Welcome to the second installment in my series examining the
American Security Council. Over the course of the
first installment
of this series I examined the origins of the ASC, with a special
emphasis on the political climate into which it was born. Effectively
the ASC sprang into being at a time when there was a transition in the
nation's economy, and as a result a shift in the elite itself. A
combination of defense contractors, new moneyed families (many of whom
with ties to the oil industry) and former military men began to emerge
as a challenge to the so-called Eastern Establishment (a clique of
largely old moneyed Northeastern-based families involved in heavy
industry and banking that have been a long time obsession of the
conspiratorial right) for control over the nation's political machinery.
The Eastern Establishment had long used the
Council on Foreign Relations (the American branch of the
Round Table group,
a think tank created by British elites to forge closer relations with
other Anglo-Saxon centric countries and ultimately open up every
market in the world to an international system of finance) as a
propaganda organ to format a consensus amongst business and political
leaders, academia, the media and other elites. These individuals in turn
sold the consensus to the general public, or at least tried to. The
Eastern Establishment was only able to dominate, but never totally
control, the public machinery. But beyond the vox populi there were
other rival camps of elites, and by the 1950s the
military-industrial complex
and it's more fanatical supporters (who, for the sake of brevity, I
will refer to as the Prussians) had adopted the methods of their rivals
and fielded their own think tank: the American Security Council.
 |
| From the early
1960s till the late 1980s these two "think tanks" would be at the
forefront of a struggle over America's foreign policy unfolding within
the ranks of the elite |
Naturally one of the chief functions of the ASC was propaganda and by
all accounts it performed this task well. In point of fact, the ASC
would have a significant influence on the national debate concerning
virtually every major defense-related topic from the early 1960s until
the late 1980s. The heart of the ASC's propaganda efforts were promoting
a fanatical form of anticommunism to elites and the general public
alike. It was in this way that Council not only began to shape the
national debate, but also pick up further supporters from within the
Eastern Establishment.
"... The Council was also active in Cold War 'education' aimed at the
general public. Between 1955 and 1961, the ASC cosponsored an annual
series of meetings called the National Military-Industrial Conferences,
which brought Pentagon and National Security Council personnel together
with executives from United Fruit, Standard Oil, Honeywell, U.S. Steel,
Sears Roebuck and other corporations.
"At the 1958 National Military-Industrial Conference, the ASC launched
the Institute for American Strategy for the purpose of inculcating
elites and the public with anticommunist ideology. Administration of the
Institute was granted to Frank Barnett, U.S. Army Colonel William
Kintner, and other 'political warfare' advocates then stationed at the
University of Pennsylvania's Foreign Policy Research Institute. Barnett
was also research director for the Institute's key corporate benefactor,
the Richardson Foundation (the charitable arm of the Vick Chemical
Company). In 1959 and 1960 the ostensibly private Institute for American
Strategy held seminars for reserve officers at the National War
College, under the auspices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the
Secretary of Defense. The manual for these seminars was the book
American Strategy for the Nuclear Age, prepared by Foreign
Policy Research Institute analysts Walter F. Hahn and John C. Neff.
This book outlines an aggressive strategy of 'protracted conflict' with
the Soviets, involving the training of citizens and government leaders
in 'psychological warfare' schools. By 1961, the Institute for American
Strategy had provided 10,000 copies of American Strategy to the National University Extension Association for distribution to public school libraries and citizen debate groups.
"Through the National Military-Industrial Conferences, regional
meetings, National War College seminars and publications, the Institute
began to assume the role of a military adjunct and a quasi-governmental
propaganda agency. However, by 1961, Senator William J. Fulbright, Chair
of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, became alarmed by what he
perceived to be a combination of right-wing and military encroachment on
the formation of U.S. public opinion...
