The Charleston Church Shooting, the WACL and Operation Gladio --Update 6/28/15: The Plot Thickens

The facts surrounding the shooting that unfolded in Charleston, South Carolina's historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church on June 17th just keeps growing more and more curious. When I first began examining this event I was most struck by the conspiratorial right's all to predictable reaction as well the bizarre synchronicity the shooting shared with the ritualistic death of financier Roberto Calvi. Calvi had been key player in the Vatican banking scandal and an initiate of the notorious Propaganda Due Masonic lodge.

It has long been alleged that the fall out from the banking scandal combined with his involvement with the neo-fascist secret society led his body being found dangling from Blackfriars Bridge on June 17th, 1982. This was thirty-three years to the day of the Charleston church shooting perpetuated by one Dylann Storm Roof.

Calvi's body

In a follow up piece I noted that Roof had apparently been heavily influenced by articles published by the far right wing Council of Conservative Citizens (CofCC) as well as his use of the Othala rune online. As to the former, the CofCC had its roots with the even more militant Citizens Councils that dated back to the 1950s. The funding for this movement was largely provided by Colonel Wickliffe Preston Draper, a "former" military intelligence officer and scion of a wealthy New England family with ties to the Bush clan. Draper has been linked to a host of intrigues, as I noted before here, and his presence as well as that of John Trevor Jr., a long time affiliate of the intelligence front known as the American Security Council (which this blog examined at great length before here), raises some very disturbing possibilities as to the ultimate purpose of the CofCC.

As for the Othala rune, this symbol was used by both a Waffen SS division as well as the neo-fascist Italian terror outfit known as Avanguardia Nazionale. The latter was founded by the notorious terrorist Stefano delle Chiaie, a figure long linked to both Operation Gladio and Operation Condor as well as Propaganda Due. Much more will be said on Gladio and Condor in a moment.

Delle Chiaie

Here I would like to address new information that has come to light concerning Roof's geographical proximity to a long time operator in the white nationalist underground. The Raw Story notes:

"Roof also lived for a time in Lexington, just a few miles away, which is home to onetime Aryan Nation leader and Christian Identity pastor August Kreis – whose activity and influence has waned as a result of severe diabetes and his arrest last year on child sex abuse charges."

August Kreis III

August Kreis has gotten around in his day. His ties to the Aryan Nations should immediately raise red flags. During its heyday the Aryan Nations maintained indirect ties to an international organization known as the World Anti-Communist League (WACL). The WACL brought together a curious mixture of "former" US military and intelligence officers, international drug and arms traffickers, various representatives of Third World dictatorships and terror networks, religious extremists of all stripes and the assorted unreconstructed Nazi war criminals. The organization was deeply immersed in drugs and arms trafficking and has been linked to terrorism on multiple continents. This researcher has chronicled the various intrigues of the WACL before here.

As for the Aryan Nations' ties to the WACL, consider:

"The Canadian branch of WACL, the Canadian Freedom Foundation, headed by John Gamble, works closely with the U.S. Counsel for World Freedom ( USCWF) and Singlaub. Together USCWF and the Canadian Freedom Foundation form the North American regional unit of WACL (NARWACL). Gamble and Singlaub alternate as chairs of NARWACL. Gamble was implicated in the Iran-Contra funding network when a firm for which he served as treasurer and director, Vertex Investments, was discovered to have invested in the arms sale to Iran through two of his partners. The Canadian Freedom Foundation (CFF) and Vertex both operate out of Gamble's law office.

"At least two CFF leaders are active anti-Semites: Pat Walsh is the Canadian correspondent for the quasi-Nazi Liberty Lobby newspaper the Spotlight and Paul Fromm helped found the neo-Nazi Western Guard.

"The Western Guard is led by John Ross Taylor, who served fifty-one months in detention for pro-Nazi activities during World War II. Taylor also leads Canadian contingents to Aryan Nations meetings, including a commemoration of the deaths of members of The Order, a paramilitary offshoot of Aryan Nations that engaged in robberies and murder in its efforts to overthrow the U.S. Government."

(Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party, Russ Bellant, pgs. 67)

Thus, Aryan Nations was within the sphere of the WACL during the 1980s via the Canada-based Western Guard Party. "Incidentally," this coincided with Aryan Nations' peak years of militancy. In addition to the escapades of The Order (which may have had possible links to P2, as noted before here), the Aryan Nations was also playing host to Vietnam veteran and leaderless resistance advocate Louis Beam and as well as Frazier Glenn Miller.

At the time Miller, another Vietnam veteran, had already been present at the Greensboro Massacre as a member of the National Socialist Party of America while still a member of the Army and would soon found the White Patriot Party after being discharged form the service. Members of the White Patriot Party were latter implicated in the murders of three individuals at an adult bookstore in Shelby, North Carolina on January 17, 1987 (another appearance of the number 17, which is littered with esoteric significance).

While other members of the White Patriot Party were implicated in the murders, rumblings have emerged recently that Miller himself played a role in the killings (a fact that that doesn't seem to have deterred the FBI from enlisting Miller as an informant). More recently Miller shot up a Jewish community center in Overland Park, Kansas on April 13, 2014. Three people lost their lives in this event.

Miller

Also in attendance at some Aryan Nations meetings during this era was Colonel William Potter Gale, a "former" military intelligence officer who essentially created the Posse Comitatus movement. Gale is another figure linked to numerous intrigues, as noted before here.

So needless to say, this "grass roots" happenings with the Aryan Nations during the 1980s seemed to have attacked a decent amount of former military men, more than a few of them with "deep" backgrounds. And in the background there were possible channels to the World Anti Communist League as terrorism connected to the Aryan Nations was at its peak.

But back to August Kreis. Kreis, another former military man with ties to Vietnam, did not become involved with the Aryan Nations until some point in the 1990s when it was largely a shell of its former self. But before that, he had been involved with the Posse Comitatus movement. During that time he made some interesting associations. The New York Daily News reports:

"He trained for his current post under his klan-mate mentor, Pennsylvania's Mark Thomas. This Christian Identity preacher exposed by the Daily News three years ago grew quiet after two disciples, skinhead brothers Bryan and David Freeman, pleaded guilty in December to murdering their parents and brother in February 1995. Kreis helps another pal, Jim Wickstrom, run the local Posse Comitatus. Wickstrom served three years of a 38-year prison sentence after his conviction for conspiracy to pass counterfeit money to build a racist guerrilla army..."

