As we go through the gates of heaven
Our number multiplied from one to seven
With our reflection on the TV screen
No violent death remains obscene
I'm the devil
And I'm here to do the devil's work
Welcome to the seventh and final installment in my examination of the
assassination of JFK. For those of you just tuning in, here's a brief rundown of the prior six: The
first and
second installments primarily focused on
Oswald's time in Dallas/Forth Worth and New Orleans in the months leading up to the assassination with a special emphasis on the
synchroncities and high strangeness that abounded in that time frame.
Part three addressed the plotters themselves while
part four
focused in on the possibility that CIA/Pentagon behavioral modification
techniques were used on individuals who frequently turn up in
assassination lore. The
fifth installment
began my examination of the secret societies that pop up in the
background of assassination lore. It briefly addressed the well known
Masonic theories before considering the appearance of numerous
Skull and Bonesmen and
Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM) knights potentially involved in the assassination and cover up.
Part six continued in this vein, addressing the role the
Sovereign Order of Saint John of Jerusalem
(SOSJ), some times known as the Shickshinny Knights of Malta, played in
the plot and cover up before shifting to the bizarre ministers and
churches that appear throughout Oswald's saga.
It is here that I shall pick up. As part six was coming to a conclusion I began to address the
American Orthodox Catholic Church (AOCC),
a peculiar sect that had several eventual members active in New Orleans
in the months leading up to the assassination. The most notable future
members were
David Ferrie (who was played by
Joe Pesci in
Oliver Stone's
JFK film) and
Jack S. Martin (played by
Jack Lemmon in the same movie), both of whom worked for former Naval intelligence officer and FBI man turned private detective
Guy Banister. Banister, a figure long linked to the assassination, was addressed at length in the
second installment of this series.
 |
| Banister |
At the end of part six I raised the possibility of whether or not David
Ferrie could have been involved in CIA/Pentagon behavioral modification
experiments. As noted in
part four, the New Orleans area and other parts of Louisiana had been used for experiments under the auspices of Projects
MKULTRA and
Artichoke.
This, combined with several of Ferrie's "hobbies", have led to
speculation amongst more daring assassination researchers over the years
that Ferrie may have been involved in these experiments.
"One of the central targets of Garrison's investigation was David
William Ferrie, who was both a hypnotist and a CIA operative.
Coincidentally, Ferrie had been in a New Orleans Civil Air Patrol group
in the fifties with Lee Harvey Oswald. One witness said that Ferrie had
been the man who had instructed Oswald in marksmanship.
"When New Orleans police raided Ferrie's apartment, they confiscated a
number of weapons, various drugs, and three blank U.S. passports –
things that any good CIA operative would keep at his elbow. Much later
researchers realized the importance of some of the evidence obtained in
the raid – several voluminous abstracts on posthypnotic suggestion and a
library on hypnotism.
"A salesman for the Equitable Life Insurance Company, Perry Raymond
Russo, told a New Orleans grand jury that Ferrie's apartment had been
the scene of many 'parties' where hypnotism had been used as
'entertainment.' One evening, Russo said, Ferrie hypnotized a young man
to whom he apparently had a strong homosexual attraction. Another
evening, Russo said, he himself hypnotized a young woman and made her
immobile. He struck pens in her hand and burned her arms just to
demonstrate the extent of the control he had over her."
(Operation Mind Control, Walter Bowart, pgs. 192-193)
 |
| the highly controversial Garrison-witness Perry Russo, whom we shall encounter again before the end of this series |
Judyth Vary Baker even went so far as to allege in her book
Me & Lee
that not only did Ferrie tell her that he was involved in MKULTA
experiments, but that he had revealed documentation of his participation
to her. In Baker's account, Ferrie was allegedly approached by the
Agency for such a project initially due to his knowledge of obscure
religious practices.
"Dave said he knew about every religion on earth and had witnessed the
rites of Voodoo and Santeria. In fact, his interest in hypnotism came
from observing religious oddities, like speaking in tongues, chanting,
and rosary prayers, which had essentially the same result. They
hypnotize the participants to make their minds more pliable. The drugs
used in Voodoo were particular interest in him. Eventually, Dave said,
he was asked to participate in a study of hypnosis secretly
conducted at Tulane by the CIA.
"Dave said he made friends with some of the professors at Tulane by
bringing in young test subjects they could experiment on, and that he
even taught a couple of classes for Dr. Heath, who was working with the
CIA on a secret program investigating mind control.
"The CIA, Dave explained, was intrigued by the legends of zombies. Under
the influence of drugs, these people became slaves without a will. 'I
became a consultant,' he said. 'At first it was with Voodoo drugs.
Later, it was with hypnosis.'
"Then Dave showed us a large, olive-colored metal container with a lock
on it. As he opened the box, he said that if we ever heard he committed
suicide, not to believe it, because he was a Catholic...
"After extracting a promise from us never to describe its contents while
he lived, Dave showed us. There was his will, some letters, photos,
religious cards and post cards.
"At the bottom was a fat brown file wrapped with a black cord knotted in
front. Dave opened this file. Inside, the pages were stamp TOP SECRET.
Because of my position at the table, I could only see the pages upside
down. They were held at the top with fold-overs spindles going through
two holes. All the pages were stamped and signed. These were MK-ULTRA
files. With the files was a report, also stamped and sign, that Dave
pointed to proudly. His name was not on the report – just a number."
(Me & Lee, Judyth Vary Baker, pgs. 25-216)
 |
| the highly, highly controversial Judyth Vary Baker |
Personally I find Miss Baker's work, centered around her alleged affair
with Lee Harvey Oswald in New Orleans shortly before the assassination,
to be highly dubious on several levels. But in this case, there may be a
grain of truth to her claims. During the
House Assassination Committee it was alleged that Ferrie attempted to recruit kids from his Civil Air Patrol group for experiments at
Tulane, which was the location for several CIA behavioral modification experiments, as noted in
part four.
