Fear and Loathing in the American Security Council Part II

Welcome to the second installment in my series examining the American Security Council. Over the course of the first installment of this series I examined the origins of the ASC, with a special emphasis on the political climate into which it was born. Effectively the ASC sprang into being at a time when there was a transition in the nation's economy, and as a result a shift in the elite itself. A combination of defense contractors, new moneyed families (many of whom with ties to the oil industry) and former military men began to emerge as a challenge to the so-called Eastern Establishment (a clique of largely old moneyed Northeastern-based families involved in heavy industry and banking that have been a long time obsession of the conspiratorial right) for control over the nation's political machinery.

The Eastern Establishment had long used the Council on Foreign Relations (the American branch of the Round Table group, a think tank created by British elites to forge closer relations with other Anglo-Saxon centric countries and ultimately open up every market in the world to an international system of finance) as a propaganda organ to format a consensus amongst business and political leaders, academia, the media and other elites. These individuals in turn sold the consensus to the general public, or at least tried to. The Eastern Establishment was only able to dominate, but never totally control, the public machinery. But beyond the vox populi there were other rival camps of elites, and by the 1950s the military-industrial complex and it's more fanatical supporters (who, for the sake of brevity, I will refer to as the Prussians) had adopted the methods of their rivals and fielded their own think tank: the American Security Council.

From the early 1960s till the late 1980s these two "think tanks" would be at the forefront of a struggle over America's foreign policy unfolding within the ranks of the elite

Naturally one of the chief functions of the ASC was propaganda and by all accounts it performed this task well. In point of fact, the ASC would have a significant influence on the national debate concerning virtually every major defense-related topic from the early 1960s until the late 1980s. The heart of the ASC's propaganda efforts were promoting a fanatical form of anticommunism to elites and the general public alike. It was in this way that Council not only began to shape the national debate, but also pick up further supporters from within the Eastern Establishment.

"... The Council was also active in Cold War 'education' aimed at the general public. Between 1955 and 1961, the ASC cosponsored an annual series of meetings called the National Military-Industrial Conferences, which brought Pentagon and National Security Council personnel together with executives from United Fruit, Standard Oil, Honeywell, U.S. Steel, Sears Roebuck and other corporations.

"At the 1958 National Military-Industrial Conference, the ASC launched the Institute for American Strategy for the purpose of inculcating elites and the public with anticommunist ideology. Administration of the Institute was granted to Frank Barnett, U.S. Army Colonel William Kintner, and other 'political warfare' advocates then stationed at the University of Pennsylvania's Foreign Policy Research Institute. Barnett was also research director for the Institute's key corporate benefactor, the Richardson Foundation (the charitable arm of the Vick Chemical Company). In 1959 and 1960 the ostensibly private Institute for American Strategy held seminars for reserve officers at the National War College, under the auspices of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Secretary of Defense. The manual for these seminars was the book American Strategy for the Nuclear Age, prepared by Foreign Policy Research Institute analysts Walter F. Hahn and John C. Neff. This book outlines an aggressive strategy of 'protracted conflict' with the Soviets, involving the training of citizens and government leaders in 'psychological warfare' schools. By 1961, the Institute for American Strategy had provided 10,000 copies of American Strategy to the National University Extension Association for distribution to public school libraries and citizen debate groups.

"Through the National Military-Industrial Conferences, regional meetings, National War College seminars and publications, the Institute began to assume the role of a military adjunct and a quasi-governmental propaganda agency. However, by 1961, Senator William J. Fulbright, Chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, became alarmed by what he perceived to be a combination of right-wing and military encroachment on the formation of U.S. public opinion...

"Despite the controversy, the American Security Council and the Institute for American Strategy continued their activities unabated. In fact, in 1962 the Council claimed credit for influencing the Kennedy administration's Cuba policy. In August 1961, the ASC's National Strategy Committee had received a letter from Assistant Secretary of State for Latin American Affairs Robert F. Woodward to the effect that key State Department officers reading ASC's reports recommending a cut off U.S. fuel to Cuba. It would be impossible to prove a decisive role for the America Security Council in this aspect of the destructive economic embargo against Cuba. It is more plausible to suggest that, as with other elite-based foreign affairs lobbies, the Council pressured the administration in a direction towards which it was already inclined. 

"As was characteristic of system-supportive anticommunist groups, the American Security Council functioned as an asset to the Cold War state, largely by reinforcing anticommunist ideology. By 1962 the Council boasted of the success of its 'Freedom University of the Air,' a series of sixty-five half-hour television programs hosted by former ASC Field Director W. Cleon Skousen. In 1964 former President Dwight Eisenhower, who, ironically, had warned of a 'military-industrial complex' in his farewell presidential speech, inaugurated the 'American Security Council Washington Report of the Air,' over 500 radio stations. From Munich, the CIA's Radio Free Europe broadcast this program in six European languages. By 1964 the program was added on the Mutual Broadcasting System's 535 stations, for a total number of stations greater than that of any other weekday news program. With major financial backing from Patrick Frawley's Schick Safety Razor company, the Council's anticommunist radio programs reach an estimated 35 million people."

(Roads to Dominion, Sara Diamond, pgs. 47-50)

Apparently Ike didn't think much of his own advise

Naturally, the ASC would have an enormous influence in dragging the nation into Vietnam as well as ensuring that the Cold War as a whole would continue  to escalate throughout the 1960s.

"... the parapolitical infighting inside the Pentagon bureaucracies will prove to have been grounded in deeper political conflicts dividing the nation as a whole... such conflict had escalated in late 1963, with strident voices for a more aggressive Vietnam policy coming from the American Security Council.

"The ASC was not just the leading group lobbying for the use of air power in Vietnam. It called also for the displacement of Fidel Castro in Cuba, and for a more militant posture towards the Soviet Union."

(Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, Peter Dale Scott, pg. 34)

Scott, a former diplomat and longtime English professor at UC Berkeley, speculated that the ASC likely had a strong influence on Nixon's decision to intervene in Cambodia in 1970 and may even have been consulted on the very day he made the decision to do so.

 "The importance of Cambodia to oilmen probably explains why Nixon, on the day of his decision to invade Cambodia (April 28, 1970), shared his decision with 'several private citizens [from] veterans and patriotic organizations,' two days before he notified Congress. Almost certainly one of these patriotic organizations was the American Security Council, a group representing both arms and oil interests (including Unocal) that had helped push Nixon into national prominence."

 (The Road to 9/11, Peter Dale Scott, pg. 39)

The ASC was not fortunate (at least in the short term), however, with another issue it became deeply involved with in 1970: the Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty (SALT), an attempt by the US and USSR to curtail their nuclear arsenals. As can be expected, the ASC started a propaganda campaign centered around the nation's "weapons gap."

"The semi-oppositional stance of conservatives towards the Nixon administration held not only for Asia policy but also for Nixon's negotiation for the first Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT), the first phase of which was signed with the Soviet Union in 1972. Right-wing activists opposed the SALT talks because they believed the treaty would tilt the arms race in favor of the Soviets. Not until the latter half of the Carter administration would conservatives wield strong influence in the SALT policymaking process...

"By 1970, however, the American Security Council begin a long campaign to persuade the public that SALT posed a threat to US nuclear capability...

"In 1970, the American Security Council launched Operation Alert, described as 'a massive nationwide voter education program' to alert the general public that the United States had become inferior to the Soviet Union in military strength. Operation Alert's first pamphlet on the 'weapons gap' was mailed to about two million voters and three thousand civic organizations. This phase of the campaign included ASC's placement of  full-page advertisements in over hundred newspapers and coincided with a major 'weapons gap' speech by Vice-President Spiro Agnew shortly before the mid-term Congressional elections. After the fall 1970 elections, ASC claimed credit for strengthening national security sentiment within Congress."

(Road to Dominion, Sara Diamond, pg. 121)

One of many disappointments the ASC experienced with Nixon in office

While the ASC failed to do little more than strengthen "national security sentiment within Congress" as far as SALT I was concerned it would ultimately play a key role in derailing the second SALT talks in 1979.

"... More significant for the movement's long-term trajectory, in 1978, the American Security Council expanded its Operation Alert program into the Coalition for Peace Through Strength, comprised of dozens of activist groups and hundreds of business and political leaders. The Coalition's initial objective was to prevent passage of a SALT II Treaty. In the process of waging that campaign, the coalition also rallied supporters against the growing anti-nuclear movement and against the 'Marxist threat' in Central America. While military leaders and neoconservative intellectuals in the Committee on the Present Danger targeted elite thinking on SALT, the Coalition aimed at mass audiences through the Right's well-honed use of newspaper advertisements, speaking tours, and radio appearances.

