The Road to Elohim Part V

The Road to Elohim Part V

Welcome to the fifth installment in my series concerning Elohim City, the broader Christian Identity movement that spawned it, and the links both have to the American power elite. In the first installment I briefly considered the origins of Elohim and the Christian Identity faith as well as providing an overview of several notorious paramilitary groups and movements connected with both. In the second part I considered the political climate in Germany in the early 90s, a topic that will have much significance later on; as well as the life and times of notorious white supremacist attorney Kirk Lyons and one of his more notable clients, German national and former Elohim City chief of security Andreas Strassmeir. In the third installment I moved on to the militant transformation Strassmeir brought to Elohim in the early 90s and the role that he and the compound likely played in the Oklahoma City bombing. In the fourth part I began to consider the implications of the Oklahoma City bombing, noting that it came in the midst of a rightward shift in the country of which it either had no effect on or even added to. I also noted that Germany experienced a wave of right-wing terrorism largely from skinhead gangs in the wake of reunification which shadowed a rightward shift amongst mainstream political parties, a situation that is currently being repeated in modern-day Greece.

Greece's Golden Dawn, a far right political party, taking to the streets

Later on in the fourth installment I introduced former Students for a Democratic Society president Carl Oglesby's concept of a"Yankee/Cowboy" war amongst America's cryptocracy. The Yankee/Cowboy War is a very complex topic of which I was only able to broadly outlined in part four and I'll only briefly describe here: It is essentially a conflict between America's old moneyed Eastern Establishment (Carroll Quigley's Round Table Group and Rhodes Scholars; the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission and many other longtime bogeymen of the conspiratorial right) and the "Cowboy" faction, a loose assortment of individuals and groups typically based out of the American South and West and unified by far right ideology. The chief concern of the Eastern Establishment has traditionally been international trade and banking. The Cowboy faction is not as financially unified, though their interests are frequently aligned with the so-called military-industrial complex.

As part four wound down I outlined the various shifts in the American power structure between the Yankee and Cowboy factions since the Kennedy administration. It can briefly be summed up as thus: The Kennedy assassination was a coup de tete by the Cowboys and led to almost a decade of Cowboy rule; at this point the Yankee staged their own counter coup, which came in the form of Nixon's resignation in the wake of the Watergate scandal; the Yankees would continue to dominate the American political system throughout the 1970s but the Cowboys laid the framework for an eventual return to power which briefly happen in 1980 with the election of Ronald Reagan; but Bush I, very much a creature of the Eastern Establishment, soon began to dominate Reagan's administration and would officially become the president in 1988; when Bush I was defeated in 1992 it was by another Yankee creation, on William Jefferson Clinton, who was a former Rhodes Scholar and considered Carroll Quigley himself a major inspiration.

With the end of the Cold War, which had long been a rallying point for the fanatically anti-Communist Cowboy faction as well as a significant moneymaker, it seemed as though the war had finally been settled in favor of the Yankee faction once and for all. But then came Ruby Ridge and Waco and the emerging specter of global terrorism (the first major terror attack on the World Trade Center, a bombing attempt, occurred in 1993) and suddenly both the grassroots right and the defense industry found new life.

In terms of "Overworld" ratifications the so-called "Republican Revolution" of 1994 served to counter the Yankee presidency of Clinton and ultimately lay the framework for the 2000 election which brought George W. Bush to power. Bush II, despite being the scion of an old monied Eastern family, was very much under the dominion of the Cowboy faction and allowed them more influence in his administration than any president since Nixon.

In many ways Bush II's presidency completed a Cowboy comeback that have been in the works since the 1970s. This comeback had many fronts, but two of the most significant were the emergence of a vast network of right-wing think tanks (i.e. the Heritage Foundation, the Manhattan Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, etc) to counter their Eastern Establishment counterparts (the notorious Council on Foreign Relations and such) and the development of a massive grassroots base built around Christian fundamentalist and evangelical church groups. Beyond these Overworld developments there is also growing evidence that various paramilitary outfits were also employed as shock troops in this counter-counterrevolution. These Cowboy shock troops frequently came from the ranks of the Christian Identity movement as the 1970s gave way to the 1980s. With this in mind let us now more closely consider the origins and history of Christian Identity theology.

The Christian Identity movement had its origins in 19th century British Israelism, emerging as its own distinct ideology in early 20th century America. A Massachusetts lawyer named Howard Rand is generally credited as the first Christian Identity philosopher though the notorious Father Charles Coughlin and William Dudley Pelley's fascist Silver Shirt movement likely had an enormous influence on the theology.

