Fringe and COG Part II

Welcome to the second installment in this appendix to my ongoing "Fringe" series. For those of you just tuning in, here's a brief recap: "Fringe," now spanning eleven proper installments and one prior appendix, has been roughly based around the involvement of the far right in high weirdness. As to the latter, this has manifested in  variety of forms: UFOs, psi, "supersoldiers", Tesla weapons, human potential and so on. As for "far right," I have roughly examined this group through the prism of powerful, intelligence-connected "think tanks" such as the Committee on the Present Danger Mach I, the American Security Council (ASC) and the United States Global Strategy Council (USGSC).

This particular appendix was inspired by some curious comments Colonel John Alexander (whose ties to the far right and deep state high weirdness were noted before here and here) made in his UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies and Realities. As was noted in the first installment, Alexander claimed that a source had alleged to him that the infamous Majestic 12 (commonly referred to as MJ-12) had its origins in Continuity of Government (COG) operations begun by the US government during World War II.

In the brief examination of the origins of COG presented in that installment I noted that National Defense Research Committee (NDRC), which featured at least one infamous MJ-12 member and a host of other figures later linked to deep state forays into UFOs and consciousness manipulation, did in fact have its origins in the civil defense networks that transformed into COG planning during WWII. From there I noted the growth in totalitarianism within COG during the Cold War and the network's likely involvement in the Kennedy assassination and Watergate. The Kennedy assassination has of course been linked to the UFO question with varying degrees of credibility while at least one Watergate figure, James McCord, had ample dealings with COG and high weirdness.

Alexander's Source

While we're still in the late-1960s/early 1970s era, it would be an opportune time to address the man who likely provided Alexander with much of his information on COG. This would be terrorism guru Robert Kupperman, a longtime member of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). The CSIS is an extremely powerful, if little acknowledged, think tank that straddles the line between the Traditional Conservative Establishment and the far right. It's rosters has included such luminaries of the Rockefeller interests as Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski and Jay Rockefeller on the one hand while also embracing financiers of the far right as Ray L. Hunt (the present patriarch of the infamous Hunt family of Texas), Richard Mellon Scaife and H. Ross Perot II. On the whole, international finance, Texas oil and the US national security apparatus are well represented by the CSIS.

It also had close ties to the United States Global Strategy Council (USGSC), the extremely well-connected think tank Alexander used as a platform in his efforts to promote "nonlethal" weapons in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The infamous China hand Ray S. Cline played a key role in founding both the CSIS and the USGSC. Cline has been closely linked to many of the CIA's blackest projects while also maintaining extensive ties with the far right, most notably via the World Anti-Communist League (WACL) and the Unification Church (noted before here).

More recently the CSIS has gained enormous influence over Trump's foreign policy, as was noted before here and here. Keep this in mind dear reader as we shall return to the CSIS before this installment is finished. But for now, let us return to Kupperman. Here's a bit more background on his activities prior to joining the CSIS:

"Kupperman has been a terrorism specialist at CSIS since 1979. Before that he served for some dozen years in the federal government, first in the President's Office of Emergency Preparedness (1967-73), then as chief scientist and deputy assistant director for military and economic affairs at the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (1973-79). Kupperman worked on terrorism both for a Cabinet Committee to Combat Terrorism and for the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration, and published Terrorism: Threat, Reality, Response with Darrell Trent in 1979. He also operated a private consulting firm, Robert Kupperman Associates, which served both private clients and the government... Kupperman advise the army on counterinsurgency, codirecting a seven-volume study, Strategic Requirements for the Army in the Year 2000, and producing a report, Low-Intensity Conflict, in 1983. The 1983 study sets forth a number of policy options for consideration by the army which Kupperman would describe as state terrorism if employed by a hostile power."

(The "Terrorism" Industry, Edward Herman & Gerry O'Sullivan, pgs. 153-154) 

Robert Kupperman

There's a lot to take in here. As was noted in the prior installment, the Office of Emergency Preparedness (OEP) was one of the key agencies tasked with implementing COG during this era, serving as a kind of predecessor agency to FEMA. Kupperamn appears to have played a lead role in the OEP as his New York Time's obituary lists him as an assistant director of the agency during his tenure there. Kupperman also assisted in the initial implementation of FEMA and would continue to advise it for years to come. In other words, Kupperman had a decades-spanning association with COG planning.

As was also noted in the prior installment, Watergate bungler James McCord was also active in the OEP at the same time Kupperman was an assistant director there. Beyond this connection, there is another possible tie between the two: behavior modification experiments. As was noted before here, McCord had spent much of his CIA career operating out of the Office of Security (OS)'s Security Research Staff. This just happened to be the section of the CIA that oversaw Project ARTICHOKE and McCord was quite close to both General Paul Gaynor and Morse Allen, both of whom oversaw ARTICHOKE for years. McCord is also likely the man who "investigated" the death of Frank Olson for the OS.

James McCord

Kupperman has no direct links to the Pentagon/CIA behavior modification programs, but he does appear to have been involved with the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA) for years. And that is an organization with more than a few skeletons in the closet.

LEAA and Domestic Crack Downs During the Vietnam Era

The LEAA was initiated by the Nixon administration and highly regarded by said administration. Nominally it was intended to provide state and local law enforcement with federal funding, but for practical purposes it was used as a tool to militarize police forces while facilitating closer cooperation between them and the US intelligence community. LEAA would play a key role in domestic operations initiated by the CIA, FBI and the military intelligence services during the 1960s against dissident movements.

"The use of informants and provocateurs was part of a massive sub rosa campaign to subvert the forces of dissent in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Joining the FBI in this effort was an alphabet soup of federal agencies: the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (BNDD), the National Security Agency (NSA), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA), the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (HEW), the intelligence divisions of all the the military services, and numerous local police forces. Over a quarter of a million Americans were under 'active surveillance' during this period, and dossiers were kept on the lawful political activities and personal lives of millions more..."

(Acid Dreams, Martin A. Lee & Bruce Shlain, pg. 224) 

Was this campaign to infiltrate dissident movements a part of COG? Most likely not, but as was noted in the prior installment, plans for mass detentions had already been in place as part of the civil defense and later COG planning as far back as the late 1930s. By the late 1960s, however, the military had stepped in and established its own plans for mass detentions of dissidents. Much of this work began in the early 1960s and was eventually rolled into what became known as Operation Garden Plot.

