Sunday, April 29, 2018

NXIVM Stoned



By now I'm sure many of you are well aware of NXIVM (which is pronounced as "Nexium," like the controversial drug), the bizarre outfit nominally engaged in self-help seminars that increasingly appears to be some type of cult. Think Scientology on steroids. Or maybe even one of the blackest sheep of the human potential movement, namely est.

As was noted before here, est appears to have grown out of prior self-help rackets linked to the far right while employing techniques straight out of Pentagon/CIA behavior modification techniques. Later, est became quite popular with certain military officers looking to create "super soldiers" as well. Keep the murky origins of est in mind as we consider the present topic as there are some eerie similarities. And on that note, let us now briefly consider NXIVM.

Unsurprisingly, the cult has already captivated the imaginations of the masses and conspiracy theorists in equal measures. The lure is undoubtedly the minor/aging celebrities, most notably Smallville actress Allison Mack, who were initiated into the cult. After all, its not every day that a former WB starlet is accused of participating in sex trafficking and slavery. Add in allegations of money laundering and bizarre, MK-ULTRA/ARTICHOKE-like behavioral modification techniques and one is left with quite a strange brew indeed.

Allison Mack
Naturally, the alternative media is having a field day with the ties to NXIVM and the Clinton family. Cult founder Keith Raniere first gained notoriety when he was run out of Arkansas in 1992 for running a pyramid scheme while Bill Clinton was still governor. It would appear that there were no hard feelings:
"Executives and top associates of the Albany-based NXIVM group – along with their family members – donated $29,900 to Clinton’s presidential campaign, according to federal records.
"On March 14 and April 13, records show, more than a dozen contributions poured into Clinton’s coffers from NXIVM, an executive and group-awareness training organization led by Brooklyn-born Keith Raniere, 47.
"Most were from first-time political donors, each giving the $2,300 maximum.
"The revelation comes on the heels of the arrest of Norman Hsu, who raised $1.5 million in campaign contributions for the Clintons and other Democrats, even though he was technically a fugitive from fraud charges in California." 
Keith Raniere
While the alt media has been quick to link NXIVM to the Democratic Party, the organization does not seem especially liberal. Apparently NXIVM has also contributed to more than a few Republican pols over the years, such as Christian fundamentalist and one time GOP presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee. And then there's the fact that one of Raniere's chief influences was alt right/libertarian icon Ayn Rand and her philosophy of "Objectivism."

Another curious aspect of NXIVM that conspiracy theorists have been quick to pounce upon is the presence of the uber wealthy Bronfman family of Canada financially backing the cult. This is not the first time the Bronfman family has funneled money to a highly charismatic yet dubious figure linked to New Age pursuits. During the 1970s the Bronfman family became major patrons of Earth Day co-founder Ira Einhorn. At the time Einhorn maintained an extensive network that served as a bridge between fringe and New Age thinkers and corporate America. Einhorn began to establish this network in the early 1970s with the backing of Pennsylvania Bell, an operating company owned by AT&T (as was noted before here, AT&T has been reputed to have funded some very curious projects prior to Einhorn's network). This put the Philadelphia-based Einhorn on the radar of various Pennsylvania elites. It wasn't long before he went national and even international.
"By the mid-1970s Ira Einhorn's network was a certified phenomenon in and of itself. Names appearing on the cover letters of recipients of a given piece might include economists Hazel Henderson; Lehman Brothers managing director Shel Gordon; Seagram heir Charles Bronfman; futurist Alvin Toffler; science adviser to the British Commonwealth Christian de Lait; corporate presidents John Hass and George Bartol; Whole Earth Catalog publisher Stewart Brand; physicists Freeman Dyson, David Bohm, Frijtof Capra, and Heinz Pagels; Esalen cofounder Mike Murphy; journalists Alex Cockburn and Jack Anderson; authors Colin Wilson, Robert Theobold, and Thomas Kuhn..."
(The Unicorn's Secret, Steven Levy, pg. 160)  
Ira Einhorn
Some of the spookier members of Einhorn's network included CIA assets Christopher Bird and Andrija Puharich. As was noted before here, Puharich lent his peculiar scientific expertise to Project ARTICHOKE. Bird has also been linked to similar research. Einhorn also knew famed stage magician and Mossad asset Uri Geller as well. But back to his Bonfman backers. 

Barbara Bronfman, who at the time was the wife of Charles Bronfman, was a major supporter of Einhorn's. Reportedly Charles Bronfman's sister, Phyllis Bronfman Lambert, also had some dealings with Einhorn. Edgar Bronfman Sr., who for a time supported NXIVM, is a sibling to both Charles and Phyllis, for those of you keeping score. I have been unable to determine if he had ties to Einhorn, but it would hardly be surprising.

Edgar Bonfman Sr.
And much like Raniere, Einhorn fell out of favor with the Bronfman family in the midst of scandal. In Einhorn's case, he was accused and ultimately convicted of murdering Holly Maddox, his long time girlfriend. For many years Einhorn was on the lam before finally be arrested in 1997 in France. He was initially able to jump bail and flee the United States with the aid of money provided by the Bronfman family via Barbara.

In regards to the current NXIVM scandal, the presence of the Bronfman family also leads to another curious figure recently addressed on this blog, namely infamous conservative lobbyist Roger Stone. Stone is now well known due to his long term relationship with President Donald J. Trump.

Stone and other key Trump allies such as fellow lobbyist Paul Manafort and Fox News mogul Rupert Murdoch were originally introduced to the Orange One in the late 1970s by Trump's long time attorney Roy Cohn. As was noted before here, Cohn had rather extensive links to organized crime and far right wing elements of the deep state. Even more disturbing are longstanding allegations surrounding Cohn's activities in New York City along these lines:
"... New York attorney John Klotz began to investigate Roy Cohn on behalf of a client. Declassified New York government files and spadework by a private detective substantiated the allegation that there was indeed a 'blue suite' at the Plaza, Suite 233. 'Roy Cohn was providing protection,' Klotz discovered. 'There were a bunch of pedophiles involved. That's where Cohn got his power from – blackmail."
(Bobby and J. Edgar, Burton Hersh, pg. 88)
Roy Cohn
As I've already noted here and here, there is ample evidence that many of Cohn's acolytes followed in their mentor's footsteps. And Roger Stone appears to be no exception, as he seemingly was the one to have blown the whistle on the prostitution ring New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was involved in. At the time Spitzer was at odds with Wall Street in the wake of the 2007-2008 financial crisis. Spitzer threatened reforms, much to the chagrin of Wall Street and state Republicans, and Stone was employed to engineer a change.

