Welcome to the fourth installment of my examination of the deep political intrigues that confronted the nation of Belgium in the Cold War era. Many of these intrigues were in relation to Operation Gladio, a network of European "stay-behind-armies" established by the US and NATO that have frequently been linked to acts of terrorism in Western Europe. Gladio was considered briefly in part one as well the links two organizations founded by Jean Thiriart had to these intrigues (and the Order of the Solar Temple cult) as well as those of the Vlaamse Militanten Orde (VMO).
With the second installment I moved on to the Front de la Jeunesse (FJ) and the Westland New Post (WNP), two organizations extensively tied to Belgian (and US) intelligence and acts of terrorism. Part three moved on to the Dutroux affair, the cover-up surrounding it and the ties one of Dutroux's associates (Jean-Michel Nihoul) had to the WNP and other component's of Belgium's fascist underground.
As was noted in part three, the arrest of Dutroux and Nihoul spurred several witnesses to come forward with accounts of pedophile networks, ritual abuse and snuff films that involved many of the most prominent individuals in Belgium and beyond. With this installment I would like to continue in that vein by addressing several of the most noteworthy individuals accused by these witnesses, who were dubbed the "X-witnesses" (the accounts of these victims were ultimately published as the X-Dossiers, which naturally only appeared in French and Dutch). The individuals in question were either linked to Belgium's financial and industrial circles or the political and intelligence sectors. Several of the most noteworthy persons straddled both.
I do not wish to delve to deeply into those accused in finance and industry, but the curious reader is advised to look up the Institute for the Study of Globalization and Covert Politics (ISGP)'s groundbreaking account of Dutroux for much more information along those lines. This is easily the best English-language account of these scandals available in either print or online.
For our purposes here, there are three noteworthy instances that should be noted. The first is the alleged involvement of the Belgian royal family in these reputed pedophile networks.
For those of you who know virtually anything about the history of Belgium, this should come as little surprise. As was noted in part one very briefly, King Leopold II committed one of the most brutal acts of modern genocide in the Belgian Congo towards the end of the nineteenth century. It is estimated that as many as five to ten millions inhabitants of the Congo lost their lives during Leopold II's reign. With such a blood-stained family history, it does not seem beyond the pale that Leopold II's descendants were also involved in child abuse. ISGP notes:
"The Belgian royal family has been implicated on several occasions. X2 spoke about a girl she had known who had been murdered, and how this girl told her about the domain of Princess Liliane de Rety ("a madwoman") where children were buried. [197] Liliane was the second wife of King Leopold III (d. 1983) and lived until her death in 2002 at Chateau d'Argenteuil. In 2004, the Delwart family, shareholders of Solvay, bought the domain. [198]
"From personal experience, X2 mentioned having seen Prince Laurent, the brother of Belgium's present crown prince. Laurent apparently was more interested in masturbating at child abuse orgies than taking part in the actual abuse. [199]
"X3 implicated Prince Charles (1903-1983), the second son of King Albert I; King Baudouin (1930-1993), the eldest son of King Leopold III; and either King Albert I or II. Unfortunately, X3 spoke about experiences from the 1950s and early 1960s, which meant that none of the other X-Dossier witnesses could confirm aspects of her story. Two of her primary abusers, Paul Vanden Boeynants and Charly De Pauw, had already appeared in the Pinon file of the early 1980s; the same is true for King Albert II. [200] Additionally, part of the details of the abuse described by X3, although recognizable, can be a bit hard swallow (the scale and setting), all making her testimony hard to use without more backup from other witnesses. In X3's support, however, she was a well-respected person in the support community for abused women and children, and her interviewers refused to write down most of what she said..."
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King Albert II |
Another aristocratic family extensively linked to the pedophile networks was that of the Lippens. ISGP reports:
"... the Lippens family appears all over the X-Dossiers. X1, X2, X4, and two anonymous letters all name Maurice Lippens and his brother Leopold, the long time mayor of Knokke, as vicious child abusers, not only involved in regular rape, but also in the snuff network. [185] Additionally, a relative of them, Count Francois Lippens, the honorary consul general of Belgium, appears somewhere deep in the Dutroux dossier..."The Lippens family is one of the oldest and most influential in the nation of Belgium. At various points in recent years family members have held key positions in major Belgian corporations such as Societe Generale, GBL (Groupe Bruxelles Lambert) and Fortis and are heavily connected to other major European business interests (especially the Rothschild family). Maurice Eugene Auguste, Count Lippens, the grandfather of the above-mentioned Maurice and Leopold Lippens, was the governor of the Belgian Congo during the early 1920s.