"Sometime in 1955, when he was fifteen, Oswald join the Civil Air Patrol
(CAP), a group of young men interested in flying. Its Senior Squadron
Commander was an older fellow then employed as an Eastern Airlines pilot
named David Ferrie.
"One of the CAP's members, Lawrence Marsh, later spoke to a House
Assassinations Committee investigator about his several years with the
group in the mid-1950s. 'When we would spend the weekend by Dave's for
these parties,' Marsh said, 'he used to practice hypnosis on us, and
find out if it were working on us by using a compass or a pen and stick
our arms. He was a fanatic about this hypnosis stuff.'
"In 1994 I contacted another CAP cadet who have been interviewed by the
committee named John Irion. 'The New Orleans CAP unit, at Lakefront
Airport, attracted by and large, a lot of underprivileged kids from
broken homes,' he told me. He remembered Oswald coming, 'a recruit if I
remember, but he never got much out of that stage. He would sulk and
then get argumentative. I would say Oswald was there maybe six months at
the most.'
"Irion also remembered Ferrie's fascination with hypnosis. 'He fancied
himself as a self-made doctor or psychologist. I personally never
submitted to it, because I knew better. It's possible he hypnotized
other people, but back then for kids of our age, it was more of a
novelty.'
"Another former CAP cadet, Anthony Atzenhoffer, told the House
Assassinations Committee that Ferrie had 'wanted the kids to participate
in some kind of experiment for Tulane University. They didn't do it.'
Irion recalled that Ferrie was 'constantly at Tulane' during those
years.
"In September 1975, Charles D. Ablard, General Counsel for the Army,
would deliver this testimony before a Senate committee: 'We have learned
of a 1955 contract with Tulane University, which involved the
administration of LSD, mescaline, and other drugs to mental patients who
had therefore had electrodes implanted in their brains as a part of
their medical treatment....' The project was the brainchild of Dr.
Robert Heath, then chairman of the Tulane Medical School's Department of
Neurology and Psychiatry, and whose specialty was electrical
stimulation of the brain. Heath once stated that the real solution to
mental problems would be found in 'controlled manipulation of the
pleasure response and... manipulation of memory by biological means.'
Heath acknowledged having taken part in one CIA research project in
1957, testing a purported brainwashing drug on several monkeys."
(On the Trail of the JFK Assassins, Dick Russell, pgs. 254-255)
As was noted in
part two
of this series, Ferrie was an arch pedophile who was accused on not
only molesting numerous kids in the New Orleans area, but of taking them
out of the country to Honduras, Guatemala and such like for "mining"
expeditions. Ferrie would also recruit kids from the Youth Study Center
in New Orleans as well as the
East Louisiana State Hospital (another location of CIA behavioral modification experiments, as noted in
part four)
while posing as a doctor. Unsurprisingly, there have long been
allegations that Ferrie had some type of sexual relations with Oswald
when he was a member of the CAP. The great H.P. Albarelli Jr. recounted
one such claim in his recent work from a former New Orleans resident
aware of Ferrie's unsavory activities.
"Continued the former resident: 'The Oswald kid, when he was young, was
in Ferrie's [CAP] group for only a few months or so and then quit. It
doesn't take a rocket scientist to know why. Everyone knew one or two
kids who quit Ferrie's group because of his coming on to kids. A lot of
people, parents, pulled their kids out when they found out he was
molesting kids...'"
(A Secret Order, H.P. Albarelli Jr., pg. 80)
Judyth Vary Baker alleges that Ferrie once tried to rape Oswald as a
teenager in a fit of lust, but came to his senses before things advanced
too far. Her account is, however, highly dubious, but it would hardly
have been inconsistent with Ferrie's well documented illicit behavior
with the CAP.
 |
| David Ferrie (far left, wearing a helmet) and Oswald (far right) during the CAP days |
The curious relationship between Ferrie and Oswald would seemingly
continue in New Orleans during the months leading up to the
assassination. In an earlier work journalist Dick Russell revealed an
incredible allegation concerning Ferrie and Oswald during this time
frame made by
Richard Case Nagell, a former military intelligence officer and CIA asset.
"When Richard Nagell was with Oswald in New Orleans, he discovered that
Oswald was 'undergoing hypnotherapy' from David Ferrie. Nagell dropped
this potential bombshell in a single phrase in one of his letters to
Arthur Greenstein. In a set of 'cartoons' that Nagell also mailed
to Greenstein from prison, one sequence shows Oswald, armed with a
secondhand rifle, at the sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book
Depository, when he suddenly 'awakens from [a] hypnotic trance.'
"Ferrie's former roommate Raymond Broshears told me in 1975 that
hypnosis was part of Ferrie's general interest in the occult –
'spiritualism, voices from the other side, all of that.' The reader may
recall the House Assassination Committee's mention that Ferrie
frequently practiced techniques of hypnosis on his young associates...
Jack Martin, an associate of Ferrie and Guy Banister, told the FBI three
days after the assassination 'that he believed Ferrie was an "amateur
hypnotist" who may have been capable of hypnotizing Oswald.' And, when
the New Orleans police discovered Ferrie dead in his apartment in 1967,
they found several voluminous abstracts on posthypnotic suggestion amid a
veritable library on hypnotism."
(The Man Who Knew Too Much, Dick Russell, pgs. 671-672)
There are also incredible allegations concerning Ferrie's occult pursuits in New Orleans during this time as well.