"Despite the controversy, the American Security Council and the
Institute for American Strategy continued their activities unabated. In
fact, in 1962 the Council claimed credit for influencing the Kennedy
administration's Cuba policy. In August 1961, the ASC's National
Strategy Committee had received a letter from Assistant Secretary of
State for Latin American Affairs Robert F. Woodward to the effect that
key State Department officers reading ASC's reports recommending a cut
off U.S. fuel to Cuba. It would be impossible to prove a decisive role
for the America Security Council in this aspect of the destructive
economic embargo against Cuba. It is more plausible to suggest that, as
with other elite-based foreign affairs lobbies, the Council pressured
the administration in a direction towards which it was already
inclined.
"As was characteristic of system-supportive anticommunist groups, the
American Security Council functioned as an asset to the Cold War state,
largely by reinforcing anticommunist ideology. By 1962 the Council
boasted of the success of its 'Freedom University of the Air,' a series
of sixty-five half-hour television programs hosted by former ASC Field
Director W. Cleon Skousen. In 1964 former President Dwight Eisenhower,
who, ironically, had warned of a 'military-industrial complex' in his
farewell presidential speech, inaugurated the 'American Security
Council Washington Report of the Air,' over 500 radio stations. From
Munich, the CIA's Radio Free Europe broadcast this program in six
European languages. By 1964 the program was added on the Mutual
Broadcasting System's 535 stations, for a total number of stations
greater than that of any other weekday news program. With major
financial backing from Patrick Frawley's Schick Safety Razor company,
the Council's anticommunist radio programs reach an estimated 35 million
people."
(Roads to Dominion, Sara Diamond, pgs. 47-50)
 |
| Apparently Ike didn't think much of his own advise |
Naturally, the ASC would have an enormous influence in dragging the nation into
Vietnam as well as ensuring that the
Cold War as a whole would continue to escalate throughout the 1960s.
"... the parapolitical infighting inside the Pentagon bureaucracies
will prove to have been grounded in deeper political conflicts dividing
the nation as a whole... such conflict had escalated in late 1963,
with strident voices for a more aggressive Vietnam policy coming from
the American Security Council.
"The ASC was not just the leading group lobbying for the use of air
power in Vietnam. It called also for the displacement of Fidel Castro in
Cuba, and for a more militant posture towards the Soviet Union."
(Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, Peter Dale Scott, pg. 34)
Scott, a former diplomat and longtime English professor at
UC Berkeley,
speculated that the ASC likely had a strong influence on Nixon's
decision to intervene in Cambodia in 1970 and may even have been
consulted on the very day he made the decision to do so.
"The importance of Cambodia to oilmen probably explains why Nixon, on
the day of his decision to invade Cambodia (April 28, 1970), shared his
decision with 'several private citizens [from] veterans and patriotic
organizations,' two days before he notified Congress. Almost certainly
one of these patriotic organizations was the American Security Council, a
group representing both arms and oil interests (including Unocal)
that had helped push Nixon into national prominence."
(The Road to 9/11, Peter Dale Scott, pg. 39)
The ASC was not fortunate (at least in the short term), however, with another issue it became deeply involved with in 1970: the
Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty
(SALT), an attempt by the US and USSR to curtail their nuclear
arsenals. As can be expected, the ASC started a propaganda campaign
centered around the nation's "weapons gap."
"The semi-oppositional stance of conservatives towards the Nixon
administration held not only for Asia policy but also for Nixon's
negotiation for the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT), the
first phase of which was signed with the Soviet Union in 1972.
Right-wing activists opposed the SALT talks because they believed the
treaty would tilt the arms race in favor of the Soviets. Not until the
latter half of the Carter administration would conservatives wield
strong influence in the SALT policymaking process...
"By 1970, however, the American Security Council begin a long campaign
to persuade the public that SALT posed a threat to US nuclear
capability...
"In 1970, the American Security Council launched Operation Alert,
described as 'a massive nationwide voter education program' to alert the
general public that the United States had become inferior to the Soviet
Union in military strength. Operation Alert's first pamphlet on the
'weapons gap' was mailed to about two million voters and three
thousand civic organizations. This phase of the campaign included ASC's
placement of full-page advertisements in over hundred newspapers and
coincided with a major 'weapons gap' speech by Vice-President Spiro
Agnew shortly before the mid-term Congressional elections. After the
fall 1970 elections, ASC claimed credit for strengthening national
security sentiment within Congress."