"The Coalition's most celebrated anti-SALT activity was its production of the film The SALT Syndrome, featuring interviews with prominent military leaders on U.S. vulnerability to the Soviet's nuclear arsenal. The SALT Syndrome aired on television more than 600 times in 1979 and was considered such a strong influence on public opinion that the Carter administration issued a detailed rebuttal of the film. Apart from New Right influence in Congress, by the time the SALT II treaty made its way to the Senate in 1979, numerous factors conspired to derail its ratification. These included U.S. intelligence reports of a Soviet 'combat brigade' in Cuba; the Iranian students' seizure of U.S. Embassy hostages in November, 1979; and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan a few weeks later. The Coalition for Peace Through Strength could not claim sole credit for defeating SALT II, but the Coalition's successful networking set a precedent for the anticommunist movement's well-coordinated 'freedom fighter' campaigns of the 1980s."

(ibid, pgs. 137-138)

We'll get to those lobby efforts on behalf of these so-called "freedom fighters" in just a moment. Before leaving the SALT talks, I'd also like to point out the ASC (via the Coalition for Peace Through Strength)'s rallying of the Christian right against bans on nuclear weapons as well:

"As opponents of the mass movement against nuclear power and weapons, the Christian Right mobilized late in the game and without a lot of fanfare. The secular American Security Council's Coalition for Peace Through Strength... drew its evangelical members' attention to campaigns for various new weapons systems. By 1983, the nuclear 'freeze' movement reached the peak of activity, with millions of Americans demonstrating outside weapons laboratories, testing sites, and nuclear power plants. Liberal clergy led the way across much of the country, and that prompted Jerry Falwell to launch his own lonely crusade against the 'freezeniks.' Falwell used his weekly television show and Moral Majority mailing list to raise funds for pro-nuclear newspaper advertisements and to sponsor a Peace Through Strength demonstration outside Congress. Falwell also circulated a pamphlet, 'Nuclear War and the Second Coming of Christ' linking the two events to belief in Christian salvation in a 'pre- tribulation rapture,' followed by a final 'battle of Armageddon.' This popular version of evangelical millenarianism caused observers to wonder what President Reagan meant when he told a 1983 National Association of Evangelicals gathering that the Soviet Union was an 'evil empire.' Most evangelicals were prepared to wait for, but not hasten, fulfillment of the Book of Revelations' prophecies."

(ibid, pg. 237)

sick...

Well, its certainly comforting to know that the ASC did its part in Rapture-izing nuclear Armageddon. And be assured, this is hardly the only tie between the ASC and the Christian right, the topic of which will be briefly touched upon when I address who is behind the ASC in the next installment. But on to those "freedom fighters" for the time being.

 "Building on the momentum of its campaigns against the Carter administration's Panama Canal and SALT treaties.., in 1979 the American Security Council (ASC) formed a Congressional Task Force for the purpose of lobbying on behalf of anticommunist governments in Central America. The task force blamed Jimmy Carter for Nicaragua's overthrow a dictator Anastasio Somoza, and the Congress-members on board ASC's Task Force pledged to back remaining anticommunist forces in Central America. Two advisers to the Reagan presidential campaign, former Defense Intelligence Agency director Daniel Graham and Major General John Singlaub (USA-Ret.), led a December 1979 delegation of ASC activists to Guatemala. There they assured leaders of military death squads that 'Mr. Reagan recognizes that a good deal dirty work has to be done.' In 1980, the Reagan campaign accepted millions of dollars in contributions from Guatemalan businessman and U.S. businessman living Guatemala. In turn, Guatemalan death squad leader Mario Sandoval Alarcon was invited to dance at Reagan's 1981 inaugural ball...

 "... the American Security Council (ASC) continued its use of television documentarians to mobilize grassroots lobbying. Beginning in early 1981, ASC spent a small fortune airing Attack on the Americas, a film that juxtaposed frightening footage of Central American violence and calm interviews with foreign policy experts like Jeane Kirkpatrick and Henry Kissinger... ASC combined media activities with lobbying and fundraising for Central American paramilitary forces."

(ibid, pgs. 214-216)

The above-mentioned figure of Major General John Singlaub is one that we will be returning to time and again over the course of this series and several I have planned for the future. In addition to his membership with the ASC, Singlaub was also the head of the World Anti-Communist League (an international "lobby" group ASC has long been closely tied too) during its most militant period in the 1980s. Singlaub, a longtime asset of CIA and military intelligence, played a major role in supporting the dirty wars that unfolded throughout Central America in the 1980s.

Singlaub

Undoubtedly the propaganda and lobbying efforts of the ASC had an enormous influence on the national debate that unfolded since the early 1960s until the late 1980s, when the imminent collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War led to a realignment amongst elites. During that period the ASC was instrumental in the rightward shift the nation went through, climaxing with the Reagan revolution of 1980 of which they played a major part of.

However, the ASC's vile war mongering was not the most lasting influence it would have on American society. You see, besides serving as a propaganda organ of the military-industrial complex and Prussian-type military men the ASC also functioned as a massive intelligence gathering operation during its early years. In point of fact, this was its original purpose.

"Founded by a group of former Federal Bureau of Investigation agents, the Council's original mission was to provide dues-paying corporations with politically sensitive information about prospective employees. ASC was started in Chicago in 1955 by ex-FBI agent William F. Carroll as the Mid-Western Research Library; in 1956 the name was changed to the American Security Council. From the 1950s through the 1980s, the Council was headed by former FBI agent John M. Fisher who had been a national security coordinator for the Sears Roebuck department store chain. By 1958, the New York Times reported that the American Security Council had gathered files of more than one million supposedly 'subversive' U.S. citizens and that the group was collecting names of rate of 20,000 per month. In 1961, the Council claimed that one of its major functions was 'to maintain close liaisons with the legislative and executive branches of government in the armed forces.' In a promotional brochure directed at the business community, the Council noted the superiority of its own intelligence gathering over that of the FBI, which by law cannot divulge the information in its files except in a court of law or for the confidential use of another federal agency. Thus, the ASC operated as a repressive agency, on par with the FBI itself.

"Among the American Security Council's original incorporators and file collectors were several right-wing activists who had actively opposed U.S. participation in World War II. These included Sears Roebuck Chairman General Robert E. Wood and publishing magnate William Regnery, both of the America First Committee; Harry Jung of the anti-Semitic American Vigilant Intelligence Federation; and John Trevor of the pro-Nazi American Coalition of Patriotic Societies. These former advocates of a non-interventionist U.S. foreign policy now found a mission in the American Security Council's efforts to expose American leftists and deprive them of their livelihoods."

(Roads to Dominion, Sara Diamond, pgs. 46-47)

General Robert E. Wood, who was discussed in much greater depth in the first installment, was one of the chief figures behind the founding of the ASC

Before continuing further with the American Security Council's intelligence aspirations there are a few points that need to be made here. First, as noted in the first installment of this series, the chief architect of the American Security Council was General Robert E. Wood (as well as other individuals heavily involved in the WWII-era 'non-interventionist' movement, as noted in the above quote) and it was largely dominated by former military men, at least in the early years. There was a strong FBI presence to be sure, but longtime ASC head and former FBI agent John Fisher likely got the gig in no small part due to his work for Wood as Sears Roebuck's chief of security. The role of FBI men in the ASC will be discussed in much further depth in the next installment of this series.

Moving along, I would now like to consider two of the individuals who contributed to the ASC's intelligence apparatus in the early years and their links to the 'non-interventionist' movement. There was Harry Jung and his "superpatriot" group, the American Vigilant Intelligence Federation, first and foremost. To say that Jung was quite a character would be an understatement. Of him the highly controversial 1940s-era undercover investigator Arthur Derounian, using the pseudonym John Roy Carlson, wrote:

"In Chicago, I wanted to look up Harry Augustus Jung, who was friendly with countless 'patriots.' In fact, young was no small fry. His work had been subsidized by banks, by industrialists and by rich old women scared to death by the Communist revolution 'around the corner.' Harry Augustus Jung was director of the American Vigilant Intelligence Federation represented in the East by his collaborator, Colonel Sanctuary. He styled himself the 'nation's foremost authority on subversive forces...'

"In 1933, Jung made membership in his American Vigilant Intelligence Federation secret, with secret codes and mysterious rituals. And in 1935 its organ the Vigilante had so well served the fascist cause that World Service placed it on it's on honor roll. Jung also went into the wholesale distribution of the Protocols...

"Jung's associates in those days included Peter Afansieff, a White Guard Russian, born in Petrograd in 1893, who arrived in San Francisco in 1922. With three other White Russians Afansieff worked on a new translation of the Protocols in Jung's office, and soon after became affiliated with the New York and Chicago branches of the Bund. When he assumed the alias, Prince Peter Kushubue, the doors of society opened to him and the bogus prince almost succeeded in getting a wealthy heiress to marry him...