"... William Dudley Pelly and his group, the Silver Shirts, warrant a closer look. Pelly founded the Silver Shirts on Jan. 31, 1933 in Asheville, N.C., the date Hitler took power in Germany. He described it as a Christian militia. Throughout the 30s and until Pelly's indictment for sedition, the Silver Shirts were one the largest and most violent pro-Nazi groups. Pelly was the son of a Methodist minister who believed that Jews were the children of Satan. He acquired his intense hatred for Jews from White Russians during his missionary work with the American Expeditionary Force in Russia at the end of WWI. This hatred was later reinforced when Pelly was fired as a Hollywood screenwriter.

"Due to their extreme racism and Judeophobia, the Silver Shirts became popular in areas of the country were the Klan was strong during the 1920s, especially in the Pacific Northwest, where they fill the void left after the Klan split apart in Oregon and Washington. The Silver Shirts were openly pro-Hitler, and formed an alliance with the American Bund and the Klan.

"If not for their lingering influence on fascist groups in America, they would be as forgettable as any of the more than 700 fascist groups from the 1930s. However, many of today's far-right groups can trace their ancestry to the Silver Shirts.  Posse Comitatus founder Henry Lamont Beach was a leader of the Silver Shirts in Oregon. Richard Butler, founder of the Aryan Nations in Hayden Lake, Idaho, was a Silver Shirter and Klansman. Butler still used the Nazi salute at Hayden Lake years after the end of the war.

"Gerald L. K. Smith, one of the founders of today's Christian Identity, was perhaps the most influential former Silver Shirt. Identity religion, the belief that the Aryans are the real descendents of the Hebrew tribes, is a common bond among many right-wing extremist groups today, such as Posse, the Aryan Nations, and many militia and Klan groups...

"Three other ministers of hate from this period deserve special mention -- Gerald Smith, Gerald Winrod and Wesley Swift. Swift, who had direct connections to the Nazis, is credited with leading the Identity movement. He also was a member of the Klan...

"Both Winrod and Smith were Coughlin disciples. Winrod came close to winning election as a senator from Kansas and, at the time, was often called the Jayhawk Nazi. Smith closely associated with Huey Long and, after his death, tried to take over the governor's political machine. Smith also was a member of Pelly's Silver Shirts.

"Although Coughlin was the most widely recognized religious figure from the Nazi movement during the 30s, Gerald K. Smith may have been the most influential in the long term. Smith was well known in the 1930s, and though he did not have as large a following as Coughlan, his influence is seen in many right-wing groups today.

"Smith was an assistant in Coughlin's Christian Front and an associate of Henry Ford. He was an ordained minister in the Disciples of Christ Church and a virulent Judeophobe who gained notoriety by staging a Passion Play in Louisiana. While Coughlin disappeared from the national scene by the end of the war, Smith went on to found the Christian Defense League (CDF), a survivalist offshoot of the Klan. The CDF pamphlet, The Cross and the Flag, was among the first to present the Identity religion.

"One of Smith's assistants in his Christian Anti-Communist Crusade was Wesley Swift, widely regarded as an icon of the Identity religion today. Swift was one of the first to assert a need for paramilitary groups, and he formed the racist California Rangers, a core group of the Minutemen. He also founded the Church of Jesus Christ-Christian in 1946. Later, after a disagreement with Butler, he moved his hate ministry to Hayden Lake, Idaho, where it formed the basis of varied racist groups, such as the Aryan Nations and the former order.

"Swift associate Col. William Gale ran for governor of California in 1958 on a pro-segregation ticket, and was a former aide to Douglas MacArthur. He also founded a church based on the Identity religion, the Ministry of Christ. Gale was a founder of the Posse comitatus. Both Swift and Gale recruited Richard Butler, the head of the Aryan Nations."
(The Nazi Hydra in America, Glen Yeadon & John Hawkins, pgs. 218-220)

There's a lot to take in here. Let us begin with the Silver Shirts and their founder William Dudley Pelley, both of whom have carved out a curious niche for themselves in 20th century America. As noted above, Pelley's Silver Shirts were one of the most violent and notorious pro-fascist groups in the 1930s, their founder ultimately being imprisoned for treason during World War II and for good reason: there is compelling evidence that Pelley was on the payroll of the Nazis.