Spitzer was ultimately driven from office and state Republicans won big in 2009 elections in New York state. Stone was again of assistance, procuring funds from a curious source:
"A couple of days ago, the Post broke the news that Roger Stone — a former state GOP functionary who resigned after allegedly threatening Eliot Spitzer’s family — was procuring money for Joe Bruno and pals from his other employer, a cultlike organization called NXIVM. Needless to say, we’ve been obsessed with the Albany-based NXIVM (pronounced, believe it or not, like 'Nexium') ever since. It’s basically like Scientology masquerading as a self-help seminar, run by a guy named Keith Raniere. Raniere claims to have the highest IQ on record and have been a judo champion by age 11; he also demands to be called Vanguard by his followers (someone should introduce him to Mystery!). He is, in short, your classic swindler (his previous enterprise, a pyramid scheme called Consumers’ Buyline, got kicked out of Arkansas in 1992) who’s discovered the resale value on Ayn Randian mumbo jumbo. NXIVM’s 'executive success' program is designed to reel in alpha types who need someone to tell them that greed is good. Its big philosophy is that 'human beings are born parasitic' (saying 'I’m hungry' or complaining about pain, for instance, is parasitic behavior; the enlightened just take what they need). It also redefines 'good' as 'pro-survival' and 'bad' as 'destructive.' Students wear colored sashes and bow in the presence of the leader. You can see where this is headed. 
"Why should we pay attention to this psycho factory? Because it has well-placed, well-heeled members and appears to be actively pursuing an entrĂ©e into political fund-raising. Stone, paid by NXIVM, had funneled at least $20,000 to the state GOP; the heirs to Seagram’s fortune are devotees; and, per the Post, Richard Mays — a Clinton friend and one of Hillary’s top fund-raisers — is an 'Espian' as well, having taken so-called intensive classes with Raniere. The Aleksey Vayner type who preaches that suicide can be good (if you’re a counter-constructive person, removing yourself from the planet is a constructive act) becomes just a little less hilarious when you realize he’s got the ear of people with actual policy decisions to make."
Keep in mind the above quote is taken from an article first published in October 2007. Thus, Stone had a connection NXIVM for well over a decade.

Roger Stone
The great Christopher Knowles of The Secret Sun recently mused: "You really gotta wonder about NXIVM and what it says about the state of our society. It's in the news now but this cult's shenanigans have been known for a very, very long time. Yet, nothing was done about it until now?"

Actually, I think the timing of this revelation is quite telling. NXIVM appears to have established a working relationship with the Clinton family at some point in the last decade and eventually donated around a million and a half dollars to the Clintons and other Democrats during the last election.

Roger Stone, who also handled political donations for NXIVM as well, would have almost surely have been aware of these ties. Is it possible he also encouraged the cult to ramp up the donations leading up to the election so that he could once again blow the whistle as he did on Eliot Spitzer at some point?

It is certainly curious that this scandal comes in the wake of the various sex scandals that have rocked Hollywood in recent months and brought down several prominent Democrats. As I noted before here, another Cohn protege, private detective Thomas Corbally, spent decades navigating the seedier side of Hollywood. Corbally has been linked to at least one major Hollywood prostitution ring.

Thomas Corbally
I don't think these revelations are coincidental at all. With the ongoing deep state civil war as vicious as ever, the control files amassed by Cohn and his associates over several decades increasingly appear as a Sword of Damocles the Orange One holds over his opponents, ever threatening to topple the entire house of cards.

And in case your wondering, this hardly appears to be the first time Cohn and his acolytes have employed cults for political change. This topic will be a addressed in much greater depth in future installments in my ongoing Goodfellas series, hopefully in the coming weeks. Until then stay tuned dear readers. 


Sunday, April 22, 2018

The House of Mellon Part IV: A Death in the Family



Several years ago I published a series on the Mellon family of Pittsburgh, who for many decades have been one of the nation's wealthiest and most influential, if little acknowledged, families. While rarely mentioned by conspiracy researchers in the same breath as more notorious American families such as those of Morgan (which hasn't been a major power for nearly half a century) and Rockefeller (whose influence has been in decline since the 1970s and will likely fall off a cliff with David Rockefeller's death), the Mellons have wielded a considerable degree of influence for well over a century now. What's more, they've proven quite adept at straddling the lines between competing factions in the various  American Establishments.

The patriarch of the family was Thomas Mellon, who rose to prominence less than a decade after the conclusion of the American Civil War. In 1870 he established what became the Mellon Bank, which by the end of the nineteenth century had become the largest financial institution in these United States outside of New York City. The family later branched out into the oil business at the onset of the twentieth century via Thomas Mellon's grandson, William Larimer Mellon Sr., who established the Gulf Oil Corporation in 1907. Finance and oil would serve as the linchpins of the Mellon empire in the decades that followed.

Probably the most famous (or infamous) of the Mellon clan was Andrew Mellon (addressed before here), who truly turned the family's business concerns into an empire.
"But what was more important at the time was that Andrew also built a great business empire. He and his brother Richard created first a national bank, then a steel concern, and then an empire. Young Mellon cornered the bauxite market. He shared in the profits of Carnegie Steel... The Mellons together established the enormous Aluminum Company of America; later they picked up Bethlehem Steel. They invested in Spindletop, the Texas gusher that opened the Gulf Coast oil industry. By the time Hoover reached adulthood, the Mellons also were players in the steel, railway, construction, and insurance industries. Succeeding Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick, Andrew Mellon ruled Pittsburgh in a way that not even the president ruled Washington."
(The Forgotten Man, Amity Shlaes, pgs. 24-25) 

Andrew Mellon
Mellon is probably best remembered, however, for his tenure as Secretary of the Treasury. He held the post from 1921 until 1932, an eleven year period in which he oversaw the Roaring Twenties as well as the stock market crash of 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression. As such, Mellon's tenure as Secretary of Treasury remains highly controversial. During that era he received ample blame for the Depression and was routinely attacked by FDR up until his death in 1937.


The Occult, UFOs and Intelligence

For our purposes here, it is interesting to note that Mellon was also a prominent Freemason who contributed to the Masonic architecture in Washington, D.C. Probably the most well known instance of this the Andrew W. Mellon Memorial Fountain, approved by Congress ten years after Andrew's death and completed in 1952. The Fountain has some very curious features.
"... The fountain was completed by 1952, and located – as Congress ordered – in a triangular area at the eastern tip of the Federal Triangle. The water from the fountain's jets rains down into a raised inner bowl, which overflows to discharge into an even larger basin, whence it flows into a wide basin at ground level: thus, the water overflows three times from the central basin into the ground-level bowl. Below the lip of the second bowl, inset on the side so as to be obscured by the flow of water, are the 12 signs of the zodiac designed by Sidney Waugh.
"These zodiacal images were carved with considerable insight and feeling. It was probably the architect Eggers – aware of the Masonic tradition that permeated Washington architecture – who insisted that the image for the zodiacal sign Aries... should be oriented so that it received the first rays of sunlight on March 21, which marks the vernal equinox."
(The Secret Architecture of Our Nation's Capital, David Ovason, pg. 281)
one of the zodiacal images found on the Mellon Fountain
The dedication for the Fountain was on May 9, 1952, and presided over by President Harry S. Truman, himself a prominent Freemason. On the whole, 1952 proved to be a banner year for high weirdness, especially UFOs. In March of that year, the Air Force launched Project BLUE BOOK to investigate the phenomenon. Three months later, rocket scientist and Crowleyite Jack Parsons (who is also alleged to have encountered a UFO while in the company of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard) blew himself up in a bizarre accident. Then in July Washington itself witnessed countless UFO sightings from the 12th through the 29th in what is considered one of the largest UFO flaps in recent history. The year then concluded with ARTICHOKE scientist Andrija Puharich making contact with entities he dubbed "The Nine" (noted before here), alleged extraterrestrials than now existed outside of time and space, in a seance held on New Year's Eve.

