The Silence of the Magicians Part II

This is the second part of my examination of Silence of the Lambs. Part one can be found here. And now, onto the toponomy.

The importance that Memphis plays in the film is also interesting. In the occult, the Egyptian Memphis is the location of the head of Osiris.

"Such is the myth or legend of Osiris, as told by Greek writers and eked out by more or less fragmentary notices or allusions in native Egyptian literature. A long inscription in the temple at Denderah has preserved a list of the god's graves, and other texts mention the parts of his body which were treasured as holy relics in each of the sanctuaries. Thus his heart was at Athribis, his backbone at Busiris, his neck at Letopolis, and his head at Memphis."
(The Golden Bough, James Frazer, pg. 370-371)

In Freemasonry, there is a rite known as the Rite of Memphis-Misraim. Though similar, the Memphis rite wasn't officially developed until the 19th century. According to Wikipedia:

"The Rite of Memphis was constituted by Jacques Etienne Marconis de Nègre in 1838, as a variant of the Rite of Misraïm, combining elements from Templarism and chivalry with Egyptian and alchemical mythology. It had at least two lodges (“Osiris” and “Des Philadelphes”) at Paris, two more (“La Bienveillance” and “De Heliopolis”) in Brussels, and a number of English supporters. The Rite gained a certain success among military Lodges. It took on a political dimension and in 1841 it became dormant, probably because of the repression following the armed uprising of Louis Blanqui’s Société des Saisons in 1839. With the overthrow of Louis-Philippe in 1848, the Order was revived on March 5, with its most prominent member being Louis Blanc, a socialist member of the provisional government with responsibility for the National Workshops."

Interestingly, these Lodges seem to have been heavily involved in the revolutionary movements that broke out in 1848.

"The major society through which the new Italian revolutionaries recruited allies in London, Brussels, and Geneva was called the Philadelphians. Like the earlier society of the same name, it was an outgrowth of Masonry, which provided international connections and an outer shell of secrecy for recruitment. Some prominent socialists like Louis Blanc drifted into the camp of the national revolutionaries in London through the Masonic Lodge of United Philadelphians."
(Fire in the Minds of Men, James Billington, pg. 329) 

As the American Memphis relates to the occult, controversial researcher Michael A Hoffman writes:

"Memphis was the city of the Egyptian kings that was the fabled repository of the severed head of Osiris. Memphis, Tennessee is associated in the Group Mind with two dead 'kings,' Martin Luther King Jr. and Elvis Presley. This city in America's 'Little Egypt' region is part of mystical toponomy. It was established by the Masonic Rite of Memphis and Mizraim which specialized in the 'magnetic' masonry of Anton Mesmer."
(Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare, pg. 81)

In general, the locations of Silence are heavily significant in conspiracy circles. Ohio and West Virginia alone have had more than their fair share of weirdness and intrigue over the years, as I've chronicled before here. Its also quite interesting that the mental facility in which Dr. Lecter is housed is located in Baltimore, Maryland. About an hour's drive to the west of Baltimore resides Fort Detrick, while Edgewood Arsenal is just a little over a half an hour to the northeast. Conspiracy buffs are of course well aware that both institutions were at the heart of the US government's early work on MK-ULTRA.

"Under the code name MKDELTA, the Clandestine Services had set up procedures the year before to govern the use of CBW products (MKDELTA now became the operational side of MKULTRA.) Also in 1952, TSS had made an agreement with the Special Operations Division (SOD) of the Army's biological research center at Fort Detrick, Maryland whereby SOD would produce germ weapons for the CIA's use (with the program called MKNAOMI). Sid Gottlieb later testified that the purpose of these programs was 'to investigate whether and how it was possible to modify an individual's behavior by covert means...'"
(The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate", John Marks, pg. 61-62)

Edgewood Arsenal was also closely involved in MK-ULTRA, as well as the saga of Frank Olson.

"The story of Frank Olson has been known for quite some time, but only in bits and pieces. It is well-known, for instance, that he was a scientist who was given LSD without his knowledge, and who became psychotic and who died after a plunge from a hotel room window...

"What is not well-known, and what has only come to light recently, is that Dr. Olson was working on chemical and biological warfare weapons at his laboratory at Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland, work that involved the search for drugs that would unlock the human memory bank and help to create the prefect assassin, the 'Manchurian Candidate'; that he doubted the morality of his work when confronted with some 'test subjects' at a secret base in the United Kingdom..."
(Sinister Forces Book One, Peter Levenda, pg. 194)

Secret bases were not the only locations used to test various techniques of 'memory manipulation.' Mental hospitals were also quite popular. Consider the efforts of the notorious Dr. Ewen Cameron and his work at the Allan Memorial Institute. Mental patients, along with military men and convicts, provided much of the research fodder for these types of experiments. I've wondered if the buffoonish character of Dr. Frederick Chilton, the head of the asylum housing Hannibal, was meant as a satire of Cameron and other CIA medical sadists.

Surely the character of Jack Crawford and the portrayal of the BSU, as they cluelessly follow one dead end after another in the Buffalo Bill case while an FBI trainee and an incarcerated serial killer put in the real work, is mockery at its finest. Despite the venerated status the Behavior Science Unit and the criminal profiler have gained in pop culture (in no small part due to this film, ironically) in the past few decades, their actual effectiveness is highly debatable as the skyrocketing number of serial killers that have merged since 1980 seem to indicate.

"Most Americans are probably familiar with what is considered the classic serial killer 'profile.' This was a notion put forth by the venerable FBI, which coined the term 'serial killer,' and pioneered the concept of 'profiling,' in an alleged attempt to understand the phenomenon of mass murder. It appears to be the vase though that the concept of the 'serial killer profile' was put forth largely to misinform the public."
(Programmed to Kill, David McGowan, pg. 99)

McGowan goes on to write:

"Clearly then there are any number of serial killer cases in which there is no defining modus operandi, and in which the deceased don't fit any kind of specific 'victim profile.' In fact, it is difficult to find a case study of any serial killer who does leave a distinct 'signature' at each crime scene.

"And what of the notion of the serial killer as a lone predator? Was Henry and Otis' partnership an aberration? Not at all. There are any number of serial killer cases where it is officially acknowledged that there was more than one perpetrator. The Manson Family, of course, is probably the most well known case of multiple-perpetrator 'serial killers...'"
(ibid, pg. 105)

For some examples of how profiling has not only failed to assess a killer, but has also prolonged their crime sprees, be sure to check out this brief piece from the Los Angeles Times. It features an apt assessment of profiling:

"Profiling is a natural contradiction. Its masters claim to understand the minds of strangers--often irrational killers. It is a soft, inexact science in a field that demands specifics."

The 'break' in the Buffalo Bill case occurs when Lecter suggests that Bill had applied and been rejected at the handful of medical facilities in the US engaged in sex change operations on psychological grounds. As transsexualism does not fit the 'serial killer profile,' Lecter's advice is almost disregarded.

And now, on to Dr. Hannibal Lecter, one of the most iconic characters in pop culture of the past several decades. The name Hannibal is of course in reference to the legendary Carthaginian general and outsider who opposed the rising power of the Roman Empire. Hannibal overcame the vast numerical advantages of the Roman legions through superior strategy and stealth. Dr. Hannibal Lecter operates in much the same fashion in regards to the Cryptocracy.

As a psychiatrist, Dr. Lecter is well acquainted with the methods of the Cryptocracy. Of Lecter, Michael A. Hoffman remarks:

"So he's part of the priesthood, but which priesthood? Psychiatrists are all priests but Lecter uses his knowledge of psychiatry to defeat the psychiatrists."
(Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare, pgs. 133-134)

The comparison of psychiatrists, especially the ones involved in MK-ULTRA and like projects, is far more apt that it may initially seem. Remember that many of the tools of mind control such as drugs and hypnosis were originally developed by priesthoods in the ancient world.

"But in exploring the mind and developing techniques for unlocking its secrets, the Agency unknowingly tread on areas that have been the domain of religion and mysticism for thousands of year. Cults as disparate as that of Eleusis in Greece, Tantra in India, Siberian shamanism, Native American shamanism, Taoism in China, Tibetan Buddhism, Jewish Qabalism, even the relatively modern phenomenon of European ceremonial magic -as represented in the twentieth century by the Golden Dawn, the OTO, and individuals such as Jack Parsons, Aleister Crowley, and MacGregor Mathers -and countless other disciplines had already mapped out large areas of consciousness and developed methods for entering relatively unscathed. As mythologists such as Mircea Eliade, Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, and others have demonstrated, there is a great deal of similarity in 'technology' among these practices, and the similarity exists for a reason."
(Sinister Forces Book One, Peter Levenda, pg. 219) 

However, magician is a much better description of what the CIA's cabal of psychiatrists truly were.