(Road to Dominion, Sara Diamond, pg. 121)
 |
| One of many disappointments the ASC experienced with Nixon in office |
While the ASC failed to do little more than strengthen "national
security sentiment within Congress" as far as SALT I was concerned it
would ultimately play a key role in derailing the second
SALT talks in 1979.
"... More significant for the movement's long-term trajectory, in 1978,
the American Security Council expanded its Operation Alert program into
the Coalition for Peace Through Strength, comprised of dozens of
activist groups and hundreds of business and political leaders. The
Coalition's initial objective was to prevent passage of a SALT II
Treaty. In the process of waging that campaign, the coalition also
rallied supporters against the growing anti-nuclear movement and against
the 'Marxist threat' in Central America. While military leaders and
neoconservative intellectuals in the Committee on the Present Danger
targeted elite thinking on SALT, the Coalition aimed at mass audiences
through the Right's well-honed use of newspaper advertisements, speaking
tours, and radio appearances.
"The Coalition's most celebrated anti-SALT activity was its production of the film The SALT Syndrome, featuring interviews with prominent military leaders on U.S. vulnerability to the Soviet's nuclear arsenal. The SALT Syndrome
aired on television more than 600 times in 1979 and was considered such
a strong influence on public opinion that the Carter administration
issued a detailed rebuttal of the film. Apart from New Right influence
in Congress, by the time the SALT II treaty made its way to the Senate
in 1979, numerous factors conspired to derail its ratification. These
included U.S. intelligence reports of a Soviet 'combat brigade' in Cuba;
the Iranian students' seizure of U.S. Embassy hostages in November,
1979; and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan a few weeks later. The
Coalition for Peace Through Strength could not claim sole credit for
defeating SALT II, but the Coalition's successful networking set a
precedent for the anticommunist movement's well-coordinated 'freedom
fighter' campaigns of the 1980s."
(ibid, pgs. 137-138)
We'll get to those lobby efforts on behalf of these so-called "
freedom fighters" in
just a moment. Before leaving the SALT talks, I'd also like to point
out the ASC (via the Coalition for Peace Through Strength)'s rallying of
the
Christian right against bans on nuclear weapons as well:
"As opponents of the mass movement against nuclear power and weapons,
the Christian Right mobilized late in the game and without a lot of
fanfare. The secular American Security Council's Coalition for Peace
Through Strength... drew its evangelical members' attention to campaigns
for various new weapons systems. By 1983, the nuclear 'freeze' movement
reached the peak of activity, with millions of Americans demonstrating
outside weapons laboratories, testing sites, and nuclear power plants.
Liberal clergy led the way across much of the country, and that prompted
Jerry Falwell to launch his own lonely crusade against the
'freezeniks.' Falwell used his weekly television show and Moral Majority
mailing list to raise funds for pro-nuclear newspaper advertisements
and to sponsor a Peace Through Strength demonstration outside Congress.
Falwell also circulated a pamphlet, 'Nuclear War and the Second Coming
of Christ' linking the two events to belief in Christian salvation in a
'pre- tribulation rapture,' followed by a final 'battle of Armageddon.'
This popular version of evangelical millenarianism caused observers
to wonder what President Reagan meant when he told a 1983 National
Association of Evangelicals gathering that the Soviet Union was an 'evil
empire.' Most evangelicals were prepared to wait for, but not hasten,
fulfillment of the Book of Revelations' prophecies."
(ibid, pg. 237)
 |
| sick... |
Well, its certainly comforting to know that the ASC did its part in
Rapture-izing
nuclear Armageddon. And be assured, this is hardly the only tie between
the ASC and the Christian right, the topic of which will be briefly
touched upon when I address who is behind the ASC in the next
installment. But on to those "freedom fighters" for the time being.