"... Ferrie's interest in occultism is hinted at by the people who knew
him. It is known that he considered himself something of a hypnotist,
as well as a psychotherapist... or at least used these dubious
qualifications as a lure for potential sexual partners. According to
Perry Russo – one of Jim Garrison's witnesses during the Clay Shaw
trial, and not necessarily the most reliable or credible of those
witnesses in the eyes of many investigators – Ferrie conducted the
equivalent of Black Masses in his apartment at the
appropriately-numbered 3330 Louisiana Avenue Parkway, New Orleans.
James Kirkwood, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Chorus Line, conducted his own informal investigation in New Orleans during the Clay Shaw trial, published as American Grotesque
in 1970. Kirkwood was unequivocally pro-Shaw and anti-Garrison, so
although his lengthy study makes for entertaining reading, his
conclusions are not always above reproach, but it is worth quoting his
transcript of Perry Russo's description of Ferrie's weekly Black Masses:
The chalice featured animal blood, the wafer consisted of some kind of
raw flesh, instead of cake or bread. He wore a little black toga, solid
black. He wore nothing underneath it. ...he called it the American
Eastern Catholic Orthodox Church... after all, the ritual, shouted
ritual... it ends up and it's a brutal thing, a sadistic quality to it –
bloodletting, chicken killing, stuff like that....'
"Previously, in his own description Ferrie, Kirkwood states,
He professed to be a bishop in the Orthodox Old Catholic Church of North
America, a cultish underground group quite different the Catholic
Church we know.
"We can see that there is some confusion with the ecclesiastical
nomenclature, if nothing else. This is understandable, since these
groups have long, outlandish names which generally include 'Orthodox'
and 'Catholic' and 'Church' somewhere in the title, in some order.
Often, the bishop concerned has consecrations with several groups so
that the confusion becomes almost unmanageable. The author believes that
Perry Russo actually comes closest to the name of the organization,
which we now know to be the American Orthodox Catholic Church; but, as
we have seen, there were Old Catholic elements behind Ferrie's
succession as well.
"The rest of Russo's characterization of the Ferrie's Black Mass sounds
more like Voudoun or Santeria than it does Satanism, and one wishes that
Russo had paid a lot more attention – or the Kirkwood had published the
transcript of his interview in full – so that we can trace the elements
of Ferrie's ritual to a known progenitor..."
(Sinister Forces Book I, Peter Levenda, pgs. 281-282)
As noted above, Judyth Vary Baker alleges in her highly controversial
account that Ferrie was quite well versed in the rituals of
Voudoun and
Santeria. She also claims that he alleged to have infiltrated cults from time to time as well, but did not conduct
Black Masses.
"... Dave also brought out three rings: an aquamarine ring that he said
belonged to his mother, a small ruby ring that glowed purple under the
light, and one carved with an ugly mythological creature.
"'This is my priestly ring,' he said. 'I use it for black magic. And Satanic rituals.'
"'Are you serious?' I said, taking up the exotic ring.
"'Of course not,' Dave replied. 'When I say a Mass, and sometimes I do
say Mass, it isn't a Black Mass. I'm not a son of Satan, so I wouldn't
wear that thing. I love God. But I use things like this to penetrate
religious cults. I can go into certain places around here with that ring
on, and they think I'm one of them.'"
(Me & Lee, Judyth Vary Baker, pg. 215)
 |
| David Ferrie |
Clearly Ferrie seems to contradict himself, first claiming that he
didn't wear his "priestly ring," then in the same breath noting that he
can penetrate "religious cults" in New Orleans with it on. Baker herself
has strongly disputed the notion that Ferrie had been ordained,
insisting that his bid with the AOCC fell through once Jack Martin
revealed his homosexuality to the bishops.
Peter Levenda,
who actually knew several of the personalities behind the AOCC as a
young adult, was unconvinced by Ferrie's alleged rejection based on his
homosexuality --quite a few priests in the wandering bishop circles were
homosexuals (some openly so), making this a rather flimsy excuse. On
the whole, Levenda's account is far more compelling than Baker's in this
regard.
The fact that Ferrie may well have been an ordained bishop conducting a
Black Mass is highly significant for reasons that are very rarely, if
ever, addressed by the countless website "exposing"
satanic ritual abuse (SRA). Levenda explains this significance as thus:
"The Black Mass which Ferrie was accused of performing is a ritual
that mocks those of the Catholic Church; essentially, it is an attempt
at organized blasphemy, an attack of rebellion, political as well as
theological. It is also designed to attract demonic influences, evil
spirits and the souls of the angry dead. Yet, this ritual carries very
little weight if performed by a lay-person. It is potentially quite
powerful, however, if performed by an ordained priest.
"A valid orientation is one of the most singular sources of spiritual
strength in the West. It is a line of ritual, faith and trust that
extends back in time through two thousand years; to those who believe in
the power of the 'laying on of hands' it is a potent magic, indeed.
Aleister Crowley, dubbed by the myopic British tabloids as the
'wickedest man in the world,' could not perform a Black Mass no matter
how much he may have liked to (there is no evidence that he ever wanted
to). He was not an ordained priest.
"Further, many rituals of ceremonial magic prescribed the use of relics
and other articles that could only be sourced from the Church, thus
giving rise to a great deal of theft and subterfuge. A priest, however,
has immense access to all of this and possesses the power to create
more: holy water, holy oil, a consecrated Host, etc. Inasmuch as many
grimoires – cookbooks of ritual magic – insist on invoking God, Jesus,
Mary, the Saints, etc., the use of genuinely blessed religious artifacts
would, of course, give the ritual that much more authority.
"Thus, David Ferrie – should his line of apostolic succession prove
valid – could 'legitimately' perform a Black Mass whereas Crowley (from
all available evidence) would not have been able to do so. This should
not be viewed as the sole objective, however. Many occultists value the
line of succession as a source of spiritual power whether or not they
consider themselves Christian. Power is power, wherever it is found and
by whatever means it can be obtained; a validly ordained priest has the
power to perform most of the sacraments, and the validly consecrated
bishop has the power to perform all of the sacraments,
including ordaining more priests and consecrating more bishops, thus
ensuring a line of power for his cult equal to that of the Catholic
Church. The allure is irresistible."