"All of these techniques -hallucinogenic drugs, hypnosis, acts of terrorism, disinformation -share an ontological purpose: to manipulate perceptions, to recreate reality. As we noted above, the German word for psychological warfare translates as 'worldview  warfare': a battle of perceptions, of consensus realities... As the men of the OSS, CIA, and military intelligence developed from the armchair scholars and academics that most of them were before the war years into soldiers fighting the Cold War on fronts  all over the world, they became -in a very real sense -magicians. As we will see, the CIA mind control projects themselves represented an assault on consciousness and reality that has not been seen in history since the age of the philosopher-kings and their court alchemists."
(ibid, pg. 144)

Hannibal Lecter's background as a Baltimore based psychiatrist seems to be an allusion to his involvement in mind control. Certainly the final chapter of Hannibal strongly indicate that both Hannibal and creator Thomas Harris are well aware of the concept of 'psychic driving' and the like. Yet Hannibal, hidden away in the deepest, darkest hole of Chilton's hospital, is clearly opposed to the Cryptocracy.
On the other hand, he clearly has no love for the plebs either. In many ways Lecter is a kind of Crowleyian figure, an insider's outsider. For all of the bashing Crowley takes amongst Christian themed conspiracy circles, many seem to forget that Crowley was instrumental in releasing much of the early occult knowledge, which drew the ire of his former associates in the Golden Dawn, among others. Crowley of course did not do this for sympathetic reasons, but likely for his own amusement.

"The Secrets of the Adepts are not to be revealed to men. We only wish they were. When a man comes to me and asks for the Truth, I go away and practice teaching the Differential Calculus to a Bushman; and I answer the former only when I have succeeded with the latter. But to withhold the Alphabet of Mysticism from the learner is the device of a selfish charlatan. That which can be taught shall be taught, and that which cannot be taught may at least be learnt."
(777 and Other Qabalistic Writings, Alesier Crowley, pg. xii)

Lecter seemingly operates in much the same fashion. He does not, for instance, reveal the truth to Starling, but he does give her the keys necessary to accomplish her task. What's more, Lecter uses the tools of the magician frequently to defeat his adversaries in the FBI and the psychiatric field, often with a wicked sense of humor. In Masonry this cruel jesting is referred to as a hoodwink.

"Satire is quite important in the occult scheme, especially as epilogue. Mockery is the ne plus ultra of ceremonial murder."
(Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare, Michael A. Hoffman, pg. 135)

Thus, in the midst of the his escape from Memphis (har har) Lecter takes the time to mutilate and posse Officer Boyle so that his body resembles both a spent moth cocoon and the crucified Christ. I shall allow my readers to figure that one out for themselves.

Hannibal Lecter is frequently seen as a glorification of evil. Certainly his status as a pop culture icon should give any reasonable person pause. The appeal Dr. Lecter has to the public is not his cruelty, or his refinement, but the sense that he's getting away with something. And indeed he is. Above all things, Hannibal is a reminder that the Cryptocracy is not invincible. A lone man, he succeeds in outwitting his opponents in the FBI and the mental fields and the vast resources they have at their disposal. Even worse, his skills are such that his adversaries frequently have no choice but to seek out his help, further weakening their position until he is able to mount his escape. As Hannibal disappears into the Caribbean in the final shots of the film to "have an old friend for dinner" there is a sense that justice has somehow been served.

And in way, against the deafening silence of the magicians, it has.

The Silence of the Magicians Part I

Silence of the Lambs stands as one of the most important films of its era, in addition to a genre defining work. In much the same way all 'gangster' movies are judged by the standards set by The Godfather films, so goes the serial killer subgenre and Silence. It also happens to be a film absolutely loaded with esoteric significance. By all accounts, the Thomas Harris novels on which the popular 'Hannibal' series are based are a gold mine of 'Revelation of Method' type information. Unfortunately, Recluse has only read one Harris novel, Hannibal, and that was all the way back in the Dark Ages that were high school. Needless to say, the significance went well over my head at the time, and thus I will not be able to draw from the Harris books for further support of this piece. Pity, but I believe the film has more than enough symbolism and hints to work with.

Within conspiracy circles one of the most controversial claims revolves around the ever growing phenomenon of serial killers. As violent crimes in American society progressively declined (until recent years), the rise of serial murders since the 1980s is a major deviance from the trend. This has led several researchers over the years to suggest that the rise in serial murders in the modern era is a form of covert terrorism being carried out by the Cryptocracy. Of course, conspiracies surrounding serial murders stretches all the way back to one of the originators, namely Jack the Ripper. Those of you that have either read Steven Knight's Jack the Ripper: The Final Solution, and/or have seen the films Murder by Decree or From Hell are aware of the links between the Ripper killings and Freemasonry. Those of you unfamiliar with these materials can find a somewhat biased synopsis of these theories at Wikipedia here.

In the modern era researchers such Michael A Hoffman, Adam Gorightly, and David McGowan have suggested that several of the most notorious serial killers, in addition to assassins and spree shooters, were products of covert mind control programs to wage a war of domestic terrorism against the peoples of the United States for the sake of bringing about a police state.

The above statement is of course a lot to swallow, and Recluse is even feeling a little silly about writing it presently. But it is something that I plan on pursuing in depth in future blogs as there is far more merit to this theory than many of the more seemingly 'practical' conspiracy theories floating around the web. That the CIA and other like organizations have actively been looking for ways to 'program' assets is not, however, a conspiracy.

"For intelligence purposes, what was required of MK-ULTRA was the ability to manipulate memory, and to relax the inhibitions of captured enemy agents so that they would reveal their secrets. Thus, what the Freudians call the 'superego' had to be bypassed, allowing the controller direct access to the contents of an enemy agent's mind. That was step one. Step two would involve erasing specific pieces of information from the subject's memory and replacing those pieces with new bits of memory, thus permitting the Agency to send that agent back into the field without any knowledge that he or she had been interrogated and had given up sensitive information. Step three was a potential bonus: Could the enemy agent then be 'programmed' to commit acts on behalf of the Agency, without knowing who gave the commands or why? This was the essence of the Manchurian Candidate. It is also the essence of what we know today as hypnotherapy and 'depth' psychoanalysis, for the psychiatrist or psychotherapist in this case is looking for access to the patent's unconscious layers, to extract important information (such as childhood trauma) and to neutralize the effects of that trauma, in some cases replacing certain unwanted or negative behavior patterns with new, approved patterns. Persons going to hypnotherapists for help with a drinking problem, or smoking, or over-eating, go through a similar process, with the important difference that the entire treatment is voluntary. What the Agency was looking for was a key that would unlock these secrets and allow unfettered access to the human mind, with or without the voluntary cooperation or submission of the 'patient.'"
(Sinister Forces Book One, Peter Levenda, pgs. 218-219)

The major debate is not whether the US intelligence community has actively been looking for ways to 'program' assets, but to what lengths this programming can be taken. I have already laid some background on this topic in my blog on 'Cults, Gangs, Dope, and Intelligence' as well as my series on Charles Manson, which can be read here and here. For those of you that really want to play connect the dots, read my three part child trafficking series here, here, and here, and take in my two part documentary on the Brotherhood of Eternal Love here and here. For the purposes of this blog I will not be delving into the possibility of an actual 'MK-Serial Killer' program, but the possibility that the film Silence of the Lambs is a thinly veiled account of such a program. Now, to the main event.

Lambs centers around a would be FBI agent named Clarice Starling, who is played by Jodie Foster. Foster is of course an apt choice as she was the obsession of would be presidential assassin John Hinckley Jr., who is himself widely suspected of being a 'Manchurian Candidate.' Hinckley in turn was obsessed with Foster on account of her role as a prostitute in Taxi Driver in which Robert De Niro stars as an unhinged Vietnam veteran who attempts to assassinate a rising politician before going on a shooting spree intended to save the prostitute played by Foster from her pimp. Taxi Driver, with its memes of political assassination, child prostitution, and general conspiracy is itself big on 'Revelation of Method.' 15 years after its release Foster would find herself starring in yet another mind control-soaked masterpiece.

