared in an issue of Covert Action Information Bulletin. Weberman is a highly controversial researcher and much of the information concerning MRU is based upon his initial expose. Thus, everything one encounters concerning MRU should be taken with a heaping grain of salt.

The following information was primarily written by Iona Miller, whose credibility should also be questioned. However, she does appear to be in contact with former employees of MRU, which is more than numerous others who have explored this topic have managed. On MRU and its mysterious director, Dr. Carl W. Schleicher, Miller notes:

"Mankind Research Unlimited, Inc. (MRU, and the later nonprofit Foundation, MRF) was a much less publicized eastcoast thinktank like Stanford Research Institute (SRI). MRU was purchased from parent company SCI on August 13, 1973 to become an independent company with its own Board operating through the Director's lifetime. Located in the Washington, D.C. area, it operated from the early 1970s to 1999. Like SRI, many strange phenomena were investigated and developed there, often at government expense. 

"MRU’s Director, Carl W. Schleicher, Ph.D. has been accused, along with Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, of being the mind control mad-genius behind MK Ultra and the ‘Manchurian Candidate’ in both Feral Press (Constantine, 1995) and by A.J. Weberman (1) online. Called the 'Father of the Cyborg,' in CIA Mind Control Operations in the USA, Schleicher heartily denied it to his death in 1999. He was preparing to sue Weberman for theft of MRU files and false allegations, according to close associates.  

"All research was conducted on a 'need to know' basis. No one seems able to make a coherent story of it, though rumors about connections of Director Schleicher to MK Ultra run rampant. What is known is he had ten active years of military service (1955-1966) for the Navy as a 'war games expert,' and spy in Europe.

"Sources say he was stationed for a time on the electronic intelligence ship,USS Liberty. He retired shortly before the SigInt ship was mysteriously attacked in the 1967 Six-Day War. He then went into 'exotic areas of knowledge' with a mandate to 'peek discretely into the unknown'. He avoided marriage, saying, 'My mission is different.' He always claimed his mission was 'humanitarian.'

"Schleicher attended the Naval Academy, worked overseas in operations research, and spoke six languages, then went into war games, publishing in The Journal of Electronic Warfare. An interest in dowsing got him into the paranormal - but not dowsing for water – dowsing for Vietcong in tunnels in Khe Sanh for the Marines. This led to a meeting with Ostrander and Schroeder, authors of Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain, and the game was afoot. He accepted their unfiltered pile of Soviet research and paid $5000 for translations. 

"Schleicher had a gruff military personality. His cohorts included former OSS, CIA and military intelligence officers, physicians, psychologists, scientists, anti-gravity investigators, healers, chemists, psychics, dowsers, and remote viewers. MRU developed a low-frequency electronic device that 'interferes with insects' antennae. But, in typical Schleicher fashion, he tersely declined explanation with a pat answer, 'I can say no more.'..

"MRU's capability and experience is divided into four fields, including biophysics -- Biological Effects of Magnetic Fields,' 'Research in Magneto-fluid Dynamics,' 'Planetary Electro-Hydro-Dynamics' and 'Geo-pathic Efforts on Living Organisms.' The latter focuses on the induction of illness by altering the magnetic nature of the geography. MRU first researched the area of Biological Effects of Magnetic Fields focusing on the induction of illness by altering the magnetic nature of the geography.  

"Mankind Research Unlimited distributed a CIA directive, summarized in a brochure on the 'Cybernetic Technique'. It discussed the Agency's development of a 'means by which information in modest rate can be fed to humans utilizing other senses than sight or hearing. 'The Cybernetic Technique,' based on Eastern European research,' involves beaming information to individual nerve cells. The purpose, the directive states, is the enhancement of mental and physical performance. To protect MK Ultra, the CIA subcontracted research and development to universities, prisons, private laboratories and hospitals...  

"This inside source discredits accusations of Schleicher working for either the CIA or The Aviary, infamous UFO debukers.He says MRF was associated with Rockefeller Foundation and NSA, producing several books for them. Recent admissions (2) about covert mind control experiments have come from Naval Intelligence. Approval authority is now required for all 'severe or unusual intrusions, either physical or psychological, on human subjects (such as consciousness-altering drugs or mind control techniques),' implying they had done so in the past." 

Carl W. Schleicher

Funding from the Rockefeller Foundation and the NSA (and possibly the Navy, whom Schleicher apparently kept in the loop) makes for an interesting combination. As I noted before here, it seems probable that the Rockefeller family did provide funding for MK-Ultra. But the presence of the NSA and Navy also indicate military interest and these forces have not always seen eye to eye with the Rockefeller interests. Possony's presence here indicates that the ASC and their allies were also monitoring these developments. Reportedly other military men were also involved, but most of  the high profile members came from the type of Ivy League backgrounds the Rockefellers love to recruit from.

In addition to Possony, some other curious characters have been linked to MRU include: Christopher Bird, Stanley Krippner and Berthold E. Schwarz, among others. Bird was a writer and anthropologist while both Krippner and Schwarz were psychologists. Unsurprisingly, all three men harbored a keen interest in telepathy.

Bird was even a co-author of The Secret Life of Plants, which addressed the consciousness of vegetation. He was also an authority on dowsing, and is considered to be the premier America authority on it in the second half of the twentieth century. Schwarz had a longstanding interest in UFOlogy, and was highly regarded in the field. He appears to have had a much more esoteric take on the phenomenon that seems to be more in line with ideas of Jacques Vallee.

Krippner was a major advocate of LSD, and was also one of the leading parapsychologist in these United States at the onset of the 1960s counterculture. He performed psi experiments as part of the so-called "Dream Laboratory" that predated both MRU and the more well known research at SRI.

"In his work at the Dream Laboratory at Maimonides Medical Center, Montague Ullman, along with psychologist Stanley Krippner and researcher Charles Honorton, produced compelling evidence that accurate precognitive information can also be obtained in dreams. In their study, volunteers were asked to spend eight consecutive nights at the sleep laboratory, and each night they were asked to try to dream about a picture that would be chosen at random the next day and shown to them. Ullman and his colleagues hoped to get one success out of eight, but found that some subjects could score as many as five 'hits' out of eight."

(Holographic Universe, Michael Talbot, pg. 206)

Stanley Krippner

Like Schwarz, Krippner also appears to have a keen interest in UFOs. The same is almost surely true of Bird as well. And, as was noted above, Possony was deeply involved in the UFO question for almost two decades prior to the founding of MRU.

Unsurprisingly, Possony does not appear to be the only one of these associates with deep state ties either. Christopher Bird has acknowledged that he was employee of the CIA during the 1950s, but it is likely this connection never ended. Curiously, Peter Tompkins, who he co-wrote Secret Life... with Bird, had been an OSS agent during WWII. Bird was also reputedly a member of convicted murderer Ira Einhorn's "psychic mafia."

"... the 'Mind Over Matter' conference that Einhorn organized on the Penn campus in late January 1977. It was one of several gatherings of the psychic mafia that Ira midwifed. The key players were all in attendance. Andrija Puharich, the ringmaster of the paranormal, speaking about the Space Kids. Chris Bird, an expert in odd corners of the paranormal with reputed CIA connections, talking about dowsing, as well as the biological implications dealt with in his best-selling book, The Secret Life of Plants. Tom Bearden, a retired Air Force colonel whose raucous self-published The Excalibur Briefing postulated a grand alternative view of reality, 'a theory of biofields which unites mental phenomena with physics.' The theory also encompassed UFOs and cattle mutilations." 

(The Unicorn's Secret, Steven Levy, pgs. 189-190) 

Christopher Bird

Andrija Puharich is figure regular readers of this blog should be well aware of. He reputedly channeled beings known as "The Nine," later alleged to be an extraterrestrial intelligence, during the early 1950s as part of a seance with possible deep state implications. He was also a scientist used by Project ARTICHOKE and his initial channeling of The Nine may have been a part of the project (as was noted before here). ARTICHOKE was overseen by the CIA's Office of Security, which had numerous ties to the far right and especially the American Security Council (as was noted before here).

Colonel Thomas Bearden, a close associate of Puharich's, was also reputed to have been a member of MRU, but I have been unable to reliably conform this. Still, Bearden may provide some insights into why Possony, a political strategist rather than a psychologist or scientist (unlike the bulk of the other figures involved in MRU), became involved with MRU. The thing Puharich, Bearden, Bird, Possony and longtime MRU director Carl W. Schleicher (and likely Krippner and Schwarz) all seem to have in common is a keen interest in Tesla technology. A lot of MRU's research seems to have involved electromagnetism and was based upon Tesla's theories concerning it.

In some accounts, this is said to be the force behind telepathy.

"Roughly speaking, the conventional picture of electromagnetism is shown by Bearden to be incomplete. Electromagnetism is 'nested' in dimensions deeper than the 3-D world. It arises from supersensible realms of existence or hyperspaces which Bearden refers to as 'nested levels of the virtual state.' The vacuum of space is actually a plenum, according to modern physics. Using the scalar electromagnetic wave, which is prior to the vector electromagnetic wave that produces electromagnetic fields, Bearden says, the vacuum of space itself can be engineered. He shows in quantum physical terms that energy may be produced directly at a distant site or extracted from it, without energy transmission through space. Essentially, beams of pure potential may be deliberately produced and intersected at a distance to cause effects. Thus, the entire range of extra-sensory and psychokinetic phenomena now appear to have an elegant explanation, albeit one which requires a radical modification of classical physics."

(Psychic Warfare, Appendix I, John White, pgs. 217-218)

Colonel Thomas Bearden

This theoretical form of electromagnetism, typically depicted as some type of extremely low frequency (ELF) wave, is also believed to be what powers UFOs in such circles. But the "psychic mafia" was not alone in these conclusions. Likely Bircher Peter Beter (one of the first researchers to link UFOs to the ASC), briefly addressed in part five, was also adamant about the prospect of UFOs being powered by electromagnetism by the late 1970s as well.

But beyond this, electromagnetism is also believed to be capable of producing some extremely terrible weapons. And it would appear that this is what lay behind Possony's interest in such things, if articles he wrote such as "Scientific Advances Hold Dramatic Prospects for Psy-Strat" and "The Tesla Connection" for Defense & Foreign Affairs during the early 1980s are any indication.

And that brings us to one of the longstanding obsessions of the ASC.

Space: The Final Defense Contract? 

"One of the most important aspects of the conservative establishment has been its support for space-based weapons. The U.S. effort to develop these type of arms goes back to a 1970 book entitled The Strategy of Technology: Winning the Decisive War. The book was written by Pentagon strategist Dr. Stefan T. Possony. In 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, Possony was invited to join the national strategy committee of the ASC, together with Edward Teller. Both men would serve on the board for more than two decades. 

"Possony's book was very popular among hawkish Pentagon officers and became  required reading at the Air War College and the National War College. It advocated for the development of a defense program that would be too high-tech and costly for other nations to reproduce or counter without collapsing their economy. Two important projects that grew out of this economy were Strategic Defense Initiative and the stealth program. The latter was developed by companies as Lockheed and Northrop, both corporations with membership in the American Security Council but with little representation on any of the council’s boards. With Strategic Defense Initiative it is somewhat different.

"The principal lobbying firm for SDI, or Star Wars, was High Frontier, set up in 1981 by General Daniel Graham, a member of the national strategy committee of the ASC. His deputy at High Frontier became General Robert C. Richardson III, another member of the strategy committee. General James Abrahamson, a member of the ASC and a visitor of Le Cercle, was director of the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization from 1984 to 1989. Another prominent ASC member was Karl R. Bendetsen, chairman of the SDI Panel for Reagan at the Heritage Foundation from 1980 to 1984. His deputy was General Graham. Edward Teller was also part of the study group. In late 1981 the group began to split over the type of designs that should be supported. General Graham and his High Frontier group wanted to built a system with 'off the shelf' components. Other members pushed for more complicated systems that would require much more research: rail guns, particle beam weapons, chemical lasers, etc. The father of the hydrogen bomb, Edward Teller, further complicated matters by insisting 'on the inclusion of third-generation weapons powered by nuclear bombs'. Teller's idea of the nuclear X-ray laser was to detonate nuclear weapons in space in order to power 'up to 100,000 separate laser beams at 100,000 targets in space'. [104] This estimation seems to have been a bit of an overstatement. The project was canceled after inconclusive test results. Outside experts were of the opinion that the nuclear explosion would only be able to power a few dozen lasers at most. Many also thought it to be more practical and ethical to go with the non-nuclear option.

"Bendetsen and his camp that pushed for more exotic weapons, like lasers, railguns and particle beam weapons (Gen. Keegan actually tried to convince members of government that the Russians already had these weapons), were the favorites of Reagan, but it was Graham's Brilliant Pebbles system that was ultimately seen as the most practical of all SDI systems. Brilliant Pebbles relied on space-based pods filled with small missiles that would take out enemy ICBMs. The missiles didn't have any active warheads - kinetic energy was enough to destroy the targets. However, the program was eventually canceled in 1994 under the Clinton administration, which saw these systems as unnecessarily expensive and potentially destabilizing. It is only in modern times that the United States has been looking again for potentially interesting space-based weapons systems."

"For over fifty years, now, the war against UFOs has continued as we tried to defend ourselves against their intrusions. The Hughes hunter-killer satellites of the 1970s were our first step in applying a planetary defense system that held any real threat against EBEs. When, late in the 1970s, we realized that a directed-energy weapon and high-energy laser were even more effective than exploding satellites, our defensive ability was enhanced even further. We recognized that by applying both the technology we found at Roswell and Tesla's vision of a particle beam to our own antisatellite missiles and laser targeting equipment, we could achieve the rapid aim/rapid fire capability that these type of defenses demanded. But we were still playing cover-up games even though the Russians were now finally acknowledging that maybe cooperation between the superpowers was called for to meet a common threat.

"In the 1980s, both President Reagan and Chairman Gorbachev recognize the need for cooperation against a common enemy. While neither officially owned up to the threat of EBEs and alien hostilities, both acknowledge that if the United States and the Soviet Union could lay aside their differences and participate in a shared policy to defend the space around the earth, then both superpowers would benefit. For his part, President Reagan pushed hard for the rapid development and deployment of a space-based defense technology to defend the planet. Called the Strategic Defense Initiative, and derisively dubbed 'Star Wars' by the press, the SDI was described in 1985 in President Reagan's own words as 'a defense shield that won't hurt people but will knock down nuclear weapons before they can hurt people.'