James Wickstrom

James Wickstrom was, according to researcher Cheri Seymour in her groundbreaking The Committee of the States, a close friend of Colonel William Potter Gale and had been his longtime alley in the Posse Comitatus movement. Together that they had steadfastly opposed ZOG (Zionist Occupied Government), or some such shit, for many years. Wickstrom was implicated for attempting to counterfeit money in France and Italy, home of Propaganda Due. During the late 1980s Wickstrom made a startling revelation concerning the Posse:

"James Wickstrom published an Intelligence Update in February, 1989, in which he wrote: 'ZOG thought the "Posse Comitatus" was just a tax rebellion movement. But to their surprise some years later, ZOG found that the movement was loaded with former military officers being used in an advisory manner. In Wisconsin alone, Posse Comitatus officers from 36 states were trained in all types of leadership positions in guerrilla warfare. Other training sites handled the other states.' "

(The Committee of the States, Cheri Seymour, pg. 169)

While mainstream researchers have largely scoffed at such claims, there were, as noted above, a considerable degree of "former" military personnel involved with the movement at this point. This state of affairs has continued to this day. And certainly "guerrilla warfare" is not the worst label one could apply to the activities of the Posse/Aryan Nations network during the 1980s if one is being very charitable. But moving along.

Another associate of Kreis' noted above, Mark Thomas, is even more interesting. Thomas would offer key assist in the formation of the Aryan Republican Army during the mid 1990s.This group was sometimes known as the Midwest Bank Bandits due to the spree of armed robberies they pulled off during that era

"Richard Lee Guthrie Jr., son of a CIA employee, discharge from the Navy for painting a swastika on the side of a ship and threatening superiors, his childhood friend Peter K.  Langan, and Shawn Kenny, went on to form the nucleus of a group known as the Midwest Bank Bandits. The group stole more than $250,000 from 22 banks between January, '94 and December, '95 in a spree that led them across Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri. The four member group would often wear FBI jackets to taunt the Bureau, and create diversions to foil police, including leaving behind inert pipe-bombs to slow pursuit. The bandits even had a macabre sense of humor, wearing a Santa Claus suit during a hold up around Christmas, and an Easter basket with a gold painted pipe-bomb left inside a bank in Des Moines.

" 'Wild Bill' Guthrie also admitted to a West Virginia sheriff that he had held Butler's Aryan Nations raise another quarter million dollars through fraud. Both Guthrie and Langan were regular visitors to the Hayden Lake compound...

"Interestingly, the Secret Service recruited Langan as an informant in August 1993 to keep an eye on his friend Guthrie, who had made threats against the lives of Presidents Clinton and Bush. Langan was released from his Georgia jail cell (serving time for robbing a Pizza Hut with Guthrie) and set up in a house in Ohio, where he was to assist the Secret Service in locating his old friend...

"Langan went south on the Secret Service six weeks later, and soon located his old friend Guthrie. The two set themselves up in a safe house in Pittsburg, Kansas, from which they were alleged to have launched their notorious crime spree.

"In November, '94, Mark Thomas, the local Aryan Nations representative, united the two with others of their kind. Thomas' farm, located rather appropriately next to a toxic waste dump, has been the site of skinhead and neo-Nazi rallies such as White Pride Day and the annual Hitler Youth Festival, where participants enjoyed such wholesome activities as pagan rituals and cross-burnings.

"Thomas introduced the pair to Pennsylvania native Scott Stedeford, a rock musician and artist, and Kevin McCarthy, bassist in a white-power band name 'Day of the Sword.' Thomas was instrumental in helping the men form an alliance which they would call the Aryan Republican Army (ARA)...

"The Pennsylvania Posse Comitatus leader would also introduce Stedeord and McCarthy to Michael Brescia, a Philadelphia native and rock musician who would go on to form a speed metal band with McCarthy and Stedeford called 'Cyanide.' The rock 'n' roll bank robbers decided to recruit the 24-year-old La Salle University student after planning the heist of a large bank in Madison, Wisconsin, which the trio robbed on August 30, 1995.

"The three men came to know 'Grandpa Millar' at Elohim City courtesy of Thomas, and Brescia was soon engaged to Millar's granddaughter, Ester. Brescia wound up living at the reclusive compound for two years. It was there that he would meet his new roommate, Andreas Carl Strassmeir, the mysterious German who settled there in 1991. It was also at Elohim City that Brescia would meet Timothy McVeigh..."

(The Oklahoma City Bombing and the Politics of Terror, David Hoffman, pgs. 119-121)

So, to recap: Mark Thomas assisted the son of a CIA employee and a Secret Service informant to establish the Aryan Republican Army. He also had ties to Elohim City, which Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh has long alleged to be tied too. As this researcher addressed extensively here, the Oklahoma City bombing is littered with indications of US intelligence manipulations.

So yes, August Kreis seems to have connections to individuals with murky backgrounds. And here is Kreis, who was recently indicted on pedophilia charges, living in an area close to Dylann Storm Roof, an avid Internet connoisseur of white supremacy. If Roof was aware that the former head of the Aryan Nations and a key figure in the Posse Comitatus lived near by, would he have been intrigued enough to contact Kreis?

This is of course all speculation on my part. But given the extensive ties the old Aryan Nations/Posse Comitatus network has to terrorism, it is most curious that Kreis would reemerge so near to Roof. Frazier Glen Miller recently returned form his own obscurity to commit the Jewish Community Center shooting, which may indicate that this network has been activated again.

But if so, under what auspices?

One of the most compelling candidates is what is commonly referred to as "Operation Gladio." This mysterious program is still widely ignored in the American media, even amongst "alternative" sources, despite is existence having been confirmed by numerous European parliaments. Here is a brief rundown of Gladio (which was actually the name of the Italian wing of this operation, but is used as a general term for the Europe-spanning network):

"As the Cold War ended, following juridical investigations into mysterious acts of terrorism in Italy, Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti was forced to confirm in August 1990 that a secret army existed in Italy and other countries across Western Europe that were part of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Coordinated by the unorthodox warfare section of NATO, the secret army have been set up by the US secret service Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6 or SIS) after the end of the Second World War to fight communism in Western Europe. The clandestine network, which after the revelations of the Italian Prime Minister was researched by judges, parliamentarians, academics and investigative journalists across Europe, is now understood to have been code-named 'Gladio' (the sword) in Italy, while in other countries the network operated under different names including 'Absalon' in Denmark, 'ROC' in Norway and 'SDRA8' in Belgium. In each country the military secret service operated the anti-Communist army within the state in close cooperation with the CIA or the MI 6 unknown to parliaments and populations. In each country, leading members of the executive, including Prime Ministers, Presidents, Interior Ministers and Defense Ministers, were involved in the conspiracy, while the Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC)...  coordinated the network on the international level. The last confirmed meeting of ACC with representatives of European secret services took place on October 24, 1990 in Brussels.