While this may seem a bit off topic, we shall be returning to UFOs in a moment and as such, I find it curious the highly occultic Andrew Mellon Memorial Fountain was unveiled in one of the most active years ever for UFO sightings. As was noted above, the Fountain was approved by Congress in 1947, another banner year for high weirdness that witnessed the Kenneth Arnold sighting and Roswell, which effectively ushered in the modern UFO era. Crowley also died in 1947 while the first wave of CIA/Pentagon behavior modification experiments were also begun in that year. But I digress.

Before moving along, it is worth noting that that Mellon Fountain is not the only piece of architecture associated with the family with strong occultic overtones. Consider the Gulf Tower in Pittsburgh:


the Gulf Tower, which bares a remarkable resemblance to a ziggurat with a ritual complex at the top...
For years it was the largest building in Pittsburgh. As you can see, the top features a step-pyramid and mausoleum. Reportedly this design was inspired by the  Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The Mausoleum was the last of the said wonders to be destroyed, surviving mostly intact till some point in the late Middle Ages. Its ruins were discovered in 1402 by the Knights Hospitaller, now known as the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM), who used them to build a castle in what is now known as Bodrum. Curiously, the Mausoleum also inspired the design of the House of the Temple, the Washington, D.C.-based headquarters of the Scottish Rite branch of Freemasonry. But moving along.

The Mellon family and their in-laws also has a rich tradition in the netherworlds of the US intelligence community dating back to at least World War II. Both Paul Mellon and David Bruce, Andrew Mellon's son and son-in-law respectively, served in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to the CIA. After the war the relationship continued, with the CIA frequently using various Mellon family foundations as a source of funding for various projects.

One Mellon highly active in such pursuits was Richard Mellon Scaife (noted in length before here), who maintained a decades-spanning association with the CIA.
"... Scaife's ties to the intelligence community span many years – he owned and operated Forum World Features, an international CIA news outlet that supplied over 300 newspapers until its exposure 1975 – and he has been one of the most generous sugar daddies of the New Right, providing the seed money for the Heritage Foundation and for the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress..."
(Spiritual Warfare, Sara Diamond, pg. 194)
Richard Mellon Scaife
Scaife, whose father Alan Scaife had also served in the OSS. also provided funding for both US and UK-based organizations linked to the Le Cercle network (noted before here and here), which was essentially the far right's response to the Bilderberg Group. Compromised largely of reactionary European aristocrats, various Western military and intelligence officers and fanatical Catholic sects like the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and Opus Dei, Le Cercle has been deeply implicated over the years in various acts of terrorism and elite pedophile networks.

On the other end of the spectrum there was William Mellon Hitchcock (noted at length before here), whose friends addressed him as "Mr. Billy." Mr. Billy came from the same generation as Dick Scaife, but he would use his share of the Mellon fortune for quite different objectives. Mr Billy, along with his sister Margaret "Peggy" Mellon Hitchcock, were major sponsors of the 1960s psychedelic movement. They became early patrons of Timothy Leary, with Mr. Billy offering up his estate at Millbrook to Leary in 1963 to carry on his research after Leary was kicked out of Harvard.

Mr. Billy is on the right
While Mr. Billy eventually became disillusioned with Leary, his interest in psychedelics remained strong throughout the 1960s. By the end of the decade he had become the financier for the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, which at the time was the largest LSD distribution network in the world. As was noted before here, during this time frame Mr. Billy also became a major investor in Resorts International, a gaming interest with extensive ties to the Syndicate and the US intelligence community. Eventually Donald J. Trump became the CEO of Resorts in 1986.


A Curious Death

The Mellon family has continued to wield considerable influence on both a national and international level into the twenty-first century, but they've generally avoided the limelight. But of late the family has turned up in the headlines again, most recently regarding a death:
"On Sunday, Matthew Mellon flew in a private jet to Cancun, Mexico, intending to check into a rehabilitation clinic. But the 54-year-old banking heir, who had been battling an addiction to opioid pills, never made it to the treatment facility.
" 'He never checked in,' says Alberto Sola, medical director of Clear Sky Recovery, a rehab clinic in Cancun. 'He was supposed to check in to the clinic on Monday morning. Then Monday morning they told us he had died.' "
Early reports, however, indicated that he had in fact died at the drug rehab center, which seems to offer an especially psychedelic brand of rehab:
"Mellon, who had faced substance abuse issues for decades, had decided to seek an experimental treatment in Mexico earlier this year, attracted to therapies with hallucinatory properties that are illegal in the United States. Clear Sky Recovery clinic specializes in ibogaine therapy, a plant-based medicine with psychedelic properties that’s derived from a West African tree. Clear Sky advertises itself as 'the world’s foremost experts in medically-based ibogaine treatment.' Sola said Mellon had died in his hotel room, but declined to comment on the cause of Mellon’s death. According to one report, Mellon was also experimenting with ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic drink, and died from a heart attack after taking it."
Matthew Mellon is from the same branch of the Mellon family as Peggy and William Hitchcock, all of whom are descendants of Gulf Oil founder William Larimer Mellon. Thus, his interest in psychedelics is hardly surprising.


Matthew Mellon
Prior to his death, Matthew Mellon had gained much notoriety for trading cryptocurrencies, beginning with Bitcoin in the early part of this decade, and then onto Ripple. At the time of his death, he had amassed a considerable fortune:
"In addition to leaving behind three children, Mellon’s death raises many unanswered questions, including what will happen to the estimated $500 million of XRP digital currency he owned. Mellon’s XRP had been worth well over $1 billion earlier in 2018 and he told Forbes in March he had been adding to the position as the price of the cryptocurrency plunged.
"XRP is the digital currency of financial payments company Ripple and Mellon had acquired a large amount of it, mostly from an initial investment of about $2 million, prior to the boom in cryptocurrencies. Mellon said he kept the digital keys to his XRP locked in cold storage in other people’s names at various locations around the U.S."