"Briefly, the Strategic Defense Initiative was described by the White House and the military as a space-based defense system to protect the United States from an all-out nuclear attack by the Soviet Union. It would include satellites that could detect the massive nuclear launch within seconds, orbiting lasers to destroy the first wave of missiles, laser-equipped submarines that could defend against the next round of attacks, and a ground-based missile system providing the last line of defense. In addition, the SDI also included what I thought was the best of its weapons, a missile-launched kinetic energy beam weapon that locked onto incoming warheads or low-orbiting space vehicles and knocked out their electronics with a particle beam. The elegant aspect to the kinetic energy beam weapon was that you couldn't really defend against it. Lasers, even high-energy lasers, had their shortcomings in that once a laser beam bounced off the surface, the surrounding energy envelope protected the surface from subsequent pulses. You either knocked out your target right away or shielded against subsequent hits. But with a particle-beam weapon, you penetrated the surface, just like microwaving a piece of meat, destroyed its electronics to render it useless, and then broken apart or melded it from within.

"Amidst the warnings that the SDI wouldn't work, was a giant unscientific gamble and a corporate giveaway, couldn't provide the massive shield against nuclear missiles, would violate the ABM treaty President Johnson had negotiated with the Russians, and was a giant waste of the taxpayers money, guess what? 

"It worked!

"We didn't have to shoot down thousands of Soviet incoming warheads, and the Soviets never really cared about the ABM treaty in the first place because they knew they weren't going to launch a first strike and neither would we. We both knew who the real targets of the SDI were, and it wasn't a bunch of ICBM warheads. It was the UFOs, alien spacecraft thinking themselves invulnerable and invisible as they soared around the edges of our atmosphere, swooping down at will to destroy our communications with EMP bursts, buzz our spacecrafts, colonize our lunar surface, mutilate cattle in their own horrendous biological experiments, and even abduct human beings for their medical tests and hybridization of their species. And what was worse, we had to let them do it because we had no weapons to defend ourselves."

(The Day After Roswell, Philip J. Corso & William J. Birnes, pgs. 290-292)

"In the 1930s Tesla announced other bizarre and terrible weapons: a death ray, a weapon to destroy hundreds or even thousands of aircraft at hundreds of miles range, and his ultimate weapon to end all war – the Tesla shield, which nothing could penetrate. However, by this time no one any longer paid any real attention to the forgotten great genius. Tesla died in 1943 without ever revealing the secret of these great weapons and inventions.

"Unfortunately, today the Soviet Union has long since discovered and weaponized the Tesla scalar wave effects. Here we only have time to detail the most powerful of these frightening Tesla weapons – which Brezhnev undoubtedly was referring to in 1975 when the Soviet side at the SALT talks suddenly suggested limiting the development of new weapons 'more frightening than the mind of man had imagined.' One of these weapons is the Tesla howitzer recently completed at the Saryshagan missile range and presently considered to be either a high energy laser or a particle beam weapon..."

(Psychic Warfare, "Tesla's Secrets and the New Soviet Superweapons," Thomas Bearden, pg. 178) 

Peter Beter

General George Keegan

the HAARP facility in Alaska

"When the U.S. military invaded Iraq 14 years ago, in March 2003, it ignited a rebellion with its incompetent and harsh rule. Its response was to dub the resistance 'anti-Iraqi forces.' It was a brazen bit of propaganda, even by Pentagon standards...

"The target of the propaganda was not the Iraqi people. They frequently expressed more support for attacks by overwhelmingly Iraqi guerrilla groups on American forces than support for the U.S. occupation. The target was Americans, many of whom willingly swallowed the absurdity that the Iraqi resistance, and not the Americans, were 'foreigners, outside agitators, viruses newly burrowed into Iraq’s body politic,' as one pundit put it. 

"This nugget of history is newly relevant. It is key to understanding how Donald Trump is bringing the 'war on terror' home. Like the tumultuous Iraq occupation, Trump is weaponizing chaos. His goals are similar, too—consolidating autocratic rule and radically reshaping society.

"This strategy is evident in Trump’s America-First worldview: Every threat is foreign and everything foreign is a threat, whether undocumented immigrants, radical Islamic Terrorism, steel, industry, missiles, drugs, or 'bad ones.' They are all that stands in the way of 'A new chapter of American greatness.' 

"His method is simple, which is what makes him so dangerous. Like U.S. generals in Iraq who defined who was a real Iraqi or not, based on their subservience to the occupation, Trump splits the nation into real Americans and those who are threats."

"Did you know that the Trump administration almost went to war with Iran at the start of February?

"Perhaps you were distracted by Gen. Michael Flynn’s resignation as national security adviser or by President Trump’s online jihad against Nordstrom. Or maybe you missed the story because the New York Times bizarrely buried it in the midst of a long piece on the turmoil and chaos inside the National Security Council. Defense Secretary James Mattis, according to the paper, had wanted the U.S. Navy to 'intercept and board an Iranian ship to look for contraband weapons possibly headed to Houthi fighters in Yemen. … But the ship was in international waters in the Arabian Sea, according to two officials. Mr. Mattis ultimately decided to set the operation aside, at least for now. White House officials said that was because news of the impending operation leaked.'

"Get that? It was only thanks to what Mattis’s commander in chief has called 'illegal leaks' that the operation was (at least temporarily) set aside and military action between the United States and Iran was averted...

"The defense secretary has been lauded by politicians and pundits alike: the 'scholar-warrior' (New York Daily News) and 'most revered Marine in a generation' (Marine Corps Times) with 'the potential to act as a restraint' (New York Times) on an impulsive commander in chief as he is 'the anti-Trump' (Politico) and therefore 'good news for global order' (Wall Street Journal). 

"So why would a retired Marine Corps general such as Mattis be willing to provoke a conflict with Tehran over a single ship? The fact is that Mattis, too, is obsessed with Iran. He has hyperbolically called the Islamic Republic 'the single most enduring threat to stability and peace in the Middle East' and — in a Trump-esque descent into the world of conspiracy theories — suggested Tehran is working with ISIS. 'Iran is not an enemy of ISIS,' Mattis declaimed in 2016, because 'the one country in the Middle East that has not been attacked' by ISIS 'is Iran. That is more than happenstance, I’m sure.'..

"Mousavian is puzzled by the defense secretary’s hawkishness: 'He is one of the most experienced U.S. generals and he knows … the consequences of confrontation with Iran would be tenfold what the U.S. experienced in Afghanistan and Iraq combined.'

"Mattis has, in fact, been tied to some of the worst war crimes of the Iraq invasion. It was he who gave the order to attack the village of Mukaradeeb in April 2004 — a decision he would later admit took him only 30 seconds to approve — which killed 42 civilians, including 13 children, who were attending a wedding there. 'I don’t have to apologize for the conduct of my men,' he told reporters. 

"Six months later, in November 2004, it was Mattis who planned the Marine assault on Fallujah that reduced that city to rubble, forced 200,000 residents from their homes, and resulted, according to the Red Cross, in at least 800 civilian deaths."

"The White House is considering delegating more authority to the Pentagon to greenlight anti-terrorist operations like the SEAL Team 6 raid in Yemen that cost the life of a Navy SEAL, multiple U.S. officials tell The Daily Beast. It's part of an effort to step up the war on the so-called Islamic State.

"President Donald Trump has signaled that he wants his defense secretary, retired Marine Gen. Jim Mattis, to have a freer hand to launch time-sensitive missions quickly, ending what U.S. officials say could be a long approval process under President Barack Obama that critics claimed stalled some missions by hours or days.

"In declared war zones, U.S. commanders have the authority to make such calls, but outside such war zones, in ungoverned or unstable places like Somalia, Libya, or Yemen, it can take permissions all the way up to the Oval Office to launch a drone strike or a special-operations team.

"Trump’s subsequent defense of the Yemen raid, and discussion of accelerating other counterterrorist operations, shows his White House will be less risk averse to the possibility of U.S.—or civilian—casualties, unlike the Obama White House, which military officials say was extremely cautious to the point of frustrating some military commanders and counterterrorist operators...

"Trump officials believe loosening the permissions process can help turn up the heat against ISIS—and counterterrorist-focused agencies like the military’s Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) are lining up new targets in anticipation of more numerous and more rapid approvals.

"One model being considered is pre-delegating authority to Mattis on extremely sensitive operations like hostage rescues; for raids or drone strikes against pre-approved targets, that authority could be pushed much further down the chain of command—all the way down to the three-star general who runs JSOC. If his teams spot a target that’s already on the White House approved high-value target list, the elite force will be able to move into action, informing the national-security apparatus of the operation but not having to wait for permission."

"The U.S. government already spends $600 billion dollars a year on its military — more money than the next seven biggest spenders combined, including China and Russia.

"On Monday, the White House said it would request $54 billion more in military spending for next year. That increase alone is roughly the size of the entire annual military budget of the United Kingdom, the fifth-largest spending country, and it’s more than 80 percent of Russia’s entire military budget in 2015.

"If Congress were to follow Trump’s blueprint, the U.S. military budget could account for nearly 40 percent of global military spending next year. The U.S. would be outspending Russia by a margin of greater than 9 to 1."

"The White House will send federal departments a budget proposal on Monday containing the defense spending increase President Donald Trump promised, financed partly by cuts to the U.S. State Department, Environmental Protection Agency and other non-defense programs, two officials familiar with the proposal said.

"One of the officials said Trump's request for the Pentagon included more money for shipbuilding, military aircraft and establishing 'a more robust presence in key international waterways and chokepoints' such as the Strait of Hormuz and South China Sea."

"On day five in office, Trump signed executive orders that criminalize 11 million undocumented immigrants, making all of them a priority for deportation. He then widened the scope of immigration raids and empowered border agents to be more aggressive, such that they are now reportedly 'looking really hard for reasons to deny, instead of reasons to admit' foreign visitors. He proposed lower standards for immigration police, potentially unleashing 'rogue elements.' Jeff Sessions’ Department of Justice has vowed to pull back on consent decree with police departments, in effect endorsing police brutality. Trump plans to increase private detention facilities for asylum-seekers to 20,000 beds and has issued a new Muslim ban. He is ratcheting up tensions with Iran, escalating the brutal U.S.-Saudi war on Yemen, and demanding a $54 billion increase in military spending.

"These moves, along with attacks on civil society, comprise a plan to divide America along sectarian lines of race, religion, and politics as the Pentagon did in Iraq. But it’s not just what he is doing; it’s how he does it. Trump has a 'year zero' approach to governance, like the U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq. 

"Trump wants to wipe history clean, creating a regime of chaos. Stephen Bannon, his chief strategist, says as much: 'It’s going to get worse' and 'every day it is going to be a fight [for the] deconstruction of the administrative state.' Emboldening frontline police, border agents, and soldiers is Trump’s version of shock and awe. He is sowing fear and chaos and circumventing traditional chains of command. It’s similar to how he uses social media and conspiratorial news to win followers by bypassing and disorienting experts, media, and opinion-makers. 

"It is disorder by design, even if a specific act like the first version of the Muslim ban backfired. As shambolic as the Trump White House is, his state of constant meltdown benefits him. The more outrageous a falsehood the better, whether claiming more than 3 million illegal ballots cost him the popular vote or that Obama wiretapped his phones during the election. When opponents castigate Trump for a 'destructive' act that 'discredits our democracy' they miss the point. He wields lies and chaos as a battering ram against anything in his way: the press, civil liberties, the judiciary, federal agencies, science, basic reality."

"I’ve been asked often why I’ve written so much against the prevailing sentiments on Russia and Trump. It’s not just because this obsessive narrative distracts from Trump’s genuinely consequential actions or from the need to find an effective vessel for activism against über-right-wing nationalism. It’s not just because it’s driven by ugly and historically familiar anti-Rusisan xenophobia, nor because it dangerously ratchets up tensions between two nuclear-armed, traditionally hostile countries. Those things are all true, but that’s not the main impetus.

"Above all else, it’s because it’s an offensive assault on reason. This kind of deranged discourse is an attack on basic journalistic integrity, on any minimal obligation to ensure that one’s claims are based in evidence rather than desire, fantasy, and herd-enforced delusions. And it’s emanating from the most established and mainstream precincts of U.S. political and media elites, who have processed the severe disorientation and loss of position they feel from Trump’s shock election not by doing the work to patiently formulate cogent, effective strategies against him, but rather by desperately latching onto online 'dot-connecting' charlatans and spewing the most unhinged Birther-level conspiracies that require a complete abandonment of basic principles of rationality and skepticism...

"...Totally fraudulent stories about Russia are published on the internet. Those who do it – including the leading media outlets and their journalists – receive endless benefits: exploding follower counts on social media, gushing praise from their peers, media appearances, profitable traffic for their sites. But then when the stories fall apart and are debunked, as they so often are, the debunking is shared by virtually nobody, and there is zero accountability or cost to their reputations because their false stories were peddled for a Good Cause.

"The most obscenely transparent charlatans and grifters have built a huge social media following over the last year by feeding Democrats an endless stream of increasingly unhinged, insane conspiracy theories about Trump and Russia. That Trump is a Manchurian Candidate recruited by old Soviet leaders and installed in the White House as a 30-year-plan – or that any critics of Democrats are on the payroll of Putin – are completely acceptable theories which many of the Democrats’ most beloved commentators endorse literally on a daily basis.

"Part of it is exciting: they get to center themselves as intrepidly uncovering an international Moscow-led plot to infiltrate the U.S. Part of it is self-excusing: it explains why Democrats have failed without having to confront the party’s fundamental corruption. Part of it is personally enriching: just as was true of the Clinton years, these conspiracies have created a whole stable of new media stars, and the crazier they are, the bigger their following will be.

"But whatever the motives, what’s most damaging is how mainstreamed it’s all become. These are the same circles which endlessly rail against misleading reports from Fox News and right-wing radio, and the dangers of Fake News. And yet – in the name of stopping Trump and winning the New Cold War – they are the most enthusiastic disseminators of exactly what they denounce.

"The most ironic part of it all is that they are achieving exactly the opposite of what they convinced their followers they are doing: they are strengthening Trump, not weakening him, by poisoning and corroding all of the institutions that – if they had any credibility – could effectively check him."

"Vice President Pence stands alone.

"In a new USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll, Americans say they have mostly unfavorable impressions of just about everybody on a list of public figures and institutions — except, that is, for the vice president, who has become a familiar figure in interviews on Sunday TV shows and elsewhere as he explains and defends President Trump.

"Only Mike Pence scored a net positive rating, with 47% of those surveyed saying they had a generally favorable impression of him and 35% a mostly unfavorable one. The rest were undecided. That 11-point advantage sets him apart from everyone else on the survey, including his boss. Trump's favorable rating has improved a bit since our December poll, but it's still narrowly in negative territory: 45% favorable, 47% unfavorable."

Mike "Teflon" Pence

" 'Clinton stated privately this month that she is quietly pushing for a Pence takeover. She stated that Pence is predictable hence defeatable,' Assange wrote. 

" 'Two IC officials close to Pence stated privately this month that they are planning on a Pence takeover. Did not state if Pence agrees,' he further added."