"As the details of the operation emerged, the press concluded that the 'story seems straight from the pages of a political thriller.' The secret armies were equipped by the CIA in the MI6 with machine guns, explosives, munitions and high-tech communication equipment hidden in arms caches in forests, meadows and underground bunkers across Western Europe. Leading officers of the secret network trained together with the US Green Berets Special Forces in the United States of America and the British SAS Special Forces in England. Recruited among strictly anti-Communist segments of the society the secret Gladio soldiers included moderate conservatives well as right-wing extremists such as notorious right-wing terrorist Stefano delle Chiaie and Yves Guerain Serac. In  its strategic design the secret army was a direct copy of the British Special Operations Executive (SOE), which during the Second World War had parachuted into enemy-held territory and fought a secret war behind enemy lines.

"In case of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe the secret body of soldiers under NATO command would have formed a so-called stay-behind network operating behind enemy lines, strengthening and setting up local resistance movements in enemy-held territory, evacuating shot-down pilots and sabotaging the supply lines and production centres of the occupation forces with explosives. Yet the Soviet invasion never came. The real and present danger in the eyes of the secret war strategists in Washington and London were the at-times numerically strong Communist parties in the democracies of Western Europe. Hence the network in the total absence of a Soviet invasion took up arms in numerous countries and fought a secret war against the political forces of the left. The secret armies, as the secondary sources now available suggest, were involved in a whole series of terrorist operations and human rights violations that they wrongly blamed on the Communists in order to discredit the left at the polls. The operations always aimed at spreading maximum fear among the population and ranged from bomb massacres trains and market squares (Italy), the use of systematic torture of opponents of the regime (Turkey), support for right-wing coup d'etats (Greece and Turkey), to the smashing of opposition groups ( Portugal and Spain)..."

(NATO's Secret Armies, Daniele Ganser, pgs. 1-2)

a patch used by Italian Gladio assets

Operation Gladio was not restricted to Western Europe, either. Similar projects such as Operation Condor and the Phoenix Program have been revealed in Latin America and Vietnam, respectively. In the case of Condor, numerous figures associated with Gladio such as the above-mentioned Stefano delle Chiaie and former SS man Klaus Barbie would also turn up in Condor operations. Theodore Shackley, one of the most notorious figures in the history of the CIA, has been linked to all three programs.

Shackley

It has been theorized that the organization that coordinated these various "stay behind" armies on an international level for many years was the World Anti-Communist League.

"... In 1966, a significant (and lasting) development occurred, namely the establishment in Taiwan – following on plans later earlier in the South Korean capital, Seoul – of the CIA-sponsored World Anti-Communist League (WACL). The organisation arose from a previous regional effort, the Asian People's Anti-Bolshevik League, sponsored by the Chinese Nationalist Kuomintang regime. Financial backers for the new anti-communist world ring included cash-hungry Korean cult tycoon Sun Myung Moon, whose recruitment methods and renowned mass nuptials uncannily mirrored certain CIA experiments in brainwashing. The tentacles of this sprawling octopus eventually extended to all corners of the planet. This was visibly the Fascist International, the huge global Gladio ... It was charged with  the ... brief to 'overcome and eliminate' any governments or forces considered sympathetic to communism. The means were not precisely specified, save for talking about warfare in psychologically political terms. Yet WACL was tracked to Operation Condor, death squads in Latin America and the Iberian Peninsula, the twin Kennedy assassinations and general oiling of Iran-Contra in life-after-death mode. So, it would not be surprising to discover WACL fingerprints thickly plastered all over The Enterprise of drug and arms dealings in its latter-day formation. In Europe, WACL was tied up with various neo-fascist fronts, particularly Licio Gelli's  P2/Gladio activities, in Italy as well as South America. The liquidations of both Aldo Moro (communist fraterniser) and Olof Palme (Iran-Iraq meddler, irritating Palestine interloper) have been cited as promoted in some degree by WACL."

(Gladio: NATO's Dagger at the Heart of Europe, Richard Cottrell, pgs. 123-124)

a meeting of the WACL

This is the same WACL that had indirect ties to the Aryan Nations during the height of its terror activities. The WACL also had ties to Wickliffe Preston Draper via Roger Pearson. Pearson headed the WACL in the late 1970s and also served for many years with the Pioneer Fund, an NPO established by Draper for the perpetuation of "scientific racism." This was the same Wickliffe Preston Draper that also provided much of the funding for the Citizen Councils that eventually merged into the Council of Conservative Citizens (CofCC). The same CofCC whose website seems to have made such an impression on Dylann Roof Storm.

Draper

"Incidentally," one of the victims of the Charleston church shooting was Clementa C. Pinckney, a liberal South Carolina State Senator. Pinckney, whom some have described as a rising star in the Democrat Party, had recently come out as a proponent of body cameras for police in the wake of the Walter Scott shooting. A charismatic figure, Pinckney's assassination removed a potential opponent of an increasingly militarized America police force. Certainly this bares more than a striking resemblance to projects Gladio has long been alleged to play a role in.

All of this is of course conjecture on my part. But each day seems to bring forth a new detail that puts this shooting spree in an especially disturbing light. And naturally, the conspiratorial right has been to busy clouding the issues to note the potential intrigues that unfolded on June 17, not unlike their response thirty-three years earlier to the death of Roberto Calvi.

Pinckney

UPDATE 6/28/15:

It would seem that Dylann Storm Roof name checked the writings of yet another individual closely linked to the old Posse Comitatus/Aryan Brotherhood network noted above in his manifesto. Raw Story reports:

"Dylann Roof refers to Harold Covington’s white separatist group, the Northwest Front, in his alleged manifesto. The rightwing sci-fi writer distances himself from the shooting, but his followers speculate if his work influenced Roof’s actions..

"The racist manifesto and photos apparently posted by Roof makes mention of the Northwest Front, created by Covington, a former member of the American Nazi party who traveled to South Africa and Rhodesia in order to agitate for white power. In the accompanying photos, Roof wore patches with Rhodesian and apartheid-era South African flags on them...