(Sinister Forces Book I, Peter Levenda, pg. 287)
The role validly ordained priests play in ritualistic Satanism,
especially the Black Mass, is a crucial one that is rarely addressed on
conspiracy blogs. Indeed, many act as those anyone is capable of
performing such rites when all "credible" (and I use that word extremely
loosely for such a dubious topic) sources indicate that this is far
from the case. The highly controversial Catholic priest
Malachi Martin indicates priests commonly lead such rites in his notorious
Hostage to the Devil as does famed mythologist
Robert Graves in the equally controversial
The White Goddess. In
The Golden Bough Sir
James George Frazer recounts tales amongst the French peasantry of a "
Mass of Saint Secaire" that bares striking similarities to the Black Mass and which could only be performed by a priest.
"... peasants believe that to revenge themselves on their enemies, bad
men will sometimes induce a priest to say a mass called the Mass of
Saint Secaire. Very few priests know this mass, and three- fourths of
those who do know it would not say it for love or money. None but wicked
priests dare to perform this gruesome ceremony, and you may be quite
sure that they will have a heavy account to render for it at the last
days. No curate or bishop, not even the archbishop of Auch, can pardon
them; that right belongs to the Pope of Rome alone. The Mass of Saint
Secaire may be said only in a ruined or deserted church, where owls mope
and hoot, where bats flit in the gloaming, where gypsies lodge of
nights, and where toads squat under the desecrated altar. Thither the
bad priest comes by night with his light o'love, and at the first stroke
of eleven he begins to mumble the mass backwards, and ends just as the
clocks are knelling the midnight hour. His leman acts as clerk. The host
he blesses is black and has three points; he consecrates no wine, but
instead he drinks water of a well into which the body of an unbaptized
infant has been flung. He makes the sign of the cross, but it is on the
ground and with his left foot. Many other things he does which no
good Christian could look upon without being struck blind and deaf and
dumb for the rest of his life. But the man for whom the mass is
said withers away little by little, and nobody can say what is the
matter with him; even the doctors can make nothing of it. They do not
know that he is slowly dying of the Mass of Saint Secaire."
(The Golden Bough, James George Frazer, pgs. 51-52)
In general the occult has been practiced at all levels of the Catholic Church for centuries, even amongst upper management.
"... Pope Sylvester II was one of the earliest of these mystically
inclined Popes. Due to his studies among the Arab philosophers of Spain,
he is considered one of the first to introduced Arabic numerals to
Europe. He was rumored to have built a mechanical head that would answer
questions put to it by the Pope. (This is an underlining myth among
many of the occult philosophers of the Dark and Middle Ages: the ability
to create talking heads.)
"Benedict IX (pontificate 1032-44, 1045, 1047-48) was another Pope
suspected of magical pursuits, although his Papacy was more notorious
for his sexual indulgences than anything else. Elected Pope at the young
age of eleven or twelve (some say around eighteen or twenty; either
way, the youngest Pope on record), he was considered to be 'a demon from
hell in the guise of a priest' by St. Peter Damian in his text Liber Gomorrhianus due
to his homosexuality and, it is said, bestiality. Benedict IX is the
only Pope to have held the office for three separate terms of office,
all due to political machinations and corruption. It is no wonder that
he was also accused of sorcery and demonology.
"Pope Gregory VII (pontificate 1073-85), while considered by many a
saintly man who forcibly established priestly celibacy as a rule in the
church, fought against corruption, and strove for unity between the
Eastern and Western churches, was nevertheless deposed on the grounds of
sorcery and magic. It was, of course, a political maneuver, and the
evidence provided against him is suspect.
"The Dominican Bishop St. Albertus Magnus was reputed to have a talking
head, like Sylvester II. This one, however, was smashed by his pupil St.
Thomas Aquinas.
"Roger Bacon (1214-94), a Franciscan monk famous for his scientific
research in the field of optics, among other disciplines, was imprisoned
on suspicion of magic and sorcery by his own Order. In actuality, he did
study alchemy and the occult, particularly Arab treatises on these
subjects, and was supported in his efforts by Pope Clement IV
(pontificate 1265-68).
"Pope Boniface VIII was accused of sorcery in 1303 A.D. by King Philip
IV ('Philippe le Bel') of France, only a few years before he organized
the wholesale arrests of the Knights Templar on charges of blasphemy and
devil-worship, which led to the subsequent execution of their Grand
Master, Jacques de Molay, in 1314.
"During another trial lasting from 1308 to 1313, Bishop Guichard of
Troyes was accused of sorcery and magic in the murder of the Queen.
"In 1317 the Bishop of Cahors was burned at the stake for his attempt on
the life of Pope John XXII through magic and incantations. He was
joined by Matteo Visconti and Galeazzo Visconti for the same crime
against the Pope.
"That same year, another man – a layperson – was convicted of the murder
of several persons through the use of wax images that have been
baptized by priests.
"In 1319, Brother Bernard Delicieux was convicted of possessing occult and magical books in Carcassonne, France.
"And one and on throughout the fourteenth century, an incredible number
of Catholic clergyman – including most importantly bishops and the
occasional Pope – were accused, tried, and convicted of using occult
means to rid themselves of political enemies. This was the same
period that saw the suppression of the Order of the Knights Templar, the
organization believed to have been the origin of the Masonic Orders
that would appear in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
"Thus, as we can see, there is a certain pedigree of occultism among the
Catholic hierarchy, by reputation if not in fact. This pedigree
certainly extended downward in the hierarchy to include all manner of
priests, and in these cases the evidence is more clearly available and
irrefutable."