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Maurice Lippens, a descendant of a governor of the Belgian Congo |
"Did you already notice how Solvay seems to come up a lot? Etienne Davignon, Karel van Miert and Guy De Selliers De Moranville were all directors of this company. But there's more. The Boëls and Janssens, both major shareholders in Solvay, were accused of trade in drugs and children in 1999, aside from the X-Dossiers. [193] Francoise Dehaye, whose husband was named by X2 as being part of the abuse network [194], is a quality and innovation manager at Solvay. The gamekeeper and-or woodsman of La Hulpe, the castle of the Solvay family, has been accused of being a violent child abuser. [195] And how about the strange statements about Chateau des Amerois, owned by the Solvay family, which also appeared in the Dutroux dossier? [196]."Why Solvay seems to turn up so much in these in accounts is unknown to this researcher. At one point, prior to the First World War, Solvay was the largest multinational in the world. It used to have a large pharmaceutical division that the company did not sell off until 2009. As a chemical company, it likely receives more than a few defense contracts. What's more, the company also deals in plastics, which indicates that it has ties to the oil industry as well. Unsurprisingly, Solvay has its US headquarters in Houston, Texas, which is to the United States oil and defense industries what New York City is to its banking and insurance industries. But moving along.
While we are on the aristocracy, there is one particular player who appears over and over again in the deep state intrigues that rocked Belgium throughout the Cold War: Baron Benoit de Bonvoisin. Unsurprisingly, the so-called "Black Baron" also frequently turns up in allegations of child abuse. ISGP reports:
"X1 and X2 mentioned de Bonvoisin as one of the most sadistic abusers in the network. [217] One of his sisters married Count Herve d'Ursel [218], who has been accused by X1 of involvement in the snuff and ritual abuse network. [219] His other sister is married to the earlier mentioned Bernard de Merode, an intelligence-connected family which has been accused of child abuse and Satanism by X4 and Nathalie W. [220] X2 mentioned having been at a meeting organized by her pimp, at which de Merode, d'Ursel and de Bonvoisin families were all present, together with the Prince and Princess of Chimay. [221] According to X2, hunts on children were organized in the woods of Chateau de Chimay. [222]"Ah, but there is so much more that de Bonvoisin has been accused of. Let us first consider a bit about the background of the Baron:
"A third central figure in CEPIC named in the de Cock report was the CEPIC treasurer, Baron Benoît de Bonvoisin, Vanden Boeynant's political advisor whilst VdB was Defence Minister (148). De Bonvoisin has been one of the most notorious characters in European fascism with particularly close links to the Italian MSI and Stefano Delle Chiaie; in 1975, de Bonvoisin hosted a gathering of European fascists at his castle at Maizeret, attended by the heads of Ordine Nuovo, the MSI, the National Front, Fuerza Nueva and the French Forces Nouvelles, amongst others. The Belgian representatives at the 1975 fascist summit were AESP contact Emile Lecerf, editor of the NEM, and Francis Dossogne of the Front de la Jeunesse, the two organisations that the CEPIC members were accused of financing in the de Cock report.
"De Bonvoisin's close relationship with AESP leaders would not be confirmed by formal membership of the Academy until the late 1970s, but as VdB's factotum, he would be a regular participant at AESP administration meetings. He was also an intimate of Archduke Otto von Habsburg, and was in close contact with Jean Violet, as indicated by a diagram of connections between various persons drawn up by leading Belgian fascist Paul Latinus, in which Violet's name figures directly under de Bonvoisin's. Significantly Violet is not linked by Latinus to any other person on the list – possibly a gateway into a different network...
"Beyond his contacts with Violet, de Bonvoisin also enjoyed a privileged relationship with Antoine Pinay; de Bonvoisin's father Pierre had been one of the founding members of the Bilderberg Group with Pinay in 1952. When de Bonvoisin was attacked in the Press in a 1981 revival of the charges of funding the Front de la Jeunesse and NEM, the NEM Club magazine retaliated by printing a picture of de Bonvoisin in Washington in the company of two senior Bilderberg and Cercle members: David Rockefeller and Antoine Pinay (150)*."
