Welcome to the second installment in my examination of the origins of the shadowy network variously known as Le Cercle, the Pinay Circle and a host of other names. I've already examined the Cercle complex at length before here, but for those of you just tuning in: Le Cercle is somewhat akin to the far right's answer to the Bilderberg Group. Both organizations were founded in the early 1950s and forged a kind of alliance during the first few decades of their existence. But differences always existed.

Bilderberg chiefly drew its membership from the ranks of international capital and the emerging technocratic class and was heavily dominated by the Anglo-American Establishment. Le Cercle's early backers largely hailed from Continental Europe and were chiefly comprised of members of the old aristocracy and various far right Catholic organizations such as the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and Opus Dei. What's more, while Bilderberg was chiefly a policy coordinating body, Le Cercle went far beyond that, effectively operating as a full blown private intelligence network. As such, it gained early support from the ranks of the Anglo-American intelligence services and by the 1970s a clique of British veterans of the Special Operations Executive (SOE) wielded enormous influence within the network

By the 1970s the Cercle complex became increasingly disillusioned with the Rockefeller-backed policy of detente. David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger, one time affiliates, had formerly broken with the group by 1980. This was part of a broader break with the Bilderberg network. Le Cercle would throw its extensive intelligence resources behind Margaret Thatcher and later Ronald Reagan, the elections of which formerly reversed course from detente to full blown rollback against the Soviet Union.

Having covered some of the numerous outraged committed by the Cercle complex over the years in a prior series, my purpose here is to explore the possible origins Le Cercle had in what is commonly referred to as Operation Gladio. Gladio was only the name of the Italian component of what was a network spread across Western Europe that the Pentagon and CIA, along with their counterparts in the UK, established in the wake of the Second World War. "Gladio" was essentially a series of stay-behind armies that were set up to wage a guerrilla war against the Soviet Union in the event of an invasion of Western Europe.


Or at least that was the rationalization, anyway. Over the years, extensive evidence has emerged that these stay-behind armies were in fact used to wage campaigns of terrorism within Western Europe to ensure that said states remained within the NATO system. Italy and Belgium in particular faced especially intense terror campaigns in what is known as the Years of Lead and the Bloody Eighties in those respective nations.

There were essentially three organizations for which these stay-behind armies were modeled upon, two of which derived from the Anglo-American intelligence services. One was the above-mentioned SOE while the other was the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS), which was largely based upon the SOE.

The third organization hailed from Nazi Germany and was known as the Reich Main Security Office (RHSA). The RHSA, a component of the SS, was a Byzantine organization that included the dreaded Gestapo, among others. For our purposes here, I am mainly concerned with two departments of the RHSA: Amt VI and Amt VII. Amt VI housed the foreign component of the SD, which was the SS's intelligence service. Within the SD was a detachment known as Amt VI-S, headed by the infamous Otto "Scarface" Skorzeny. Amt VI-S possessed the bulk of Nazi Germany's special operations forces and was used extensively to train stay-behind networks to harass the advancing Allies.

And then there was the mysterious Amt VII, which is often described as the RHSA's "research library." In reality, it appears to have conducted a lot of arcane research into the occult. As the war was winding down, the infamous Italian philosopher and occultist Julius Evola went to work for the RHSA, likely in either Amt VI or VII, but most likely the latter. Evola in turn appears to have became involved in efforts by the Reich to establish of a postwar stay-behind network, likely as an ideological architect.

Evola

Such were the topics discussed in part one of this series. In this present installment I would like to consider these postwar networks in greater depth.

Welcome to the long-delayed third installment in my examination of the origins of the shadowy transnational outfit variously known as Le Cercle, Pinay Cercle Violet Cercle, the Pesenti Group and a host of other titles over the years. I've already dealt with Le Cercle at length during a prior series, so I shall only provide the briefest outline here.

Le Cercle began as an offshoot of the infamous Bilderberg group in the 1952-1953 period. But unlike Bilderberg, which was dominated completely by the Anglo-American Establishment, Le Cercle grew out of rapprochements between German and French elites in the early postwar years. Pan-European and Atlantic oriented throughout the Cold War, Le Cercle was nonetheless dominated by particularly reactionary Catholic orders such as the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM) and Opus Dei throughout its early history. Various Western intelligence services had a strong presence from early on as well, particularly those from Germany and France. When the Anglo-American Establishment did make inroads beginning in the late 1960s, it was chiefly via "former" intelligence officers. In particular, veterans of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) would come to dominate Le Cercle by the 1980s.

As the years wore on, the Cercle complex became increasingly disillusioned with the policies being pursued by the Bilderberg clique, especially that of detente. David Rockefeller and Henry Kissinger, some time Cercle affiliates, had formally broken with the group by 1980. By this time the Cercle complex was firmly committed to rollback, a much more militant approach towards the Soviet Union. To this end they became a crucial support network for the elections of Ronald Reagan and especially Margaret Thatcher.

the Iron Lady shares a laugh with Ronnie Raygun

As far as this series is concerned, I would like to explore the potential origins the Cercle complex has in what is commonly referred to as Operation Gladio. Gladio was only the name of the Italian component, however, as different names were used in other NATO or NATO-aligned countries featuring such networks (in Greece, "Red-Sheepskin" was used; in Turkey, "Counter-Guerrilla;" etc). In effect these networks consisted of secret armies that, in the event of a Soviet invasion, would be activated to form a resistance against the invaders.

That was the theory, at least. In actuality, ample evidence has emerged over the years that these networks were frequently employed in acts of terrorism to ensure submission to the United States (this topic was dealt with in regards to Italy here, and with Belgium here).

As was noted in part one of this series, the Gladio networks were largely based upon similar networks established by the above-mentioned SOE, the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS), and Amt VI-S of Nazi Germany's Reich Main Security Office (RHSA) during the Second World War. With the second installment, I considered how the assets of the Amt VI (the Ausland-SD, effectively Nazi Germany's CIA) were transferred to a Spanish-German conglomerate known as SOFINDUS during the final years of the war and were used to establish what are commonly referred to as the "Ratlines." Elements of the Amt VI-S, including its head, Otto Skorzeny, ended up working for SOFINDUS after the war. Meanwhile, SOFINDUS itself had been taken over by a curious entity.

"... An early transnational commercial intelligence firm formed in 1946 by Donovan's wartime British counterpart, Sir William Stephenson, with a number of old OSS and British Special Operations Executive hands. According to Stephenson's longtime friend and biographer, William Stevenson, the firm was 'designed to continue Anglo-American intelligence cooperation.' Donovan's law firm handled legal business for WCC from the onset, and Donovan became a director in 1947. The firm was backed by an impressive list of capitalists from the British, American, and Canadian overworld, including Nelson Rockefeller, John J. McCloy, Russell Forgan, Lester Armour, Sydney Weinberg (of Goldman Sachs), Richard Mellon, Rex Benson, and Sir Victor Sassoon."

(American War Machine, Peter Dale Scott, pg. 55)

"Suddenly, in May 1945, Stephenson and a small cir of associates moved on the formation of a highly enigmatic private corporation called British-American-Canadian-Corporation, S.A. (BACC). The New York-based company was formed with a Panamanian registry. It operated in New York in the same building that served as the headquarters for Stephenson's BSC. Nearly all of its corporate officers and almost all of its rank-and-file were former intelligence officers. Two of Stephenson's top partners in the corporation were senior-level British intelligence officer Sir Charles Hambro and Colonel Rex L. Benson. In civilian life Benson was merchant banker and put up most of the money for the new corporation. Hambro was also a powerful merchant banker and highly decorated World War I Veteran. At the beginning of World War II, he joined the Ministry of Economic Warfare to oversee several departments of the SOE including the French, Belgian, German and Dutch sections, also for five months beginning in November 1941, he was SOE deputy. He was involved in the earliest coordination with William Donovan over the start-up of an American organization for covert action."

(The Skorzeny Papers, Ralph P. Ganis, pg. 21)

The presence of Sir Charles Hambro in the BACC is most significant for our purposes here. At least two crucial Cercle figures and SOE veterans had links to either Hambros or his bank. Sir Peter Tennant, a future Cercle chairman, was one of the earliest members of the SOE, having been personally recruited by Hambro himself. And then there was Henry Sporborg, a Deputy Head of the Special Operations Executive who went to work for Hambros Bank in the postwar years. But back to the matter at hand.

The WCC was actually founded in 1945 by an OSS officer known as Frank Ryan. Ryan had also provided a lot of capital for the foundation of the BACC, linking the two corporations from early on. It was not until 1947, however, that they were formally merged.



But in addition to the funds provided by American, British and Canadian capitalists, there were rumblings that capital for these two entities was also provided by other sources. The great Peter Dale Scott noted that "Nazi money, laundered by Allen Dulles and Sir William Stephenson through the WCC" (American War Machine, pg. 71), was also available. This charge is most plausible. In The Skorzeny Papers, Ralph P. Ganis compellingly argues that that both the BACC and the WCC were involved in Operation Safehaven, a joint US-UK project launched in 1944 to recover hidden Nazi assets. And as was noted in the prior installment, SOFINDUS had been the recipient of billions of dollars worth of Nazi gold during the final years of the war. According to Ganis, the SOFINDUS network was rolled into the BACC-WCC sometime around 1946-1947. As such, it is highly probable that the WCC had access to recovered Nazi gold.

It is also likely that the WCC and its operations would later be financed in part by drug money as well. In the aftermath of the Chinese Revolution, Wild Bill Donovan would become a crucial backer of the disposed Kuomintang (KMT) regime. These Nationalist Chinese would go on to take possession of Formosa, becoming the ruling political party there for decades and effectively turning it into an Apartheid country in the process. Hence, Formosa is now known as Taiwan.

the emblem of the KMT

Even before the Chinese Revolution, the KMT enjoyed enormous influence in the United States. Its supporters were dubbed the China Lobby and this network wielded the same kind of power in American politics throughout much of the Cold War that the similar (and closely aligned) Israeli Lobby now enjoys. In the case of the KMT, much of this influence was bought and paid for with drug money. Much more information on this topic can be found here.

In the immediate aftermath of the KMT's defeat on mainland China, the WCC came to its aide via a subsidiary known as the Commerce International China (CIC).

"...In addition, the WCC (along with sponsors in the U.S. overworld) develop links to the KMT in this period. Thus, in early 1950 a Panama-based company, Commerce International (China), or CI(C), was supplying military arms and training to Chang Kai-shek on Taiwan in a period when Secretary of State Acheson was not yet permitting official US support. Bruce Cumings suspects that CI (C) 'may well have been a CIA proprietary company'...."

(American War Machine, Peter Dale Scott, pg. 55)

The vice-president of the CIC at the time was an individual known as Satiris Fassoulis. Previously Fassoulis had been a pilot for General Claire Chennault during the war. Chennault was a key figure in the China Lobby and the founder of Civil Air Transport (CAT). CAT would later become the infamous Air America.


When relations between Taiwan and the United States were normalized, the CIC would once again be enlisted. The impetus for this alliance came from a "fact finding" mission launched in 1949 that formalized military relations between the two nations.

"The plan to save Taiwan advanced on 7 November 1949, when privateer William S. Pawley received permission from Secretary of State Dean Acheson to lead a group of retired military officers, headed by Admiral Charles Cooke, to Taiwan to advise the KMT on security affairs. No stranger to political intrigues or the underworld, Pawley own sugar plantations, an airline and a bus system in Cuba, and was linked to Mafia leaders who had investments there too. He was well connected to the espionage Establishment as well: Bill Donovan met with Chiang Kai-shek's defense minister and secret police chief to grease the skids on Pawley's behalf, and William Bullitt in December began raising funds for the so-called Pawley-Cooke Advisory Mission – the lion's share of which was provided by a group of Texas oilman led by right-wing fanatic H. L. Hunt, a onetime professional gambler who, in his younger days, help finance his empire by running a private racing wire."

(The Strength of the Wolf, Douglas Valentine, pg. 78)

William D. Pawley and Admiral Charles Cooke would go on to become luminaries in the American Security Council (ASC), for years the black heart of the defense establishment in the United States. Nominally a think tank and a lobby group, the ASC was also a full blown private intelligence network. Its membership included numerous "former" high ranking military and intelligence officers. Much more in the ASC can be found here. The Texas oil magnet H.L. Hunt was a crucial figure in funding the modern conservative movement. He is also believed to have been a key figure in the Kennedy assassination, as was noted before here.

Pawley (top) and Admiral Cooke (bottom)

As such, the Pawley-Cooke expedition was a crucial alliance between the American national security establishment and the far right. This alliance would later have profound implication for these United States, as was noted before here and here.

There is also much evidence that the Pawley-Cooke expedition would play a crucial role in facilitating the import of KMT opium in the United States. Douglas Valentine would go on to note:

"... the Pawley-Cooke mission in Taiwan, which was funded by ultra Texas oilman like H. L. Hunt, in which, and which, in 1951, was facilitating the CIA-Kuomintang drug smuggling operation that entered the US by crossing the Mexican border at Laredo, Texas?

"There was certainly enough evidence for the Kefauver Committee to take a long look at the Lone Star State. In 1951, Lait and Mortimer had identified Hunt as a professional gambler who ran a private racing wire, which suggests Mafia ties. They had also claimed that the Mafia had 'taken over the age-old racket of running guns across the border,' under the aegis of Carlos Marcello."

(The Strength of the Wolf, Douglas Valentine, pg. 309)

H.L. Hunt

As far as the WCC is concerned, not only did Donovan himself personally intervene on behalf of the Pawley-Cooke mission, but the CIC (a subsidiary of the WCC) provided the mission with everything from gas masks to airplanes.

But in addition to providing military support to the KMT and helping bring the Nationalist Chinese into US Cold War strategy, the WCC also helped them procure a new supply of opium in the aftermath of the Chinese Revolution. Donovan himself was also deeply involved in these efforts, which began even before the end of the Chinese war.

"...With only token support from the Truman administration, the Nationalists' war with the Communist was faltering, and in Thailand a war had erupted between the police and army over the opium trade. Then a registered foreign agent of the Thai government, former OSS chief William Donovan traveled to Bangkok to unite the squabbling factions in a strategic alliance against the Communist. The Nationalist Chinese who served as middlemen in the production and transportation of narcotics from Thailand to Hong Kong, Macao, and other Asian markets, benefited greatly from Donovan's intervention."

(The Strength of the Wolf, Douglas Valentine, pg. 70)

Wild Bill

This intervention became crucial for the survival of the KMT in the aftermath of being completely driven from the Chinese mainland.

"...by 1956, the KMT had been driven from the Chinese mainland and that Chinese production of opium, even in remote mountainous Yunnan, had been virtually eliminated. The disruptions of a world war and revolution had created an opportunity to terminate the opium problem in the Far East. Instead, U.S. covert support for the Thai and KMT drug traffickers converted Southeast Asia, for more than two decades, into the world's major source of opium and heroin.

"The origins of the U.S. interface with these drug traffickers in Thailand and Burma are obscure. They appear, however, to have involved principally four men: William Donovan; his British ally Sir William Stephenson, the organizer with Donovan of the World Commerce Corporation (WCC); Paul Helliwell; and Willis Bird (both veterans of OSS China). After World War II, Sir William Stephenson's WCC 'became very active in Bangkok,' and Stephenson himself established a strong personal relationship with King Rama IX.

"Stephenson recruited James Thompson, the last OSS commander in Bangkok, to stay on in Bangkok as the local WCC representative. This led to the WCC's financing of Thompson's Thai Silk Company, a successful commercial enterprise that also covered Thompson's repeated trips to the northeastern Thai border with Laos, the so-called Isan, where communist insurrection was most feared and where future CIA operations would be concentrated..."

(American War Machine, Peter Dale Scott, pgs. 70-71)

James Thompson

Donovan himself would continue to maintain a strong presence in this region of the world well until the 1950s. In 1953, he appointed US ambassador to Thailand, where he appears to have continued to keep a watchful eye over the opium trade there.



It does not appear that Asia was the only region of the world where Donovan would collaborate with organized crime in anti-Communist activities either. By the late 1940s, the newly founded CIA had become deeply concerned over growing Communist influence in Italy. Specifically, there was an overriding fear that the Italian Communist party would come to power. By now it is well known that CIA provided considerable funds to influence Italian elections in 1948 to prevent this possibility, but there is evidence that even more extreme measures were resorted too.

"One covert and commercial use to which international drug traffickers were put was as a tool in the suppression of communists and labor organizers. In May 1947, for example, Mafioso Salvatore Giuliano and his gang killed eight people and wounded thirty-three in a Sicilian village that had voted for the Communist Party's candidates in elections held four days before. Frank Coppola, from his base in nearby Partinico, reportedly provided Giuliano with the bombs and guns, and was himself 'allegedly financed by former OSS chief William Donovan.'

" 'Coppola was the controller behind the scenes, the maker of Sicilian and Roman deputies,' author Gaia Servadio says in Mafioso, and 'the deus ex machina of the Salvatore Giuliano saga.'

"By 1948, the CIA was so influential in Italy that the leader of its Communist Party, Palmiro Togliatti, charged the US with subverting Italy's national elections. He also charged that reporter Michael Stern (who glorified Giuliano in a series of articles for Time Magazine in 1947) was a spy for William Donovan and China lobby Senator Carl Mundt..."

(The Strength of the Wolf, Douglas Valentine, pg. 76)

Frank Coppola

Earlier, Valentine had indicated that Donovan's work in Italy during the late 1940s was also linked to the WCC, a good possibility given that he had no other known intelligence connections at the time. And while this is all highly speculative, there can be little question that Donovan had had dealings with the Mafia going back to the time of Operation Underworld.

Now, let us step back for a moment. Clearly with its ties to SOFINDUS (and by default, Nazi gold) and the Southeast Asian opium trade, the WCC was clearly well capitalized by the early 1950s via a host of off-the-book sources. This provided a vast, clandestine source of funding for a host of equally clandestine operations. If Donovan's involvement with Coppola in Italy during the late 1940s is any indication, these operations likely included "wetworks."