In Lambs Foster finds herself entangled in the web of two separate serial killers, one dubbed 'Buffalo Bill', the other the legendary Dr. Hannibal Lecter character played by Sir Anthony Hopkins. At the onset of the film Lecter is incarcerated in a Baltimore mental facility while the so-called 'Buffalo Bill' murderer, one Jame Gumb, is in the midst of his rampage. The head of the Behavior Science Unit, a character named Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn) who is based upon legendary profiler John E. Douglas, sends Starling to interview Lecter in Baltimore. Starling is under the impression that she is being sent simply to convince Dr. Lecter to fill out a questionnaire when in fact Crawford is hoping that Lecter may provide some insight into Buffalo Bill. Hannibal picks up on Crawford's play but opts to help Starling anyway.

Not so subtle hints that Buffalo Bill is in fact a Manchurian Candidate are dropped liberally throughout. At one point Hannibal himself blatantly tells Starling, "Our Billy wasn't born a criminal, Clarice. He was made one through years of systematic abuse." Bill is given a background common of many serial killers, namely one featuring years of sexual abuse. As with several high profile serial killers such as Jeffrey Dahmer, David Berkowitz ('Son of Sam'), and Leonard Lake, Bill is also a veteran, having served in the U.S. Navy. And yes, I gleamed this detail from reading several synopsises of the book, and not from the movie, so I'm cheating ever so slightly. Anyway, whether Bill was groomed from early childhood for the role he eventually plays, or whether he was simply recruited while serving in the Navy due to his background, we can not know.

What we can know is that Bill links himself throughout the film with both the butterfly and the moth, two insects with heavy esoteric significance in the occult. This is especially true of the butterfly, which along with scarab, the scorpion and the bee, are the chief insect symbols.

"The butterfly (under the name of Psyche, a beautiful maiden of opalescent light) symbolizes the human soul because of the stages it passes through in order to unfold its power of flight. The three divisions through which the butterfly passes in its unfoldment resemble closely the three degrees of the Mystery School, which degrees are regarded as consummating the unfoldment of man by giving him emblematic wings by which he may soar to the skies. Unregenerate man, ignorant and helpless, is a symbolized by the stage  between ovum and larva; the disciple, seeking truth and dwelling in meditation, by the second stage, from larva to pupa, at which time the insect enters its chrysalis (the tomb of the Mysteries); the third stage, from pupa to imago (wherein the perfect butterfly comes forth), typifies the unfolded enlightened soul of the initiate rising from the tomb of his baser nature."
(The Secret Teachings of All Ages, Manly P. Hall, pg. 270)

Those of you familiar with the concept of the 'Monarch Project' will also recognize the significance of the butterfly, as the project derives its name from the Monarch butterfly. The Monarch Project is another controversial aspect of conspiracy culture as their is limited evidence to its actual existence, though its objectives (to create a 'programmed' intelligence asset) are very similar to official CIA programs such as MK-ULTRA. Here I will only briefly define Monarch, and delve into its legitimacy. To that end, former Republican Nebraska state senator and CIA asset John DeCamp notes:

"'Monarch' refers to young people in America who were victims of mind control experiments run either by US. government agencies such as the Central Intelligence Agency, or military intelligence agencies.

"The story by Monarch victims...is that they were tortured for the purpose of creating 'multiple personalities' within them. These multiple personalities could then be programmed as desired -as spies, 'drug mules,' prostitutes, or assassins."
(The Franklin Cover-Up, pg. 323) 

As to the butterfly itself, Vigilant Citizen's Secret Arcana blog notes:

"Monarch mind control is named after the Monarch butterfly – an insect who begins its life as a worm (representing undeveloped potential) and, after a period of cocooning (programming) is reborn as a beautiful butterflies (the Monarch slave). Some characteristics specific to the Monarch butterfly are also applicable to mind control.

'One of the primary reasons that the Monarch mind-control programming was named Monarch programming was because of the Monarch butterfly. The Monarch butterfly learns where it was born (its roots) and it passes this knowledge via genetics on to its offspring (from generation to generation). This was one of the key animals that tipped scientists off, that knowledge can be passed genetically. The Monarch program is based upon Illuminati and Nazi goals to create a Master race in part through genetics. If knowledge can be passed genetically (which it is), then it is important that parents be found that can pass the correct knowledge onto those victims selected for the Monarch mind control.'"

Curiously, after Starling has killed Buffalo Bill the camera cuts to the image of a butterfly on a wind ornament (after a cut to a newspaper clipping proclaiming 'Terror') in the killer's lair. Further, when Starling informs Lecter that an insect has been found in the throat of one of Bill's victims he immediately asks if its a butterfly.

The moth, especially the death's head moth depicted in the film, is another insect with esoteric significance.

"Night moths typify the secret wisdom, because they are hard to discover and are concealed by the darkness (ignorance). Some are emblems of death, as Acherontia atropos, the death's-head moth, which has a marking on its body somewhat like a human skull."
(The Secret Teachings of All Ages, Manly P. Hall, pg. 270)

In some traditions the death's head moth first appeared in England during the beheading of Charles I, though I have yet to find reliable collaboration of this. Another significant aspect of the death's head moth are their relationship to bees. The death's moth is also notorious for raiding beehives which it manages by mimicking the scent of the honey bees. The beehive is of course a major symbol in Freemasonry and other occult orders. In essence the beehive describes the natural order of the world from the view of the Cryptocracy. The death's head moth upsets that order, making it a kind of terrorist to the worker bees. Buffalo Bill operates in much the same fashion, mimicking the actions of normal people to blend in, yet terrorizing the order of the world by his seemingly random attacks.

And that brings us to the supposed 'randomness' of Bill's victims. As the FBI fumbles blindly trying to make Bill fit into one of their legendary profiles, Hannibal immediately guesses both Bill's identity, and his selection of victims. He tips off Starling to the location of Bill's lair with a note scribbled on a case file that states: "Clarice, doesn't this random scattering of sites seem desperately random - like the elaborations of a bad liar?" From this, Starling is able to deduce that Bill's first victim was not chosen at random, but was someone that he already knew, in contrast to the profile Crawford and the rest of the BSU boys were working from.

And if Bill's first victim was not random, is it possible that he had some familiarity with his other victims? If so, this opens up a major can of worms concerning Bill's final victim, one Catherine Martin, daughter of the fictional Republican senator Ruth Martin. In the film a TV anchor is heard in the background assuring the audience that the abduction is not politically motivated, but the circumstances are most peculiar. It seems a bit of a stretch that Bill, who is based out of Ohio, would just happen to randomly abduct the daughter of a US senator in Memphis, TN. The actual abduction itself, as presented in the film, seems to indicate that Bill at least had some familiarity with her routine before carrying out his assault. It seems possible that his familiarity with the Martins went beyond simple stalking.

In the second part of this series we shall examine the choice of locations, the FBI and psychiatric fields, and even Lecter himself. Stay tuned.

Witch Trafficking Part III

But what about the Satanism, you may be asking? It just doesn't seem right to discuss international pedophile rings without delving into Satanism, now does it? In part one and two we didn't find much evidence of Satanism. So, let us consider one more curious figure with ties to both Spence and King. First, though, we must briefly consider the US Military's rash of Satanic-themed abuse that broke out in the 1980s on daycare centers at some of the nation's most revered military bases.

"As the Mercury News reported, 'by November, 1987 the Army had received allegations of child abuse at 15 of its day care centers and several elementary schools. There were also at least two cases in Air Force day care centers,' and another in a center run by the U.S. Navy. In addition, 'a special team of experts was sent to Panama [in June 1988] to help determine if as many as 10 children at a Department of Defense elementary school had been molested and possibly infect with AIDS.' Yet another case emerged in a U.S.-run facility in West Germany.

"These cases erupted at some of the country's most esteemed military bases, including Fort Dix, Fort Leavenworth,  Fort Jackson, and West Point. Many of those making the accusations were career military officers who had devoted their lives to unquestioning allegiance to the U.S. armed forces. Many would resign their posts in outraged protest.