Julian Assange

" 'I would find all of that dialogue to be absurd and frankly offensive,' Pence told radio host Laura Ingraham. 'It is the greatest honor of my life to serve shoulder-to-shoulder with the 45th President of the United States. To see his leadership every day, to see the compassion that he has for the American people every day. I would dismiss that out of hand and tell you that I'm just, I'm so excited about the progress that we've been made strengthening this country, protecting this country, reviving this country's economy and all credit goes to President Donald Trump.' "

The Family sponsors the National Prayer Breakfast which every president since Eisenhower has dutifully attended annually

"Hillary may well be God's beautiful child, but she's not a member of Coe's Family. Rather, I've been told at Ivanwald, she's a 'friend,' less elect than a member, but more chosen than the rest of us. A fellow traveler but not a sister. Her goals are not their goals; but when on occasion they coincide, Hillary and the Family can work together. Such collaborations, as much as the endeavors of true believers such as Brownback, are a measure of the mainstreaming of American fundamentalism. The theology of Jesus plus nothing is totalitarian in scope, but diplomatic in practice. It doesn't conquer; it infects, as Abram used to preach. Within the body politic, it doesn't confront ideas, it coexists with them, it cells multiplying by absorbing enemies rather than destroying them...

"In her memoir Living History, Hillary describes her first encounter with the Family. It was at a lunch organized on her behalf in February 1993 at the Cedars, 'an estate on the Potomac that serves as the headquarters for the National Prayer Breakfast and the prayer groups it has spawned around the world. Doug Coe, the longtime National Prayer Breakfast organizer, is a unique presence in Washington: a genuinely loving spiritual mentor and guide to anyone, regardless of party or faith, who wants to deepen his or her relationship with God.'..."

(The Family, Jeff Sharlet, pgs. 272-273) 

"The Family wants to 'transcend' left and right with a faith that consumes politics, replacing fundamental differences with the unity to be found in submission to religious authority. Conservatives sit pretty in prayer and wait for liberals looking for 'common ground' to come to them in search of compromise. Hillary, Rob Schenck noted, became a regular visitor to the Family's C Street House in 2005. 'She needs that nucleus of energy that the Coe camp produces.' That summer, she appeared as part of the threesome that shocked old school fundamentalist: Bill, Hillary and Billy, live in New York for Graham's less crusade. Before tens of thousands, the patriarch of Christian conservatism said Bill 'ought to let his wife run the country.' Bonhomie and cheap blessing, maybe, but it was the kind of endorsement that Bill never won, despite Graham's custom of speaking sweet nothings to power." 

(The Family, Jeff Sharlet, pgs. 276-277) 

Hillary

"Republican Donald Trump, a far-right demagogue who campaigned on a slew of bigoted, xenophobic policies, has won the 2016 presidential election in a shocking victory few people predicted.

"What was not often acknowledged in Trump’s heated race against Democrat Hillary Clinton, however, was how her campaign fueled his rise to power.

"An email recently released by the whistleblowing organization WikiLeaks shows how the Clinton campaign and Democratic Party bear direct responsibility for propelling the bigoted billionaire to the White House.

"In its self-described 'pied piper' strategy, the Clinton campaign proposed intentionally cultivating extreme right-wing presidential candidates, hoping to turn them into the new 'mainstream of the Republican Party' in order to try to increase Clinton’s chances of winning."

Douglas "Doug" Coe, 1928-2017

longtime Family head Douglas Coe

"In the 1920's this system of economic and political power formed a hierarchy headed by the Morgan interests and played a principal role both in political and business life. Morgan, operating on the international level in cooperation with his allies abroad, especially in England, influenced the events of history to degree which cannot be specified in detail but which certainly was tremendous. Nevertheless, the slow developments of business life which we have mentioned were making investment bankers like Morgan obsolete, and the deflationary financial policies on which these bankers insisted were laying the foundation of the economic collapse which ended their rule in general social disaster by 1940."

(Tragedy and Hope, Carroll Quigley, pg. 532)

J.P. Morgan

"The shift of the farm block, light industry, commercial interests (notably department stores), real estate, professional people, and mass, unskilled, labor to the Democratic Party in 1932 resulted in the election of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. The new administration sought to curtail the power of the two opposition and exploiting groups (bankers and heavy industry) and to reward and help the groups which had elected it... 

"The New Deal's actions against finance and heavy industry were chiefly aimed at preventing those two from ever repeating their actions of the 1920-1933 period...."

(Tragedy and Hope, Carroll Quigley, pg. 533)

FDR

"When Roosevelt first campaigned for president, he did attack 'money changers' and financial elites, but in truth he was only attacking a small segment of them – those associated with the bank of JP Morgan and its holding companies who had agents in the Federal Reserve, which mismanaged interest rate policy during the 1920s, which in turn helped create the stock market bubble that crashed in 1929. Roosevelt had the support of the Rockefeller family, which owned Chase Bank, and the bank's managers, who were rivals of JP Morgan..."

(The War State, Michael Swanson, pg. 50)

"With the interlocking transformations in East-West, North-South, and United States-Japanese-Western European relations threatening collapse of Pax Americana and little to take its place but the shuttle diplomacy of a peripatetic Secretary of State, Chase Manhattan Bank chairman David Rockefeller brought together Wall Street investment bankers, multinational corporate directors, and members of the foreign-policy establishment identified with its liberal flank to develop a blueprint for a new world order. These elite figures were joined by their counterparts from Japan and Western Europe, hence the organization's christening as the Trilateral Commission. As one observer reported after an early meeting of the Commission, 'It was, in short, a remarkable cross-section of the interlocking establishments of the world's leading industrial nations.' Only four senators were extended membership in the elite group; one of these was Walter Mondale of Minnesota. One governor, Daniel Evans of Washington, was invited to participate as was one former governor, listed as James E. Carter Jr. of Georgia. Carter had recently appeared on the cover of Time's special issue on the 'New South' and was recommended for Trilateral membership by Time editor and Trilateralist Hedley Donovan.

"As noted above, Foreign Policy began its first issue with the proclamation that 'an era in American foreign policy which began in the late 1940's, has ended.' The same might be said of David Rockefeller and his Trilateral colleagues' view of the Council on Foreign Relations as an organization. It was bound to closely to the Cold War and Containment Militarism, a policy many of its members still insisted on trying to justify, as evident from the bitter debate within the Council over the lessons of Vietnam. The Trilateral Commission would start anew, incorporating the liberal wing of the Council on Foreign Relations but without the burden of the 'institutional memory,' to develop the kind of consensus that the Council had furnished for Containment Militarism in the Cold War years. This time, however, the consensus will be built around 'the management of interdependence' which a Trilateral position paper identified as 'the central problem of world order for the coming years' – as opposed to the containment of communism which had dominated elite thinking for the previous quarter century."

(Peddlers of Crisis, Jerry W. Sanders, pgs. 176-176)

the logo of the Trilateral Commission

David Rockefeller (center left) with several other luminaries of the far right Le Cercle network that he later broke with, including Antoine Pinay (who I believe is on the far left) and the infamous Benoit de Bonvoisin (far right)

But in the second decade of the twenty first century, the longstanding assumptions concerning Globalization are under fire as never before. The national security state has grown vast and powerful during the War on Terror, far surpassing the not inconsiderate power it wielded during the Cold War. But increasingly this ascension threatens to turn to ash in the mouth of the Pentagon with the rise of the BRICS nations, but most especially China. Decades of free trade have made China wealthy and powerful while threatening the ability of the Pentagon to wage war against other major world powers (noted before here). What's more, there's the glacier size headache of dealing with technological espionage, with has thrived in the era of neo-liberalism. Those super secret weapons that Pentagon is reputed to have may not remain super secret for much longer.

And David Rockefeller is as responsible for this state of affairs as anyone. He and his close partner, Henry Kissinger, laid the foundation for the opening of the global to American corporations in the 1970s with their push for detente with the Soviet Union. As a result, Russia, China and many other formerly closed economies were opened up to extensive US investment during that decade, paving the way for the rise of the BRICS as major industrial powers in the next century.

"Nixon's and Kissinger's arrival in the White House in 1969 coincided with David Rockefeller's becoming CEO of the Chase Manhattan Bank. The Nixon-Kissinger foreign policy of detente was highly congruous with Rockefeller's push to internationalize Chase Manhattan banking operations. Thus in 1973 Chase became the first American bank to open an office in Moscow. A few months later, thanks to an invitation arranged by Kissinger, Rockefeller became the first U.S. banker to talk with Chinese Communist leaders in Beijing. Rockefeller also served as intermediary between the White House and other foreign leaders, such as Gamel Abdel Nasser and Anwar Sadat in Egypt, King Faisal of Saudi Arabia, and the leaders of Oman."

(The Road to 9/11, Peter Dale Scott, pg. 38)

Henry Kissinger

But now an ever growing number of the American elite are becoming disillusioned with these policies. For much of the past two decades the United States has been falling behind while our principal rivals are rapidly closing the gap. Throughout the 1990s and early 00s this was not especially concerning when China seemed committed to the New World Order. But with the creation of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) China has effectively established its own global economic order as a direct challenge to US-dominated institutions such as the World Bank and the IMF.

It would seem that the Chinese elite are not content to play second fiddle to their counterparts in Europe and the US indefinitely and this, along with their massive military build up, are the first salvos in a quest for a new international order.

With such pressures coming to bare against the current globalist world order, Rockefeller's death couldn't have come at a worse time. For years he was the rallying point for the globalists of the United States and Europe. But with his death and the extreme age of his closet colleagues, there should be real questions arising as to how long this system can survive its founder's death. The great Institute for the Study of Globalization and Covert Politics already considered these implications several years ago, noting:

"One thing that should be taken into account is that the average age of the Rockefeller clique at the top of ISGP's Superclass Index is about 86. David Rockefeller is a solid century old, George Shultz and Henry Kissinger are in their 90s and a lot of their closest friends and proteges aren't lagging behind very far. There's no clear heir to David Rockefeller either, who, along with his family, built almost the complete worldwide network of NGOs in the post-World War II era. His son, Dr. Richard Rockefeller, died in a plane crash in 2014. While respected in the medical world, Dr. Richard Rockefeller had no influence in the world of business, politics, or think tanks. The same goes for David Rockefeller, Jr., or the rest of David Rockefeller's children (all daughters): they have been involved in various philanthropic projects, maybe a think tank here and there, but they have virtually no political influence and do not possess the vast riches anymore the Rockefeller family acquired in the late 19th and early 20th century through the oil business.

"Apart from David Rockefeller and Laurance Rockefeller, the only member of the Rockefeller family with any political influence heading into the 1990s was Jay Rockefeller, West Virginia's senator from 1985 to 2015, who served as vice chairman and chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee in the years after 9/11. A son of David's brother, Nelson Rockefeller, Jay Rockefeller has been involved in a number of NGOs - including Bilderberg 1971-1972, the CFR, Alfalfa, Trilateral Commission, Japan Society and Asia Society - but his influence on national or international politics never even remotely compared to that of the Henry Kissinger-David Rockefeller duo. Jay is getting into his 80s, so chances are we won't be hearing much from him anymore. And while his son Justin has been active in the NGO world, this also has been at a rather low level, similar to the children of David Rockefeller. 

"Thus, it will be interesting to see how the liberal establishment, which for almost a century has had the Rockefeller family to rally around, will adapt to this new situation, especially in a world with dwindling national resources, a recalcitrant Russia, an emerging China, rapidly rising CO2 and methane levels, and other global challenges."

Jay Rockefeller

Thus, it would appear that the Rockefeller family is poised to fade away from the halls of power just as their long time rivals the Morgans did over half a century ago. And with globalism's longstanding "Rock of Ages" now gone, these challenges are only going to become more pronounced. It is likely that the infighting and fractures within the American elite will only become more extreme, which may lead to desperation as their status is threatened both from without (i.e. China and Russia) and within (primarily from the far right).

As such, the prospect of another major war was likely increased even more with Rockefeller's death. While he was able to maintain some semblance of order through sheer force of personality in the twenty-first century, the collapse of the post-WWII order was already inevitable and with it will come another era of chaos and instability. Rockefeller was a monstrous figure on any number of level to be sure, but he was also the product of a generation of elites that had witnessed modern warfare among superpowers first hand. As such, he and many of the elites of that generation seemed to realize that there was a line that should never be crossed.

Those now in the driver's seat do not appear to have such qualms. And that is most distressing.

some may even believe they are fulfilling prophecy...

J. Allen Hynek (left) and Jacques Vallee (right)

"... John Lear, who largely brought us the story of Area 51, also has an Air Force background. His father is primarily known as the creator of the Lear Jet, but more importantly, Lear grew up in the circle of General Jimmy Doolittle and General Hoyt Vandenberg. This was a rather ultra-right American Security Council-linked Air Force circle. Doolittle worked with LeMay and was another good friend of Senator Barry Goldwater. Both Vandenberg and Doolittle were said to be Majestic 12, so is it a coincidence that Lear came onto the scene with Linda Howe right when the bogus Aquarius Project and Majestic 12 documents were released? Reportedly Lear's mother asked Vandenberg about the Majestic 12 documents after their release, with the old general confessing to the group's existence. Of course, the documents are bogus. We don't need to wonder about that anymore. The important thing here is that we have another apparent Air Force asset steering up the UFO community. And not just any asset, but one whose family is closely tied to persons who originally cooked up the Roswell saga. The fact that Lear was a CIA pilot in contra operations hardly matters at this point anymore." 

General Jimmy Doolittle (top) and General Hoyt Vandenberg (bottom)

"The process of integrating ex-Nazi emigre groups into U.S. nuclear operations may be traced at least to early 1947, when General Hoyt Vandenberg became the first chief of staff of the newly independent U.S. Air Force. Vandenberg had commanded the Ninth Air Force in Europe during World War II, then been tapped to head the Central Intelligence Group, the immediate predecessor to the CIA, in 1946. Among the general's responsibilities at the air force was the development of the written plans describing strategies and tactics for the use of America's new nuclear weapons in the event of war...

"The army, air force, and CIA all began competing programs to prepare for the post-nuclear battlefield. This included creation of what eventually came to be called the Special Forces – better known today as the Green Berets – in the army and the air resupply and communications wings in the air force. The job of these units... was to set up anti-Communist political leaders backed by guerrilla armies inside the USSR and Eastern Europe in the wake of an atomic war, capture political power in strategic sections of the country, choke off any remaining Communist resistance, and ensure that the Red Army could not regroup for a counterattack...

" 'The Eastern European and Russian emigre groups we had picked up from the Germans were the center of this; they were the personnel,' according to the retire colonel. 'The CIA was to prepare these forces in peacetime; stockpile weapons, radios, and jeeps for them to use; and get them ready in the event of war....' "

(Blowback Christopher Simpson, pgs. 139-140)

the legendary William Cooper

"The Knapp interview of Robert Lazar had exploded like a bomb among the ranks of American ufologists. Here was a clean-cut, articulate, educated young man who knew physics and who casually claimed to have seen nine flying saucers inside hangars at Area S-4 in the vicinity of Groom Lake and Area 51. Not only had he seen them, but he had touched them and he had been hired to reverse-engineer their propulsion system, which was based on antigravity and used a stable superheavy element – specifically, element 115 – as part of this field. Lazar had handled element 115 and even had a piece of it at his house for a while. There were rumors that someone had tried to try to kill Lazar because of these revelations, and all kinds of bizarre speculation circulated about those advanced disks in Air Force hangars..."