"... In 1968, acting on the recommendations of the hastily convened Kerner Commission, the Pentagon took unusual steps to combat civil disturbance. A plan and command, named Operation Garden Plot, was devised for 'DOD components [that is, U.S. armed forces] to respond to reasonable requests from the FBI for military resources for use in combating acts of terrorism.' Under this plan

Military intelligence – working with the FBI, local county and state police forces – undertook and directed a massive domestic intelligence-gathering operation.... 

Security forces ranging from Army troops to local police were trained to implement their contingency plans.

The Army task force that had designed this program took on a new home, the Directorate of Civil Disturbance Planning and Operations, and became a national coordinating center for these different efforts.

"The Army task force's transformation into the Directorate of Civil Disturbance Planning and Operations occurred during the massive rioting the broke out in black ghettos of nineteen cities after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in April 1968. The Directorate's headquarters was in the Pentagon's basement , known as 'the domestic war room.'

"In effect, plans and programs were being established to institutionalize martial law on a long-term or even permanent basis. A number of steps were taken towards eroding the prohibition, established in the Posse Comitatus Act of 1876 against the ongoing use of the army in civilian law enforcement.

"In 1970 this army program, code-named Garden Plot, was partially exposed by Senator Sam Ervin Senate Subcommittee on Constitutional Rights. In 1975 journalist Ron Ridenour gave further revelations of one of Garden Plot's 'subplans – code name Cable Splicer, covering California, Oregon, Washington and Arizona, under the command of the Sixth Army. It is a plan that outlines extraordinary military procedures to stamp out unrest in this country. Developed in a series of California meetings from 1968 to 1972, Cable Splicer is a war plan that has adapted for domestic use procedures used by the U.S. Army in Vietnam.' The massive army intelligence program was supplemented at various stages by CIA, the Secret Service, the Internal Revenue Service, and the National Security Administration."

(The Road to 9/11, Peter Dale Scott, pgs. 27-28)

Theoretically both of these programs were shuttered before Nixon was removed from office, but Garden Plot was officially activated in 1992 in the midst of the LA Riots. It would appear that Garden Plot and Cable Splicer were briefly suspended in the mid-1970s before being incorporated wholesale into FEMA COG planning beginning with the Carter administration and reaching an apex during the Reagan years.

But I've digressed enough for the time being. Back to LEAA. In addition to its use in domestic surveillance and subversion, it was also used a conduit for MK-ULTRA experiments.

"... Largest of all the supporters of behavior modification was the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA) which, under the Department of Justice, funded hundreds of behavior modification experiments. All the above agencies were named in secret CIA documents as those who provided research 'cover' for MKULTRA."

(Operation Mind Control, Walter Bowart, pg. 108)

Little is known about the actual MK-ULTRA experiments LEAA actually sponsored, but one project that never got off the ground and likely related to MK-ULTRA is quite horrifying. It involves none other than long time CIA contract psychiatrist and frequent MK-ULTRA participant Dr. Louis Jolyon "Jolly" West. Jolly West is perhaps best known for his "treatment" of Lee Harvey Oswald assassin Jack Ruby and for managing to kill an adult elephant with LSD (seriously). One of his more chilling proposals was the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence. It was to be based in California and received vigorous support from then-governor Ronald Reagan in the early 1970s.

"West is probably most notorious for proposing in 1972 to then California Governor Ronald Reagan the creation of the Center for the Study and Reduction of Violence, to be built on a remote abandoned missile test site in the Santa Monica Mountains. Among his earliest recruits were Leonard Rubenstein – formally a top aide to Dr. David Ewen Cameron – as well as two South American doctors who had also worked for Cameron –one to the shock room and the other to run the psychosurgery suite. At the time, the two were employed at 'detention centers' in Paraguay and Chile, which is a nice way of saying that they were working at torture/interrogation centers run by Nazi exile communities. 

"Also recruited by West was Dr. Frank Ervin, one of a trio of Harvard psychosurgeons who had not long before proposed lobotomy as the solution to urban 'rioting.' The center was to work in conjunction with California law enforcement and had secured large grants from the US Law Enforcement Assistance Administration and the National Institute of Mental Health (these two organizations had forged a close alliance in 1970 with the encouragement of the Nixon Administration, with both of them heavily involved in funding MK-ULTRA projects). There were to be psychologists, physicians and sociologists on board – mostly recruited from among West disciples at the Neuropsychiatric Institute – as well as lawyers, police officers, probation officers and clergymen.

"The goal of the center was to identify 'predelinquents' and treat them before their 'deviance' and supposed propensity for violence could be manifest. The team believed that predelinquents could be identified on the basis of several factors: socioeconomic status (poor), age (young), ethnicity (black), and sex (males). Treatments under consideration included electroshock, chemical castration, experimental drug therapy, and psychosurgery – better known as lobotomy (the 'surgical' destruction of the frontal lobes of the brain)."

(Understanding the F-word, David McGowan, pgs. 207-208)

Louis Jolyon "Jolly" West

Mercifully, this project never got off the ground, but it goes to show that the LEAA may have been used for some very disturbing experiments. I have been unable to determine if Robert Kupperman was active with the LEAA during the MK-ULTRA era, but certainly he seems plugged into the black heart of the deep state and may well have favored "experimental" treatments for budding terrorists.

This is especially interesting in the context of James McCord's involvement in the Office of Emergency Preparedness during the same time Kupperman was an assistant director there. As noted above, McCord likely had had extensive dealings in Project ARTICHOKE during his time with the CIA's Office of Security. And keep in mind, ARTICHOKE went well beyond "mere" behavior modification and also encompassed the first forays of the Pentagon and CIA into psi research and may even have included Andrija Puharich's seances to contact "The Nine," alleged nonhuman intellgiences that existed out of time and space (noted before here and here, respectively).

All of this raises some very curious questions as to what exactly was going on with OEP during this era. Unfortunately, very little attention has been paid to the activities of this particular organization or the possible ties between COG planning and the CIA/Pentagon consciousness experiments.

What can be said, however, is that Watergate provided a brief reprieve to these dealings that lasted until the late 1970s. With the ascension of the Reagan administration, COG planning returned with a vengeance.