"Together with Captain Victor de Kayville (born Livok) a wealthy a former officer in the Czarist Army who jumped ship, Afansieff helped publish The American Gentile. It was a 'patriotic, American pro-Aryan' semi-monthly published for the defense of Gentile culture and civilization. James True and Robert Edward Edmonson wrote for it and articles from World Service found their way in. The American Gentile became the filthiest Nazi-front sheet of its period in Chicago and deserve the praise which it received in World Service. In February, 1935, Jung accused Afansieff of withholding funds and the two parted company.

"In the meanwhile and with uncommon 'patriotic' versatility,Jung was 'fighting Communism' by obtaining funds from both Jewish and Christian firms. Jung solicitors told wealthy Gentiles they were combating Jewish Communism, while wealthy Jews were told that the Vigilantes were combating Communism.

"Among those seduced by Jung under the delusion that they were supporting a worthy cause (during 1931-1934) where the Rockford National Bank, First National Bank of Joliet, Illinois; International Harvester, William Wrigley, Florsheim Shoe Company, Sears Roebuck and Company and many others. The biggest sucker, however, proved to be the aged Mrs. Finley J. Shepherd, daughter of the late Jay Gould, who gave away millions. Scared out of her wits at the 'coming Communist revolution,' she was shaken down for $5000 by Jung and his cronies. Jung was the first Park Avenue 'patriot' to go after the big money boys, first to sell the Protocols and first to share offices with an Illinois Klan leader, Gale S. Carter, who was number 37 in Jung super-secret membership list.

"In addition to these samples of 'patriotism,' Jung had another profitable pastime. He maintained a labor spy and straight breaking establishment and kept extensive files of persons and organizations he considered 'radical.' Jung sold this 'confidential information for high fees. The late Speaker of the House, Henry T. Rainey, summed up his exploits in a letter he wrote Jung:

My files showed that you are a sort of detective, worming your way into the homes of the most trusted members of labor organizations obtaining information with which to combat the efforts of labor organizations to better their conditions, and that you obtain this information for the purpose of assisting 'strikebreakers.'

The data I have show that you foment strikes in the districts where there is no union and then settle the strike for a price. The information I have with reference to you is that you are the man who does the slimy, stool pigeon work necessary for the purpose of destroying organized labor wherever it has contractual relations with employers...

"Jung had changed his tactics in recent years. He now spent lavishly to bury his past and put on the cloak of respectability. He became a specialist on 'Americanism' and graduated to lecturing before the Chicago Athlete Association and the Racquet Club. He was befriended by Colonel Robert R. McCormick, publisher of the Chicago Tribune and had his office in room 2212 of the Tribune Tower, dubbed the 'Devil's Tower.'"

(Under Cover, John Roy Carlson, pgs. 390-393)

Mr. Harry Augustus Jung, brownshirt extraordinaire

As noted in the first installment of this series, Chicago Tribune publisher Colonel Robert R. McCormick had also likely been involved in the founding of the American Security Council. He was apparently Jung's longtime patron and it would seem likely that the ASC drew no small amount of inspiration from Jung's work with the American Vigilant Intelligence Federation. Jung died roughly around the time that the ASC was found but his massive amount of files were turned over to the Council. According to former FBI agent William Turner in the gem Power on the Right these files included some one million names.

Naturally Colonel Robert McCormick was also involved in the pre-WWII "non-interventionist" movement

But as disturbing as Jung and his intelligence network may be, it is easily rivaled by another notorious "non-interventionist," John Trevor Sr. and his American Coalition of Patriotic Societies. Prior to these endeavors Trevor, like Colonel Robert R. McCormack and many other individuals we shall meet over the course of this series and related ones, was a member of military intelligence.

"... a Harvard-educated lawyer and industrialist descended from a signer of the Declaration of Independence and, like his close friend Madison Grant, a member of New York's social elite, had served as an officer of military intelligence just after World War I, a role in which he 'made his own rules, gave himself his own assignments,' according to a colleague at the time. For example, Trevor Sr. developed a plan to suppress a mass uprising of Jewish subversives in New York City, going so far as the order 6,000 rifles and a machine gun battalion for deployment in Jewish neighborhoods in anticipation of a disturbance that never took place. Keeping secret ties to military intelligence even after his return to civilian life, the elder Trevor became, according to one historian, 'one of the most influential unelected individuals affiliated with the U.S. Congress,' testifying in the hearings that led to the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924 and crafting its plan to designate national quotas for each country based on the number of its residence in the United States in 1890, before the bulk of the immigration from southern and eastern Europe. To defend the quotas, in 1929 Trevor founded the American Coalition of Patriotic Societies, which quickly became an unparalleled organization for numerous far-right groups; later named as the collation's 'honorary president' was C. M. Goethe, a president of the ERA who strongly recommended the 'marvelous eugenics program of Hitler's as a model that the United States must adopt if it were to have any chance of becoming 'Germany's successful rival.'

"... Also before the war Trevor, as head of the American Coalition, collaborated on a number of projects designated to distribute Nazi propaganda, and in 1942, according to investigative journalist Adam Miller, the collation 'was named in a U.S. Justice Department Sedition Indictment for pro-Nazi activities.' In a particular irony, Trevor and the coalition... were investigated by military intelligence."

(The Funding of Scientific Racism, William Tucker, pgs. 60-61) 

Trevor was also greatly involved in "immigration reform"

Naturally military intelligence found nothing on Trevor, enabling him to continue his valuable work. In fairness to Trevor, it should be noted that his supporters have long denied the allegations of Nazi collaboration and his plot to put down Jewish subversives with some 6,000 rifles. On the flip side of the coin, however, his son, John Trevor Jr., has been deeply involved with eugenics-based projects for years, most notably the notorious Pioneer Fund, of which he was a secretary for.

And these are the "non-interventionists" – General Robert E. Wood, Colonel Robert R. McCormick, Harry Augustus Jung and Captain John Trevor – who lent  "inspiration" to the American Security Council in the early years.

To be sure, there were more overworld elements that contributed to the ASC's intelligence efforts, but they were no less dubious. Lee Pennington of the American Legion, for instance, would also contribute his massive collection of files to the ASC.

"During World War II the Legion build up a network of confidential information contacts, on the model of the so-called vigilantes of the American Protectively Agency during World War I. The key man in this effort, an FBI agent named Lee Pennington, Jr., left the Bureau for the Legion in 1953, where he began to develop a massive 'library' of information on alleged subversives. Future Watergate burglar James McCord, in search for subversives in the CIA, made his first contacts in the 1950s with Pennington, his library, and Lou Russell of HUAC.

 "Pennington thus became a CIA consultant, a status which continued when he transferred his by-now massive files on Americans from the American Legion to the newly formed American Security Council. However, the principal users of his library were large corporations, including defense contractors such as the large oil companies, who consulted the file-card index when screening employees as part of their industrial-security program."

(Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, Peter Dale Scott, pgs. 244-245)

Unsurprisingly, there was also some overlap between the American Security Council and the notorious private security, Wackenhut. Wackenhut, now G4S Secure Solutions, was known to have files on millions of Americans for years.

"Wackenhut is a private detective agency founded in 1954 by former FBI man George Wackenhut and three ex-FBI friends in Miami, a hotbed of rightist political activity at the time. George Wackenhut had important political connections – Florida Governor Claude Kirk and Senator George Smathers among them – and shared a predilection with J. Edgar Hoover for acquiring files on people. His connections help build his agency into a powerful private police force with huge government contracts. Senator Smathers' law firm hired guards from the Wackenhut subsidiary to work nuclear bomb test sites in Nevada and Cape Canaveral, a workaround to the federal law forbidding private detective agencies working for the government. George Wackenhut's preoccupation with compiling files made the agency an extraordinary intelligence resources well. Investigator John Connolly noted that 'By 1965, Wackenhut was boasting to potential investors that the company maintained files on two and a half million suspected dissidents – one in forty-six American adults then living. In 1966, after acquiring the private files of Karl Barslaag, a former staff member of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, Wackenhut could confidentially maintain that with more than four million names, it had the largest privately held file on suspected dissidents in America.'"

(The Octopus, Kenn Thomas & Jim Keith, pgs. 32-33) 

The Institute for the Study of  Globalization and Covert Politics (ISGP) alleges the following ties between ASC and Wackenhut in their highly compelling account of the Council:

"The controversial detective and private security firm Wackenhut, ran by an extreme right Christian Scientist, occasionally made use of the files of the Church League. [19] Wackenhut also had its own database of suspects in the 1960s and 1970s, largely based on several unspecified libraries the company bought. George Wackenhut himself estimated that the library "got up to about three million" individual names [20]. To what extent these names overlapped with the databases of the Church League and the ASC hasn't been investigated, but it is likely to have been considerable as Wackenhut was represented on the national strategy committee of the ASC for several decades. A 1968 list - to pick one - reveals that two of the three co-chairmen of the committee at that point were Wackenhut directors: General Bernhard A. Schriever and Lloyd Wright."