"The Roof killings are not the first time Covington’s name has come up in connection with an allegedly racist murder. Covington was part of a group of white supremacists in the 1970s who massacred black people at a rally in Greensboro (Covington didn’t kill anyone and wasn’t in attendance on the day of the violence). He was also at one time close with  Frazier Glenn Miller, who is charged with killing a one woman, a 69-year-old Jewish man and that man’s 14-year-old grandson in front of their temple last year..."

The American Nazi Party has been linked to deep intrigues, as I noted before here.

Covington's one time close friend Frazier Glenn Miller was also enlisted as an FBI informant for a time. Covington, who like many of the white supremacists considered in this article, is a former military man. During the mid-1970s he turned up in South Africa and later Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where he claimed to have worked as a mercenary. There is no evidence for this claim but he did indeed play a role in creating the Rhodesian White People's Party as well as a group called South African Friends of the Movement. The above-mentioned World Anti-Communist League (WACL) and American Security Council (ASC) had extensive dealings with the governments of Apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia during this time, but I have been unable to link either of Covington's groups to either international lobby group. But certainly they would be in keeping with the types of groups the WACL and ASC aligned themselves with in that part of the world.

Its also interesting to note that several of Covington's former allies in the white supremacist underground accused Covington of being a CIA asset shortly after the Greensboro massacre (which he was present for, along with Frazier Glenn Miller). Despite being sought by the FBI for questioning for his role in the massacre he was able to return to North Carolina unfettered. Much more on Covington and these allegations can be found here.

an image from the aftermath of Greensboro

Again, I would like to emphasize that there is no evidence at all indicating that Roof made contact with Covington, August Kreis or the Council of Conservative Citizens. But it certainly seems to stretch coincidence that Roof's interests would intersect with some many groups and individuals with possible deep backgrounds.

Covington

Citizens Councils, Psychological Warfare and the 23/17 Phenomenon

In a prior article I weighed in on the recent shooting in Charleston, South Carolina's historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in which nine people lost their lives, including Clementa C. Pinckney, a pastor and South Carolina State Senator (a Democrat who some have described as a rising star) who had recently become an advocate for requiring police to wear body cameras. This article was partly a criticism of the conspiratorial's right's inevitable clouding of the issues at hand as well addressing the shooting spree's bizarre synch to the murder of Roberto Calvi (he of the Vatican banking scandal and Propaganda Due) thirty-three years to the day of this present rampage and some musings about Operation Gladio and the likelihood that the American patriot and white supremacists communities were co-opted into these intrigues.

Clementa C. Pinckney, the liberal South Carolina state senator assassinated during he shooting spree, an act totally with in the MO of Operation Gladio

With this follow up I would like to address two other curious developments that have presently come to light: The first is the influence literature published on the Council of Conservative Citizen's website seems to have had on the shooter, Dylann Storm Roof. The Council of Conservative Citizens (CofCC) is a far right organization with roots dating back to the 1950s. It is the successor to an even more militantly racist organization known as the Citizens Councils of America (CCA, sometimes referred to as the White Citizens Councils). Here is a bit of background about the development of the CofCC:

"The Citizens Councils of America was founded after the Supreme Court's Brown decision in 1954, and became known as the white citizens' Councils and the downtown Klan to civil rights activist. In several Southern states, where they were intertwined with local businesses, state government, law enforcement, the councils led the resistance to desegregation. The man credit with starting the 'council' movement, Mississippi State Circuit Judge Tom Brady, wrote a manifesto supporting white supremacy and promising massive resistance to integration in the South. Brady was a onetime delegate to the Democratic Party's National Convention, like many other southern segregationist during the Jim Crow era, and later became a state supreme court judge. At the Citizen Council of America's height it claimed sixty thousand members...

"During the 1950s and 1960s, Willis Carto made repeated overtures to the organization's leaders. He spoke at its meetings, won its formal approval when first starting Liberty Lobby, and put Judge Brady on an early advisory board. Carto also developed independent correspondence and a working relationship with Brady. The councils eschewed Carto's explicitly anti-Semitic rhetoric, however, and a few Jewish businessmen joined its ranks. The pages of its bulletin, The Citizen, continued to expound white supremacy theories until it closed down. Once the battle to defend state-sponsored segregation was decisively defeated, however, the organization's founders exhibited little more than regret for the lost past and little vision for a post-civil rights era future. And so began a long slow decline during the 1970s.

"During the Carter administration, when other elements of the white supremacist movement began to surge again, the Citizens Councils continue to shrink. The remaining centers of activity in Carroll County, Mississippi, St. Louis, Missouri and Memphis, Tennessee, acted as hubs for other local chapters. Political and social activism, rather than propaganda or pure ideology, kept these groups alive. Besides electing their own officers, members continued fighting against school busing. They built support for private (all-white) academies. They campaign for candidates for office – from school boards to county commissions to U.S. Congress. They held picnics and other social affairs, and one chapter even had its own women's bowling team. At the same time, these relatively innocuous activities continued to come wrapped in an undiluted rationale for the supremacy of those who deemed themselves white... 

"Finally, when the Citizens Councils of America gave way to the association calling itself the Council of Conservative Citizens, both Bill Lord and Gordon Baum helped birth the new formation. The full transition to the Council of Conservative Citizens occurred over a five to seven-year period, beginning in March 1985 with the creation of two related nonprofit corporations in Missouri and ending in 1990 with the financial dissolution of the old Citizens Councils of America. Baum became the chief executive. The Citizens Informer tabloid, still published in St. Louis by a third corporation, became the house organ of the reassembled amalgam of organizational faces. And the new Council of Conservative Citizens (CofCC) inherited the dead organization's mailing list and membership. The conversion occurred unevenly as local groups of the old Citizens Councils changed their names and formally affiliated with the Council of Conservative Citizens...

"While the old Citizens Councils had been simply holding on, the new Council of Conservative Citizens began a period of rapid growth in the early 1990s. Rather than simply marketing its tabloid to new subscribers, as Liberty Lobby's Spotlight did, or look for in few good men to turn into revolutionary cadres, as National Alliance did, it focused existing organizational resources in developing new local councils as matter of policy. Like any self-respecting Rotary or Kiwanis club, councils gave their best activists plaques and awards, as if supporting South African apartheid were a form of public service. They elected local boards of directors, held regular meetings, and created an internal organizational life that socialized and educated their members – without drawing them into the small cultlike groups that salted the Christian patriot movement in the Midwest and West. By building a stable foundation, rather than sending funds to a central headquarters, they enabled future growth and leadership development to occur organically. 

