A Vast Right Wing Conspiracy: The Secret Origins of the Patriot Movement Part III
Welcome to the third installment in my examination of the sinister roots of the Patriot movement. In the first installment of this series I considered the original links between patriot groups and the US intelligence community that dates back to the First World War as well several former military men who played a major role in establishing the modern Patriot movement's ideology. In the second installment I began to focus in on the three distinct strands behind the modern day Patriot movement, namely the John Birch Society, the Liberty Lobby and the Posse Comitatus.
As part two unfolded I broke down the backers of Willis Carto's Liberty Lobby, including figures such as Roger Pearson, Francis Parker Yockey and Francois Genoud, all of whom having had ties to the post-WWII European fascist underground. I argued that Carto was affiliated with what researcher Kevin Coogan referred to as "the Order," a network established by the SS before the end of WWII and which occultist and SD (the SS's chief intelligence arm) asset Julius Evola played a major role in. From here on out "the Order" shall be referred to as the "Evola network" to avoid confusion with another Order that we shall soon consider (though the two may well have been closely linked).
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| Evola |
Before leaving the Liberty Lobby I would like to consider one other individual who likely was a major financial backer of Carto's: Colonel Wickliffe Preston Draper.
Draper, like many individuals we've already encountered thus far, also had ties to the US intelligence community: a WWI veteran, he was assigned to military intelligence (officially) after the outbreak of WWII. Beyond this, he was a member of one of the wealthiest and most powerful American families originating from New England. He possessed ample pedigree beyond the Draper line, however.
"Burdened with three last names as a constant reminder of his illustrious ancestry, Wickliffe Preston Draper was raised in a family where being 'well bred' was not just a figurative expression for good manners. His given names were indications of the Southern aristocracy on his mother's side. Draper's maternal grandfather, General William Preston, could trace his family's history back to ownership of Craigmillar Castle outside Edinburgh, where James V and his daughter, Mary, Queen of Scots, were frequent visitors. Educated at Harvard and Yale Law School, General Preston had fought in the Mexican War and had been a member of the Kentucky legislature and the U.S. Congress before being appointed ambassador to Spain by President James Buchanan; when Lincoln came to office, he returned to Kentucky to assist the rebel effort, serving first as a command officer in the Confederate Army and then, after being appointed the Confederacy's ambassador to Mexico, as a diplomat. Draper's maternal grandmother, Margaret Wickliffe, also came from a prominent Kentucky family that lived in antebellum splendor on their Lexington estate, owned by Margaret's father, 'Old Duke' Robert Wickliffe, the wealthiest planter and largest slaveholder in the state. And in one leading eugenics texts, both the Prestons and Wickliffes were named as examples of 'the Kentucky Aristocracy,' families of statesmen and generals, in which 'the men were brave and gallant, the women accomplished and fascinating and incomparably beautiful.'
"But just as illustrious, and even more important in determining the material advantages of Draper's life, was the New England Puritan background on his father's side. In the community of Hopedale, Massachusetts, in which he was raised, being a Draper was synonymous with wealth, privilege, and power. Indeed, according to one nineteenth-century observer, if not for an accident of history, the town would have been called Draperville.
"Wickliffe Preston Draper arrived in the world on August 9, 1891, just in time to receive his own entry in The Drapers in America, a hagiographic genealogy published the following year by a member of the family whose work had been subsidized by Wickliffe's paternal uncle. Proud of their colonial roots dating back to James 'the Puritan' Draper, who had left the village of Heptonstall in Yorkshire, England and settled in the New World in 1648, the 'Draper men,' according to the genealogy, 'have ever been to the front in all emergencies... have held offices of all kinds in the village, town, city, county, or country... have been soldiers, sailors, statesmen, lawyers, doctors, engineers, authors, merchants, farmers, manufacturers, in the church and school, and have brought to each and every one of these occupations an earnestness and steadfastness of purpose and success of the highest order.' Nine towns or counties in the United States, and one in the United Kingdom, had been named after the family.
"The line leading directly to Wickliffe Draper was particularly distinguished. His great-great-grandfather Abijah Draper had fought at Lexington and Concord and commanded a company of minutemen under Washington at Roxbury. Abijah's son Ira invented the rotary temple, a device for keeping the cloth extended in weaving that doubled output by allowing a single weaver to attend two looms; by the time Wickliffe was a teenager, the business built around his great-grandfather's invention was the largest manufacturer of textile machinery in the world."
(The Funding of Scientific Racism, William H. Tucker, pgs. 16-17)
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| General William Preston (top) and General William F. Draper (bottom), just two of the Colonel's illustrations relations |
"In 1935, Draper had traveled to Berlin, where the International Congress for the Scientific Investigation of Population Problems was being held, to learn first hand what sort of eugenic measures were being enacted by the Nazi government. To facilitate his contact with officials and scientists in the Reich, Laughlin had written to Eugen Fischer, president of the International Congress and an important scientific authority for the Reich, naming Draper as one of the two official delegates from the Eugenics Research Association (ERA) and commending him as 'one of the staunchest supporters of eugenical research and policy in the United States'... From Berlin, Draper reported to Laughlin that he had met 'several Germans who may be able to give me the information I seek, and which I look forward to discussing with you on my return.'
(ibid, pg. 52)
By all accounts the Colonel was impressed. He would go on to help promote a Nazi propaganda film known as Erbkrank (The Hereditary Defective) in the United States upon his return. Some have alleged that his ties to Nazi Germany went well beyond promoting a propaganda film, however. In point of fact, the full extent of Draper's dealings with the Third Reich remain classified more than 65 years after the end of WWII and 40 years after the Colonel's death.
"According to Marshall Ravnitzky, a reporter for the National Law Journal, the Federal Bureau of Investigation has been withholding records on Draper's involvement with the Reich under an inappropriate application of classification rules to files more than fifty years old."
(ibid, pg. 63)Both before and after the Second World War Draper would dedicate his rather immense fortune toward the funding of eugenics and far right organizations. Two major recipients of this largess prior to WWII were the American Coalition of Patriotic Societies (ACPS) and what would become known as the Pioneer Fund. The ACPS, founded by former military intelligence officer John Trevor Sr. (whose son, John Trevor Jr., would later become a board member of the Pioneer Fund along with long time Carto associate Roger Pearson), was already considered in depth in the first installment in this series. As noted there, the ACPS was a kind of prototype for modern day patriot groups, especially the anti-immigration types (the modern day Minutemen are especially indebted to the ACPS). It would go on to become deeply involved with the American Security Council (the founding of which Trevor Sr played a key role in) for decades. Draper was apparently the Coalition's long time financial patron.
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| anti-immigration activism has been a long time preoccupation of the Trevor clan |
"A greater source of concern is the Pioneer Fund, a group that had direct links to Hitler and the Nazis. In 1937, Wicklife Preston Draper, heir to the giant textile machinery manufacturer, Draper Corp., established the Fund. Draper was an extreme racist and a staunch anti-unionist as early as the days of the Sacco and Vanzetti trial of the 1920's. Other projects of his hatred were the United Nations, John Kennedy, the Nye Committee and liberals. His hatred for members of the Nye Committee for trying to charge the duPonts with war profiteering led to his deliberate persecution of Alger Hiss between 1948-51.
