Obama is a symbol of much of today’s generation, which accepts no responsibility for anything The Most Embarrassing President of My Lifetime

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Obama is a symbol of much of today’s generation, which accepts no responsibility for anything

The Most Embarrassing President of My Lifetime

By Doug Patton (Bio and Archives)  Friday, September 6, 2013

i didn't do it “Speak softly and carry a big stick.” — Teddy Roosevelt
“The buck stops here.” — Harry Truman
“I didn’t set a red line.” — Barack Obama
Barack Obama is, without question, the most embarrassing president of my lifetime — and that is saying something, since my life so far has encompassed 12 presidencies, some of which have brought a lot of embarrassment to the nation. Even Richard Nixon, with his Watergate scandal, Jimmy Carter, with his malaise, and Bill Clinton, with his lewd behavior in the Oval Office, could not top this president for pure, unadulterated disgrace.

Of course, in Obama’s case, it is not a matter of personal scandal like it was for Clinton. By telling the world a year ago that he was drawing a red line in the hot desert sands of Syria — that red line being the use of chemical weapons — he created the debacle that currently threatens to engulf the Middle East. He blustered at the time that if the regime of Bashar al-Assad crossed that red line, there will be a price to pay. No one yet knows what that price will be, but from the current discussion, it appears that it will involve the destruction of at least three camels, four sheep, a half-dozen goats and an abandoned aspirin factory. That oughta show ‘em!
What it will do, in all likelihood, is unify the Islamic crazies in the Middle East and turn Assad into a regional hero, emboldening him to attack Israel, secure in the knowledge that the United States has no stomach for a wider war.
Congressional offices on Capitol Hill are reporting phone calls coming in at a rate of more than 200 to 1 against approving Obama’s plan to attack Syria. Republican and Democrats alike are being bombarded with negative responses from their constituents. Still, there are those among the insulated legislative class — John McCain, Lindsay Graham, John Boehner, etc. — who have not gotten the message that the American people are about as enthusiastic about Obama’s proposed war plans as they are about undergoing a quadruple root canal. In fact the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted to approve a resolution to allow Obama to use force.

Meanwhile, Facebook postings from members of our military are appearing with sentiments like this: “I didn’t join the Marine Corps to fight for al-Qaeda in a Syrian civil war.”
Yet there was the ever-arrogant Barack Obama, standing at the podium in Stockholm on Wednesday, embarrassing himself yet again (and, by extension, the fools who elected him) by announcing in response to a reporter’s question about his crumbling credibility, “I didn’t set a red line. The world set a red line.”
Obama is a symbol of much of today’s generation, which accepts no responsibility for anything. Therefore, when something goes wrong among his cockamamie plans, it must be someone else’s fault. Usually, of course, it would be George Bush’s fault, but even Obama couldn’t bring himself to tell that one again, not in this case. No, this time it’s the whole world’s fault. And Congress. And America. It’s American credibility that will suffer, he told the world, not his. Unbelievable.
The questions that need to be asked are these: What is the national security interest of the United States of America in attacking Syria? Will our intervention accomplish anything more than assuaging the ego of an arrogant president who has no knowledge of military matters? Will the consequences for the wider region, and for the interests of the United States, be improved if we attack Syria? And the most frightening question: have we elected a president who so admires Islam and so hates Israel that he would deliberately aid al-Qaeda while provoking a brutal Arab tyrant to attack our tiny but crucial ally?
I fear the answers to these questions are as follows: none; no; no; and, unfortunately, yes.

Comments

Doug Patton is a freelance columnist who has served as a political speechwriter and policy advisor to conservative candidates, elected officials and public policy organizations. His weekly columns are published in newspapers across the country and on selected Internet web sites, including Human Events Online and GOPUSA.com, where he is a senior writer and state editor. Readers may e-mail him at dougpatton@cox.net.

Why So Much Occult Symbolism in Vanity Fair’s Video “How to Land a Hollywood Agent”?