I have been able to confirm that one of the above-mentioned individuals, General Bernard A. Schriever, was in fact a member of both Wackenhut and the ASC at the same time. However, information on this relationship as a whole remain scarce beyond what was reported on ISGP.

General Bernard A. Schriever, later of the ASC and Wackenhut

By the early 1970s the ASC had compiled a massive library on "subversives."

"At present the dossier system consists of, in the ASC's words, 'seven major files and libraries on communism and statism' as well as 'the largest private collection on revolutionary activities in America.' The index alone consists of over six million cards. Although the ASC shuns the implications that it is running a blacklist service, and denies it keeps tabs on individuals as such, it nonetheless has indexed and collected the names and activities of over a million persons and organizations fitting its standards of dubious loyalty. In 1970 the ASC announced that it had 'handled over 195,000 research requests from members, government agencies, congressional committees, and news media...'

"The dossier service is available to the ASC's thirty-five hundred member firms and organizations who pay dues that may run well over a thousand dollars a year apiece, depending on the number of employees..."

(Power on the Right, William Turner, pgs. 202-203)

The ASC allegedly gave up on the private intelligence racket at some point in the 1970s and yet more than a few individuals with ties to the ASC would end up working in other private intelligence organizations in the 1980s, some of which with direct ties to the so-called "patriot movement."

The effects of the intelligence efforts of groups like the ASC and other such organizations on the American worker is difficult to gauge but likely significant. Many researchers believe that the ASC did in fact engage in blacklisting. What's more, the bulk of the customers for their files were reportedly corporations and not the government (though the ASC was deeply involved with the US intelligence community). Effectively, this means the clientele of ASC was not simply scrutinizing the backgrounds of perspective employees, but also researching their political beliefs. And as the above should illustrate, many of the organizations that provided intelligence to the ASC effectively believed that liberalism in general was a subversive political belief. The ASC insisted that its major concern was whether or not an individual supported the "free enterprise system."

"What constitutes a left-winger for the ASC? Only the vaguest of guidelines have emerged from the statements of President Fisher. In 1960, in filing for tax-exempt status (it was denied), he explained one purpose of the ASC: 'To promote the common business interests of American business organizations in defending themselves amongst those activities of Communists and other subversive organizations which are directed against the business operations of American business organizations.' The idea was more succinctly put in a later pamphlet: 'Interest for or against the free enterprise system – that's the thing that starts our interest. If the situation is in line with the current Communist Party line, then it becomes of interest to us.' Seemingly this would embrace advocacy of progressive social and labor legislation, and an end to racism and the Vietnam War."

(ibid, pgs. 201-202) 

What's more, it seemingly had no qualms about using highly dubious "superpatriot" organization as sources of intelligence. More than a few affiliates of the John Birch Society and even the Liberty Lobby would also serve with the American Security Council while former FBI agent William Turner even alleges that the 1960s paramilitary outfit the Minutemen was used as an intelligence source by the ASC (ibid, pg. 201). This is hardly surprising as a reoccurring theme amongst various "superpatriot" outfits is the appearance of some type of intelligence network and/or an "enemies list" and over the years various intelligence apparatuses (both within the government and the private sector) have found them to be highly effective in this capacity. Indeed, this relationship has existed for decades.

And it is here that I shall wrap things up for now. In the next installment I shall began to examine the forces behind the ASC as well as the bizarre origins of the relationship between the American intelligence community and "superpatriot" groups. Stay tuned.

Firearms, Drugs, and Doomsday -Updated 12/20/12

Guns have been a major hot button topic this year and for good reason. The United States has witnessed two of the most horrific mass shootings in its long, bloody history of mass shootings in 2012. In between Aurora and Newtown has been an increasingly surreal wave of gun violence that has involved peoples as diverse as neo-Nazis and NFL football players. As the carnage spirals out of control America is becoming increasingly divided over firearms, each side largely acting in predictable fashion.

Liberals are still leading the charge for stricter laws regulating firearms, especially military-style weapons. Meanwhile conservatives continue to insists that the solution to the wave of gun violence is even more guns, with at least one Republican Congressman arguing for teachers being armed. Naturally the conspiratorial media sees Newtown at the latest black ops bid to strip Americans of their Second Amendment rights, thus paving the way for a UN-led Red Dawn-style invasion, or something to that effect.

As has become the custom, gun sales have gotten a healthy boost from the Sandy Hook shooting. Even the slightest hint of stricter gun laws, be it the political rhetoric in the wake of a mass shootings or Obama being re-elected, has meant big business for the gun industry. Despite the perception of Obama as an arch gun-grabber, the president has done little more than talk about stricter gun control, much to the delight of the industry. Indeed, some within the industry are even referring to Obama as the gun salesman of the year. Before all is said and done, he may be the greatest of all time.

This has led some astute-types to question the gun industry's role in all of these mass shootings. Christopher Knowles recently published an excellent piece to this effect on the Secret Sun, which can be read here. Knowles has been calling BS on the prospects of a federal gun grab for a while now and until recently I would have been inclined to agree with him. But on Saturday I read an article on MSNBC that put me in doubt. It said:

"Pot smokers in Washington and Colorado are inhaling a little easier after President Barack Obama said the federal government has more important things to do than go after 'recreational' drug users in states that legalize marijuana.

"'We've got bigger fish to fry,' Obama told ABC News' Barbara Walters.

"He was weighing in on the issue for the first time since voters in the two states approved initiatives to legalize the recreational use of marijuana – which is still a crime under federal law.

"Obama admitted this disconnect between federal and local laws had put him in a tough spot.

"'I head up the executive branch. We're supposed to be carrying out laws,' he said. 'And so what we're going to need to have is a conversation about how do you reconcile a federal law that still says marijuana is a federal offense and state laws that say that it's legal?'

"The Justice Department is still looking into how to handle the conflict. But in the meantime, Obama suggested, the feds aren't gearing up for what might be a costly, unpopular crackdown on tokers in Colorado and Washington."

This may simply be a feign on Obama's part, however. The same article goes on to state:

"The president’s comments on the new Colorado and Washington laws echo the stand he took on medical marijuana during the 2008 campaign, when he said prosecutions would be a low priority.

"Two years later, though, federal authorities toughened up that stance, announcing that dispensaries and growers in 18 states that have legalized medical marijuana could be charged with violating drug and money-laundering laws. Dozens of medical marijuana collectives have been ordered shut since then."

This is putting it mildly. The Obama administration has cracked down harder on medical marijuana than any prior regime, including the Bush II administration. It would be a grave mistake to take anything Obama says about cannabis laws at face value for the time being, so keep in mind that the following thoughts are based upon hypotheticals with no real certainty, i.e. Obama will actually follow through on what he is saying in regards to cannabis laws.

At this point I'm sure many of you are wondering what the legal status of cannabis has to do with gun laws, so let me explain:

I've begun to believe that for the War on Drugs to wind down something must be found to take its place and that something will almost surely be firearms. This belief is not driven by some grandiose conspiracy theory about the rights of Americans being eroded (though in the case of both drug and gun laws this is a bonus effect for the Cryptocracy) but by dollars and cents.

It's no secret that the international drug trade is big business. What's more, it's barely hidden any longer that certain segments of the American power structure, most notably the banking industry and the US intelligence community, benefit greatly from the billions upon billions of dollars produced by this totally unregulated industry. As far as the banking industry is concerned, recent scandals involving drug money laundering by Wachovia (now owned by Wells Fargo) and HSBC only scratch the surface. For instance, it was quietly revealed in 2009 that drug money was about the only thing that kept a big chunk of the financial sector afloat in the midst of the 2008 financial crisis. The UK-based Guardian reported:

"Drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis, the United Nations' drugs and crime tsar has told the Observer.

"Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said he has seen evidence that the proceeds of organised crime were 'the only liquid investment capital' available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year. He said that a majority of the $352bn (£216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result...

"...Speaking from his office in Vienna, Costa said evidence that illegal money was being absorbed into the financial system was first drawn to his attention by intelligence agencies and prosecutors around 18 months ago. 'In many instances, the money from drugs was the only liquid investment capital. In the second half of 2008, liquidity was the banking system's main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor,' he said.

"Some of the evidence put before his office indicated that gang money was used to save some banks from collapse when lending seized up, he said.

"'Inter-bank loans were funded by money that originated from the drugs trade and other illegal activities... There were signs that some banks were rescued that way.' Costa declined to identify countries or banks that may have received any drugs money, saying that would be inappropriate because his office is supposed to address the problem, not apportion blame. But he said the money is now a part of the official system and had been effectively laundered."