Eighties

COG planning was once again exposed, if ever so gingerly, in Establishment publications during the 1980s. As with the initial revelations during the 1970s, it is possible that at least some elements of the Traditional Conservative Establishment were becoming a little nervous about what was being rolled out. Certainly normal people in the streets should have (should remain) positively terrified. Consider:

"The plans for what journalist James Bamford has called the 'secret government' of COG had been slowly developing, chiefly but not only under Republican administrations, since the 1950s... a major step was the creation in 1979 of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). But FEMA's emergency planning was radically politicized under President Reagan. By 1984, in the words of journalist Ross Gelbspan, 'Lt. Col. Oliver North was working with officials of the Federal Emergency Management Agency... to draw up a secret contingency plan to surveil political dissenters and to arrange for the detention of hundreds of thousands of undocumented aliens in case of an unspecified national emergency. The plan, part of which was code-named Rex 84, called for the suspension of the Constitution under a number of scenarios, including a U.S. invasion of Nicaragua.... But in addition to groups opposing United States policies in Central America, the FEMA plan reportedly included environmental activists, opponents of nuclear energy and refugee assistance activists.'

"Earlier, Governor Reagan in California had authorized the development of a counterinsurgency plan (known as Cable Splicer) and exercises to deal with such crises, in conjunction with the U.S. Sixth Army and the Pentagon (Operation Garden Plot). The cadres developing Cable Splicer (headed by Louis Giuffrida), were with Reagan's elevation to the presidency transferred into FEMA. As head of FEMA, Giuffrida pursued plans for massive detention of dissidents; these became so extreme that even Reagan's attorney general, William French Smith, raised objections.

"As developed in the mid-1980s by Oliver North in the White House, the plans called for not just the surveillance but also the potential detention of large numbers of American citizens. During the Iran-Contra hearings North was asked by congressman Jack Brooks about his work on 'a contingency plan in the event of emergency, that would suspend the American Constitution.' The chairman, Democratic Senator Daniel Inouye, ruled that this was a 'highly sensitive and classified matter,' not to be dealt with in an open hearing. This dramatic exchange was virtually ignored by the establishment media.

"In the wake of Brooks's question in Congress, the public was told how attorney general William French Smith, in an August 1984 letter to the NSC chair Robert McFarlane, had written that FEMA's proposed executive order 'exceeds its proper function as a coordinating agency for emergency preparedness.' To this day it is usually reported that 'Smith's objections apparently killed the draft executive order.' But the authorizing National Security Decision Directive (NSDD 55 of September 14, 1982, on 'Enduring National Leadership') continued in effect for a decade. It was augmented by President Reagan on September 16, 1985, with National Security Decision Directive 188 (NSDD 188, 'Government Coordination for National Security Emergency Preparedness'). The directives were part of a series, augmented by additional executive orders, that authorized ongoing 'continuity planning.'

"Some of the highest-level planning for COG was conducted by a parallel extragovernmental group. This parallel structure, operating outside normal government channels, included the head of G.D Searle & Co., Donald Rumsfeld, and then congressman from Wyoming Dick Cheney. Overall responsibility for the program, hidden under the innocuously named National Program Office, was assigned to Vice President George H. W. Bush, with 'Lt. Col. Oliver North... as the National Security Council action officer."

(The Road to 9/11, Peter Dale Scott, pgs. 183-184)

As readers of my "Fringe" series are aware, Donald Rumsfeld was active in the hawkish think tank the United States Global Strategy Council (USGSC) at the same time as Colonel John Alexander was using it as a platform to lobby for "nonlethal" weapons. Eventually nonlethals would receive there first official endorsement during the Bush I administration from Richard Cheney's Defense Department (which also green-lighted Garden Plot during the 1992 LA Riots). Cheney and Rumseld of course had a longstanding friendship and political alliance dating back to the Ford administration. Reportedly the relationship was somewhat frayed during this point after Cheney refused to back Rumsfeld's 1988 presidential bid, but it would seem Rummy still had some sway over the Secretary of Defense.

Prior to signing on with the USGSC Alexander had worked with Los Alamos National Laboratory in developing nonlethal weapons. As was noted in the "Fringe" series, Los Alamos also had a longstanding connection to UFOs. Curiously, Los Alamos appears to have become involved with FEMA at some point in the 1980s in developing what would later fall under the rubric of nonlethal weapons.

"The Los Alamos National Laboratory also offered services to FEMA in the area of counterterrorism. In a report entitled Los Alamos Technical Capabilities: Concepts for Assisting the Federal Emergency Management Agency in Its Various Missions, the laboratory placed a number of projects at the agency's disposal, among them 'technologies to identify stressed individuals at a distance without their knowledge; technology to enhance or degrade human performance, to trace personnel, and to identify individuals according to their genetic "protein mutations." From the R&D platter, FEMA could have selected rapid entry and breaching technology or capabilities in using microwave radiation to stun, kill or create perceptual distortions in "mammalian organisms." ' According to the report, such technologies could be developed in minimal time because they were based upon capabilities already known."

(The "Terrorism" Industry, Edward Herman & Gerry O'Sullivan, pg. 59)

The microwave technologies sound very much like certain nonlethal concepts developed by Alexander and company. One can't help but wonder if Alexander's work with Los Alamos in the late 1980s was not spurred at least in part by FEMA's demands for new methods of crowd control. But moving along.

While the participation of Rumsfeld and Cheney as "team leaders" in the COG exercises during the 1980s is well known at this point, the involvement of another major deep state player as a team leader is far less remarked upon.

"...The Reagan Administration assigned personnel to three teams, each named for a color, such as red and blue. Each team included an experienced leader, who could operate as a new White House chief of staff. The obvious candidates were people who had already served at a high level in the executive branch, preferably with experience in the national security apparatus. This was where Cheney and Rumsfeld came in since they had previously served as White House chief of staff in the Ford administration. Besides Cheney and Rumsfeld, who were regulars, other team leaders over the years included James Woolsey, later the director of Central Intelligence, and Kenneth Duberstein, who worked for a time as Reagan's real-life White House chief of staff."

(Rise of the Vulcans, James Mann, pg. 140)

As I'm sure many regular readers are aware, James Woolsey is one of the most well-connected deep state players out there. Check out the great Institute for the Study of Globalization and Covert Politics to see just how well-connected, but suffice to say, he's involved with nearly a hundred think tanks and has remained an enormously influential voice in US foreign policy for decades now. While he's frequently rejected the label, Woolsey is effectively the most powerful neo-con active today. He most recently backed Donald Trump for the presidency, only to break with Trump shortly after the Orange One took office.