Sep 6th, 2013 | http://vigilantcitizen.com/latestnews/much-occult-symbolism-vanity-fairs-video-land-hollywood-agent/

The magazine Vanity Fair created a series of short videos called Vanity Code, quick “how to” guides how to be a douchebag socialite – the “lifestyle” promoted by the magazine. The video entitled “How to Land a Hollywood Agent” humorously instructs small time writers how to become big time in Hollywood. While the humor somewhat caused me to expire air out of a my nose at some point, it is the blatant and flagrant symbolism that caused me to watch it again. Here’s the video.

The first thing we see in the video: the Vanity Code logo. It’s an all-seeing eye inside a pyramid. Why so much Illuminati right away?

“Inside view of the entertainment world” + occult symbolism = Get the message.

This the guy giving the instructions. He is dressed in full Masonic attire and around him are EVERY SINGLE Masonic symbol in existence. Left of him is the Masonic square and compass, right of him are the Masonic G with the all seeing eye. Bonus: a skull. In front of him is the seal of Solomon and,  again, a pyramid with all seeing eye.

On the chalkboard behind the man is basically a full Masonic trestleboard, complete with the twin pillars, the all seeing eye and so forth.

An actual Masonic trestleboard.

Why is this guy giving advice on Hollywood made to be the most hardcore Freemason ever? Is it a subtle way of hinting at how to REALLY make it in Hollywood?
In another video, the guy gives advice on how to behave in “Eye Wide Shut”-style swingers party.

It is hip to be an occult elite wannabee.

The viewers (you) is represented by the guy wearing a red devil mask. Weird.

Owned by Condé Nast, the mega-corporation that also owns the Illuminati-symbolism-laden Vogue magazine, Vanity Fair subtly yet blatantly telling you who runs the show. As usual, all of that symbolism will swoosh about ten miles above most people’s heads.

Apple Rejects Thomas Jefferson Book App, Claiming It's Just A Book... Even Though It's Not

Apple Rejects Thomas Jefferson Book App, Claiming It's Just A Book... Even Though It's Not

Prenda's Mark Lutz Doesn't Show Up In Two Key Cases, Has A Reason But Won't Share Because People Might Discuss It

Prenda's Mark Lutz Doesn't Show Up In Two Key Cases, Has A Reason But Won't Share Because People Might Discuss It

President Obama Says He Learns What NSA Is Doing From The Press, Then Goes To NSA For Details

from the uh,-that's-not-how-it's-supposed-to-work dept

Ewan MacAskill calls out a rather astounding statement by President Obama during his most recent press conference in St. Petersburg at the G20 summit. The very last question, which I believe is asked by AFP reporter Tangi Quemener, asks President Obama to respond to some of the recent NSA leaks, in particular the spying on Brazilian and Mexican officials. The President gives the usual long and winding answer about doing what intelligence agencies do, and various costs and benefits, but then there's this:

Now, just more specifically, then, on Brazil and Mexico. I said that I would look into the allegations. I mean, part of the problem here is we get these through the press and then I've got to go back and find out what’s going on with respect to these particular allegations -- I don’t subscribe to all these newspapers, although I think the NSA does -- now at least. (Laughter.)

Leaving aside the "joke" at the end, the admission is rather startling. Here is the President of the US admitting two astounding things. First, it appears that he and the NSA really have no clue at all what information Ed Snowden walked away with, and second (and worse), it appears that the President is admitting that he doesn't know what the NSA is doing and is similarly learning these facts from the press. This comes from the same President who has repeatedly insisted that there is plenty of oversight over these programs. If that's true, then he shouldn't be taken by surprise when the press reveals what the NSA is doing, and shouldn't have to "go back and find out what's going on." He's more or less admitting that there's no oversight and the NSA is a rogue agency making its own rules, only checked on when the press reveals something.

Michael Reagan Exposes the Liberal Hollywood Lies in ‘The Butler’

Michael Reagan Exposes the Liberal Hollywood Lies in ‘The Butler’

The US Government Stands Revealed to the World as a Collection of War Criminals and Liars

truther September 6, 2013

Paul Craig Roberts

Does the American public have the strength of character to face the fact that the US government stands before the entire world revealed as a collection of war criminals who lie every time that they open their mouth? Will Congress and the American public buy the White House lie that they must support war criminals and liars or “America will lose face”?