"Further adding to the CoffCC's momentum, they maintained a nonsectarian policy towards other like-minded efforts. Members joined their local Republican women's clubs, promoted local antitax groups, and helped elect school board members. They also continued supporting and sustaining all-white private schools, particularly in Mississippi, much as Citizens Councils had in the past. And councils adopted a set of issues that paid significant organizational dividends, such as the preservation of the Confederate flag and memorials. As result, the CofCC could reasonably point to itself as uniquely embodying the unity of white nationalism and traditional Southern conservatism.

"... Further adding to its strength, CofCC members entwined themselves in the Republican Party's Buchananite wing like kudzu on an Arkansas hillside. The council's emphasis on working at the Republicans' grass roots had handsomely rewarded a relatively small investment. Witness the prominence of Mississippi State Senator Mike Gunn...

"As a result of these policies and the growth they engendered, the Council of Conservative Citizens began to absorb activists from white nationalism's further corners. Most were from the second and third tiers of movement leadership. Their names, personalities, and immediate past activist histories, however, added to the CofCC's growing importance inside the movement. From David Duke's Republican campaigns in Louisiana emerged Hope Lubrano and Kenny Knight, among others. Knight brought his experience as Duke's campaign manager, and Lubrano had been a key organizer who later worked for Buchanan in the presidential primaries. From the Populist Party came A. J. Barker, the North Carolina siding salesman. Less than a year after joining, Barker became chair of the CofCC North Carolina affiliate. Also from the Populist Party's ranks came William Carter, a chiropractor who became the council's South Carolina state chair. As activists from a variety of groups enlisted, so did a few well-placed cadres from William Pierce's National Alliance, who took up positions of influence and authority..."

(Blood and Politics, Leonard Zeskind, pgs. 418-422)

Given recent developments in these United States, the CofCC's strong presence in the St. Louis area (which is close to Ferguson, MO, where the Michael Brown shooting and subsequent riots occurred) as well as its long time advocacy for the Confederate flag are most interesting. Revisionist historian and Holocaust denier Michael A. Hoffman II has repeatedly pointed (such as here and here) to the banning of the Confederate flag on Texas licence plates being announced on the same day of the shooting as being a catalyst for the event. Naturally Hoffman has little to say about the COofCC, a group that has both advocated for years for the Stars and Bars and reportedly had a strong influence on shaping the world view of Dylann Storm Roof. But this is hardly surprising, so let us move along.

Hoffman

While being a largely obscure and fringe organization, the CofCC was able to make surprising headway with national political figures, ultimately claiming Mississippi Governor Kirk Fordice and former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott as affiliates. This is quite an achievement for an organization that likely never had more than a hundred thousand members and affiliates nation wide. Indeed, given how far outside the mainstream the organization's views were by the 1990s, this is quite a shocking development and should have elicited more questions of "How?" and "Why?" amongst the curious.

Trent Lott, whose career was partly derailed by his association with the CofCC, is shown here speaking before one of their meetings

A possible answer to these questions rest with the director of the Citizens Councils of America, CofCC's predecessor organization, William "Billy" J. Simmons. Simmons had longstanding ties to Colonel Wickliffe Preston Draper, the scion of a wealthy New England family linked to the Bush dynasty and a "former" military intelligence officer. Despite only serving in the Army for a few years Draper would insist that friends and acquaintances address him as "Colonel Draper" or simply the "Colonel" throughout his life. Draper has been linked to a host of intrigues over the years, including the Kennedy assassination. Much more information on the Colonel can be found here.

the Colonel

Simmons and the Citizen Councils would become the recipients of the Colonel's largess during the 1950s and onward. As the Colonel neared death, they were one such organization that he sought to reward.

"... According to his will, in the year before his death the Colonel made twenty-nine separate contributions of $1,000 ($4,400 AFI) each to private segregated schools, none of them in Mississippi. It is hardly possible that, although he was donating to so many other schools throughout the South in 1971, Draper had contributed nothing to the development, a few years earlier, of the Council School Foundation's system. Not only was the Mississippi effort headed by 'Billy' Simmons, his close ally in the fight for racial purity, but the Colonel had some particularly strong connection to Jackson, perhaps because it remained the unwavering locus of support for white supremacy. Although he was raised in New England and a long-time resident of New York, Draper's checking account at Deposit Guarantee National Bank in Jackson contained $179,000 ($765,000 AFI) at his death, almost three times the amount in his New York account; the Colonel also $450,000 in diamonds (almost $2 million AFI) in a safe deposit box at Deposit Guaranty, requiring Weyher, the executor of his will, to employ an armored truck to transport the gems back to New York for sale.

"In addition, Draper left $1.7 million ($7.26 million AFI) in his will to the Puritan Foundation, which had been incorporated in Jackson in August 1963 by Buford and Shell for unspecified charitable purposes. According to its charter, the nonprofit foundation was to receive investments, the proceeds from which it would then donate as 'grants or gifts' to other nonprofit organizations 'engaged in efforts to improve the conditions of mankind.' That is, Puritan was formed to act as an intermediary, funneling money from unnamed donors to unspecified recipients. The true purpose of this vague document became somewhat clearer when an amendment, filed in March 1964 – exactly the same time that the Jackson Citizens' Council's School Committee was planning its alternative, segregated system – revealed the John B. Trevor Jr. was the Puritan Foundation's president and Harry Weyher its secretary, indicating that even before Draper's death the foundation had been one of Pioneer's unacknowledged activities. The participation of Buford and Shell in this laundering operation, both men members of the board of the Council School Foundation, suggested the ultimate destination of the Colonel's money in this case. Any residual doubt that Puritan had been Draper's method for funding segregated schools in Jackson was dispelled when, in 1978, the Puritan Foundation was merged into the Council School Foundation. For practical purposes, there probably was never any real distinction between the two organizations.

"Finally, Draper's will named Jackson's Deposit Guaranty as trustee for another $3.25 million ($13.9 million AFI). Although the ultimate recipient of these funds is unknown, they were also undoubtedly left for another operation intended to preserve 'some island of segregation.' The bank itself, where Simmons's father had been chair of the Executive and Trust Committees, had been utterly sympathetic to the segregationist campaign, providing substantial loans to local Citizens' Council and School Foundation for the five segregated schools in the Jackson area; disclosure of the loans in 1970 caused some embarrassment because, by that time, the chair of Deposit Guaranty's Executive Committee was also a member of an educational advisory committee set up by the Nixon administration to promote support for public schools in Mississippi. Between the Puritan Foundation and the unnamed recipient of the Deposit Guaranty trusteeship, the Colonel had left just under $5 million ($21.14 million AFI) to the center of resistance to civil rights."