"Draper and associate Harry Laughlin created The Model Eugenics Laws in America, which Hitler used to write the Nuremberg Laws. In 1936, Laughlin received an honorary degree from the University of Heidelburg. Both Draper and Laughlin advocated the involuntary sterilization of institutionalized Americans. Twenty-four states adopted such laws that led directly to sterilizing more than 75,000 Americans...
"On Sept. 12, 1963, the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission received notice from Morgan Guaranty Trust Co. that it received an anonymous gift of $100,000 to fight against civil rights. Additional money was forthcoming from the Pioneer Fund and used in a broadside attack on civil rights. The Pioneer Fund also was a source of funding for anti-bussing programs. It is also the source of much of the funding for book titles like The Bell Curve, a piece of racist drivel disguised as science. The Bell Curve is inherently false and used much of the work provided by the Pioneer Fund. One of the chief beneficiaries of the Pioneer Fund has been Roger Pearson, who is closely linked to the Liberty Lobby. In addition, the Pioneer Fund was one of the driving forces behind Proposition 187, the anti-alien measure on the 1994 California ballot. Presently, two noteworthy Republican politicians are linked with the Pioneer Fund: Jesse Helms and Steve Forbes."
(The Nazi Hydra in America, Glen Yeadon & John Hawkins, pgs. 221-222)
But the ACPS and the Pioneer Fund are not the only contributions Draper made to the far right. Draper was also one of the chief financial supporters of the Citizens Councils of America (a group closely linked to the above-mentioned Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission), an organization founded in the wake of the 1954 Brown v Board of Education Supreme Court decision to oppose desegregation. The Citizens Councils were hugely popular in the 1950s and 1960s and would manage a staggering comeback in the 1990s after being re-branded as the Council of Conservative Citizens. Former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott would of course become infamously affiliated with this organization.
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| Trent Lott speaking before the Council of Conservative Citizens |
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| the "Christ of the Ozarks" shrine the Colonel helped fund |
"The International Association for the Advancement of Ethnology and Eugenics (IAAEE) was established in 1959, with Truth Seeker's Robert Kuttner as president, to further advance the cause of biopolitics. Kuttner, who became an editor for Mankind Quarterly, would later testify before the House Committee on the Judiciary on the evils of school desegregation as a spokesman for Willis Carto's Liberty Lobby. The IAAEE's general secretary was a former Queens College student named Donald Swan. A Truth Seeker/Racist Forum regular and friend of H. Keith Thompson, Swan also went by the name 'Donald Walker' and 'Thor Swenson.' H. Keith Thompson also worked with the IAAEE.
I did all the printing for the IAAEE, a distinguished group of ethnologists, many of international repute, examining racial differences from a scientific point of view... They were funded by a foundation set up by Col. [Wickliffe] Draper, and produced a series of booklets examining these matters. Their findings were used extensively in preparing defenses to Brown v. Board of Education, and by the White Citizen's Council...
"Truth Seeker, Right, and Mankind Quarterly on the one hand, and the NL and the IAAEE on the other, were interrelated wings of a close-nit political tendency. While the League and publications like Right and Truth Seeker appealed to street-level activists from the WDL, NRP, and NSRP, Mankind Quarterly and the IAAEE mobilized more sophisticated arguments to justify white supremacy..."
(Dreamer of the Day, Kevin Coogan, pg. 481)
The above-mentioned H. Keith Thompson was a close associate of Francis Parker Yockey. He had also been an SD asset during WWII and acknowledged to researcher Coogan to have been in control of an SS slush fund set up prior to the end of WWII to aid high ranking Nazis after the inevitable defeat. And here he is assisting the Draper-funded IAAEE crowd. By all accounts Draper's contributions to this endeavor were significant, much to the benefit of Carto and his fledgling Liberty Lobby.
"Judging by the fact that its efforts were advertised, and its publications distributed, exclusively by extremist sources, however, the association seemed more interested in providing scientific authority for a reemerging racist and Nazi movement than in having an impact on academic thought. For example, IAAEE membership was solicited in Western Destiny, where it could attract the attention of a readership also interested in how the Jewish Culture Distorters were destroying the white racial basis of Western civilization by peddling false notions about equal rights. The IAAEE reprints were available from the 'Sons of Liberty' publication list, along with such learned works as Christ Was Not a Jew, an analysis of 'Jewish parasitism and the Aryan deliverer'; Jewish Ritual Murder, which 'documents the case proving Jewish ritual murder of Gentiles'; and A Real Case against the Jews, in which 'a Jew tells... the real reason why the Jews should be hate.' Even before its first issue, advance notice of the Mankind Quarterly's imminent publication was announced in Pearson's Northern World and subscriptions offered by British Publishing Company, a notorious specialist in anti-Semitic literature. In the United States, subscriptions to the Quarterly could be ordered from a Liberty Lobby circular also offering subscriptions to Northern World, the 'complete file back issue' of Right, and Francis Parker Yockey's Imperium, a particularly influential book in the neo-Nazi movement, dedicated to 'the Hero of the Second World War,' Adolf Hitler. Race and Modern Science also appeared on the lobby's Noontide Press List, together with the classic fraud The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, The International Jew, Hitler Was My Friend, and a host of works 'exposing' the Holocaust as an enormous hoax. And all the IAAEE publications regularly appeared on the list of recommended literature in the Citizen, the monthly publication of the Citizens' Councils. Swan and Gregor even toured the South, distributing copies of Mankind Quarterly and the reprint series to state departments of education to encourage the use of scientific date 'to counter the Brown decision' and the introduction in the high school curriculum of a course on race based on IAAEE materials. And in an internal dispute within the neo-Nazi movement, each side would claim its position was based on IAAEE publications. If the IAAEE's real purpose was to dignify hate groups and racists with academic support, then the Colonel's money probably was not spent in vain.
"Whatever Draper's motivation, however, there is no doubt that he spent liberally. Without the relevant financial records... it is not possible to know exactly how much of Draper's resources were donated to various IAAEE projects, but the amount was certainly substantial. In 1963, the only year for which some financial data are available, the IAAEE reported income of $23,210, all but $400 coming from 'contributions and donations,' undoubtedly Draper's money. The almost $22,000 ($133,000 AFI) of expenditures included $7,600 ($44,000 AFI) for 'printing costs' --in a year neither Race and Modern Science nor any of the monographs was published --and $5,000 ($29,000 AFI) for the purchase of Avin's symposium on housing; the fact that copies of the symposium were later distributed as part of the Liberty Lobby's campaign against a civil rights bill suggests that some projects carried out by Carto's organization, which had a number of prominent members in common with the IAAEE, probably were also funded by Draper."