Forbes goes onto note that in his final months Mellon had had conversations with Donald Trump concerning cryptos while also becoming increasingly paranoid about his safety:
"He began the year in Los Angeles with great promise and a flurry of activity. Late last year, Mellon, who lived in New York, searched online for the most expensive rental house in Los Angeles and booked a futuristic looking home in the Hollywood Hills for $150,000 a month. With a massive cryptocurrency fortune and fearing for his security, Mellon got an armored car that resembled a tank and added a security detail while maintaining an active social schedule.
"... In late March, Mellon told a Forbes reporter, he dined with President Donald Trump.
" 'I shared with him that he should become blockchain friendly if he wants the next Millennial vote,' Mellon told Forbes in late March."
While no doubt many will link Mellon's sudden and bizarre death to his involvement with cryptos, its interesting to note that his brother, Christopher Mellon, had made some interesting statements of his own a little over a month before Matthew's death. Specifically, he called for greater defense spending in regards to UFOs in an Op-Ed that appears in the Washington Post:
"Lately, media coverage of the issue of unidentified aerial vehicles has focused on an expired $22 million congressional earmark for Bigelow Aerospace, a contractor with ties to former Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid (Nev.). The money mostly funded research and analysis by that contractor, without participation from the Air Force, NORAD or other key military organizations. The real issue, though, is not a long-gone earmark, helpful though it may have been, but numerous recent incidents involving the military and violations of U.S. airspace. It is time to set aside taboos regarding 'UFOs' and instead listen to our pilots and radar operators.
"Within a roughly $50 billion annual intelligence budget, money is not the issue. Existing funds would easily cover what’s needed to look into the incidents. What we lack above all is recognition that this issue warrants a serious collection and analysis effort. To make headway, the task needs to be assigned to an official with the clout to compel collaboration among disparate and often quarrelsome national security bureaucracies. A truly serious effort would involve, among other things, analysts able to review infrared satellite data, NORAD radar databases, and signals and human intelligence reporting. Congress should require an all-source study by the secretary of defense while promoting research into new forms of propulsion that might explain how these vehicles achieve such extraordinary power and maneuverability." 
Christopher Mellon, like many family members before him, has longstanding ties to the US intelligence community and the DoD. He spent nearly ten years as the Staff Director for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. In 1998, he became the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Security and Information Operations. Then, in 1999, he became the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, a post he held until 2002. After leaving the DoD, he became a Minority Staff Director for Senate Select Committee on Intelligence member Senator Jay Rockefeller.

Christopher Mellon
Mellon is no minor figure in other words, by the scion of one of the nation's wealthiest and most powerful families, and a longstanding veteran of the US intelligence community. He is also involved with To the Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences, a disclosure project launched by former Blink-182 frontman Tom DeLonge. Another member of said organization recently exposed Robert Bigelow's secret UFO program. As was noted before here, this may have been part of the ongoing deep state civil war, as Bigelow is a major Trump backer.

Was Matthew Mellon's death related to his brother's work in the UFO disclosure, his exposure to cryptocurrencies, the deep state civil war or some combination of all three? Certainly this is a curious series of events, from a branch of the family that his been linked to strange intrigues in the past. Even more bizarre is the fact that the active psychedelic component of ayahuasca, which is what is presently being blamed for Mellon's death, is DMT. As I noted before here, DMT has been known to induce visions of extraterrestrial-like nonhuman entities while curious and tragic medical issues have at times followed.


It would certainly be interesting to know if cryptos were the only thing discussed in Matthew Mellon's March meeting with Trump. Several weeks later the financier was dead, under still murky circumstances that at least nominally are being blamed on some type of entheogenic-centric treatment for opioid abuse. Clearly, something does not add up here.

The waters are further muddied by where the Mellon family fits into the elite hierarchy. While nominally aligned with the Rockefeller-dominated globalist wing of the American Establishment, family members such as Richard Mellon Sciafe and even psychonaut William Mellon Hitchcock have been very at home with members of the far right. In terms of the Mellon brothers we've just considered, Christopher is clearly in the former camp while Matthew was a long time backer of the Republican Party and does not seem to have been especially uncomfortable with Trump. Of course, Matthew was also dating a member of the Kennedy family at the time of his death as well.

In conclusion, all I can come up with is phrase that is becoming more and more common every day: Truly, we live in incredible times.



Sunday, April 8, 2018

Goodfellas Part V: The Bedroom Dick




Welcome to the fifth installment in what began as a series examining the ties between President Donald J. Trump (aka the Orange One) and organized crime. Since then the series has taken on a life of its own, covering a host of scandals and shadowy figures that constitute the hidden history of the United States following the end of the Second World War. For those of you just joining us, I'll try my best to recap what has been previously examined.

This series grew out of a prior blog I had written in October of 2017 considering Trump's brief tenure as CEO of the gaming interest known as Resorts International. Resorts originated in the early 1960s as a company known as the Mary Carter Paint Company, which was widely believed to be a CIA front involved in anti-Castro operations in Florida during the Bay of Pigs era. By the end of the decade, Mary Carter had been rechristened Resorts International and had gotten into the casino industry. It established the first casino in the Bahamas at Paradise Island, which cemented its place as one the premier gaming destinations in the world.

From the get-go Resorts' contacts were impeccable. Overworld figures like President Richard M. Nixon and reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes were regular guests. At the other end of spectrum, various associates of Meyer Lanksy were directly employed by the Resorts casino on Paradise Island while stockholders included Richard Mellon Hitchcock, who at one point was the banker for the largest LSD smuggling syndicate in the world, and other clients of Castle Bank & Trust, a notorious CIA front that specialized in laundering money generated from drug and arms trafficking.

Meyer Lansky, a looming presence in this series
Most curious of all was a subsidiary of Resorts known as Intertel. Intertel, with a staff comprised largely of "former" US intelligence agents, was a private intelligence agency that first gained notoriety in 1970 for its "rescue" of Howard Hughes from one of his Las Vegas casinos. Intertel would continue to provide security for Hughes up until the time of his death in 1976. During this timeframe Hughes was rarely seen in the flesh outside of Intertel agents, which has led more than a few researcher to wonder if Intertel had in fact stealthy taken over his vast business empire.

Intertel was a still a part of Resorts when Trump briefly became its CEO in 1986. Resorts had played a key role in opening up Atlantic City to legalized gambling and Trump had nominally wanted to acquire more casinos in the city. Eventually Trump was bought out by Merv Griffin, but maintained possession of what was supposed to be Resorts' crown jewel, the Taj Mahal.

While Resorts is often depicted as a minor episode in Trump's business career, it likely announced his arrival as a major player in certain circles as Resorts had longstanding ties to both organized crime and the US intelligence community. Indeed, it seems especially ominous in light of ties Trump had been cultivating for nearly a decade leading up to his bid to take over Resorts.

As was noted in the first installment of this series, it appears that Trump had forged close ties to organized crime elements by at least the beginning of the 1980s and that by the middle of the decade his flagship, Trump Tower, was being used as a vast center of money laundering by said elements. As I was wrapping up that installment, I noted one of his early backers was the mysterious Edward "Biff" Halloran, a reputed member of the Genovese crime family (the same family Meyer Lansky had long collaborated with) who disappeared in 1996.