"By 1934, the Nazis had only been in power for less than a year, but already were active in placing their agents or pro-Nazis in positions of power. On Feb. 22, 1934, Sen. Daniel Hastings of Delaware and Rep. Chester Bolton announced the Republican Party had merged their Senatorial and Congressional Campaign Committees into a single organization, independent of the Republican National Committee. Just before the merger, the two campaign committees hired Sidney Brooks, longtime head of research at International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT). ITT was one of many American corporations that went to extraordinary means to continue trading with the Nazis after war broke out.

"Brooks soon made a frantic visit to New York. On March 4, 1934, he went to Room 830 of the Hotel Edison, rented to Mr. William Goodales of Los Angeles, who was actually William Dudley Pelley. The meeting ended with an apparent agreement to merge Brooks' Order of 76 with the Silver Shirts. Then Brooks stopped at 17 Battery Place, the address of the German Consulate General.

"The Order of 76 was a pro-fascist group. Its application form required the fingerprints and certain biological details of applicants. Brooks' application revealed that he was the son of Nazi agent Col. Edwin Emerson, and that he chose to use his mother's maiden name to hide his father's identity."
(ibid, pg. 184)

Pelley with his Silver Shirts

Strangely, there was much overlap between Pelley and his group and Guy Ballard's I AM movement, an early New Age group, in the 1930s as well. In the postwar years Pelley would also become involved with UFO movement on some level.

"According to my information, contactee George Adamski had prewar connections with American fascist leader William Dudley Pelley, who was interned during the war.  Another seminal contactee, George Hunt Williamson (whose real name was Michel d'Obrenovic), was associated with Pelley's organization in the early 50s. In fact, Pelley may have put Williamson in touch with Adamski. Other associates of Williamson during the great era of the flying saucers were such contactees as John McCoy and the two Stanford brothers, Ray and Rex.

"The connections among all these men, who have been very influential in shaping the UFO myth in the United States, are quite intricate. William Dudley Pelley, who died in 1965, was the leader of the Silver Shirts, an American Nazi group that began its activities about 1932. Its membership overlapped strongly with Guy Ballard's I Am movement. Pelley declined to join the other fascist groups in their support of Congressman Lemke in 1936, standing on his own in Indiana as a Christian Party candidate. His opposition to Roosevelt increased until his eight-year interment for sedition in 1942. After the war, he started an occult group, Soulcraft, and published a racist magazine called Valor. He also wrote the book Star Guests in 1950, a compilation of automatic writings reminiscent of the Seth Material.

"It was about 1950 that Williamson is said to have begun working for Pelley at the offices of Soulcraft Publications in Noblesville, Indiana, before moving to California, where he witnessed Adamski's desert contact on November 20, 1952, with a Venusian that had long blond hair. Williamson, however, has assured me that he never embraced any of the racist theories that the pro-Nazi movement promoted. Perhaps Adamski and Pelley knew one another as a result of their common interest in the I am cult? Dr. Laughead, who inspired the contacts of Mrs. Keech in the Midwest and later launched Dr. Audrija Puharich on the tracks of the mythic 'Specta,' is also said to of associated with this group."
(Dimensions, Jacques Vallee, pgs. 250-251)

Guy Ballard, founder of the "I am" movement 

There are some incredible connections, indeed. Peter Levenda (in the first book in his Sinster Forces trilogy) has speculated that this Dr. Laughead was the equally mysterious Dr. Vinod, who originally channeled The Nine (also known as 'Specta') for Andrija Puharich and a group of American bluebloods in 1953. The topic of Puharich and The Nine is another incredible story, which I chronicled before here, and thus will not delve into. Incidentally (or not), the notorious cult leader Jim Jones moved to Indianapolis, Indiana in 1951. Noblesville, the location of Pelley's Soulcraft Publications and the place where he was ultimately buried, is just north of Indianapolis. Jones founded the Peoples Temple in Indianapolis in 1955 and would maintain a strong presence there until the mid-60s. There is of course much speculation about Jones and his Peoples Temple, some of which I've chronicled before here and here.

So much for Pelley and the Silver Shirts. Another crucial figure in the Christian Idenity movement and the paramilitary right in general is William Potter Gale, a former colonel in the United States military who served under Douglas MacArthur during World War II. In the postwar years Gale is said to have had close associations with at least one other former member of MacArthur's staff.