This is what makes Otto Skorzeny's alliance with the WCC network during the early 1950s even more ominous. While this was no doubt partly related to Skorzeny's access to Nazi gold, there's no question that Skorzeny also had quite the stable of hardened killers at his disposal as well. Combine this with all the covert operations veterans from the OSS and SOE who ended up working with the WCC, and one is left with the specter of a well-funded, corporate version of Murder, Inc.

Otto "Scarface" Skorzeny

This is especially ominous in light of where Donovan was linked to political terror: Italy. Italy was of course one of the first European nations where a stay-behind network was erected. In Puppetmasters, the great Philip Willan alleges that this network was created immediately following the conclusion of the Second World War, well before NATO was established. The fashion and structure of this network shall be noted briefly in the next installment to illustrate the different levels of what is commonly referred to as Gladio in Italy. Hint: There appears to have been more than one Gladio network.

Another European nation that was an early recipient of this largess was France. In addition to a formal stay-behind network, there appears to have been a even more militantly pro-US secret army set up there in the years following the war. And recent evidence suggests that Donovan played a crucial role in these endeavors as well.

"The exact name of the covert group established by General Donovan authorized by U.S. authorities in 1947 is not known. The author has therefore created a name and special acronym unique to this book for ease of presentation and understanding. Henceforth, the author shall use 'Secret Paramilitary Group' or 'SPG' when discussing the hidden covert organization Donovan formed within the World Commerce Corporation. 

"The new anti-Communist operations of which the SPG would eventually be involved went under the code name Rose des Vents (Compass Rose)..."

(The Skorzeny Papers, Ralph P. Ganis, pg. 69)

The possibility of such a network will be explored in much further in the next installment, along with the postwar intrigues that rocked France during the late 1940s. It is likely these events set the stage of the rise of Cercle complex by 1953. And with that I shall sign off for now. Stay tuned dear readers until the next episode.

After posting some initial thoughts about Russiagate last week, especially in relation to Trump's ambiguous relationship with the FBI, I wanted to follow up this week with a more in-depth analysis. Here I would like to explore the potential reasons for this disastrous hoax, while also considering the motives behind those involved. So grab the popcorn, as this particular exploration is quite the comedy of errors.

One of the most interesting developments in the wake of the Mueller report are revived allegations that various Western intelligence agencies, including those in these United States, attempted to entrap various officials working for the Trump campaign. While these allegations have been floating around for well over a year now, the disastrous fallout from the Mueller report has added additional credence to such charges. Several days after the report was delivered to US Attorney General William Barr, Senator Rand Paul(R-Ky) charged: "So they sent spies into the Trump campaign, they tried to entrap Trump officials to admit they were working with Russia."

Paul alleged to have insider sources feeding him this information, but having direct access to the US intelligence community isn't necessary to gauge the validity of these claims. Indeed, after a precursory examination, it is not difficult to see how sketchy several of the "smoking gun" meetings linked to Russian collusion truly are.



Take, for instance, the much-hyped June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Don Jr. and Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya. Also present were Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and lobbyist Paul Manafort, a long time associate of the Orange One. Initially, this meeting was portrayed as a bid by the Trump campaign to receive damaging information on Hillary Clinton from a Russian national who, presumably, had acquired it from Russian intelligence. Veselnitskaya has long insisted, however, that all that was discussed at the meeting were sanctions.

At the time, Veselnitskaya was working for a Russian company known as Prevezon. As part of her efforts on behalf this client, Veselnitskaya had hired Fusion GPS to conduct investigations. That would be the same Fusion GPS, a private intelligence company, that produced the infamous Steele dossier. Indeed, Fusion had just been retained at the time to conduct opposition research into the Trump campaign and Veselnitskaya had even met with Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson on the same morning as the Trump Tower meeting. Both parties have insisted this meeting was unrelated to the later Trump Tower meeting, which would make the meeting highly coincidental and fortuitous at best. At worst, it has a strong whiff of skulduggery about it.

Veselnitskaya

And what of the ominous Trump Tower Moscow project that was initiated in 2015 and continued throughout the 2016 presidential elections? Trump's former attorney, Michael Cohen, worked closely on this project and later lied to Congress about how long Trump was involved in it. Financing for the project was to be provided by the VTB Bank, an institution owned by the Russia government and under sanctions at the time. What's more, the loan had been procured by a former GRU (Russian military intelligence) officer.

Sounds pretty serious, right? But here's the catch: the former Russian military intelligence officer has also worked with US intelligence, including passing on information related to Russian military technology, the satellite phone numbers of Osama bin Laden, and photographs of a North Korean official purchasing nuclear materials. Further, the long time backer of a Trump Tower in Moscow is a mysterious figure known as Felix Sater, the former managing director of Bayrock Group LLC who is reputed to have extensive ties to organized crime. Sater had been a senior adviser to Trump and The Trump Organization since the early '00s and had been working on developing a Trump Tower in Moscow since at least 2005.

It was Sater who brought the former GRU officer into the project. And like this former GRU officer, Sater has worked with US intelligence community for years, beginning as an FBI informant during the late '90s. In other words, the alleged links to the sanctioned VTB Bank were facilitated by a GRU officer and a gangster with links to the US intelligence community, the latter having maintained ties for nearly two decades.

Mr. Sater, whom we shall encounter again before this piece is finished

Easily the most pathetic effort are the allegations that Roger Stone met with a purported Russian agent to acquire dirt on Hillary during May of 2016. The individual in question, who used the alias "Henry Greenberg," is a Russian national with a criminal history in the these United States. Stone alleges that Greenberg asked for two million dollars in exchange for the information he possessed on Hillary. Stone promptly dismissed Greenberg as a crackpot and that was the end of that.

Later, Stone would allege that Greenberg had in actuality been an FBI informant, a claim of some merit. "Greenberg" did in fact make regular trips between Russia and the United States on behest of the FBI between 2008-2012 and would continue working with the Bureau officially until 2013. The three year gap between Greenberg's work with Bureau and his meeting with Stone has been used as evidence that Greenberg had gone back to work with the Russians. The Atlantic even dredged up a former FBI special agent, one Frank Montoya Jr., to proclaim: "My read on Greenberg is that he was either working at the behest of the Russians or he was freelancing (which means it was at the behest of the Russians)."

Ah yes, because the famed Russian intelligence services would task a man who had just worked with the American FBI three year prior with contacting the Trump campaign in a bid to steal the 2016 election. Its not like this would have been a sensitive operation or anything, so why not enlist a man with a criminal background who had recently collaborated with the US intelligence community?



But as sketchy as the Trump Tower meeting and Stone's May 2016 face-to-face with Greenberg are, nothing can quite surpass the curious fortunes of George Papadopoulos, the man who allegedly spurred the FBI's investigation after drunkenly boasting to an Australian diplomat that the Russians were in possession of material that could be damaging to Hillary Clinton (emails were never discussed in this meeting, as is often claimed). As with Stone's curious meeting with Mr. Greenberg, this occurred in May of 2016. The diplomat in question later reported this conversation to the FBI, setting in motion the Trump-Russia collusion narrative.

Papadopoulos

Papadopoulos had officially joined Trump's campaign as a foreign policy adviser on March 21, 2016. Earlier that month, Papadopoulos had visited Link Campus University in Rome, a university that has been used to train Western intelligence agents, including those from the FBI and CIA. It was during this time that he first met a highly mysterious figure known as Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese national who allegedly helped set up the Link Campus. Mifsud is an absolutely crucial figure to the Russiagate narrative --arguably the linchpin. Mifsud has been widely described as a Russian intelligence agent by the Western media.

During their time together in Rome, Mifsud alleged to Papadopoulos that he had high level contacts within the Russian government. Three days after officially joining Trump's campaign, Papadopoulos met again with Mifsud, this time in London. Mifsud was accompanied by a woman whom he allegedly introduced as a relative of Vladimir Putin (Mifsud himself later denied this claim). Papadopoulos would again meet with Mifsud in London a little over a month later (April 26, 2016, to be exact). This time, Mifsud allegedly boasted to Papadopoulos that the Russians had dirt on Hillary in the form of thousands of emails. Apparently, it was this particular claim that spurred Papadopoulos' ill conceived boasts to the Australian ambassador.

The question then becomes, how plausible is it that Mifsud was an agent of the Russian government?

Mifsud

 The answer: Not very likely.

While there is no question that Mifsud had dealings with Russian officials at times, and was a regular participant in the Valdai Discussion Club and the Russian International Affairs Council, Russia-based think tanks with ties to the government there, the bulk of his contacts were with fellow academics (Mifsud himself is a professor). Mifsud's highest level contact in the Russian government appears to have been academic Ivan Timofeev, who is involved with both of the above-mentioned think tanks. While Timofeev is highly respected in academic circles in Russia and linked to the nation's Foreign Affairs Ministry, he appears to be a minor official at best.

Conversely, Mifsud appears to have longstanding ties to Western intelligence services. One of his principal patrons at the Link Campus was Vincenzo Scotti, a former Italian Interior Minister and intelligence asset. He also had a longstanding relationship with British diplomat Claire Smith, a former member of the UK's Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC). The JIC oversees the UK's entire intelligence community, including GCHQ (the UK's NSA), MI5, and MI6. It is the senior intelligence assessment body in the UK and a part of the Cabinet Office. As such, Smith would have access to much of the intelligence being generated by the UK's secret services.

Another curious link of Mifsud's is to an Riyadh-based think tank, likely the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies. The think tank was run by Prince Turki al Faisal, who headed Saudi intelligence for nearly a quarter of a century before becoming an ambassador to the UK and US in the wake of 9/11. Prince Turki has long maintained close ties to the Bush family and especially the US intelligence community.

"Prince Turki had been a subject of CIA interest ever since his father had sent him to prep school at The Lawrenceville School in New Jersey. Agency talent spotters on the faculty at Georgetown University kept close track of Turki until he dropped out of Georgetown to return home at the outbreak of the 1967 war with Israel. After later completing his education in England, Turki again returned home to prepare himself to eventually succeed his uncle Kamal Adham as director of Saudi Intelligence...

"Both Prince Turki and Sheikh Kamal Adham would play enormous roles in servicing a spy network designed to replace the official CIA while it was under congressional scrutiny between the time of Watergate and the end of the Carter administration. The idea of using the Saudi royal family to bypass the American Constitution did not originate in the Kingdom. Adham was initially approached by one of the most respected and powerful men in Washington, Clark Clifford, who rose to power under Harry Truman and had enjoyed a relationship with the intelligence community for years...

"Prince Turki himself acknowledge the private network for the first time in an uncharacteristically candid speech given to Georgetown University alumni in February 2002: 'And now I will go back to the secret that I promised to tell you. In 1976, after the Watergate matters took place here, your intelligence community was literally tied up by Congress. It could not do anything. It could not send spies, it could not write reports, and it could not pay money. In order to compensate for that, a group of countries got together in the hope of fighting Communism and established what was called the Safari Club. The Safari Club included France, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Iran. The principal aim of this club was that we would share information with each other and help each other in countering Soviet influence worldwide, and especially in Africa. In the 1970s, there were still some countries in Africa that were coming out of colonialism, among them Mozambique, Angola, and I think Djibouti. The main concern of everybody was that the spread of Communism was taking place while the main country that would oppose Communism was tied up. Congress had literally paralyzed the work not only of the US intelligence community but of its foreign service as well. And so the Kingdom, with these countries, helped in some way, I believe, to keep the world safe at the time when the United States was not able to do that. That, I think, is a secret that many of you don't know. I'm not saying it because I look to tell secrets, but because the time has gone and many of the actors are gone as well. 

"Turki's 'secret' was that the Saudi royal family had taken over intelligence financing for the United States. It was during this time period that the Saudis opened up a series of covert accounts at Riggs Bank in Washington. Starting in the mid-1970s, bank investigators say, these accounts show that tens of millions of dollars were being transferred between CIA operational accounts and accounts controlled by Saudi companies and the Saudi embassy itself. Turki worked directly with agency operatives like Sarkis Soghanalian and Ed Wilson..."

(Prelude to Terror, Joseph J. Trento, pgs. 100-102)

Prince Turki

Turki had then effectively helped set up a "private CIA" to circumvent Congress during the mid-1970s. The CIA director at the time? George H.W. Bush. For more information on the infamous Safari Club, one of the chief fronts for this private CIA, check here.

Curiously, Mifsud was also director for a time of an entity known as the Centre for War and Peace Studies, a research center based out of the Link Campus University. Link was one of the two principal sponsors behind the Centre, the other being a Saudi charity known as Essam & Dalal Obaid Foundation (EDOF). EDOF is headed by an individual with longstanding links to Prince Turki and Saudi intelligence.

Mifsud's links to the Saudis, besides strongly suggesting connections to the Western security services, also places him firmly within the camp of the neo-liberal/globalist elite. This connection is further bolstered by his friendship with Link Campus colleague Gianni Pittella, a member of the European Parliament who headed the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats group in the parliament from 2014-2018. Pittella attended the 2016 Democratic National Convention where he made a big splash by taking a very vocal position against Republican candidate Donald Trump while also endorsing Hillary. Pittella has had a longstanding friendship with Mifsud.

Pittella

Needless to say, all of this should raise serious doubts about the notion that Mifsud was officially connected to the Russia government, or some type of spy for said government. These notions are further discredited by the actions of US officials after Papadopoulos had first mentioned Mifsud to the FBI on January 27, 2017. The FBI would then interview Mifsud between February 8-12 of that year, with no arrest occurring. Mifsud would continue to meet with senior UK officials during 2017, with the US seemingly taking no actions to warn their European counterparts about Mifsud's potential links to Russian intelligence.

If Mifsud was in fact a Russian spy playing a central role in establishing a channel to the Trump campaign, these actions are completely inexplicable. Further exasperating the credibility of Mifsud-as-a-Russian-spy are the inaction against his former colleagues in the wake of his 2018 disappearance. If in fact Mifsud was a spy for the Russians, he arguably was one of the most well placed in history. Through Link, he had established ample contacts throughout Western intelligence and diplomatic services, meaning that any number of his former colleagues could also be Russian agents. Surely this would have been of great concern to various Western intelligence services, and yet little effort has been made to find Mifsud since his disappearance so as to determine who he had compromised and/or recruited.

In other words, the lack of action on the part of Western security services strongly indicates that they do not take seriously the allegations that Mifsud is a Russian spy. If they did, he surely would have been arrested by the FBI in February of 2017 as he was allegedly the chief point of contact between Trump and the Russians. That he was let go speaks volumes. That no serious effort has been made to find him, despite colleagues insisting that he is hiding out in the Italian countryside with the aid of Italian intelligence (which was worked closely with the CIA since the end of WWII) should close the door on the notion that he is a Russian spy.

A few weeks ago I recorded another interview with Ryan of Occulture that has recently been posted. It can be found here and here. This is a follow up to a previous chat we had done in June of 2018 concerning the origins of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, more commonly known as the Knights of Malta. With this chat we continue with the Maltese knights, but with an emphasis on the intrigues they embarked upon during the Cold War era. As such, this conversation focuses heavily on Propaganda Due and especially Le Cercle. As such, a lot of the material for this chat was drawn from two separate series I wrote on these two entities. For those of you looking for additional information on topics discussed in this chat, I suggest checking them out:


Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
Part Eight
Part Nine
Part Ten
Part Eleven
Part Twelve


Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven


This chat was long in the making. It was postponed on several occasions initially due to a project I was working on, later because my landline quit working (I can only really do interviews with my landline for reasons that are explained in the chat) and finally, due to me losing power at my cabin for nearly a week in the midst of winter. When we got around to finally doing it, I was quite sick at the time to boot. As such, I wasn't nearly as prepared for this chat as I would have liked to be, hence the reason its just a little over an hour. Nevertheless, there is some interesting information contained in it, most notably Trump's links to the Knights of Malta.

Finally, I also offer an explanation as to why the blog has only been updated sparingly for the past few months: Because I've been working on another project, namely writing a book with Frank Zero. For those of you interested, much more information on this project is revealed during the chat with Ryan.

As always, I hope everyone enjoys. Regular updates on this blog should be much more frequent now that the book project is mostly done, aside from a little final editing. Thank you regular readers for your patience and continuing to frequent this site during the long drought. Hopefully, that will help as we try to find a publisher.

Until next time, stay tuned.

William Ramsey graciously had me on today to discuss Le Cercle. My luck with podcasts continued. Despite being healthy and well prepared for this one, my Internet was knocked out in the midst of our chat by a rather nasty thunderstorm. Curiously, the topic I was about to delve into concerned the differences between the magickal systems of Aleister Crowley and Julius Evola. That's a fascinating topic that will unfortunately have to wait until another time. At least I didn't lose my power. 

Black metal and churches burnings are headlines once again, making for one of the more unsettling aspects of 2019 thus far. February of this year witnessed the release of Lords of Chaos, a fictionalized account of the rise of the pioneering black metal band Mayhem. By April, a budding black metal musician by the name of Holden Matthews was arrested for setting fire to three historic black churches in the state of Louisiana. Of course, Louisiana has its own dark history of black churches being burned. But churches burnings have very much became one of the founding myths of the black metal community.

This too traces back to Mayhem. The group had been founded in 1984. Throughout its initial run (until 1993), the driving force had been Øystein Aarseth, who went by the name of Euronymous. By the early 1990s, the band had generated much hype around itself despite having only issued a handful of demos, bootlegs, and one EP. Their proper debut album wouldn't even be issued until 1994, after the first incarnation of the band was defunct.

Despite this, band members were largely able to focus on the group full time without being burdened with holding down a job. Euronymous was even able to procure his own record store in 1991, Helvete (which means "hell" in Norwegian), which generated little to no income, but which served as a rallying point for the emerging Norwegian black metal scene. How exactly Mayhem was able to establish a reputation within the metal community and financially support themselves with so little output from the band (which rarely played live either) is one of the more curious aspects of their saga that has been little explored.