Trump Tower
With the second installment, I considered a curious former business partner of Halloran's, namely Kentuckian Bradley Bryant. By the late 1970s Bryant, with the aid of fellow Kentuckian Andrew "Drew" Thornton, had established an elaborate, nationwide drugs and arm trafficking network known as "the Company." They recruited heavily among former US military personnel via Soldier of Fortune magazine, which was run by former Green Beret Robert K. Brown. Brown was himself heavily involved in the Bay of Pigs and related anti-Castro operations and would later play a role in the supply network for Iran-Contra.

During the third installment, I noted other ties Trump had to the Company, most notably former Kentucky Governor John Y. Brown, who set up shop in Trump Tower after losing his reelection bid in 1983 (thanks in no small part to allegations concerning his ties to the Company) just as the Tower was becoming a major center of money laundering. Previously Brown was alleged to have been a silent owner of Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, which the Company used to launder money and which Trump was a frequent guest of in the late 1970s.

As I wrapped up that installment, I began to consider the figure who likely initiated Trump into this netherworld: his longtime attorney and political mentor Roy Cohn. Cohn had first risen to prominence during the 1950s when he served as Joseph McCarthy's lead attorney in his Communist witch hunts. During this time Cohn became a bitter foe of the Kennedy family as well. Later, he was reputed to be a member of Permindex, a shadowy international trade organization originally based in Basel, Switzerland that has long been linked to the JFK assassination. Cohn would also become the attorney for Greek shipping magnet Aristotle Onassis, who has been accused of putting up the money for RFK's assassination.

Roy Cohn
With the fourth installment I began to consider the longstanding allegations that Cohn was a key figure in a nationwide pedophile ring. His links to Robert Keith Gray and Craig Spence were considered, as was the broader ties all three men had to the Franklin scandal, as well as their relationship to infamous CIA Director William Casey. Casey was himself a part of a broader international network of far right figures linked to pedophile networks geared towards compromising Western governments. The European branch of this network is known as Le Cercle (noted before here) while the broader international front was for years the World Anti-Communist League (WACL, addressed at length before here).

Cohn himself had impeccable links to this network via its American branch, which for many years was fronted by the American Security Council network (ASC, noted before here). Links between the Trump administration and the old ASC network have already been addressed before here and here. Cohn himself was involved in the more extreme offshoots of the ASC, such as the John Birch Society and the Western Goals Foundation, a private intelligence network launched by the ASC and JBS during the early 1980s. Cohn briefly served as Western Goals' director. A member of Western Goals' advisory board during this time was General John Singlaub, who was also the chairman of the WACL and Robert K. Brown's old boss during Vietnam. As was noted in part two of this series, General Singlaub would later use Brown in his efforts to set up supply lines as part of Iran-Contra.

But in addition to Cohn's extensive ties to the international right (or Fascist International, if one prefers) there is ample evidence that Cohn and his acolytes were involved in honey trapping decades before the Franklin scandal was exposed and many of them remained active in such practices years after Cohn's death. A likely instance of this was the prostitute scandal that brought down New York Governor Eliot Spitzer in 2008.

Eliot Spitzer
The man who outed Spitzer? None other than Cohn's longtime friend and protege, Roger Stone. Yes, the same Roger Stone who would play in key role in Trump's conquest of the White House. Stone had been hired in 2007 by New York state Republicans close to Wall Street to take down Spitzer after he had launched corruption probes against said monied interests. At one point Stone even made a threatening phone call to Spitzer's father. Stone alleged to have found out about Spitzer's involvement in a prostitution ring via a Miami-based friend of his involved in the "sex industry."

But Stone's activities against Spitzer are child's play compared to the decades-spanning activites of a certain international man of mystery.


Corbally: The Early Years

His name was Thomas "Tom" Corbally and nominally he had worked for many years as a private detective. Corbally's family had been involved in detective work since the 1920s, when his grandfather (also named Thomas) had founded the Corbally Detective Agency in Newark, New Jersey. Corbally's father and uncles all worked for Agency and Tom himself was working over 30 hours a week there before he was 18. 

The Corbally family also had extensive ties to organized crime by this time as well. Corbally had been kidnapped as a child and the Corbally's had looked to members of what is now referred to as Genovese crime family to arrange for his safe return. We've already encountered the Genovese family extensively throughout this series. As noted above, Biff Halloran was believed to be made member of the Genovese family while Meyer Lansky had a decades-spanning association with them. 

Unsurprisingly, it would seem that Corbally had ties to some intelligence organization by the onset of WWII as well. Initially, his contacts appear to have been with the British:
"Before Pearl Harbor, America First isolationists were determined to keep the United States out of the raging European war, making any recruitment effort politically sensitive. Corbally, determined to get in the fight, made contact with the Clayton Knight Committee — an unsanctioned operation designed by the Canadian government to bring willing Americans north even as the US government maintained strict official neutrality in the war. Very few people knew the Clayton Knight Committee had its unadvertised headquarters right in the lavish surroundings of the Waldorf Astoria on New York’s Park Avenue."
the Waldorf Astoria, which will appear again in this ssaga
During this time frame, the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York appears to been one of the key meeting places for the Pilgrim's Society, the absolute pinnacle of the Anglo-American establishment.  We shall return to such circles in just a moment, so do keep it in mind.

Corbally did some time with the Royal Canadian Air Force during the early 1940s, but eventually washed out, alleged due to his insubordination (which was quite a feat during an era when Western governments were trying to get their hands on all able-bodied men they could find). Eventually, he turned up again in Germany at the end of the war, apparently working for some branch of the US intelligence community:
"He popped up in Germany, where he served as a civilian with the US military occupation until at least June 1949. Officially, Corbally was attached to the Combined Travel Board, which helped determine who could and could not come in and out of Germany after the war.
"On one document, Corbally wrote that his title in Germany was 'chief clerk.' Intriguingly, he also wrote that a military regulation 'precludes a description of several classified phrases [sic] of my employment' with the occupation government. He continued, 'However, I feel that the experience gained by my working with [US Army Counterintelligence Corps] and the War Department Detachment in Germany is worthy of note.'
"In that sentence, Corbally left an enormous clue about his true role in Germany. The 'War Department Detachment' sounds like some bland bureaucratic entity — but a historian at the US Army Center of Military History tells me that it was in fact the cover name used by the CIA in postwar Germany. 
"It’s difficult to tease out of the limited written record what Corbally’s missions actually were. But a once-classified memo on the CIA website shows that the War Department Detachment was tasked with securing 'all available data which you may obtain on political, economic, and sociological developments in other zones of occupied Germany.' The entity had license to roam far outside its borders, including Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Austria...
"The War Department Detachment identified and tracked down top German officials after the war and came in contact with some of the most murderous Nazis, including the infamous Nikolaus 'Klaus' Barbie — an SS and Gestapo officer known as 'the Butcher of Lyon' for his torture of French prisoners. The Detachment would eventually develop a relationship with Barbie after the war as it recruited German allies to help subvert the growing communist presence in Soviet-controlled East Germany. For his help, US intelligence officials later helped Barbie escape to South America — where he would live undetected until the 1970s."