"Building on the momentum of its campaigns against the Carter
administration's Panama Canal and SALT treaties.., in 1979 the American
Security Council (ASC) formed a Congressional Task Force for the purpose
of lobbying on behalf of anticommunist governments in Central America.
The task force blamed Jimmy Carter for Nicaragua's overthrow a dictator
Anastasio Somoza, and the Congress-members on board ASC's Task Force
pledged to back remaining anticommunist forces in Central America. Two
advisers to the Reagan presidential campaign, former Defense
Intelligence Agency director Daniel Graham and Major General John
Singlaub (USA-Ret.), led a December 1979 delegation of ASC activists
to Guatemala. There they assured leaders of military death squads that
'Mr. Reagan recognizes that a good deal dirty work has to be done.' In
1980, the Reagan campaign accepted millions of dollars in contributions
from Guatemalan businessman and U.S. businessman living Guatemala. In
turn, Guatemalan death squad leader Mario Sandoval Alarcon was invited
to dance at Reagan's 1981 inaugural ball...
"... the American Security Council (ASC) continued its use of
television documentarians to mobilize grassroots lobbying. Beginning in
early 1981, ASC spent a small fortune airing Attack on the Americas,
a film that juxtaposed frightening footage of Central American violence
and calm interviews with foreign policy experts like Jeane Kirkpatrick
and Henry Kissinger... ASC combined media activities with lobbying and
fundraising for Central American paramilitary forces."
(ibid, pgs. 214-216)
The above-mentioned figure of Major General
John Singlaub is
one that we will be returning to time and again over the course of this
series and several I have planned for the future. In addition to his
membership with the ASC, Singlaub was also the head of the
World Anti-Communist League
(an international "lobby" group ASC has long been closely tied too)
during its most militant period in the 1980s. Singlaub, a longtime asset
of CIA and military intelligence, played a major role in supporting
the
dirty wars that unfolded throughout Central America in the 1980s.
 |
| Singlaub |
Undoubtedly the propaganda and lobbying efforts of the ASC had an
enormous influence on the national debate that unfolded since the early
1960s until the late 1980s, when the imminent collapse of the
Soviet Union
and the end of the Cold War led to a realignment amongst elites.
During that period the ASC was instrumental in the rightward shift the
nation went through, climaxing with the Reagan revolution of 1980 of
which they played a major part of.
However, the ASC's vile war mongering was not the most lasting
influence it would have on American society. You see, besides serving as
a propaganda organ of the military-industrial complex and
Prussian-type military men the ASC also functioned as a massive
intelligence gathering operation during its early years. In point of
fact, this was its original purpose.
"Founded by a group of former Federal Bureau of Investigation agents,
the Council's original mission was to provide dues-paying corporations
with politically sensitive information about prospective employees. ASC
was started in Chicago in 1955 by ex-FBI agent William F. Carroll as
the Mid-Western Research Library; in 1956 the name was changed to the
American Security Council. From the 1950s through the 1980s, the Council
was headed by former FBI agent John M. Fisher who had been a national
security coordinator for the Sears Roebuck department store chain. By
1958, the New York Times reported that the American Security
Council had gathered files of more than one million supposedly
'subversive' U.S. citizens and that the group was collecting names of
rate of 20,000 per month. In 1961, the Council claimed that one of its
major functions was 'to maintain close liaisons with the legislative and
executive branches of government in the armed forces.' In a
promotional brochure directed at the business community, the Council
noted the superiority of its own intelligence gathering over that of the
FBI, which by law cannot divulge the information in its files except in
a court of law or for the confidential use of another federal agency.
Thus, the ASC operated as a repressive agency, on par with the FBI
itself.