But beyond his extensive connections and influence over foreign policy, Woolsey is also a major player in the UFO question. Grant Cameron even goes so far as to label Woolsey as one of fourteen "Magicians" within the US intelligence community tasked with managing the UFO issue. Of Woolsey ties to the UFO question, he goes on to note:

"James Woolsey and his wife Susan had a daylight UFO sighting in the late 1960s in New Hampshire. He is, therefore, an experiencer because when someone sees a UFO (as is clearly shown by abduction reports are not seen when they are operating), they are a part of what the UFO intelligence is doing. The sighting, therefore, was probably not random been intended, and Woolsey may have a mission...

"Woolsey asked for meeting with Dr. Steven Greer in 1993 to discuss the UFO situation. After a three-hour conversation in December on the subject, Woolsey initiated both an unclassified and a classified review of CIA files on UFOs. The unclassified files ended up being summarized in an article titled 'CIA's Role in the Study of UFOs, 1947-90: A Die-Hard Issue' published in the CIA's Studies in Intelligence.

"Although Woolsey denied any interest in what Greer was saying, his wife attended a special briefing that Greer set up for members of Congress in the spring of 1997, where he gathered together about a dozen military witnesses of UFO events.

"Woolsey was also part of a disclosure initiative in 1998 where the population would get prepared for a world 'where it was known that aliens were among us.'

"Woolsey, it is believed, was involved in the briefing of George Bush. Although the media reports that he has left the Trump intelligence team, I'm told he, is still active and is helping to brief Trump on the UFO issue."

(Managing Magic, Grant Cameron, pgs. 302-303)

James Woolsey

Its also interesting to note that both Woolsey and Rumsfeld had a decades-spanning association with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). According James Mann (a CSIS fellow) in Rise of the Vulcans, Rumsfeld was involved in the CSIS from practically the founding, presumably along with Ray S. Cline. As was noted above, Cline and Rummy would end up in the closely-linked United States Global Strategy Council in the late 1980s with Colonel John Alexander and his nonlethal weapon crusade.

Curiously, the CSIS appears to have contributed exercises that were closely related to COG in the 1980s as well.

"A few months after the inauguration, Donald Rumsfeld was invited to play the role of president of the United States in an exercise devised by a Washington think tank. In this scenario, 'President' Rumsfeld was intent on securing congressional approval to go to war. 'I don't care what you tell them,' he barked at White House chief of staff Ed Markey, 'just go over to Capitol Hill and make them do it, and make sure there are no constraints.'

" 'It was an exercise devised by the Center for Strategic and International Studies [CSIS] to study the functioning of the War Powers Act,' recalled Markey, a liberal Democratic congressman from Massachusetts...

"By all accounts 'President' Rumsfeld played his role in that 1989 exercise for CSIS with great gusto, raging at the obdurate Congress and deploying the 'White House spokesman' (played by the venerable broadcast journalist Daniel Schorr) to maneuver the press into supporting his martial position. But this Washington exercise was a comparatively lighthearted affair compared Rumsfeld's role in games that were far more elaborate, and deeply secret..."

(Rumsfeld, Andrew Cockburn, pg. 84)

While this exercise was not technically a part of COG, it dealt with the issue of establishing a chain of command in the wake of a nuclear strike to launch a counter strike, a topic which COG planners were endlessly vexed by during the 1980s. One can't help but wonder if the CSIS's advisement went beyond these non-classified exercises.

Offutt Air Force Base

I hesitate to include this last piece of information as it comes from a not-especially credible source, but I find it curious the allegations have rarely been linked to the 1980s COG exercises. It involves the notorious Franklin Scandal, an alleged pedophile ring run by Larry E. King, a Nebraska state representative and Republican activist, during the late 1980s. The ring allegedly had national reach, and was also reputed to be tied up in Iran-Contra (which eventually ensnared Oliver North, a key figure in 1980s COG planning, as noted above)and the Craig Spence scandal, among other intrigues. 

One of the individuals alleged to have been part of this ring was Paul Bonacci. Bonacci is easily the least credible witness to emerge from Franklin, having a long criminal history, extensive substance abuse problems and having changed his story multiple times. What's more, this account comes John DeCamp, a former CIA officer who participated in the Phoenix Program before going on to serve as Nebraska state senator. Needless to say, the following should be taken with a heaping grain of salt. 

"Paul has told investigators that the ring which plunged him into Satanism was centered at Offutt U.S. Air Force Base near Omaha; and that he was taken to Offutt to be sexually victimized by a babysitter's boyfriend when he was about three years old, around 1970. Offutt is the headquarters for the Strategic Air Command, and has had a cadre of thousands of intelligence personnel.

"At Offutt, and later at other military installations, Paul says this ring 'trained' him by tortures, heavy drugging, and sexual degradation, while instructing him in military arts including assassination. In fact, his personal knowledge in these realms can scarcely be accounted for other than by crediting the indictments he has made. 

"Larry King, FBI agent Gary Wahl, Alan Baer, Harold Andersen, and former Omaha Police Chief Robert Wadman have all been reported as collaborators with this Satanic military-based ring. King reportedly told Paul's captors at Offutt, 'He's young – but you trained him good.' A member of Nebraska's Concerned Parents group reported hearing from two North Omaha witnesses that 'King used to send limos down to Offutt Air Base to pick up CIA agents for parties.' Larry King reported his own adoring relationship to late CIA director William Casey in a Sept. 7, 1988, interview in the Omaha publication Metropolitan."

(The Franklin Cover-Up, John DeCamp, pg. 327)

Larry E. King

According to DeCamp, Bonacci also alleged that one of the men who abused him at Offutt was Colonel Michael Aquino, who was briefly addressed in part nine of the "Fringe" series. Aquino, a military intelligence officer who at one time was a member of Anton LaVey's Church of Satan until he broke away and founded his own Temple of Set, has been linked to any number of sensational allegations over the years, most notably the Presidio child care scandal. While I've always been rather dubious of many of the claims surrounding Aquino, who may have been a member of the far right American Security Council (ASC) during the 1980s and more recently hooked up with Colonel John Alexander as part of the powerful Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFOI).

Colonel Michael Aquino

There are some interesting connections to the 1980s COG exercises here. One is of course Offutt Air Force Base itself, which then housed the Strategic Air Command. In the event of a nuclear attack on the United States, Offutt would have no doubt played a key role and is equipped with extensive COG facilities. On the day of 9/11, George W. Bush was brought Offutt for a time after COG protocols were initiated.