(The Funding of Scientific Racism, William H. Tucker, pgs. 99-100)
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| the Colonel in the flesh |
"In 1958, Prescott Bush and Gordon Gray, who were President Eisenhower's frequent golfing partners, helped secure an appointment for William Draper to chair a committee advising Eisenhower on the use of military aid to other countries. He was a relative of Wickliffe Draper. Dillon and Read employed him the 1930s. He helped Prescott Bush float the largest bond issue for Nazi Germany, and later served in postwar Germany as head of the economics unit in charge of dismantling the cartel system.
"Draper was a racist and major funding source of the eugenics movement. He used his position as commission head to direct its focus away from military aid to the danger of overpopulation in third world countries. The Eisenhower administration dismissed his racist views. Draper went on to fund the Population Crisis Committee with money from the Rockefellers and duPonts. In the 1960s, he served as an adviser to LBJ. He was instrumental in getting the Johnson administration to use overseas aid programs to fund birth control in nonwhite countries...
"George H.W. Bush, Prescott's son, was a vocal supporter of Draper's politics. In 1964, he campaigned in Texas against the Civil Rights Act. In 1969, as a member of Congress, Bush arranged hearings on the dangers posed by the birth of too many black babies...
"In the 1980s, as vice president, George H.W. Bush urged Reagan to appoint William Draper's son Bill as administrator of the United Nations Development Program, an organization connected with the World Bank and charged with supervising population control. Bush also was in on the appointment of Bill Draper to the Export-Import Bank. During the 1980s, the Export-Import Bank, at the urging of the Reagan administration, served as a funnell to provide Saddam Hussein with funds and credits during the Iran-Iraq war.
"The Bush and Draper families shared close friendships going back to the 1920s. Bill Draper was co-chairman for finance and head of fund raising for the 1980 George H.W. Bush for President campaign. The Pioneer Fund was established by Wickliffe Draper. Charles Murray, the Pioneer Fund's best-known expert, has served as adviser to many of George W's top consultants, and is often quoted by them. He directly influenced the repressive welfare programs of Tommy Thompson and NYC Mayor Giuliani, and was a consultant to Thompson on changes in the Wisconsin welfare system. Murray's books, The Bell Curve and Losing Ground, both about the inferiority of blacks, serve as bibles for the school privatization and anti-welfare movements in the United States..."
(The Nazi Hydra in America, Glen Yeadon & John Hawkins, pgs. 172-173)
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| William H. Draper Jr. |
Overall, the Draper clan (along with the Bushs and the Mellons, among others) seem to have served as one of the chief bridges between the old guard Eastern Establishment (who were themselves quite taken with fascism and Nazism, as I briefly noted before here) and the emerging military-industrial complex. What's more, the Draper clan still remains highly relevant. William H. "Bill" Draper III, besides being deeply involved with various civic activities for the Reagan/Bush regime, was also a highly successful venture capitalist. His son Timothy C. Draper carried on the tradition via Draper Fisher Jurvetson, a firm that funded Skype, Hotmail, Overture, Baidu, Tesla Motors, SpaceX and so forth.
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| WHD III (top) and Timothy C. Draper (bottom) |
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| Prescott Bush |
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| the legendary logo of Skull and Bones |
"Incidentally," the SS (which was modeled upon secret Medieval military orders such as the Knights Templar, Knights Hospitallers, and the Teutonic Knights, a fact that will be especially curious in light of an organization that will be addressed in just a moment) also used the skull and cross bones as an insignia. Of course, the German military had been using the skull and cross bones as a symbol going all the way back to the time of Frederick the Great, when the insignia was adopted by elite cavalry troops of the Prussian army.
During the interwar years between the First and Second World Wars Freikorps, paramilitary organizations drawn from the ranks of former German military men to combat communist forces, used the skull and crossbones extensively as an insignia. Numerous future leaders of the Nazi regime such as Ernst Rohm (the head of the SA, commonly referred to as stormtroops or brown shirts) and Heinrich Himmler (the head of the SS). It is widely believed that the Freikorps had an enormous influence on both the SA and SS as well as the Nazi regime in general.
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| Prussian cavalry (top), a Freikorps member (middle) and one of the famed SS death's head rings (bottom) |
While it may seem incredible that such forces were behind the Liberty Lobby, the group behind the John Birch Society and the Posse Comitatus may be even more bizarre. Both strands, like virtually all of the conspiratorial right, were obsessed with the notion that the nation was falling under the control of Eastern Establishment groups such as the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission, which in turn were controlled by centuries-old secret societies such as the Freemasons and the Illuminati (and of course the Jews). In theory these secret societies are in turn engaged in a Satanic plot to destroy America's Constitution (usually via sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll PSYOPs conducted by the US intelligence community) and replace it was a Communistic, one-world dictatorship.
Thus it is quite ironic that in all probability the JBS and almost surely the Posse were themselves controlled by a secret society that claimed descent from a Medieval military order; that was dominated by "former" high ranking military officers and intelligence personnel; that was likely involved on some level in the trafficking of drugs, arms, and black market gold; and was accused of practicing occultic rituals (a charge not without merit, but which we not be addressed at length in this particular series). Despite these endeavors this group presented itself as a far right wing traditionalist Catholic/Orthodox organization engaged in a mortal struggle against the forces of godless Communism (and of course, the Jews).
The organization was known as the Sovereign Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, Knights of Malta and sometimes referred to simply as the Shickshinny Knights of Malta. It did indeed claim descent from the Medieval Knights Hospitallers, but via the Russian line of succession and was distinct from the "official" successor organization to the Hospitallers, the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (though there does seem to have been no small amount of collaboration between the SOSJ and SMOM over the years). While it is highly unlikely that the SOSJ's claims of descent from the Knights Hospitallers are legitimate, the organization would wield a shocking degree of influence over twentieth century America.
The origins of the modern Sovereign Order of Saint John and its long time Grand Master, "Colonel" Charles Pichel, are quite murky. There seems little doubt, however, that by the 1930s the SOSJ and Pichel had become deeply involved with both the Nazis and powerful figures in the White Russian exile community.
"... Pichel's interest in chivalric orders went back at least to 1924, when he helped establish the American Heraldry Society in New York City. By the early 1930s, he was active in the far right. On 15 July 1933 he wrote to a prominent Nazi named Ernst Hanfstaengl offering his services as a liaison between the American right and Hitler. In the late 1930s he became involved in a nebulous Axis propaganda wing called 'The Order of the Blue Lamoo.' Pichel's ties to the Blue Lamoo surfaced in a 1939 report by a New York detective named Boris Casimir Palmer (Pilenas). A former World War I military intelligence agent, Palmer ran his own detective agency out of an office located at 170 Broadway. On 27 June 1939 he sent a letter to the Non-Sectarian Anti-Nazi League (NSANL) under the title 'Subject Japanese espionage.' In it, he discussed Pichel's involvement with Boris Brasol, a leading White Russian anti-Semite, intelligence operative, criminologist, literary figure, and founder of the Union of Czarist Army and Navy Officers. Brasol was said to have been a representative of a Nazi propaganda organization called the Fichte Bund, and was close to the Cossack General Grigori Semionov, who was financed by Japan.