(Papal Magic, "Simon", pgs. 41-45)
There have also long been rumblings of satanic cults being operated by "rogue" priests as well.
"Priests with less noble approaches to the subject of demons, however,
also proliferate throughout Church history. A few years before the
outbreak of possession at Loudon, a similar case took place in the town
of Aix-en-Provence in France, at another Ursuline convent. In the years
1610 a young novice –Magdalen de la Palude– entered the convent and
befriended another nun, Louise Capeau. In short order, Magdalen became
possessed, subject to fits, and this state became contagious to the
point that Louise Capeau also became possessed.
"Eventually, the two nuns revealed that they had been subject to spells
cast by a Catholic priest by the name of Louis Gaufridi, said to be the
head of all the magicians of Europe 'as far as Turkey.' Magdalen
revealed that she had been initiated into a coven of sorcerers and
witches by Gaufridi when she was still a child.
"This astonishing information was only the beginning, as Magdalene gave
many detailed descriptions of the action of the cult. Eventually, Father
Gaufridi was himself arrested and eventually admitted that he had come
into the possession of occult books left to them by his uncle and was
tempted to try them out. When he did, he found himself face-to-face with
demons, who instructed him in all the mysteries of magic. He used his
magic powers to seduce women, and introduce them to the cult and marry
them to demons, such as Beelzebub, the 'Lord of the Flies.'
"According to Gaufridi, his cult consisted of three levels of
degrees: that of novices, witches, and magicians (the highest degree).
Eventually, after the inquisitors had all the information they could use
from him, they had Gaufridi burned at the stake.
"Sixty years later, in Paris, we are confronted by an even greater
monstrosity, that of the Abbe Guibourg and his colleague and partner in
crime, Catherine Deshayes Monvoisin – known more popularly as La Voisin.
"This scandal, involving human sacrifice, Black Masses, poison, and the
murder of infants, rocked France during the reign of Louis XIV, the Sun
King. Most of what we know about Guibourg, the priest at the center of
the scandal, and his satanic excesses can be gleaned from the
interrogation archive still held at the Bibliotheque de l'Arsena and the
Bibliotheque Naionale in Paris. The La Voisin affair involved Madame de
Montespan, a mistress of King Louis XIV, who was afraid she would lose
the King's love and attention. Driven to distraction, she consulted the
famous La Voisin, a sorceress and fortune-teller, who told her that a
Black Mass had to be performed... on de Montespan's naked body.
"Several of these masses were performed, and the priest in charge was
one Etienn Guilbourg, a man of about sixty-seven years. He had been
chosen to replace another priest, Abbe Mariette, who had been performing
these rights for La Voisin until he found himself in prison for
sacrilege, and then went into self-imposed exile abroad. Guibourg
eventually would perform Black Masses in the hundreds, according to the
trial records, and during these Masses infants were sacrifice. At times,
he was assisted by other priests – the Abbe Davot, the Abbe Guignard,
and the Abbe Serault, among others, including Bishop Gille-Lefranc, for a
total of some fifty Catholic clergyman who were finally
executed for sacrilege, sorcery, and blasphemy over the affair – and
once news of this operation finally reached the authorities, a
large-scale crackdown took place during which more than one
hundred other persons – nobles and commoners – were arrested and
over thirty commoners executed (the noblest generally escaping the death
sentence)."
(ibid, pgs. 32-35)
And here we have David Ferrie, an ordained priest of the American
Orthodox Catholic Church, who was accused of performing Black Masses in
the months leading up to the assassination of JFK – the same David
Ferrie who was linked to the assassination by another ordained priest of
the AOCC, Jack S. Martin; and the same David Ferrie who was an arch
pedophile and expert hypnotist operating in a region of the country
heavily linked to various CIA behavioral modification experiments. Were
all of these things related, and somehow linked back to the AOCC?
No doubt many will believe that I am stretching here and I would not
even have gone into this digression concerning David Ferrie's possible
performance of Black Masses were it not for the fact that the American
Orthodox Catholic Church appears in at least two other instances of
incredible high strangeness in recent history.
The first instance involves a highly controversial book generally referred to as the "
Simon Necronomicon." The Simon
Necronomicon was allegedly a Medieval Arabic
grimoire that was adapted from a magical system handed down from ancient
Sumeria.
It was allegedly discovered in the early 1970s by an Orthodox priest
who uses the alias "Simon," who in turn came to possess it after he had
unwittingly borrowed it from another Orthodox priest (of a different
denomination) named William Prazsky. Prazsky, who had been consecrated
by Bishop Walter Propheta of the AOCC, apparently acquired the book and
other rare texts via series of thefts performed by other priests of his
church.
 |
| possibly Bishop Walter Propheta |
This account is of course highly, highly controversial. Many believe
that "Simon" is Peter Levenda himself and that he was one who wrote the
Simon
Necronomicon as an elaborate hoax to cash in on the
famous (and fictional) grimoire referenced to in several short stories by
H.P. Lovecraft.
Regardless of which account is true, however, the AOCC still crops up
in the tale: Levenda claims to have become indebted to the AOCC after
they helped him secure a religious deferment from the draft for the
Vietnam War.
"It was understood that Levenda would be acting as part of the 'team' of
right-wing, anti-Communist agents at the AOCC and available for such...
assignments as needed. This was not so much a formal request as quid pro quo as it was a suggestion."
(Dead Names, "Simon", pg. 72)
Of these "assignments, "Simon" noted:
"This meant acting as an informer on the various churches and bishops
with which he had contact, and to cooperate in whatever duties he was
asked to perform. Most of these were mundane and had no obvious
intelligence function."