Drug money is absolutely essential to the global financial structure for reasons stated above: It is a vast source of liquid investment capital that any major financial institution can dip into whenever fast money is needed. The fact that laundering drug money is also a highly profitable, off-the-book source of income only helps.

As noted above, the US intelligence community also benefits greatly from drug money. There is a simple reason for this: Drug money is idea for funding black ops, covert wars, and other nefarious operations that require considerable sums of money. Rogue historian Peter Dale Scott has been chronicling this state of affairs for years.

"...Operation Paper, the U.S. government's support for the remains of the Nationalist Chinese KMT forces in Burma and Thailand. These forces worked off and on with OPC and CIA for more than a decade. Operation Paper's assets were off the books and self-financing --mostly by profits from drug dealing. By restoring the global drug traffic out of Southeast Asia, the KMT proxy institutionalized what would become a CIA habit of turning to drug-supported, off-the-books assets for fighting wars --in Indochina and the South China Sea in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s; in Afghanistan and Central America in the 1980s; in Columbia in the 1990s; and again in Afghanistan in 2001. As I have written elsewhere, nearly all these wars where in defense of the overseas interests or aspirations of major U.S. oil companies.

"Because the use of drug-supported armies was at odds with Washington's official antidrug policies, the practice had to remain secret. This meant that major programs with long-term consequences were being initiated and administered by small cliques that were almost unknown in Washington. Operation Paper brought OPC into contact not only with drug traffickers abroad but also with organized crime at home. OPC officer Paul Helliwell was the key figure involved in creating an infrastructure in Thailand (SEA Supply Inc.) and a supporting airline (Civil Air Transport, later Air America). Helliwell's infrastructure linked top CIA officials from the Wall Street overworld with leaders from the organized crime underworld. For example, he was the legal counsel for the small Miami National Bank used by gangster financier Meyer Lansky to launder his foreign profits."
(The Road to 9/11, Peter Dale Scott, pgs. 14-15)

As the above quote indicates, not only were major financial institutions and the US intelligence community heavily involved in the international drug trade, but they frequently collaborate with one another in said venture. This is a logical arrangement as both institutions have found the vast, unregulated pool of drug money to highly useful in numerous endeavours.

This is, to my mind, one of the chief reasons why the United States has continued to stay the course on its disastrous and increasingly unpopular drug policies. Still, a point is fast approaching where it will be all but impossible to continue generating the public support, both domestically and abroad, necessary to continue such policies. The legalization of cannabis in Colorado and Washington state is just the latest blow to the US War on Drugs. At a U.N. General Assembly meeting in September the heads of several major Latin American countries all but called for an end to drug prohibition, for instance. These things combined with the changing demographics in the United States (the staunchest drug war support has historically come from the pre-Baby Boomer generations in the US who are fast dying off) make it all but certain that they heyday of the (illegal) international drug trade is coming to an end.

The major problem in all of this for the Cryptocracy is the possibility of the vast pool of off-the-books cash drying up. After all, if cannabis is legalized, psychedelics decriminalized, and pain med laws are further relaxed, much of the black market demand for entheogens and opiates will but disappear. There's still cocaine of course but the kids seem to increasingly dig meth, which can be easily produced in a home bathroom, for a speedy buzz.

What then is left that can bring in the same kind of black market revenue that drugs have managed for years? Firearms, already a multi billion dollar industry in the United States, are an obvious candidate. Gun companies are already deeply involved in the War on Drugs, making a shift from narcotics to firearms all the more viable. The United States seemingly has an inestimable demand for firearms and a vast smuggling network already exists between it and Mexico.

Presently the flow of firearms heads south while the drugs go north, but this could be easily reversed. The U.S. need only initiate a 'War on Firearms,' giving it the perfect excuse for sending vast supplies of weapons to Mexico where the notoriously corrupt government will simply transfer them over to the cartels. The cartels would then use their long-established smuggling networks to ship the weapons back to the United States where members of the fringe right would re-sell them. Some may scoff at such a notion, but keep in mind David Koresh, the infamous head of the Branch Davidians who perished in the 1993 Waco siege with 75 of other members of the cult, dipped into the arms trade in a bid to cash in on the forth coming Federal Assault Weapons Ban.

"Koresh developed a good understanding of the profits that could be made from dealing in guns, and over time he purchased a large number of guns for investment purposes. In the early 1990s, Koresh knew that the federal law banning semiautomatic weapons would eventually pass. In order to profit from increasing demand, he bought a large number of semiautomatic weapons, and entered into a partnership with a gun dealer to buy parts to assemble other weapons for later sale. When the law passed, Koresh expected to realize a huge profit."
(Searching For a Demon, Steven M. Chermak, pg. 41)

David Koresh, would-be arms dealer

No doubt a similar line of thinking will appeal to the more radical elements of the Patriot Movement, who will see both dollars signs and a way of striking back at the Federals. Thus, everyone (except normal people. of course) would benefit. The gun 'enthusiasts' would still have relatively easy access to new firearms, the bank industry and US intelligence community would still have their vast pool of off-the-books funding, and organized crime would still have a highly profitable product to sale. Some may argue that the gun industry would object, as their profits would seemingly be threatened by a widespread ban on firearms in the United States. In all likelihood, however, they would continue to profit in much the same way the drug industry did in the wake of narcotics prohibition going into high gear in the Western world in the early 20th century.

"During the 1930s and 1940s, the majority of legal drug factories and pharmaceutical houses were located in Germnay, France, and Switzerland, including such companies as Merck, Hoffman, La Roche, A.G., I.G. Farben and Sandoz, all major suppliers of morphine, heroin, cocaine, and dilaudide. As Block describes it, 'While legal shipments went out the front doors of these firms, countless crates of drugs earmarked for illicit trafficking were going out the back doors. It was a highly lucrative operation for many criminals at the time.' It was also quite lucrative for the pharmaceutical companies."
(A Terrible Mistake, H.P. Albarelli Jr., pg. 405)

No doubt the arms industry would be more than happy to make similar back door deals with gangs, militias and other would-be arms dealers. This combined with the inevitable fresh wave of funding for another ill defined war along the lines of the War on Drugs and the War on Terror would ensure handsome profits. Thus, the arms industry wins regardless of what the legal status of firearms in the United States is.

So much for guns then. In another recent blog Christopher Knowles addresses Nancy Lanza's status as a 'doomsday prepper,' a growing movement mostly deriving from the conspiratorial right, a factor that surely contributed to her son's rampage in Newtown on some level. In a prior blog I tried to address the fallout from the rampant paranoia the conspiratorial right are descending into myself but Knowles makes the case far better than I could ever hope to. He makes a few other excellent points that are also worth noting.

For one, Knowles points out the specter of the Mayan calendar hysteria that has subtly lingered over the recent wave of mass shootings. Much like the Y2K paranoia, a meme of an impending apocalypse largely centered around 2012 has gripped popular culture in recent years. Unlike Y2K, however, America is a much different place now than in the feel-good Clinton years. The 2000 presidential elections, 9/11, the War on Terror, and the recent economic collapse have made America a much more pessimistic and paranoid society. In the 1990s, when the economy was stable, crime was low and the world was seemingly peaceful (at least according to the media), the apocalyptic fantasies of the conspiratorial right concerning Y2K were all but impossible for Americans to take seriously. Now an apocalypse doesn't only seem possible, but even inevitable.

With this in mind Knowles puts forth what is the best explanation I've read thus far for Adam Lanza's motives in targeting school children. Knowles writes:

"I can't help but think that 12/21/2012 was the stressor here. Did Lanza feel that nothing mattered anymore in light of the coming apocalypse? Or was he- in his warped calculus- trying to actually spare these babies the horrors of his imaginary apocalypse?

"...in Lanza's misfiring synapses- that he was sparing the children from a greater horror? That may well emerge as investigators sift through the Lanza home."

In reading the above passages I couldn't help but be reminded of another recent instance of child murders featuring right-leaning, conspiratorial overtones. In this case a Virginia-based defense contractor murdered his entire family, including his children, over fears of Obama being re-elected. The Daily Mail reports:

"Albert Peterson shot dead his wife and two sons hours after going to church because he dreaded the thought of Obama winning the election, a family friend has revealed. 

"A confidante of the family for the past 25 years has spoken to MailOnline about the strength and grace of the Peterson family, as well as the torment that plagued Albert which drove him to shoot dead his wife Kathleen and his two sons Christopher and Mathew at their suburban home in DC on Sunday.

"A history of mental illness, the loss of a dear uncle, and a growing fear of Obama winning a second term in the White House took its toll on the mind of Mr Peterson, a wealthy defense contractor, the friend said.

"'He just did not want his kids inheriting this mess,' Maggie L, who did not wish to reveal her last name, told MailOnline. 'Sometimes we thought he might take his own life when he was so depressed. We never thought he would take Kathie's...'