"The Canadian businessman Geisbrecht also heard reference to a Kansas City hotel later learned to be the meeting place for members of the right-wing Minuteman group, a group whose California branch was headed by another Willoughby associate, a man named William Gale."
(Nasa, Nazis & JFK, "Furtive Winks, Flying DISCs and the Torbitt Document," Kenn Thomas, pg. 16)

Here are a few more details on this paramilitary outfit (which does not seem to be a branch of the 1960s Minutemen) Gale, who would go onto co-found the Posse Comitatus in the late 1960s (which in turn would serve as the basis of the modern 'Sovereign Citizen' and militia movements, as discussed in part one), was involved in:

"... Colonel William P. Gale, yet another ex-McArthur man. In 1962, as California state chairman of the Constitution Party, Colonel Gale announced his candidacy for the governorship on a platform calling for the abolition of all income taxes. He also organized... a paramilitary outfit.

"Willoughby... and a number of other military officers put together Gale's tactical guide, or manual of arms for the future. It suggested that 'patriotic underground armies should be established, named the "Rangers" who should train to assassinate, sabotage, and overthrow the "People's Democracy."'

"A Long Beach Press-Telegram expose called Gale's Rangers 'a secret guerrilla group composed of persons devoted to extremist racial and religious beliefs.' Not long after their spring 1962 formation, the Rangers would begin attracting a wide range of wanderers along the L.A.-to-Miami route. Those people's dedicated aim was the overthrow of Fidel Castro."
(The Man Who Knew To Much, Dick Russell, pgs. 111-112)

William Potter Gale

The Willoughby mentioned above is none other than Charles Willoughby, a Major General in the U.S. Army who served as Douglas MacArthur's Chief of Intelligence for much of World War II and Korea.

"MacArthur's intelligence branch was under the formal command of Gen. Charles Willoughby. MacArthur referred to Willoughby as his 'little fascist.' born in Germany, Willoughby was a love child of Baron T. Scheppe-Weindenbach and Emma Willoughby of Baltimore, Md. After MacArthur's promotion to the U.S. Far Eastern Command, Willoughby chose to follow his idol. The Army previously assigned both men to the Philippine command. Impressed by Willoughby's loyalty, MacArthur appointed him as his Assistant Chief of Intelligence.

"After Japan attacked the Philippines,Willoughby moved to Corregidor with MacArthur, then evacuated with him to Australia. Will be was generally inept and not even remotely prepared for many of the assignments. However, MacArthur demanded absolute control over intelligence and special operations, and  Willoughby was ready and able to deliver MacArthur total control and loyalty. Willoughby was also clever at hiding his blunders and promoting his successes. Years after the war, Willoughby became a member of just about every fringe far right wing group that came into existence."
(The Nazi Hydra in America, Glen Yeadonn & John Hawkins, pg. 483)

MacArthur and officers closely associated with him such as Willoughby have long been linked to what is alternatively known as the Golden Lily or the Black Eagle Trust, a stash of gold bullion and another precious metals accumulated by Imperial Japan during the second World War. This rather massive treasure was hidden on the Philippines where MacArthur and his staff eventually discovered it. They would use it to set up several slush funds that were used to fund right-wing groups in postwar Japan.

"... American forces uses funds recovered from the Golden Lily. three secret funds existed during the military occupation: the M-Fund, the Yoshida Fund and the Kennan Fund. MacArthur was instrumental in setting up the M-Fund, initially believed to be as large as $2 billion. Money for it came from the sale of confiscated gold, silver, gems and other strategic materials...

"MacArthur and his staff created the M-Fund to buy elections. Its first big application came in the late 1940s when the socialist won. The M-Fund immediately began dispensing great sums to discredit the socialist cabinet. Later, Washington used the fund to discredit Tokyo's move to open relations with the People's Republic of China.

"MacArthur and his staff set up the Yoshida Fund with a different objective. It was used to finance the Japanese underworld for 'wet work,' kidnapping and murder. Gen. Willoughby controlled the Yoshida Fund, where money was used to silence union leaders and organizers. Willoughby also had the job of falsifying Japanese military history to conform to the needs of the American Cold War Warriors..."
(ibid, pg. 486)

It's interesting to note that Lockheed, the defense contractor who employed future Aryan Nations founder Richard Butler as a senior manufacturing engineer, was later involved in the Golden Lily/Black Eagle Trust operation.