"Among the American Security Council's original incorporators and file
collectors were several right-wing activists who had actively opposed
U.S. participation in World War II. These included Sears Roebuck
Chairman General Robert E. Wood and publishing magnate William Regnery,
both of the America First Committee; Harry Jung of the anti-Semitic
American Vigilant Intelligence Federation; and John Trevor of the
pro-Nazi American Coalition of Patriotic Societies. These former
advocates of a non-interventionist U.S. foreign policy now found a
mission in the American Security Council's efforts to expose American
leftists and deprive them of their livelihoods."
(Roads to Dominion, Sara Diamond, pgs. 46-47)
Before continuing further with the American Security Council's
intelligence aspirations there are a few points that need to be made
here. First, as noted in the first installment of this series, the
chief architect of the American Security Council was General Robert E.
Wood (as well as other individuals heavily involved in the WWII-era
'non-interventionist' movement, as noted in the above quote) and it was
largely dominated by former military men, at least in the early
years. There was a strong FBI presence to be sure, but longtime ASC
head and former FBI agent John Fisher likely got the gig in no small
part due to his work for Wood as
Sears Roebuck's
chief of security. The role of FBI men in the ASC will be discussed in
much further depth in the next installment of this series.
Moving along, I would now like to consider two of the individuals who
contributed to the ASC's intelligence apparatus in the early years and
their links to the 'non-interventionist' movement. There was Harry Jung
and his "superpatriot" group, the American Vigilant Intelligence
Federation, first and foremost. To say that Jung was quite a character
would be an understatement. Of him the highly controversial 1940s-era
undercover investigator
Arthur Derounian, using the pseudonym John Roy Carlson, wrote:
"In Chicago, I wanted to look up Harry Augustus Jung, who was friendly
with countless 'patriots.' In fact, young was no small fry. His work had
been subsidized by banks, by industrialists and by rich old women
scared to death by the Communist revolution 'around the corner.' Harry
Augustus Jung was director of the American Vigilant Intelligence
Federation represented in the East by his collaborator, Colonel
Sanctuary. He styled himself the 'nation's foremost authority on
subversive forces...'
"In 1933, Jung made membership in his American Vigilant Intelligence
Federation secret, with secret codes and mysterious rituals. And in 1935
its organ the Vigilante had so well served the fascist cause that World Service placed it on it's on honor roll. Jung also went into the wholesale distribution of the Protocols...
"Jung's associates in those days included Peter Afansieff, a White Guard
Russian, born in Petrograd in 1893, who arrived in San Francisco in
1922. With three other White Russians Afansieff worked on a new
translation of the Protocols in Jung's office, and soon after
became affiliated with the New York and Chicago branches of the Bund.
When he assumed the alias, Prince Peter Kushubue, the doors of society
opened to him and the bogus prince almost succeeded in getting a
wealthy heiress to marry him...
"Together with Captain Victor de Kayville (born Livok) a wealthy a
former officer in the Czarist Army who jumped ship, Afansieff helped
publish The American Gentile. It was a 'patriotic, American
pro-Aryan' semi-monthly published for the defense of Gentile culture and
civilization. James True and Robert Edward Edmonson wrote for it and
articles from World Service found their way in. The American Gentile became the filthiest Nazi-front sheet of its period in Chicago and deserve the praise which it received in World Service. In February, 1935, Jung accused Afansieff of withholding funds and the two parted company.
"In the meanwhile and with uncommon 'patriotic' versatility,Jung was
'fighting Communism' by obtaining funds from both Jewish and Christian
firms. Jung solicitors told wealthy Gentiles they were combating Jewish
Communism, while wealthy Jews were told that the Vigilantes were
combating Communism.
"Among those seduced by Jung under the delusion that they were
supporting a worthy cause (during 1931-1934) where the Rockford National
Bank, First National Bank of Joliet, Illinois; International Harvester,
William Wrigley, Florsheim Shoe Company, Sears Roebuck and Company and
many others. The biggest sucker, however, proved to be the aged Mrs.
Finley J. Shepherd, daughter of the late Jay Gould, who gave away
millions. Scared out of her wits at the 'coming Communist revolution,'
she was shaken down for $5000 by Jung and his cronies. Jung was the
first Park Avenue 'patriot' to go after the big money boys, first to
sell the Protocols and first to share offices with an Illinois
Klan leader, Gale S. Carter, who was number 37 in Jung super-secret
membership list.