The War Department Detachment was in fact a front for the Central Intelligence Group, the precursor to the CIA. Corbally's work with the Army's Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) is also interesting. While little remarked upon now, the CIC was an extremely powerful organization in the postwar years and took the lead role in Germany initially of establishing the so-called "Ratlines" there. They also appear to have been involved in setting up the earliest efforts to create "stay-behind armies," which eventually became a part of what is commonly referred to as Operation Gladio (Gladio was in fact only the name of the Italian branch).

In theory, Gladio and related networks were established in Western Europe by the Pentagon and CIA to wage guerrilla war against the Soviet Union in the event of the invasion. In actuality, considerable evidence has emerged over the years that these networks were engaged in terror campaigns in NATO nations to ensure that said nations remained vassals of the United States during the Cold War. Frequently these networks recruited heavily among "former" fascists and Nazis, who in turn engaged in what is often referred to as a "strategy of tension." In many instances, fascists infiltrated left wing and communist organizations and used them to carry out terror campaigns that were then linked to the Soviet Union by equally compromised intelligence services in NATO nations. Much more information on how these networks functioned can be found in my series concerning the infamous Propaganda Due Masonic lodge whose grand master, Licio Gelli, was linked to Permindex along with Roy Cohn (noted in part three of this series).

The above-mentioned Klaus Barbie was a key part of the initial efforts to establish the German component of the "stay behind" networks.
"The U.S. Army's General Staff Top Secret March 28, 1949 Overall Strategic Concepts highlighted that Germany 'has an excellent potential of trained men for both underground and Secret Army Reserves [stay-behind units]. Effective resistance can and should be organized.' On the orders of the Pentagon in Washington the newly created US Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) tracked down German Nazis and brought them to the Nurnberg trials, while the CIC also secretly recruited selected right-wing extremist for the anti-Communist army. This practice of the Pentagon was revealed only in 1986 when the US Department of Justice in a large press conference – which had maybe drawn the biggest crowd of journalists in Washington since the Watergate days – admitted that the CIC had recruited a high-ranking Nazi in the post-war years. Specifically a 600-page long study, compiled by Allan Ryan for the US Justice Department, confirmed that SS and Gestapo officer Klaus Barbie had been recruited by the CIC in 1947, had thereafter been hidden from the war crimes investigators and had then been spirited out of Europe to Argentina through a clandestine 'ratline' in 1951.
"Barbie was saved not because the United States secret service officers were impressed with his moral record, but because he was most useful in the setting up of the German stay-behind network. 'Among those who were recruited and did some recruiting for the scheme in the first years,' the British press reported during the Gladio revelations, 'were and ex-SS Obersturmfuhrer, Hans Otto, and other smaller fish. But the prize catch was Klaus Barbie who functioned as a recruiter for ex-Nazis and members of the fascist Bund Deutscher Jugend (BDJ).' Barbie, during the war known as the 'Butcher of Lyon,' had during his stay in the French town from 1943 to 1944 been responsible for the murder of at least 4,000 resistance workers and Jews, as well as the deportation of another 15,000 to concentration death camps. Barbie was condemned to death in absentia by a French court soon after the war for crimes against humanity as witnesses described him as a sadistic torturer, who terrified men, women and children with his whip and Alsatian dog."
(NATO's Secret Armies, Daniele Ganser, pg. 190)
Klaus Barbie
It should be emphasized that there is no evidence that Corbally ever met Barbie, or that he was involved in setting up early stay-behind networks, especially since he left the Army in 1949, just as these networks were first being put into place. Its interesting to note that some believed he left the Army under some distress. Reportedly, he briefly considered becoming a priest for some time after he left the service.


Kroll

His time with the CIC and War Department Detachment was almost surely not Corbally's last brush with the US intelligence community, however. In the early 1970s, he began a long association with the infamous Kroll and Associates who, along with similar outfits such as Wackenhut and Intertel, were at the forefront of the private intelligence revolution. Nominally Kroll is involved in corporate investigations and risk consultations, and as such has had a longstanding association with Wall Street. Kroll has also long been reputed to work as an arm of  both the US and British security services. It first gained infamy in that regard when its ties to 9/11 began to emerge.
"... After the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Kroll acquired the contract from the Port Authority of New York to upgrade security at the World Trade Center, in the process beating out two other firms. Kroll continued with the WTC security contract through the period leading up to the September 11 attacks. One of Kroll's directors, Jerome Hauer, also managed New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's Office of Emergency Management, which was located on the 23rd floor of WTC-7, which was also destroyed on September 11. Kroll's contract gave it unfettered access to all the buildings destroyed in New York on 9/11."
(Black 9/11, Mark H. Gaffney, pgs. 31-32)
Curiously, the above-mentioned Jerome Hauer was also who hired former FBI counter-terrorism expert John P. O'Neill to oversee security at the World Trade Center. O'Neill, who died in the WTC on 9/11, had previously spent years tracking Osama bin Laden for the FBI and is at the center of many conspiracy theories surrounding 911.

John P. O'Neill
It is also interesting to note that at the time of 9/11, Kroll was partially owned by the American International Group, better known as AIG. AIG had longstanding ties to the US intelligence community going back to its founder, Cornelius Vander Starr, who worked for the OSS during WWII and who opened up his company to the CIA for years afterwards. This relationship was carried on by Vander Starr's handpicked successor, Maurice Greenberg, who was AIG's chairman and CEO at the time of 9/11 Greenberg had been a close friend of William Casey, who we dealt with at length in the prior installment. At one point Casey had tried to recruit Greenberg to be his deputy director at the CIA during the Reagan years.

Greenberg was ultimately forced out of AIG in 2005 in the midst of various fraud investigations being conducted by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the US Justice Department and the New York Attorney General's Office. And the New York Attorney General who went after Greenberg? None other than Eliot Spitzer, who brought various civil complaints against Greenberg. Spitzer would go on to be elected New York Governor in 2006 and was taken out in 2008 by Roger Stone, as was noted above. While Greenberg's downfall was surely not the only reason why Spitzer was removed from office, Greenberg was an Old Boy par excellence and surely his downfall ruffled a few feathers.

Maurice Greenberg
But back to the matter at hand, namely Thomas Corbally. Corbally appears to have left Kroll around the time of 9/11, thus it is unlikely he played a role though he reportedly remained well informed up to the time of his death in 2004. Regardless, it seems likely Corbally helped initiate Kroll into the US deep state. He was reportedly responsible for some of their more unsavory international connections:
"Corbally introduced Kroll operatives to French Resistance and intelligence veterans in Paris, and explained how the Vatican Bank was used by the mafia to launder money in Italy. One time, he set up a seemingly promising meeting with an aristocratic British judge at the fabulous Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong, with its rows of gleaming Rolls-Royces lining the driveway — only for the poor Kroll investigator to find out that what the posh judge really wanted was a Newark-style bribe."
But when not moonlighting for Kroll, Corbally appears to have been up to some incredible intrigues.