(Revelations, Jacques Vallee, pg. 204)

"... One day, in December 1987, he had been approached for a job under Naval Intelligence. He was interviewed at a facility of EG&G, a defense contractor, although there is no implication that the company is involved with the project itself."

(Revelations, Jacques Vallee, pg. 205) 

John Lear

"...Born in Florida in 1959, Lazar is known to have taken courses in electronics at the Los Angeles-based Pierce College in the 1970s, and to have spent some time employed with Fairchild, a company founded in 1959 by Nobel Prize-winner and co-inventor of the transistor, William Shockley. But that's only part of it. Lazar claims – and continues to claim – that he received an MS in electronics from the California Institute of Technology (Cal Tech), and an MS in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and also that he worked on some pretty classified stuff in the process."

(Keep Out, Nick Redfern, pg. 19)

"...No convincing evidence of any sort has ever surfaced in support of Lazar's claims to have obtained degrees at Cal Tech and MIT. Critics and debunkers gleefully rub their hands together and cry: 'Foul, Bob!' Lazar's response? The government is trying to discredit him by erasing significant portions of his background and life history. On the other hand, it might reasonably be argued that the lack of credible data pertaining to Lazar's educational assertions would be enough to rule out the possibility of his ever having been considered for employment in the world of government-funded, cutting-edge science.

"Lazar's claims to have worked at Los Alamos were also disputed, and viewed with suspicion by certain elements of both the UFO research community and the mainstream media. In fact, his claims were outright refuted by spokespersons of Los Alamos itself. For a short while, at least. Soon, something came along the turn the issue on its head: KLAS-TV's George Knapp found Lazar's name in the October 1982 telephone directory of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. When the evidence was presented to grim, red-faced Los Alamos officials by Knapp, they quickly chose to modify their position. The new version of events was that Lazar had been employed by them after all, but under the umbrella of an outside contract company called Kirk-Meyer. They maintain that Lazar never, ever, not even once, worked on issues of a secret or sensitive nature. However, colleagues of Lazar had informed Knapp that Lazar worked at Los Alamos in matters relative to the highly sensitive Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) – or 'Star Wars' program – that had been grandly envisioned by President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s."

(Keep Out, Nick Redfern, pgs. 27-28)

"In June 1982, legendary theoretical physicist Edward Teller gave a lecture at Los Alamos, and Lazar attended. As Lazar approached the venue on the day in question, he was amazed to see Teller sitting casually outside on a wall, reading the aforementioned Los Alamos Monitor article on Lazar himself. This was highly fortuitous, so Lazar introduced himself and had a brief chat with the man who was one of the inspirations for the deranged Dr. Strangelove in Stanley Kubrick's classic 1964 movie of the same name."

(Keep Out, Nick Redfern, pg. 20)

Edward Teller

"One 16 February 1949 a secret conference was held at Los Alamos to discuss the UFO phenomenon, in particular the so-called 'green fireballs' which were then being reported in the area. Among the scientists and military officials present where the nuclear physicist Dr. Edward Teller and Dr. Lincoln LaPaz, an astronomer from the University of New Mexico whose expert opinion was called on throughout the conference..."

(Above Top Secret, Timothy Good, pgs. 265-266)

"Now let's fast-forward to 1988. At that time, Lazar was running a photo lab in Las Vegas, but he was on the lookout for far more gainful employment. He sent out a resume to Teller, who remembered Lazar and his beefed-up Honda. This was very good news. It got even better when Teller agreed to use his contacts to see about getting Lazar back into the world of physics. As a result, Lazar was approached by a representative of Edgerton, Germeshausen, and Grier, Inc. (EG&G), a U.S. defense contractor. Thus began a strange saga filled with many a cloak, dagger, and hall of mirrors."

(Keep Out, Nick Redfern, pg. 21)

"Let's go back to the beginning, to Lazar's claims that he was offered the job of a lifetime as a result of having approached Dr. Edward Teller. When questioned after the murky matter began to take shape within UFO research circles as well as the mainstream media, Teller did not deny having met Lazar. Nor did Teller deny having referred Lazar to additional sources that may ultimately have led him to area 51. In fact, Teller actually squirmed, with distinct uneasiness apparent in his voice, manner, and appearance, when he uttered the following words, after being put on the spot by an enterprising television journalist: 'I probably met him. I might have said to somebody I met him and liked him, after I met him, and if I like him. But I don't remember him.'..."

(Keep Out, Nick Redfern, pg. 27)

" 'What kind of work were you doing?'

" 'We were back-engineering the propulsion system. They gave me briefings on that. A lot of it didn't make sense.'

" 'What do you mean?'

" 'Well, for one thing, there was no theoretical work at the facility. And much of the physical research was inept. They told us that a team had cut up one of the reactors by sawing it off in two. When they tried to run it, the thing exploded in their faces. That took place in May 1987, before they expelled the Russians from the project.

"Indeed, that was absurd. No one in his right sense would have done this; a project manager would have stopped it. Lazar agreed: it did not make sense. Nor did his own presence there makes sense. He said: 

" 'I'm no research physicist. If those were really alien disk, they should have had the best scientists in the country working on them. Instead they gave us these briefings and just told us to try anything we liked. Nothing was written down. 

 " 'What did you have in the lab, on your workbench?

" 'I had a digital voltmeter,' said Lazar.

" 'That's all?' exclaimed one of my friends.

" ' I also had an oscilloscope. That's it.'

"Where were the x-ray inspection systems, the multichannel analyzers, the signal generators that are the standard tools of the high-tech trade?"

(Revelations, Jacques Vallee, pgs. 205-206)

Bob Lazar

"[Michael] Aquino is bright and 'well educated.' He graduated with honors from Santa Barbara high school in 1964 and was the National Commander the Eagle Scout Honor Society of the Boy Scouts of America 1965-66. He received a Department of the Army scholarship to the University of California and after graduation served his country as a psyops officer in Vietnam where he received the Army Commendation Medal, Air Medal, Bronze Star, Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry from the Vietnamese government, an Oak Leaf Cluster to the Army Commendation Medal, and a second Oak Leaf Cluster in 1980.

"Not only is a Aquino a citizen in good standing with the U.S. military (now the reserves), he's a member in good standing in academia. He is, in fact a doctor having obtained his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1980. His dissertation was entitled The Neutron Bomb. His resume says he's qualified in International Relations, Comparative Politics, American Government and Political Theory. For several years he was a consulting faculty member of the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. He's a member of the National Advisory Board of the American Security Council, a member of the World Future Society and the L5 Society and the Academy of Magical Arts, Inc. (the 'Magic Castle' of Hollywood.)"

(Operation Mind Control, Walter H. Bowart, pg. 162)

Anton LaVay

"On the eve of the North solstice, June 21, 1975, Aquino performed a magical 'Working' and Satan purportedly appeared to him in the image of Set – the oryx-headed god of death and destruction that Aquino claims is the earliest manifestation of the Christian devil, dating back to 3000 BC. The result was a document, The Book of Coming Forth by Night, in which Set declared the dawning of the 'Aeon of Set.' According to the document, the origins of the new era can be traced back to 1904, when Set appeared to Aleister Crowley in Cairo in the guise of his guardian angel, Aiwass, and declared Crowley the herald for the dawning 'Aeon of Horus.' In 1966, LeVay ushered in the Aeon of Satan, an intermediary phase that symbolized indulgence and that was to prepare the way for the Aeon of Set, which would bring forth enlightenment."

(Satan Wants You, Arthur Lyons, pgs. 126-127) 

the Wewelsburg sun wheel to the left

"... Aquino was interested in National Socialism as a case study in rhetorical, symbolic and psychological warfare and had wanted to visit Wewelsburg ever since first reading popular accounts about it... After conducting extensive research, he concluded (similar to the present author) that writers were all reproducing the same descriptions of the castle taken from Schellenberg (1956) and Hohne (1967). Aquino first visited Wewelsburg in October 19, 1982 and immediately realized that all previously published descriptions of the castle's interiors and furnishings were widely inaccurate. He sent a detailed account of his visit in a letter to the ToS priesthood dated November 8, 1982... which was subsequently published in the February 1983 issue of Scroll of Set. Aquino's description of the North Tower was among the first accurate accounts published; he was unaware of the groundbreaking volume of Huser (1982) which it appeared earlier that year. At that time security arrangements at Wewelsburg were considerably more lax than they are today an elderly museum guide left Aquino alone in the North Tower for an extended period of time... 

"Aquino remained in the Gruft from 3:00 – 4:30 PM and performed a magical rite that has come to be known as the 'Wewelsburg Working.' The purpose of the ritual was three-fold: 1) to aid in understanding an ongoing crisis in the ToS dating to June/July of that year, 2) to energize the upcoming year and 3) to summon the Powers of Darkness at this powerful locus. Before leaving the museum, Aquino signed the visitor's log providing tangible evidence of his visit to Wewelsburg (reproduced in... 2011...). Aquino came away from the ritual feeling rejuvenated and inspired to reform the ToS Order of the Trapezoid on a new theoretical basis in order to explore the National Socialist magical current. News of Aquino's ritual spread throughout the worldwide occult community spurring interest in Wewelsburg and its mysterious sun wheel. Occultists in increasing numbers began visiting Wewelsburg. In 2010 the Kreismuseum Wewelsburg contacted the ToS concerning the inclusion of a narrative about the Wewelsburg Working and the Order of the Trapezoid in a new exhibit."

(The Black Sun Unveiled, James Pontolillo, pgs. 55-57)

the infamous North Tower of Wewelsburg

"We are fortunate that the Auschwitz taboo prevents people from looking too closely at. . . Nazi Germany, or from experimenting with any of its regular governmental doctrines. Because they work. They are the essence of true political power. Anti-Semitism is irrelevant to them... It is ironically true that a right-wing backlash in the United States – which is what the neo-Nazis are hoping for – would wipe them out first. If an American Fuehrer does appear, he won't be wearing a uniform with a swastika armband. He will wear a business suit, and he will be calling popular attention to the patriotic virtues in 1776." 

(Michael Aquino, taken from Arthur Lyons' Satan Wants You, pg. 174)

General Paul E. Vallely

"... A three-year-old girl, reportedly molested at the Army's Presidio day-care Center in San Francisco, had fingered Aquino as the same 'Mikey' who photographed her in the nude and sexually abused her in a black-painted room with a cross on the ceiling. On August 14, 1987, Aquino's home was raided by police detectives, FBI agents, and members of the Army's Criminal Investigation Division. Several carloads of 'evidence' were seized and what Aquino called a 'modern witch-hunt in the most classical sense,' but no charges were ever filed against Aquino or any member of his church. In April 1989, Aquino filed formal complaints against to SFPD detectives involved in the raid, and police commissioners sustained the complaints in November 1990. Detective Sandi Gallant was 'counseled' to avoid derogatory comments on Aquino's church or lifestyle, while Detective Glen Pamfiloff got a written reprimand for his conduct on the 1987 raid."

(Raising Hell, Michael Newton, pgs. 19-20)

Aquino has been linked to the ASC since the 1980s, but it appears by the 2010s he was hotly contesting the extent of his membership. The great ISGP was able to contact Aquino and seek clarification on these points. Of Aquino's responses, ISGP states:

"I specifically looked for a connection between Aquino and the American Security Council and found it rather quickly. He appears to have known ASC president John Fisher [85], who, just as General Richardson, served on James Angleton's Security and Intelligence Fund, and in the 1980s was reported to be a member of the advisory board of the American Security Council. [86] In addition, he appears to have the same hawkish political stances as the ASC while his former boss, General Paul Vallely, a close associate of the ultra-connected CIA spook James Woolsey and Angleton protege Neil Livingstone [87], became a prominent figure in the Center for Security Policy. Aquino, however, denies knowing absolutely anyone even remotely connected to the ASC, claims he never was an advisory board member and basically says that all he did was pick up an offer of the ASC to send him newsletters. As for why Fisher appeared in his source-appreciations, he doesn't know "specifically why" he put him in there. His amnesia and non-involvement is all just a little too convenient for me and I have trouble buying it, especially after claiming never to have even heard of James or Suzanne Woolsey. I mean, this is an intelligence officer who has credited the CIA and DIA with providing him information for his papers. This is a person trained as a psychological warfare specialist. And he never heard of former CIA director James Woolsey - who held a position at Offutt Air Force Base in 1987-1988 and whose wife, a psychologist by training, had already known Warren Buffett for at least 10 years previously? The same Warren Buffett who was very close to the leadership of Offutt and had access to the base? Maybe we should remain a little skeptical for the time being..."

In the footnotes, ISGP published several of the questions and responses from Aquino concerning the ASC:

"Did you know John Fisher? You've credited him in your 'Neutron Bomb' paper. 'Yes, I see that he was included in my list of source-appreciations, but at this point in time I don't know specifically why. When I was researching the dissertation, I cast nets out to every possible source, and of course thanked those who responded and/or gave me information/further leads. But now I don't know what that might have been in Mr. Fisher's case. I just did a search for his name elsewhere in the dissertation, including the footnotes & bibliography, and didn't find anything. So I presume he may have given me some source leads to track down in Washington, etc.' "

"Were you an advisory board member of the ASC? 'From what I recall, all members were designated "Advisory Board", which I assume was just a gimmick to make us feel more important. It was still just a correspondence membership.' The ASC refuses to clarify this question to me." 

Colonel Michael Aquino

This researcher does not consider Aquino's responses to be particularly believable either. Beyond the points raised by ISGP, there's also the question of why the ASC would arbitrarily list Aquino in its National Advisory Board if he had only signed up for a newsletter. Its not like Aquino --then only a major --would have brought the organization any real prestige. Whatever recognition Aquino had by that point came from his exploits with the CoS and ToS. And such affiliations wouldn't exactly have been to warmly received by the ASC's rank and file.

In fairness to Aquino, I tend to find many of the more extreme allegations commonly leveled against him such as his involvement in pedophilia to be rather dubious. Aquino never attempted to hide his occult exploits and does not ever seem to have shied away from publicity. His profile just seems far too high profile for something life a pedophile ring, which surely would be carried out in the strictest secrecy by individuals avoiding the limelight at all costs.

Aquino playing mind war games on various alternative communities seems far more plausible. He has been involved on the fringes of various New Age-centric groups since the late 1960s and seems to have embraced the allegations leveled at him by the conspiratorial right with ample gusto over the years.

But was there something more to Aquino's connections to the ASC than disinformation and psyops? Another military man linked to the ASC who would later befriend Aquino may indicate that there were some very strange projects being perused by the National Advisory Board indeed by the 1980s. This figure shall be considered in the next installment. Until then, stay tuned dear reader.