(Rogue Agents, David Teacher, pgs. 76-77)
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de Bonvoisin, the Black Baron |
The Bilderberg Group is of course a long time bugaboo of the conspiratorial right, generating countless exposes and ample teeth gnashing for decades now. An in depth examination of the Bilderberg Group is of course far beyond the scope of this series and no doubt regular readers of this blog already have some degree of familiarity with the institution anyway. But in brief: Founded in 1954, Bilderberg brought together many of the major financial, industrial and political interests in North America and Europe together in a clandestine fashion with the objective of imposing Anglo-American neo-liberal policies on the member nations as well as much of the rest of the world. David Rockefeller is one of the figures most closely associated with Bilderberg.
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the Bilderberg Hotel where the group first met and from which its name derives |
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Viscount Davignon, a highly connected globalist and alleged pedophile |
The CEPIC was an organization that we've already encountered in the second installment in this series. As was noted there, the CEPIC was an offshoot of the Parti Social Chrétien (PSC). Several of the victims of the Brabant massacres were affiliated with the PSC and the CEPIC and were seemingly killed in an execution fashion. Here's some more details concerning the CEPIC:
"... a right-wing ginger group within the major Belgian conservative party, the Parti Social Chrétien (PSC). The group, CEPIC, the Centre Politique des Indépendants et des Cadres Chrétiens, would become an official section of the PSC in 1975. In September 1973, a Gendarmerie report by Major de Cock implicated several prominent AESP/CEPIC members in funding an extreme right-wing group, the NEM Clubs. A 1976 Gendarmerie report by Chief Adjutant Roger Tratsaert further alleged that the NEM Clubs had been major participants in plans for a coup d'état by elements of the Gendarmerie in the early 1970s (147)."
(Rogue Agents, David Teacher, pg. 74)The 1973 attempted coup shall be addressed in a moment. For now, its worth noting that the reader has already encountered a key figure behind the "NEM Clubs" (militant organizations that were inspired by the Nouvel Europe Magazine (NEM), a publication that the great David Teacher states had ties to British and US intelligence dating back to the Second World War): Emile Lecref (addressed in part one).
Lecref was one of the most well-connected figures in Belgian's fascist underground. In addition to editing NEM, he was on good terms with de Bonvoisin who was one of his chief financial backers. He also had extensive ties to the PSC and CEPIC as well as Damman's far more exclusive AESP. Beyond this, he was also one of the key figures in the Belgian branch of the World Anti-Communist League (WACL, an international organization with extensive ties to US intelligence as well as terrorism and drugs and arms trafficking; much more information on the WACL can be found here) and maintained ties to the right-wing terror network known as Aginter Press. Aginter was noted in part one of this series while its ties to the terror attacks that rocked Italy during the so-called "Years of Lead" can be found here.
Aginter and Operation Gladio in Italy also extensive ties with the MSI, Ordine Nuovo and Italian terrorist Stefano Delle Chiaie. As noted above, de Bonvoisin was also on good terms with these groups and individuals. This may be especially significant in a future installment, so do keep it in mind.
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Delle Chiaie |
Next to de Bonvoisin, the most prominent Belgian figure with deep connections to be mentioned in regards to child abuse was the former Prime Minister Paul Vanden Boeynants (typically referred to as "PvB" or "VdB" for short):
"Behind such a carnival lay the revelations from a troop of witnesses that Vanden Boeynants frequently participated with judges, army officers, lawyers, businessmen and other elite figures, in orgies involving young children and acts of ghastly bestiality, including hunts where children were chased through the woods with Dobermans. PvB is dead, following a heart operation that went wrong. All that he knew about Belgium's depravities has usefully gone to the grave. Yet his legacy lives on, connecting him to almost every organisations spinning in the orbit of crime, neo-Nazi cults and the key figures in the secret army operations..."
(Gladio: NATO's Dagger at the heart of Europe, Richard Cottrell, pg. 305)ISGP also notes some of them ore incredible charges against PvB:
"Vanden Boeynants was accused by X1, X3 and X4 of being a violent child abuser and-or a person involved in hunts on children. [210] Nathalie W. claimed to have seen Vanden Boeynants at the Dolo [211], the favorite club of Nihoul, while X2 testified she had seen Vanden Boeynants' private driver there, Henri Bil, talking to one of Belgium's most notorious gangsters, Madani Bouhouche. [212] X1 has named both Bil and Bouhouche as child abusers. [213] On a lesser note, Vanden Boeynants' name also appeared in the Pinon file of the 1980s [214] and in Maud Sarr's tv testimony in February 1990 [215], in which his name came up alongside a DEA-trained gendarme general with whom he once ran a massive drug importing operation. [216] Both the Pinon and Maud Sarr cases were about a prostitution network in which minors were used to blackmail high officials."