Cohn and Honey Trapping

Corbally first met Roy Cohn at some point during the 1950s and soon fell under his spell. Cohn would go on to have an enormous influence on Corbally:
"Cohn’s law practice, and its seemingly never-ending flow of corporate conflicts, political intrigue, and society maneuvering, provided a steady stream of investigative work for... Corbally. And it was through Cohn that Corbally later met and socialized with future president Donald Trump, who, like Corbally, enjoyed being around beautiful women."
Trump was also mentioned as a contact of Corbally's back in his 2004 obituary. It would seem that Corbally had a longstanding relationship to the Orange One stemming from Roy Cohn and that likely laid the basis for Trump's rise to the presidency. For you see, it would appear that Corbally was Cohn's chief sexual blackmail specialist.

This aspect of Corbally's career has occasionally bubbled to the surface over the years, most recently in the early 1990s. It was then that the scandal of the "Hollywood Madam," Heidi Fleiss, was making the rounds. In 1993 Fleiss had first been charged with pandering and rumors soon began to emerge that she provided services for many of Hollywood's leading stars and studio executives. As Fleiss' legal woes mounted, Corbally was there for her:
"Over the course of their relationship, Corbally would become a client and confidant of the 'Hollywood Madam,' who ran an escort service for the rich and famous. Later, when Corbally found out Fleiss was snorting crystal meth, he told her to stop — and he set an example with his own sober lifestyle. And after her 1993 arrest for pandering, pimping, and narcotics possession, Corbally gave her tens of thousands of dollars in cash to help Fleiss pay her mounting legal bills. When she was facing jail time, Fleiss turned to Corbally to concoct a desperate plan to flee the country. Corbally instead counseled her to stay and do whatever time she was sentenced to. After all, he said, she was still a young woman with plenty of time ahead of her. Better a few years in prison than a lifetime running from US law enforcement."
Heidi Fleiss
It would also appear that Corbally subtly threatened her to not name any of her clients:
"When she was at her most vulnerable — even contemplating suicide — Corbally came forward with much-needed cash to help Fleiss’s legal defense. One payment to her law firm was as much as $20,000. But it was delivered with a stern message: Heidi must not name names. Her wealthy, powerful clients had to be protected."
It seems to have worked, as only a few names had come out until recently. Curiously, one of the first names to have surfaced was that of famed producer Robert Evans. Evans had produced the Syndicate-glorifying Godfather as well Chinatown, a private detective movie starring Jack Nicholson and directed by convicted pedophile Roman Polanski. Evans and Polanski had previously collaborated together on the infamous Rosemary's Baby, which has been a lightening rod for a host of sinister and strange synchronicities over the years. And Polanski was of course married to Sharon Tate at the time of her murder at the hands of the Manson family.

Corbally had likely known Evans for several years prior to their mutual involvement with Fleiss. This connection will be most significant in a future installment, so do keep it in mind dear reader.

Robert Evans
Before moving along, it is also worth noting the sex scandals currently rocking Hollywood. Most notably, several prominent Democrats such as Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey have been laid low by the #MeToo movement, no doubt to the delight of the Orange One. This researcher and no doubt many others have wondered if the sudden exposure of the infamous casting couch may have been driven at least in part by the leaking of control files by someone close to Trump.

As far as this researcher can tell, none of the celebs who have been outed as former clients of Fleiss' have turned up as arch offenders in the #MeToo fallout. That being said, a comprehensive list of Fleiss' clients has never been revealed. But beyond that, Corbally was apparently quite active in Hollywood for decades. He surely had encountered other sex rings over the years.

As we shall see, it seems that Corbally was keeping tabs on numerous VIP sex rings across the globe for years. With a figure like this active in Hollywood for many years, Trump may well have numerous smoking guns in his possession in regards to Tinseltown. It would be interesting to see how things play out as Hollywood becomes more combative towards the Orange One. Certainly anyone who encountered Corbally back in the day should think twice before throwing in with the "Resistance."


Cliveden

Of course, the fallout from Heidi Fleiss' arrest was hardly the first time Corbally's name had turned up in a high profile sex scandal. The first instance was linked to events that ultimately toppled the government in the UK and may even have involved a beloved American president. 

I am of course referring to the Profumo affair. As I'm sure many of my American readers only have a vague understanding of Profumo, here's a brief rundown: In 1961 John Profumo, the Secretary of State for War in the Conservative government of Harold Macmillan began an affair with a barely legal model named Christine Keeler. The affair was not revealed to the public at large until 1963, long after Profumo had ceased seeing Keeler.

John Profumo
What really made the affair scandalous was the fact Keeler had also been sleeping with Captain Yevgeny Ivanov, a Soviet naval attache, at the same time she was seeing Profumo. Ivanov was working on behalf on the GRU, the Soviet Union's military intelligence, during his time in the UK. This led to concerns that Keeler was being used by Ivanov to ply state secrets from Profumo.

Keeler was set up with both Profumo and Ivanov by a osteopath named Stephen Ward. Ward had ample connections in British high society and was known to supply barely legal girls to many of his aristocratic friends. It is also widely believed that Ward was working on behalf of MI5 (and possibly MI6 as well) when he set up Keeler with Ivanov. There are even allegations that British intelligence was attempting to use Ward's friendship with Ivanov as a kind of back channel to the Soviet Union during the Cuban missile crisis.

Stephen Ward
Ward's chief patron among the aristocracy was Lord William Waldorf Astor II, who may have also been his handler for some branch of British intelligence. Certainly Astor had extensive contacts among such circles.
"Astor had extensive involvement with intelligence, professionally and personally. As the naval intelligence representative to the 31 Committee, he had regular contact with MI5 and MI6 officers in the Middle East. Later, in London, he had continued to work in intelligence at the Admiralty. His first wife, Sarah, have been a translator at Bletchley, where Germany's Enigma code was broken. His second wife, Philippa, was the daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Hunloke, MI5's man in Jerusalem during the war."
(The Secret World of Stephen Ward, Anthony Summers & Stephen Dorril, pg. 77)
Beginning in the late 1950s, Astor began to rent out a cottage on his family's estate at Cliveden to Ward for use on the weekends. Ward in turn frequently brought young girls with him to Cliveden to entertain Lord Astor and other visiting aristocrats. These parties became quite notorious once the Profumo affair was exposed. It was at Cliveden that Profumo had first been introduced to Christine Keeler, after all.