What's more, among Ufologists there is a longstanding theory that the modern transistor did not in fact have Earthly origins, but that it had been acquired by humanity from "other sources." As was noted in the Fringe series, the Roswell incident has long been linked to the actual origins of the transistor. The Secret Sun's Christopher Knowles, in his groundbreaking Lucifer's Technologies series, also addresses the linkage of the transistor to Roswell as well as the very murky history of said invention.

a replica of the alleged first working transistor

But Shockley is my concern here and not the transistor per se, so let us return to the matter at hand. By 1954 Shockley had greatly alienated his colleagues at Bell for reasons indicated above. As such, he decided to relocate to the West Coast in 1956 and found his own lab, Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, in Mountain View, California of the famed Santa Clara County. The parent of Shockley's lab, Beckman Instruments, was the first company working on silicon semiconductors in what would come to be known as "Silicon Valley."

"Under Shockley's proposal, non-taxpayers with an IQ below 100 would have been paid $1,000 for each of their IQ points under 100 if they agreed to be sterilized. Such an intervention in the gene pool was necessary, he argued, to curb what he called 'dysgenics,' overbreeding among the 'genetically disadvantaged.' "

"... Before Draper's death, the physicist found himself, as had George, Kuttner, Garrett, and others before him, the direct recipient of regular cash gifts, transmitted by Weyher on behalf of an unnamed client who wanted to provide the funds 'as a token of his esteem' for Shockley's work. Shockley's gifts were more substantial than those for previous recipients, coming to more than $22,000 between 1968 and 1970 ($109,000 AFI)... In addition, other gifts in the form of securities from Morgan Guaranty Trust, totaling $76,000 ($370,000 AFI) between 1968 in 1971, were also sent to Stanford to be used for Shockley's 'research,' accompanied by telegrams from same bank official who had forwarded the Colonel's contributions to the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, requesting as usual that 'the fact and amount of the gift be kept confidential.'

"Finally, there were two types of acknowledged assistance from Pioneer. Between 1969 and 1976, the fund contributed almost $175,000 ($689,000 AFI) in grants to Stanford to support Shockley's 'research into the factors which affect genetic potential.' Pioneer also provided $54,500 ($169,000 AFI) to Shockley's own nonprofit organization to promote eugenics – the Foundation for Research and Education on Eugenics and Dysgenics (FREED) – which had begun with a $10,000 ($44,000 AFI) contribution from Weyher, probably another gift from the Colonel. Although FREED was Shockley's idea, George S. Leonard, previously a member of the CCFAF and one of the attorneys for the intervenors in the attempt to overturn Brown, actually drafted the bylaws and executed the necessary paperwork for its creation. The organization's purpose, according to Leonard's bylaws, was to engage in activities designed to 'further public understanding, legal utilization, and academic acceptance' of scientific information on differences in the 'natures, capabilities, and potentialities of men.' In practice, FREED functioned as a publicist for Shockley, producing a newsletter with descriptions of his public appearances, his press releases, and copies of articles written by and about him. And like any good public relations operation, FREED sought to increase its base, requesting permission from recipients of the newsletter to have their written support for eugenics circulated 'to other people who live in your neighborhood'; apparently Shockley was ready to organize a eugenics movement door-to-door. Between the various gifts and grants, Shockley received $337,500 (almost $1.4 million AFI) altogether from the 'throne in New York.' "

(The Funding of Scientific Racism, William H. Tucker, pgs. 144-145)

William Shockley

"... With his move to the capital, Pearson also endeavored to create a new, more respectable image as a mainstream conservative, eventually gaining membership on the editorial boards of such think tanks as the Heritage Foundation, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and the American Security Council. At the same time, however, he made one more attempt to form a Nazi international, taking control of a new United States chapter of the World Anti-Communist League (WACL) after the old chapter renounced its membership, complaining, in an internal memo, that Pearson had filled the organization with 'neo-Nazi, ex-Nazi, fascist, neo-fascist, and anti-Semitic groups,' including former S.S. officers who have been members of the Northern League. According to two journalist, the numerous ex-Nazi collaborators and war criminals directly recruited to the WACL by Pearson 'represented one of the greatest fascist blocs in postwar Europe.' Previous conservative groups that had been constituent members of the organization resigned, offended by its new direction." 

(The Funding of Scientific Racism, William H. Tucker, pg. 170)

Roger Pearson

"After studying electrical engineering in Japan during World War II, Moon return to Pyongyang (now the capital of North Korea) to found his first church. 'It was no different from many other unorthodox Christian sects except for the ritual of "blood separation," involving female members of the church. They were required to have sexual relations with Moon, to clear themselves of "the taint of Satan." '

"Moon was arrested by the communist authorities twice and in 1947 was sentenced to five years in Hungnam prison. Although he maintains that he was just another example of communist persecution of religion, other sources, including former Korean government officials, say the charges were in response to the Church's reported orgiastic practices.

"Eventually freed by United Nations troops in their advance north during the Korean War, Moon fled to Pusan, in South Korea. There he founded the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity or, simply, the Unification Church. 

"Moon's ministry found quite a few converts among the homeless and impoverished refugees who flooded Pusan, but the strange tenets he espoused were met with suspicion and hostility by both the rulers of South Korea and the established Catholic clergy. Moon could count among his disciples, however, a number of well-connected young army officers. When he was again arrested in 1955, this time on a morals charge for staying the night in a 'love hotel' with a follower, Moon's military contacts managed to get the charge changed to violation of military conscription law and it was eventually dropped."

(Inside the League, Scott and Jon Anderson, pgs. 65-66) 

"... Moon's life took a dramatic turn when, walking through the hills around his village, he was visited by Jesus Christ. 'You are the son I have been seeking,' Christ informed the startled sixteen-year-old, 'the one who can begin my eternal history.'..

"Unification theology is a potpourri of Christianity, Confucianism, mysticism, patriotism, anti-communism, and Moon's own megalomania. It Moon's eyes, Christ technically falls into the category of a failure, for although he established a spiritual kingdom, he didn't establish a physical or political one. Moon is here to rectify that oversight; he is anointed as the man to complete Jesus' original mission.

"Because it rejected Jesus, Israel is no longer God's chosen land (though the Jews were finally cleansed by suffering six million dead in World War II); God had to find a new Messiah and a new Adam country. Moon and Korea were uniquely designated for this purpose, for one of the most original aspects of Unificationism is its attribution of spirituality and gender to nations based upon their topographically..."

(Inside the League, Scott and Jon Anderson, pg. 64)

Sun Myung Moon

"The history of the Unification Church is inextricably links with the history of U.S. support for the military government of South Korea and with the post-World War II activities of leading Japanese war criminals and industrialists. By the mid-1970s, the Unification Church was implicated in a scandal called 'Koreagate,' involving Korean government influence buying within the United States. In 1977, a congressional investigative committee chaired by Rep. Donald Fraser (D-MN), revealed that after the 1961 coup which brought Korea's Park Chung Hee to power, the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) decided to organize and utilize the Unification Church as a 'political tool' within the United States. KCIA agents were found to have infiltrated the staffs Rep. Cornelius Gallagher (D-NJ) and House Majority Leader Carl Albert (D-OK), and numerous Moonies landed volunteer positions in Congressional offices.

"The Fraser Committee found that one of the early KCIA/Moon projects was the Korean Cultural Freedom Foundation, a supposedly nonprofit organization which was actually a propaganda campaign on behalf of South Korea. By the spring of 1964, KCFF was raising funds from Americans for the Freedom Center; the latter was a project of the Asian People's Anti-Communist League (APACL), promoted and subsidized by the Korean government. The Freedom Center is the secretarial headquarters of the World Anti-Communist League (WACL), a multinational network Nazi war criminals, Latin American death squad leaders, North American racists and anti-Semites, and fascist politicians from every continent."

(Spiritual Warfare, Sara Diamond, pg. 59)

Over the years the Unification Church was linked to several New Age-type organizations, many of them deeply interested in parapsychology and Ufology. Along these lines the group most closely associated with the Moonies appears to have been the Spiritual Frontiers Fellowship. Moon received several readings (such as this one) from its founder, Arthur Ford.

Moon was brought into Ford's orbit by Anthony Brooke, the last of the "white rajahs" to rule Sarawak (now part of Malaysia) and British army intelligence veteran of the Second World War. After a brief struggle to retain his meager monarchy petered out in the late 1950s (amidst intrigues) Brooke became an "ambassador of global consciousness." Brooke first encountered Moon in 1964 and was immediately taken with him. He would go on to write glowingly of the Unification founder in Revelation for the New Age and Towards Human Unity.

Anthony Brooke

Brooke spent time at Findhorn Foundation, an early New Age outpost located in Scotland. It was co-founded by Dorothy Maclean, a former employee of the British Security Coordination in New York City during the 1940s that helped establish the Office of Strategic Services (OSS, the precursor the CIA). Beyond this, the founders reportedly believed they were in psychic contact with aliens:

"Yes, aliens. The official Findhorn website states: 'The Findhorn Community was begun in 1962 by Peter and Eileen Caddy and Dorothy Maclean. All three had followed disciplined spiritual paths for many years and had been specifically trained to follow God’s will'. But 1962 was merely when Peter, Eileen and Dorothy moved to Findhorn. The Findhorn Community’s true origins lie in the 1950s, in the maelstrom of post-war fringe ideas and philosophies which eventually settled out as what we now call the ‘New Age’. Central to Findhorn’s origins lies a secret which the current leaders of the community would very much like to play down; flying saucers. For all their talk of the Community being formed by the guidance of God one of the core beliefs held by Findhorn’s founders in the ’50s and 60s was that flying saucers existed, existed and their occupants were in psychic contact with them. It was also an article of faith that physical contact with the saucers was not only possible, it was certain.

Dorothy Maclean

It appears that for a brief time in 1970 Doris Orme, allegedly the first Western Unification convert, taught classes at Findhorn. While there she met her future husband, who left Findhorn with her. Orme was brought there by Brooke, who at this time was prone to referring to Moon as "the messiah" when not trying to contact UFOs.

Unsurprisingly, Moon appears to have had a keen interest in psychic phenomenon that spanned several decades. For instance, in 1974 while kicking off the third annual International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences (ICUS), Moon stated:

"The study of extrasensory perception has drawn the attention of quite a number of scholars in the academic community. In particular, the discovery that a dolphin can communicate with human beings intelligently deserves notice. Along the same lines, it has been observed that plants respond to the love and other emotional states of human beings. These discoveries suggest that our present view that the animal and plant worlds are lacking in consciousness and reason may be limited. We may now as well envision a universe in which a harmonious co-existence may be brought about between human beings and other creatures, where man, being the center of all things, may serve as the spokes of the wheel turning the whole universe in ultimate harmony and oneness."

Bruce Maccabee

By far Moon's interesting tie to the New Age, however, is Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell. As I'm sure many of my readers are well aware. Mitchell had a keen interest in psi and UFOs. He reportedly conducted a private ESP experiment from space during the Apollo 14 mission and would remain a public advocate of Ufology all his life. Most recently emails on this topic from Mitchell to John Podesta, the former chairman of Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, were revealed by Wikileaks during said campaign and showed Mitchell's advocacy on this topic continued practically up to the time of his death.

In addition to UFOs, Mitchell has been deeply involved with psi for years and played a crucial role in launching the famed SRI remote viewing experiments during the early 1970s. Specifically, Mitchell enabled SRI to test famed Israeli magician Uri Geller under laboratory conditions on behalf of the CIA.

"With the imminent arrival of Uri Geller in November 1972, CIA anticipation was high and secrecy was paramount. Kit Green had been personally handling the Geller matter since he was assigned the job by CIA director Richard Helms. Declassified memos reveal two focused concerns during this time. One was Geller's celebrity, and the other was the presence of Andrija Puharich, who had by now taken on a Svengali-like role as Geller's official manager. Given Puharich's notorious background, the CIA needed to keep him at arms length from any Agency affiliation. This issue was temporarily solved by using Edgar Mitchell's newly formed Mind Science Institute of Los Angeles (later the Institute of Noetic Sciences) as a conduit for payments to Puharich and Geller..."

(Phenomena, Annie Jacobsen, pgs. 140-141)

As was noted above, Puharich was a former ARTICHOKE scientist (noted before here) and the channeler of The Nine, alleged extraterrestrial intelligences supposedly first contacted in the 1950s and which reappeared in the Geller saga (all of which was addressed before here).

But back to the matter at hand. Mitchell would remain involved with the SRI project throughout the 1970s and would show ample deep state connections throughout the process. For instance, when a new project was found to continue funding, SRI asked Mitchell to lobby the CIA. He secured an appointment with a certain director.

"For Puthoff and Targ, a new funding opportunity was now at hand. The SRI scientists called on the ambassador of psychic research, Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, for help. Mitchell had created a nonprofit institute and Petaluma, California, called the Institute of Noetic Sciences, where he worked on metaphysical and consciousness studies full-time. On behalf of Puthoff and Targ, Ed Mitchell was able to secure a meeting with CIA director George H. W. Bush. Mitchell traveled to agency headquarters, in Langley, Virginia, where the CIA director listened intently, Mitchell recalled in 2015..."

(Phenomena, Annie Jacobsen, pg. 200)

Edgar Mitchell

This was not the only time Mitchell had met with Bush in regards to psychic phenomena, either. As I hope all of this has illustrated, Mitchell was a major player in deep state interest in psi during the 1970s and continued to be consulted on topics such as UFOs by insiders up to the time of his death.

With this in mind, it makes Mitchell's ties to the Christian Right all the more curious. His affiliation with the Moonies dated back to the 1970s. In 1973, for instance, he appeared at a Moonies function in California along with long time ASC luminary Stefan Possony. As was noted in the "Fringe" series, Possony had a longstanding interest in UFOs and was reputed to have worked with Mankind Research Unlimited (MRU) during the 1970s, another think tank alleged to be involved in exploring psychic phenomena on behalf of the US intelligence community.

As such, Possony's presence at this event with Mitchell in 1973 is most eyebrow raising as the SRI experiments were in full swing by that point as well. At the time Possony was a fellow of the Hoover Institute, based out of Stanford, which SRI had been a part of until 1970. Was Possony keeping tabs on what was going at SRI around the same time he is reputed to have been involved with MRU?

Stefan T. Possony

But back to Mitchell. During the 1980 ICUS conference Mitchell moderated a group panel on psychic phenomena. He was joined in this endeavor by former SRI scientist and then-president of Noetic Sciences Willis Harman.

And that brings me to the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), where Mitchell's most damning link to the Christian Right resides. A co-founder of IONS and its chief financial patron in the early years was one Paul N. Temple, a former Standard Oil executive. He would go on to serve as the IONS's chairman of the board of directors for seventeen years.