Helvete, which since become something of a shrine for black metallers

According to Dayal Patterson's Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult, at least some of the funding for Helvete came from Euronymous' parents, of whom few details are available on. Presumably, they also helped financially support Euronymous during his time with Mayhem in addition to the record label he launched around the time of opening Helvete. Another future Mayhem member, Varg Vikernes (of which much more will be said below), also appears to have come from a well-to-do family. Lena Bore, Vikernes' mother, reportedly gave $20,000 to a neo-Nazi clique in 1997 to break Varg out of prison after he was convicted of murdering Euronymous.

But what of the other band members and hanger-ons? In Patterson's work, it is hinted that some supported themselves through various illicit acts, most notably selling drugs and firearms. But this may not have been the case in the early days. Many of the participants in the early scene are described as coming from solid middle class background, but even the middle class of the 1990s would have struggled to come up with $20, 000. On the whole, one is left with the impression that there was some real money backing up the early scene, though naturally few researchers have explored this angle.

The band's reputation is a bit harder to pin down. Certainly, the shock factor was a big part of it. In 1991, Per "Dead" Ohlin, one of the band's early singers, committed suicide in 1991 at Euronymous' house. Euronymous did not immediately report the suicide to the police, but rather took pictures of Dead's corpse and collected pieces of his skull, which were later used to fashion necklaces with. One of these pictures was later used on the cover of the infamous bootleg live album Dawn of the Black Hearts.

Dead (left) and Euronymous (right)

Needless to say, this was the type of thing that draws attention. Still, Black Hearts was not released until 1995, well after the band had become legends in the metal community. Sure, rumors of these types of activities were making the rounds in said community years before, but would this have been enough to establish Mayhem as a pivotal act with so little actual output?


Regardless, things took a truly radical turn in the aftermath of Dead's death. When Mayhem had first been founded in the 1980s, Euronymous and his cohorts approached their pioneering brand of black metal with tongue firmly in cheek. There was a sense of humor to the whole thing, in other words. But by the early 1990s, Euronymous appears to have firmly bought into what he was preaching. His philosophy has been described as "nihilistic hatred, colored by the brooding, depressive morbidity often associated with the negative side of the Scandinavian psyche" (Black Sun, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, pg. 204). Satanism had long played a role in this scene as well, but solely for the shock value during the 1980s. But by 1992, Euronymous became very serious about creating a Satanic underground. Fortunately, several of the more extreme denzies of Helvete found a certain appeal in this vision.

"Well he was perhaps exaggerating his own importance for dramatic effect, there's no doubt that Euronymous played a major role in setting the scene for the culture of destruction taking place across Norway. The 'militant people' he spoke of – along with some aware but uninvolved in their activities – would become known as the Inner Circle, Black Circle, or Black Metal Mafia, though more recent statements from those involved highlight that this was not as formal or organized a group as such phrases might suggest. Nonetheless, black metal's anti-Christian/Satanic ethos had, for the first time, been turned into significant direct action, and activities such as grave desecrations and church arson became relatively common.

"Pinning down exactly what inspired the situation isn't easy, and it's important to note that the majority of those involved came from untroubled middle-class backgrounds and weren't involved in other illegal activity. With a few exceptions, drugs were only notable in the scene by their absence, and though drinking with some, it was not widespread at that time. Some members of the circle, such as Mortiis and Vikernes, didn't drink or use drugs, and the use of intoxicants was criticized by several bands in interviews. Though certainly not true today, the Norwegian scene of that period could actually be quite militant and even puritanical, especially compared to most other youth music cultures, not least within metal itself."

(Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult, Dayal Patterson. pg. 161)

Patterson goes on to note that quite a cultish atmosphere grew out of this scene:

"Undoubtedly, there was more at work behind the arsons than simply an ideological opposition to the church. There was, for a start, a somewhat cultish atmosphere, wherein young participants (mostly those carrying out these activities were in their late teens) wished to be accepted within the scene by older members, such as Euronymous. And a culture had been created by charismatic individual such as Dead, Euronymous, and Vikernes, that celebrated evil, hate, misanthropy, and Satanism.

"Interviews of the time saw bands attempting to break every taboo still standing, glorify murder, torture, suicide, arson, and more, often tying this to an overtly spiritual, even supernatural, theme, with frequent references to the devil, spirits, hell, and the like. At the same time, music and art were being created that far surpassed what had come before – recordings whose timelessness has been proved by their enduring popularity. For those swept up in all this, the lines between everyday reality, art, ideology, and the glorious melodrama of black metal were blurred in what must have been an intoxicating mix."

(ibid, pg. 164)

Perhaps "psychodrama" would be a more apt description of what the Norwegian scene had unleashed. Curiously, this militant approach to black metal began to spread throughout Norway, creating local scenes that had no initial links to the Oslo-based scene of Mayhem. One especially notorious scene was the one that developed around the city of Kristiansand. This scene spawned musicians such as Terje Vik Schei (who performed under the pseudonym Tchort, a Slavic word for devil), who would go onto to work with such acts as Emperor, Satyricon, and Carpathian Forest.

"As Terje confirms, the Kristiansand scene was notably extreme even by the standards of the time, with members attacking Christians in the street with knives in the middle of the day. Going some way beyond mere anti-Christian ideology or even straightforward antisocial behavior, these activities were entrenched in the destructive Satanic culture similar to the one that had grown up in Oslo. Like Mortiis (whom he would replace in Emperor), Terje admits a certain 'saturation' of extreme ideas. Even for Terje himself – no longer a Satanist and now married with children – this period is quite surreal to look back upon.

" 'I have to force myself in order to recall these events,' he admits. 'The actions were extreme, but so were we all at that time. Living off human blood, decorating your flat with tombstones, animal carcasses, digging up graves and shit, does something to you, and what is considered extreme didn't seem so extreme back then. Again, it was more about the atmosphere, the emotions and feelings and pushing our limits that led to stuff like animal sacrifice, drinking blood, etc. We didn't see this as part of the music scene we now "belonged" to, but as part of the life situation we were experimenting with. We had some books and ideas on how rituals were performed, but we followed our own instincts – or lack of them – more than anything else. I remember that I passed out on the street on one occasion as I had been living off animal blood solely for quite some time.' "

(Black Metal: Evolution of the Cult, Dayal Patterson, pg. 166)

Tchort

Charming. Later, these Kristiansand lads would make the pilgrimage to Oslo where they encountered Euronymous in all his glory.  Reportedly, he tried to recruit them as the "muscle" for some of the projects then being discussed among the Inner Circle.



Easily the most notorious member of the Inner Circle, and a pivot figure in launching the church burning spree that made the scene infamous, was Varg Vikernes. After playing in several death metal outfits, Varg founded Burzum in 1991, a black metal band in which he was the only member. Euronymous signed Burzum to his fledgling record label, Deathlike Silence Productions. Vikernes later joined Mayhem as their bassist in 1992. Vikernes' arrival at the Oslo scene is generally credited with unleashing the wave criminality that followed.

"... Having introduced a devil-worshiping called in the Norwegian black metal, Euronymous and Vikernes began to proclaim their readiness to commit outrages. On 6 June 1992 the beautiful old wooden stave church of Fantoft, one of Norway's architectural treasures dating from the twelfth century, was burned to the ground by arson. By January 1993, fire attacks occurred on at least seven other major Norwegian stave churches. Vikernes was subsequently convicted of the murder of Euronymous in August 1993 and of three of the church arson; he was sentenced to twenty-one years in jail. Sensational publicity during the trial period guaranteed Vikernes the media role of an arch-satanist."

(Black Sun, Nicholas Goodrick-Clark, pg. 204)

Euronymous more accurately deserves the credit for the Satanic cult, as he had been working towards such a thing well before Vikernes enjoyed the scene. What Vikernes really deserves credit for, in addition to turning Euronymous' fantasies into action, was the introduction of far right politics into the scene. Reportedly a former skinhead, Vikernes would become deeply infatuated with Nazism and other extreme right ideologies during his incarceration.

"While in jail, Vikernes began to formulate his nationalist heathen ideology using materials from Norse mythology combined with racism and occult National Socialism. These essays were published in various underground publications and in Filosofem, a neo-Nazi magazine published by Vidar von Herske, another member of Burzum, who migrated to France. Vikernes' articles typically revolved around esoteric interpretations of myths in the Edda, with discussions of Odin, his magical ring, ravens and wolves. Vikernes identified himself with Wotan or Odin: 'I am his flesh and blood, his soul and spirit; for I am his posterity and the archetypes in our race are his.' Other articles focused on Norse cosmology and magical practices. With his increasing racial nationalism, Vikernes sees himself as a successor to Vidkun Quisling, the Norwegian political leader who headed the collaborationist government during the Nazi occupation of the Second World War. In particular, Vikernes is interested in Quisling's mystical doctrine of 'Universalism,' which combines pantheism with a Nietzschean will to power. He has also written a book Vargsmal, underlining his role as chieftain of his Norwegian Heathen Front."

(ibid, pgs. 204-205)

Varg

Curiously, one of the leading figures in creating the mythos surrounding the Norwegian black metal scene also has extensive links to far right politics. This would be none other than Michael Moynihan, the co-author of Lords of Chaos. As Lords was for years the chief source of information Americans had on black metal (its biggest market being the US), Moynihan has played an enormous role in how the genre is perceived here. As such, Moynihan has been accused of exaggerating the fascist tendencies within the movement. And generally speaking, it does not appear that extreme right politics had a significant influence on black metal in the early days. Euronymous had in fact long identified with Communism, for instance.

Moynihan

Still, there's no question that a far right variety has became firmly entrenched within the genre --consider, for instance, the rise of National Socialist black metal (NSBM). In recent years, scholars have attributed these developments to Moynihan himself and how he framed black metal in Lords.



This would hardly be the first time Moynihan has attempted to launch a far right movement. In 1989, he joined a curious entity known as the Abraxas Foundation. Founded in 1984 by industrial musician (and fascist sympathizer) Boyd Rice, Abraxas has been described as a "social Darwinist think tank." Other figures linked to Abraxas have included Adam Parfrey, the legendary founder of Feral House, and Zeena LaVey, the daughter of Church of Satan (CoS) founder Anton. It probably goes without saying, but Abraxas maintained links with the CoS.

It also forged ties with cult leader Charles Manson at some point during the 1980s as well. It was through Manson that Moynihan was introduced to James Mason, the head of the Universal Order (which Manson had provided the name for). Mason was a longtime far right activist who had joined George Lincoln Rockwell's American Nazi Party in 1966 while still a minor. A decade later, Mason joined the more militant National Socialist Liberation Front  (NSLF) and began editing a publication known as Siege. There, he advocated urban warfare and cultish murders as to destabilize the system. Eventually, Moynihan collected these writings into a book he published, which was also titled Siege. Moynihan's publication of Siege would become a cult classic among neo-Nazis and ultimately spawn more militant groups such as the Atomwaffen Division, which has recently be linked to several murders across three states.

James Mason

Mason is not Moynihan's only link to the old American Nazi Party either. Another organization Moynihan has been affiliated with is the Asatru Alliance (AA), an "Old Norse and Germanic religion" movement that grew out of 1960s Norse revival. The Norse revival, in turn, has long been linked to the far right in these United States.

"... Odinism began its modern career with the establishment of the Odinist Fellowship in 1969 by Else Christensen. Born at Esbjerg on the Danish West Coast in 1913, Else Oscher was involved in revolutionary unionism and politics in Copenhagen during the 1930s. She was eventually attracted to the left-wing Strasserite wing of the emerging Danish National Socialist Worker's Party, and in 1937 married Alex Christensen, who had served as a senior aide to the party leader later ousted in 1933. Following the Nazi occupation of Denmark in 1940, Alex was briefly imprisoned as a dissident. In 1951 the Christensens emigrated to Canada, where they settled in Toronto. Else Christensen's interest in racial radicalism brought her into contact with Willis Carto, a leading figure of the American far right, and James K. Warner, New York organizer of Rockwell's American Nazi Party. Carto introduced her to the writings of Francis Parker Yockey, Oswald Spengler's American eulogist and author of Imperium. Abandoning the idea of using Odinism as the religious counterpart of National Socialism in America, Warner gave Christensen his Norse material, which included the writings of Alexander Rud Mills."

(Black Sun, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, pg. 259)

Else Christensen

According to the great William Turner in Power on the Right, the above-mentioned Rockwell lieutenant James K. Warner had relocated to Los Angeles in 1966 to establish what was described as the "Odinist Religion and Nordic Faith Movement," of which he was the high priest of. Warner would continue promoting Odinism in LA until the late 1960s, at which point he turned his material over to Christensen and embraced Christian Identity theology.

Nor is Warner the only connection the American Odinist movement has to the American Nazi Party. During the 1970s, two Arizona-based ANP members, "Valgard" (Michael) Murray and Elton Hall, would join Christensen's Odinist Fellowship. Murray would eventually become the vice-president of the group and go on to found the AA in 1987. Hence, the ANP has longstanding ties to the American Odinist movement.

Another crucial figure in the AA was Robert Nicholas Taylor. Prior to hooking up with the AA, Taylor had been deeply involved with the Minutemen, one of the earliest post-WWII far right militias. The Minutemen had many interesting connections, including the US intelligence community, noted before here. Taylor was allegedly the "director of national intelligence" for the Minutemen and boasted of setting up "the first guerrilla training schools ever to exist in the United States."

Minutemen "promotion" material

On the whole, Moynihan appears to have had extensive links with especially militant sections of the far right. As such, his fixation on Varg Vikernes and the fascist aspects of black metal are most unsettling. While working on Lords, did Moynihan see Varg and black metal as being capable of establishing the type of revolutionary movement that he appears to have been working towards for decades?

"The link between the current Yockey revival and the occult is equally clear in the case of the French 'third-positionist' Christian Bouchet, who helped found a new European Liberation Front in homage to Yockey. Bouchet has been associated with the French branch of the Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO), and his occult journal is named Thelema in homage to Aleister Crowley. He is a leading figure in Nouvelle Resistance, whose journal Lutte du Peuple he also edits.

"... Bouchet... tried to turn the 'Satanic' or 'black metal' music scene in a fascist direction... Bouchet's group, Nouvelle Resistance, meanwhile, is behind the music fanzine called Napalm Rock. Napalm Rock has embraced a leading Norwegian black metal musician named Varg Vikernes..."

(Dreamer of the Day, Kevin Coogan, pg. 620) 

Bouchet

Bouchet has continued to defend Vikernes, who relocated to France after his incarceration, as recently as 2013. Between Varg, Crowley, and Yockey, Bouchet certainly has some curious occult influences. But for our purposes here, it is the origins of Bouchet's occult beliefs that are of greatest concern.

"... The national-revolutionary Bouchet was previously influenced by both Evola and Thiriart, and despite being very far from Marine Le Pen's alleged 'normalizing' line, he was still a FN candidates in the 2012 general elections and maintains a significant party role at the local level. A former member of Organisation Lutte du Peuple and Troisieme Voie (Third Way), and founder in 1991 of the (now disappeared) pan-European and national-revolutionary Nouvelle Resistance (New Resistance), this French activist has been constantly spreading the works of Evola, Mutti, Adinolfi, and many others..."

(Transnational Neofascism in France and Italy, Andrea Mammone, pgs. 223-224)

That would be Julius Evola, the infamous Italian philosopher and occultist. In the twenty-first century, Evola is more influential than he has ever been. Most recently aspects of his ideology have been embraced by the American alt-right, the Greek Golden Dawn, Russia's Alexander Dugin, and so many more. Indeed, it would seem that Evola has even managed to influence the architects of neo-fascist black metal. While Varg Vikernes apparently finds Evola's work at times to be too "oriental oriented," he has none the less recommended Evola's books to his fans. And then there's Moynihan, who has been at the forefront of the Evola revival. Moynihan founded the journal Tyr to promote a brand of Traditionalism inspired by Evola and has even edited and published one of Evola's most influential works.

Welcome to the long overdue forth installment in my examination of the origins of what is variously known as Le Cercle, Pinay Cercle, the Pesenti Group, and a host of other names. This mysterious network has its origins in the 1952-52 period, beginning as an auxiliary of the infamous Bilderberg group. Officially, it was created to seek Franco-German rapprochement as necessary first step towards a United Europe. However, the founding members were all linked two especially reactionary Catholic orders, the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM, more commonly known as the Knights of Malta) and Opus Dei. What's more, Le Cercle has long enjoyed close relations with the old European aristocracy, a relationship that appears to continue to this day.

As such, Le Cercle would gradually drift from the more capitalistic, technocratic, and American-centric Bilderberg group, especially over the issue of detente, in the 1970s. By the 1980s, it had effectively become the international right's counterbalance to Bilderberg. Much more information can be found on Le Cercle in my series on the complex.

As was noted there, Le Cercle appears to have long enjoyed a close relationship with the various "stay-behind" networks spread across Europe and Turkey. These networks were established by the intelligence services of the US and UK in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War. In the event of a Soviet invasion, these networks would be used to wage a guerrilla war against conventional Soviet forces with the aid of US and UK special operations forces.

It is the purpose of this series to illustrate how the Cercle complex may have grown out of these stay-behind networks as a kind of coordinating body. Part one of this series considered the origins of these stay-behind networks in the World War II-era organizations known as the UK's Special Operations Executive (SOE). the US's Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and Nazi Germany's Amt VI-S of the Reich Main Security Office  (RHSA). The second installment considered how the Amt VI-S assets were transferred to a conglomerate known as SOFINDUS as the war was winding down while the third and most recent installment considered the mysterious World Commerce Corporation (WCC).


The WCC had been set up by OSS founder and director William "Wild Bill" Donovan in the wake of the OSS's dissolution and appears to have been used to stash away assets of that intelligence service. In the UK, famed spy William Stephenson established the British American Canadian Corporation (BACC) to do the same for SOE assets after that agency was was also shuttered. The WCC would ultimately acquire both the BACC and SOFINDUS by the end of the 1940s, giving the corporation assess to various special operators from the finest covert operations services the West produced during the Second World War.

While the SOE, or more precisely Operation Jedburgh, served as the model for the various Cold War era stay-behind networks, inspiration was also drawn from the OSS (which was the SOE's partner in Jedburgh) and especially Amt VI- S, which was overseen by the legendary Otto "Scarface" Skorzeny. As such, the WCC was likely at the forefront of establishing the stay-behind networks during the early Cold War. It did, after all, have ample expertise for such things to draw upon from.