"...Adnan Khashoggi... was a Lockheed agent and partner of Yoshio Kodama. Kodama was a Japanese rear admiral during the war and a member of the Japanese Yakuza crime clan. During the war, Kodama was in charge of shipping loot to the Philippines... The CIA used Lockheed to funnel money worldwide. Moreover, Lockheed European Sales Director, Dutchman Fred Meuser, was a member of Prince Bernhard's wartime air force squadron. Another member of the Lockheed bride team was CIA officer Nicholas Deak. Deak founded a money-brokering firm to funnel money to Kodama."
(ibid, pg. 474)

While the Golden Lily/Black Eagle Trust funds were theoretically only for black ops in foreign nations there are indications thatsome of this money eventually ended up in the coffers of domestic far right groups. The John Birch Society (which was cofounded by Col. Lawrence Bunker, a member of MacArthur's staff in Tokyo) attempted to procure Golden Lily gold via Nevada mining engineer Robert Curtis in the mid-1970s. Former general John Singlaub, a longtime fixture of various American far right groups such as the World Anti-Communist League, led an expedition to recover some the gold in 1994.

"One of the latest recoveries, which raised scandalous headlines in 1994, involved former UN Secretary Gen. Kurt Waldheim, who took part in an operation involving the CIA and former Gen. John Singlaub. The operation, dubbed Nippon Star, recovered more than 500 metric tons of gold from the Philippines. Singlaub, who was active in right-wing extremist groups and political intrigue in Central and South America, headed the team. Singlaub was part of the military intelligence complex before retiring."
(ibid, pg. 473)

John Singlaub

I've found nothing that conclusively links funds from the Golden Lily/Black Eagle Trust to right-wing extremist groups in the United States, but it is interesting to note that the Philippines has long been suspected as a source of financing for the Oklahoma City bombing. There is compelling evidence that Terry Nichols, Timothy McVeigh's only official co-conspirator in the Oklahoma City bombing, met with members of various Islamic terror networks in the Philippines (which has been a hub for various terror organizations such as the Huk and Abu Sayyaf for years) around 1994.

"... Terry Nichols have met Iraq he agents Abdul Murad, Ramzi Yousef, and Khalid Mohammed. Yousef had been imprisoned for the 1993 World Trade Center attack, but in February 1995 he was living with his uncle Khalid Mohammed, the mastermind of the 1993 WTC and Oklahoma City bombings, in an apartment in the Philippines. Later the plans for the Oklahoma bombing and a number of 9/11-style attacks on US skyscrapers with airliners were found on Ramzi Yousef's computer. This intelligence was fully translated by the FBI and CIA in late January and early February 1995. Nichols also met with eight Iraqi members of an al-Qaeda cell in the Philippines who, in addition to the bombings, planned assassination attempts on President Clinton and on the pope."
(Conspiracies and Secret Societies, Brad Steiger & Sherry Steiger, pg. 352)

Terry Nichols

While its highly debatable as to whether or not Islamic groups masterminded the Oklahoma City bombing enough evidence has emerged indicating that they played some kind of a role. This topic will be discussed a bit further in a future installment. For now, I would like to consider what Nichols allegedly brought back with him from the Philippines after that fateful trip in 1994.

"Terry Nichols hid a dagger under his compost-smeared cloak. Lana Padilla, his first wife, called a news conference on July 13 after visiting him in prison. She said that Nichols made frequent trips to the Philippines -- so many, in fact, that the farmer from Kansas had charged $40,000 in air fares to his credit cards. Ms. Padilla also claimed that Tim McVeigh footed the bill for a 1989 trip. After his arrest, federal agents discovered that Terry Nichols had a locker full of gold and silver bullion on stored in Las Vegas. Nichols, she told reporters, was given the precious metals in November, 1994, while on a junket to the Philippines, by a party unknown."
(Virtual Government, Alex Constantine, pg. 271)

At this point it behoves me to stop in our narrative and consider the implications of some of the things discussed above. I shall begin with how MacArthur and the officers that served under him fit into the whole Yankees/Cowboys War premise that I've been working off of throughout this series. It seems evident to me that MacArthur was aligned to some extent with the Cowboy faction. Semi-official Yankee historian Carroll Quigley seems to confirm this.