"Palmer told the NSANL that a Franciscan priest, Father Peter Baptiste Duffee, claimed that Brasol also belonged to 'a Nazi propaganda organization known as the Blue Lammoo [sic]. At the head of the group is Charles T. Pichel, an ex-con.' Pichel, then living in Leonia, New Jersey, was said to be working 'for a member of the IRA, who is in the employ of the Japanese Commercial Attaché in Washington. Duffee identified the IRA man as Vincent Walsh. Walsh, who later worked with the Japanese consulate in New York, was tied to Pichel, who was 'said to be an Englishman, alleged drug smuggler, and Nazi spy.' Duffee also reported on another Blue Lamoo'er close to Pichel, a 'Count Tcherep-Spiridovich.'
"How well informed was Father Duffee? In his book American Swastika, Charles Higham reports that the priest served as Father Coughlin's liaison to Boris Brasol. Duffee was also right about the Blue Lamoo. According to the anti-fascist Friends of Democracy group, the Ancient and Noble Order of the Blue Lamoo was a White Russian fascist organization one of whose members was the 'Count V. Cherep-Spiridovich.' The 'Count' was born Howard Victor von Boenstrupp. A former patent lawyer, Boenstrupp was also known as 'the Duke of St. Saba,' 'Colonel Bennett,' and 'J.G. Francis.' A close associate of Silver Shirt leader William Dudley Pelley, he was indicted along with Pelley on sedition charges on 21 July 1942. Nor was this his first encounter with the law. In 1933, when he was just plain Howard, he was charged with grand larceny for allegedly stealing a valuable book and other crimes. During the House Committee on Un-American Activities questioning of Fritz Kuhn, Cherep-Spiridovich's name came up in connection with two publications, Intelligence and American Tribunal. He was also linked to 'the Order of St. John of Jerusalem.'
"Boenstrupp said he got his title after being legally adopted by a real White Russian count, Major General A. Cherep-Spiridovich, who died a suicide. A friend of Boris Brasol, the count lived in America after World War I and headed the Anglo-Latino-Slav League. He was also involved in the Anti-Bolshevik Publishers Association, which published The Gentiles' Review. Cherep-Spiridovich was the author of a near-psychotic 1926 tract called The Secret World Government of the Hidden Hand, and was intimately involved in promoting The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion in the United States.
"Starting in June 1922, the well-known journalist Norman Hapgood ran a series of exposes in Hearst's International entitled 'The Inside Story of Henry Ford's Jew Mania.' In it, Cherep-Spiridovich and Brasol were identified as the two most influential figures behind Ford. According to Hapgood, Cherep-Spiridovich at one point lived in Detroit and worked for Ford. He also identified another Russian friend of Brasol's involved with the Protocols, a former diplomat and Hereditary Knight Commander in Pichel's order named Boris Bakhmeteff.
"As for Brasol, his ties to Ford evolved out of an earlier connection to American military intelligence. One of his ex-military intelligence cronies was C.C. Daniels, then head of the Ford Detective Agency in New York and the brother of Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels. Dr. Harris Houghton, C.C. Daniel's family physician and the New York head of Army Intelligence, was also close to Brasol. After World War I, Houghton created the Beckwith Company to publish tracts like the Protocols.
"Casimir Palmer, who worked for the Military Intelligence Division in Washington during World War I, also knew Brasol. In a signed affidavit dated 2 April 1937, he said he first met Brasol in April 1918 when the Russian was working for the War Trade Board in New York City. After telling Palmer that the downfall of the Russian monarchy had been part of a Jewish conspiracy, Brasol 'mentioned something about there being in existence some sort of secret document known as the Protocols of Zion. They next met on 29 June 1918 at Brasol's apartment on West 84th Street. Again Brasol claimed that Jewish bankers like the Warburgs were behind the Bolshevik Revolution, information that Palmer relayed 'to my superior, Captain Carleton J.H. Hayes, now Professor of History at Columbia University.' Palmer then reported that a copy of the Protocols manuscript was sent to a Congressional Committee by 'a very close friend of Henry Ford, a Dr. H.A. Houghton.' When Palmer met Brasol for a third time, Brasol gave him a copy of the Protocols, which he had gotten translated into English.
"Brasol spread the Protocols in league with the Grand Duke Kirill. Kirill and his chief aide-de-camp General Vasily Biskupsky appear to have received financial support from Henry Ford, with Brasol serving as their intermediary. According to Robert C. Williams' book Culture in Exile, Kirill's wife Viktoria managed 'to obtain funds for the movement from the United States.' In their book Who Financed Hitler, James and Suzanne Pool state that Brasol was Kirill's American representative at the time. They reported that Brasol sent money from Ford to the Grand Duke and Duchess, who in turn gave it to Ludendorff to support the Bavarian far right, including Hitler. If this information is correct, it might explain the Nazi refusal to give Biskupsky the money he claimed was due him, since the funds hadn't originated with Grand Duke Kirill in the first place.
"Grand Duke Kirill had another supporter on the American far right: Charles Pichel. Pichel reports that on 13 January 1934, 'the late Grand Duke Kirill, acting officially as Kirill Wladimirovich (Kirill I)' from his place in exile in Saint Briac, France, confirmed the legitimacy of Pichel's Order. Two years later, in a proclamation dated 24 November 1936, he conferred upon Pichel 'the Order of St. Andrew the Apostle, First Class in Gold' for his 'zeal in defending and helping to perpetuate the noble history of Imperial Russia and the Imperial Families of Russia.' Kirill's order was 'signed by the President of the Committee of Imperial Orders and the Delegate of the Emperor in the United States,' presumably Brasol."
(Dreamer of the Day, Kevin Coogan, pgs. 606-608)
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| the original Count Cherep-Spiridovich (top) and Grand Duke Kirill (bottom) |
The SOSJ would once again find itself in the midst of intrigue by the late 1950s when it received an influx of former high ranking military officers.
"In the 1950s the Knights developed close ties to the Defenders of American Constitution, and some DAC leaders became members of the 'Military Affairs Committee' of Pichel's Knights. General Pedro Del Valle was a member of both the Supreme Court of the Knights and its Military Affairs Committee. Other members of the Military Affairs Committee included Gen. Lemuel C. Sheppard, Lieutenant General George E. Stratemeyer, Major General Charles A. Willoughby, Brigadier General Boner Fellers, Admiral Charles M. Cooke, and seven retired U.S. Navy rear admirals. The Order's 'Honorary Grand Admiral' was Admiral Sir Barry Domville, the Nazi sympathizer and former head of British Naval Intelligence who had been interned during World War II under Regulation 18B. Both Willoughby and Del Valle had been close allies of General Douglas MacArthur. In order to overcome the MacArthur network's opposition to CIA activity in Asia, CIA Director Walter Bedell Smith once tried to interest Del Valle in heading a CIA office in Tokyo, bur without success."