But for many years prior to Temple's affiliation with Noetic Science and the New Age, he had supported quite a different religious agenda: The Family/Fellowship. After beginning as a union busting organization during the 1930s, the Family would emerge by the end of World War II as a wealthy and well-connected international organization with ties to the heart of the emerging deep state. The organization's National Prayer Breakfast has been attended by every sitting US president since Eisenhower. Much more information on The Family can be found here.

It would appear that Temple played a key role in The Family's rise. He was one of the key financial backers for years. In 2002 the L.A. Times noted:

"The Fellowship does not solicit money. A handful of wealthy backers, including Detroit lawyer and GOP donor Michael Timmis, Denver oilman Jerome A. Lewis and former Maryland investor Paul N. Temple, support the Fellowship with personal contributions. Private foundations they control also contribute hundreds of thousands yearly to the International Foundation, tax records show."

Paul N. Temple

This raises some intriguing possibilities, one of which is that Temple, the primary source of funding for Noetic Science in the early years, would have been the one to handle the covert CIA funds to SRI. Thus, we are left with the prospect that a crucial financier of The Family, one of the most notorious cults the Christian Right has yet produced, was a covert supporter of the SRI experiments. The same SRI experiments that were greatly aided by Temple's Noetic Science co-founder and Moonie affiliate Edgar Mitchell.

And less we forget, Possony and William Shockley were also active at nearby Stanford University during this time. And the SRI experiments also featured the participation of ARTICHOKE scientist Andrija Puharich. As was noted before here, several key ARTICHOKE men in the CIA had ties to far right organizations like the American Security Council.

Again, all I can do is marvel at the extent elements of the far right have latched onto New Age-centric pursuits. While sponsorship of the New Age has long been linked to Rockefeller money, I hope this post and the "Fringe" series have helped lay bare the extent that the far right and the closely related military-industrial complex had infiltrated such topics.

The comfort that men like Edgar Mitchell show in both worlds is striking. And this overlap is mirrored by organizations like The Family. As was noted before here, Hillary Clinton, while not a member, is regarded as "friend of The Family." And it was her campaign chairman, John Podesta, whom Mitchell was contact with concerning the UFO question.

But The Family is also close to the Trump administration. As was noted before here, key members of the administration such as Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, Secretary of Justice Jeff Sessions and Vice-President Mike Pence are also Family members. And yet the Trump campaign certainly put arcane and occultic practices to use on the campaign trail (noted here).

The more one peels back the layers of this netherworld, the more on is left with mysteries wrapped in enigmas shrouded in riddles. And with that I leave you for now dear readers. A big thank you again to "Don Dilligent" and "AW" for their crucial contributions to this post.

Stefan T. Possony

Colonel Alexander is a figure that many regular readers are no doubt aware of. In the wake of the film version of The Men Who Stare At GoatsAlexander became something of a pop culture staple as he is the man many believe the Jeff Bridges character of "Bill Django" is based upon. This is largely erroneous as the Django character is primarily based upon Lieutenant Colonel Jim Channon, who had an enormous influence on Alexander's later ideas.

Jeff Bridges as "Bobby Django" in Goats

But before we get to that, here's a bit of background on Alexander:

"... Alexander is a former Green Beret. From 1966 through 1969 he commanded Special Forces A-teams in Vietnam and Thailand, earning the moniker Assassin Six. After the war he engaged in a variety of pursuits that kept his brain and body challenged. He climbed mountains in Nepal and swam with whales in Tonga. In an effort to understand human belief systems he studied superstition, sorcery, and witchcraft around the world, interviewing witch doctors in Zimbabwe, shamans in Siberia, and tribesmen in New Guinea who still practiced cannibalism. What interested him most was how people faced fear, and how people feared death. For his PhD in near-death studies, working under the celebrated physician Elizabeth Kubler-Ross, Alexander was a founding board member of the nation's first Children's Hospice International, where he facilitated the development of protocols to help terminally ill children face death without fear."

(Phenomena, Annie Jacobsen, pg. 277)

"Taxpayer dollars were also lavished on something called Task Force Delta, an Army War College project whose mission was to investigate alternative philosophical realms for anything militarily useful. A Lieutenant Colonel Jim Channon and several other like-minded officers from the task force soon came up with an idea for something called the 'First Earth Battalion,' an eco-friendly politically correct warrior-monk vision of the future soldier. Before long, Channon and the others were into role-playing games, acting out the New Age fantasy...

(Remote Viewers, Jim Schnabel, pg. 277)

"Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is defined as a set of techniques used to facilitate individual pattern changes. Techniques found useful by many senior U.S. Army officers are based on this trademarked program. NLP teaches ways to modify behavior patterns that are not useful as well as to install useful behavior patterns.

NLP, formulated by Richard Bandler (a mathematician and computer expert) and John Grinder (a linguist), was introduced to the U.S. Army via a program called New Patterns of Influence. In addition to the NLP basics, this program contains information from the U.S. Army's Organizational Effectiveness School (dissolved in 1984 due to budget constraints), as well as original thinking by Lieutenant Colonel Frank Burns and Bob Klaus on skills required for military leadership.

"This course, carefully packaged as a three-day intensive, was presented to selected general officers and Senior Executive Service (SES) members. Among the first generals to take the course was then-Lieutenant General Maxwell Thurman, who later went on to receive his four-star and become Vice-Chief of Staff of the Army (VCSA) and Commander, U/S/ Southern Command. General Thurman, who distinguished himself as SOUTHCOM's leader during the Dec. 20, 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama, is well known as bright, forward thinking, and innovative.

"It was General Thurman's support that allowed the NLP training group to make inroads with many other generals. In fact, he commissioned a study of human performance by the National Academy of Science, monitored by the Army Research Institute. General Thurman has kept interest allied through his personal influence. 

 "This program was considered effective by a great majority of the several hundred who attended over a period of four years. In 1983, the NLP training group, along with John Alexander, was engaged to teach these skills to several members of Congress, including Al Gore, Jr. and Tom Downey, under the auspices of Congressional Clearinghouse on the Future, a bipartisan activity established to provide information to congressmen when they request it. Gore went on to become a serious candidate in the 1988 presidential primary race."

(The Warrior's Edge, John Alexander, Richard Groller, Janet Morris, pgs. 47-48)

Al Gore at the 1988 Democratic National Convention

"...NLP practitioners, Bandler and Grinder modeled successful therapists who were Fritz Perles (father of Gestalt therapy), Virginia Satir (a remarkably talented family therapist) and Milton Erickson (a victim of polio, genius hypnotist and the true father of the basic NLP breakthrough information = communication is 90% behavioral, 5% tonal and 5% content."

(Operation Mind Control, Walter H. Bowart, pg. 469)

Walter H. Bowart

Milton H. Erickson

"The military as well as major corporations have been very interested in putting NLP to use. The Ford Motor Company, Westinghouse, and the Calvin Klein Fashion House are among scores of major companies that have sent employees for training, according to the New York Times: 'Kevin Garby, an author and researcher on New Age topics in Carlyle, Pennsylvania, sites an army recruiting slogan "Be All That You Can Be" as evidence of what he contends has been the significant influence' of NLP-like disciplines. In the early 1980s, Garby said, 'officers of the Army War College in Carlyle, some of whom were graduates of EST, and were former members of The Radical Students for Democratic Society, conducted a study aimed at creating a "New Age Army." The slogan, a derivative of the "You Create Your Own Reality" orthodoxy of New Age groups, grew out of this work."

(Operation Mind Control, Walter H. Bowart, pg. 255)

As to what all of this has to do with Alexander and our subjects of inquiry, namely the far right and high weirdness, I shall now address the connection. Or at least one of them, anyway. It involves Alexander's transfer to the Army's Intelligence and Security Command (INSCOM), where the bulk of his official efforts in high weirdness were commissioned. It would appear that said interests were the driving factor behind this transfer:

"... Alexander received word that the deputy undersecretary of defense, a retired Army four-star general named Richard G. Stilwell, wanted to see him. A lieutenant colonel being asked to meet with a four-star general was an uncommon occurrence, since it bypassed the chain of command. Alexander was unsure what to expect. Stilwell was an Army legend. He participated in the Normandy invasion in World War II, served as head of the U.S. Military Assistance Command, Thailand, during the Vietnam War, served in the CIA and as commander in chief of the United Nations Command in Korea. What did Stilwell want to see John Alexander for? he wondered.

"At 12:30 p.m., that same day, Alexander made his way to the general's office, located in the elite E-ring of the Pentagon, for the meeting. 'It was oddly informal,' he recalls. 'The general wanted to discuss various forms of phenomenology I'd written about in my paper.' The conference ended without a specific request, which also struck Alexander as unusual. Walking back to his desk in the Pentagon's C-ring, Alexander wondered what the real purpose of the meeting might have been.

"That afternoon, at a little after 4 p.m., an executive officer approached Alexander and told him this was his last day in the Office of the Inspector General. General Stilwell had arranged for his transfer to INSCOM, at Arlington Hall, Virginia. His new commanding officer would be Major General Albert Stubbleline. 'I'd been moved formally into the psychic realm,' says Alexander."

(Phenomena, Annie Jacobsen, pgs. 280-281)

the insignia of INSCOM

In his book UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies, and Realities, Alexander further elaborates on this meeting, noting that he had met Stilwell briefly in Vietnam while operating out of Thailand but that the general did not remember this encounter when they met in 1981. He also indicates that Stilwell had a keen interest in "unusual topics" and that it was the general's wife who had suggested that he met Alexander.

At the time Stilwell was a member of the American Security Council, hence his interest in "unusual topics" is hardly surprising. He had originally cut his teeth in intelligence work during the Second World War, when he operated out of China and Burma with the OSS. Many of the intelligence officers with a background in China prior to the Revolution were referred to as "China Cowboys" because of their freewheeling ways. At the time two other OSS China Cowboys, General John Singlaub and Ray S. Cline, were deeply involved in the ASC as well (more on the China cowboys can be found here).

On the whole, Stilwell is one of the most mysterious and influential deep state players of this era. Consider some of his accomplishments:

"From the start of the Reagan administration, Gen. Richard Stillwell, who helped form the ISA, promoted the build-up of Special Operations Forces, the official military supplement to the 'private' covert networks. Stilwell, another Asian OSS veteran, took charge of the Far East Division of the CIA's Office of Policy Coordination during the early 1950s' raids against China, but was dismissed when the Nationalist Chinese drug running through Civil Air Transport was exposed. He returned to Southeast Asia to direct the secret war in Laos as commander of U.S. forces in Thailand, where the military leadership had been heavily involved in the opium trade."

(Rollback!, Thomas Bodenheimer & Robert Gould, pg. 99) 

General Richard G. Stilwell

Stilwell had in fact helped organize Civil Air Transport in the early 1950s. The airline would later gain infamy in the 1960s, after it had been rechristened Air America. As I'm sure many of you are aware, Air America played a key role in transporting opium from Southeast Asia to the United States until the early 1970s. Stilwell appears to have still been involved in the opium trade during his time in Vietnam in 1960s, in a region Alexander was also active in during that time frame as well.

For our purposes, his role in creating the ISA and building up Special Operations Forces is even more interesting. For those of you unaware, ISA stands for Intelligence Support Activity, more commonly referred to as The Activity. The Activity is a highly secretive component of the US Army, originally subordinated to INSCOM and tasked with providing intelligence exclusively to Special Operations Forces. It had its origins in an outfit known as the Field Operations Group (FOG) that was launched in the wake of the disastrous Operation Eagle Claw, the failed bid to rescue US hostages from Iran in 1980. Eagle Claw convinced military officials that Special Operations Forces needed more reliable intelligence on the ground if another rescue operation was to be attempted and FOG was the result.

Another rescue mission was never initiated, but the Army was impressed enough to make FOG a permanent unit and it was given its current name and a greatly increased budget in 1981. For the next twenty plus years it would work closely with Special Operations Forces while operating out of INSCOM. In 2003, The Activity was removed from the authority of INSCOM and transferred to the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC). Presently it is the primary intelligence service of the JSOC and has become extremely powerful in the intelligence community as a result. General Michael Flynn, who oversaw The Activity while directing intelligence for the JSOC, later advanced to Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and, briefly, as Donald J. Trump's National Security Advisor.

the insignia of The Activity

According to Peter Dale Scott, Stilwell also played a key role in establishing the JSOC as well. As I've noted before here, the JSOC has emerged as a major power within the American deep state over the past ten years and especially with the rise of Trump. It was partly designed, initially, to take on some of the covert functions of the CIA in the wake of the Church Committee, but has increasingly emerged as a rival to the CIA itself. With its own intelligence units, drone strike force and troops drawn from the ranks of the Delta Force, Navy SEALS and Army Rangers, the JSOC has increasingly become the go-to agency for handling black ops overseas.

As was noted before here, the JSOC even appears to have taken the lead role in Copper Green, which may well be a new version of Project ARTICHOKE and other CIA/Pentagon behavior modification experiments. But Copper Green may not have been the extent of the JSOC's forays into consciousness exploration, not by a long shot. In point of fact, the JSOC may have been exposed to some very esoteric concepts at its inception. For these concepts, we will now need to turn our attention to a rather curious project Colonel John Alexander oversaw during his time at INSCOM.

the Jedi Project

The Jedi Project is one of the most enigmatic projects the Army embarked upon during the 1980s, the (official) peak of their explorations into high weirdness. Jedi, the name of which was obviously taken from the Star Wars franchise, is typically overshadowed by the much more well-know Project GRILL FLAME, the Army's legendary remote viewing project. GRILL FLAME was also run out of INSCOM before being passed on to the DIA after General Albert Stubblebine's departure from the agency in the mid-1980s amidst scandal. The scandal was driven in no small part by Stubblebine's obsession with arcane approaches to intelligence.

the famed General Albert Stubblebine

While Alexander was only nominally involved with GRILL FLAME, he oversaw many of Stubblebine's other esoteric interests via the Advanced Human Technology Office, which was part of a program Stubblebine initiated called Beyond Excellence. The Jedi Project appears to have grown out of this program, though its origins likely trace back to Task Force Delta. Of them and the basis of the project, Alexander noted:

"In 1983, the Jedi master provided an image and a name for the Jedi Project, a human-performance modeling experiments based on neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) skills. Sponsored by a U.S. government interagency task force, Jedi used advanced influence technologies to model excellence in human performance. The subjects involved in Jedi were willing to be influenced to acquire desirable skills.

"The Jedi Project grew out of the New Patterns of Influence Program, developed during the early eighties to disseminate NLP skills throughout the U.S. Army, under the auspices of the U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command and, until 1984, the Organizational Effectiveness School.

"The number of human subjects involved in the Jedi Project was not statistically significant. The experiment was run as a proof-of-principal and, standing alone, the results are impressive."

(The Warrior's Edge, John Alexander, Richard Groller & Janet Morris, pgs. 72-73)

Alexander indicates that this experiment was rather tame, largely focusing on things like mental cues and techniques to help soldiers improve their marksmanship. For this reason perhaps many researchers do not appear to have paid much mind to Jedi until the early '00s, when journalist Jon Ronson interviewed a former Special Forces member who indicated that Jedi was far more ambitious than simply improving marksmanship:

"In the mid-1980s, he told me, Special Forces undertook a secret initiative, codenamed Project Jedi, to create supersoldiers – soldiers with superpowers. One such power was the ability to walk into a room and instantly be aware of every detail; that was level one."