"In addition to these samples of 'patriotism,' Jung had another
profitable pastime. He maintained a labor spy and straight breaking
establishment and kept extensive files of persons and organizations he
considered 'radical.' Jung sold this 'confidential information for high
fees. The late Speaker of the House, Henry T. Rainey, summed up his
exploits in a letter he wrote Jung:
My files showed that you are a sort of detective, worming your way into
the homes of the most trusted members of labor organizations obtaining
information with which to combat the efforts of labor organizations to
better their conditions, and that you obtain this information for the
purpose of assisting 'strikebreakers.'
The data I have show that you foment strikes in the districts where
there is no union and then settle the strike for a price. The
information I have with reference to you is that you are the man who
does the slimy, stool pigeon work necessary for the purpose of
destroying organized labor wherever it has contractual relations with
employers...
"Jung had changed his tactics in recent years. He now spent lavishly to
bury his past and put on the cloak of respectability. He became
a specialist on 'Americanism' and graduated to lecturing before the
Chicago Athlete Association and the Racquet Club. He was befriended by
Colonel Robert R. McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune and had his office in room 2212 of the Tribune Tower, dubbed the 'Devil's Tower.'"
(Under Cover, John Roy Carlson, pgs. 390-393)
 |
| Mr. Harry Augustus Jung, brownshirt extraordinaire |
As noted in the
first installment of this series,
Chicago Tribune publisher Colonel
Robert R. McCormick
had also likely been involved in the founding of the American Security
Council. He was apparently Jung's longtime patron and it would seem
likely that the ASC drew no small amount of inspiration from Jung's
work with the American Vigilant Intelligence Federation. Jung died
roughly around the time that the ASC was found but his massive amount
of files were turned over to the Council. According to former FBI agent
William Turner in the gem
Power on the Right these files included some one million names.
 |
| Naturally Colonel Robert McCormick was also involved in the pre-WWII "non-interventionist" movement |
But as disturbing as Jung and his intelligence network may be, it is
easily rivaled by another notorious "non-interventionist,"
John Trevor Sr. and
his American Coalition of Patriotic Societies. Prior to these endeavors
Trevor, like Colonel Robert R. McCormack and many other individuals we
shall meet over the course of this series and related ones, was a member
of military intelligence.
"... a Harvard-educated lawyer and industrialist descended from a
signer of the Declaration of Independence and, like his close
friend Madison Grant, a member of New York's social elite, had served as
an officer of military intelligence just after World War I, a role in
which he 'made his own rules, gave himself his own assignments,'
according to a colleague at the time. For example, Trevor Sr. developed a
plan to suppress a mass uprising of Jewish subversives in New York
City, going so far as the order 6,000 rifles and a machine gun battalion
for deployment in Jewish neighborhoods in anticipation of a disturbance
that never took place. Keeping secret ties to military intelligence
even after his return to civilian life, the elder Trevor became,
according to one historian, 'one of the most influential unelected
individuals affiliated with the U.S. Congress,' testifying in the
hearings that led to the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924 and
crafting its plan to designate national quotas for each country based on
the number of its residence in the United States in 1890, before the
bulk of the immigration from southern and eastern Europe. To defend the
quotas, in 1929 Trevor founded the American Coalition of Patriotic
Societies, which quickly became an unparalleled organization for
numerous far-right groups; later named as the collation's 'honorary
president' was C. M. Goethe, a president of the ERA who strongly
recommended the 'marvelous eugenics program of Hitler's as a model that
the United States must adopt if it were to have any chance of becoming
'Germany's successful rival.'
"... Also before the war Trevor, as head of the American Coalition,
collaborated on a number of projects designated to distribute Nazi
propaganda, and in 1942, according to investigative journalist Adam
Miller, the collation 'was named in a U.S. Justice Department Sedition
Indictment for pro-Nazi activities.' In a particular irony, Trevor and
the coalition... were investigated by military intelligence."