"The United States was as eager as the Chinese to avoid a direct clash between the two countries, because such a clash could easily build up into a major war in the Far East, leaving Russia free to do its will in Europe. Washington was fearful that Chiang Kai-shek, since he could rot reconquer China himself and hoped America would do it for them, might seek to precipitate such a war by making an attack from Formosa on mainland China. There was also a strong chance that MacArthur might encourage or allow Chang to do so because that haughty general agreed with Chiang that Europe was of no importance and that the Far East should be the primary, almost the only, area of operations for American foreign policy. He had bitterly opposed the 'Germany First' strategy throughout World War II and had begrudged men or supplies sent there on the grounds that these divisions delayed his triumphant return to the Philippines. As the war drew to its close, he had said: 'Europe is a dying system. It is worn out and run down and will become an economic and industrial hegemony of Soviet Russia... The lands touching the Pacific with their billions of inhabitants will determine the course of history for the next ten thousand years.'

"These views were shared by the Right-wing isolationist groups of the Republican Party with whom MacArthur have been in close touch for much of his life and to whom he owed some of his success. In American politics these groups had power to do considerable damage because of their influence on the Republican congressional party and the fact that the bipartisan foreign-policy under Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan, which operated elsewhere in the world, did not exist in regard to the Far East. The danger of any Chiang-MacArthur cooperation to build the Korean action up into major war was intensified by the fact that this would be opposed by the United Nations and by our allies, neither of whom was considered important by the neo-isolationist or by MacArthur, but whom the Truman administration refused to alienate unnecessarily because they were essential, as bases, in the containment of Russia."
(Tragedy and Hope, Caroll Quigley, pgs. 973-974)

The views MacArthur expressed regarding Europe and Asia were very much in line with those of the Cowboy faction, as discussed in part four of this series. While Europe has been a long-standing preoccupation of the Yankee faction the Pacific was seen as a continuation of the American West to some within the Cowboy faction. Indeed, some of the genesis of the Yankee/Cowboy war can be traced back to the conflict between Yankee Harry Truman and Cowboy MacArthur during the Korean War. On the other hand MacArthur advised both Kennedy and LBJ against escalating the Vietnam War, a major objective of the Cowboy faction, shortly before his death and was specifically sought out by Kennedy for advice on at least two occasions. Thus, it would seem that MacArthur was not a hard-line Cowboy.

The same cannot be said of several of his former officers, men such as Charles Willoughby (who collaborated with such far right luminaries as Rev. Billy James Hargis and Edwin Walker after leaving the Army), Laurence Bunker (a co-founding member of the John Birch Society), and William Potter Gale, who became deeply involved with various fringe right groups beginning in the 1950s. By all accounts Gale, who had coordinated guerrilla resistance in the Philippines during World War II, was a major figure in the Christian Identity movement by the 1970s. He was also a cofounder of the modern California Ranger and the Posse Comitatus movement, both of which had an enormous influence on the militia movement and other paramilitary fringe right groups. This seems to indicate that the Christian Identity movement, and the broader 'Patriot movement' with which it has frequent overlap, were very much creatures of the Cowboy faction.

The Cowboy/Christian Identity tie is further reinforced by the figure of Richard Butler, the Aryan Nations founder who was recruited into the Christian Identity movement by Gale. As noted above, Butler was previously employed by Lockheed Martin at roughly the same time that he began to embrace Christian Identity theology. Lockheed, a major defense contractor based out of California, is a natural ally of the Cowboy faction. As noted above, there is even evidence that Lockheed was involved in laundering some of the gold from the Golden Lily/Black Eagle Trust that was originally established by MacArthur and his officers.

Richard Butler

Beyond this, numerous major figures in the Christian Identity movement such as Tom Metzger, William Pierce and Gordon 'Jack' Mohr all cut their teeth in the John Birch Society before embracing Christian Identity. The JBS, which was cofounded by Fred C. Koch (founder of the Koch dynasty), is totally a creature of the Cowboy faction. What's more, many other significant figures in the Christian Identity movement such as Louis Beam, Bo Gritz, and Gordon Kahl were all military veterans, a group that is long rallied around the Cowboy faction of the American cryptocracy.

Metzger (top), Beam (middle), and Kahl (bottom), all major Christian Identity figures

The rise of the modern Christian Identity movement at some point in the 1960s fits in nicely with the counter-counterrevolution the Cowboy faction embarked upon around this time. As noted above, there were two major features of this counter-counterrevolution in the 'Overworld': the rise of Cowboy think tanks, and thus a Cowboy intelligentsia, such as the Heritage Foundation to counter the long-standing dominance in public discourse held by Yankee counterparts such as the Council on Foreign Relations; and the emergence of a politicalized fundamentalist/evangelical Christian grassroots that could counter the trade unions and other such organizations that have formed the basis of the modern Yankee grassroots.