Curiously billionaire Warren Buffett, the so-called "Oracle of Ohama," happened to be there as well. Buffett had reportedly been an early backer of King's in Nebraska. In some accounts, he was also alleged to have participated in the pedophile ring. But moving along.

Offutt would have surely been used during the 1980s COG exercises and apparently James Woolsey, one of the COG "team leaders," was employed at Offutt from 1987-1988, right in the midst of the Franklin scandal. Woolsey would later go on work with Colonel Michael Aquino's old boss and co-author the infamous "From PSYOP to Mind War," General Paul Vallely in the ASC-spinoff the Center for Security Policy (CSP). The CSP, along with the CSIS, are two of the most powerful think tanks active in the Trump administration (the CSP's influence was noted here). And of course Woolsey and Rumsfeld were active in the CSIS at the same time Rummy was involved in the United States Global Strategy Council with Aquino's future friend, John Alexander. And Alexander would later forge ties with longtime CSIS member Robert Kupperman, his potential source for the COG-Majestic 12 allegations, during the late 1980s when all of this was unfolding.

Given the incestuous nature of all the players, I can't totally discount Bonacci's claims concerning Offutt. Clearly some strange things were going on with COG planning during the 1980s and there are certainly hints that some of the key players in said activities were also involved in CIA/Pentagon behavior modification experiments.

 ***

And so concludes this current appendix. In a future installment of the "Fringe" series, I'll pick up the COG threads going into the 1990s and 00s as many of these same individuals would return with a vengeance in the Bush II years. This would seemingly coincide with a vigorous return of high weirdness to the deep state. But that's a story for another time. Until then dear readers, stay tuned.

Fringe and COG Part I

Those of you who have been following my 'Fringe" series know that it has been a long, strange trip thus far. Now encompassing eleven proper installments, plus a kind of appendix, it began with a simple enough premise: to chronicle the involvement of the far right in high weirdness. By high weirdness, I am of course referring to UFOS, psi, human potential, "nonlethal weapons," and other occulted topics the mainstream has long shunned. As for far right, I have largely examined it through the prism of various intelligence-laden "think tanks" such as the Committee on the Present Danger Mach I, the American Security Council (ASC), and the United States Global Security Council (USGSC).

There have been many twists and turns in this research, which began by examining the origins of the national security state and its links to the Roswell incident (noted here and here) and has continued on up until the early 1990s. In that span I've examined a host of topics, including NICAP (noted here), the mythos surrounding Hangar 18 and Area 51 (noted here and here, respectively), the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) and its origins in Tesla weapons (noted here), super soldiers (noted here) and the links between nonlethal weapons and mind control (noted here). And those are just some of the highlights.

Over the course of researching this series I've made many fascinating discoveries I was not aware of when I began, thanks in no small part to my readership, and as such it has been hard fitting everything into a coherent narrative. This necessitated the first appendix, as well as what you are currently reading. This information is quite fascinating, and as it runs the length of the years already covered, I felt it would be best to consolidate everything relating to Continuity of Government (COG) and civil defense schemes here.

I had become interested in the involvement some COG officials had in high weirdness going back to my series on the CIA's Office of Security, which was published last year. For the last year or so I have been gathering further pieces but most recently I was quite struck by a statement made by Colonel John Alexander (addressed before here and here) in his brilliant white wash UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies and Realities. Alexander dedicates a good portion of the work to debunking many of the sacred cows of Ufology but makes some quite eyebrow raising comments while discussing the notorious Majestic 12:

"With then could be the reality underlining Majestic 12? Is it possible the organization once existed and that a collection of influential people was brought together for some purpose? The answer may be yes. A reliable, vetted, and confidential source, who states he had access to MJ-12 material, indicated this was a real group. He also indicated that there would be no reports at the Department of Defense level as everything was controlled by the White House. However, he firmly acknowledge that the topics the group was involved in studying had nothing to do with the Roswell crash in particular or UFOs in general.

"The following is speculation, but that clue cause me to think seriously about what such a body as MJ-12 might be involved in. It was Hal Puthoff who pointed me towards what could be the real answer – Continuity of Government or COG. For decades this was one of the most highly guarded secrets in America. Formally initiated under President Eisenhower at the height of the Cold War, COG was designed to prevent nuclear decapitation of the U.S. government. It would appear that some of those plans remain classified and have been adapted to current counterterrorism circumstances. The point is that in those early post-World War II days, nerves were frayed, tensions were high, and a plan for national survival was needed. 

"We do know that continuation of leadership was a primary concern of President Truman. In 1945, only two months after being sworn into office following the death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, he asked Congress to designate the line of succession. According to the Congressional Research Service, 'He [Truman] noted that, in naming his Cabinet members, a president chose his successor, and concluded that, "I do not believe that in a democracy this power should rest with the Chief Executive." ' Therefore, the idea that President Truman would make continuity of government a primary focus is fundamentally sound. 

"Very important from an MJ-12 perspective, all the pieces fit, including timing, mission, and membership. On July 26, 1947, President Harry S. Truman signed the National Security Act that realigned and reorganized the U.S. Armed Forces, foreign policy, and Intelligence Community apparatus. It was the National Security Act that created the Air Force as a separate enable branch of the Department of Defense. The Act also established the National Security Council as a centralized body for coordination of national security policy within the executive branch. In addition it created the first peacetime intelligence organization, the Central Intelligence Agency. Notably, this act did not go into effect until September 18 of that year and one day after James Forrestal was confirmed by the U.S. Senate as the first Secretary of Defense. The memo from Truman to Forrestal, directing him to initiate Operation Majestic 12 'with all due speed and caution,' is signed just six days later (September 24, 1947). While this memo has not been authenticated, the content is commensurate with activities that followed. 

"It was under the COG plans that hardened secret underground bases such as Mount Weather in western Virginia were constructed. A few years ago it was revealed that a swanky resort called Greenbrier, in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, actually had hidden subterranean facilities and was the place that Members of Congress would be sequestered in case of a nuclear exchange. Amazingly, it is now open to tourists.

"However, complex plans, such as COG, do not materialize out of thin air. They require extensive thought and careful planning. The alleged composition of MJ-12 was exactly right for the task of developing a plan to safeguard American leadership. They had the brainpower and experience to tackle such a problem. Further, creating a body of senior advisors was the normal manner by which government agencies approach complex issues such as restoring duly authorized leadership under catastrophic circumstances. In fact, that process of appointing advisors continues to be a widely used norm. Membership of such panels is usually directly related to the level of the office establishing the study. Those named as the MJ-12 constituency dovetails appropriately with a body created that might advise a POTUS. The dearth of written substantiation is also reasonable. Other extremely sensitive projects were known to be conducted with little, or no, paper trail.