(ibid, pg. 604)
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| General Douglas MacArthur, object of idol worship amongst countless members of the post-WWII far right |
"Upon his father's death in 1956, Trevor Jr. took control of the coalition. Despite its own indictment for sedition during the war, the organization was concerned about a long list of 'subversive' institutions and activities. In regular resolutions, which were read into the Congressional Record and used in attempts to influence national legislation, the coalition expressed its opposition not only to attempts to 'undermine' the immigration laws by admitting more 'aliens' or relaxing the requirements for deportations but also to arms negotiations, membership in the United Nations and its very presence on 'American territory,' diplomatic relations with the USSR, NATO-sponsored conventions to promote 'greater political and economic cooperation,' display of the Panamanian flag in the Canal Zone, fluoridation of public water supplies, the National Council of Churches, and the World Federation of Mental Health, whose purpose was the destruction of 'our form of government and our American Way of Life.' One of the coalition's official spokesmen who presented its resolution to the House Committee on Foreign Affairs was General Pedro del Valle, a member of the Liberty Lobby's advisory board, who professed 'the instinctive distrust which is natural in all Christians for all Jews, diluted or pure'; Jews 'cannot also be good Americans,' he wrote to a fellow officer, because 'all Jews are hostile to the kind of America that anybody but a Jew desires.' Del Valle was also a co-owner of the biweekly paper Common Sense, which claimed that Mao Zedong was a 'front... for New York Jews,' and was considered a member of 'our... inner circle of top people' by George Lincoln Rockwell, 'Commander' of the American Nazi Party, one of the faithful few who donated to Rockwell's campaign to 'nail the nigger and Jew LEADERS' behind 'Martin Luther Coon.'"
(The Funding of Scientific Racism, William H. Tucker, pgs. 61-62)
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| General Pedro Del Valle |
I've already briefly considered Willoughby in the final installment of my series concerning the American Security Council where I noted that he and MacArthur had effectively shut the OSS out of the Far East, ensuring that virtually all US intelligence operations there were under their direct control. After "retiring" from the military in 1951 in the wake of MacArthur's removal from command in Korea Willoughby, with the assistance of the notorious Hunt clan of Dallas, formed his own private intelligence network. This intelligence network would later become affiliated with the Gehlen Organization, a group of former Nazi intelligence assets controlled by Reinhard Gehlen that would go on to dominate West Germany's primary intelligence organization, the BND, for decades.
"... General Willoughby... was set up in a right-wing intelligence network called the 'International Comite for the Defense of Christian Culture' by H. L. Hunt's sons Nelson Bunker Hunt and Lamar Hunt.
"In the 1960s this group's self-named 'Foreign Intelligence Digest' network incorporated some of Kennedy's most outspoken ideological opponents in the United States: men like Frank Capell... and Billy James Hargis, the 'Christian Crusade' ally of General Edwin Walker's army indoctrination program in West Germany. German neo-Nazis and Abwehr veterans rounded out this group, along with Cuban exile, José Ignacio Rasco...
"One avowedly racist member of this network was Austin J. App, chairman of the Federation of American Citizens of German Descent. According to a British book, the West German intelligence network, the BND, may have funded App's Federation to the tune of $280,000 in 1964. If so, the Hunt-Willoughby connection can be called transnational, in that it melded assets, and probably funds, from overseas to supplement the Hunt family's assets. The Hunts' own marginal status in U.S. society should not therefore mislead us into subordinating Willoughby's network still further. In a postnational era, transnational influence flood into our country by vehicles whose apparent marginality is misleading...
"In late 1963 the most conspicuous transnational feature of the Hunt-Willoughby network was their closest identification with Madam Nhu, the widow of the recently assassinated Ngo Dinh Nhu in Vietnam. The ongoing Willoughby interest in the Far East was represented by the presence of Father Raymond de Jaegher of the Free Pacific Association, the patron in America of Ngo Dinh Diem and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu. The Hunt-Willoughby-Walker intelligence network seems to have taken care of Madam Ngo Dinh Nhu when she came to Dallas in the fall of 1963 and was presented with a banquet of flowers at in October 1963 'U.S. Day' rally in Dallas, organized by General Walker..."
(Deep Politics and the Assassination of JFK, Peter Dale Scott, pgs. 213-214)
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| a young Charles Willoughby who, like Wickliffe Preston Draper, was a physically imposing presence in his prime (journalist Dick Russell places him at 6'3, 220 pounds) |
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| recovered Golden Lilly treasure |
"Early in October, after many days of torture, Kojima broke and revealed everything he knew. Lansdale organized a convoy of cars and set out with Santy and Major Kojima to retrace the trips made by General Yamashita to 'more than a dozen' Golden Lilly treasure vaults. These were all in high valleys north of Manila, in a triangle from Baguio in the west to Bambang in the center, and Aparri at the northern tip of Luzon.
"When they returned to Manila in mid-October, Lansdale reported to Colonel McMicking, then flew to Tokyo where he briefed Willoughby, Whitney, and MacArthur. At their instruction, he then flew to Washington to brief General Magruder, who still headed the Strategic Services Unit, a last vestige of the OSS just before the new Central Intelligence Group (CIG) was created under General Hoyt Vandenberg. It was Magruder who had moved Lansdale to Manila two months earlier. Vandenberg or Magruder then sent Lansdale to the White House to brief President Truman's national security aide, Navy Captain Clark Clifford, and members of the Cabinet. President Truman decided to keep the discovery secret, and to recover as much of the Japanese loot as possible. At this stage, it is impossible to say precisely how these briefings unfolded, or exactly what President Truman did. The secrecy surrounding Santy's recoveries is nearly total.
"What we do know, from two separate high-level sources in the CIA, is that Robert B. Anderson flew back to Tokyo with Lansdale, for discussions with MacArthur. After some days of meetings, MacArthur and Anderson flew secretly to Manila, where they were taken by Lansdale and Santy to some of the sites in the mountains, and to six other sites around Aparri at the northern tip of Luzon. In the intervening weeks, Santy's men, aided by hand-picked teams from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, had successfully opened several of these vaults, where MacArthur and Anderson were able to stroll down row after row of gold bars. Other sites were opened in subsequent months. In all, the recoveries took two years to complete, from late 1945 to early 1947.
"From what was seen in these vaults, and also discovered by U.S. Army investigators in Japan, it became evident that over a period of decades Japan had looted billions of dollars' worth of gold, platinum, diamonds, and other treasure, from all over East and Southeast Asia. Much of this had reached Japan by sea, or overland from China through Korea, but a lot had been hidden in the Philippines."
(Gold Warriors, Sterling & Peggy Seagrave, pgs. 95-96)
Willoughby would go on to control a slush fund of this loot that he would use to fund some of the wettest wet works the US intelligence community would become involved during the post-WWII era. We shall examine these operations in a moment but first we must consider another fortuitous occurrence that happened to Willoughby while he was stationed in the Far East: namely, the close relationship he forged with Japanese war criminal and yakuza chief Yoshio Kodama.