However, the waters of these stay-behind networks are quite murky. Much compelling evidence has emerged in recent decades indicating that not only were these networks designed to resist a potential Communist invasion, but also to suppress strong Communist parties and other left wing/anti-Atlanticist movements domestically. Both the stay-behind networks in Italy and Belgium in particular have been linked to extensive amounts of domestic terrorism during the "Years of Lead" and the "Bloody Eighties," respectively. More information on the Italian outrages can be found here, while Belgian atrocities were addressed here.

the aftermath of the Bologna railway station bombing

Furthering clouding the issue is compelling evidence indicating that there may have been multiple stay-behind networks in many of the nations ravaged by terrorism. In Italy, for instance, there was the "official" stay-behind network, which is often referred to as Gladio. It consisted of three main levels. The highest level, sometimes referred to as "parallel SID" or "Super SISMI," was a shadow intelligence service drawn from the ranks of "patriotic" elements of the Italian secret services. It was centered around Ufficio R of the various Italian military intelligence agencies, beginning with SIFAR and continuing through its successors, SID, and SISMI. It was controlled by NATO and the US intelligence community and nominally under the authority of reliable Italian statesmen. In fact, only select pro-Atlantic politicians and officials were even aware that it existed.

Below this level was another composed of regular units of the military and Carabinieri that would form either "stay-behind" or rapid response units in the event of invasion or an internal civil disturbance. Finally, the third level consisted of civilian stay-behind paramilitary groups. It was this level that was actually designated "Gladio." These civilian "Gladiators" were trained by special operations personnel and funded by the higher levels of this parallel apparatus. While many were law abiding anti-Communist, some were hard line fascists.

In addition to these three levels, there were also "mixed" civilian-military groups such as the Nuclei di Difesa dello Stato and the "presidentialist" Rosa dei Venti groups. While external of the "official" stay-behind network, these groups certainly collaborated at various times with each of the three levels. What's more, all these organizations were involved in infiltrating extremist elements of both the right and left while also recruiting from various criminal organizations to carry out illegal actions or "dirty tricks."

And yet there appears to have been another stay-behind network, more secretive than any of these, that actually carried out many of the outrages attributed to Gladio. This network predated US/UK efforts in Italy, and was variously known as "Anello" ("Ring" or "Link") or Il Noto Servizio ("the Known Service").

"... This civilian organization, composed of ex-military personnel, ex-RSI operatives, entrepreneurs, journalist, and right-wing activists, had originally been created – with a different name – by General Mario Roatta... in 1944. Later, apparently in exchange for assistance and taking refuge inside the Vatican and thence fleeing Franco's Spain in March 1945 so as to escape prosecution for war crimes, Roatta transferred control of the secret organization to the new postwar Italian state (or perhaps, according to some observers, to its American backers), and was thence headed for time by a Polish officer in General Wladyslaw Ander's Army named Solomon Hotimsky. The organization, which was headquartered in a palace in central Milan very near to the Carabinieri barracks on Via Moscova, thereafter intersected with many of the other secret structures... and it continued to operate until the mid-1980s. According to a member of the group... the name "Anello" was chosen for the organization by Andreotti himself after the SIFAR scandal erupted in the late 1960s.

"Throughout much of its history, 'Anello' was informally dependent upon the prime minister, most often Andreotti during the 1970s, but its 'dirty' operations to impede the left (perhaps including kidnappings and/or murders of 'troublemakers' made to look like 'accidents') were also reportedly 'aided' by personnel from the Defense and Interior Ministries, especially by Carabinieri seconded to SID and SISMI.... the 'Anello' entity was involved in a number of important covert activities, including both 'Plan Solo' and the Borghese Coup. In connection with the latter operation, 'Anello' operatives reportedly arranged for Borghese's flight to escape judicial punishment... The same organization was also implicated in facilitating the August 1977 flight and exfiltration from Italy of wanted Nazi war criminal Herbert Kappler; identifying (perhaps with the help of Brigate Rosse informants) the location of Aldo Moro's secret BR prison, which certain higher government officials intentionally did not act upon; and negotiating (with the help of mafiosi) the release of DC politician Ciro Cirillo (who had been kidnapped by the BR on 27 April 1981). Some have speculated that the apparent Mafia-sponsored assassinations of well-informed OP journalist Mino Pecorelli and General Carlo Dalla Chiesa may have been linked, at least in part, to the worrisome discovery of the existence of 'Anello.' "

(The Darkest Sides of Politics, I, Jeffrey Bale, pgs. 290-292) 

Mario Roatta, the alleged founder of "Anello"

It appears that Belgium also featured "official" and "unofficial" stay-behind networks as well. According to the great Daniele Ganser in the classic NATO's Secret Armies, Belgium in fact had two separate "official" stay-behind networks. One was dubbed STC/Mob, and was housed in the Surete (somewhat akin to the Belgian FBI, or a civilian MI5). It was considered a civilian network and fell under the purview of the Justice Ministry. The other, SDRA8, was housed in the SGR, a military intelligence service. As such, SDRA8 was under the control of the Defense Ministry and largely comprised of military personnel.

In addition to these "official" stay-behind networks, there appears to have been an unofficial network that had been organized by Paul Vanden Boeynants (VdB) and Baron Benoit de Bonvoisin. VdB was a political institution in Belgium, having served as prime minister twice ('66-'68 and '78-'79) in addition to having been the defense minister for much of the 1970s. De Bonvoisin was an extremely well-connected aristocrat whose father had helped set up the Bilderberg group.

de Bonvoisin

The origins of this shadow stay-behind network appear to trace back to the Belgian NEM Clubs of the 1970s. In 1971, VdB and Bonvoisin had helped establish the far right Nouvel Europe Magazine (NEM). Fascist militants soon established clubs amongst the magazine's readership so as to meet one another. By 1973, an especially militant organization had grown out of these clubs known as the Front de la Jeunesse.

Formal coordination was applied to this fascist underground in 1974 with the establishment of the Public Information Office (PIO). The PIO was headed by Major Jean Marie Bougerol, a member of SDRA8. The PIO was not a full blown government agency, however, but a public-private partnership sponsored by VdB and Baron de Bonvoisin. As such, the PIO was used from early on to carry out controversial actions against the left.

"... PIO had two official missions, the first of which was to expose Soviet disinformation in the media, largely through the publication of a press review called Inforep. PIO's second task was to act as a clearing-house for information on subversion, distributing information to the Army, the Gendarmerie, the Sûreté de l'Etat - Belgium's internal security agency, and the Foreign Ministry Security Division. Unofficially, Bougerol used PIO to mount the same kind of aggressive counterintelligence programmes that the FBI had been conducting in America under COINTELPRO against the Students for a Democratic Society, the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement from 1969 until at least 1976 (254)."

(Rogue Agents, David Teacher, pg. 124)

The PIO appears to have become the meta group behind militant right wing organizations such as the above-mentioned Front de la Jeunesse and the NEW Clubs, both of which had been created with the assistance of VdB and de Bonvoisin. By the mid-1970s, the PIO appears to have laid the foundation for an even more militant group.

"To return to PIO, from the outset, Bougerol used his earlier contacts with the extreme Right for PIO operations. As part of his counter-subversion work, Bougerol gave lectures to reserve officers, many of whom were recruited as PIO agents. One of the reserve officers' clubs at which Bougerol lectured was the Brabant Reserve Officers' Club (BROC), which in 1975 was given the task of bolstering the patriotism of other reserve officers' clubs. BROC's members included not only AESP member Baron Bernard de Marcken de Merken and Colonel Paul Detrembleur, who helped set up the DSD and would later head the SDRA from 1981 to 1984 at the height of the strategy of tension in Belgium, but also Paul Latinus, the Belgian Delle Chiaie, protégé of de Bonvoisin. A former leader of the Front de la Jeunesse financed by de Bonvoisin, Latinus would later emerge as commander of the fascist parallel intelligence service Westland New Post (WNP), a key component in Belgian parapolitics in the 1980s covered in detail in a later chapter. According to Sûreté sources, Latinus was recruited into PIO by Bougerol in 1977; in his limited testimony to the Belgian Parliament's Gladio Inquiry, Bougerol at least admitted having met Latinus (266). "

(Rogue Agents, David Teacher, pg. 127)

As was noted before here, the Westland New Post (WNP) would be a the forefront of right wing terrorism in Belgium during the so-called "Bloody Eighties." The founder and director of the WNP, the above-mentioned Paul Latinus, had been recruited into the American DIA while still seventeen. As such, it is highly probable the actions of the WNP were being sanctioned and even directed from a very senior level in the Belgian state.

The PIO network then appears to have served the same function as "Anello" in Italy, namely to perform "duties" that were too controversial for the official stay-behind networks. Frequently, these duties involved blatantly criminal actions. As such, these networks frequently leaned on right wing extremists and organized crime elements to accomplish its tasks.

At this point, it is also interesting to note the close links these "unofficial" stay-behind networks have to Le Cercle. While this researcher is unclear as to when famed Italian statesman Giulio Andreotti became involved with "Anello," it appears to have been under his control by at least the 1970s, if not sooner. This is most interesting, for Andreotti was a founding Cercle member in the 1952-1953 period.

Andreotti

As for the PIO network, its patrons were VdB and de Bonvoisin. The career trajectory of VdB was quite similar to that of Andreotti. Both men were long serving politicians who were major powers within the the Christian Democratic parties they belonged too (Christian Democrats were the political parties the US intelligence community frequently sought to collaborate with in Europe). Both men had served as prime ministers, and both had spent an extended period of time heading their respective defense ministries. As such, this would have left either man well placed to monitor the activities of these stay-behind armies, both official and unofficial, for many years. It is thus unlikely that they would have been allowed to hold such posts for so long without approval from the US and NATO.

VdB

Naturally, both VdB and de Bonvoisin were members of the Cercle complex. VdB appears to have signed up by at least the early 1970s, and de Bonvoisin was not far behind. As such, the Cercle complex appears to have been firmly in control of the unofficial stay-behind networks in Italy and Belgium by at least the 1970s, just as these networks were being put towards especially militant uses.

But this series is about the origins of the Cercle complex, which dates back to the 1950s. What's more, the French partners appear to have been at the forefront of establishing and sustaining the Cercle during the early years. As such, it behooves us to briefly consider the stay-behind networks that existed in France at the onset of the Cold War.

"On the initiative of the US and the British Special Forces SAS a secret army was set up in France under the codename 'Plan Bleu' (Blue Plan) whose task was to secretly prevent the powerful PCF from coming to power. The Blue Plan, in other words, aimed to prevent France from turning red. Victor Vergnes, one of the French secret soldiers who were recruited for the Plan Bleu army, recalled that in the immediate post-war years the stimulus had come from the British. 'At the time I lived in Sete in the house of commander Benet, a DGER officer formally active in missions in India. Numerous meetings took place during that time in his house.' The SAS, specialised in secret warfare, contacted the newly created French secret service Direction Generale des Etudes et Recherches (DGER) and agreed with them to set up a secret army in northern France across the Channel in the Bretagne. 'One day,' Vergnes recalled, 'after he had been visited by lieutenant Earl Jellicoe of the SAS, he said to me: "We are setting up a secret Army, especially in the Bretagne area".'

"The cells of the secret army soon spread across all of France. Involved were numerous agents and officers of the DGER. It was noteworthy that the DGER under Director Andre Devawrin included also members of the Communist resistance. Conservative agents and above all the United States considered the presence of Communists in the DGER to represent a security risk. This applied above all to top-secret operations targeting the French Communist such as Plan Bleu. Therefore the DGER was closed down in 1946 and replaced by a staunch anti-Communists new military secret service SDECE under Henri Alexis Ribiere. With the replacement of the DGER by the SDECE, the Communist lost an important battle in the secret war in France as the SDECE became its most dangerous opponent. Trained anti-Communists from the civil war in Greece were recruited as the SDECE shifted to the right..."

(NATO's Secret Armies, Daniele Ganser, pg. 87)

the above-mentioned Earl Jellicoe, a British aristocrat and military officer who traveled in many of the same circles as the future British Cercle members

These developments put the French Socialists in a precarious position. On the one hand, they knew collaboration with the PCF was out of the question. France desperately needed access to US funding in order to rebuild, and there was no way the United States would make these funds available for a Communist government. On the other hand, Plan Bleu and the presence of so many right wing extremists among the secret soldiers greatly unnerved the Socialist government

As such, the Socialists tried to counter both factions. In May of 1947, Socialist Prime Minister Paul Ramadier ousted the Communist ministers from his cabinet, denying the PCF access to any crucial post in the national government. While this move no doubt pleased the Americans, a month later Edouard Depreux, the Socialist Minister of the Interior, outed Plan Bleu and alleged that it was being used for the purpose of a coup that would take place later that year.

Paul Ramadier (top) and Edouard Depreux (bottom), both of whom played a key role in preventing a stealth take over of France by either the Soviet Union or the Anglo-Americans

Ganser goes on to dispute just how series the alleged coup really was. Certainly the Socialist didn't seem to have been especially concerned, as they took numerous steps to counter the Communist in the aftermath of the exposure of Plan Bleu. This included creating a paramilitary anti-Communist police unit operating under the Interior Minister, a psychological warfare campaign, and creating a new stay-behind network. The former two will be addressed in a future installment, but for now a few words shall be said concerning Stay-Behind Network Mach II.

This one was dubbed Rose des Vents (Rose of the Winds, i.e. Compass Rose). Curiously, Italy also had a Compass Rose, the above-mentioned Rosa dei Venti.

"While Rome magistrates were investigating the Borghese coup a parallel investigation in northern Italy was uncovering the activities of the Rosa dei Venti (Compass Rose) conspiracy. According to some accounts, the organization took its name from the compass rose, the star-like shape which marks the four points of the compass and which has been adopted as the symbol of NATO. Others suggested that it was a loosely knit association linking twenty, and later more, right-wing subversive organizations. What is certain is that the Rosa dei Venti was involved in coup-plotting in the early Seventies and was financed by a number of wealthy northern industrialists. It also appears to have enjoyed the usual support of the NATO security establishment..."

(Puppetmasters, Philip Willan, pg. 99)

NATO's banner

Or maybe not so curious. As was noted above, the Rosa dei Venti also appears to have been linked to the Italian stay-behind network. In France, it was the principal stay-behind network until the early 1960s. And its mission was ambitious, if nothing else.

"... According to the overall CIA and NATO planning for anti-Communist secret warfare in Western Europe the Rose des Vents army within the SDECE had the task to locate and fight subversive communist elements within the French Fourth Republic. Furthermore it had to undertake evacuation preparations and provide for a suitable exile based abroad. The Rose des Vents secret army was trained to undertake sabotage, guerrilla and intelligence-gathering operations under enemy occupation. France was divided into numerous geographical stay-behind zones, to which secret cells were allocated, with each zone being supervised by an SDECE officer. An exile base for the French government was installed in Morocco in northern Africa, and the SDECE sent some of its microfilm archives to Dakar in Senegal."

(NATO's Secret Armies, Daniele Ganser, pg. 90) 

As with Plan Bleu, Rose des Vents nominally fell under the purview of the SDECE (though it has been alleged that a secretive Gaullist group working through the SDECE is whom actually set up Rose des Vents). However, it appears that much of the training and support was provided by the infamous 11th bataillon parachutiste de choc (11th Shock Parachute Battalion), more commonly known as the 11th Choc (11th Shock). This was the paramilitary arm of the SDECE, often compared to the British Special Air Services (SAS), though it drew as much inspiration from the Special Operations Executive (SOE). Indeed, two 11th Shock commanders, Paul Aussaresses and Jean Sassi, were veterans of the SOE's Operation Jedburgh.

The 11th Shock was at the forefront of French efforts to maintain their colonial holdings in the aftermath of the Second World War. The unit saw heavy fighting in the French-Indochina War and Africa, most notably during the Suez Crisis and the Algerian War. After the disastrous defeats in Indochina and Suez, elements of the 11th Shock became increasingly radicalized. In 1958, as public support for the Algerian War began to waver, elements of the unit began to plan a coup to restore de Gaulle to power while other members remained loyal to the government. When word of the coup got out, the SDECE headquarters in Paris was surrounded by elements of the 11th Shock loyal to the Fourth Republic.

the insignia of the 11th Shock

A full blown civil war between the 11th Shock would wait until 1961, when another coup was planned. This one was in response to de Gaulle's decision to grant Algerian independence. After years of bloodshed and humiliation in the colonies, this was unacceptable to elements of the French military. Members of the Army's 5th (Psychological Action) Bureau, the French Foreign Legion, and especially the elite paratroopers, staged the infamous "general's putsch" of April 1961. After the putsch was defeated, remnants of the coup plotters used the Organisation de l'Armee Secrete (OAS: Secret Army Organization) to carry on the fight. Terrorism was a favorite tactic of the OAS.

Several noteworthy members of the 11th Shock would join the OAS, including Yves Godard (a former commander of the unit), and Yves-Felix Marie Guillou, more commonly know as Yves Guerin-Serac. Guillou would go on to found Aginter Press, which was linked to right wing terrorism in three separate continents. More information Aginter can be found here. Guillou would alter forge ties with Le Cercle's Belgian partners as well (noted here).


Aginter Press has long been linked to the stay-behind networks of Italy and Portugal as well. As such, there has been much speculation as to the role the stay-behind network played the general's putsch.

"The OAS coup came on April 22, 1961 when four French Generals under the leadership of General Challe seized power in Algeria in an attempt to maintain the country's union with France. Allegedly, secret soldiers of the CIA-supported NATO stay-behind army who had joined the OAS were directly involved. The secret soldiers 'supported a group of generals who were resisting, sometimes violently, de Gaulle's attempts to negotiate Algerian independence and end the war'..."