"In Stan Friedman's book he goes to great lengths to attempt to explain why Donald Menzel, a harsh UFO critic, would be included on a panel with direct access to material proving his position to be wrong. Stan concluded that it was because Menzel was leading a double life. While he publicly denounced UFOs, Stan contends Menzel was a closet insider and knew that he was intentionally misleading the American people. A much simpler answer would be that Menzel was a member of a group addressing pressing problems of strategic importance that were not related to UFOs. Certainly COG is a perfect fit. They were the right people, at the right time, involved in the right mission. That is, if they ever did exist." 

(UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies, and Realities, John Alexander, pgs. 130-132)

Colonel John Alexander

It probably goes without saying, but there's a lot to take in here. Let us begin with Majestic 12, more commonly referred to as MJ-12. As I'm sure many of the regular readers of this blog are well aware of the mythos surrounding MJ-12 I shall be brief: Beginning in the 1980s a series of documents were produced by researchers Jamie Shandera, William Moore and Stan Friedman purporting to describe a highly secretive group initiated by President Harry S. Truman in 1947 to manage the UFO phenomenon. There were allegedly twelve members in the initial group, all of them heavies within the deep state at the time. They included the above-mentioned Forrestal and Donald Menzel, as well Lloyd V. Berkner, Detlev W. Bronk, Gordon Gray, Dr. Jerome C. Hunsaker, General Robert M. Montague, General Nathan F. Twining, General Hoyt S. Vandenberg, Admiral Sidney W. Souers, Admiral Roscoe Hillenkoetter and the ever enigmatic Vannevar Bush.

That's quite an impressive roster. Virtually all the civilians alleged to have been involved with the group were among the finest scientists of their era. Forrestal and Gordon Gray, the only civilians in the group without scientific backgrounds, were key officials in national security matters. Admiral Hillenkoetter was the first Director of the CIA while Admiral Souers and General Vandenberg had headed its predecessor, the Central Intelligence Group. General Montague was the base commander of Sandia Laboratory, which frequently appears in UFO literature. General Nathan Twining, who was addressed at length in "Fringe", was the initiator of Project Sign and has long been linked to Roswell. It probably goes without saying, but if said group did exist, it would have wielded tremendous power with these kinds of heavies.

General Nathan Twining

The authenticity of the documents outlining MJ-12 has of course long been questioned, though many of the detractors grudgingly acknowledge that the above-mentioned Truman-Forrestal memo, which authorized the creation of MJ-12, is real. As I've noted before here, I've long found the prospect of MJ-12 actually existing to be rather dubious, though there is compelling evidence that Vannevar Bush was involved in some type of official UFO project for the government in the era in which the MJ-12 documents were allegedly issued.

Alexander's comments got me to re-examine this belief, however, and an intriguing idea occurred to me: What if MJ-12 or something very much like it was real after all, but not directly involved in the UFO question (as Alexander alleges) but oversaw some type of subgroup involved in such research?

If MJ-12 was an aspect of COG, as Alexander alleges, it stands to reason that the group would have considered the UFO question as there are various ways it could have destabilized the government. But at the onset of the Cold War, there were certainly other developments that could have had an equally devastating effect, necessitating a wide ranging approach to continuity of government.

Is it possible? Certainly when one considers the history of COG and the players involved, it doesn't seem as far-fetched as some may initially believe. And on that note, let us turn our attention to the history of COG.

Origins

COG has its roots in the concept of "civil defense" and civil defense plans first began to emerge in earnest during the First World War. As this was the first modern "total war," it was felt that civilian populations had to be mobilized for the war effort to both keep the military supplied and to defend the national from saboteurs and even in the event of an attack. The first formal body assigned to managing these efforts was an institution known as the Council of National Defense (CND) in these United States.

a rare picture of the Council

The CND would set a rather troubling precedent that would be continued on through later incarnations of civil defense, and later continuity of government: namely, a partnership between the public and private sectors. On the one hand, the CND was officially headed by the Secretaries of the Interior, Agriculture, Labor, Commerce, Navy and War with its funding coming from the Army. In addition to these government bodies, however, President Woodrow Wilson appointed a "nonpartisan" commission drawn almost entirely from the ranks of captains of industry and who for practical purposes ran the day to day operations of the Council.  

Nonetheless, the Council appears to have performed its functions with little controversy and was promptly shuttered in 1921 once the war had concluded. It was then briefly revived at the onset of the Second World War and that is where things start to get interesting. While the second incarnation of the CND was not around for very long, it did manage one crucial feat: it created the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC).

Regular readers of this blog should be well familiar with the NDRC by now, but for the uninitiated, in brief: The NDRC is revered nowadays for the role it played in beginning research on radar and the atomic bomb that was later carried on by the closely related Office of Scientific Research and Development, but it was engaged in even more sinister projects. As was noted before here, its Division 19 was one of the first efforts by the national security apparatus to develop methods of behavior modification. Key players in the NDRC and Division 19 later ended up in more notorious CIA/ Pentagon behavior modification projects such as ARTICHOKE and MKULTRA. Even more curious, however, is the longstanding association NDRC members such as H. Marshall Chadwell (who briefly headed ARTICHOKE) and the above-mentioned Vannever Bush had to the UFO question (noted before here and here).

And it just so happens they got their start in deep black projects while operating out of an agency that was originally created as part of the nation's civil defense network --the same civil defense network that would be used to create modern COG planning a few years later. Thus, even at this early date a connection appears to exist between continuity of government and these fringe topics such as UFOs, behavior/consciousness modification and psi (which was a major component of the above-mentioned Pentagon/CIA projects, as noted before here).

COG Gets Serious

While early civil defense efforts were fairly benign, it was during World War II that extreme measures, such as plans for mass incarcerations of the civilian populace, were first proposed. When the Cold War began in earnest in 1950 and the prospect of a nuclear war between the USA and the Soviet Union became a very real possibility, formal continuity of government plans began to appear. Thus, the period from roughly 1939 till 1950 proved to be especially significant, as the government first became comfortable with suspending the Constitution on the one hand, while establishing plans for the preservation of government with no real input from the public on the other. Of this crucial period, the great Peter Dale Scott noted:

"In November 1939, after the outbreak of war in Europe, Hoover began to compile a list of individuals to be closely monitored and/or detained in the event of a national emergency or war. In June 1940 he sought and gained the approval of the Attorney General Robert Jackson for the list, known as the Custodial Detention List...