The Christian Identity movement played a subtle role in this transformation. Most notably it made it easier for the Overworld to move further to the right while still appearing to be moderate. After all, even some of the hardcore Christian fundamentalist/evangelical ministers did not seem overly radical in comparison to Christian Identity theologians such as Robert Millar and Richard Butler. And Cowboy policy objectives devised by their think tank network such as renewed American militarism and Chicago School economics seemed downright moderate in comparison to either.

Beyond this, the Christian Identity movement and the broader Patriot movement which it has been closely associated beamed a steady stream of the American paranoid style into the public discourse. What's more, the more militant factions within the Identity and Patriot movements could operate in the criminal underworld (and did frequently become involved in bank robberies and arms trafficking as well as occasionally delving into drugs and black-market gold), which was highly useful to the Cowboy factions for reasons that we shall soon discuss. Finally, the Identity movement provided the Cowboys with a potential terror network, though it was rarely used as such until the 1990s.

The figures of William Potter Gale and Richard Butler provide a direct link between the Cowboy faction and the Identity movement until the late 1980s. Up until that time Butler had arguably been the most powerful figure within the Identity movement and his Aryan Nations compound in Hayden Lake, Idaho was the base of operations for many of the most militant groups and individuals within the movement. But by the late 1980s Gale was dead and Hayden Lake had drawn the attention of both law enforcement and the media, making it an unsuitable base for the various criminal enterprises militant Identity adherents were involved in. By the early 1990s Elohim City had become the new banner for the militant Identity adherents to rally around but now they had no direct links to the Cowboy faction.

All of this makes reports of Terry Nichols acquiring gold and silver bullion from the Philippines all the more intriguing. Some researchers have alleged that the Golden Lily/Black Eagle Trust funds that MacArthur and his staff set up still exist and that they have been used to create what can best be described as a kind of "shadow" CIA. This entity sprang up around the figure of Edward Lansdale, the former OSS man who later served as an intelligence officer under MacArthur in the Pacific theater. Later Lansdale, while working with the CIA (an institution dominated by a Yankee hierarchy, but which featured a vibrant Cowboy faction active in operations), would become involved in the Bay of Pigs disaster.

"When President Kennedy sacked Lansdale over his operations against Cuba, Lansdale did not give up his covert activities. He merely went private. He still had enough contacts in the military and the CIA, and accounts of gold in his name to remain a player in covert operations. In practice this left Lansdale as a private individual with the power to overthrow foreign governments and even the ability to plunge a country accidentally or deliberately into an unwanted war...

"By 1980, there were plenty of individuals like Lansdale who were terminated from government services to staff private military or intelligence firms. Starting in 1972... hundreds of agents who had been engaged in the dirty tricks click... were forcibly retired... More than 1000 agents were terminated...

"Further investigations in the 1970s led to more dismissals, not only at the CIA, but also the Pentagon. The Carter administration dismissed additional CIA and military personnel...

"By 1980, private military and intelligence firms proliferated to such an extent that they became known during the Iran-Contra scandal as 'The Enterprise.'"
(The Nazi Hydra in America, Glen Yeadon & John Hawkins, pgs. 488-489)

Edward Lansdale

Is the gold and silver bullion that Terry Nichols received in the Philippines evidence that Elohim City was a part of this 'Enterprise?' Curiously, Timothy McVeigh wrote his sister Jennifer a confidential letter in which he described himself as being recruited into a top-secret branch of military special forces that was engaged in illegal activity.

"... McVeigh wrote his sister Jennifer that he was picked by the Army for a highly specialized Special Forces Covert Tactical Unit (CTU) involved in illegal activities. The letter was introduced to the Federal Grand Jury. According to [a] former grand juror... these illegal activities included 'protecting drug shipments, eliminating the competition, and population control.' While all the details of the letter aren't clear... there were five to six duties in all, and that the group was comprised of 10 men."
(The Oklahoma City Bombing and the Politics of Terror, David Hoffman, pg. 62)

Timothy McVeigh

Strangely, the strongest link between the Cowboy faction and Elohim City are the attorneys for both McVeigh and Nichols. McVeigh was represented by human being known as Stephen Jones, an attorney born in Lafayette, Louisiana who has been described as a "Republican activist."

"... After the Oklahoma City bombing, 'country' lawyer Stephen Jones was handed McVeigh's case...