"As the Times Herald Report reported in June 1991, the 'incidents [at the West Point Child Development Center] unfolded against a backdrop of satanic acts, animal sacrifice, and cult-like behavior among the abusers, whose activities extended beyond the U.S. Military Academy borders to Orange County and a military base in San Francisco, parents charged...' As the Mercury News reported, 'by the end of the year, 50 children had been interviewed by investigators. Children at West Point told stories that would become horrifyingly familiar. They said they had been ritually abused. They said they had had excrement smeared on their bodies and been forced to eat feces and drink urine. They said they were taken away from the day care center and photographed.'

"Despite abundant medical and psychological evidence and literally dozens of child witnesses, and despite '950 interviews by 60 FBI agents assigned to the investigation,' the investigation, 'led by former U.S. Attorney [and future mayor] Rudolph Giuliani' produced 'no federal grand jury indictments,' according to the Herald Record. 'In 1987, Giuliani said his detailed investigation showed only one or two children were abused.' Giuliani's contention was directly contradicted by an independent investigation, as the Herald report divulged: 'a still-secret, independent report -produced by one of the nation's top experts on child sexual abuse -confirms the children's accusations of abuse...'

"The Herald Record revealed that, in a suit brought  by the parents, 'lawyers for both the government and the 11 child plaintiffs agreed that some children were sexually abused at the center two years ago.' The government, however, claimed that it would not be held responsible, due to the 'assault exemption in the Federal Tort Claim Act.' As the New York Times explained, 'under federal law the government cannot be held liable for assaults committed by its employees and thus cannot by sued for assault.' In other words, the Army did not dispute the allegations; it just rather cavalierly maintained that it was exempt from being sued for what occurred at one of its daycare centers."
(Programmed to Kill, David McGowan, pgs. 43-44)

As a quick side note, a certain rock star whom I've written on before here was attending West Point around the time the child abuse allegations were going down.

Anyway, the most notorious of the alleged military daycare centers to host sexual abuse was the Presidio Child Development Center in San Francisco.

"Allegations of abuse being perpetrated at the center first emerged in November 1986. Alarmed by accusations made by her child, a parent sought a medical examination that confirmed that her three-year-old boy had in fact been anally raped. The boy identified his rapist as 'Mr. Gary,' a teacher at the center named Gary Hambright. Even with this conclusive medical evidence, however, 'it took the Army almost a month to notify the parents of other children who had been in Mr. Gary's class that the incident had taken place.'

"Within a year, at least sixty additional victims had been identified, all between the ages of three and seven, and further 'allegations would be made by parents that several more children were molested even after the investigation had begun.' Amazingly enough, the center remained open for more than a year after the first case of abuse was reported, although, as noted by the Mercury News, 'day care centers under state jurisdiction are routinely closed when an abuse incident is confirmed.' And this was considerably more than a simple abuse incident that had been confirmed. The children told stories that implicated many other perpetrators in addition to Hambright. They also told of being taken away from the center to be abused in private homes; at least three such houses were positively identified. And they told of being forced to play 'poopoo baseball' and the 'googoo' game -'games' that involved the children being urinated and defecated upon, and being forced to ingest urine and feces. Many of the children also spoke of having guns pointed at them and of being told that they and/or their parents and siblings would be killed if they told anyone what had been done to them.

"Despite the mounting number of victim/witnesses, and the numerous crimes alleged by these children, only one suspect, Gary Hambright, was arrested -on January 5, 1987 -and he was charged with abusing just a single child. Even then the charges were dismissed just a few months later, in March 1987.

"There is little doubt that literally dozens of children were in fact severely abused at the center. There undeniably was medical evidence to document that fact. Five of the children had contracted chlamydia, a sexually transmitted disease; many others showed clear signs of anal and genital trauma consistent with violent penetration. Authorities chose to ignore such evidence. One mother complained to the San Francisco Chronicle that the FBI never interviewed her or her son, even after doctors confirmed the boy's abuse."
(ibid, pg. 40) 

Again with the FBI taking a rather lackadaisical approach to some very serious allegations. This likely had to do with a rather curious individual named Michael Aquino -Lt. Col Michael Aquino, specifically -being implicated in the molestation ring along with Mr. Gary.

"One child positively identified Aquino and his wife, Lilith (known to the kids as 'Mikey' and 'Shamby'), and was also able to identify the Aquinos' private home and to describe with considerable accuracy the distinctive satanic interior decor of the house. On August 14, 1987, a search warrant was served on the house. Confiscated in the raid were numerous videotapes, photographs, photo albums, photographic negatives, cassette tapes, and name and address books. Also observed was what appeared to be a soundproof room. Neither of the Aquinos was charged with any crimes, nor have they been to this day -a fact that Aquino points to as proof of his innocence."
(ibid, pg. 41)

Ah, but things are never as cut and dry as they may seem with this topic. As mentioned above, Lt. Col. Aquino is a rather curious figure with interests in some very fringe topics. Two of these topics include Satanism and Nazism.

"In 1970, Aquino found himself stationed in Kentucky, where he began a Church of Satan grotto and corresponded heavily with members and prospective members of the Church. LaVey authorized him to write the Lovecraftian 'Call to Cthulhu' ritual for use by the Church and, indeed, Lovecraft's idiosyncratic metaphysics has been exploited more than once by Aquino over the years...

"Aquino eventually obtained a master's degree in political science from the University of California (at Santa Barbara) and ultimately a doctorate from the same university. Thereafter, he began to report directly to the Joint Chiefs of  Staff as a lieutenant colonel with top-secret clearance. In the meantime, Aquino -tired of LaVey's grandstanding an what he perceived to be the founder's anti-intellectual bias -had split off from the Church of Satan to form his own organization based on a personal revelation, the Temple of Set.

"To Aquino, Set is representative of a certain force in nature that is not necessarily identical to the Satan with which most Christians believe they are familiar. That is, Set is not the personification of evil but of ideas in opposition to those of Christianity; a separate, personal theology that transcends Judeo-Christian metaphysics to include this 'Dark Lord.' Thus, while Christians may view Set as evil owing to its opposition to their own religion, Set (according to Aquino) is not evil in any objective sense.

"Aquino took a decidedly intellectual approach to satanism, and issued a fifty-page 'required reading' list. He reorganized what was essentially a Church of Satan command structure and staffed his Circle of Nine with former COS members...

"Consistent with Aquino's decision thoroughly to explore the Dark Side of human experience is a fascination with Nazi occultism. Aquino believes that he can divorce the occult aspects of the Third Reich from its political, social, and criminal aspects. To that end he performed the Wewelsburg Working, a magical operation in which occult essence of Wewelsburg -and thus of Himmler's SS cult center with all its mystical resonances -is distilled into an engine of power that can be used by Aquino to effect a satanic renaissance.

"He visited Wewelsburg in the early eighties and was duly impressed by Himmler's occult fantasy, some of which was still intact. On one of his visits he performed a magical ritual in the North Tower of the castle, a ritual designed to unleash the power of Wewelsburg on the rest of the world: to jump-start the next phase of human evolution."
(Unholy Alliance, Peter Levenda, pgs. 339-340)

When Lt. Col Aquino wasn't busy founding his own satanic cult or performing Nazi magical workings in the former abode of Himmler, he worked on his day job with the U.S. Army: psychological warfare officer. In 1980 Aquino coauthored a rather striking paper called From PSYOP to MindWar: The Psychology of Victory. In this piece, which can be read here, Aquino advocated putting the entire US media at work on 'MindWar' operations:

"To this end MindWar must be strategic in emphasis, with tactical applications playing a reinforcing, supplementary role. In its strategic context, MindWar must reach out to friends, enemies, and neutrals alike across the globe -neither through primitive 'battlefield' leaflets and loudspeakers of PSYOP nor through the weak, imprecise, and narrow effort of psychotronics -but through the media possessed by the United States which have the capabilities to reach virtually all people on the face of the Earth.

"These media are, of course, the electronic media -television and radio. State of the art development in satellite communications, video recording techniques, and laser and optical transmission of broadcasts make possible a penetration of the minds of the world such as would have been inconceivable just a few years ago. Like the sword Excalibur, we have but to reach out and seize this tool; and it can transform the world for us if we have the courage and the integrity to enhance civilization with it. If we do not accept Excalibur, then we relinquish our ability to inspire foreign cultures with our morality. If they then desire moralities unsatisfactory to us, we have no choice but to fight them on a more brutish level.

"MindWar must target all participants if it is to be effective. It must not only weaken the enemy; it must strengthen the United States. It strengthens the United States by denying enemy propaganda access to our people, and by explaining and emphasizing to our people the rationale for our national interest in a specific war."