I've already considered Kodama in depth in the first installment of my examination of the World Anti-Communist League where I revealed that he was one of the most powerful figures in post-WWII Japan. Kodama was thought to be the major power broker behind the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party (which has been the ruling party in Japan almost exclusively since 1955) for decades in addition to being one of the largest drug lords in the world. Kodama, along with Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (whom Douglas MacArthur was closely affiliated with) of Taiwan, dominated the drug trade in the Far East for decades.
Kodama was able to operate with impunity for so many years thanks in no small part to the close ties he forged with the US intelligence community in the wake of the Second World War. And it was no other than Sir Charles who was responsible for bringing Kodama into the fold.
"Kodama then spent two years in Sugamo Prison as an indicted war criminal, but was magically released in mid-1948 when he made a deal with General Willoughby to give the CIA $100-million (equal to $1-billion in today's values). This payment bought Kodama his freedom from prison and from any prosecution for war crimes. The money was placed in one of the secret slush funds controlled by the CIA station at the U.S. Embassy. Subsequently, Kodama was put directly on the CIA payroll, where he remained for many years, until his death in 1984. Tad Szulc of The New York Times wrote, 'Kodama had a working relationship with the CIA.' Chalmers Johnson said Kodama was 'probably the CIA's chief asset in Japan.'"
(ibid, pg. 108)
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| Kodama |
"Willoughby also took on the job of falsifying the Japanese military history of the Pacific War, so that it would conform to the needs of America's Cold Warriors. On the Japanese side, Willoughby's 'historians' included the most notorious war criminals, Kodama and Tsuji (who masterminded the Sook Ching massacre in Singapore and Malaya). The historical monographs they prepared were first composed in Japanese, then translated with the help of Nisei in Willoughby's ATIS. The monographs were then laundered of anything remotely sensitive. Once sanitized, they were published by the U.S. Government, collectively titled The Japanese Monographs and Japanese Studies in World War II. Not surprisingly, the series contained big gaps. As the official introduction states: 'The paucity of original orders, plans and unit journals... rendered the task of compilation most difficult... However, while many of the important orders, plans, and estimates have been reconstructed from memory... they are believed to be generally accurate and reliable.' According to Louis Morton, author of the official military history of the Philippines campaign, the reports prepared by Willoughby's office 'constitute the most important single Japanese source on Japanese operations in the Pacific and Asia during World War II.
"Willoughby persuaded Kodama to write a memoir guaranteed to please his new American clients. Disingenuously title I Was Defeated in its English translation, it was published in 1951 by a CIA proprietary called Asian Publications. Listed as publishers were Harvey Fukuda, who did the editing, and Robert Booth, who did the bookkeeping. In 1952, the same publishers gave birth to the English-language translation of the memoir by Colonel Tsuji --a man who... also had been charged by British investigators with cannibalism. Tsuji's Underground Escape presented a falsified story in which he claimed he spent years after the war hiding from the Allies in Thailand and China, when in fact he was, like Kodama, an employee of General Willoughby and the CIA in Tokyo.
"The purpose of these memoirs was to shift the blame away from certain politicians, so they could be groomed for political careers in postwar Japan. Kodama's memoir put blame for the war exclusively upon senior officials of Japan's army and navy, most of them dead, who he portrayed as fanatical war-crazed monsters. Everyone else was a hapless pawn.
"Generously, Kodama provided the funds from his own deep pockets to launch two postwar political parties headed by fanatical rightists, which eventually merged into the Liberal Democratic Party..."
(ibid, pgs. 113-114)
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| Masanobu Tsuji, another Willoughby favorite who suspected of indulging in "recreational" cannibalism during the war |
"... the Yotsuya Fund. This was set up to manipulate and steer Japan's underworld, and to finance 'wet work' --extortion, kidnapping, and murder. General Willoughby, MacArthur's 'lovable fascist' and head of G-2 at SCAP, controlled the Yotsuya Fund and worked energetically with Kodama and his legions of yakuza to suppress any kind of leftist activity or public protest during the occupation. Because democracy tolerated dissent, the concept of democracy had long been regarded by Japan's ruling elite as 'a poisonous idea from the West.' In Japan, even the mildest kind of dissent was not tolerated. During the McCarthy era in America, suppression of dissent became synonymous with anti-communism. But the witchunt in Japan during that epoch was far more severe, and bloody.
"Despite being head of G-2, at this late stage in his career Willoughby was involved in dirty tricks rather than intelligence-gathering or counter-espionage. Among other things, his Yotsuya Fund financed a Korean Liaison Office that sent spies into North Korea, Red China and the far eastern USSR.
"Yotsuya, the district for which Willoughby named his underground fund, was a seedy Tokyo tenderloin populated in the postwar years by gangsters, prostitutes, and bottom-feeders, a hub for the blackmarket, awake all night with illegal gambling casinos and attached brothels... Kickbacks from postwar dives like the Mandarin Club, a casino and brothel in Yotsuya run by American Ted Lewin, a pal of Kodama, funded the Cannon Agency, Willoughby's dirtiest and wettest operation in Japan. Named for U.S. Army Colonel J.Y. Cannon, this was a military version of Murder Incorporated, a death squad.
"Jack Cannon arranged the beatings and killings of student leaders, liberals, leftists, socialists, labor union organizers, scholars, journalists, and anyone else who got in the way. Cannon worked closely with Machii Hisayuki, Kodama's Korean lieutenant who headed the ethnic Korean Tosei-kai gang of yakuza. Jack Cannon initially worked for the U.S. Army's Counter-Intelligence Corps, or CIC. His job was to ferret out and to murder dissidents. A Nisei interpreter employed by Willoughby's ATIS, who once had helped Cannon blow open a safe, recalled that the colonel always behaved like 'a movie style gangster.' Once the Cannon Agency was set up, Jack Cannon became something that would have chilled the blood of most Americans. He is thought to have been behind the kidnapping of a prominent left-wing writer, Kaji Wataru. Also attributed to him was the torture, dismemberment, and murder of Shimoyama, the president of Japan's national railroads whose body was found scattered along the railway tracks. Whenever he needed a hand, Cannon called on Machii's Korean yakuza. He also was suspected of arranging plane crashes that took the lives of British and American diplomats and military officers who were investigating links between Willoughby and indicted war criminals like Kodama and Colonel Tsuji Masanobu. When the job was so wet and dirty that it had to be completely divorced from Washington, Willoughby bypassed Cannon and brought in a murder squad called KATOH, the acronym of five Japanese Army officers who did surgical assassinations for money.
"To be sure, what makes this even more disturbing is that Willoughby was judged by U.S. Army contemporaries to be incompetent, paranoid, and congenitally driven to cover up his misjudgments. As most documents relating to Willoughby's activities still are kept hidden by the U.S. Government half a century later, we may reasonably suppose that there is yet more disturbing information on his messianic activities."