(The Men Who Stare At Goats, Jon Ronson, pg. 14)

Level two was intuition, level three was "invisibility." The soldier then indicated that the level that came after that was the ability to kill a goat or another living thing with one's mind. As you may have guessed, this is what ultimately inspired of Ronson's classic book and the film loosely based upon it.

While it is generally assumed this form of lethal psychokinesis was explored in GRILL FLAME, it appears that this curious pursuit in fact grew out of Alexander's Jedi Project, which was based out of Fort Bragg, North Carolina. As many of you are no doubt aware, Fort Bragg is the training center and home for the bulk of America's Special Operations Forces, and the headquarters of both the Joint Special Operations Command and the Special Forces (more commonly referred to as the "Green Berets").

Another individual involved in the project, Dr. Jim Hardt (who for years ran an office out of William Shockley's old office space in Silicon Valley; as was noted before here, Shockley has his own curious ties to high weirdness and the far right), further confirmed the prior allegations given to Ronson:

"It all began with a visit from a colonel named John Alexander, who turned up one day at Jim Hardt's door with a few other military men. Alexander had headhunted Dr. Hardt, having been deeply moved by Jim Channon's First Earth Battalion Operations Manual. He wanted to know if Dr. Hardt could really turn ordinary soldiers into advanced zen masters in just seven days, and give them the power of telepathy simply by plugging them into his brain machine.

"Dr. Hardt said it was indeed true, and so the quest to create a supersoldier, a soldier with supernatural powers, was set in motion right there in that building in Silicon Valley.

"The colonel told Jim Hardt that Special Forces had, ever since the publication of Jim's manual, invited one peak-performance guru after another from the new-age and human-potential movements of California to lecture the soldiers on how to be more attuned with their inner spirits..."

(The Men Who Stare at Goats, Jon Ronson, pgs. 44-45)

So, to recap: in the early 1980s Colonel John Alexander became involved with the curious Task Force Delta, which received patronage from powerful generals such as Maxwell Thurman and Colin Powell. While nominally involved in more practical projects, such as re-branding the Army after the disastrous Vietnam years, it also explored some very arcane topics. Out of these pursuits emerged Colonel Jim Channon's infamous First Earth Battalion, which Alexander appears to have used as a basis for the Jedi Project he ran out of INSCOM for General Albert Stubblebine.

Colonel John B. Alexander

Curiously, Alexander ended up working for Stubblebine because of the intervention of powerful deep state figure and American Security Council member General Richard Stilwell. Stilwell reportedly had a keen interest in unusual topics. He also was a major backer of Special Operations Forces and helped create the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) and its eventual intelligence branch, the Intelligence Support Activity.

The JSOC is headquartered out of Fort Bragg and was just getting off the ground as Alexander was reportedly launching his Project Jedi there circa 1983. Project Jedi was based upon neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), a practice widely linked to mind control. It was reportedly brought to the Army by est graduates, another off shoot of the human potential movement linked to right wing extremism and mind control (noted before here). Using this as a basis, Alexander simply sought to incorporate other New Age-derived techniques to induce telepathy in Special Operations Forces with an aim towards lethal psychokinesis.

Its important to note, however, than these techniques have only been likened to Special Forces soldiers (Green Berets, which Alexander was a member of), rather than other Special Operations Forces (such as those in the JSOC). But given that the JSOC is far more concerned with assassinations (and mind control, if Cooper Green is any indication) than Special Forces, it seems likely that components of the JSOC would have also been exposed to Jedi. Certainly both Special Forces and JSOC members are well represented at Fort Bragg.

But the American Security Council connection via Stilwell makes this chain of events even more incredible. Keep in mind dear reader that in part four I noted Christopher Knowles's linkage of the Roswell incident with an ancient Greek myth involving the creation of supersoldiers. As was noted in that installment, and part three, many of the military officers linked to Roswell ended up sitting on the National Strategy Committee of the ASC.

The same National Strategy Committee Stilwell was sitting on in the 1980s when he arranged for Alexander's transfer to INSCOM and thus set him on the path to Jedi and the creation of supersoldiers.

Ah, but there's more. As I noted in a prior series on the CIA's Office of Security (OS), there was extensive overlap between the OS and the American Security Council (noted before here and here). And as noted above, the OS was also the outfit within the CIA that ran Project ARTICHOKE. Specially, it was operated out of the OS's Security Research Staff (SRS), which for many years was overseen by General Paul Gaynor. And Gaynor just happened to be very close to several high ranking ASC officials, as was Morse Allen, the OS-SRS official who oversaw the day to day function's of ARTICHOKE.

This makes for an interesting chain of events:

• the Roswell incident (or "working", as Christopher Knowles has dubbed it) unfolds in 1947
• that same year, the US military initiates the first formal post-WWII behavior modification experiments with Projects CHATTER and Pelican
• eventually all of these projects are rolled into Project BLUEBIRD, later ARTICHOKE, which was very much a joint CIA-Pentagon project. As was noted before here and here, these experiments were deeply concerned with psi. The creation of supersoldier was also an objective, as noted in part four of this series. 
• after the Rockefeller-sponsored MKULTRA eclipsed ARTICHOKE in 1955, many of the more "out-there" aspects of these experiments were downgraded for over a decade. 
• meanwhile, the American Security Council is launched around this same time. By the early 1960s it has acquired a National Strategy Committee staffed with numerous generals linked to Roswell and other deep state figures involved in the UFO question as well as maintaining links to various ARTICHOKE personnel
• In 1966, the CIA and Pentagon launch MKOFTEN, allegedly the most extensive foray into the occult these agencies had ever ventured. Not long afterwards, curious movements such as est and NLP sporting methods reminiscent of behavior modification techniques begin springing up in California
• in the early 1970s, the famed SRI remote viewing experiments are launched. Numerous figures linked to the far right loom in the background of these experiments and at least one ARTICHOKE veteran (noted before here) also particiapted
•  around 1977, the Army launches what will eventually become Project GRILL FLAME
• in 1981, John Alexander is transferred to INSCOM on behalf of the ASC's General Richard Stilwell. He and General Albert Stubblebine waist no time in initiating a host of arcane projects based upon recommendations from the mysterious Task Force Delta while also overseeing GRILL FLAME
• in 1983, Alexander launches the Jedi Project, potentially initiating the final stage of ARTICHOKE's old objective of creating supersoldiers, a quest that may have begun with Roswell

the fruits of our efforts to create Jedi...

Again, I'm struck by the closeness of the ASC to so many of these events. Certainly the American Security Council was far from the only deep state institution to wade into these murky waters --the presence of the Rockefeller family in these affairs is well-documented as well. But they were clearly one of the major players, a fact that has been largely overlooked by researchers for years now. And that is most unfortunate for not only is the ASC significant, but it may have been involved in a struggle for the hearts and minds with the Rockefeller clique as well.


And with that I shall wrap things up for now dear reader. With the next installment we'll consider Alexander's curious pursuits after leaving the Army. Stay tuned.

J. Michael Straczynski

Giuseppe Garibaldi

"Central to many recent theories about secret societies, the Sinclairs are a Scottish aristocratic family of Norman extraction --their name was originally St. Clair --with a historic connection to Scottish stonemasonry... it was well enough established in tradition in the early seventeenth century that one branch of the Sinclair family was able to gain the backing of Scottish stonemasons' lodges in two attempts to re-establish their rights over the craft. The Sinclairs were also patrons of the masterpieces of Scottish medieval architecture, the famous Rosslyn Chapel...

"The hereditary rights of the Sinclairs over Scottish masons lapsed with the transformation of Scottish stonemasons' lodges into modern Freemasonry in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. In 1736, at the establishment of the Grand Lodge of Scotland. Willaim Sinclair of Roslin formally relinquished all rights over Masonry. In return, the members of Grand Lodge made him Scotland's first elected Grand Master for a term of one year..."

(The Element Encylopedia of Secret Societies and Hidden History, John Michael Greer, pgs. 560-561) 

was Sinclair supposed to have had famed distant relatives as Garibaldi did?

Jeff Conaway as Zack Allan

Andreas Katsulas

Richard Biggs

"He first learned of his diabetes when he was 17 — complications of the disease had killed his father — but did not face the condition directly until a foot infection in the mid-1990s led doctors to tell him that he might need to have his leg amputated.

" 'Like most severely overweight people, I had to hit a rock-hard bottom before I’d take responsibility for the consequences of neglecting my own health,' he said in an interview with USA Today several years later. The wake-up call led him to a significant weight loss. He began to take a leading role in educating others about the disease."

Furst as Vir

"This is a war, then, between US-led capitalist globalization, and anyone who resists it. And to win it, the document puts forward a combination of strategies: consolidating the US intelligence complex and using it more ruthlessly; intensifying mass surveillance and propaganda to manipulate US and global popular opinion; expanding US military power and reach to ensure access to 'strategic regions, markets, and resources.' "

"Here’s a crazy idea floating around Washington these days, outlandish even by today’s outlandish standards: The United States should hire a mercenary army to 'fix' Afghanistan, a country where we’ve been at war since 2001, spending billions along the way. The big idea here is that they could extricate U.S. soldiers from this quagmire, and somehow solve it. 

"Not surprisingly, the private-military industry is behind this proposal. Erik D. Prince, a founder of the private military company Blackwater Worldwide, and Stephen A. Feinberg, a billionaire financier who owns the giant military contractor DynCorp International, each see a role for themselves in this future. Their proposal was offered at the request of Steve Bannon, President Donald Trump’s chief strategist, and Jared Kushner, his senior adviser and son-in-law, according to people briefed on the conversations.

"It could get worse. In a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed, Prince laid out a plan whereby the fighting force would be led by an American viceroy who would report directly to Trump. Modeled after General Douglas MacArthur, who ruled Japan after World War II, the viceroy would consolidate all American power in a single person. His mission: Do whatever it takes to pacify Afghanistan. No more backseat driving of the war from pesky bureaucrats in Washington, or restrictive rules of engagement imposed on soldiers. An American viceroy with a privatized fighting force would make trains run on time in Afghanistan—if they had trains."

Blackwater co-founder Erik Prince

Sean Spicer (top) and Reince Priebus (bottom)

Mooch

"Mattis and Kelly also agreed in the earliest weeks of Trump's presidency that one of them should remain in the United States at all times to keep tabs on the orders rapidly emerging from the White House, according to a person familiar with the discussions. The official insisted on anonymity in order to discuss the administration's internal dynamics."

"Mad Dog" Mattis (top) and Kelly (bottom)

Tillerson's successor?

"The attacks have usually come at night. Many victims say they never noticed anything amiss. Others insist they have definitely felt or heard something — either vibrations or any number of odd sounds including a loud ringing, a scraping noise and a high-pitched chirping like the noise made by crickets or cicadas. Several said the noises came in minute-long bursts.

"One diplomat described being jolted awake in a Havana hotel room by a grinding, blaring cacophony. When he moved a few feet across the room, the noise stopped. When he got back into bed, the agonising sound hit him again — as if, he told doctors, he had walked through some invisible wall cutting straight down the middle of his room.

"Whether they heard anything or not, the consequences have been unmistakable — symptoms ranging from nose bleeds, nausea, dizziness and severe headaches to mild brain damage and permanent hearing or memory loss. Oddly, as soon as some of the victims left Cuba, they stopped hearing noises.

"Or maybe it wasn’t so odd, given the astonishing explanation that has surfaced as to why at least 21 U.S. diplomats, as well as others from Canada, have been brought low while serving in Communist Havana. Although America hasn’t pointed any finger at the likely culprit, Washington believes they were victims of a secret sonic weapon...

"Most diplomats were affected in their homes — which were provided by the Cuban government. But at least one incident occurred on an upper floor of the Hotel Capri, a historic high-rise building popular with tourists, where two diplomats were living.

"Nobody else at the hotel made a similar complaint. The targeting, if indeed a weapon is involved, is so specific that it affected only certain parts of certain rooms.

"Colleagues of the diplomat in the Hotel Capri experienced a similar effect — waking with a ringing in their ears and reaching mistakenly for their alarm clocks, then getting up, only to discover the ringing stopped when they moved away from their beds.

"Two officials said the sonic attacks made a ‘deafeningly loud sound similar to the buzzing created by insects or metal scraping across the floor’. Sending out the sort of targeted, localised beam of sound that could hit someone as they sleep is possible, but fiendishly tricky.

"The fact that many of the victims never heard anything indicates the sound was outside the human hearing range.

"If so, it would have to be emitting either a very high frequency — called ultrasound — or a very low one, infrasound.

"Of those, experts say the most likely is ultrasound — which is employed, for example, in dog whistles — because it’s far simpler to channel into a tight beam of energy. It has also been proved to produce some of the symptoms — such as hearing loss and disorientation — reported by the diplomats. It can even be fatal."

1. It would make for a striking quid pro quo with US intelligence rivals. Keep in mind that Russian diplomats have been dying at alarming rates for months now. Attacking US diplomats in Havana with some type of new psychotronic weapon would certainly make for a compelling response. 
2. There is a historic precedent for this current incident. It is what is commonly referred to as the Moscow Signal 

"In 1962, American military engineers were conducting a security sweep of the U.S. embassy in Moscow, searching for listening devices, when they discovered a strange electromagnetic signal. The first analysis by American scientists was that this was some new means of eavesdropping. But further investigation revealed that the Soviets were using multiple frequencies to transmit a series of widely fluctuating and irregularly patterned microwave beams aimed primarily at the upper floors of the central wing of the embassy, where the ambassadors and top intelligence officials had their offices. The CIA had reason to believe that the Soviets were developing an electromagnetic weapon designed to adversely affect the behavior of embassy personnel.

"Military engineers determined that the microwave beam was coming from a source inside a tenth-floor apartment inside a building located roughly 100 meters to the west, across Tchaikovsky Street; it affected the west façade of the embassy building, with highest intensities between the third and eight floors. The signal (determined to have a power density between 2.5 and 4.0 GHz) was given the code name MUTS, or Moscow Unidentified Technical Signal, and had apparently been in use since 1956. The Pentagon got to work on a counterstrategy and assigned the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) the job of initiating a classified program to duplicate the effects of the Moscow Signal."

(Phenomena, Annie Jacobsen, pgs. 74-75)

the US embassy building in Moscow where diplomats were exposed to a form of electromagnetic radiation

"The Russian Woodpecker was a Soviet signal that could be heard on the shortwave radio bands worldwide between July 1976 and December 1989 – the latter date marking the collapse of the communist regime in the Soviet Union. It sounded like a sharp, repetitive tapping noise – giving rise to the 'Woodpecker' name. The signal could be replicated by tapping a pencil on a table between eight and fourteen times each second. 