(The Funding of Scientific Racism, William Tucker, pgs. 60-61)
 |
| Trevor was also greatly involved in "immigration reform" |
Naturally military intelligence found nothing on Trevor, enabling him
to continue his valuable work. In fairness to Trevor, it should be noted
that his supporters have long denied the allegations of Nazi
collaboration and his plot to put down Jewish subversives with some
6,000 rifles. On the flip side of the coin, however, his son,
John Trevor Jr., has been deeply involved with
eugenics-based projects for years, most notably the notorious
Pioneer Fund, of which he was a secretary for.
And these are the "non-interventionists" – General Robert E. Wood,
Colonel Robert R. McCormick, Harry Augustus Jung and Captain John Trevor
– who lent "inspiration" to the American Security Council in the
early years.
To be sure, there were more overworld elements that contributed to the
ASC's intelligence efforts, but they were no less dubious. Lee
Pennington of the
American Legion, for instance, would also contribute his massive collection of files to the ASC.
"During World War II the Legion build up a network of confidential
information contacts, on the model of the so-called vigilantes of the
American Protectively Agency during World War I. The key man in this
effort, an FBI agent named Lee Pennington, Jr., left the Bureau for the
Legion in 1953, where he began to develop a massive 'library' of
information on alleged subversives. Future Watergate burglar James
McCord, in search for subversives in the CIA, made his first contacts in
the 1950s with Pennington, his library, and Lou Russell of HUAC.
"Pennington thus became a CIA consultant, a status which continued when
he transferred his by-now massive files on Americans from the American
Legion to the newly formed American Security Council. However, the
principal users of his library were large corporations, including
defense contractors such as the large oil companies, who consulted the
file-card index when screening employees as part of their
industrial-security program."
(Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, Peter Dale Scott, pgs. 244-245)
Unsurprisingly, there was also some overlap between the American Security Council and the notorious private security,
Wackenhut. Wackenhut, now
G4S Secure Solutions, was known to have files on millions of Americans for years.
"Wackenhut is a private detective agency founded in 1954 by former FBI
man George Wackenhut and three ex-FBI friends in Miami, a hotbed of
rightist political activity at the time. George Wackenhut had important
political connections – Florida Governor Claude Kirk and Senator George
Smathers among them – and shared a predilection with J. Edgar Hoover
for acquiring files on people. His connections help build his agency
into a powerful private police force with huge government contracts.
Senator Smathers' law firm hired guards from the Wackenhut subsidiary to
work nuclear bomb test sites in Nevada and Cape Canaveral, a
workaround to the federal law forbidding private detective agencies
working for the government. George Wackenhut's preoccupation with
compiling files made the agency an extraordinary intelligence resources
well. Investigator John Connolly noted that 'By 1965, Wackenhut was
boasting to potential investors that the company maintained files on two
and a half million suspected dissidents – one in forty-six American
adults then living. In 1966, after acquiring the private files of Karl
Barslaag, a former staff member of the House Committee on Un-American
Activities, Wackenhut could confidentially maintain that with more
than four million names, it had the largest privately held file on
suspected dissidents in America.'"
(The Octopus, Kenn Thomas & Jim Keith, pgs. 32-33)
The
Institute for the Study of Globalization and Covert Politics (ISGP) alleges the following
ties between ASC and Wackenhut in their highly compelling account of the Council:
"The controversial detective and private security firm Wackenhut, ran
by an extreme right Christian Scientist, occasionally made use of the
files of the Church League. [19]
Wackenhut also had its own database of suspects in the 1960s and
1970s, largely based on several unspecified libraries the company
bought. George Wackenhut himself estimated that the library "got up to about three million"
individual names [20]. To what extent these names overlapped with the
databases of the Church League and the ASC hasn't been investigated,
but it is likely to have been considerable as Wackenhut was represented
on the national strategy committee of the ASC for several decades. A
1968 list - to pick one - reveals that two of the three co-chairmen of
the committee at that point were Wackenhut directors: General Bernhard
A. Schriever and Lloyd Wright."
I have been able to confirm that one of the above-mentioned individuals, General
Bernard A. Schriever,
was in fact a member of both Wackenhut and the ASC at the same
time. However, information on this relationship as a whole remain scarce
beyond what was reported on ISGP.
 |
| General Bernard A. Schriever, later of the ASC and Wackenhut |
By the early 1970s the ASC had compiled a massive library on "subversives."