The obama regime’s lies are so transparent and blatant that the cautious, diplomatic President Putin of Russia lost his patience and stated the fact that we all already know: John Kerry is a liar. Putin said: “This was very unpleasant and surprising for me. We talk to them [the Americans], and we assume they are decent people, but he [Kerry] is lying and he knows that he is lying. This is sad.”
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article36117.htm

When Secretary of State Colin Powell was sent by the criminal bush regime to lie to the UN, Powell and his chief of staff claim that Powell did not know he was lying. It did not occur to the Secretary of State that the White House would send him to the UN to start a war that killed, maimed, and dispossessed millions of Iraqis on the basis of total lies.

The despicable John Kerry knows that he is lying. Here is the American Secretary of State, and obama, the puppet president, knowingly lying to the world. There is not a shred of integrity in the US government. No respect for truth, justice, morality or human life. Here are two people so evil that they want to repeat in Syria what the bush war criminals did in Iraq.

How can the American people and their representatives in Congress tolerate these extraordinary criminals? Why are not obama and John Kerry impeached? The obama regime has every quality of Nazi Germany and Stasi Communist Germany, only that the obama regime is worse. The obama regime spies on the entire world and lies about it. The obama regime is fully engaged in killing people in seven countries, a murderous rampage that not even Hitler attempted.

Whether the criminal obama regime can purchase the collaboration of Congress and the European puppet states in a transparent war crime will soon be decided. The decision will determine the fate of the world.

As for facts, the report released to the UN by the Russian government concludes that the weapons used in chemical attacks in Syria are similar to the weapons in the hands of al-Nusra and are different from the weapons known to be possessed by Syria.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article36116.htm

The obama regime has released no evidence to the UN. This is because the criminal regime has no evidence, only made up fairy tales.

If the obama regime had any evidence, the evidence would have been released to British Prime Minister david cameron to enable him to carry the vote of Parliament. In the absence of evidence, cameron had to admit to Parliament that he had no evidence, only a belief that the Syrian government had used chemical weapons. Parliament told Washington’s puppet that the British people were not going to war on the basis of the Prime Minister’s unsubstantiated belief.

Are the American people and the rest of the world just going to stand there, sucking their thumbs, while a new Nazi State rises in Washington?

Congress must vote down the war and make it clear to obama that if he defies
the constitutional power of Congress he will be impeached.

If the US Congress is too corrupt or incompetent to do its duty, the rest of the world must join the UN General Secretary and the President of Russia and declare that unilateral military aggression by the US government is a war crime, and that the war criminal US government will be isolated in the international community. Any of its members caught traveling abroad will be arrested and turned over to the Hague for trial.

BREAKING: China Sends Warships & 1000 Marines to Syria, Accuses the U.S. of lying About Syria And Ignoring International Laws. Russia Sends another Amphibous Assault Ship. Turkey Sends More Troops to Syria Border

http://investmentwatchblog.com/china-accuses-the-u-s-of-lying-about-syria-and-says-u-s-ignoring-international-laws-china-sends-warships-to-syria-joining-russian-warships-in-mediterranean-sea/

Breakthrough urban food forest tower under construction in Milan

Breakthrough urban food forest tower under construction in Milan

Another benefit from eating a Mediterranean-style diet: Lowered risk of suffering a devastating stroke

Another benefit from eating a Mediterranean-style diet: Lowered risk of suffering a devastating stroke

Doctors resign from UC Davis after getting caught infecting cancer patients' brains with fecal bacteria

Doctors resign from UC Davis after getting caught infecting cancer patients' brains with fecal bacteria

A USSA Government Repugnant To Its Own Constitution Is Void

http://intellihub.com/2013/09/06/ussa-government-repugnant-constitution-void/

When I was younger, and cast my inner vision forward through the years, I have to admit that I never quite anticipated the precise set of circumstances that now beset the Earth, humanity and me, on a personal level.