(The Funding of Scientific Racism, William H. Tucker, pgs. 128-129)

Draper was a major sugar daddy for the far right and it has been widely speculated that the amount of money that he bequeathed to the moment is far beyond what the official numbers indicate. But certainly $21.15 million adjusted for inflation is nothing to sneeze at, especially if it was invested well. And by most accounts, the Colonel's financial managers were quite good. It is thus quite possible that by the time the CofCC replaced the Citizens Council the latter organization had quite a war chest to draw from, one of which that would enable it to influence national policy to degree that its actual membership (or lack therefore of) could never manage.

Its also interesting to note the presence of John Trevor Jr. as president of the Puritan Foundation, one of the NPOs which provided the Citizens Councils with its ample funding. Trevor was the son of John Trevor Sr., a long time Draper associate and former military intelligence officer. He was the founder of the far right anti-immigration and union-busting American Coalition of Patriotic Societies (ACPS). Trevor Jr. succeeded his father as head of this organization. Under his leadership, the ACPS would develop close ties with the American Security Council (ASC). This far right "think tank" has extensive ties to the US intelligence community, as has been noted before here.

Thus, it is not beyond the question, in this researcher's estimation, that the Citizens Council was originally envisioned in part as another psychological warfare front, one in which African-Americans and other minorities groups were routinely and viciously dehumanized while vigorous efforts were made to radicalize the largely white male membership that constituted the bulk of Citizens Councils members. Certainly the presence of both Draper and Trevor in the organization's history is indicative of an intelligence link. But moving along.

Before wrapping up, I can't help but note an appearance of the 23/17 phenomenon in the shooting spree. The 23/17 phenomenon was first noted by Robert Anton Wilson and is closely linked to the 23 enigma. Tek-Gnostics gives an excellent run down of this odd bit of synchronicity:

"The 23/17 enigma, simply stated, refers to the belief that many incidents of synchronicity are directly connected to the numbers 23… 17… or some combination or modification of these numbers. Uncle Bob Wilson (aka: Robert Anton Wilson) credits William S. Burroughs as being the first person to identify the 23 enigma. Wilson, in his book The Cosmic Trigger, related the following story.

" 'More important to our narrative, William S. Burroughs (author of ‘Naked Lunch’) introduced me to the 23 Enigma while I was at Playboy... In the early '60s in Tangier, Burroughs knew a certain Captain Clark who ran a ferry from Tangier to Spain. One day, Clark said to Burroughs that he'd been running the ferry 23 years without an accident. That very day, the ferry sank, killing Clark and everybody aboard. In the evening, Burroughs was thinking about this when he turned on the radio. The first newscast told about the crash of an Eastern Airlines plane on the New York-Miami route. The pilot was another Captain Clark and the flight was listed as Flight 23... Burroughs began keeping records of odd coincidences. To his astonishment, 23s appeared in a lot of them.'

"Burroughs wrote a short story in 1967 called "23 Skidoo." The term "23 skidoo" was popularized in the early 1920s and means “it's time to leave while the getting is good.” This expression appeared in newspapers as early as 1906.

"Wilson, along with co-author Robert Shea of “Illuminatus!” fame, more clearly identifies the 23/17 phenomenon, in that both numbers are tied to the Discordian Law of Fives. The Discordian holybook, the Principia Discordia states that: All things happen in fives, or are divisible by or are multiples of five, or are somehow directly or indirectly appropriate to 5. To Discordians, 23, a corollary of the law of fives, is considered either lucky, unlucky, sacred to their goddess Eris, sinister, sacred to the unholy gods of the Cthulhu Mythos, or significantly strange.

"In Illuminatus!, the character Simon Moon illustrates this rational using the following mathematical-numerological-magical formula… in 23: 2 + 3 = 5, and in 17: 1 + 7 = 8 = 2³ ...clear as mud, right? To clarify, Moon pulls in another enigmatic number… 40. In the following excerpt from Illuminatus!, Moon further clarifies…

" 'That brings me to the 40 enigma. As pointed out, 1 + 7 = 8, the number of letters in Kallisti. 8 x 5 = 40. '

" 'More interestingly, without invoking the mystic 5, we still arrive at 40 by adding 17 + 23. What, then, is the significance of 40? I've run through various associations… Jesus had his 40 days in the desert, Ali Baba had his 40 thieves, Buddhists have their 40 meditations, the solar system is almost exactly 40 astronomical units in radius (Pluto yo-yos a bit)—but I have no definite theory…  yet.' 

Robert Anton Wilson

More information from Wilson on the 23 enigma can be found here while this researcher has written at length concerning the number seventeen before here.

As for the Charleston shooting, the appearance of the number 17 is quite obvious: the killing spree unfolded on June 17th (the same day thirty-three years early when Roberto Calvi's neck famously found itself at the end of a rope dangling from Blackfriars Bridge). The appearance of the number twenty three in this sage comes from a surprising place: a browser tab used by Roof. The New York Times reports:

"The icon for the browser tab on Mr. Roof’s website is an Othala rune, an ancient symbol appropriated by the Nazis that remains common among neo-Nazi groups."

the Othala rune

The Othala rune is generally listed as either twenty-third or twenty-fourth rune in various alphabets. Its meaning roughly translates to "heritage, inheritance, or inherited estate." Of especial interest in this case is the fact that this rune was adopted by 7th SS Volunteer Mountain Division Prinz Eugen as a part of its insignia and later by the Italian neo-fascist terror outfit known as Avanguardia Nazionale (National Alliance). This organization was founded by the notorious terrorist Stefano Delle Chiaie. Chiaie has been closely linked to Italy's Propaganda Due (P2) Masonic lodge over the years as well as Operation Gladio. And of course Robeto Calvi and his death have long been linked to P2 and Gladio as well (this researcher has addressed the connection of the former before here, here and here).

Certainly this then is a rather striking appearance of the 23/17 phenomenon. And with that dear readers I shall sin for now.