"At present the dossier system consists of, in the ASC's words, 'seven
major files and libraries on communism and statism' as well as 'the
largest private collection on revolutionary activities in America.' The
index alone consists of over six million cards. Although the ASC shuns
the implications that it is running a blacklist service, and denies it
keeps tabs on individuals as such, it nonetheless has indexed and
collected the names and activities of over a million persons and
organizations fitting its standards of dubious loyalty. In 1970 the ASC
announced that it had 'handled over 195,000 research requests from
members, government agencies, congressional committees, and news
media...'
"The dossier service is available to the ASC's thirty-five
hundred member firms and organizations who pay dues that may run well
over a thousand dollars a year apiece, depending on the number of
employees..."
(Power on the Right, William Turner, pgs. 202-203)
The ASC allegedly gave up on the private intelligence racket at some
point in the 1970s and yet more than a few individuals with ties to the
ASC would end up working in other private intelligence organizations in
the 1980s, some of which with direct ties to the so-called "
patriot movement."
The effects of the intelligence efforts of groups like the ASC and
other such organizations on the American worker is difficult to gauge
but likely significant. Many researchers believe that the ASC did in
fact engage in blacklisting. What's more, the bulk of the customers for
their files were reportedly corporations and not the government (though
the ASC was deeply involved with the
US intelligence community).
Effectively, this means the clientele of ASC was not simply
scrutinizing the backgrounds of perspective employees, but also
researching their political beliefs. And as the above should illustrate,
many of the organizations that provided intelligence to the ASC
effectively believed that liberalism in general was a subversive
political belief. The ASC insisted that its major concern was whether or
not an individual supported the "free enterprise system."
"What constitutes a left-winger for the ASC? Only the vaguest of
guidelines have emerged from the statements of President Fisher. In
1960, in filing for tax-exempt status (it was denied), he explained one
purpose of the ASC: 'To promote the common business interests of
American business organizations in defending themselves amongst those
activities of Communists and other subversive organizations which are
directed against the business operations of American business
organizations.' The idea was more succinctly put in a later
pamphlet: 'Interest for or against the free enterprise system – that's
the thing that starts our interest. If the situation is in line with the
current Communist Party line, then it becomes of interest to us.'
Seemingly this would embrace advocacy of progressive social and labor
legislation, and an end to racism and the Vietnam War."
(ibid, pgs. 201-202)
What's more, it seemingly had no qualms about using highly dubious
"superpatriot" organization as sources of intelligence. More than a few
affiliates of the
John Birch Society and even the
Liberty Lobby
would also serve with the American Security Council while former FBI
agent William Turner even alleges that the 1960s paramilitary outfit the
Minutemen
was used as an intelligence source by the ASC (ibid, pg. 201). This is
hardly surprising as a reoccurring theme amongst various "superpatriot"
outfits is the appearance of some type of intelligence network and/or
an "enemies list" and over the years various intelligence apparatuses
(both within the government and the private sector) have found them to
be highly effective in this capacity. Indeed, this relationship has
existed for decades.
And it is here that I shall wrap things up for now. In the next
installment I shall began to examine the forces behind the ASC as well
as the bizarre origins of the relationship between the American
intelligence community and "superpatriot" groups. Stay tuned.
Catch our drift? Probably the ‘terrorists.’)
http://truthstreammedia.com/big-sis-says-cyber-attack-will-bring-down-power-grid-when-not-if/