"... He took the case after both of his legal predecessors were run off by death threats. Jones stepped forward to represent John Doe One. He said he had no qualms about lynch-mob reprisals. He also claimed to have no conflicts of interest in the case. But Jones is not the simple backwoods lawyer he affects to be.

"In 1964, he was a legal assistant to Richard Nixon. Jones 'stayed in touch.' he was among the 'honored,' he boasts, to be graced with an invitation to Nixon's funeral in 1994."
(Viual Governmet, Alex Constantine, pg. 257)

Jones

Nichols' attorney had even more direct ties to the Cowboy faction, as well as being on friendly terms with Jones after after having collaborated together before in defending a controversial Oklahoma City psychotherapist.

"... Michael Tigar, the attorney representing Terry Nichols. In the 60s and 70s, Tigar was employed by the law firm of Williams, Wadden & Stein. He reported to Edward Bennett Williams, the head of the firm, a Beltway attorney long on intimate terms with the CIA. Williams often referred to Tigar as his 'most brilliant protégé.'

"The law firm sprang into existence to cater to the same interagency intelligence underground implicated in drug distribution, mind control and by all appearances a U-Haul of exploding compost in Oklahoma City. A senior partner of the firm was Brendan Sullivan, the high strung legal phenomenon who represented Oliver North during the Congressional Iran-Contra hearings. Williams, a Jesuit, was twice offered the post of CIA director. He refused... Robert Maheu, the CIA hitman, attended Holy Cross with Williams and was a close friend. In 1958, the famed attorney paired Robert Maheu with a Los Angeles mobster Johnny Rosselli to plot against Cuban premier Fidel Castro...

"Michael Tigar came to the firm after resigning his position as a Supreme Court clerk. He represented some extremely high-power clients for a journeyman attorney. It was Tigar who coached Bobby Baker, the LBJ aid in prison for tax fraud and influence peddling in 1967, before Senate appearances. Tigar defended John Connally when the former Texas governor was accused of pocketing a bride. Connally was acquitted. He rewarded Tigar with a prize bull. The beast was packed off to Fidel Castro."
(ibid, pg. 270)

Michael Tigar

It would seem that both Jones and Tigar became involved with the Cowboy faction relatively early in the respective legal careers. Years later each man "incidentally" end up representing a defendant in the Oklahoma City bombing. If McVeigh or Nichols were in fact working for the Cowboy faction, or were aware that it was pulling the strings at some level, than having either man represented by a trusted attorney would be an effective way of controlling either defendant.

The mysterious gold and silver bullion that Terry Nichols acquired shortly before the Oklahoma City bombing and the presence of Jones and Tigar as the attorneys for McVeigh and Nichols respectively strongly indicate that the Cowboy faction was still pulling the strings of the Christian Identity movement at the time of the Oklahoma City bombing. As noted in the prior installment, the bombing occurred in the midst of a rightward shift within the United States, a shift that was not hindered in the slightest by a major right-wing terror attack. This would not be inconsistent with how the Christian Identity movement has operated in relation to the objectives of the Cowboy 'Overworld,' as noted above. Still, the Christian Identity movement had never even attempted something on this scale before, let alone pulled it off.

Of course Clinton, a highly popular Yankee president, was sitting in the Oval Office at the time. But then again, Clinton had already been largely neutered by the so-called 'Republican Revolution' of the 1994 congressional elections and had already begun taking his administration in a more rightward direction. In this context, Oklahoma City seems like overkill on the part of the Cowboy faction. It also enabled Clinton to largely dismantle the paramilitary right wing groups, a project the Cowboy faction seems to have spent some time cultivating. Perhaps the destruction of these groups was inevitable --Bush I seems to have gone on the warpath against them both during Reagan's presidency and his own, resulting in raids on the compounds of the Covenant, the Sword, and the Arm of the Lord and of the Aryan Nations in the 1980s in addition to high profile shootouts with the likes of Gordon Kahl, Robert Matthews, and ultimately Randy Weaver. This was a crusade that Clinton seems to have taken up in earnest with Waco, possibly spurring the Cowboy faction to get some use out of the paramilitary wing of the Christian Identity movement before it was destroyed.

Or not. Frankly, I have not devised a truly compelling Cowboy motive for the Oklahoma City bombing. The same cannot be said for Andreas Strassmeir, a German national from a politically connected family, and the faction that he likely represented. In the next, and hopefully last, installment I shall finally address the implications of Strassmeir's role in the Oklahoma City bombing and offer up a candidate and motive for said terror attack. Stay tuned.