NEW YORK, NY – JUNE 17: A letter regarding the United States’ constitution, written by the first president of the United States, George Washington, is seen on display at Christie’s Auction House on June 17, 2013 in New York City. The specific letter displayed in the photograph is expected to be sold for $1,000,000 – $2,000,000. (Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

Op-Ed

By Dr. Richard Sauder
Intellihub.com
September 6, 2013

Oh, I knew from the age of three years that dire times were on their way. In 1958 The Bone Lady appeared to me, and ever since that spring day in the Virginia Tidewater I have known that great darkness lay ahead. Now we are living that dark time, and we are steadily traveling deeper into the darkness. Can humanity muster the courage and presence of mind, as a species, to turn around the violent, negative, self-destructive trajectory that it is currently following?
I hope so, but the nuclear crisis at Fukushima, Japan steadily worsens from merely frightful to apocalyptic in scope. That one event alone, if left unchecked, may spell humanity’s doom, and may also destroy a very large portion of the rest of the biosphere on this planet. It is just that bad.
And then there is the looming threat of global warfare, should the USSA go ahead and militarily strike or invade Syria, as USSA president, barack obama, has threatened to do. Given the enormous geopolitical stakes at play, such a bone headed decision could possibly lead to a shooting nuclear war. Indeed, the shamanic plants here in South America have inwardly alerted me last year to the danger of a series of false flag nuclear attacks against USA cities, with the intent of initiating what the plants referred to as totalitarian nuclear warfare. These attacks do not have to happen, and I pray they do not, but it appears that a very violent, shadowy, political faction does have this sort of contingency plan. The unfortunate fact is that there are certain psychopathic elements on this world who desperately want war, the more and the bigger the better from their point of view, the better to engage in war profiteering and also in solidifying their position of control over the human race and the planet. That’s the grim reality.
As if all that were not bad enough, in recent months the scale of the USSA government’s privacy destroying, civil-liberties-violating, surveillance war against the American people, and much of the rest of the world, has come to light. Not only is the USSA government in violation of its own constitution, which is another way of saying that the USSA government now lacks constitutional legitimacy, that it is an illegitimate government; but it is in violation of well established international law, as well.
According to Article 12 of the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence. …. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference ….
Article 19 says, Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
I want to also cite Article 20, which states: Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
Not only the comprehensive NSA spying, but also the violent, national crack down against the Occupy Movement in 2011 by the many police agencies of the USSA, are in flagrant violation of both the American constitution and of international law, as codified in the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
For these reasons and more, I was recently motivated to write a letter to Dr. Francis Boyle, professor of international law at the University of Illinois. Dr. Boyle and I have had occasional contact with one another over a period of many years, beginning in about 1981, when he testified in federal court in Kansas City, Missouri as an expert witness as to the illegality of preparation for nuclear warfare, according to the spirit and the letter of long established international law. The occasion was a federal trial in which I was being criminally prosecuted for the alleged offense of trespassing on the launch lid of a nuclear missile silo at Whiteman Air Force Base, in the state of Missouri. I had staged a nonviolent, peace demonstration against nuclear war on the missile silo, and for that I was arrested, jailed, criminally tried, and ultimately sentenced to half a year of imprisonment in the Buchanan County jail in St. Joseph, Missouri. And that was where Dr. Boyle and I happened to first cross paths.
In any event, Dr. Boyle is a bona fide expert in international law. Here’s hiscurriculum vitae, and here is a list of his numerous professional accomplishments. The letter I wrote to him, and cc’ed to my attorney here in Quito, Ecuador and to Gary Davis of the World Service Authority, follows. My further comments can be found below, after the letter.
Dr. Francis Boyle, PhD
Professor of International Law
University of Illinois
College of Law
Hello Dr. Boyle,
I trust you are well. I was just now looking again at your extensive, international law credentials.
As I explain below, I intend to remain in South America, most likely in Ecuador, where I have lived the past three years. You may be sure that I have followed recent political and diplomatic developments with great interest.
The more so as I am a publicly known, anti-nuclear activist with a years-long history of outspoken opposition to a variety of USA government polices. As you know, I have been jailed and imprisoned multiple times by the USA government, including in the 1980s and again in 2010, always for peaceful, nonviolent, anti-nuclear activism.
My Minot Manifesto, issued to the news media on 15 April 2010, and archived on my blog, clearly explains my actions, my philosophy and my political motivations in peacefully demonstrating against preparations for nuclear warfare, on a USA Air Force Minuteman-III nuclear missile silo in North Dakota, USA. Many thousands of people have read my Minot Manifesto, either in whole or in part. It has circulated widely internationally. I served 100 days in jail in North Dakota in 2010 as a direct consequence of being arrested by the USA Air Force for that nonviolent anti-nuclear demonstration. Please see my Minot Manifesto here and archive it for future reference, in the event that the web host removes it.
I note that Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Treasury Secretary under President Reagan, has said earlier this month that the USA has suffered a coup d`état, and is no longer under constitutional government, and that the regime that currently holds power in Washington, DC lacks legitimacy.
Former USA President Jimmy Carter has also said this month that the USA no longer has a democratic government, that the government is no longer a democracy.
“America has no functioning democracy at this moment,” Carter said, according to Der Spiegel, the German news organization.
As you know, under the NDAA of 2012, enacted into so-called “law” by the government in Washington, DC — anyone at all, anywhere in the world, is subject to secret arrest and indefinite, secret detention and even summary execution, without regard to fundamental due process of law, such as habeas corpus, and a free and open trial. All of this can be done at the secret whim of the Executive with no appeal or oversight whatsoever, least of all by those who are victimized by this dictatorial, totalitarian policy.