"The random frequency was heard on disrupted legitimate broadcast, amateur radio, and utility transmissions and resulted in thousands of complaints by countries worldwide to Moscow. The complaints were however non-specific: it seemed that whatever the Russians were doing, was interfering with 'business as usual' in the West, and could the Russians please rectify the problem. The answer was 'njet,' but also invited another question: what was the signal?

"Today, it is known that the signal came from the Duga-3 system, which was officially part of the Soviet Anti-Ballistic Missiles early-warning network, also known as an over-the-horizon radar (OTH) system and it is this that the Soviet Union post 1989 gave as the official explanation. In principle, it therefore seemed to be a mundane cause and purpose, tied in with the Soviet’s defence system and not with a global mind control technology."

the Duga radar from which the "Russian Woodpecker" signal was broadcast

"Dennis Stanley, in a chapter that appeared in The Truth About the Men in Black... believes that 'visits by unknown agents are seeded throughout UFO literature and newspaper accounts of flying saucer sightings. For many years, they were overlooked or not recognized for what they were. Today, just about every UFO investigator has encountered these Men in Black. The history of demonology, witchcraft, and the occult filled with similar incidents, leading one to speculate that the UFO phenomena are at least partly "psychic" in nature.

"UFO magazine editor Allen H. Greenfield has pointed out that there is usually a consistent reference associating the term 'Black Man' with the Devil, along with a mention of an Indian-like appearance supposedly attributed to the Devil by witches. Greenfield has noted that there was a concentration of such cases beginning at the time of the Elizabethan, post-Reformation era in the 1600s. Several occult volumes classify these beings into a group of their own and refer to them as Men in Black, Demons, Devils, Apparitions, or Black Men – the latter being the most commonly used. 

"The writings of arch which-hunter Cotton Mather mention a 'Black Man' associated with the Indians. And there was mention of a man dressed in black during the witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts." 

(Men in Black: The Secret Terror, Gray Baker, pg.41)

The stage was set for the appearance of the Knights Hospitaller when an alleged lay brother of the Benedictine order known only as Gerard was appointed to head the Hospital of Saint John at some time around 1080. "Blessed" Gerard is the mysterious first Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller. Virtually nothing is known about his life prior to his arrival in the Holy Land, though it has long been claimed that his birthplace was Amalfi.

Blessed Gerard

What is known is that he first rose to prominence during the Siege of Jerusalem in 1099. Reportedly, his assistance proved to be invaluable to the Christian Crusaders and for reasons that went beyond medical care. 

"One of the ejected Christians was Blessed Gerard, master of the Amalfi hostel in the city, who immediately approached the Christian leaders to assist them with first hand knowledge of the layout and the defenses of Jerusalem. Needless to say, his intelligence was indeed most welcome. The crusading leaders ensured that their plans for the city's fall would encompass and indeed utilize Gerard's inside information."

(The Sword and the Green Cross, Max J. Ellul, pgs. 76-77)

the imperial banner of the Holy Roman Empire

"... By 1228, the Syrian Nizaris had in fact become tributaries to the Hospitallers under the terms of a cooperative pact, while they continue to pay tribute to the Templars. It was also around this time that the Nizaris began to lend occasional support to the military orders in their campaigns against some of the Christian rulers of the Latin states; and at least the Hospitallers reciprocated by defending the Nazaris against the encroaching forces of Antioch and Tripoli. The Nizari involvement in the Hospitaller campaign of 1230 launched by Krak des Chevaliers against Bohemond IV of Antioch represented one such instance of cooperation.

"It was against this background that Bohemond V (1233-57), the next prince of Antioch and Raymond's brother, wrote Pope Gregory IX complaining that the Grand Master of the Hospitallers was then in league with the 'Assassins.' In response to this complaint, on 26 August 1236, Pope Gregory wrote to the Archbishop of Tyre and the bishops of Sidon and Beirut insisting that the Hospitalers should terminate any compromising connections with

the Assassins, the enemies of God and of the Christian name, who formerly dared to slay treacherously Raymond [son of Bohemond IV]... and many other magnates and Catholic princes, and are striving to overcome our faith by force... and what is far graver still the aforesaid Assassins, on account of the promise made by the after mentioned Master and brethren [of the Hospital] to support and protect them Christian attacks, and undertaken to pay them a certain sum of money every year. Therefore we have sent them orders writing to desist from defending these same Assassins... And so we now charge you that if the said Master and brethren should fail to observe this our command, you shall compel them to abandon this understanding by the censures of the Church, without right of appeal, after giving them due warning."

(The Assassin Legends, Farhad Daftary, pgs. 75-76)

the Nizari showing why they are forever remembered as "Assassins"

"... A 1952 draft version of the manual describes a man named Hasan-Dan-Sabah who used the drug hashish to 'induce motivation in his followers, who were assigned to carry out political and other murders, usually at the cost of their lives.' Hasan-Dan-Sabah's credo with his closest initiates and most skilled assassins was: 'Nothing is true, everything is permitted.' States the CIA's manual, 'Assassination is a term thought to be derived from "Hashish," a drug similar to marijuana.' It is certainly intriguing, for a number of reasons, that the Agency included this reference in its assassination manual. First and foremost is the nexus among Hasan-Dan-Sabah (also known as the Old Man of the Mountain), Hassan-I-Sabbah, an Iranian born in 1056 near modern day Tehran, and the Knights Templar, a legendary group that nearly all of the CIA's founders and earliest employees openly admired and sought to emulate."

(A Terrible Mistake, H.P. Albarelli, Jr., pgs. 263-264)

Hassan-i-Sabbah

ruins of the legendary city of Harran

"Notable in this process of translation and research was the Sabian intellectual community of Baghdad, which thrived under an enlightened caliphate between the ninth and mid-tenth centuries AD. The Sabians had, in order to qualify for respect as 'people of the Book' as directed by the Koran, taken the philosophical writings of Hermes Trismegistus as their prophetic work, their holy book.

"The philosophy of Hermes was congenial to Baghdad's Muslim authorities because it represented the unity of God and the cosmos. Hermes was congenial to the so-called Sabians because they had originally come from Harran in northern Syria, where the lights of the cosmos were venerated; Harran had seven temples, each dedicated to a planet."

(The Invisible History of the Rosicrucians, Tobias Churton, pgs. 103-104)

The Hospital and the Temple

The relationship between the Knights Templar and the Knights Hospitaller has long been shrouded in controversy. The Hospitallers predated the Templars and there appears to have been an early influence. But the Templars took up arms before the Hospitallers, which no doubt led to the transformation of the latter into a full blown military order. Many accounts insist, however, on an ever growing rivalry between the two orders that appeared headed towards open conflict in the years leading up to the suppression of the Templars.

"As part of the planning of a new Crusade, the pope had indicated that he wanted to discuss the proposal that the Templars and the Hospitallers be merged into one order, an idea that had been coming up more more frequently in recent years. Just two years earlier a Dominican friar, Raymond Lull, had written a merger plan that had aroused much interest. He proposed that the Knights of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem and the Knights of the Temple of Solomon be combined into a single order to be called the Knights of Jerusalem, and that all of the rulers of Europe combine their Crusading forces under a single commander to be known as the Rex Bellator, the 'War King.' A few years earlier a French priest, Pierre de Bois, had submitted a written plan for the recuperation of the Holy Places called De Recuperatione Sanctae, in which he cited the efficiencies to be achieved by combining the military orders. 

"The pope had responded favorably to the merger concept. The Hospitalers had brought new hope for a crusade and new respect to themselves by the recent invasion of the island of Rhodes, and the pope leaned towards the appointment of Foulques de Villaret, Grand Master of the Hospitallers, as Grand Master of the proposed combination."

(Born in Blood, John J. Robinson, pg. 128) 

Pope Clement V, who oversaw the persecution of the Knights Templar

This proposed merger was effectively carried out with the suppression of the Knights Templar in 1312, of which the Knights Hospitaller were one of the chief benefactors of.

"That order has managed to escape any criticism in the matter of the Templar suppression, but apparently only because it had kept a low profile throughout, probably for the very good reason that its role and its rewards at been worked out in advance. It is well known that the papacy was in favor of the union of the Templars and Hospitallers and had already determined that Foulques de Villaret, master of the Hospitallers, would be the Grand Master of the combined orders. The Templars, at their headquarters in Cyprus, had heard of the serious intent to combine the orders and had taken the time to prepare a written rebuttal. The Hospitallers, at their own headquarters on the same island, must have received the same information, yet they prepared no rebuttal, written or verbal. In fact, de Villaret managed to stay away from the meeting in France altogether, with no recorded papal criticism for his absence. That was undoubtedly because his presence wasn't needed and because there was no point in chancing a confrontation between the two orders, especially since the pope was already dedicated to looking after the interests of the Hospitallers. Not only did the Hospitallers offer no objection to the concept of the merger, but they made no attempt whatever to speak up for their brother warrior-monks as they were arrested and tortured. They simply stayed out of it and bided their time, until Clement V, much to the anger of King Philip, declared that all of the confiscated Templar property would go to the Knights Hospitallers and that all released Templars could be taken into the Hospitaller order, thereby achieving de facto the union he had been planning all along, with full Hospitaller approval and cooperation. If one looks for motive, the Hospitaller order was the major beneficiary of the suppression of the Templars, as it probably been plan from the beginning. The pope and the Hospitallers together thwarted the aims of Philip of France, and there should be no doubt that the Hospitallers rank as one of the three assassins of the Order of the Temple." 

(Born in Blood, John J. Robinson, pgs. 272-273)

There's a lot to taken in here. A good starting point may be the little-remarked upon role the above-mentioned Ramon Llull played in the suppression of the Templars. A Spanish Franciscan monk, was one of the earliest and most vigorous supporters of merging the Templars and the Hospitallers. Llull had ventured to the island of Cyprus in 1299 to convert the infidel and appears to have been poisoned in 1302. He was ultimately saved by Jacques de Molay, the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar who famously burned at the stake.

Jacques de Molay

Afterwards Llull reportedly pitched de Molay his merger plan, which the Grand Master was not favorably disposed towards. Despite de Molay having saved his life, Llull continued to promote his merger plan and went on to argue for the confiscation of Templar property by the Knights Hospitaller in the wake of the suppression of the former order. 

In addition to being a Franciscan with some sway in the Catholic hierarchy, Llull was also a mystic and early alchemist. One would expect him to be very interested in the ideas the Templars and the Hospitallers were being exposed to in the Holy Lands and to be sympathetic in general to the plight of the Templars. Not only had his life been saved by de Molay, but he was a fellow heretic operating within the frame work of the Catholic Church. And yet he backed the Hospitallers.

Ramon Llull

Was there something about the Knights of the Hospital that intrigued Llull beyond their ability to continue the Crusades? Unfortunately, this is a question little explored. But moving along.

The above reference Robinson makes to the "three assassins of the Order of Temple" is a reference to Masonic myths surrounding the Biblical figure of Hiram Abiff, whom the Masons claim as their founder. In Masonic lore Hiram is murdered by three unworthy craftsmen (some times referred to as "Ruffians") while working on the Temple of Solomon. Robinson speculated that these "Ruffians" (referred to as Jubela, Jubelo and Jubelum) were stand-ins for the suppression of the Templar order, with the three unworthy craftsmen representing King Philip of France, Pope Clement V and the Knights Hospitaller.

This is in stark contrast to much conspiracy literature, which tends to depict the Knights of Malta as lackeys of the Freemasons. There is little evidence of this, however. The Scottish Rite degree named after the Knights of Malta appears to reflect Robinson's take on the Maltese knights as assassins (while still showing a certain admiration for the Order). And famed nineteenth century Freemason Albert Mackey, in his encyclopedia of Masonry, proclaimed the Maltese knights to be longstanding foes of the Masons:

"As regards Freemasonry it may be said in general that the Knights were antipathetic to it, or to any such teachings or truths as Masons held at any period. In particular, the Order was twice used in attempts to destroy Freemasonry, and it therefore has at one time or another belong to that long chapter of the history of the Fraternity which is called Anti Masonry.

"It has been an open and confessed military arm of the Vatican before the Pope issued their first Bull against Freemasonry in 1738, and it was ordered to oppose Freemasonry wherever it could. In about 1800 it was instrumental in driving Freemasonry out of Russia. When Metternich after 1815 and the Congress of Vienna became the dictator of Europe he made the complete climination of the Fraternity one of his open and principal aims; and to a large extent he succeeded for some years, and may be described as the most powerful Anti-Mason of the nineteenth century.

"The Knights of Malta were one of the agencies employed by him..."

(Encyclopedia of Freemasonry, Vol. 3, Albert Mackey, pg. 56)

In recent years the linkage between the Knights of Malta and Freemasonry has been revived by no less than Pope Francis himself, who has demanded that the Maltese knights purge Freemasons from their ranks.

Pope Francis

The presence of Freemasons among the Maltese knights is deceptive, however. In modern times this connection was laid bare in the scandal surrounding Propaganda Due (P2), the infamous Italian Masonic lodge linked to Operation Gladio and a host of terror attacks in Italy and beyond. As was noted before here, the upper echelon of P2 was almost totally dominated by the Maltese knights and the closely related Opus Dei. In other words, reactionary Catholic orders were using Masonic lodges (as there were other Propaganda lodges across Europe) as cover for a host of illegal and immoral activities. Some have suggested that this use of "unclean hands" was to further distance the Maltese knights from the deeds they were engaged in.

This is compelling, but I suspect there was another motive: to give yet another black eye to a longstanding foe of the Order. P2 has provided much fodder to conspiracy researchers obsessed with Masons (virtually all of them, in other words) who in turn almost totally ignore the dominating influence the Maltese knights had over P2. In many ways, it would be difficult for a reactionary Catholic order to come up with a more perfect cover.

***

And with that I shall wrap things up for now with the following thoughts: the Knights of Malta emerged during the Crusades and spent nearly two centuries roaming the Holy Lands. There they likely encountered a host of esoteric ideologies from the likes of the Nizari, Mandeans, Yazidis, Druze and possibly even the Sabians and Sufis. It has been long suspected that their fellow Crusading military order the Knights Templar adopted some type of esoteric doctrine derived from some combination of these groups.

The Templar are then suppressed and persecuted in Europe, with the Knights Hospitaller ending up with their properties, members and possibly whatever occultic doctrines the Templars subscribed too. Certainly this more than echoes modern encounters of Men in Black who perform a similar function in regards to UFO revelations.

For the Knights of Malta, this was only the beginning. In the years to come they would encounter even more strange doctrines that they potentially embraced internally while suppressing among the general public. On the whole this is in rather stark contrast to speculative theories of the Knights Templar. If the Templars did in fact inspire Freemasonry, they ultimately made a host of esoteric doctrines accessible to the public at large through their lodges. The Knights of Malta, by contrast, preferred to keep this knowledge hidden.