In an introduction to the piece written in 2003 Aquino scoffs at the 'lunatic fringe' that latched onto his work as evidence of occult indoctrination within the armed forces. He asserts that the paper was never meant for official publication, and that it was meant only to stimulate dialogue amongst the PSYOP folks. He does, however, acknowledge:

"While in the 1980s I had no reason to think that this paper had had any official effect upon U.S. PSYOP doctrine within or beyond the Army, it was with some fascination that I saw specific of its prescriptions applied during the first Gulf War, and recently even more obviously during the 2003 invasion of Iraq. In both instances extreme PSYOP was directed both against the object of attack and upon U.S. domestic public perception and opinion, in 2003 to the extent of 'embedding' journalists with military units to inevitably channel their perspectives and perceptions."

Our dear colonel is being far to modest if this report is any indication to lengths of which the military has grasped the sword Excalibur:

"The U.S. Army has used local television stations in the U.S. as training posts for some of its psychological-operations personnel, The Upshot has learned. Since at least 2001, both WRAL, a CBS affiliate in Raleigh, N.C., and WTOC, a CBS affiliate in Savannah, Ga., have regularly hosted active-duty soldiers from the Army's 4th Psychological Operations group as part of the Army's Training With Industry program. Training With Industry is designed to offer career soldiers a chance to pick up skills through internships and fellowships with private businesses. The PSYOPS soldiers used WRAL and WTOC to learn broadcasting and communications expertise that they could apply in their mission, as the Army describes it, of influenc[ing] the emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foreign audiences.'"

When Aquino hasn't been busy devising MindWar strategies and organizing cults, he seemingly likes to unwind with children. In addition to the accusations at Presidio, there was speculation that the West Point molestations were linked.

"The West Point case, among others, was alleged to be linked to the Presidio case. As the Times Herald Record reported in June 1991, the 'incident [at the West Point Child Development] center unfolded against a backdrop of satanic acts, animal sacrifices and cult-like behavior among the abusers, whose activities extended beyond the U.S. Military Academy borders to Orange County and a military base in San Francisco, parents charged.'"
(Programmed to Kill, David McGowan, pg. 43)

Paul Bonacci, one of the children who alleged molestation in the Nebraska-based Franklin affair, made a curious statement as well:

"Bonacci also told me about a high-ranking military officer who was in cahoots with King and Spence's pedophilic blackmail enterprise -he said that the military officer in question was a Satanist and a pedophile. The military officer Bonacci alluded to is an admitted Satanist, and he was implicated in the molestation of several children. I have the search warrant that police executed on his home during a molestation investigation -a child who was purportedly molested gave an apt description of the officer's house, which was detailed in the search warrant. After local police executed the search warrant, they found corroboration of the child's account, but the feds usurped the case and dropped the charges against the officer -a familiar theme."
(The Franklin Scandal, Nick Bryant, pgs. 503-504)

John DeCamp, via an essay by investigative reporter Anton Chaitkin, is a bit more direct as to the identity of this officer:

"Paul Bonacci and other child victims have given evidence in great depth on the central role of Lt. Col. Michael Aquino in this depravity. Aquino, alleged to have recently retired from an active military role, was long the leader of an Army psychological warfare section which drew on his 'expertise' and personal practices in brainwashing, Satanism, Nazism, homosexual pedophilia and murder."
(The Franklin Cover-Up, pg. 328)

Aquino, Sammy Davis Jr., and Anton LaVey

If Aquino was in fact linked to King and Spence, this would imply a literal coast-to-coast pedophilic ring stretching from California to Washington, DC. In the mix is also the CIA front known as the Finders, who operated in close proximity to the DC operations of King and Spence. There's also the specter of a vast narcotics network closely related to this pedophilic ring. I've only touched on this briefly, but given King's ties to Lt. Col Oliver North and his position as manager of a suspect S&L during the 80s, it seems likely drug money was heavily involved in this operation. The link between the trafficking of drugs and children, who are frequently used as 'mules,' is well known.

"These individuals [pimps] 'participate actively in the international trafficking of children -including American children and children who are nationals of other countries. Typically, these pimps also are connected in some way... to international drug networks.' The close connection between the international trafficking of children and the international trafficking of drugs is significant in that, as a number of researchers have documented, America's Central Intelligence Agency plays a central role in the international drug trade. It would seem then to logically follow that that same organization would be deeply involved in the equally lucrative international trade in children."
(Programmed to Kill, David McGowan, pgs. 30-31)

And why not, given that the chief domestic institution charged with monitoring the trafficking of children, the FBI, can't even be bothered to keep statistics on the number of kids that go missing in the US in a given year. The FBI clearly has far more important things to worry about, such as debunking absurd claims such as Satanic Ritual Abuse.

"I recall the 'satanic panic' that emerged in the 1980s, but I didn't give it too much credence because it was so off-the-wall. The FBI, though, responded to the escalating brouhaha with a 11 report authored by a supervisory special agent at Quantico, Virgina's venerated Behavioral Science Unit. The report essentially debunked all the wacky innuendo about ritual abuse and reassured the American public that it as virtually non-existent and they could sleep soundly at night. Though the FBI report yielded scant evidence concerning ritual abuse, several studies and articles on the subject have been published in academic, peer-reviewed journals. The strength of their findings lies in the fact that the victims who claim to have been ritually abused are from disparate geographic locations and socioeconomic strata; yet they describe the same improbable, horrific events."
(The Franklin Scandal, Nick Bryant, pg. 499)

So, what about the Satanism? Obviously, this is a tricky subject for reports of Satanism are typically what make people file allegations of an elite pedophilic ring under the 'utterly insane' banner rather than the merely 'far out' one. Worse, the topic tends to inspire extreme dogmatism -one said effectively refuses to believe any notion of a 'satanic conspiracy' while the other side is totally convinced.

Other explanations of satanism have been offered, of course. Some researchers believe that, while something in fact happened to the children in question, their memories of ritual abuse are implanted memories to cover up the actual abuse. Others speculate that ritual abuse does in fact occur, but it is used not because of religious significance, but because its presence will make the concept of a national pedophilic ring all the more unbelievable.

Those of you already familiar with the Franklin affair are probably aware that I have neglected to mention a major player -namely, Boy's Town, the legendary Catholic orphanage based out of Nebraska. Many of the kids alleged to be part of Larry E. King's pedophilic ring were recruited from Boy's Town. Given the ever mounting evidence of a vast pedophile network within the Vatican, the legacy of Boy's Town is clearly significant, especially as it seems to be closely linked to the CIA/DoD ring.

I chose to avoid Boy's Town in this piece not because I wanted to downplay the massive responsibility Christians have for these sex rings, but because I felt it would border on information overload. Pedophilia within the Vatican is a major problem, and something that I plan on addressing in a later piece that will also focus on Boy's Town.

However, as we are now considering the role occultists play in these pedophilic rings, its important to remember that another major player is the Vatican. There is not a great deal of evidence that has emerged that the participants in the perverted events described in this series were Satanists outside of Lt. Col Michael Aquino. On the other hand, Aquino seems to have had some major mojo to the point of effecting US intelligence doctrines. How much a part his religion played in this direction is something we will likely never know.

As I look to wrap up this blog, I shall bring it all back home, to Salem circa 1692.

"Compare this historical event with satanic cult survivor syndrome, and wonder if the stories of a network of satanic cults breeding children for human sacrifice -along with confessions of persons who claim they were breeders, or had been pressed into cult service while children -are in any way different from those of the Salem case. Then wonder a little further, and ask: if there was smoke in the Salem case -and evidence of at least a small fire -and if some clergymen, politicians, and scientists in New England in 1692 were involved in serious occult studies and research, then perhaps there was a fire beneath all the smoke of the satanic cult hysteria of three hundred years later, and perhaps some of our own clergymen, politicians and scientists in America of 1992 were also involved in serious occult research. Is it simply a recurring phenomenon, or is there a link between the events of 1692 and those of present-day America?"
(Sinister Forces Book One, Peter Levenda, pg. 20)

Indeed, the links are quite clear. In both cases minors displayed bizarre signs of abuse. Eventually this abuse led the populace at large to hysteria in search of a scapegoat. In both cases, the occult was blamed, and not without some legitimacy -Various powerbrokers in the America of both 1692 and 1992 were engaged in some rather dark occult workings. And in both cases, tragically, either the innocent or minor occultists were then punished for the crimes of their peers. In the Salem case, even the individuals involved in the 'occult' didn't practice much beyond traditional folk magic. In the 1990s, 'Satanic' rituals were reduced to dressing in black and listening to some heavy metal albums. Consider the case of the West Memphis Three, which may in fact have involved a ritual murder, but will forever be known for the gross miscarriage of justice due to the hysteria the murder inspired.