(NATO's Secret Armies, Daniele Gander, pg. 95)

But the OAS wasn't the only faction in the 11th Shock or the stay-behind network. In the aftermath of the Second World War, a curious organization was founded known as the Service d'Order du RPF. This outfit was essentially meant to be the dirty trick and paramilitary arm of de Gaulle's Rassemblement du Peuple Francais (RPF) party, but would soon turn into the general's personal Praetorian guard and an unofficial French intelligence service. Unsurprisingly, it had ample supporters in both the SDECE and the 11th Shock. Jacques Foccart, the director and "spiritual father" of the successor organization to Service d'Order, Service d'Action Civique (SAC), was a reserve officer in the 11th Shock. He was not alone.

"... After the war Foccart entered de Gaulle's inner circle and set up the SAC. The secret warfare school that he established at Cercottes near Orleans 'became a place of pilgrimage for SAC members in the 1950s.' SAC in the post-war years had a membership of nearly 8,000 'reservists', including active members of the SDECE covert action department Service Action, and the SDECE elite combat unit the 11th du Choc. Together they all trained in Cercottes, and in the wake of the 1990 Gladio discoveries the secret warfare centre was revealed as one of the places where the French Gladiators had received their training."

 (NATO's Secret Armies, Daniele Ganser, pg. 100)

Foccart

According to Major Ralph P. Ganis in The Skorzeny Papers, it was actually the Service d'Order, working through the SDECE and 11th Shock, that had set up the Rose des Vents as Communist penetration of the SDECE was still a concern. The Service d'Order was briefly disbanded in 1954, but was again reactivated in 1958 as the SAC for the coup that brought de Gaulle back to power. As such, it would have worked directly with future OAS members in restoring de Gaulle to power. It probably goes without saying, but Rose des Vents network likely played a role in this coup as well.

After the defeat of the 1961 putsch, it was the SAC that took the lead role in combating the OAS.

"... SAC... executed ruthless counterterror operations against the OAS. Recruited into the ranks of the SAC where the barbouzes, or 'bearded ones,' including criminal elements and Vietnamese experts in torture. This description appears to match the French news reporting on the 'Yatagan Commando,' composed of French veterans and Vietnamese targeting the OAS..."

(The Skorzeny Papers, Ralph P. Ganis, pg. 243)

Ganser alleges that after the 1961 general's putsch, de Gaulle crippled the Rose des Vents network and then effectively transformed the SAC into France's stay-behind network. Of course, the SAC may well have been the organization directing the Rose des Vents network in the early years, so this transfer probably consisted of locating the Gaullist loyalists while drumming out the pro-NATO faction. The SAC would become a powerful body within the French deep state --future President Jacques Chirac had directed the SAC during the mid-1970s while serving as prime minister, for instance.


As for the OAS, it had been fairly soundly defeated by the SAC and other Gaullist allies by 1962, but the organization was not formally dissolved until 1965. Remnants would continue to soldier on in Aginter Press and like organizations until 1968. The May of '68 student revolt forced de Gaulle into declaring an amnesty for the OAS. For here on out, elements of SAC and what was left of the OAS would begin collaborating again. As such, it is possible the Rose des Vents network was revived in some form at this point, though the details of French stay-behind networks are hazy beyond the 1960s.

The Service d'Order appears then to have played a role in similar to the "Anello" network in Italy during the early years of the French stay-behind network. However unlike "Anello", which was controlled by a reliably Atlanticist politician, de Gaulle had always been weary of his US and UK partners. As such, when the Service d'Order was reactivated as the SAC, it appears to have been used to form an anti-NATO stay-behind network. It is of course quite possible that the Rose des Vents network served the foundation for the new SAC, but by the early 1960s there appear to have been two parallel stay-behind networks, one loyal to de Gaulle and the other to NATO (the OAS). As such, the waters were quite murky indeed in France by this time.

At this point I will sign off for now. With the next installment we'll consider one particular anti-Communist organization the Socialists set up in the early days of the Cold War and its overlap with the Cercle complex. Until then, stay tuned dear readers.

This week brought indications that a new front in the deep state civil war has opened up. Last month US Attorney General William Barr noted that he believed "spying did occur" against the 2016 Trump campaign. While the Justice Department's Inspector General has been reviewing how surveillance warrants were obtained against former Trump aide Carter Page for months now, Barr apparently did not feel this investigation was broad enough. To wit, he launched a new investigations into the origins of the Russiagate conspiracy theories last month.

It was not until Monday, May 13th, that Barr's new investigation was announced, however. It was first revealed, along with the prosecutor heading it, by the New York Times, long a stronghold of the anti-Trump "resistance." Already there are indications that several of the most vigorous anti-Trumpers are getting nervous.

Reportedly, a rift has begun to emerge between former FBI director James Comey and former CIA director John Brennan over who opted to use the infamous Steele dossier in the intelligence community's assessment of Russian interference in the 2016 US Presidential elections. Of late Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence General James Clapper have been trying to pin it on Comey, but compelling evidence points towards the formers. As I noted before here, Brennan and Clapper appear to have been at the forefront of the US intelligence community's anti-Trump efforts.



The most noteworthy thing about the recent investigation is the man heading it: longtime special prosecutor John Durham. Reportedly, Durham is one of the most powerful, if little acknowledged, figures in the Beltway. He is most well known for his anti-mafia efforts in New England. In 1999, Clinton-era Attorney General Janet Reno appointed Durham to investigate whether Irish gangster James"Whitey" Bulger and his associate, Stephen "The Rifleman" Flemmi, had corrupted FBI agents whom they served as informants too. Durham's investigation led to the conviction of former FBI agent John Connolly Jr. for the role he played in helping both men avoid two separate prosecutions.

Whitey Bulger

Of course, anytime someone has connections to Whitey Bulger eyebrows should raise. Bulger himself alleged to have been used as a test subject for MK-Ultra during the late 1950s. Specifically, Bulger claimed to have been experimented upon by Emory University's Dr. Carl Pfeiffer during a stay in the Atlanta Penitentiary. These particular experiments had a reputation for being especially brutal.

"One of the most guarded and least documented of the early MKULTRA projects was Subproject 9, first undertaken at Emory University in Atlanta and the University of Illinois. Among TSS officials, Subproject 9, which evolved over a five-year period into Subprojects 26, 28, and 47, was commonly referred to as 'the Atlanta project' or 'the bullpen project.' Overseen by Dr. Carl C. Pfeiffer, the project on paper involved 'the use of various sternutatory [chemical substance that produces sneezing and other effects] agents on normal and schizophrenic human subjects.' In fact, it was far more complex, indeed frightening; it involved intentionally producing psychotic states with LSD..."

(A Terrible Mistake, H.P. Albarelli Jr., pg. 301)

The great Hank Albarelli goes on to note that several noteworthy gangsters were subjected to these experiments in Atlanta.

"During the time Pfeiffer was conducting experiments in Atlanta some of the more infamous inmates were Francois Spirito, considered the 'father of modern heroin trafficking'.... and also Joe Valachi, infamous Mafia stool-pigeon. Another inmate and Pfeiffer experimental subject was Antoine D'Agostino, also a heroin dealer, who was declared insane while in prison after he suddenly claimed he was having religious visions and was being visited regularly in his cell by the Virgin Mary."

(ibid, pg. 303)

Dr. Carl Pfeiffer

Not long after being "treated" by the good Dr. Pfeiffer would Joe Valachi decide to become a federal witness against the mob. And as for Francois Spirito, as I noted before here, he is one of two individual Albarelli credited with the murder of Frank Olson. As such, Whitey Bulger was certainly in some interesting company at the Atlanta Penitentiary.

Bulger has of course been in the news of late. On October 30, 2018 (the day before Halloween no less), Bulger was murdered at the US Penitentiary, Hazelton near Brucetown Mills, West Virginia. Bulger was reportedly beaten to death at the facility only hours after being transferred there.

Needless to say, the circumstances of Bulger's death are quite bizarre. Bulger, 89 at the time of his death, was wheelchair bound and facing health issues even before arriving in West Virginia. Why he was transferred in the first place is a mystery, as is why he was placed in general population despite his age and health issues. The facility in question had witnessed several murders in the 40 days leading up to Bulger's arrival and the US Attorney Generals' office had just been warned that it was dangerously understaffed a week before Bulger arrived. The man credited with Bulger's death, a former Mafia hitman, has no known motive other than the fact that he takes offense to informants.

The conspiratorial right has been alleging since Bulger's death that the hit was organized to silence Bulger before he could divulge what he knew about Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller's time in New England investigating organized crime there during the 1980s. The thinking is the Mueller was one Justice Department official working to cover-up Bulger's status as an informant. While these allegations are not especially compelling, it is curious that a man so closely associated with exposing the FBI's corrupt relationship with Bulger is now spearheading the investigation into Federal spying on the Trump campaign.



Far more compelling was Durham's role in scuttling an investigation into CIA torture during the Obama years. Durham was appointed by then-Attorney General Eric Holder to investigate 101 potentially criminal cases involving the CIA's use of "enhanced" interrogation techniques. Durham quickly threw out 99 of these cases, and instead opted to focus on two that had resulted in deaths. However, the deaths were not the reason Durham had chosen to focus on these two cases. Rather, he was concerned with these decision of CIA officer Jose Rodriguez to order the destruction of videotapes of these interrogations. Rodriguez in turn had opted to order the destruction of these tapes because he felt that public reaction to the tapes would be "devastating." Naturally, Durham would clear Rodriguez of any wrong doing.

Jose Rodriguez is himself quite an interesting figure. A 31 year CIA veteran, Rodriguez spent the bulk of his career in the Directorate of Operations (DO), the CIA's clandestine arm that oversees its covert operations and the like. In the aftermath of 9/11, he was appointed Chief Operating Officer of the Counterterrorism Center (CTC). Initially, he was brought on to work under Cofer Black, but ended up replacing him as head of the CTC. While there, Rodriguez once again found himself working with his former colleague from the DO's Latin American section, Enrique "Ric" Prado. According to Annie Jacobsen in Surprise, Kill, Vanish, it was the combination of Rodriguez and Prado who personally lobbied Vice-President Dick Cheney to enhance the paramilitary capabilities of the CIA so that its paramilitary arm could better "find, fix, finish" (read:assassinate) terror suspects.

Jose Rodriguez

These ambitious plans were greenlighted and the Directorate of Operations (now the National Clandestine Services/NCS) took the lead in carrying out these operations. In November of 2004, Rodriquez came full circle and was appointed head of the DO/NCS. During his tenure, the NCS became infamous for his use of "enhanced" interrogation methods.

Another colleague of Rodriguez's during his time at the CTC was present CIA director "Bloody" Gina Haspel. While at the CTC, Haspel had assisted Rodriguez in setting up the CIA's "extraordinary"rendition program. Later, she became Rodriguez's chief of staff while he served he headed the NCS. Naturally, Haspel played a key role in the tape destruction scandal that Durham later cleared Rodriquez of. And now, Haspel will be assisting Durham in his investigation of the origins of the Russian collusion allegations.

"Bloody" Gina

Even more curious is the specter of Blackwater that hangs over many of these individuals. After leaving the CIA, Black would join Blackwater as a vice chairman. And then there's Ric Prado. Prado, a figure reputed to have been involved in organized crime for decades as well, was allegedly tapped to run a CIA assassination program that was later transferred to Blackwater.

"...In 2005 he became a senior officer in Blackwater, the private contracting firm now known as Xe. In 2009, after CIA director Leon Panetta informed Congress that the agency had created a possibly illegal 'targeted assassination unit' – or 'death squad' program as the media dubbed it – aimed at killing terrorists around the world, Prado was identified as the head of it. He was also outed as the man responsible for moving the 'death squad' program to Blackwater and a no-bed contract..."

(American Desperado, Jon Roberts & Evan Wright, pg. 285n)

"Ric" Prado

While Rodriguez never personally joined Blackwater, he presently sits on the international advisory board of Constellis, the company that currently owns Blackwater. Rodriguez is joined on the international advisory board by Jason DeYonker, a friend and former financial adviser of Erik Prince. Prince is of course the founder and former owner of Blackwater. When he sold the company in 2010, it was DeYonker who handled the transaction. The links Prince has to the Trump regime have been noted before here.


These connections are quite incestuous, to put it mildly. But just how serious Durham's investigation is remains to be seen. Many on the Right are optimistic that Durham will be a raging bull in pursuing the anti-Trump deep state faction. But Durham has worked for Republican and Democratic administrations alike, and while he exposed the FBI corruption behind Whitey Bulger, he also played a key role in covering up the CIA's torture program. As such, Durham's findings may be as disappointing to pro-Trumpers as the Mueller report was to the anti-Trump faction.

Still, if Comey and Brennan are any indication, there appears to be real concern among the anti-Trump plotters. While nothing truly earth shattering will likely come out over the next few years, Durham's investigation will surely play a key role behind the scenes as a kind of cudgel to beat back the anti-Trump faction. As it will almost surely continue through the 2020 election, the prospect of an October surprise can not be discounted either, especially with Joe Biden looking like the likely Democratic nominee at this point.

Of course, Biden being the forerunner in the first place begs the question as to just how serious the Democrats really are, and if the upcoming election is farce (at least more so than usual), but that's a topic for another time. But certainly after making meager electoral gains in the 2018 Congressional elections, the Democrats appear to have reverted to full blown suicide mode by backing Biden.

And with that I shall sign off for now dear readers. Keep the popcorn ready and as always, stay tuned. 

The great Jasun Horsley of Auticulture was kind enough to have back on his show. Ironically, the first podcast I ever did for this blog was with Jasun back in 2016. That podcast was actually recorded shortly before I moved from Florida to West Virginia and was, I believe, the last post I made as a Floridian.

Regular readers of this blog may recall that I haven't had the best luck doing podcasts from my isolated cabin in the Mountaineer state (anecdotes can be found here and here). Fortunately, I was not sick for this one, and there was no extreme weather knocking out the Internet and/or power. As such, this podcast went extremely well. In fact, it may be the best one I've done to date.

That being said, I'm not promising that my pronunciation are going to be any better for this one. I tried to brush up a bit before hand, but Jasun brought up a few topics I had not prepped for. At least I think I got Opus Dei right this time.

On the whole, a host of topics were discussed over the course of this two hour plus chat. Many of the usual suspects turned up --Le Cercle, Donald Trump and Julian Amery, among others. In fact, we discussed the British deep state quite a bit. I attempted to lay out a premise I've been working on that a covert civil war played out in the UK beginning with the Profumo affair and ending with the election of Thatcher in '79. In particular, I attempted to highlight the bizarre relationship future Cercle chairman Brian Crozier appears to have had with the Fabian Socialists, most notably David Owen. For those of you unaware, Jasun is quite taken with the Fabians. His most recent book, Vice of Kings, deals heavily with this topic.

the seal of the Fabian Society

As should come as little surprise to those of you familiar with our respective work, we also found the time to discuss pedophile rings in the UK. More compelling, however, was our discussion concerning the differences in the systems of Aleister Crowley and Julius Evola. I think many of you who are more esoterically inclined will find this particular segment of our conversation quite fascinating.

Crowley (top) and Evola (bottom)

The podcast can be found here. My series on Le Cercle can be found here. More information on the forces behind Trump can be found here and here. Additional details on my thoughts concerning the burning of Notre Dame can be found here.

As always dear readers, I hope that you enjoy. Stay tuned until next time.

Welcome to the fifth installment in my ongoing examination of the origins of the mysterious outfit variously known as Le Cercle, the Pinay Circle, the Pesenti Group, and so on. The Cercle complex had its origins during the early 1950s, beginning as an auxiliary of the infamous Bilderberg group. But while Le Cercle had its fair share of wealthy capitalist backers, the core of its membership has typically derived from the European aristocracy and reactionary Catholic orders such as Opus Dei and the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM). As such, the politics of the Cercle complex have tended to be much more right wing than those of their globalists counterparts in Bidlerberg. Indeed, these factions appear to have become increasingly antagonistic of one another throughout the 1970s, leading an eventual break with the Rockefeller family around this time.

But the purpose of this series is the Cercle complex's origins, not what its been up to over the past seven decades. For more on these sordid details, check out my prior series of Le Cercle, which can be found here.

As the title of this particular series implies, it is my contention that the Cercle complex had its origins in the various "stay-behind" networks that the intelligence services of the UK and US established in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War across Western Europe and beyond. In theory, these networks would wage a guerrilla war with the support of UK and US special operations forces in the event of a Soviet invasion, but considerable evidence has come out since the 1990s that these networks were frequently used to destabilize host nations, ensuring their subservience to US (and to a much lesser extent, UK) interests.

These networks had their origins in resistance and stay-behind networks established by the UK's Special Operations Executive (SOE), the US's Office of Strategic Services (OSS), and Nazi Germany's Amt VI-S of the Reich Main Security Office (RHSA) during WWII. The first installment of this series provided additional details about these organizations and their secret armies. Part two explained how many of these SOE, OSS, and Amt VI-S assets were transferred to the private sector in the aftermath of the war via conglomerates such as the British American Canadian Corporation (BACC), the World Commerce Corporation (WCC) and SOFINDUS. Eventually, the BACC and SOFINDUS fell under the umbrella of the WCC, which became a kind of super private intelligence agency specializing in covert operations. As such, the WCC was considered in further detail in the third installment.

the insignia of the SOE, OSS and SD (Amt VI)

The fourth and most recent installment shifted gears a bit and began to focus on the early post-war stay-behind networks. There this researcher attempted to show evidence of multiple stay-behind networks in nations that have been particularly ravaged by terror. In the case of both Italy and Belgium, there appear to have been private stay-behind networks under the control of Cercle-connected politicians in those respective nations in addition to the "official" stay-behind networks under the control of the intelligence services of those countries.

From there, I turned my attention to France. As the Cercle complex was largely a French initiative in the early days, the history of French stay-behind networks is especially relevant to this series. As was noted there, the initial French stay-behind network was known as Plan Bleu. It was established in 1946 and exposed by the French Socialist government during the next year. The Socialists, however, appear to have objected more to the far right elements the UK and US had recruited into this network rather than the idea of a stay-behind network in and of itself. To wit, the Socialist government would greenlight the establishment of a second stay-behind network, this one known as Rose des Vents (Compass Rose).