(The Gold Warriors, Sterling & Peggy Seagrave, pgs. 110-111)
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| Machii Hisayuki, yet another Willoughby favorite |
"Little else has been written about Canon, but in the late 1950s, this 'rub-out man for the CIA' is known to have penetrated Fidel Castro's guerrilla operations against Batista, and by the early 1960s he would become an associate editor for Willoughby's Foreign Intelligence Digest and work with the ex-general on the International Committee for the Defense of Christian Culture..."
(The Man Who Knew To Much, Dick Russell, pg. 68)While mainstream historians have almost exclusively depicted Willoughby as a marginal and rather buffoonish figure, the above would seem to indicate otherwise. Willoughby may have been incompetent as far as conventional military intelligence was concerned, but he seems to have displayed considerable abilities at managing wet works and organized crime for the suppression of leftists. The job he did in Japan was so thorough that the party he and MacArthur backed has remained in power almost exclusively since 1955.
Officially the Yotsuya Fund was taken away from Willoughby in the early 1950s and rolled into another slush fund that was eventually turned over to the Japanese in 1960. Thus, Willoughby's role in the Golden Lilly publicly ended. But it was the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party, dominated by Willoughby's dear friend Yoshio Kodama, that gained control of this slush fund in 1960. What's more, Santa Romana (the soldier who originally uncovered several Golden Lilly vaults) was reportedly still in control of Golden Lilly-derived slush funds at the time of his death in the mid-1970s (the Seagraves allege that as much as $50 billion in assets belonged to Santy at that time). As a close associate as well as a former subordinate of Willoughby's controlled vast sums of the Golden Lilly funds, it does not seem beyond that realm of possibility that Willoughby himself also had access to the funds well after he officially retired from the Army.
Nor was this likely the only source of funding available to Sir Charles. Kodama, as noted above, was also a major international drug lord. Kodama's primary partner in this endeavor was Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, a man who owed his postwar politcal fortunes to Willoughby's close friend and mentor, General Douglas MacArthur.
"The man who would make the new regime in Taiwan palatable to the Americans was General Douglas MacArthur. One day in July 1950, while he was commander in chief of the United Nations forces fighting in Korea, MacArthur breezed into Taipei, met with Chiang Kai-shek, and promised him, in contradiction to President Truman's policy, that American expertise and weapons would soon be flowing to the island bastion. Appearing before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, the general extolled the virtues of the Kuomintang government...
"That MacArthur had achieved such a firm grasp of the state of affairs in Taiwan during a single day's visit was not questioned by the American legislators. Indeed, his promises of American support were prophetic. As the Korean War turned against the United States, Chiang Kai-shek, with his dream of returning to the mainland and defeating the communists, were seen as a potential pressure point against Mao. With the rise of Senator Joseph McCarthy and his 'exposing' of communist sympathizers in the federal government, American officials muted or stopped criticism of Chiang's rule. Suddenly the Kuomintang was respectable, and American aid began to pour in. The American Military Assistance Advisory Group (MAAG) in Taiwan grew from a handful of advisers in 1951 to 2,300 five years later. Economics aid and war material flowed in at a rate that the island could not possibly absorb. By 1961, military expenditures, nearly all provided by the American government, were three-quarters of the national budget."
(Inside the League, Scott & Jon Anderson, pgs. 49-50)
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| Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek |
Thus, all of this would indicate that one of the key figures in the Sovereign Order of Saint John had access to vast amounts of underground revenue generated from black market gold and drug trafficking. What's more, it is quite possible that the SOSJ itself was involved in such activities. Consider one of the Order's above-mentioned members, Admiral Charles Cooke. Cooke seems to have been an early player in what would become the CIA's drug trafficking operations involving Civil Air Transport (CAT, later known as Air America).
"The plan to save Taiwan advance 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 owned sugar plantations an airline and a bus system in Cuba, and was linked to Mafia leaders who had investments there too. He was 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 oilmen led by right-wing fanatic H.L. Hunt, a one time professional gambler who, in his younger days, helped finance his empire by running a private racing wire.
"Also involved in the Pawley-Cooke escapade was M. Preston Goodfellow, former publisher of the Brooklyn Eagle and Donovan's liaison, with Garland Williams, to William Keswick and the British SOE in 1942. Later in the war Goodfellow managed sensitive OSS operations in Burma and China, and formed close ties to General Tai Li and drug smuggler Du Yue-sheng. According to Korean War historian Bruce Cumings, Goodfellow made a fortune by combining business ties with 'right-wing regimes in Asia and interests in Central America.'
"Pawley's collusion with Cooke, Donovan, Goodfellow, Bullitt, and Hunt is a textbook example of how Establishment privateers run the secret government. And naturally the mission dovetailed with federal narcotics activities. In January 1950 Goodfellow traveled to Taipei with Cooke, and in April Bullitt's bagman arrived. Soon thereafter, a 'Colonel Williams' introduced the bagman to Satiris Fassoulis, 'who gave him $500,000 for a PR campaign on Taiwan,'
"Was this our Garland Williams? Probably. Williams had experience at both ends of the Iran-China connection. In 1948 and 1949 he had conducted surveys of Iranian opium production and had reported to Anslinger that Iran's most influential families had amassed a fortune through the opium trade, and that they intended to keep anti-drug laws weak. He knew that Iran shipped tons of opium to Indochina through Greece and Armenian brokers like Fassoulis. But Williams was also a security chief for the secret government, and at the same time that CIA officer Allen Dulles was meeting with KMT officials to seal the Pawley-Cooke deal, he was recalled to active duty and took command of the Army's 525th Military Intelligence Group. Among its functions, the 525th MIG prepared intelligence officers for duty in Korea, and as chief of the Group, Williams was in position to provide covert support to the Pawley-Cooke Advisory Mission, or to Satiris Fassoulis.
"For his part, Fassoulis denies ever having met Williams, or that Hunt provided money, or that Pawley was involved. He denies everything. However, he had been an American pilot in China during the war, where he may have met Garland Williams, and in 1950 he was vice president of Commerce International China (CIC), a subsidiary of Donovan's WCC. CIC was exempt from the Foreign Agents Registration Act and supplied the Pawley-Cooke mission with everything from gas masks to airplanes. It was also accused of smuggling contraband to America."
(The Strength of the Wolf, Douglas Valentine, pgs. 78-79)
There's a lot to note from the above quote. I've addressed the figure of William D. Pawley before during my examination of the American Security Council (ASC), of which he was a member of along with Charles Willoughby and a host of other former MacArthur men. What's more, the Sovereign Order of Saint John was also directly involved with the ASC via its Coalition for Peace Through Strength, as I noted before here.
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| Pawley |
Colonel Garland Williams is a truly mysterious figure. He first became involved with the US Intelligence community during WWI when he was recruited into military intelligence by General Ralph Van Deman, the chief architect of the modern day industrial security apparatus organizations like the American Security Council and the John Birch Society likely became deeply involved in (more information on Van Deman's industrial security apparatus and its links to the ASC can be found here; the links to the JBS will be discussed in the next installment). After the war Williams joined the Federal Bureau of Narcotics where he became a mentor to men like Charles Siragusa and the notorious George Hunter White. When WWII broke out Williams, Siragusa and White became deeply involved with the US intelligence community, both for the OSS and military intelligence (White, for instance, was involved with both).