And therein is where true evil lies -when the innocent are continuously made to be the victims. In Franklin, this was clearly the case. Many of the child victims that attempted to step forward were persecuted by the legal system and media. Countless films and TV shows have been made to glorify the FBI, an institution seemingly charged with covering up some of the most horrendous crimes in modern America. They should be making films on Alisha Owen, one of the female Franklin victims that over came years of sexual abuse, two plus years of solitary confinement in the Nebraska penal system, and a vicious media smear campaign for the sake of truth. Sadly, there's probably no money in such a project.

So what is the witch trafficking of the title? It is Alisha and all of the other children that did not emerge from the pedophilic underground in remotely as good of shape. It is the West Memphis Three and their ancestors roting in Salem holding cell. It is the scapegoat that is frantically sought after while the true monsters remain unacknowledged.

Witch Traffickng Part II

This is the second part in an examination of child sex rings in the United States, as well as its ties to the US intelligence community, drug trafficking and Satanism. Part one in this series examined the Satanic Ritual Abuse panic of the 1980s, and its links to the Salem witch trials, in addition to the scale of missing and abused children across the US. The first part can be found here.

In this series I'm going to examine a series of pedophilic rings with deep backgrounds and rumors of occult practices. Grab the popcorn.

First up are our old friends the Finders, who I've mentioned in conjunction with several modern instances of bizarre, and at times state sanctioned, child abuse here and here. For our purposes, here is a run down:

"On February 4. 1987, a concerned citizen notified the Tallahassee Police Department -he had observed six white children, 'poorly dressed, bruised, dirty, and behaving like wild animals,' in a Tallahassee park. The children were accompanied by two well-dressed white males driving a white 1979 Dodge van with Virginia plates.

"The Tallahassee police responded to the call and took the children and adults into custody. The adults refused to cooperate, and one produced a business card that stated he planned to exercise his Constitutional right to remain silent. Police officers noted that the children, whose ages ranged from three to six, could not adequately identify themselves or their custodians and were 'unaware of the function and purpose of telephones, televisions, and toilets.' The children also said that they were not allowed to live indoors and were given food only as a reward. The Tallahassee police charged the two adults with felony child abuse, and they were held on a $100,000 bond. The children were placed in protective custody.

"Police officers found documents in the van that enabled them to tentatively identify the two adults and partially identify the children. They also found documents containing two Washington, D.C. addresses -one of which corresponded to the van's vehicle registration.

"The Tallahassee police suspected child pornography; they contacted the US Customs Service (USCS), which has a Child Pornography and Protection Unit. Shortly thereafter, Detective James Bradley of the Washington, DC Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) contacted Special Agent Ramon Martinez of the USCS. Detective Bradley indicated that the Tallahassee arrests were probably linked to a case that he was investigating in the DC area, involving a 'cult' called the Finders. An informant had told Bradley that the Finders operated various businesses out of a warehouse in DC and housed children at a second warehouse.

"...And on February 6, the MPD, accompanied by the USCS, executed search warrants on the warehouses. Rummaging through the first warehouse, they found jars of feces and urine and also a room equipped with several computers and printers and a cache of documents.

"'Cursory examination of the documents revealed detailed instructions for obtaining children for unspecified purposes,' wrote Martinez. 'The instructions included the impregnation of female members of... the Finders, purchasing children, trading, and kidnapping. There were telex messages using MCI account numbers between a computer terminal believed to be located in the same room, and others located across the country and in foreign locations. One such telex specifically ordered the purchase of two children in Hong Kong to be arranged through a contact in the Chinese Embassy.

"The investigators also discovered documents that discussed 'bank secrecy,' 'high-tech transfers,' 'terrorism,' and 'explosives.' To their astonishment, they even found a detailed summary of the events surrounding the arrest in Tallahassee the previous night and instructions that were broadcast via a computer network. The instructions advised the 'participants' to move the 'children' through different police jurisdictions, and 'how to avoid police attention.'

"Martinez and the MPD officers also found a large collection of photographs. A number of the photos were of nude children, and one appeared to be a child 'on display' in a way that accented the 'child's genitals.' An MPD officer then presented Martinez with a photo album. The album contained photos of adults and children dressed in white sheets slaughtering two goats. The photos portrayed the slaughter, disembowelment, skinning, and dismemberment of the goats by the children. The photos showed the removal of the male goat's testes and the removal of 'baby goats' from the female goat's 'womb,' and the presentation of a goat's head to one of the children.

"'Not observed by me but related by an MPD officer were intelligence files on private families not related to the Finders,' Martinez continued in his report. 'The process undertaken appears to be have been a systematic response to local newspaper advertisements for baby-sitters, tutors, etc. A member of the Finders would respond and gather as much information as possible about the habits, identity, occupation, etc., of the family. The use to which this information was to be put is still unknown. There was also a large amount of data collected on various child care organizations."
(The Franklin Scandal, Nick Bryant, pgs. 10-12) 

Seemingly this would be enough to land the Finders in hot water. But things are different when one has connections.

"A February 10, 1987 article in the Washington Post reported on a news conference kicked off by MPD Chief Maurice Turner, Jr. This news conference occurred after the CIA intervention, and at it Chief Turner backpedaled with ferocity, rejecting allegations that the Finders were involved in satanic rituals or child abuse. The chief also elevated the Finders from a cult to a 'communal group.' He neglected to mention that the Finders were a communal group that reportedly had an interest in 'purchasing children, trading, and kidnapping,' and also an interest in 'terrorism' and 'explosives.' He omitted discussing the jars of feces and urine as well.

"Two days after Chief Turner's press conference, an FBI spokesman said that their investigation of the Finders was 'winding down' because the Bureau hadn't 'uncovered any evidence of federal violations.' The two adult Finders taken into custody by Tallahassee police had their felony child-abuse charges reduced to misdemeanors. Six weeks later the abuse charges were dropped altogether, and the children were eventually returned to the Finders."
(ibid, pg. 13)

As noted in the prior piece of this series, FBI nonintervention will be a reoccurring theme in this topic. The reference to the CIA pertains to a curious meeting Special Agent Martinez of the USCS had when attempting to contact the MPD in relation to the Finders.

"Approximately a month after the MPD executed the warrant, Agent Martinez set up an appointment with Detective Bradley to review the documents that had been seized at the two warehouses. His report stated that he was to meet Bradley in early April. On April 2, 1987, Agent Martinez arrived at MPD. headquarters at approximately 9:00 A.M. He was in for a shock. Detective Bradley was unavailable, but he spoke to a 'third party' who was willing to discuss the Finders only on a 'strictly off the record basis.'

"'The individual further advised me of circumstances which indicated that the investigation into the activity of the Finders had become a CIA internal matter,' Agent Martinez concluded in his report. 'The MPD report has been classified secret and was not available for review. I was advised that the FBI had withdrawn from the investigation several weeks prior and that the FBI Foreign Counter Intelligence Division had directed MPD not to advise the FBI Washington Field Office of anything that had transpired. No further information will be available. No further action will be taken.'"
(ibid, pg. 12)

And indeed, no further action was taken.

The Finders' main warehouse was located about four miles from the affluent Sheridan-Kalorama neighborhood in Washington, DC. Their secondary warehouse, the one where they supposedly kept their 'kids,' was located a mere seven to eight minutes away. Over the years the Sheridan-Kalorama neighborhood has housed two of the most notorious figures in the child trafficking conspiracy circles. One of them was a Republican lobbyist known as Craig Spence.

"Consider the case of Craig Spence, a behind-the-scenes Republican powerbroker in Washington. In June 1989, the Washington Times published a story that sent shockwaves rippling across Capital Hill. It seemed that Spence had been deeply involved with a callboy ring that supplied young boys, some of them very young boys, to the elite of both political parties, as well as to visiting dignitaries...