"Recently, Mr Peterson began writing paranoid emails to his friends and family about politics on a daily basis, sometimes even more frequently, Maggie said.

"'I got emails and the emails stopped all of a sudden last week,' Maggie said. 'He felt that our God-given rights were being taken away. He didn't like where the country was going.'"

Albert Peterson and the wife and kids he murdered over fears of Obama's re-election

In this case we see an already mentally disturbed individual driven to such paranoid lengths by Obama fear mongering that he potentially murdered his children to 'spare' them from the dystopian future he believed the Obama administration was leading America toward. While the article is extremely vague concerning Albert Peterson's ideological leanings it would hardly be surprising to learn that he was influenced by the conspiratorial right.

In this context Knowles' musings about Lanza's motives seem especially on point. And the implications of this are far more disturbing than the conventional debates concerning firearms, especially for conspiracy culture itself. Naturally most conspiracy-oriented blogs, to say nothing of the demagogues who have spurred them on, will be to busy 'exposing' the gun-grab/UN-peacekeeper meme to consider such implications.

 

 

UPDATE 12/20/12

 

With 12/21/12 just about an hour away here on the East Coast it seems like a good time for a few final thoughts on the Mayan calendar hysteria. Today I stumbled upon an interesting article on MSNBC centered around the 2012 effect on China. Apparently the People's Republic has the highest percentage of 2012 believers in the world. The article notes:

"Not everybody thinks the end of the world is funny, though. A poll conducted by Ipsos-Reuters in 21 countries earlier this year claimed that as much as 20 percent of China’s population believed that the Mayan calendar correctly predicted this month as the end of the world. That percentage was markedly higher than in the second country on the list, Turkey (at 13 percent), or in the United States (12 percent)."

an ark built in China for the 2012 apocalypse

Earlier I argued that the Mayan/2012 apocalypse fear mongering may have played a role in the rash of mass shootings in the United States both in 2012 and a few years prior (a lot of the apocalyptic fantasies of the conspiratorial right went into overdrive with the election of Obama). Obviously the US has a disturbingly high percentage of its population believing that the Mayan calendar predicts the end of the world but China tops us with a good fifth of the population buying into the Armageddon meme. A curious question then is whether China has been displaying random, violent acts akin to the mass shootings here in the united States in recent years.

The answer seems to be in the affirmative. Loren Coleman has chronicled as series of bizarre and gruesome school stabbing incidents in which an individual with a knife or like weapon has assaulted children in schools both here and here. What's more, there was a recent school stabbing in the Henan Province on December 13, the day before the Newtown massacre.

The recent school stabbing is hardly the only violent bit of strangeness China has faced during this year. In May it was reported that Chinese authorities had arrested a man from the village of Nanmen suspected of murdering and eating over a dozen boys and young men. His most recent victim allegedly went missing in April of 2012. All of this unfolded right around the same time the infamous Miami cannibal attack occurred here and Canadian porn star Luka Magnotta murdered, dismembered and allegedly ate parts of his gay Chinese lover north of the border. I wrote more on these cannibalistic incidents here.

the Chinese cannibal

More recently Chinese authorities have rounded various members of a Christian cult for plotting to attack the Chinese Communist Party. MSNBC reports:

"The government is taking one aspect of the doomsday talk seriously; it has reportedly rounded-up members of a religious group calling for the toppling of the Communist Party.

"The group, known as the 'Almighty God,' has called for a "decisive battle" to slay the 'big red dragon,' a reference to the Book of Revelation and the organization’s name for the Chinese Communist Party.

"Nearly 1,000 members of the sect have been arrested, The New York Times reported. NBC News could not independently verify the number of detentions, but Chinese state media also reported that authorities had detained around 1,000 members over some seven provinces, Reuters reported.

"This is not the first time that China has dealt with a fast-moving Christian cult it deems a risk to party rule. In fact, according to the newspaper, 'Almighty God' has its roots in a sect that claimed it had 300,000 adherents called "Lightning from the East," according to Time Magazine in 2001.

"Lightning from the East propagated the belief that Jesus had returned to earth in the form of a 30-year old Chinese woman who had written a third testament of the Bible and promised salvation from the coming apocalypse for all who joined her."

Interestingly, this Chinese female Christ apparently claimed to be from the Henan Province, the same location as the most recent Chinese school stabbing. This account of the cult alleges that the message of the female Christ bares similarities to that of Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon. It notes:

"The message of the “female Christ” of Eastern Lightning resembles that of Rev. Sun

Myung Moon of the Unification Church. Moon came to America in 1971 claiming that Christ had not completed His mission, and in 1992 he declared he and his wife to be the Messiah, the True Parents, who would usher in a “Completed Testament” age of world peace."

Moon

Incidentially (or not), Moon and the Unification Church have curious links to the arms industry and the murky world of intelligence.

"As for the Reverend Moon and his Unification Church, this convicted felon (for tax evasion) has supported the extreme right in America for decades. The Unification Church itself fronts for the Korean Central Intelligence Agency, and when the author himself was approached by the Church in the 1970s they owned --in addition to a network of churches with a sophisticated marketing campaign aimed at scientists and other intellectuals --a rifle factory in Korea. Reverend Moon himself believes that Jesus will return as a Korean, and he has let it be known that he believes this Second Coming involves his own person."
(Sinister Forces Book II, Peter Levenda, pgs. 309-310)

Is the Eastern Lightening Church tied in some way to the Unification Church and, by default, the US intelligence community? This would certainly go a long way toward explaining the scope of China's crackdown on the Church, which apparently considers 12/21/12 to be the date of doomsday.

Hopefully tomorrow's headlines will not involve this cult or any number of other such groups feeding off of the 2012 hysteria.

The Drone

The world is changing, as the media routinely reminds us. The world that we are currently living in is not the world that our parents grew up in. Technology is permanently changing the landscape and we're just going to have to accept it. Old fashioned notions, such as claims to privacy, will have to be rethought in the brave new world that we are now entering. 

These are common phrases one encounters when it comes to unmanned aerial vehicles, more commonly referred to as drones. Many Americans first became aware of them shortly after Barack Obama was elected president, when their use in Pakistan was greatly expanded. Since then policymakers have continuously raved to the press about them, via the anonymous source route, as there use is increasingly spanning the globe. Reuters UK reports:

"In the rugged mountains of western Pakistan, missiles launched by unmanned Predator or Reaper drones have become so commonplace that some U.S. officials liken them to modern-day 'cannon fire.' And they are no longer aimed solely at 'high-value' targets like Mehsud, according to U.S. counterterrorism and defence officials. 

"Under a secret directive first issued by former President George W. Bush and continued by Barack Obama, the CIA has broadly expanded the 'target set' for drone strikes. As a result, what is still officially classified as a covert campaign on Pakistan's side of the border with Afghanistan has in many ways morphed into a parallel conventional war, several experts say. 

"Killing wanted militants is simply 'easier' than capturing them, said an official, who like most interviewed for this story support the stepped-up program and asked not to be identified. Another official added: 'It is increasingly the preferred option...' 

"Back in Washington, the technology is considered such a success that the U.S. military has been positioning Reaper drones at a base in the Horn of Africa. 

"The aircraft can be used against militants in Yemen and Somalia, and even potentially against pirates who attack commercial ships traversing the Gulf of Aden and the Indian Ocean, officials said. 

" 'Everyone has fallen in love with them,' a former U.S. intelligence official said of the drone strikes."

Many citizens of Pakistan likely don't share the same enthusiasm for the drones as certain unnamed US intelligence officers. But you can't make an omelet with out breaking a few eggs, now can you? Drone strikes on militants --essentially technological assassinations --have been sold to the public on the basis that they present a safer and more 'moral' alternative to war. After all, isn't it better to kill a handful of terrorists in order to preserve the peace than invading an entire country? Or is the issue more complex?

Given the highly controversial and debated total of civilian deaths associated with drone strikes, the issue is clearly far more clouded than policymakers would have us believe. Washington claims that the vast majority of peoples killed during drone strikes were militants. Other accounts have alleged that nearly a third of all deaths in Pakistan associated with drones are civilians. New American Foundation notes:

"Our study shows that the 114 reported drone strikes in northwest Pakistan from 2004 to the present have killed between 830 and 1,210 individuals, of whom around 550 to 850 were described as militants in reliable press accounts, about two-thirds of the total on average. Thus, the true civilian fatality rate since 2004 according to our analysis is approximately 32 percent. Averaging the press reports in 2009 indicates that 502 people were killed, 382 of whom were described as militants, for an average civilian fatality rate of 24 percent."