Indeed, the French Socialists would prove to be vigorously anti-Communist and appear to have taken the lead in anti-Communist efforts during the late 1940s. As such, I would like to focus on the initiates taken by the French Socialists during this period as their efforts may have contributed to the creation of Le Cercle.

"... the CIA in the Fourth Republic targeted also the French police. After in the spring of 1947 when the Communist Ministers had been expelled from the French government the whole administration was purged from Communists while the anti-Communists were promoted in the police forces. Prominent among them was commissar Jean Dides who during the Second World War had closely cooperated with the OSS and now was promoted to become the commander of a clandestine French paramilitary anti-Communist police unit operating under Interior Minister Jules Moch. The embassy of the United States was pleased with progress made..."

(NATO's Secret Armies, Daniele Ganser, pg. 89) 

Moch

This does not appear to be the only stay-behind initiative that Moch launched either. According to Ralph P. Ganis in The Skorzeny Papers, it was also Moch who supported the creation of Paix et Liberté (Peace and Liberty), one of the first post-war efforts to create an transnational anti-Communist network. In the "Paix et liberte: A Transnational Anti-Communist Network" essay appearing in the invaluable Transnational Anti-Communism and the Cold War collection, Bernard Ludwig also credits Prime Minister René Pleven with the organization's creation.

Pleven served as French Prime Minister twice in the postwar years, first from 1950-51, and again from 1951-52. Cercle founder Antoine Pinay served in both of Pleven's administrations as Minister of Public Works, Transport, and Tourism, while Moch also served as Minister of Defense during the first administration. Pinay and Moch would also serve together in the third administration (1951) of Henri Queuille in the same cabinet posts as well.


While there is some dispute as to just when exactly Paix et Liberte was founded, the general consensus is that it was up and running by 1950. Its' official founder was regarded as a rising star in French politics.

"It was during this period that French politician Jean-Paul David, with the backing of the French government, attempted to fill the gap. His organization, Paix et Liberte, made its appearance in France in September 1950. Prime Minister René Pleven had called a meeting of like-minded political leaders to propose the formation of a new organization to confront communist 'fifth column' infiltration in French society. David, at 37 the leader of the Rassemblement des gauches republicaines (RGR), deputy for Seine et Oise, and mayor of Mantes-la-Jolie, 'was not an intellectual but an organizing genius, a courageous man endowed with some straightforward ideas, notably an urgent need to combat Marxist influence'. Finance in the region of two to three million francs a year was assembled from French industry and banks, and a high-profile campaign was begun utilizing posters, brochures explaining the communist threat and the reality of concentration camps, radio transmissions, and even a film, Creve-Coeur, about the French battalion fighting in the Korean War. Links were also made with like-minded groups across Western Europe..."

(Western Anti-Communism and the Interdoc Network, Giles Scott-Smith, pgs. 21-22) 

Before getting to those "like-minded groups," a few points need to be made. Let us start with the Rassemblement des gauches republicaines (RGR: Rally of Republican Lefts). This was a political coalition that brought together several largely center-right parties in opposition to the Communists, the Socialists and the Christian Democrats. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, it dominated French politics. And it was the 37 year-old Jean-Paul David who led it. As such, David was clearly a major player in French politics by this point despite having never held a cabinet position or other such prestigious postings.

David

It was not until 1952 that another coalition, the even more conservative Centre National des Indépendants et Paysans (CNIP: National Centre of Independents and Peasants), that the RGR suffered an electoral set back. 1952 witnessed the election Cercle co-founder Antoine Pinay as Prime Minister. Pinay was a member of the CNIP. Despite this, Paix et Liberte still received support from the French government, even if it doesn't appear to have been as vigorous as when the RGR was the leading coalition. Nonetheless, David began to push an ambitious agenda for Paix et Liberte while Pinay was initially Prime Minister.

"... Nevertheless David, who gained notoriety as the network's spokesman, became the point man for a determined attempt in 1952-53 to take it a step further by establishing a psychological warfare section within NATO itself. With the backing of French Foreign Minister Georges Bidault, David carried out an intensive rolling tour of NATO countries during this period in order to raise governmental understanding and support for psychological warfare activities. Always received at the highest levels, David's visit to the US in February 1952 was recorded in the New York Times and was intended to link up with like-minded American organizations and send a strong message that Europe was rearming not only militarily but also psychologically in the struggle against communism..."

(Western Anti-Communism and the Interdoc Network, Giles Scott-Smith, pg. 22) 

Georges Bidault was the foreign minister in the administration of René Mayer, the RGR candidate who succeeded Pinay as the Prime Minister in 1953. But Pinay was the Prime Minister during David's initial foray into the United States in 1952. Given that Paix et Liberte was sponsored by the French government, Pinay must have approved of David's efforts on some level. Despite different coalitions holding power in France during the crucial 1952-1952 period (the same time frame Le Cercle was founded, incidentally) the rise of Paix et Liberte appears to have continued unabated.

Pinay

And that brings me to my next point: the extent of the involvement of French security services had in Paix et Liberte. Scott-Smith notes that SDECE (France's principal foreign intelligence service at the time and a crucial player in the stay-behind networks, as was noted in the prior installment) contributed members to a "brain trust" the French government provided to Paix et Liberte. Elsewhere, the great Daniele Ganser notes that the above-mentioned Jean Dides (the police commissar tasked with establishing an anti-Communist police unit under the direction of Jules Moch) "regularly took part in the meetings" (NATO's Secret Armies, pg. 89) of the group.

Finally, David himself and key figures of Paix such as Pierre Rostini were veterans of the Resistance. What's more, Ludwig (writing in the Transnational Anti-Communism and the Cold War collection) describes other early supporters as "various militants from the RPF [Rassemblement du peuple francais]" (pg. 82). This is almost surely a reference to the Service d'Order du RPF mentioned in the last installment. This network was essentially a private intelligence service within the SDECE loyal to de Gaulle. It eventually became the dreaded Service d'Action Civique (SAC). Both networks were deeply involved with establishing the French stay-behind networks. As such, there are clear links between Paix et Liberte and French security services involved in stay-behind operations.

Finally, there's the question of American involvement in Paix. For years, it has been alleged that Paix et Liberte was principally funded by the CIA. For instance, Ganser writes: "American historian Christopher Simpson estimated that covert action units such as 'Paix et Liberte' were funded by the CIA during the secret war against the Communists with 'well over a billion dollars yearly'..." (NATO's Secret Armies, pg. 89). Of course, Paix was but one organization among many that this billion dollars was earmarked for. While there seems to be little question that some funding was provided by the CIA, Scott-Smith calls into question the general assumption that it was largely a CIA project.

"... The Dutch report on September 1953 does state that 'it cannot be denied that the movement in France is mainly sustained from American funds' but does not say what information this remark is based on. Regnier contends that even if American funding was involved it must have been a small percentage of the overall budget provided by French professionals and employers organizations..."

(Western Anti-Communism and the Interdoc Network, Giles Scott-Smith, pg. 270 n36)

Accounts of what some of the regional partners received appear to confirm Scott-Smith's instance that these funds were not substantial. Writing in Puppetmasters, Philip Willan notes: "A secret service report declared that the Milan office of the United States Information Service (USIS) 'appears recently to have made a payment of 3 million Lire... to the Peace and Freedom Association for their anti-communist struggle...' " (pg. 108). While this may sound impressive, 3 million Lire is only akin to several thousand US dollars --hardly enough for any kind of significant operations. As such, it seems likely that private sources of income is what chiefly fueled Paix.

Scott-Smith noted that David had met with high ranking figures in the US intelligence community such as Allen Dulles and Walter Bedell Smith in 1953 to pitch his concept of Paix leading NATO psychological warfare efforts. The Americans were unmoved, however, and refused to back Paix as a NATO venture. As such, while there can be no question that the Americans had some involvement, Paix et Liberte appears to have been principally a European project, and one largely controlled by the French.

Despite being rejected for a formal role by the Americans, David was undeterred. He continued to build up his network both domestically and across Europe. In France, one of the crucial partners he picked up was a Georges Albertini, a former socialist turned Nazi collaborator. Albertini would become a leading figure in European anti-Communist circles throughout the Cold War, in addition to a crucial figure in the Cercle's French section for decades. Much more information on Albertini can be found here.

the enigmatic Georges Albertini

Elsewhere, David began aggressively expanding Paix's European reach. By at least 1951 he was busy setting up sister organizations across Europe, with an eye towards uniting them under an executive committee. For now, let us consider several of David's partners.

"...The Volksbund, ostensibly a civil society organization, was put to use as the strong arm of the government, particularly by the Ministry for All-German Affairs. Unlike Paix et liberte, which was led by a politician, the protagonists from the VFF were – or had been – close to government circles, and took advantage of connections with intelligence circles. This was particularly so in the case of the founder of the organization, Eberhard Taubert, a former executive in the National Socialist Ministry of Propaganda. In 1933 he had created an association similar to the VFF, the Antikomintern. The anchoring of the VFF at the heart of the state apparatus was made possible by the extensive anti-communist consensus that reigned in Bonn, built particularly around the Christian Democratic Party (CDU) and its extended network. A key figure for the VFF was its vice president, Arthur Ruppert, a journalist and CDU militant from the Ruhr who had participated in the party's reconstitution in Hamburg and across the British zone, making him a key contact for the future chancellor Konrad Adenauer."

(Transnational Anti-Communism and the Cold War, "Paix et Liberte: A Transnational Anti-Communist Network," Bernard Ludwig, pg. 82)

In other words, it had its origins in Nazi Germany. Hence the reason that Paix took the lead in establishing a European wide network despite the VFF predating it and arguably having even more elite connections. Indeed, the VFF appears to have had a direct line to Konrad Adenauer, another Cercle co-founder. But Adenauer was hardly the only VIP in post-war Germany VFF founder Eberhard Taubert could count among his network.

He would later go to serve as an "adviser" to another Cercle co-founder, future German Defense Minister Franz Josef Strauss. Even more curious is the individual he sought out to pitch what became the VFF in 1948: Per Ludwig, it was none other than US diplomat Robert D. Murphy. Murphy was one of the most powerful State Department officials of his era, and also a member of the Bilderberg group's steering committee. He reportedly played a role in the stay-behind networks, with Ralph Ganis alleging in The Skorzeny Papers that it was Murphy who greenlighted the use of the World Commerce Corporation to participate in such activities. Much more will be said of Murphy in a future installment, so do keep him in mind dear reader.

Murphy

In addition to these "overworld" figures, Taubert was (unsurprisingly) well connected within the Nazi underground as well. According the great Jeffrey Bale in the first volume of his groundbreaking The Darkest Side of Politics, Taubert was also part of the network on Werner Naumann, a towering figure in the post-war Nazi diaspora. Naumann had joined the Nazi party in 1928, and by 1933 had become a general in the SA (Brown Shirts). He was also a member of the SD, and eventually joined the Ministry of Propaganda. He succeeded Goebbels' as its head shortly before Hitler's suicide. Indeed, Naumann had been a regular fixture in Hitler's bunker during the final weeks of the war, showing just how close he was to the remaining Nazi hierarchy.

Naumann was especially close to Martin Bormann, the head of the Nazi party apparatus. Indeed it was Naumann who first raised the specter of Bormann's survival during 1953. Bormann managing the post-war Nazi international from some distant location in South America would become a popular conspiracy theory in the second half of the twentieth century, with proponents that included elements of the Mossad, and high ranking intelligence officers in both the USSR and US such as Lev Bezymenski and Frank Wisner, respectively. Curiously, Naumann alleged that Bormann was a Soviet spy who fled to Moscow in the aftermath of the war.

This was hardly the only intrigue Naumann became involved in during the postwar years either. Indeed, the great Kevin Coogan in his classic Dreamer of the Day notes that Naumann was one of the key figures in the postwar SS underground. Naumann was a member of the Bruderschaft (Brotherhood), a crucial postwar Nazi network involved in smuggling various war criminals to South America and the Middle East.

Naumann

The group had more ambitious plans beyond this, however, hoping to lead a gradual Nazi revival in Germany. Naumann was reportedly selected as the front man for this plot. To this end, he founded the Naumann Kreis (Circle), a shadowy network of former Nazis that sought to establish cells inside the Free Democratic Party (FDP), a moderate right wing group. At the time, the FDP was part of Adenauer's coalition government.

Around this time, Naumann also became the manager of the H.S. Lucht Company, which was then owned by the widow of another former Ministry of Propaganda man. The Madrid business manager of the company was none other than Otto Skorzeny, who as noted in part one was essentially the figure head of the postwar SS underground.

All of this was unfolding during the early 1950s as Taubert was setting up the VFF. As such, there is a strong chance that Taubert himself was part of these intrigues due to his access to the well-funded Paix network. Naumann was arrested by British authorities in 1953, bringing an end to these plots, though Taubert appears to have emerged mostly unscathed. This researcher suspects that Taubert was effectively a bridge between "overworld" figures like Adenauer, Strauss, and Murphy on the one hand, and the SS underground on the other.

"... At the end of spring 1951, a Paix et liberte committee was also set up in Brussels under the leadership of Marcel Paternostre, president of the World Committee of Political Refugees from Central Europe and member of the Belgian section of the Comite international de defense de la civilisation chretienne (CIDCC). But the true architects of the Belgian wing, officially created on 4 October 1951, were Marcel De Roover and Maurice Keyaerts. De Roover had run the Societe d'etudes politiques, economiques et sociales (SEPES), a private anti-Communist organization that represented the Belgian section of the EIA, from behind the scenes prior to the Second World War. At the start of 1951 he served as David's intermediary in the creation of a Dutch Paix et liberte committee (Vrede en Vrijheid) under the leadership of E. P. van Dam Isselt, secretary of the Benelux committee, the body for trilateral cooperation."

(Transnational Anti-Communism and the Cold War, "Paix et liberte: A Transnational Anti-Communist Network," Bernard Ludwig, pg. 84) 

As was noted before here, the Comite international de defense de la civilisation chretienne (CIDCC: International Committee for the Defense of Christian Civilization) shared a lot of members in common with the Cercle complex, including founders Antoine Pinay and Jean Violet. Another Belgian CIDCC member who later became involved with Paix was the uber-connected Paul van Zeeland. He was a former Belgian Prime Minister and a founding member of the Bilderberg group. According to Ludwig, Van Zeeland became the president of Paix's international committee in 1954, shortly before the organization was rechristened the Comite international d'action sociale (CIAS).

Van Zeeland

Elsewhere, Chevalier Marcel de Roover (sometimes referred to as the "Black Knight") was an unabashed fascist who, according to David Teacher in the classic and long suppressed Rogue Agents, played a role in setting up early Belgian stay-behind networks. As was noted before here, de Roover was a key member of the Academie Europeenne des Sciences Politiques (AESP), another organization with an extensive overlap among the Cercle complex (and the Belgian stay-behind networks).

"... Sogno advocated a Gaullist-style presidency in the government of technocrats to tackle what he saw as the moral and economic decline of the country. He became a member of P2 in 1979. Born into an aristocratic family in Turin in 1915, Sogno had been a hero of the Resistance, working with the forces of the British Special Operations Executive and winning an American Bronze Star for his bravery during the war. As such he was an ideal leader for the anti-communist struggle, being untainted by fascist associations. After the war he became a diplomat, serving at the Italian consulate in Paris before becoming director of the NATO Planning and Co-ordinating Group in London in 1954. He returned to Paris, to the NATO Defense College, which he addressed on one occasion on 'The communist menace in Italy'. It was during the 1950s that he made his contribution to the Cold War by founding the Peace and Freedom Association (Pace e Liberta), which became a vehicle for a rabidly anti-communist propaganda campaign. He was ably assisted in this endeavor by Luigi Cavallo, a former communist journalist and secret service agent provocateur. In the 1960s Sogno moved to the United States, where he served in the consulate in Philadelphia and then as a counsellor at the Washington embassy, before ending up as an ambassador in Rangoon, Burma. He returned to Italy in the 1970s, just in time to play his part in saving the country from chaos and communism."

(Puppetmasters, Philip Willan, pgs. 107-108)

Sogno

We'll get to Sogno's role in "defending" Italy from chaos and Communism a little later in this installment. For now, its worth highlighting Sogno's role in the British Special Operations Executive (SOE). As was noted in the first installment of this series, the SOE was the inspiration for the various stay-behind networks, while many former SOE hands would later come to dominate the British section of Le Cercle. As was noted in part two, SOE veterans would also play a key role in setting up the British American Canadian Corporation (BACC), which was later incorporated into the WCC. The WCC also acquired Nazi Germany's SOFINDUS conglomerate, which was initially intended to sponsor a clandestine, post-war Nazi revival. Otto Skorzeny became an agent of SOFINDUS around the time it was acquired by the WCC.

The above-mentioned P2 was of course Propaganda Due, the notorious Masonic lodge that has also been linked extensively to Italian stay-behind efforts (noted before here). P2 also had compelling links to the above-mentioned Belgian AESP, as was noted before here). Through the AESP, P2 also had links to the Cercle complex.

Roger Kynard "Roky" Erickson was both an American original and an American tragedy. He is most well known now as the American Syd Barrett, but with a somewhat happier ending. The body of work Erickson put together over the course of nearly six decades in the music industry (sans a decade or two when he gave up music) has proven to be enormously influential. A host of acts ranging from ZZ Top, Echo & the Bunnymen, Julian Cope, the Butthole Surfers, R.E.M., Primal Scream, and legions of modern neo-psych bands claim him as an influence.  When Erickson passed away on May 31, he was several decades into a remarkable career resurgence that would have seemed impossible in the 1980s.

Welcome to the sixth installment in my ongoing examination of the mysterious Cercle complex. Variously known as Le Cercle, Pinay Cercle, the Pesenti Group, and so on, the Cercle emerged during the early 1950s as a kind of auxiliary to to the infamous Bilderberg group. But despite its Atlanticism, the composition was of the Cercle complex has differed somewhat from Bilderberg. While the latter was dominated by American and Northern European elites, Le Cercle was originally a joint Franco-German venture. As such, it had more of a Catholic orientation was dominated by reactionary orders such as the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and Opus Dei during the early years. Over the years a considerable amount of knights, lords, barons and dukes have been affiliated with the group as well, with these aristocratic trappings continuing to this very day.