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PvB |
Vanden Boeynants was arguably the most well-connected Belgian politician of his era. His political career began shortly after WWII had ended.
"Prime Minister from 1966 to 1968, Paul Vanden Boeynants from the Parti Social Chrétien (PSC). Vanden Boeynants, or VdB as he is known, would become a national institution in Belgian politics - the Belgian Andreotti, going on to serve as Belgian Defence Minister from 1972 to 1979 and as Prime Minister in 1978-79. He first entered politics at the age of 29 in the ranks of Retinger's European Movement. Before being elected to Parliament, he was one of the five Belgian representatives at the second conference of the Union of European Federalists, the most powerful group within the European Movement, held in Rome in November 1948 shortly after massive intervention by the CIA to ward off an electoral victory by the Socialist-Communist Popular Democratic Front in the April 1948 elections...
"Through the UEF, Vanden Boeynants made a valuable contact in the person of the UEF Treasurer, the Belgian banker Pierre Bonvoisin, who in 1952 would be one of the founding members of the Bilderberg Group with Antoine Pinay. When VdB was Belgian Defence Minister in the 1970s, he would show his gratitude to Pierre Bonvoisin by appointing Bonvoisin's son, Benoît, as his political advisor."
(Rogue Agents, David Teacher, pgs. 51-52)
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Pierre de Bonvoisin, the Black Baron's father and PvB's early patron |
"... Paul Vanden Boeynants ('PvB' for short), the paunchy and wealthy son of a pork butcher, who became defense minister and twice premier. Compared to the average dour prime minister of Belgium, he had an unusually colourful career. His 'Social Christian Party' was infiltrated by Western intelligence, and was really little more than a vehicle for himself. He put his chubby hands to everything that offered profit, beginning with the national gendarmerie's National Bureau for Drugs, where he installed a pliant general who was on the CIA's payroll. His task was to make sure that regular shipments of marihuana and cocaine bound for the CIA crossed the border into Belgian without harassment. Boeynants, the made-good butcher's son, found time to open a meat processing factory in Malta as another cover to wash CIA dope funds.
"The narco-traffic flooding Belgium belonged in large part to the CIA's long-established international drug circuits, with a certain amount creamed off by Nihoul and partners in return for co-operation on the marketing side. On his part, PvB's carefully articulated populist charms disguised his control over an enormous bundle of enterprises owing strong connections to the underworld and the CIA. When the time came for scores to be settled, the enemies that he had made in the years of good fortune arranged his prosecution for tax evasion. Boeynants responded with threats to sing in no uncertain terms. He was let off with a slap on the wrist, even if his ambitions to become burgomaster (mayor) of Brussels traveled no further."
(Gladio: NATO's Dagger at the Heart of Europe, Richard Cottrell, pgs. 304-305)
In addition to being linked to pedophile networks on multiple occasions, PvB was also involved in two other noteworthy political scandals. The first unfolded in 1973 and apparently involved an aborted coup, which PvB (then serving as Defense Minister) would have been a logical candidate to head. David Teacher notes:
"... An AESP Member of Honour since at least June 1970, he would rise to become President of CEPIC from 1977 onwards and leader of the PSC. VdB was implicated by the de Cock report in funding groups planning a coup d'état; at the time, he was Belgian Defence Minister, the minister responsible for overseeing the Gendarmerie."
(Rogue Agents, David Teacher, pg. 76)As noted above, the CEPIC would be closely implicated in the alleged coup plans. PvB's close associate, Baron de Benvoiisin, was also a key backers of these plans. It would seem that the coup was exposed before it could be put in motion, however. Surprisingly, there is not a lot of information available about these doings (at least in the English language). It is interesting to note, however, that an aborted coup had also been planned in Italy (December 1970) during this same era. This plot involved Prince Junio Valerio Borghese, the so-called "Black Prince," as well as the notorious Italian terrorist Stefano Delle Chiaie. As noted above, Delle Chiaie had close ties to Benvoisin. Delle Chiaie also had a longstanding relationship with Aginter Press:
"In Spain, Delle Chiaie linked up with right-wing extremist from other European countries including Otto Skorzeny, a former Nazi, and Yves Guerain Serac, a French former officer for the illegal Organisation Armee Secrete (OAS) and Gladio-linked leader of the Portugal-based CIA front Aginter Press."