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| Colonel Garland Williams |
It's also interesting to note that Williams was called back into military intelligence and deployed to Korea at the same time as Charles Willoughby was the chief of military intelligence there. Thus, Willoughby would have been his commanding officer and almost surely aware of the Pawley-Cooke operation if not outright participating in (a possibility that is highly likely, as will be discussed in a moment).
Finally, there's H.L. Hunt to consider. Hunt, as well as several of his sons, had long time ties to both MacArthur and Willoughby. He bankrolled MacArthur's disastrous 1952 bid for the presidency and hired Willoughby as an "agent" for the Hunt Oil Company shortly after he "retired" from the military in the wake of MacArthur's sacking. The Hunt family would go on to become major financial backers of Willoughby's intelligence network, an investment that may have paid out handsome dividends for them. Researcher Douglas Valentine alluded to the possibility that the Hunt family became deeply involved in Texas drug trafficking, a prospect that the legendary Kefauver Commission on organized crime may have been stirred away from by George Hunter White himself.
"... why would White want to keep the Committee out of Dallas? Was it to deflect attention from the Pawley-Cooke mission in Taiwan, which was funded by ultra Texas oilmen like H.L. Hunt, 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 lookk 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)
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| H.L. Hunt |
"... Garland Williams, who went into deep-cover in the Far East, was pretty clearly the 'Col. Wiliams from the Army' who arranged for a mob associate, Satiris 'Sonny' Fassoulis, to become an officer of Commerce International China, a company which 'had definite ties with Army intelligence.' Fassoulis thus became a principal agent in the 'private' procurement of military supplies and advisers for Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan, a project originally proposed to the U.S. government by William Pawley. Funds for CIC's 'volunteers' came 'through "Texas oil people," presumably including H.L. Hunt'; and many of the advisers came from General Charles Willoughby's intelligence G-2 in Japan, itself working with elements from Japan's yakuza underworld."
(Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, Peter Dale Scott, pgs. 168-169)Thus it doesn't seem much of a stretch to state that Willoughby was likely deeply involved in establishing the Kuomintang/Air America opium network as well as the route this network used through Texas. And a little over a decade later Willoughby would find himself in the Sovereign Order of Saint John (SOSJ) along with Charles Cooke while the Texas route was still humming along (General Claire Chennault, another individual deeply involved in the establishment of CAT/Air America, was also a co-founder of the Defenders of the American Constitution along with SOSJ member General Pedro Del Valle). In point of fact, there is ample evidence to indicate that the individuals directly involved in the drug (as well as arms) trafficking were largely drawn from the ranks of the Syndicate, anti-Castro Cuban exiles (of whom Willoughby would establish ties with) and members of various patriot groups, most notably the Minutemen. Such a possibility will be further examined in the series that shall follow this one.
Before moving along I can't resists pointing out the irony of patriot groups being involved in drug trafficking by the time the 1960s rolled around. The internet is awash with hundreds of thousands of articles proclaiming that the 1960s and the counterculture that is famously associated with it was some type of PSYOP constructed by elements drawn from the CIA, MI6 (Tavistock is especially important to such strands) and of course the Jews and the Communists to enslave America's youth with cannabis and entheogens. Apparently this was meant to lead them down the paths of feminism, uncontrollable dancing, and other such evils things that would invoke a child-like mental state in the next generation.
While it is undeniable that the CIA played a significant role in introducing LSD in the United States (as I've noted before here, here and here) there is little to indicate that the acid culture that emerged in the 1960s was some type of PSYOP. In point of fact, things did not end especially well for individuals and groups such as Alfred "Captain Trips" Hubbard (and not Albert, of whom I've written more on here), Mary Meyer, the Brotherhood of Eternal Love (the Brotherhood was almost surely railroaded by a scion from the Mellon family, as I noted before here) and others who had a vision for entheogens that was distinct from that of the CIA and the Pentagon.
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| the Captain (top), Mary Meyer (middle), and Brotherhood of Eternal Love founder "Farmer John Griggs (bottom) |
Conversely, few researchers seem to have paid much mind to the fact that major powerbrokers within powerful "think tanks" such as the American Security Council and the World Anti-Communist League have been willfully and consciously flooding the United States with cheap, high grade heroin (and later methamphetamines, cocaine and crack) for decades, with things going into overdrive as the 1960s set in (more on the ASC's involvement on drug trafficking can be found here; for the WACL's ventures, check here, here and here). To say that this has had a devastating impact on this nation would be an understatement (consider, for instance, comments recently made by The Wire creator David Simon, who described the War on Drugs as "a Holocaust in slow motion"). And yet few researchers, most especially those from the conspiratorial right, have seriously considered the implications of this.
Opiates, from which heroin derives, have been the drug of choice to enslave peoples since at least the time of ancient Sumeria. And yet few researchers seem to have been especially troubled by the ties the Patriot movement had to individuals who were actively engaged in shaping the post-WWII narcotics trade. In the grand scheme of things, what's a little heroin trafficking amongst patriots?
And it is here that I shall wrap things up. As I've established over the course of this installment, the chief backers of Willis Carto's Liberty Lobby were a cabal of "former" Nazis and their collaborators (more than a few of whom had been recruited by some branch of Nazi Germany's intelligence community) and Colonel Wickliffe Preston Draper, a "former" military intelligence officer who was also a prominent member of a wealthy and powerful New England family. The Colonel also seems to have had some link to Nazi Germany, though FBI records concerning such things are still classified over 65 years after the end of the war. The Colonel would go on to support numerous other far right organizations and individuals besides Carto, including the eugenics think tank known as the Pioneer Fund (which the Colonel himself founded and which much of his fortune was left to), the American Coalition of Patriot Societies (an organization founded by a military intelligence officer and which became closely affiliated with the American Security Council), the Citizen's Councils (which later became the infamous Council of Conservative Citizens), and proto-Christian identity "minister" Gerald L.K. Smith.
I also introduce the Sovereign Order of Saint John, a secret society whose long time Grand Master also seems to have been involved with Nazi intelligence prior to WWII. In the postwar era the Order received an influx of former high ranking military officers, more than a few with backgrounds in military intelligence. Most notably there was Charles Willoughby, Douglas MacArthur's long time intelligence chief whose finest hour came while managing death squads and organized crime in Japan towards the suppression of leftists. Willoughby, along with another SOSJ member, Charles Cooke, was also deeply involved in the creation of Civil Air Transport/Air America, an airline that was involved in trafficking drugs for decades with the sanction of powerful members of the CIA and military.
And it was the Sovereign Order of Saint John that was chiefly responsible for the creation of the John Birch Society and the Posse Comitatus, as we shall examine in the next installment. Stay tuned.
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