"According to Tim Weiner, it was on July 7, 1950, at the crest of the hysteria fomented by the Korean War and by hearings in HUAC and SISS, that Hoover for the first time formally briefed the White House and the NSC his plans for 'the mass detention of political suspects in military stockades, a secret prison system for jailing American citizens, and the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus.' He also revealed that he had since 1939 a list of about twelve thousand individuals, nearly all the U.S. citizens, who under his plan could be rounded up summarily on the issuance of a single 'master warrant...'

"Hoover's plan was soon paralleled in Congress by the passage (over Truman's veto) of the McCarran Internal Security Act in the same year 1950, whose Title II authorized the attorney general in times of emergency to round up and hold individuals in detention centers. Congress, in passing the Emergency Detention Act, was unaware that Hoover had already assumed this power. Moreover the Act established certain protections of individual human rights, which Hoover and some Department of Justice officials considered 'unworkable.' 'Accordingly, Attorney General J. Howard McGrath directed the FBI to ignore the Congressionally mandated standards and instead base current and future detention investigation on the administration's secretly authorized program.' In this decision we see a sign of America's emerging dual state, in what some U.S. agencies are directed secretly to ignore the law.

"The October 1950 entry of China into the Korean War moved Truman, on December 16, 1950, two proclaimed 'a national emergency, which requires that military, naval, air, and civilian defenses of this country be strengthened as speedily as possible.' Truman's proclamation of a national emergency authorized publicly the military buildup authorized secretly two days earlier in NSC 68/4 of December 14 – in the same way that Bush's proclamation of a national emergency on September 14, 2001, became the public authority for the COG measures implemented secretly by Cheney and Rumsfeld (during Bush's absence from Washington) on 9/11.

"The Chinese intervention also persuaded Truman to threaten Beijing with possible use of atomic weapons. As the Soviet Union now possessed its own bomb, Truman initiated COG planning to deal with a possible counterattack. Thus in a sense it can be said that today's manic planning for Doomsday is a by-product of the Korean War.

"Truman's proclamation of a national emergency lasted until 1977. Under Eisenhower 'A series of atomic attack simulations, entitled "Operation Alert", were implemented from 1955 to 1960,. . . to test "the capability of all levels of government to operate following an attack." ' These exercises generated a growing number of Presidential Emergency Action Documents, or PEADs, which have been since defined by FEMA as 'final drafts of Presidential messages, proposed legislation proclamations, and other formal documents, including DOJ ['s Department of Justice]-issued cover sheets addressed to the President, to be issued in the event of a Presidentially-declared national emergency.' "

(The American Deep State, Peter Dale Scott, pgs. 145-147)

Hoover

The COG/civil defense network was thus well on its way to becoming a shadow government by the late 1950s, with wide ranging powers to suspend the Constitution. Even in the few instances in which Congress attempted to put restraints on these powers, the COG network was frequently directed to ignore the law. Given how highly secretive and classified the COG network is, ignoring the law proved to be quite an effective practice.

It is hardly surprising then that by the early 1960s the COG network would frequently turn up in what Scott calls "deep events," political upheavals that rocked the nation and fundamentally changed its trajectory. The first time COG appeared in such an event was of course the Kennedy assassination. In a separate article, Scott outlined the presence of COG in the assassination, which chiefly involved the use of a secretive communications system known as the White House Communications Agency (WHCA):

"The WHCA radio channel used by Lawson and others communicated almost directly to the WHCA base at Mount Weather in Virginia, the base facility of the COG network. From there, Secret Service communications were relayed to the White House, via the batteries of communications equipment connecting Mount Weather with the White House and “Raven Rock” — the underground Pentagon sixty miles north of Washington — as well as with almost every US military unit stationed around the globe.

"Jack Crichton, head of the 488th Army Intelligence Reserve unit of Dallas, was also part of this Mount Weather COG network. This was in his capacity as chief of intelligence for Dallas Civil Defense, which worked out of an underground Emergency Operating Center. As Russ Baker reports, 'Because it was intended for "continuity of government" operations during an attack, [the Center] was fully equipped with communications equipment.' [18] In retrospect the Civil Defense Program is remembered derisively, for having advised schoolchildren, in the event of an atomic attack, to hide their heads under their desks. [19] But in 1963 civil defense was one of the urgent responsibilities assigned to the Office of Emergency Planning, which is why Crichton, as much as Secret Service agent Lawson, could be in direct touch with the OEP’s emergency communications network at Mount Weather...

"We have seen that there was interaction in Dallas between the WHCA and DPD radio channels, thanks to the WHCA portable radio that Lawson had installed in the lead car of the presidential motorcade. [26] This radio in turn was in contact by police radio with the pilot car ahead of it, carrying Dallas Police Department (DPD) Deputy Chief Lumpkin of the 488th Army Intelligence Reserve unit. [27] At the same time, as noted above, it was in contact with the COG nerve center at Mount Weather, Virginia. And Mount Weather had the requisite secret communications to receive information from classified intelligence files, without other parts of the government being alerted.

"Permit me at this moment an instructive digression. It is by now well established that Kennedy in 1963 was concerned enough by 'the threat of far-right treason' that he urgently persuaded Hollywood director John Frankenheimer 'to turn [the novel] Seven Days in May into a movie.' [28] In this book, a charismatic superior officer, Air Force General James Mattoon Scott, intend[s] to stage a coup d’état …. According to the plan, an undisclosed Army combat unit known as ECOMCON (Emergency COMmunications CONtrol) will seize control of the country’s telephone, radio, and television networks, while the conspiracy directs the military and its allies in Congress and the media from 'Mount Thunder' (a continuity of government base based on Mount Weather).

"It is no secret also that in 1963 Kennedy had aroused major right-wing dissatisfaction, largely because of signs of his increasing rapprochement with the Soviet Union. The plot of the book and movie reflects the concern of liberals at the time about generals like General Edwin Walker, who had resigned in 1961 after Kennedy criticized his political activities in the Army. (Walker had given his troops John Birch Society literature, along with the names of right-wing candidates to vote for.) [29] We can assume however that Kennedy had no firm evidence of a Mount Weather conspiracy: if he had, it is unlikely his response would have just been to sponsor a fictionalized movie." 