Even more dire reports than this have been issued. The Brookings Institution presented an especially chilling ratio of civilian deaths:

"Critics correctly find many problems with this program, most of all the number of civilian casualties the strikes have incurred. Sourcing on civilian deaths is weak and the numbers are often exaggerated, but more than 600 civilians are likely to have died from the attacks. That number suggests that for every militant killed, 10 or so civilians also died."

Anywhere from a third to 90% of drone fatalities as civilians does not upheld the image of precision warfare the Obama administration has publicly embraced and which his staff has dubbed 'the scalpel' (as opposed to the 'hammer' of the Bush administration) approach. In deed, some very dangerous precedents are being set by the current administration's embrace of drones and assassinations. Esquire has described it as the 'Lethal Presidency':

"You are not only the first African-American president; you are the first who has made use of your power to target and kill individuals identified as a threat to the United States throughout your entire term. You are the first president to make the killing of targeted individuals the focus of our military operations, of our intelligence, of our national-security strategy, and, some argue, of our foreign policy. You have authorized kill teams comprised of both soldiers from Special Forces and civilians from the CIA, and you have coordinated their efforts through the Departments of Justice and State. You have gradually withdrawn from the nation building required by "counterinsurgency" and poured resources into the covert operations that form the basis of "counter-terrorism." More than any other president you have made the killing rather than the capture of individuals the option of first resort, and have killed them both from the sky, with drones, and on the ground, with "nighttime" raids not dissimilar to the one that killed Osama bin Laden. You have killed individuals in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya, and are making provisions to expand the presence of American Special Forces in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. In Pakistan and other places where the United States has not committed troops, you are estimated to have killed at least two thousand by drone. You have formalized what is known as "the program," and at the height of its activity it was reported to be launching drone strikes in Pakistan every three days. Your lethality is expansive in both practice and principle; you are fighting terrorism with a policy of preemptive execution, and claiming not just the legal right to do so but the legal right to do so in secret. The American people, for the most part, have no idea who has been killed, and why; the American people — and for that matter, most of their representatives in Congress — have no idea what crimes those killed in their name are supposed to have committed, and have been told that they are not entitled to know."

The drone is rapidly giving the United States unprecedented abilities to wage wars. In the past the United State's military reached was somewhat limited by the number of dead American soldiers the public would tolerate before the cost was deemed to high. The Vietnam conflict largely came to an end after Americans grew tired of nightly images being broadcast from their TVs of soldiers coming home in body bags. The Bush administration attempted to counter this by limiting the media's access to the war, distorting the number causalities, and deploying thousands of 'private contractors' (whose deaths the administration had no obligation to report) in roles the US has traditionally reserved for the military. Even then, the road side bombings and such became to much for the America public and support for the Iraq invasion rapidly declined.

Obama has continued the widespread use of mercenaries in addition to increase use of the Special Forces and US Intelligence community, but it has the drone that has quietly redefined warfare. With the use of drones the United States is no longer burdened with the specter of dead soldiers to contend with. Clearly this has had a liberating effect on US foreign policies as the covert wars the US has waged against Pakistan and more recently Yemen have generated little to know serious protest domestically. Drone warfare has accomplished the unimaginable: It has placated liberal and conservative opponents alike. Liberals tolerate it as it promises a more 'human' type of warfare in which entire populations will no longer be subjected to the horrors of invasion while conservatives marvel at the cost effectiveness of it all. Mainstream America is just happy not to have their sons or daughters coming home in caskets to think to deeply on the matter.

With drones being such a resounding success abroad it was only a matter of time until they were deployed domestically. Russia Today reports:

"What do you know about drones? You know drones — those robotic, unmanned planes that fire missiles for the American military across Afghanistan, Pakistan and anywhere else the United States needs to get away with murder. 

"Well if you don’t know too much, don’t worry, that’ll change soon. The Federal Aviation Administration is looking into rules that will bring the controversial aircraft into the country, creating an United States airspace buzzing with tiny, robot planes to look over every inch of American soil — and maybe more. 

"An article published Tuesday in the Los Angeles Times reveals that new drone planes could be coming domestically quite soon, as both law enforcement and the agricultural sector are seeing benefits in keeping an arsenal of unmanned planes ready to patrol the skies. For farmers, drones could bring a new method of pumping pesticides into fields of crops from above; for the cops, the aircraft could conduct surveillance over suspected criminals (think police chopper but remote controlled). The Times reports that utility companies see a benefit in drones as well, giving them a new set of eyes to monitor oil, gas and water pipelines. 

"But with missile-equipped drones causing thousands of deaths overseas, the installation of a drone program stateside could be detrimental to America as the government all but deems the country fit as a warfront. 

" 'It's going to happen,' Dan Elwell, vice president of civil aviation at the Aerospace Industries Association, tells the Times. 'Now it's about figuring out how to safely assimilate the technology into national airspace.' 

"According to the Department of Homeland Security’s website, the government has already been using drones domestically for several years, but remains mostly mum on their missions, other than that they are regularly used for 'support of disaster relief efforts.' 

"In July, however, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Michael Kostelnik, currently with the US Customs and Border Protection UAV program, told a congressional subcommittee that a third drone was being added to an arsenal of two that already fly over Texas to patrol the US/Mexico Border."

The use of drones domestically will be sold to the public on the grounds that they will only be used for surveillance purposes and for tasks unnecessarily dangerous to human beings. But rest assured, the Pentagon has bold plans for the drone, and not just the aerial versions, as this 2009 DoD Unmanned Systems Integrated Roadmap report makes clear. Unmanned undersea vehicles and especially unmanned ground vehicles will also play a heavy role in domestic drone deployments as well. The report states:

"While UAS [unmanned aircraft systems] may fly in and around urban settings, and UUVs [unmanned undersea vehicles] and USVs [unmanned surface vehicles] may operate in and around ports and marinas, UGVs [unmanned ground vehicles] will be the predominant vehicles expected to conduct missions within buildings, tunnels, and through city streets. This requires that UGVs be able to operate in Global Positioning System (GPS)-denied areas, traverse stairs, deal with elevators, open doors, and possibly even open windows, desk and file drawers, and cupboards, etc. In addition to the challenge of navigating and traversing within buildings, UGVs will need to navigate within and through city streets that will be busy with traffic and pedestrians. Urban streets also mean UGVs will have to contend with curbs, trash, water drains, etc."  

The Pentagon is even eyeing that possibility that these ground based drones can be used for 'non-lethal through lethal crowd control' in addition to conventional military assaults. Does this mean that the police-state security of events such as the Summer Olympics will soon be managed by unmanned ground and air vehicles as much as it is by flesh and blood police officers? Could this even be taken a step further with drones replacing some of the day to day functions of police officers? Police have already begun using such devices as auxilaries, as I've noted before here. The Atlantic has a great breakdown of the brave new world of drone warfare the Pentagon envisions.

As shocking a these developments may be to some, the Cryptocracy has in fact been telegraphing its plans for drones and like technologies for years via twilight language and predictive programming. As early as the 1980s Hollywood has presented us with a vision of the future in which humanity was policed by drone-like technologies. Sometimes this was along dystopian lines such as the future presented in The Terminator films where humanity had been all but wiped out by a self aware AI controlling an army of robots and drones (called Hunter-Killers in the films). Robocop presented a more 'benevolent' vision in which corporate America seeks to replace flesh-and-blood police officers with cyborgs and land-based drones (the ED-209s).

Curiously, the Terminator and Robocop franchises were brought together in the form of a 1992 comic miniseries called RoboCop Versus The Terminator, which was soon followed by a tie-in video game of the same name. The main creative mind behind the comic series was none other than the legendary Frank Miller, who has recently found himself in the midst of controversy (again) over the similarities the Aurora shooting had to a panel included in his 1986 The Dark Knight Returns miniseries depicting a disturbed individual shooting up a movie theater. Miller actually wrote the screenplays for the second and third Robocop films, though he claims his scripts were heavily altered. In his RoboCop Versus The Terminator miniseries the Terminators and humanity vie for the support of the transhumanistic Robocop, who is humanity's only hope against Skynet.

The appearance of drone-like robots policing humanity would become even more common in cinema by the late 1990s. The hugely popular Matrix films featured drone-like enforcers called Sentinels that had the appearance of mechanical squids (strangely, the drone recently captured by Iran is called a Lockheed Martin RQ-170 Sentinel).  Minority Report featured 'spider robots' that bare similarities to the mini-drones that are now becoming en vogue. In the Stargate franchise drone weapons are used by an extraterrestrial race known as the Ancients who apparently were the inhabitants of the mythological city of Atlantis before departing Earth. If this wasn't enough of a hint, a Robocop remake is about to be released while another Terminator film is under discussion with Arnold returning.

Sentinels (top left and right) and the Robocop remake poster (bottom)

But enough predictive programming, let's move along to twilight language. That unmanned vehicles are being referred to as drones in the first place is seemingly a kind of occult mockery. The word drone has its origins in Old English and has always referred to a male honeybee. The bee itself is of course loaded with symbolism.