The Cercle complex wielded phenomenal power throughout the Cold War and beyond, which has been explored before in an earlier series. As the title implies, the purpose of this present series is to explore the origins of the Cercle complex in relation to the various stay-behind armies that sprung up across Europe and beyond in the almost immediate aftermath of the Second World War. These paramilitary networks were initiated by the US and UK so as to wage a guerrilla war against the Soviet Union in the event of an invasion. They were modeled upon WWII era operations conducted by the UK's Special Operations Executive (SOE), the US's Office of Strategic Services (OSS), and Nazi Germany's Amt VI-S of the Reich Main Security Office. The first installment of this series provided further details on these organizations. Part two explored how assets of these organizations were transferred to the private sector at war's end, while the third installment considered the World Commerce Corporation (WCC), the Frankenstein-like conglomerate that ultimately came to control these various assets by the onset of the Cold War.

emblems of the SOE (top), OSS (middle), and SD (Amt VI: bottom)

The fourth installment began to explore the origins of several of the earliest stay-behind networks, and noted that in the nations most ravaged by terrorism linked to these networks (i.e. Italy and Belgium), there appear to have been multiple stay-behind networks, some under the official control of the security services of the host nation, others dominated by private, and often far right, groups. With the fifth and most recent installment of this series, I explored how these stay-behind networks were not restricted to paramilitary operations, but also appear to have been used in psychological warfare efforts. Specifically, I focused on Paix et Liberte, a French organization that established various branches across Western Europe engaged in various psyops and the like.

A major point of emphasis over the course of the last two installments in this series has been the parapolitics in France during the early years of the Cold War and for good reason: the Cercle complex was principally a French initiative initially. As such, our exploration will end in France.



But before getting there, I would like to take a brief digression to Germany. The various stay-behind efforts there during the early Cold War further elaborate the Cercle complex's control over the various stay-behind networks, including the private ones. As was noted in part four, the "Anello" (Italy's principal private stay-behind network) appears to have been under the direct control of famed Italian statesman Giulio Andreotti (as was the Propaganda Due [P2] Masonic lodge, allegedly), a co-founder of Le Cercle. In Belgium, but the official and private stay-behind networks appear to have been directed by Paul Vanden Boeynants (aka VdB) and Baron Benoit de Bonvoisin (aka the Black Baron), both of whom were actively involved with the Cercle complex since at least the 1970s.

In the case of Germany, there appear to have been similar connections. I would have outlined these in part four had I not forgotten about some crucial information a reader kindly provided in the comment section of the first installment of this series (hat tip Robert). But by giving these events their own installment, I'll be able to more fully explore the murky netherworld of the German stay-behind networks, which are quite curious (to put it mildly).

In the immediate postwar years, two prominent German officials are most closely associated with the stay-behind efforts. Neither name should come as a surprise to regular readers of this blog.

"When the Gladio scandal erupted in 1990 an unnamed former NATO intelligence official explained that the covert action branch of the CIA under Frank Wisner in order to set up the German Secret Army had 'incorporated lock, stock and barrel the espionage out then run by Hitler's spy chief Reinhard Gehlen. This is well known, because Gehlen was the spiritual father of Stay Behind in Germany and his role was known to the West German leader, Konrad Adenauer, from the outset.' According to the unnamed NATO officer, US President Truman and German Chancellor Adenauer had signed a secret protocol with the US on West Germany's entry into NATO in May 1955 in which it was agreed that the West German authorities would refrain from active legal pursuit of known right-wing extremists. What is not so well known is that other top German politicians were privy to the existence of secret resistance plans. One of these was the then German Secretary of State and former high-ranking Nazi, Hans Globke."

(NATO's Secret Armies, Daniele Ganser, pg. 193)

our old friend Reinhard Gehlen

That Gehlen, Adenauer, and Globke would be at the forefront of these efforts is hardly surprising. Indeed, these three men arguably dominated West Germany throughout its early history.

"Dubbed 'the gray eminence,' Globke secured his Richelieu-like grip on postwar Bonn through his jurisdiction over West Germany's prodigious secret-service outfit, the Gehlen Org. Gehlen himself described working with Globke as 'pleasant and stimulating.' Together with Adenauer – who referred appreciatively to Gehlen as 'my dear general' – they formed a high-powered troika that dominated West German politics until 1962, when the eight-five-year-old chancellor finally stepped aside.

"At a time when Adenauer was virtually unknown in Germany, Gehlen leaned on his influential U.S. contacts to support him for chancellor. Adenauer also had the backing of the financial and industrial oligarchs of the Rhine-Ruhr area, who, like Gehlen, favored his Atlantic-oriented approach to international affairs. Adenauer's political longevity was enhanced by the meddling of the Org, which spied on the chancellor's domestic opponents. The list of targets included nearly everyone who did not readily fall into step with Adenauer's march towards economic and political integration with West."

(The Beast Reawakens, Martin A. Lee, pgs. 54-55) 

Konrad Adenauer would go on to become a co-founder of the Cercle complex during the 1952-1953 period. As such, it is hardly surprising that he would be close the German stay-behind efforts. As was noted above, another Cercle co-founder, Giulio Andreotti, would be closely involved with Italian stay-behind efforts for years as well. Further, we've already encountered at least one instance of Adenauer's efforts on behalf of the stay-behinds in the prior installment. There it was noted that the Volksbund fur Frieden und Freiheit (VFF: the People's League for Peace and Freedom), the German arm of the Paix et Liberte network, maintained close ties to Adenauer's Christian Democratic Party (CDU) and had a direct line to the chancellor.

Adenauer

That Adenauer owed so much of his postwar fortunes to Reinhard Gehlen is also interesting. A former intelligence chief for Wehrmacht Foreign Armies East, Gehlen was later tapped by the US intelligence community to become West Germany's spymaster. He accomplished this through the efforts of the Org (short for Gehlen Organization), an intelligence network heavily staffed with former Nazis. Eventually, the Org would be transformed into the BND (West Germany's principal intelligence services) circa 1955. Gehlen would dominate US intelligence efforts in Eastern Europe throughout the 1950s until it became glaringly obvious that his Org was thoroughly penetrated by the Soviets.

Gehlen has never been linked to the Cercle complex directly, but he surely wielded influence via Adenauer and Jean Violet, a French co-founder on the payroll of the BND (noted before here) for years. From 1949 to 1956, the main CIA liaison to the Gehlen Org was James Critchfield. As David Teacher notes in Rogue Agents, Critchfield is known to have been involved with the Cercle complex by the 1980s. Gehlen and his Org would also back closely related networks such as Interdoc throughout the Cold War as well. But moving along.

As for the secret armies themselves, there appear to have been several such organizations, in keeping with developments in other European countries around this time. The most well known are the Bund Deutscher Jugend (BDJ: League of German Youth) and its paramilitary arm, the Technischer Dienst (TD). Here's a little more background on these outfits:

"In Germany one of the Nazi-dominated US networks named 'Bund Deutscher Jugend' (BJ) and its stay-behind 'Technischer Dienst' (TD) were discovered in 1952. Klaus Barbie had played a leading role in setting up the German stay-behind BDJ-TD. But the secret was not kept long. The New York Times reported on October 10, 1952 under the somewhat misleading headline 'German Saboteurs betray US Trust. Wide Investigation Follows Confirmation of Financing Guerrillas' War Training', that 'Authoritative officials have privately confirmed today that the United States has sponsored and helped finance the secret training of young Germans, including many former soldiers, to become guerrilla fighters in the event of a war Soviet Union.' The US newspaper reported that the disclosure yesterday in the State Parliament of Hesse and the banner headline publicly today in the German press have caused the United States Department and the Army considerable embarrassment', above all because 'it was discovered that the projected guerrilla group had engaged in political activities. Their leaders... drew a blacklists of persons who were to be "liquidized," if they were deemed unreliable in a war against the Russians.' Therefore 'Several joint German-United States meetings were held' because many acting 'Socialist, including government officials, were on the list, as well as the Communists'.

"This early discovery of a part of the German stay-behind caused a major scandal on both sides of the Atlantic and Newsweek in the United States reported in October 20, 1952 that the CIA had organized a group of 'stay-behinds' in Germany. Interestingly enough the German newspaper Der Spiegel on October 29, 1952 correctly reported that stay-behind networks existed next to Germany also in numerous countries of Western Europe: 'The BDJ affair has caused considerable worries in the different headquarters of the American secret service in Europe. Because the "Technischer Dienst" in Germany is but one branch of a partisan network supported by the United States and spreading over the whole of Europe.' Specifically, as the Spiegel reported, 'This network is most strongly developed in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Italy and the Iberian peninsula. In France this organization was created already in 1948, with the support of the leader of the Socialist, [Ministry of the Interior] Jules Moch.' "

(NATO's Secret Armies, Daniele Ganser, pg. 193)

Jules Moch

Jules Moch is of course a figure that figured prominently in the prior installment of this series. There it was noted that Moch played a leading role in reestablishing a stay-behind network in France after the earlier Plan Bleu network drew the ire of the Socialists. Moch also played a key role in establishing the Paix et Liberte network, whose German branch had ties to the administration of Konrad Adenauer. This is all becoming quite incestuous indeed.

As for Adenauer, while there is some dispute as to when exactly he learned of the existence of the BDJ-TD (some source allege that he was ignorant of these networks prior to their 1952 exposure, while others allege that he was aware of them for several years prior), there can be little question that Adenauer played a crucial role in covering them up after the initial fallout. Adenauer likely would have had good reason for a cover up, as Martin A. Lee alleges in The Beast Reawakens that the BDJ-TD was used to spy on and harass his political opponents.

It is also interesting that Klaus Barbie would play a crucial role in setting up the BDJ-TD. The exposure of this network directly led to Barbie fleeing Europe for South America. There, the former SS man would establish himself as as a security chief and drug lord in Bolivia by the late 1970s. Barbie was plugged into the underground SS network headed by Otto Skorzeny and worked closely with the infamous Italian neo-fascist terrorist Stefano Delle Chiaie, who had ties to organizations linked to the Cercle complex (noted before here and here). Curiously, the man who debriefed Barbie and likely gave the greenlight for his work on the BDJ-TD project was the longtime US intelligence officer Arnold M. Silver.

Klaus

Silver is quite a mysterious figure. He initially broke into the intelligence racket while working for the US Army's Counterintelligence Corps (CIC), which also played a crucial role in the early stay-behind efforts. In addition to "interrogating" Barbie on behalf of the CIC, he also did the same for Otto Skorzeny, whom we will inevitable encounter later in this installment. While with the CIC, he also served along side of future Cercle participant Henry Kissinger.

Silver later joined the CIA in 1948 and became quite a senior figure. He served in Austria, Luxembourg (as the Chief of Station no less), Germany, and Turkey before returning to the United States. According to the great David Teacher in Rogue Agents, Silver was in charge of counter-subversion efforts in West Europe. He was eventually drummed out of the CIA during the Carter administration by the DCI, Admiral Stansfield Turner. After his departure from the CIA, Silver became involved with the Cercle complex, initially through Brian Crozier's 6I network (a private intelligence network under the control of the Cercle complex, noted before here). By the 1980s, he had become a "security adviser" to the Cercle complex itself.

"The Bruderschaft was one of the most important groups in Germany's postwar fascist elite. Using its intelligence and organizational contacts with fascist movements around the world, it played a critical role in the Nazi underground railroad that smuggled war criminals to South America and the Middle East. In the early 1950s, elements from the Bruderschaft also helped create the Freikorps Deutschland, a paramilitary organization later outlawed by occupation authorities.

"The Bruderschaft was founded in 1945-46 in a British POW camp in Germany by Major Helmut Beck-Broichsitter, an ex-staff officer of the Grossdeutschland Division. He was soon joined by Franke-Gricksch, who brought to the group a detailed plan to recapture power 'through slow, mythological insinuation into governmental and party positions, under cover of such secrecy or camouflage as might be necessary for the success of the operation.' "

(Dreamer of the Day, Kevin Coogan, pg. 192)

The Bruderschaft remains one of the most enigmatic organizations of early postwar Nazi underground. The two principal figures behind it, Helmut Beck-Broichsitter and Alfred Franke-Gricksch, effectively represented different factions of the postwar underground. Many of the former Wehrmacht (the regular German military, as opposed to the Waffen-SS) officers within the Bruderschaft tended to side with Beck-Broichsitter, while Franke-Gricksch spoke for the SS, Hitler Youth, and Conservative Revolutionary elements within the organization.

This divide became more pronounced as the Cold War struggle intensified. According to Jeffrey Bale in The Darkest Sides of Politics, I, Beck-Broichsitter proposed in setting up anti-Communist shock troops to work in conjunction with the American military. Specifically, Coogan reports that efforts were in fact made to merge the paramilitary forces of the Bruderschaft with those of the BDJ-TD.

Beck-Broichsitter

Conversely, Franke-Gricksch was fanatically anti-American and favored closer cooperation with the Soviets. This would bring Franke-Gricksch and the Bruderschaft into the orbit of anti-Western elements of the emerging Fascist International such as Francis Parker Yockey, who had dealings with Franke-Gricksch during the early 1950s. Franke-Gricksch's overtures to the Soviet Union caused a rift between his faction and Beck-Broichsitter's within the Bruderschaft. Eventually, Franke-Gricksch and his supporters were expelled from the Bruderschaft in February of 1951.

The ultimate fate of Alfred Franke-Gricksch is shrouded in mystery. In September or early October of 1951, he crossed over into East Berlin and was never seen alive again. During much of the prior year he had been in regular contact with Communist officials and in 1955, his wife returned to Germany from a Soviet prison camp. She alleged that Franke-Gricksch had been executed by the Soviets, but many believed that he was still alive.

As for the Bruderschaft, it was formally dissolved around the time of Franke-Gricksch's flight to East Berlin. But this was not the end of it. Rather, its members formed even more exclusive groups. The most noteworthy of these was the Naumann-Kreis (Naumann Circle) that was briefly discussed in the prior installment. There, it was noted that the Naumann-Kreis enjoyed ties to Dr. Eberhard Taubert, the founder of the Volksbund fer Frieden und Frieheit (VFF), the German branch of the CIA-linked Paix et Librete movement.

a propaganda poster from the VFF

That the US intelligence community may still have been trying to forge links with the old Bruderschaft network at this point is rather baffling. As the great Kevin Coogan noted in Dreamer of the Day, even the nominally pro-Atlanticist Beck-Broichsitter had at times supported normalizing relations with the Soviets. And there's no question the paramilitary networks the Bruderschaft had established were known to the Soviets, thanks to the efforts of Franke-Gricksch. But then again, the Gehlen Org was itself thoroughly penetrated by the Soviets at this point as well, so what were a few more double (triple?) agents in the grand scheme of things?

In a recent email exchange, a reader dropped a most interesting name on your humble researcher: Jim Mellon. Of course, long time readers of this blog are well aware that Recluse is obsessed with all things related (har har) to the famed Pittsburgh dynasty. For decades now, they have been among the most powerful and well connected families in this nation. Family patriarch Thomas Mellon established the Mellon Bank in 1869. By the onset of the twentieth century, it had become one of the most profitable financial institutions in the United States outside of New York City.

Yes, yes, yes, Jeffrey Epstein. In case on has been spending extended periods of time on the astral plane, I'm sure those of you who are reading this are well aware that the infamous financier and accused pedophile was arrested on July 6 for sex trafficking minors. These charges came over a decade after Epstein had received a slap on the wrist in Florida for similar allegations. Undeterred, Epstein's former victims had continued to hound the alleged pedophile in a series of lawsuits for much of the past twelve years. Finally, it seems, this dogged persistence may be paying off.

Predictably, Epstein's arrest has generated highly partisan reactions. The neoliberal mainstream is quick to point out that President Donald J. Trump once praised Epstein as a "terrific guy" and that the Orange One had had regular dealings with the accused child rapist during the 1990s and the 00s. Epstein was a frequent visitor to the Mar-a-Lago Club during this time frame and his personal address book included 14 phone numbers for Trump. What's more, at least one of the minor's allegedly abused by Epstein was recruited at Mar-a-Lago during the late 1990s. And then there's the fact that Trump's  now former Labor Secretary, Alexander Acosta, is the one who gave Epstein a slap on the wrist in 2007 while he was serving as the US Attorney for the Southern District of Florida in 2007.

Acosta

Unsurprisingly, Democrats have been doing a lot of crowing about these developments, proving that they have learned nothing in the wake of the disastrous Mueller Report. While there's no question that Trump knew Epstein socially, evidence of the Orange One engaging in the nefarious activities Epstein is known for is harder to come by. The same cannot be said of former President Bill Clinton. While the mainstream media has done all in their power to downplay Clinton's relationship with Epstein, there's no question that Clinton took over 20 flights on Epstein's private jet, dubbed the "Lolita Express." Nor do these activities appear to be the extent of the Clinton family's involvement with Mr. Epstein. Indeed, Epstein's own attorneys have alleged that Epstein played a crucial role in launching the Clinton Global Initiative.

Clinton (left) and Epstein (right)

Clinton is almost surely not the only prominent Democrat who will be linked to Epstein either. While party officials have tentatively acknowledged this, hope still springs eternal that the Orange One will also be laid low in the process. I for one would not count on it. Trump banned Epstein from Mar-a-Lago in 2007, allegedly because he had sexually assaulted a minor there. Elsewhere Brad Edwards, an attorney representing several of Epstein's alleged victims, acknowledged that Trump was the only figure to offer him information on Epstein back in 2009. And as for Acosta, a curious explanation for the sweetheart deal he gave to Epstein in 2007 has emerged recently: he was told to go easy on Epstein because he was above his pay grade. Reportedly, this was due to Epstein's ties to intelligence.

And that brings us to what is easily the most interesting name to emerge in connection to the Epstein scandal: Ghislaine Maxwell. Maxwell has drawn shockingly little scrutiny in the Epstein scandal up to this point, and for good reason: A closer examination of her and her family lead to some truly disturbing rabbit holes that much of the power elite desperately want to remain buried.