(ibid, pg. 72n)
 |
| Levenda |
So Levenda was (briefly) an acknowledged informant for the AOCC. And here he is, lurking somewhere behind the notorious Simon
Necronomicon. One of the most curious aspects of the Simon
Necronomicon is the fact that, despite being widely denounced as hoax, even vigorous critiques of the grimoire such as
Daniel Harms and John Gonce acknowledge that it works. Gonce apparently even went so far as to claim that the book was protected by an
egregore, a kind of psychic entity.
"... The Necronomicon must be the only book of its kind in the world whose detractors and supporters both believe is a book of power. Nowhere does the same reputation exist for other occult works. The Satanic Bible is not singled out for this concentrated fury. Neither are any of the ceremonial magic grimoires. Gonce's is saying that the Necronomicon
is dangerous, that it encourages people to violence, that it contains
mysterious traps for the unwary or uninitiated, that even Gonce and
Harms themselves have been victimized by magical attacks from users of
the book. Not since James Joyce's Ulysses was banned by the U.S.
government has there been such a pseudomoral outrage over a book. In
fact, it is probably the only volume of modern times that has been
characterized as a book that is itself intrinsically powerful. This is
certainly a phenomenon of immense interest and importance: a mere book
whose reading of the causes all sorts of extreme events to occur..."
(Dead Names, "Simon", pg. 308)
Numerous accounts can be found online of people experiencing hauntings
and other bouts of high strangeness simply from having a copy of the
Simon
Necronomicon in their home. But I digress.
 |
| the dread Simon Necronomicon |
The other bizarre appearance of the AOCC in the surreal I would like to
address involves a figure known as Thomas Jude Baumler. Baumler had
worked out of Guy Banister's office in New Orleans in the months leading
up to the assassination. What's more, he was brought into the AOCC by
another former Banister employee and wandering bishop, Jack S. Martin.
Peter Levenda gave a great rundown of Baumler in his "The Bishop and the
Boys" series posted on his
Sinister Forces blog a few years ago, but these blog entries have since been taken down. There were cut and pasted in their entirety in this
forum, from which the following quote is taken:
"And was Jack Martin really investigating “phony” churches on behalf of
the US government? Or was he trying to call someone’s attention to
something? Jack Martin remained a bishop with the American Orthodox
Catholic Church to the end of his days, even going so far as to bring in
another Banister associate, the corpulent attorney and unapologetic
racist Thomas Jude Baumler, to the Orthodox fold, consecrating Baumler a
bishop in August of 1974, nearly eleven years after the Kennedy
assassination and seven years after the beginning of the Garrison
investigation and the death of both Stanley and Ferrie.
"From personal correspondence with an individual involved with this
affair, I learned that Baumler had already been ordained a priest by
Stanley years before; in other words, prior to Stanley’s death in March,
1967. Baumler’s status in New Orleans society was assured; he came
from an old family and was associated with one of the famous Mardi Gras
'crewes'. In addition, according to my informant, Baumler was also a
Mason and belonged to the same lodge – the Etoile Polair Lodge of the
French Grand Orient – as Mafia don Carlos Marcello, the man for whom
David Ferrie was working on the day of the assassination."
("The Bishop and the Boys Part III", Peter Levenda)
 |
| the Etoile Polair Lodge of the French Grand Orient |
In the mid-1960s Baumler would become involved with one of the most notorious "churches" of recent times.
"The magazine was selling well and the Chapters, now in a number of
cities, were bringing in money at last. We had a theology and it seemed a
rational next step to incorporate as a church with a tax-exempt status.
An attorney was needed to conduct the business and New Orleans, with
its overlay of sensuous spirituality, felt an appropriate place to do
it.
"Quite how we stumbled into the attorney, the late, great Tommy Baumler,
others might recall; perhaps it was his irreverent flamboyance that
magnetized us together. He was already immensely fat and as I picture
him in my mind's eye, I see him hunched in a darkened office, an
overhead fan barely disturbing the heavy, dank air. A lenticular cloud
of cigar smoke hangs above his head like a dirty halo. He was gruff,
cynical, rude and very funny. We were charmed.
"Everything about Tommy Baumler was dark. He thought we were a great
joke and he loved the idea of turning us into a regular church. Much of
the flowery, pompous language in the incorporation papers came directly
from Tommy's fevered imagination. We had to talk him out of calling is
the Church of Christ and Satan as being simply too provocative, finally
setting on the Church of the Final Judgment."
(Love Sex Fear Death: The Inside Story of the Process Church of the Final Judgment, "My Life Inside the Process Church," Timothy Wyllie, pg. 74)
Yes folks, Tommy Baumler, a bishop of the American Orthodox Catholic Church, helped incorporate the
Process Church of the Final Judgment
and even helped the Process select its full name. As many of you are
probably aware, the Process Church has been a long time staple of
conspiracy culture, having been linked to the
Manson family and the
Son of Sam killings, among other infamies. As I argued in a prior series (which can be found
here,
here,
here and
here), the role that the Process Church of
Robert and Mary Ann DeGrimston played in this bizarre cult underground was likely marginal at best.
 |
| Robert DeGrimston, a long time whipping boy of conspiracy theorists |
But much like the
Minutemen organization (as noted before
here), there seems to have been
two
Process Churches --the "official" Process of the DeGrimstons and the
"real" Process, a cult that may well have been comprised of wandering
bishops drawn from the AOCC and other fringe Orthodox and Catholic
Churches in that netherworld. This topic shall be discussed in much
greater depth in a future series.