"Among the revelations in the case was that Spence had taken some of his call-boy escorts on private, late-night tours of the White House. The tours, of which there were at least four, were cleared by a uniformed Secret Service guard who moonlighted as a bodyguard at Spence's parties. Spence hinted that the tours were arranged by the national security adviser to then-Vice President George H.W. Bush, Donald Gregg, for whom Spence once sponsored a dinner. One of the tours occurred just after Spence stopped by the Nightline studio to see his friend, Ted Koppel. Spence reportedly introduced Koppel to a 15-year-old boy, who Koppel later claimed Spence had introduced as his son. Koppel though had been a close friend for over twenty years and surely knew that Spence did not have a teenage son. Koppel first met Spence in Southeast Asia when Koppel was serving as the ABC bureau chief in Hong Kong, and Spence was nominally working as an ABC correspondent in Vietnam.

"Spence openly boasted on working with both the CIA and ranking members of the Reagen and Bush administrations. He claimed that he had been involved in covert operations in Vietnam. Japan, Central America and he Middle East. His claims were scoffed at and he was largely portrayed as a self-important blowhard. There are indications, however, that Spence was involved in covert operations as far back as Vietnam, where he could well have been working under journalistic cover. An associate of his from that era told the Washington Post: 'Spence pulled disappearing acts in Vietnam... sometimes for weeks at a time... Then he'd turn up, refusing to say where he'd been.'

"'The sex? That's done all the time,' a former Bush economic adviser told the press. 'If a foreign diplomat wants a companion, the State Department provides it. It doesn't matter if it's a man or woman. They have a special fund set up for that.' What the unnamed adviser did not say was that such services were provided not as a courtesy to the dignitary, but as a way to compromise and control. Allegations quietly arose that the callboy ring, and Spence's parties, were part of a CIA sexual blackmail operation. Spence's Washington mansion was said to be overflowing with surveillance equipment, including hidden cameras and microphones and an abundance of two-way mirrors. It was also alleged that cocaine flowed freely at Spence's parties, and that he could have been involved in bringing drugs in from El Salvador.

"The Spence story never really registered on the national media's radar screen. Despite being a largely Republican scandal, it was completely ignored by such pillars of the purportedly liberal press as the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Los Angeles Times. The story soon disappeared entirely and Washington and the media proceeded to pretend as though nothing had ever happened. According to a Washington Times reporter, the paper trial was quickly covered up. Some 20,000 documents pertaining to the case were sealed by court order and the U.S. Attorney's office issued a gag order on the release of information. By the time that Craig Spence turned up dead in a Boston hotel less than five months after the story first broke, he had been all but forgotten. He had earlier told a friend: 'I may be disappearing soon. It will be sudden. It may appear to be a suicide, but it won't be.'

"Spence was reportedly found lying on his bed in room 429 of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel, wearing a tuxedo and with a telephone cradled to his ear and a Walkman headset around his neck. He had, according to the Independent, 'no obvious signs of injury,' and 'police refused to comment on the cause of death.' The door to the room was barricaded. Written on the mirror were several messages, one of which read: 'Chief, consider this my resignation, effective immediately. As you always say, you can't ask others to make a sacrifice if you are not ready to do the same. Life is duty. God bless America.' Another was an apology to the hotel: 'To the Ritz, please forgive this inconvenience.' A third was an unexplained Japanese phrase: 'Nisei Bei.' The hotel registry showed that the room the apparent suicide victim was found in was occupied by 'C.S. Kane.'

"Spence had been subpoenaed by a grand jury but had not yet been called to appear. As it turned out, very few witnesses ever did appear before that grand jury. Spence had also reportedly agreed to provide Penthouse magazine with 'lurid details of Washington's bisexual wonderland.' His story, needless to say, was never told."
(Programmed to Kill, David McGowan, pgs. 31-34)

A close associate of Spence's, and another notorious figure in conspiracy lore, is the former the Franklin Credit Union head and Nebraska state Representative Larry E King. King is an individual that acquired a seemingly deep background early in life.

"King went on to graduate from Central High School in 1962 and then enrolled at Omaha University, where he eventually took up pre-med studies. Becoming disillusioned with pre-med, he signed up for a four-year hitch in the Air Force in 1965, rising to the rank of sergeant...

"A 1973 article in the Omaha Sun was the first media mention I found of Larry King. According to the article, the Air Force sent King to Thailand to be an 'information specialist' as the Vietnam War was raging, and he handled 'top secret' military communications."
(The Franklin Scandal, Nick Bryant, pg. 32)

Thailand is of course one of the most notorious destinations for child prostitution and sex tourism in general in the entire world -David Carradine himself bought the farm in Bangkok, allegedly. One can only imagine what kind of 'information' King was compiling during his tour there. Regardless, he soon found himself on the fast track once back in the states and the ride didn't let up until the Savings and Loans scandal began to break out in the late 1980s.

"Throughout the 1980s, the middle-aged King, tall and corpulent, had been described as a 'GOP high-roller' and 'the fastest rising African-American star' in the Republican Party. He was Vice Chairman for Finance of the National Black Republican Council, a sanctioned affiliate of the Republican National Committee. King also ardently campaigned for the 1988 presidential bid of his 'personal friend,' George H.W. Bush. In a 1988 flurry of name-dropping, King told a reporter for Omaha's weekly Metropolitan of his lofty connections atop the political food chain: 'I know some of the people I admire aren't very popular. Ed Meese. The late Bill Casey of the CIA. And I love former Chief Justice Burger. Those are the people I really like to talk to. Bill Casey... I thought so very highly of him.'

"....He had an array of diverse business ventures, but his primary day job was manager of an Omaha credit union, created to provide loans for Omaha's underserved black community. The full name of the firm was the Franklin Community Federal Credit Union.

"On November 4, 1988, federal agents descended on the Franklin Credit Union, and the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) would ultimately conclude that $39.4 million had been stolen. King would be indicted on 40 counts that included conspiracy, fraud, and embezzlement. Federal law required annual audits of federally regulated credit unions, but King possessed the political juice to stave off audits for years."
(ibid, pg. 17)

Eventually 37 of the 40 charges were dropped, with King pleading guilty to three. He was given three consecutive five year prison sentences for a total of 15 years. He was paroled in 2001. Many feel that this was only scratching the tip of the iceberg. King had ties to some of the darkest political currents of the 1980s, including the Iran-Contra scandal, of which his bank may have been laundering money for. Former Nebraska state senator and CIA asset John DeCamp writes:

"Former political associates of King, sources on Capital Hill, and intelligence specialists suggest that Larry King was one of dozens of owners and directors of savings and loans and other financial institutions, used by the CIA to help finance covert operations. From their information, a picture takes shape.

"S&L managers, allegedly including King, would secretly lend CIA operatives bundles of depositors' money, supposedly on a 30-day basis. In some instances, hundreds of thousands and even millions of these dollars would be flown out of the United States, to destinations such as Switzerland and the Bahamas. The money would be invested for profit in short-term high-yield financial instruments or other overseas hot-money schemes. Before federal auditors could notice any money missing, it would be returned. Some of the profit would be used to pay off cooperating financial officers and other intermediaries. The rest was funneled into slush funds for covert operations.

"But the CIA would not always return the money. In 1990, a U.S. congressional committee was forced to investigate allegations that the CIA's financial machinations had been a factor in the collapse of several S&Ls. In an explosive series of articles in the Houston Post, investigative reporter Pete Brewton wrote during 'an eight month investigation into the role of fraud in the nation's savings and loan crisis, the Post has found evidence suggesting a possible link between the Central Intelligence Agency and organized crime in the failure of at least 22 thrifts, including 16 in Texas.'

"One of the S&Ls named by Brewton was the Denver-based Silverado Savings & Loan, on whose board sat Neil Bush, son of the president. Sources have alleged that Silverado and Larry King's Franklin Credit Union had financial dealings with one another, but no independent confirmation has been obtained.

"U.S. House of Representatives Banking Committee hearings on the Franklin Credit Union, held in 1989, did place Larry King in the right locations for covert operations. They established that during the 1980s, King traveled several times to Jamaica, where Lt. Col. Oliver North and other Iran-Contra principals transacted a lot of banking. They heard testimony that Franklin's chief accountant, Tom Harvey, together with his mother Mary Jane Harvey, made several trips to Switzerland, in the time period millions of dollars disappeared from the credit union.