(NATO's Secret Armies, Daniel Ganser, pg. 108)
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As noted in part one, both Jean Thiriart and Emile Lecref had ties to Aginter |
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the "Black Prince" |
"Then, in early 1989, Vanden Boeynants was kidnapped by members of the well-known Hemers gang, which, it later transpired, had close connections to both Belgian Gladio units and Dutroux's activities. The government tried to pretend he had been snatched by an unknown cell called the 'Socialist Revolutionary Organisation,' which strongly suggested Gladio fingerprints. PvB was held for a month, then released after payment of a whopping ransom. This being the surreal state of Belgium, there were further twists to the episode. First, the prominent gang boss Patrick Haemers– someone else who knew too much – joined the lines of convenient prison suicides. His two accomplices were luckier. One fine day in 1993 at the Brussels-St. Gilles prison, their guards left their cells unlocked. They quietly strolled away to freedom."
(Gladio: NATO's Dagger at the Heart of Europe, Richard Cottrell, pg. 305)ISGP has much more information of PvB's kidnapping and its ties to Dutroux. But suffice to say, the official narrative of PvB's kidnapping (while he was still on probation for financial fraud) is widely disbelieved by the general public in Belgium.
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Patrick Haemers (right), one of the alleged kidnappers of PvB |
" 'The factory' X1 regularly spoke about (see above) was a location, where besides regular abuse, snuff movies were shot. Vanden Boeynants' private driver Henri Bil, Baron de Bonvoisin, Annie Bouty, Michel Nihoul, Tony, the controversial lawyer Michel Vander Elst, former prime minister Wilfried Martens, examining magistrate Melchior Wathelet and lawyer Jean-Paul Dumont apparently all went to the ASCO factory to torture and abuse children. [270] In November 1996, X1 took the investigators to the location she had described. On arrival, it turned out that the witness had been talking about the ASCO factory, located just outside Brussels. The description she had given matched, and coincidentally, ASCO was (and is) owned by the Boas family, which used to be close friends and business partners of the late Paul Vanden Boeynants. [271] X1 mentioned having seen a "Roger" [272] at the factory, apparently the head of the Boas family who used to be a member CEPIC and Cercle des Nations."
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Wathelet |
"1991 was to prove another of those years when momentous events occurred in the Gladio calendar, pointing to something extremely sinister beneath the covers of the state. Andre Cools, a significant figure in the vastly corrupted Walloon socialist party, and an ex-deputy premier, suddenly threatened to blow the whistle on links to secret funding and worse, implicating people in high places. He was almost immediately assassinated, in a drive-by shooting in Liege in July that year. Cools was tainted by the Italian Agusta helicopter bribes affair, and implicated in the mysterious disappearance of millions of dollar bonds supposedly in safe transit at Brussels airport. Unquestionably, Cools – a characteristically corrupted and vain Belgian politician with much to hide – was being blackmailed, and decided that if he was going down with the ship, that he would take all hands down with him. The newspapers were engrossed at precisely this moment with the widely suspected links between prominent Belgian politicians and stories of sordid sex trafficking.
"The Flemish newspaper De Standaard pitched with delight on the Walloon socialist organization. It was portrayed as the centre-piece of a sprawling web of corruption linking big business, major banks, insurance firms and construction companies, with many ties to crime networks. With the paper could not say was how much money the party (and its leaders individually) banked directly from NATO slush funds. Cools may have intended to discuss the matter en plein air. Witnesses who escaped the Nihoul sadist orgy circuit often cited Cools as a regular participant, which adds force to his statements just before his death that he was about to make some 'shocking revelations' about the Belgian mafia, and their links to some of the most important people in Liege."
(Gladio: NATO's Dagger at the Heart of Europe, Richard Cottrell, pg. 311)
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Andre Cools |
And with that I shall wrap things up for now. In the next installment I shall begin to examine some of the elite organizations that were behind the de Benvoisisin/PvB network. Stay tuned.