Before wrapping up there is one last aspect of the AOCC that bears
mentioning here, and that is the organization's likely ties to the
Sovereign Order of Saint John of Jerusalem (SOSJ), sometimes referred to
as the Shickshinny Knights of Malta. As was noted in
part six of this series, the SOSJ seemed to have played some type of role in the JFK assassination and cover up. As was noted
here and
here, the order also played an enormous role in the creation of the "
Patriot movement," having members involved with the creation of the
John Birch Society as well as the
Posse Comitatus movement (from which both the modern "
sovereign citizen" and
militia movements derive). As was noted in the
sixth installment
in this series and here, the SOSJ was littered with former high ranking
military officers (including several generals and admirals) as well as
CIA assets.
 |
| the Knights Hospitaller cross many modern Knights of Malta organization claiming descent from the Medieval order use |
"Simon" indicated in his history of the Necronomicon that the
underworlds of wandering bishops and knighthoods claiming Medieval
descent frequently overlapped.
"In addition to bogus churches, there are bogus nobles. That is, bogus
orders of chivalry, of knighthood, and titles like baron, marquis,
count, and duke. There are legitimate lines of nobility, of course, and
legitimate orders of knighthood, such as the famous – or infamous,
depending on your point of view – Knights of Malta. But there are many,
many false orders that have been established for the express purpose of
separating credulous Americans from their American dollars.
"The reader may be interested to learn that, often, those who create
bogus orders of knighthood are also involved in bogus churches, and that
sometimes these same individuals may be involved in bogus universities
as well."
(Dead Names, "Simon", pg. 43)
Numerous members of the AOCC were involved with various orders of knighthood. In the first installment of his groundbreaking
Sinister Forces trilogy Peter Levenda notes that Bishop Walter Propheta, the head of the AOCC, even acquired a
Papal Knighthood at one point.
"For an unknown consideration, Propheta was to receive a Papal
Knighthood from one Prince Policastro of Sicily. This event had
been arranged with the Belgian bishop aftermentioned. This dignity was
delivered to Propheta's church by two gentlemen from the Italian Embassy
in a limousine. The reason for this award is not known to the author;
indeed, as an award it would not have been particularly necessary since
Propheta had his own purveyor of knighthoods, baronetcies, dukedoms and
other such endowments in the person the Bishop Pierre Michel Lorenzo de
Valitch, a putative Serbo-Croatian Count who had been in the art gallery
business years before, but who ran a flourishing trade in bogus orders
of knighthood for the rich and famous. The Count's appearance was
reminiscent of a young Bela Lugosi, complete with kidskin gloves,
monocle, and silver-knobbed walking stick. Thus, there would have been
no particular need to have gone to such extremes to pick up what the
Count could have more easily provided using his own connections.
The author suspects that he was being tested in this instance, and
introduced the religious underground and some of its political
affiliations."
(Sinister Forces Volume I, Peter Levenda, pgs. 282-283)
Bishop de Valitch is an interesting figure. He seems to have overseen his own Sovereign Order of Saint John, now known as the
Sovereign Order of Saint John Knights of Malta Federation of the Autonomous Priories. According to "Simon," de Valitch had ties to the Serbian war criminal
Željko Ražnatović, known as "Arkan."
"This would be the late Bishop DeValtch, a Serbian count with the AOCC
who had ties to an infamous Serbian war criminal known as Arkan
or 'Archangel'. DeValich's church had provided money laundering and
other services to Arkan and his Serbian warlords, according to SISMI,
the Italian military intelligence organ..."
(Dead Names, "Simon", pg. 63n)
 |
| "Arkan" |
Levenda notes in his "The Bishop and the Boys" series that at least one
member of the AOCC also held membership in the SOSJ (the Shickshinny
organization)
at the time of his consecration:
"One of the other bishops of the American Orthodox Catholic Church –
Homer Ferdinand Roebke, an associate and colleague of Carl Stanley –
consecrated one Forest Ernest Barber on March 7, 1965, less than five
months after the Forbes consecration. As I am informed by investigator
David Guyatt, Barber was a member of the Augustan Society (an
“International Genealogical, Historical, Heraldic and Chivalric Society”
with some interesting associations) as well as of the Shickshinny
Knights of Malta, a far-right organization and secret society that
numbered among its initiates such intelligence notables as the rabid
right-winger Major General Charles A. Willoughby (the former Adolf
Tscheppe-Weidenbach and member of General MacArthur’s intelligence staff
during World War II) as well as Colonel Philip J Corso, a man with a
long background in intelligence dating from the war who was the author
of The Day After Roswell, a controversial memoire of his experiences in
the aftermath of the UFO crash in New Mexico."
("The Bishop and the Boys Part III," Peter Levenda)
Its also possible that Archbishop Christopher Maria (Carl) Stanley was also involved in the SOSJ. According to
this article
posted on something known as the Maine World News Service, Stanley was
the Grand Master of his own version of the Knights of Malta, known as
the Sovereign Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, Knights Hospitaller,
Priory of the Holy Savior. While the credibility of this article should
certainly be questioned, it makes no outrageous claims and its reference
section seems to be on the up and up. Of this order,
the article states:
"This group is one of the many scissions of the Shickshinny operation
(see II). It was headed by the Rev. Christopher Carl Jerome Stanley
of the Old Catholic Church. Stanley was consecrated by J.F.
Assendelft-Altland, a highly controversial "episcopus vagans" and
self- styled Patriarch of the Ancient Catholic Byzantine Church.
According to Formhals,(5) Stanley initially styled himself
"Bishop" later "Archbishop". Somewhere along the line he also
acquired the titles of "Count of Durazzo" and "Prince of the Holy
Roman Empire". The prioral seat was originally located in
Louisville, then moved to Seattle, and finally to Texas. After
Stanley’s death the group disappeared from the American chivalric
scene."
 |
| Archbishop (now "Saint") Stanley |
This would seem to imply that Stanley himself was a member of the SOSJ
before founding his own order some time around 1960. Still, if the
above-mentioned Homer Ferdinand Roebke is any indication, it would seem
that overlap between the membership of the SOSJ and the AOCC continued
well after Stanley officially broke with the SOSJ. In general, the
netherworld orders of knighthood and wandering bishops is quite
incestuous.