Perhaps, but films have frequently been used for limited hangouts. With the increasingly isolation Kennedy felt within his own administration during the final months, just how effectively he could have dealt with an out-of-control COG network internally is debatable. Instead, he seems to have taken his case to the American public via films like Seven Days in May and Dr. Strangelove (which, as noted before here, also has eerie parallels to the Kennedy assassination and subtle references to the COG network).

Another Deep Event

For our purposes here, the second "deep event" Scott links to the COG network is most noteworthy. This second incident is of course Watergate and it is of interest because the involvement of a certain Office of Security veteran regular readers of this blog should be well aware of: "Plumber" James McCord. 

You see dear reader, in the years leading up to McCord signing on with the White House "Plumbers", he was involved in a most curious project while working out of the Office of Emergency Preparedness, a predecessor of the National Program Office: 

".... As a colonel in the Air Force Reserve, McCord served as commander of the Special Analysis Division (SAD) of the Wartime Information Security Program (WISP), which was a creature the Office of Emergency Preparedness (OEP). In the event of a 'national emergency,' declared by either the President or the Secretary of Defense, the Office of Wartime Information Security would activate contingency plans for imposing censorship on the press, the malls and all telecommunications (including government communications). In addition, provision existed for the preventive detention of civilian 'security risks,' who would be placed in military 'camps,' thereby quashing any effective dissent. The civilians selected for preventive detention were expected to include antiwar activists, trade-union leaders, members of radical political organizations and others identified on the FBI's 'custodial detention cards.' The peacetime rubric under which these plans were rationalized was the specter of election-year violence. There were reports – in fact unfounded rumors – that the Weather Underground was planning to bomb the polls on Election Day, and that one or both of the national political conventions would end in a bloodbath. The presidential election might, therefore, have to be 'postponed' in the interest of public safety. The implementation of WISP might be expected to restore order within a short period of time, during which the incumbent president would remain in office.

"As for McCord's SAD unit, its responsibility was to develop and test computer procedures for handling the federal 'watch lists' and 'custodial detention' targets, dispensing orders to various military units on the basis of geographical location and functional duties. Towards that end, McCord participated in WISP-connected war games conducted at the government's supersecret Mount Weather facility. Given McCord's background in counterespionage and counterintelligence, he may be said to have been ideally suited for activities of this kind."

(Secret Agenda, Jim Hougan, pgs. 16-17)

James W. McCord Jr.

Indeed. As I've noted before here, McCord is easily the most interesting of the Watergate Plumbers. On the one hand, he clearly seems to have been the man who sabotaged the infamous break-in. On the other, he appears to have been running a sexual blackmail operation that targeted the DNC's Watergate-based headquarters for months before the break-in.

But in addition to Democrats, McCord's operation also appears to have ensnared key officials in the Nixon administration, most notably John Dean and Jeb Magruder, two of the three men (along with Attorney General John Mitchell) who ultimately green-lighted the Watergate break-in. Curiously Dean, the White House Council under Nixon, was also involved in COG planning prior to Watergate. Of his involvement, Peter Dale Scott noted: "... John Dean, perhaps the central Watergate figure, had participated in COG activities when serving as the associate deputy attorney general" (The American Deep State, pg. 118).

John Dean

Jeb Magruder had no known ties to COG, but he played in key role in the rise of a man who would wield tremendous influence over the COG network for decades to come:

"State representative Marion Burks was the initial favorite, and was expected to receive the popular Mrs. Church's endorsement. But [Donald] Rumsfeld's chances suddenly improved when the Chicago Sun-Times, which had already endorsed Rumsfeld, headlined a story that money in an insurance company of which Burks was the chairman had gone missing. The ambitious twenty-nine--year-old (he turned thirty in July 1962) had recruited an equally youthful team of helpers, including an MBA student from the University of Chicago named Jeb Stuart Magruder, later jailed in the Watergate scandal for his role in the Nixon administration's criminal dirty tricks operation. 'I already had experience in the 1960 Nixon campaign in Kansas City, so it was natural for me to get involved,' Magruder, now a minister of the Presbyterian Church, told me in 2006.

"Rumsfeld himself affected a statesmanlike attitude during the campaign, never mentioning the allegations against Burks, while Magruder and other Rumsfeld operatives reportedly arranged for someone to raise the issue at every one of Burks's meetings, disregarding his repeated protests of innocence. 'I did what I did best,' the seventy-two-year-old Magruder replied when I asked him about his role. 'I don't remember much about Burks.' In his 1974 memoir, An American Life, a younger Magruder recalled, 'We did everything we could to keep the [Burks] issue alive. Don never mention it in public, but whenever Burks spoke we would send our people to pepper him with questions about the scandal.' The allegations were a total smear; Burks retired as a respected circuit court judge. But meanwhile Rumsfeld had won the primary."

(Rumsfeld, Andrew Cockburn, pgs. 13-14)

Donald Rumsfeld

And so began the storied career of two-time Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who remained actively engaged in COG planning during the nearly two and a half decades he was out of government. As was noted before here, Rumsfeld was also a member of a hawkish think tank known as the United Stares Global Strategy Council (USGSC) during the same time the group brought on John Alexander to promote the use of "nonlethal warfare." Nonlethals would later gain traction in the Bush I presidency wen Rummy's dear friend and fellow COG compatriot Richard Cheney was serving as the Secretary of Defense.  But more on that in the next installment.

One more thing bears mentioning before wrapping up: James McCord's early CIA forays. You see, McCord had already been active at the black heart of the deep state years before he was brought into COG or Watergate. When he initially signed up with the CIA he was signed to infamous Office of Security (OS, addressed at length before here), the section of the CIA that ran Project ARTICHOKE and its predecessor, BLUEBIRD, for potentially up to two decades. And as was noted before here, McCord just so happened to be close to Morse Allen and General Paul Gaynor, the two leading OS figures behind ARTICHOKE. Indeed, it is highly likely McCord was involved in ARTICHOKE in some capacity and at a minimum participated in the cover-up of Frank Olson's death (noted before here). What's more, McCord was in frequent contact with his old OS boss, General Gaynor, throughout the period in which he was both running a honey trap on the DNC and Nixon's inner circle while also working for the Plumbers.

In point of fact, high weirdness surrounded McCord and Watergate (as noted bore here). And he was highly active in COG planning at the same time as another figure who would later hook up with Colonel John Alexander. In the next installment we shall consider this relationship and much more. Stay tuned dear reader.