It would seem that Lord Astor consented to these parties in part at the behest of British intelligence.
"MI6... was interested in Ward from the early 1950s. According to the agent who monitored Ward's activity, MI6 concluded, moreover that it sister service, MI5, used Lord Astor and his estate at Cliveden for 'honeytrap' operations – operations designed to entrap intelligence targets by compromising them sexually. Lord Astor, an MI6 officer said, was 'on friendly terms with senior members of MI5, and was happy to help him, and in his view the country, when asked to do so... When they needed to make use of Ward, to provide suitable women for visiting heads of state, they went through his friend Lord Astor.' "
(The Secret Life of Stephen Ward, Anthony Summers & Stephen Dorril, pg. 79)
Lord William Waldorf Astor II
At this point I need to pause and give the reader a little background on Lord Astor and his estate at Cliveden. As I'm sure many of you are aware, the Astor family is one of the most powerful in the history of both the US and UK. The patriarch is generally considered to be John Jacob Astor, the first American multimillionaire and one of the wealthiest men in history. Officially Astor made his money in the fur trade, but some of it in fact came from smuggling opium. As such, he's not only one of the richest men to ever live, but one of the most powerful drug dealers as well.

John Jacob Astor
Astor came to American shortly after the time of the Revolutionary War from Germany by way of England. He was born in Waldorf, now part of Germany, then a part of the Holy Roman Empire. Astor lived there until he was 16, at which point he left for London. He eventually settled in New York and for many decades afterwards his family would remain one of the most powerful in both the state and city that bares its name. Still, the family seems to have retained a fondness for their German heritage as many subsequent generations of Astors have used Waldorf in the names of their children (and at last one notable building). This is interesting in light of the Astor family's later support for a strong Germany. But more on that in a moment.

The British branch of the Astor family was established by John Jacob Astor III, a grandson of the first John Jacob, and the wealthiest Astor of his generation. While John Jacob III spent much of his life in these United States, he became increasingly fixated upon London in his later years. His son, William Waldorf Astor, became the first Lord Astor in 1899 after permanently moving to the UK in 1891.

The Astor family soon emerged at the absolute pinnacle of the Anglo-American Establishment. As such, they have long been one of the leading families in the Pilgrims Society. As was noted above, Thomas Corbally was originally recruited into British intelligence at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City, which was long a meeting place of the Pilgrim in the US. And as I'm sure many of you have guessed by now, the Waldorf was built and long managed by the Astor family.

The Pilgrims Society is one of the most powerful elite societies in modern history, though it is little known among most conspiracy researchers, who continue to fixate upon one of its most notorious offshoots: the Round Table Group. As is well known by now, the Round Table Group served as the basis for the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), for many years the leading think tank for the Eastern Establishment in the United States, and its British counterpart, the Royal Institute for International Affairs.


Would the reader then be surprised to learn that the Astor family and their estate at Cliveden played a key role in establishing the Round Table network that the CFR grew out of? Consider:
"... the Round Table group, and came later to be called, somewhat inaccurately, the Cliveden Set, after the country estate of Lord and Lady Astor. It included Lord Milner, Leopold Amery, and Edward Grigg (Lord Altrincham), as well as Lord Lothian, Smuts, Lord Astor, Lord Brand (brother-in-law of Lady Astor and managing director of Lazard Brothers, the international bankers), Lionel Curtis, Geoffrey Dawson (editor of The Times), and their associates. This group wielded great influence because it controlled the Rhodes Trust, the Beit Trust, The Times of London, The Observer, the influential and highly anonymous quarterly review known as The Round Table (founded in 1910 with money supplied by Sir Abe Bailey and the Rhodes Trust, and with Lothian as editor), and it dominated the Royal Institute of International Affairs, called 'Chatham House' (of which Sir Abe Bailey and the Astors were the chief financial supporters, while Lionel Curtis was the actual founder), the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, and All Souls College, Oxford. The Round Table group formed the core of the three-bloc-world supporters, and differed from the anti-Bolsheviks like D'Abernon in that they sought to contain the Soviet Union between a German-dominated Europe and an English-speaking bloc rather than to destroy it as the anti-Bolsheviks wanted. Relationships between the two groups were very close and friendly, and some people, like Smuts, were in both."
(Tragedy and Hope, Carroll Quigley, pg. 581) 
Cliveden
Cliveden then served as a frequent meeting place for this group during the first half of the twentieth century, where they plotted to reshape the world in their own image. As such, it is typical to conceive of this group as dyed-in-the-wool globalists in this day in age but this is not accurate. The chief concern of the Round Table Group/Cliveden Set in the early days was the expansion of the British Empire, with the hopes of an eventual reconciliation with the United States. They were aided in this project by their American partners, who were headed by J.P. Morgan.

After the First World War, they had become staunch backers of a strong Germany as a counterbalance to the Soviet Union. As such, they played an enormous role in rearming Germany and the rise of the Nazi Party on the British end. Their appeasement of Germany, however, appears to have set the stage for the loss on control of the Round Table network in the postwar years.

During the Second World War there was a dramatic shakeup within the Anglo-American Establishment. Up till this point in time the British had been the dominate partners in the relationship, but after WWII, with the UK effectively bankrupt, the United States was in the driver's seat. What's more, within the American Establishment the Morgan faction had been replaced by the Rockefeller family.

The Rockefellers, more than anyone, were who launched the modern era of globalism, largely with the aid of the same Round Table network that was initially created for the preservation of the British Empire. The British partners, faced with the loss of their Empire now, had little choice but to go along with it.

At the time of the Profumo affair, many of the descendants of the Cliveden Set such as Lord Astor still tentatively supported this project. They formed much of the elite support for the government of Harold Macmillan in the Tories (the British Conservative Party). By 1961, however, dissent had begun to emerge as several of the Cliveden Set children, most notably Julian Amery, signed up with the Monday Club. The Monday Club was formed initially in protest towards Macmillan's policies concerning Apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), namely growing opposition to white rule in these African nations. As such, the Monday Club soon became a rallying point for the far right among the Tories.


Eventually Amery and several other Cliveden babies ended up in senior roles in the above-mentioned Le Cercle. The British partners in Le Cercle in turn have been at the forefront of the growing Eurosceptic movement and played a key role in the UK opting to leave the EU. As was noted before here, many of these British Le Cercle partners have also been extensively linked to pedophile rings in the UK. This is most interesting in light of the fact that many of the girls who turned up at Cliveden during the Ward era were barely legal and some still minors. And as I stressed in the prior installment, Roy Cohn's friend William Casey (himself closely linked to the Franklin scandal) was also involved extensively with Le Cercle.

Given the rather unabashed support the original Cliveden Set had for Nazi Germany and the more recent support their descendants have given to the far right, including separatist movements (at least in Europe countries), it would be a mistake to believe that this group was some type of quasi-Communistic one-worlders.

And with that, I shall wrap things up for now. In the next installment we will get into Corbally's actual role in Profumo, its broader implications in regards to the US deep state and the strange going-ons at Cliveden. Stay tuned dear reader.