What then are we to make of the appearance of the SOSJ and the AOCC and
the broader anti-Communist network to which both belonged in relation to
the Kennedy assassination? As was examined in
part three
of this series, this network seemed to have been involved in arms and
drug trafficking as well as sexual slavery in conjunction with
Syndicate figures and US intelligence assets. In
part four
I also noted that there was overlap between prominent figures engaged
in the CIA/Pentagon behavioral modification experiments, most notably in
the figure of Project Artichoke head Morse Allen. And here we find
David Ferrie, a member of the AOCC with deep intelligence ties, engaged
in pedophilia throughout the New Orleans area and beyond and rumored to
be preforming Black Masses in the months leading up to the
assassination.
At this point this researcher feels compelled to issue a warning as I
have ventured into the world of one of conspiracy culture's most
fanatically held beliefs, namely that of a vast international cult
network engaged in what is commonly referred to as Satanic ritual abuse
(SRA) under the auspices of the US intelligence community. These claims
first began to come to public attention at large in the late 1970s and
would become a
bona fide pop culture staple by the 1980s.
"Nineteen seventy-seven was also the year that Satan returned to Earth, according to the controversial bestseller Michelle Remembers,
allegedly a true story about a satanic cult survivor and the book that
started the craze later memorialized by Geraldo Rivera in his famous
television broadcast of October 24, 1988, "Devil Worship: Exposing
Satan's Underground," one of the most-watch programs in television
history. The broadcast included live interviews with former FBI agent
Ted Gunderson and investigative journalist Maury Terry, who both
insisted on the reality of murderous satanic cults in the United
States..."
(Dead Names, "Simon", pg. 155)
By and large these claims are almost totally bogus.
"Prompted in part by the hysteria surrounding the revelations of Maury
Terry concerning the Process and the Son of Sam murders, and the
appearance of Terry and others on a controversial Geraldo Rivera
television program, these cult cops found themselves with their hands
full. Like the witchcraft mania that gripped Salem at the end of the
seventeenth century, America was in the throes of 'satanic cult survivor
syndrome': a new psychological category defined by victims coming
forward and claiming they had been sexually and physically abused by
members of a cult. Often, these claims were accompanied by lurid tales
of generational cult activity and the blood sacrifice of infants and
children committed far from the prying eyes of the authorities. At one
point it was claimed that tens of thousands of children went missing
ever years as a result of the insatiable thirst of satanic cults for
fresh, virginal victims.
"Eventually it was discovered that the statistics didn't quite match the
claims of the 'survivors.' There simply could not have been that many
sacrificial victim; some young women who claimed they had been used as
'breeders' for the cults – carrying babies to term that would be
sacrificed in obscene rituals, without any official record of their
birth – were found never to have been pregnant at all. In fact, the FBI
was having a hard time coming up with even a single solitary case of the
ritual murder of an infant carried out by a cult. No bodies, no
evidence, no crime scenes, no crime."
(ibid, pgs. 243-244)
Eventually SRA proponents tried to rationalize these discrepancies by
arguing that SRA was part of the CIA/Pentagon behavioral modification
experiments and thus covered up by the
US intelligence community. This led to the rise of the
Project Monarch conspiracy theories, which are
almost surely a hoax, as is the bulk of the SRA claims.
But not only are these satanic cults a hoax, but a dangerous one at that. As the
satanic cult hysteria
revved up in the 1980s countless individuals had their reputations,
careers and very lives ruined as a result of these claims. The most well
known of these incidents are the so-called
West Memphis Three,
three teenage metalheads who were falsely convicted of a series of
brutal child murders in Arkansas in 1993. These boys (now men) rotted in
prison until 2011, 18 years of their lives wasted while the actual
killer(s?) remained free.
 |
| the West Memphis Three |
Nor was the case of the West Memphis Three an isolated incident.
Four San Antonio women
were just recently released from prison (in November of 2013) after
they were falsely convicted of committing satanic ritual abuse in 1998,
for instance.
But beyond these travesties of justice, the satanic ritual abuse
hysteria accomplished something potentially even more tragic: Deflecting
blame from the one community, that of these bizarre knighthoods,
wandering bishops, fringe Christian churches and the broader
anti-Communist network to which they belonged, that may have actually
been involved in such things. And again, that is highly debatable,
though this anti-Communist network was involved in any of horrible
things over the years. In recent series I've sketched an outline of it,
from its origins in the
First Red Scare and pre-WWII
union busting up to the foundation of a powerful right wing lobby group known as the
American Security Council (ASC), which became the national front for this network; the ASC's international counterpart, the
World Anti-Communist League (WACL); and the US "Patriot" movement, which was closely aligned with both the ASC and the WACL. The ASC series can be found
here,
here,
here and
here; the WACL,
here,
here,
here and
here; the Patriot movement one
here,
here,
here and
here.
Those of you just joining me are urged to look over these series to put
the information presented in my examination of the Kennedy
assassination in context.
And it is here that I shall wrap things up for now. In a future series
or two that will appear at some point in 2014 I shall examine the
possibility of some type of cult network operating in this
anti-Communist underground and popping up in places as diverse as the
Process Church and the Patriot movement. In the mean time this blog will
focus on a few "lighter" topics for a time. Stay tuned.
Posts
Threatening
letters from copyright trolls usually take pretty much the same format –
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way. For the payment of a few hundred to a few thousand dollars or
euros, we can make this all go away.”
Excluding French fries and potato chips, some
health experts consider potatoes superfoods. Unfortunately, the stigma
of spuds remains; their health promoting and nutritional aspects are
mostly unknown, buried in misinformation and partial facts that scare
most consumers away.