You undoubtedly are also aware of recently discovered evidence that the FBI knew of a plot to assassinate Occupy Movement activists by sniper fire in 2011, including in San Antonio, Texas, where I lived for ten years, from 2000 to 2009. This information was withheld from the public by the FBI. The identity of the group who planned to assassinate the activists remains concealed by the FBI, which raises questions about the FBI´s role and knowledge in this affair. It is certainly chilling to me, as I have a personal history of public, political activism and the plot included plans to kill activists in the city where I recently resided in the USA.
This information about the assassination plot against American political activists, the recent enactment of the NDAA 2012 which authorizes the indefinite military detention of USA citizens anywhere in the world, including summary execution without trial or criminal charge, coupled with the statements of former USA Treasury Assistant Secretary Roberts and Former USA President Carter, have driven home the reality of the ugly, anti-freedom, anti-liberty direction that the government of the USA has taken.
What to speak of the recent act of international piracy against the official airplane and person of Evo Morales, the President of Bolivia, who was recently forcibly detained in Austria, under orders of agents of the American government. The detention of President Morales was a clear violation of well established international law and diplomatic protocol. The legal and diplomatic violation of the official airplane and person of the Bolivian President was carried out under the pretext of searching for Edward Snowden, the internationally known American, ex-NSA contractor, who has fled from the USA into political exile, and who currently resides in the international airport in Moscow, Russia.
If the USA government is prepared to so flagrantly flout well-established, international norms of legal procedure and diplomatic protocol against even a sovereign head of state — based on patently false information — and to initiate an international manhunt against a man, Edward Snowden, who has committed no violence, whose alleged offense is that he has revealed to all humanity the manifold crimes of the rogue, dictatorial regime that is currently in power in Washington, DC, then what does that mean for other Americans such as me, who have also openly opposed the policies of the American government?
The more so as I am also an internationally known writer and researcher who has written and spoken extensively on radio, TV and the Internet on the topic of the secret underground bases of the USA military-industrial-espionage complex, the world of so-called Black Operations. My books include:
Hidden in Plain Sight: Beyond the X-Files
Underground Bases & Tunnels: What Is the Government Trying to Hide?
Underwater and Underground Bases
In my writings, I mention numerous USA government underground bases, including some of the NSA`s enormous, deeply buried, secret underground bases, including at Ft. Meade in Laurel, Maryland and Sugar Grove, West Virginia, USA, as well as at Pine Gap, Australia.
A coup d`état truly has occurred in the USA, the country is no longer governed by a democracy, and the lives of political activists and others are clearly in jeopardy, including activists and writers such as myself, as revealed by the recently publicized, hitherto secret, internal FBI documents mentioned above.
So I am sure that you can fully appreciate the level of my concern and my decision to remain in Ecuador, a country with a growing international reputation as a champion of fundamental human rights, and a refuge for those who have a legitimate fear of possible imprisonment, reprisal or death at the hands of rogue political or military agents.
Sr. Fulano de Tal, with a well-known law firm here in Quito, is currently representing me.
I am currently applying for the World Service Authority passport and World Citizen identity card, issued by the World Service Authority, which is headquartered in Washington, DC, but which is wholly separate and distinct from the USA government.
I reserve the right under universally recognized principles of law to take further peaceful actions as may be necessary to safeguard my liberty and well being.
Respectfully yours,
Richard Sauder, PhD
Quito, Ecuador
cc:
1)
My attorneys in Quito, Ecaudor
2)
Mr. Gary Davis, President
World Service Authority
World Office
5 Thomas Circle, NW
Washington, D.C. 20005
Tel: (1) 202- 638-2662
Fax: (1) 202- 638-0638
E-mail: info@worldservice.org
website: http://www.worldservice.org
The Subsequent Course of Events
Suffice it to say that I did obtain the World Service Authority passport, as well as world citizen registration and identity cards. So I now have another set of identity documents. I think it is prudent for ANYONE in these uncertain times, who is concerned about issues of personal liberty, to take a similar step, especially (but not only) for people in the European Union and the USSA, since they are losing their freedoms so rapidly, and may want to relocate elsewhere in the world, if possible.
It is clear that a free and open, representative republic is over in the USSA. A fundamental presumption of civic life in a republic is that there is a type of social and legal contract between the governed and the government that represents them (in theory), as exemplified by the legal principles that are laid out in the national constitution.
But the NSA spying outrage alone puts paid to that notion. The social and legal contract between the governed and the government is irrevocably broken.

Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137 (1803), one of the bedrock Supreme Court decisions in the early years of the American republic, flatly ruled that: “…a law repugnant to the Constitution is void.” It is abundantly clear that vast swaths of present day USSA government policy, laws, rules and regulations flagrantly flout numerous articles and clauses of the American constitution, and for that reason are void.
If the Supreme Court cannot bring itself to say this, or rule accordingly, then it too logically stands in violation of the very constitution that it theoretically is sworn to uphold.
This is another way of saying that the USSA government has effectively “voided” itself, by dint of its recourse to a large body of law, rules, regulations and policies that conflict with, violate, contradict and flout the American constitution.
To state it succinctly, and in the spirit of Marbury v. Madisoon, 5 U.S. 137 (1803),” … a USSA government repugnant to its own constitution is void.”
The USSA government has turned against its own people, thereby abrogating the implicit and explicit social and legal contract between people and government, as enshrined in the American constitution.
It’s a dictatorship now.

Writer Bio:

 Dr. Richard Sauder is the Editor-In-Chief of the Event Horizon Chronicle and the author of many books.

For media inquires, interviews, questions or suggestions for this author, email: contacts@intellihub.com or telephone: (347) 759-6075.

Read more articles by this author here.

Russia and China Both Have Warships Traveling to Syria

Russia and China Both Have Warships Traveling to Syria

NEWS AND VIEWS FROM THE NEFARIUM SEPT 5, 2013

NEWS AND VIEWS FROM THE NEFARIUM SEPT 5, 2013

Fear and Loathing in the American Security Council Part II

Fear and Loathing in the American Security Council Part II

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)

General Robert E. Wood, who was discussed in much greater depth in the first installment, was one of the chief figures behind the founding of the ASC

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.

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