A reader kindly provided me with a link to disgraced financier and alleged pedophile Jeffrey Epstein's "little black book" on the recent post I did concerning the parapolitics behind this latest scandal. The contents of this little black book were originally posted on Gawker by the great Nick Bryant (author of The Franklin Scandal). That post can be found here while a more legible list of the names can be accessed here.

Through these links I was able to determine that Edgar Bronfman Jr. did in fact appear in Epstein's black book, as was briefly discussed in "Maxwell's Silver Hammer." Bronfman Jr. is the brother of the two Bronfman heirs implicated in the NXIVM cult overseen by now-convicted pedophile Keith Raniere.

Naturally, Bronfman is but one of several interesting names to appear in Epstein's little black book. As such, I shall provide a brief assessment of several of the most noteworthy names and briefly address the significance behind them in this particular post. While many of these names are hardly surprising, several appear to provide a glimpse into the networks behind Epstein's pedophile ring. Several trace back to an early sex scandal from nearly six decades ago that appears to be one of the crucial deep events of the past century.

And with that in mind, on to the names.

During this past Friday, John of We've Read the Documents had me on for a little chat. In just a little over an hour and a half we covered a host of topics, many of them relating to the plight of infamous financier Jeffrey Epstein. We covered several of the most compelling names in his black book, while I elaborated on the extensive ties the Epstein revelations have to a British scandal from nearly six decades ago that is often referred to as the Profumo Affair.

As you may have guessed, we spent some time discussing Robert Maxwell, the father of Epstein's alleged madam Ghislaine. Inevitably, we also covered Trump's infamous attorney and mentor Roy Cohn; how credible the allegations of Cohn's alleged pedophilia are; whether there was more to the relationship between Trump and Cohn than political and financial ambitions; Cohn's ties to William Casey and Craig Spence; and whether Cohn was actually a part of Permindex. Naturally, JFK and the Kennedy family also came up, but not in the most flattering light. We also briefly discussed "Russian mafia" don Semion Mogilevich and his connections to both Robert Maxwell and Trump. And of course, it wouldn't be a truly Reclusive podcast if I did not dip into Le Cercle and Julian Amery.




The interview can be found here.

For those of you looking for additional material on my research into these topics, check out the following:


On Epstein

Maxwell's Silver Hammer
Epstein's Little Black Book


"Goodfellas" (My series on Trump's Deep State and Organized Crime Connections)

Goodfellas: The Hidden History of Resorts International
Goodfellas: The Dark Tower and Beyond Part I
Goodfellas: The Dark Tower and Beyond Part II
Goodfellas Part III: Viva Las Vegas
Goodfellas Part IV: Lavender Mafia Edition
Goodfellas Part V: The Bedroom Dick
Goodfellas Part VI: Cliveden Games
Goodfellas Part VII: Jack and Bobby
Goodfellas Part VIII: Sons of Cohn


Le Cercle: Clerical Fascism and the Pedophocracy

Part One
Part Two

The big bad wolf is dead.

On Friday, August 9, 2019,  new documents were unsealed in the case against Jeffrey Epstein that named several of the powerful men accused of sexually abusing minors procured for them by the disgraced financier. They included individuals such as former New Mexico governor and presidential candidate Bill Richardson; wealthy financier Glenn Dubin; former senator George Mitchell (who, like Richardson, is also a Democrat); MIT scientist Marvin Minsky; and Prince Andrew.

The very next day, Epstein allegedly committed suicide.

It was, in a sense, an apt end to saga that shares more than a few similarities with a British scandal from nearly six decades ago commonly known as the Profumo affair. As I've noted before here, at least half a dozen families linked to that particular sex scandal also appear in Epstein's black book. Elsewhere, President Donald Trump would later employ one the key American figures in the scandal.

The central figure in Profumo was an osteopath named Stephen Ward who also happened to procure girls for the British Establishment on the side. Like Epstein, Ward also allegedly committed suicide in the midst of legal proceedings deriving from his peculiar services to the Establishment. He expired on August 3, 1963, fifty-six years and a week to the day of Epstein's suicide.

Ward

The most recent suicide occurred at what is reportedly one of the most secure prisons in the nation and came on the heels of a prior suicide attempt on July 23rd. Naturally, Epstein had been taken off of suicide watch a mere six days after the prior attempt. No doubt some fascinating explanations will be forthcoming in the near future attempting to rationalize how such blatant bullshit could be so. Until then, another recent revelation concerning the convicted pedophile deserves some discussion.

Epstein

One of the most truly striking aspects of the Epstein revelations (and that's saying something as even singling out one is a little difficult) are the strange doings-on at his New Mexico ranch located near Stanley, New Mexico. On the last day of July, Establishment organ The New York Times reported that the financier had sought to use his New Mexico residence to impregnate hundreds of women in an effort to seed the human race with his DNA. What's more, these plans were allegedly deeply seeded in notions of transhumanism and eugenics.

To this end, he appears to have courted many leading scientists for decades in an effort to locate potential candidate to aide him in these objectives. In addition to the above-mentioned Minsky, they included such luminaries as Stephen Hawking, Murray Gell-Mann, Stephen Jay Gould, Oliver Sacks, George M. Church (a molecular engineer who works to identify genes that could be used to create "superior humans"), Frank Wilczek, Steven Pinker, and the arch skeptidick Lawrence Krauss. Krauss may have been a particularly good fit for Epstein, as he has reportedly been accused of sexual misconduct for over a decade. Of course, the Skeptics movement that Krause is so prominent in has its own curious ties to pedophilia.

But back to Stanley. The New York Times' revelations put Epstein's New Mexico Connection in the headlines after the sex offender's southwestern lair had avoided much scrutiny. While federal authorities recently reopened investigations into allegations of abuse at Epstein's residencies in New York City and Palm Beach, FL, his ranch at Stanley is presently only being looked at by New Mexico authorities. Nor did Epstein face any criminal charges in New Mexico, despite being accused of abusing a fifteen-year old girl there.


Clearly, there are some rather striking implications behind this most recent limited hangout. But before getting to the good stuff, a little more on the background of Epstein's ranch and the area surrounding it should noted. So, here you are:




Epstein purchased the property from the prominent Democrat Bruce King, a three term New Mexico governor, in 1993. King was born in Stanley and later died there. His family stills owns much of the land around Epstein's parcel. This would include King's son, Gary, a former attorney general in New Mexico and the Democratic candidate for governor there in 2014.

Bruce King

Another neighbor is the Cerro Pelon Ranch, currently owned by fashion designer Tom Ford. Naturally, Ford is one of the names that appears in Epstein's black book. He is also another Democrat. Given the presence of the King family and Epstein in Stanley, Ford's presence makes the small town something of southwestern base for various Democratic royalty. No doubt Cerro Pelon provided a further pipeline to Hollywood as well.

Bizarrely, the state of New Mexico itself owns a considerable chunk of land right in the middle of Epstein's parcel. Nothing is present on this tract save for a structure built into the ground at the southern end. This brings to mind the longstanding allegations that New Mexico is one location for a series of massive underground bases spread across these United States and beyond. The New Mexico local is often referred to a Dulce Base, and is supposedly located underneath the Archuleta Mesa at the Colorado/New Mexico border. In some more dubious accounts, the facility is said to be controlled by extraterrestrials. The Delta Force even allegedly engaged in a firefight with the Greys at some point down there.

the bizarre structure located on New Mexico's tract of land in the middle of Epstein's ranch

As should come as little surprise, the allegations concerning Dulce originate with a disinformation campaign run by the Air Force Office of Special Investigation (AFOSI) against an eccentric inventor and businessman named Paul Bennewitz. During the late 1970s, the town of Dulce had become a hotspot for cattle mutilations. Against this backdrop, Bennewitz became convinced that he was witnessing UFOs flying over nearby Kirkland Air Force Base, which actually is used to test experimental aircraft and the like at the Air Force Operational Test and Evaluation Center. It has been proposed that, in an effort to steer Bennewitz away from Kirkland, where he may have exposed real classified project, the AFOSI cooked up the Dulce mythos. Probably the best account of these shenanigans can be found in Greg Bishop's Project Beta. This researcher has also addressed the co-called "Bennewitz Affair" before here and here.

Bennewitz

Despite the dubious origins of the claims concerning the Dulce facility, allegations of underground bases still persist. And it is rather inexplicable that the state of New Mexico would have a tract of land possessing what appears to be the entrance to an underground facility smack dab in the middle of Epstein's land.

What isn't speculative is the presence of the highly secretive Los Alamos National Laboratory less than an hour away. So far, the specter of nearby Los Alamos doesn't seem to have drawn much scrutiny from the conspiracy theorists, which is odd considering its connection to the Maxwell family.


As many of you are no doubt aware, a woman named Ghislaine Maxwell has been closely linked to Epstein's misadventures. Indeed, she is often described as the financier's "madam." Ghislaine also happens to hail from a family with a rather deep background, most notably her father Robert, who is alleged to have spied for the KGB, Mossad, and MI6 at various points. Nor is this a complete list of the intelligence services Maxwell was linked to over the course of his flamboyant life. To the public at large, however, he was principally known as a former Labour MP and publishing tycoon, something along the lines of a left wing Rupert Murdoch (who was a frequent rival of Maxwell's).

Much like Epstein, Robert Maxwell cultivated the scientific community, both in the East and West. Indeed, his ties to Soviet scientists appear to have lead to a decades-spanning relationship with various Eastern and Western intelligence agencies. His first publishing house, Pergamon Press, specialized in scientific journals. It had been set up by MI6 with an eye towards enabling Maxwell to cultivate the Soviet scientific community for the sake of espionage. This was briefly addressed by this researcher before here.


It wasn't until Maxwell began spying for Israel, however, that he set his sights on Los Alamos. During the early 1980s the Israelis had managed to acquire a version of PROMIS, a controversial piece of software developed by Inslaw. Inslaw had developed PROMIS on behalf of the Department of Justice to create a searchable database for files in the federal court system. In a sense, it was a kind of early search engine and as such, would be of great interest to both government agencies and multinational corporations that were trying to digitize their records.

As such, both the CIA and the Mossad separately created alternative versions of PROMIS with a "backdoor" inserted that would enable these intelligence agencies to view the files in the PROMIS databases without the users being aware of the eavesdropping. When the Mossad set out to market this "enhanced" version of PROMIS, Maxwell was tapped to serve as a kind of salesman.

One particular target the Israelis had in mind was Los Alamos, home of various US nuclear secrets and other cutting edge technology related to defense. Naturally, Maxwell took the lead on selling Los Alamos on this "enhanced" version of PROMIS. He parlayed his contacts in the Republican Party into a meeting with officials at the Sandia National Laboratory facility, located on Kirkland Air Force Base, in 1984. Sandia is a part of the Los Alamos network, and one especially close to American nuclear research.

Maxwell closed the deal less than a year later, giving the Israelis unparalleled access to American nuclear secrets in the process.

"In early February 1985, once more accompanied by an assistant and a secretary from IOD, Robert Maxwell returned to Sandia laboratories. He had come to sign the contract for Sandia to purchase the exclusive rights to the Promis software. He initialled each page of the document and signed his name with flourish on the last page. He gave as his title president and chief executive officer of Information on Demand. When it had been countersigned, he placed a copy of the contract in his briefcase. Snapping it shut, he handed the valise to the assistant, dismissing him and the secretary with the familiar wave of his hand. 

"Maxwell was then given a celebratory luncheon in the Sandia boardroom. Then he and his entourage drove back to the waiting private jet. As it flew out over the desert, it once more passed the township with the prophetic name of Truth and Consequences. 

"For unsuspecting Sandia, the truth was that Israel now had an electronic spy in the midst of, until now, the most secure of all nuclear facilities. 

"It was a significant triumph for the Jewish state, for its prime intelligence service, Mossad, and for Rafi Eitan. It meant Israel would be able to depend less on the United States to ensure that its nuclear arsenal out in the Negev desert would remain at the cutting edge of developments. It would ensure that Israel would also still remain the only nuclear power in the Middle East."

(Robert Maxwell, Israel's Superspy, Gordon Thomas & Martin Dillon, pg. 101) 

Maxwell

Did Epstein pick up on the value of scientific espionage from Ghislaine, who in turn had learned it from her father? It is certainly possible, but Epstein does not appear to have been principally working for a foreign intelligence service. While Epstein is reputed to have had ties to the US intelligence community (briefly noted before here), this researcher suspects that his activities in Stanley were of a much more private nature. But what was ultimately driving these efforts?

Greg Carlwood of The Higherside Chats (THC) was kind enough to have me back on the air recently. I had previously appeared on THC in 2017 to discuss The Nine, Roswell, and my "Fringe" series. This time around we tackled Jeffrey Epstein and a host of other related topics: NXIVM, Roger Stone (whose people had actually approached Greg about appearing on THC at one point!), Roy Cohn, Profumo and the extensive family connections between that decades old scandal and the names appearing in Epstein's black book, the World Commerce Corporation, the Anglo-American Establishment, and Robert Maxwell.

On that note, we also discussed new information not yet published on this blog further linking both Robert Maxwell and Epstein to Le Cercle. For those of you just joining the party, the Cercle is officially a foreign policy think tank, but in actuality has served as a vast private intelligence network since at least the late 1960s. It originally emerged in the 1952-1953 period as an auxiliary to the Bilderberg group. It always had a much more rightward drift, however. Much of its early membership was dominated by members of especially reactionary Catholic orders such as the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and Opus Dei. In more recent years, it has become a kind of secret society behind the British Tories and driving force behind Euroscepticism and Brexit. Much more information on the Cercle can be found here.

Enjoy these new revelations. I'll be expanding upon them on a blog I'm currently working on that will also include source material.

Greg and I also fund time to address some of the bizarre aspects of the Epstein case, most notably the strange doings in New Mexico. If you want speculation on underground bases, black ops technology, and ancient astronauts, you will find it in this podcast. I also get around to ranting about the conspiratorial perspective of the Clintons and To the Stars Academy.

A portion of the podcast can be found here. The full two hours are only available in the members section.


For those of you looking for additional background material on my work on Epstein, check out these posts:

Maxwell's Silver Hammer
Epstein's Little Black Book
Epstein Dies: Long Live the New Mexico Connection?

For more information on Trump, Roy Cohn, and their criminal and deep connections, check here.

Oh, and I also announced that I've started working on book concerning Epstein and the network/cabal that spawned him. I'm tentatively calling it A Special Relationship. We'll see how that goes.

As always dear readers, I hope that you enjoy. Until next time, stay tuned.

In the aftermath of the release of the Mueller report earlier this year (2019), I wrote an article debunking many of the so-called "smoking guns" behind what is often referred to as "Russiagate." Inevitably, I addressed both Fusion GPS, the private intelligence firm that produced the infamous "Steele dossier"; and Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russia attorney who allegedly offered Donald Trump Jr. and company dirt on Hillary Clinton at the equally infamous 2016 Trump Tower meeting.

In said article, I noted that Veselnitskaya had actually met with Glenn Simpson, a co-founder of Fusion GPS, on the same exact morning as the Trump Tower meeting, which occurred later that day. As Fusion GPS was already compiling opposition research on Trump at the time, the Veselnitskaya-Simpson pow-wow has the air of improbable coincidence to it.

But there is no disputing that Veselnitskaya and Simpson were working in conjunction for the same client at the time. Further, the interests of this client reportedly dominated the conversion at the Trump Tower meeting. And no, that client was not Hillary Clinton.

Rather, it was Denis Katsyv, a Russian business man most well known for his holdings in the company Prevezon. Prevezon, in turn, is said to have been engaged in money laundering and tax fraud. These charges were reportedly first uncovered by the Russian accountant Sergei Magnitsky, whom the Magnitsky Act was named after.

Katsyv

The Magnitsky Act was passed by the US Congress with bipartisan support in 2012 and was soon signed into law by then-President Barack Obama. The law effectively allowed the US government to freeze the assets of Russians the government deemed guilty of human rights abuses, or something along those lines. Thus far, the effects of the Magnitsky Act have been minimum, with only some $20 million in Russia assets frozen and a few minor officials being barred from these United States. While this is rather inconsequential, Russian elites are said to keep nearly $500 billion in assets in Western banks. The Magnitsky Act would pave the way for seizures of this largess, which has probably caused a few sleepless nights in Moscow.

But let us return to Fusion GPS for a moment. When not doing opposition research on Donald Trump, the private intelligence provider was snooping around the chief architect of the Magnitsky Act: hedge fund manager Bill Browder.

Browder

Browder is a figure your humble researcher had never looked too deeply into. But thanks to the efforts of a regular reader, it was brought to my attention that Browder has curious links to several figures that have featured prominently on this blog in recent weeks. As such, I thought the rest of you may be intrigued by a closer look at Mr. Browder.

Eric was kind enough to have on the Anti-Naughty Podcast, which he just recently launched. It would seem I that I am the second guest he's had on. Eric and I had a good time doing the interview, and hopefully all of you will enjoy it as well.

Topics discussed include my background and how I got into conspiracy blogging; my mixed emotions concerning the presidency of Richard Nixon and his war with the China Lobby/Kuomintang and the Corsican mafia; Robert Maxwell and the rest of the family (most notably Ghislaine and Kevin); legendary private detective Robert Maheu; Resorts International and Intetel; the various mobsters that frequented Trump Tower, R. Kelly's sexual forays there as well as the infamous 2016 meeting with Russian lobbyists; the Sovereign Order of Malta and the Knights Templar/Freemasons; the possible link between the headless John the Baptist symbolism used by various esoteric orders and the Bornless Ritual; Propaganda Due; Le Cercle, Norman Lamont and their connections to the Maxwells; the Phoenix Program and John DeCamp; the relationship between political warfare and special operations; and an update on the latest progress concerning my book projects.

The interview can be found here.

For those of you looking additional information on the topics discussed, follow these links:

Le Cercle
Propaganda Due
Trump's mob/deep state ties
Robert Maheu's entrapment operations
The Maxwell family's ties to Le Cercle
Robert Maxwell's background

And with that, I shall sign off for now. As always, stay tuned until next time readers.