17 Over Blackfriars -Updated 6/21/15

On the night of June 17th your humble researcher sat down to his laptop after a particularly miserable  day only to be confronted by the early reports concerning the shooting at the historic Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church located in Charleston, South Carolina. I was immediately confronted with a sickness in the pit of stomach that took several moments to clear. Upon regaining my senses, a peculiar thought popped into my mind: "The intellectual masturbation linking this shooting to Freemasonry is going to be off the chain, especially among the proponents of 'twilight language'."

While it took a full day for the posts to start appear, I can now at least say I was not disappointed in this regard. The remarks of famed "revisionist historian" (and likely fascist sympathizer) Michael A. Hoffman II were especially predictable. The longtime foe of the Judaic-Masonic-Communist conspiracy noted:

"Dylan Storm Roof was shown in the national media with a Confederate States of America license plate on June 18, the day which began with the breaking news that the US Supreme Court had upheld the ban on Confederate license plates by the state of Texas (as far as those plates being issued by the state itself). Coincidence? 

"Roof’s heinous killings occurred on the 33rd degree of north parallel latitude in Charleston, South Carolina, headquarters of the most powerful masonic body in the world, the Scottish Rite. Coincidence?

"Other news media have reported that Mr. Roof has in the past taken the psychotropic drug Xanax. (He was facing felony drug charges prior to the massacre he perpetrated). Was he drugged during his shooting spree? The Establishment media don't ask, and they also don’t ask why he wasn’t tested for drugs or alcohol being present in his system when he was apprehended. Many other youths who initiated massacres (Kip Kinkle and the Columbine High killers for example) were under the influence of a hypnotic pharmaceutical drug when they committed their crimes.

"The New York Times issued a graph yesterday purporting to show that Black people are the chief victims of hate crimes in the United States, but these statistics are cooked. It is very difficult to have black on white crime officially listed as a hate crime. Such crimes are too often dismissed as non-racial, random violence...

"The politically correct issues here are racism and gun control, and the suppressed issues are mind control pharmaceuticals and Manchurian candidates..."

Hoffman

Hoffman also makes heavy use of a Texas Freemasonic license plate in this post (as well as comments left on Loren Coleman's Twilight Language blog), seemingly implying that the access Texans have to Masonic license plates and not those sporting the stars and bars of the Confederacy somehow played somehow contributed to the shooter's rampage.

Other such revelations made by Hoffman is his erroneous claim that the shooter Dylan Storm Roof was abusing Xanax. In point of fact, Roof had been arrested for illegal possession of Suboxone back on February 28th, a point even the neo-con propaganda outlet known as World Net Daily got right. As a former psychology major and an individual who has spent his fair share of time around pill poppers (a largely unavoidable state of affairs for someone living in Florida), I have long been concerned about the pharmaceutical drugging of America. Hence, this is easily the most compelling point Hoffman makes, especially after recent studies have linked opioid-based painkiller use to higher rates of violence.

Suboxone, however, is designed to dull certain opioid receptor modulators, and thus has effects somewhat different that conventional opioid painkillers such as Xanax. This researcher has had extensive dealings with individuals whom have used Suboxone and did note the kind of radical shifts in behavior and mood that regular painkillers or anti-anxiety meds can produce. In point of fact, Suboxone seems to ease the motivations of its users. Major weight gain, for instance, is a side effect I have personally noticed and have seen reported online. Hence, I am not especially convinced that the drug itself could have been a catalyst (though it certainly could have contributed to the shooter's diseased mind). But obviously I am hardly an authority on such things (though neither are any number of online conspiracy theorists who will play up the prescription drug angle).

Racism has of course been widely downplayed by Hoffman and many conservative commentators despite the fact that the shooting took place a historically significant African American church, all the victims were black, and that the shooter published photos of himself on Facebook sporting the banners of Apartheid-era South Africa and Rhodesia on a black jacket as well as another one in which he is seen sitting on the hood of car with a Confederate flag on its license plate. Charleston, South Carolina may be a highly important city to Freemasonry, but it is also the city that played host to the first battle of the Civil War with the First Battle of Fort Sumter in 1861. And of course, the shooter has apparently acknowledged that the shooting was driven by a desire to spark a race war.

Mr. Roof sporting his Rhodesia and Apartheid-era South Africa patches while dressed in black

But clearly the Masonic conspiracy, and especially the fact that Masonic licenses plates are still available in Texas while the Confederate flag has been banned, is the main catalyst. Just keep telling yourself that.

Meanwhile, Alex Jones, the proverbial Venerable Grand Master of conspiratorial right, has remarked that he does not detect evidence of a false flag operation. Raw Story reports:

"Jones said on Thursday that the shooting, which resulted in the deaths of nine people at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, did not feel like a 'false flag' attack to him because of the lack of what he called 'talking points' from the media. He also said that the suspect, 21-year-old Dylan Roof, 'looks like the textbook-case lunatic.' "

Jones

In point of fact, the shooting certainly bares traces of a textbook Operation Gladio attack. That Jones would not point this out is hardly surprising, however. Despite ample evidence of the program's existence, Operation Gladio is rarely addressed by the conspiratorial right in America. There is a reason for this, as shall be noted in a moment. But first, a bit about Gladio:

"Operation Gladio was first made public in August 1990, when then-Prime Minister Giulio Anderotti admitted its existence to the Italian Parliamentary Committee on Terrorism. To this day much about Gladio remains mysterious. It seems that planning for the operation began to take place in 1951... Gladio was incorporated into Office 'R' of SIFAR in 1956. On paper, Gladio was a NATO-backed 'Stay Behind' operation: Any Soviet attack on Italy would encounter a pre-established resistance network, a militarily-trained underground with access to secret arms caches hidden across the country. To implement Gladio, SIFAR established a sabotage training school in Sardinia in 1954. Technically, Gladio was made up of two principal branches: 40 S/B (Stay Behind) units trained in guerrilla warfare, and five rapid deployment units with names like Alpine Star, Sea Star, Rhododendron, and Azalea. American-supplied weapons, including hand grenades, sniper rifles, and explosives were also buried in 139 hiding spots.

"The Italian government claimed initially that Gladio was part of a general agreement with NATO. NATO, however, officially denied any involvement. Revelations that Gladio-type organizations existed in non-NATO nations like Austria, Spain, and Switzerland further eroded the NATO cover story. Gladio really seems to have been what its name means: a double-edged sword to be used against the Soviets and any element inside Italy, from either left or the right, that might try to take Italy out of NATO. Gladio also served as the backdrop for the 'strategy of tension,' which repeatedly destabilized Italian politics with bombings and other terror attacks. Popular fear of terrorism, from either the 'left' or 'right,' could then be used to justify a suspension of constitutional law or even, in a worst-case scenario, a military-backed Pinochet-like 'white coup' to insure Italy's continued allegiance to the West."