"In a memo dated June 18, 1989, Jerry Lowe noted that Larry King often received phone calls from Switzerland, that the staff at Franklin Credit Union had heard that King took money to Jamaica, and that Tom Harvey took money abroad, on numerous trips to Spain.

"Direct ties of Larry King to persons and institutions active in Iran-Contra are a matter of public record. In 1987, according to the World-Herald, King donated $23,350 to Citizens for America, a group that sponsored speaking tours for Oliver North and Contra leaders. CFA was a key public relations group for Iran-Contra; King was a founding member and one of its largest contributors.

"According to his May 22, 1989 interview with Omaha radio station KKAR, King was trying to bring North to Nebraska. A former security guard for King has sworn that he saw North attend at least one of King's parties, a party at which children were also present."
(The Franklin Cover-Up, pgs. 172-174)

These 'parties' referenced in the last paragraph are by far the most controversial allegations surrounding King -They were supposedly a key feature in a vast child sex trafficking network that King oversaw. Reports of this network began to emerge publicly when the Nebraska state senate begin its own investigation of Franklin.

"A special senate 'Franklin Committee' was established and tasked with looking into allegations of financial improprieties, but soon found itself instead investigating claims of child prostitution, child pornography and ritual homicide. Committee members began receiving anonymous threats...

"The Omaha operation, described... as a 'large ring of powerful pedophiles,' appears to have been in business for several years -with the knowledge of, and for the perverse pleasure of, a variety of city, state, and federal authorities. Jerry Lowe, the first investigator assigned to the case by the Franklin Committee, reported back: 'The allegations regarding the exploitation of children are indeed disturbing. What appears to be documented cases of child abuse and sexual abuse dating back several years with no enforcement action being taken by the appropriate agencies is on its face, mind-boggling.'"
(Programmed to Kill, David McGowan, pgs. 35-36)

Much speculation has emerged over the years as to what really went down behind the scenes at the Franklin Credit Union. Unfortunately, we will likely never know as the Powers that Be have been in a mad rush to suppress/discredit all evidence and witnesses relating to Franklin since the story first began to break.

"Equally disturbing is the evidence presented of the massive cover-up that was perpetrated by the FBI, local police, a grand jury assigned to the case, and of course the ever-compliant media. The cover-up involved... the untimely deaths of at least fifteen key players in the scandal -including Franklin Committee investigator Gary Caradori, whose private plane was blown out of the sky on July 11, 1990 with Caradori and his eight-year-old son on board. Caradori had been threatened frequently, as had the witnesses from whom he was gathering information...

"..Just as appalling as the trail of dead witnesses was the fact that the child victims, rather than the perpetrators, were arrested and thrown in prison. One of them, a young female victim, achieved the rather dubious honor of spending more time in solitary confinement than any other woman in the history of the Nebraska penal system. She was sentenced to 9-25 years in prison for allegedly committing perjury. Her sentence was ten years longer than the one Larry King received for looting his financial institution of $40 million."
(ibid, pgs. 36-37)

DeCamp, a member of the Franklin Committee, remarks:

"The Justice Department, acting through the FBI and the U.S. Attorney's Office in Omaha, emerges from the record of the Franklin investigation not so much as a party to the cover-up, but as its coordinator. Rigging grand juries, harassment of witnesses, incitement to perjury and tampering with evidence -federal personnel were seen yo apply all of those techniques in the Franklin case...

"In 1988 and 1989, according to testimony to the Legislature's Franklin committee, the FBI claimed to be interested in Franklin money issues, but not child abuse. Dennis Carlson of the Foster Care Review Board testified to the Franklin committee, citing state Assistant Attorney General William Howland, that U.S. Attorney Tom Thalken had said 'that the federal authorities were investigating Mr. King... But he said basically their investigation was confined to the money issues, and they were not specifically investigating allegations of child abuse.'

"Howland's part-time investigator, Vlahoulis, told the Franklin committee that it was his impression the FBI had information on private charter flights, something Gary Caradori would confirm in a dramatic way.

"Moreover, as advertised in a May 12, 1990 article in the World-Herald, the FBI had been looking at Franklin since 1987, for over a year before it was closed! The FBI men could hardly have been unaware of the Franklin ambiance, not to mention the bedroom in the new addition, and the evidence shows that they were not. It was reported in the Lincoln Journal in December 1988, as summarized by Jerry Lowe for the Franklin committee, that 'an ex-employee who is not identified said that when FCU shut down, FBI agents immediately began asking questions regarding child pornography, drugs and the lifestyle of Larry King.'

"Caradori's notes of March 14, 1990 record that on the day of the federal agents' raid, he was told by a member of the accounting firm that was auditing Franklin, that

a large amount of pornographic material was taken out of the credit union, including videos and photographs depicting sexual acts. I was told that if Friedrichs or any of the other people working for the CPA firm that was contracted by the government would say anything, that they would automatically lose their jobs.

"That evidence was never made available to the Franklin committee, nor its existence publicly acknowledged by the FBI. All warrants concerning the raid were sealed by U.S. Magistrate Richard Kopf."
(The Franklin Cover-Up, pgs. 182-184)

So, just how far down the rabbit hole does Franklin lead? To fully appreciate that, we need to reconsider Larry King's former Sheridan-Kalorama neighbor, Craig Spence. Henry Vinson, the convicted former owner of a escort service Spence flooded with cash on a monthly basis, had an interesting story to tell journalist Nick Bryant.

"Vinson told me he became Spence's go-to guy for hookers and also his confidante, and Vinson maintains that Spence invited him to his Kalorama home on numerous occasions. 'I was probably at Spence's house twenty to twenty-five times,' Vinson told me. 'Spence loved cocaine and little boys -he was addicted to sex and addicted to drugs. He was definitely a pedophile.'

"Dropping by Spence's house on one occasion, Vinson says, he was introduced to Spence's friend Larry King. Vinson remembers meeting King perhaps ten times. 'King and Spence were in business together, and their business was pedophilic blackmail,' said Vinson. 'They were transporting children all over the country. They would arrange for children to be flown into Washington, DC and also arrange for influential people in DC to be flown out to the Midwest and meet these kids. I think that these kids were mostly marginalized -kids that no one cared about. King would talk about bringing in boys from Boys Town in Nebraska, and Craig Spence talked about that too.'"
(The Franklin Scandal, pgs. 311-312)

Bryant goes on to write:

"Rumors that Franklin Credit Union funds ended up in the Reagen administration's illegal Contra war chest even made it into the Lincoln Journal, and Larry King fondly name-dropped his friendship with CIA Director William Casey, but rumors and name dropping do not a CIA operation make. However, Paul Rodriguez and his colleagues had sources state that Craig Spence was a CIA asset; Spence himself claimed he was a CIA asset and confessed that his home was bugged by 'friendly' intelligence agents. Henry Vinson also told me that Spence confessed to him he was a CIA asset and that his blackmail enterprise was CIA-affiliated.

"Vinson claims to have informed federal prosecutors that the pedophilic blackmail enterprise of King and Spence had connections to the CIA. The CIA has denied its affiliation to Spence, and Vinson is a convicted felon, but thousands of documents were sealed in Vinson's case. The documentation salvaged by the Washington Times is at odds with the statements issued by the US Attorney concerning Vinson's clientele, but it corresponds to Vinson's allegations.

"Should we believe Vinson, the convicted felon, whose statement concerning his VIP clientele are corroborated, or the government that covered up the names of Vinson's clientele and refuses to unseal the documents in his case? The unsealing of Vinson's case files may elucidate the alleged connections of King and Spence's pedophilic pandering to the CIA. If Vinson's documentation is unsealed, and shows that he revealed to the feds that King and Spence were pedophilic pimps connected to the CIA, then it would be incumbent on the Department of Justice to tell America whether those allegations were investigated or simply ignored and covered up. If the Department of Justice has a sincere interest in the welfare of children, it should unseal those documents and provide the American public with answers."
(ibid, pg. 492)

This is certainly a complex web we're navigating -a callboy ring in DC, a pedophilic ring in Nebraska with possible ties to the one in DC, and the Finders organization operating within a few miles of the chief pimps fingered in both affairs. Oh, and all three rings may be on the pay roll of the CIA, with the FBI actively covering up their existence. And all the while, Lt. Col. Oliver North and Iran-Contra loom somewhere in the background along with Salem of 1692.

So, what does it all mean? Trip into the next installment of this series, which can be found here, for further instructions.