(Dreamer of the Day, Kevin Coogan. pg. 332)

a patch used by Italian Gladio "Gladiators"

A few points need to be clarified. While Gladio was in theory an equal opportunity operation that targeted the Left and Right as the climate dictated, the Italian deep state went out of its way to implicate leftists in terror plots while down playing the threat from right wing extremists. In point of fact, neo-fascist organizations such as Ordine Nuovo and Avanguardia Nazionale were routinely recruited to both infiltrate the Left and carry out terror attacks to implicate them. This researcher has already chronicled such developments in his examination of the kidnap and murder of Italian states Aldo Moro (addressed here, here and here) as well the role neo-fascist played in the terror bombings (noted before here) that rocked Italy during the period known as the "Years of Lead."

Moro during his alleged kidnapping by the Communist Red Brigades

Nor was Gladio restricted to Italy or even Western Europe. It was in fact an international operation with Gladio being simply the Italian component. In South America it was known as Operation Condor while a similar operation was conducted during the Vietnam War known as the Phoenix Program. Amongst all these operations a reoccurring pattern emerges: acts of terrorism in various forms that are blamed on the Left and used to shock the population at large.

For years the international umbrella organization that directed Gladio was known as the World Anti-Communist League (WACL). The WACL brought together a curious assortment of US military and intelligence officers, international drug and arms traffickers, various Third World dictators and religious extremists of various stripes and the inevitable unreconstructed Nazi war criminals. Much more on the WACL and its links to terrorism can be found here. Its ties to Gladio have been addressed in brief here.

The WACL also had its tendrils in the United States. As was noted before here, it had ties to the Aryan Nations in the 1980s through a Canadian affiliate. During this time the Aryan Nations was playing host to the terror outfit known as The Order as well Frazier Glen Miller, who was recently arrested for shooting up a Jewish synagogue. The Aryan Nations was also in contact with Colonel William Porter Gale, a "former" military intelligence officer who created the Posse Comitatus, which much of the modern Patriot movement derives its ideology from. More information on Gale can be found here while the links to the Order and the Aryan Nations to a broader, US-backed international fascist network, can be found here.

the emblem of The Order

Thus, Jones and his ilk do well to not address Gladio as a compelling argument can be made that the neo-Nazi and Patriot movements in these United States are essentially the US component of this network.

That being said, there is no evidence as yet that Dylan Storm Roof had ties to this broader network. But consider: Stormfront, the premier US neo-Nazi website, has been linked to over 100 murders in its day. The forums of this website attract a host of angry and disillusioned young men, more than few already pre-disposed to violence. A well trained psychological warfare specialists for the FBI, CIA or military intelligence (most likely) would find any number of compelling subjects herein that could be pushed over the edge without much prodding. Their work would be even easier if some of these young men were pill poppers, an increasingly regular character trait amongst the kids.

the logo of Stormfront

While I have no evidence whatever that this is what happened, it is at least as plausible as any number of other theories making the rounds.

Before wrapping up, I can't resist in throwing in my own twist in on the Masonic conspiracy theories making the rounds concerning Roof. Easily the most credible evidence of some type of modern Masonic conspiracy emerged in the form of Italy's Propaganda Due (P2) Masonic lodge. As I've noted before in an ongoing series, P2 was linked extensively to terrorism and drug and arms trafficking in both Italy and abroad. But as noted before, it was hardly a regular or mainline Masonic lodge. A thorough examination of the actual forces behind P2 will soon be forth coming on this blog.

Easily the most famous event linked to P2 was the bizarre, ritualistic death of financier Roberto Calvi. Here are a few details:

"... The last hours of Calvi's life were spent in the Chelsea Cloisters, frantically working the telephone. The by-now ex-chairman of Banco Ambrosiano was clearly facing an imminent deadline. Sometime during the evening of the 17th June, he stepped out in his usual expensive top had and favorite hand-made loafers. He was next seen suspended from an orange rope strung from builders' scaffolding beneath Blackfriars Bridge. As even the uninitiated generally know, orange is the keynote colour the Masonic Craft. Calvi's body was loaded with ballast, about forty kilos of stones stuffed into his pockets and bizarrely, his trouser flies. His calves' leather wallet contained £10,000 in sterling, Swiss francs, and Italian lira notes. His expensive though unwaterproofed Swiss watch stopped at just before 2 a.m., the point at which it was dipped in the water by the rising river tide. After 2:30 am, the level of the water would  not have been sufficiently high to reach Calvi 's wrist.

"That suicide would demand amazing agility for an overweight sixty-two-year-old man suffering from poor eyesight and pronounced vertigo. In a statement of doubtless unintended irony, Superintendent John White of the London river police declared: 'The long and the short of it is that we do not know how he came to be at the end of that rope.' The scene of the crime was drenched with mystical significance. The bridge lies in the area of London where the black-capped Dominican friars establish themselves in the mid-1300s. Black is the colour most often associated with fascism."

(Gladio: NATO'S Dagger at the Heart of Europe, Richard Cottrell, pgs. 232-233)

Calvi's dead body

Black is course the color Dylan Storm Roof has been shown wearing most commonly since the shooting emerged. Indeed, he seems to have spent a fair amount of his time in the months leading up to the shooting dressed entirely in black. But of course, this may not have been a reference to fascism.

The date of the church shooting is more curious, however: June 17, 2015. Roberto Calvi was murdered on June 17, 1982. This is thirty-three years to the day of Calvi's murder. The number thirty-three is of course highly significant in Freemasonry in part because thirty-three is the highest grade in the Scottish Rite, which has its headquarters in Charleston, South Carolina.

But P2 was not part of the Scottish rite and hardly a mainline Masonic lodge. They referred to themselves as "Black Friars" in their meetings and the implications of this are quite eye opening. This blog will soon consider these implications at length. Stay tuned.

UPDATE 6/21/15:

Reports are now coming in that Roof's ideology was heavily influenced by the website for the Council of Conservative Citizens. This far right organization is part of the peculiar legacy of Colonel Wickliffe Preston Draper, a military intelligence officer hailing from a phenomenally wealthy New England whom dedicated a considerable amount of his fortune advancing a far right nationalist agenda. Much more information can be found on the Colonel and the host of intrigues he was involved in here.

the Colonel