"The beehive is found in Masonry as a reminder that in diligence and labor for a common good true happiness and prosperity are found. The bee is a symbol of wisdom , for as this tiny insect collects pollen from the flowers, so men extract wisdom from the experiences of daily life."
(The Secret Teachings of All Ages, Manly P. Hall, pg. 271)

Many occult orders have viewed the beehive as the idea order of society. That being said, the drone has typically been an object of ridicule, if considered at all. In his opening remarks on the fifth degree of Scottish Rite Freemasonry, known as the Perfect Master, Albert Pike sniffs:

"Industry and honesty are the virtues peculiarly inculcated in this Degree. They are common and homely virtues, but not for that beneath our notice. As the bees do not love or respect the drones, so Masonry neither loves nor respects the idle and those who live by their wits, and least of all those parasitic acari that live upon themselves."
(Morals and Dogmas, pg. 98)

Drones have long been the embodiment of the social parasite, of those that live off of the work of others and are driven by nothing other than their basest instincts. Drones have no real function in a beehive other than to impregnate the queen. Once this task is accomplished they are driven from the hive by the industrious worker bees. It is rather curious then that the word drone would be applied to unmanned vehicles.

I suspect that this application is a kind of joke. Human armies have always been at risk of falling prey to idleness and their baser instincts, leaving their commanders high and dry. But the new, mechanical fighting force currently being developed will pose no such threat for the Cryptocracy, nor will it feature the moral impairments that human armies encounters from time to time: Drones have no qualms about killing unarmed women and children, for instance, as recent events in Yemen show. Mechanical drones will in fact become the ultimate police force against segments of the population that the Cryptocracy considers human drones.

Several recent articles on the domestic use of drones have made the implications of these devices increasingly clear via twilight language. Consider this little nugget buried in the middle of an article by The Guardian on the Holloman Air Force Base, a hub for drone warfare:

"Such critics may consider it apt that Holloman straddles the Jornada del Muerto – Journey of the Dead Man – the macabre Spanish name for the perilous, water-less shortcut through the wilderness once used by Billy the Kid. Situated on a high desert plain, the base bakes by day, shivers by night and witnesses spectacular lightning storms. It has evocative neighbours. To the east, Roswell, which the conspiratorially minded already associate with human-less aircraft; to the west, Truth or Consequences, a town named after a 1950s radio quiz show."

Even the most casual reader should raise an eyebrow in the presence of such a name game. Roswell is of course one of the major hubs of modern extraterrestrial lore, with large scale urban myths developing around an alleged UFO crash there in 1947. Those of you who have read the legendary King-Kill 33 essay by James Shelby Downard and the highly controversial revisionist historian Michael A. Hoffman II will be immediately struck by several of the other locations referenced above. Both the Jornada del Muerto and Truth or Consequence, New Mexico factor heavily into their theories surrounding the Creation and Destruction of Primordial Matter, supposedly the first of three alchemical works to bring about the total decay of matter. Of Jornada del Muerto, Hoffman writes:

"Fabled alchemy had at least three goals to accomplish before the total decay of matter, the total breakdown we are witnessing all around us today, was fulfilled. These are:

• The Creation and Destruction of Primordial Matter

• The Killing of the Divine King

• The Bringing of Prima Materia to Prima Terra...

"The Creation and Destruction of Primordial Matter was accomplished at the White Head ('Ancient of Days'), at White Sands, New Mexico, at the Trinity Site. The Trinity Site itself is located at the beginning of an ancient western road known in old Mexico as the Jornada del muerto (the Journey of Death)."
(Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare, pg. 80)

the Trinity site

Downard and Hoffman have long linked Truth or Consequence, New Mexico to the first atomic bomb explosion, though they've never been clear on this link.

"There are occult links between masonic ceremonies held at the town of Truth or Consequence, New Mexico and the masonic ritual which attended the explosion of the first atomic bomb... 

"The gauntlet the cryptocracy threw down at our feet in the specially orchestrated chain of ritual criminal events and locations intimately connected to Truth or Consequence, New Mexico, was an 'open-air' ceremony in full public view of those who had eyes and the intuition to see it. This was the 'truth.' The supreme high-stakes gamblers of the masonic cryptocracy risked 'the consequence.' "
(ibid, pg. 55)

According to the official website for Truth or Consequence's Masonic lodge there was in fact some kind of large outdoor ceremony there to dedicate a new Masonic lodge in 1949 (the previous lodge, built in 1939, had burned down in a fire in 1947) but details are scarce. Hoffman seems to indicate that this ceremony took place either before, or roughly at the same time as, the first atomic bomb explosion, but clearly this is not possible. What significance the ceremony had, if any, remains a mystery.

Even stranger, the happenings in New Mexico are not the only associations drones have with the Downard-Hoffman 'Decay of Matter' theory. For another curious link we must shift our attention to my home state, sunny Florida. While Florida is chiefly known now for its beaches, babes and prescription drugs policymakers are eyeing a new source of revenue: turning the state into testing grounds for domestic drones. USA Today reports:

"From large to small, the number of such unmanned aircraft systems — popularly called "drones" — is expected to surge as the federal government works to open civilian airspace to them by 2015. Florida officials hope to position the state as a hub for this fast-growing industry by becoming a test site. 

" 'The skies over Florida will look dramatically different in the years to come,' Space Florida President Frank DiBello told a gathering of aerospace professionals this month. 

"The agency's board recently approved spending up to $1.4 million to try to win designation as one of six test ranges across the country that Congress has directed the Federal Aviation Administration to name by the end of the year. 

"The test sites hope to show that unmanned systems of all shapes and sizes — from wingspans of inches to more than 240 feet — can fly safely alongside piloted aircraft in different terrain and weather conditions... 

"At home, the Federal Aviation Administration has granted about 60 public entities permission to perform limited operations outside restricted airspace. Those include Customs and Border Protection, NASA and, in Florida, the Miami-Dade Police Department, sheriff's offices in Orange and Polk counties and the University of Florida."

Forbes reports that Cape Canaveral, home of the Kennedy Space Center (the site NASA has used to launch every human space flight since 1968), has already been turned into a drone base:

"Cape Canaveral is now a drone base. Since the space program is now on a death watch, it’s good to know they’ve found a way to repurpose this base. U.S. Customs and Border Protection flies drones on our northern, southern, and southeastern borders. The base previously used primarily to launch shuttles is now a drone practice spot and sends out a General Atomic Guardian drone to monitor the SE border and fly over the ocean to make drug busts."

a drone over Kennedy Space Center

Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center, of which I've written more on here, also play heavily into the Downard-Hoffman theory of the destruction of matter. As noted above, the third stage of this works consists of 'bringing of Prima Materia to Prima Terra.' Essentially this means bringing a piece of the moon to earth, which was the real reason for the creation of NASA in the Downard-Hoffman theory.

"The third objective of alchemy, the bringing of Prima Materia to Prima Terra was accomplished in the 1969 Apollo moon flights and the returning to earth of the moon rockets. Some of these rocks have been 'stolen' for use in occult rituals of no mean significance..."
(Secret Societies and Psychological Warfare, Michael A. Hoffman II, pg. 90)

The location of where these space ships were launched, Cape Canaveral, was also highly important to this ritual. It also has ample ties to JFK, whose assassinations marked the second ritual the destruction of matter, the 'Killing of the Divine King' rite.

"The number 28 is one of the correspondences of Solomon in kabbalistic numerology; the Solomonic name assigned to 28 is 'Beale.' On the 28th degree of latitude in the state of Texas is the site of what was once the giant 'Kennedy ranch.' On the 28th degree is also Cape Canaveral from which the moon flight was launched --made possible not only by the President's various feats, but by his death as well, for the placing of Freemasons on the moon could occur only after the Killing of the King. The 28th degree of Templarism is the 'King of the Sun' degree."
(Secret and Suppressed, "Sorcery, Sex, Assassinations and the Science of Symbolism," James Shelby Downard, pg. 75)

And now, in the early 21st century, we see many of the locations Downard and Hoffman associated with the alchemical destruction of matter reappearing in association with the United States' drone program. At this point I suppose I should address the credibility of Downard and Hoffman's theories. It's no secret that Downard and especially Hoffman are rather unfashionable, to put it mildly, in the synchro-mystic field and related lines of thought. They are often lumped in with right-wing conspiracy theorist with radical Christian leanings (and possibly working as disinformation agents) such as A. Ralph Epperson, Texe Marrs and William Cooper, and not without reason. What's more, Downard and Hoffman's research isn't always without fault, as I displayed above in relation to Truth or Consequence, New Mexico.

William Cooper

But in this case I don't believe it's relevant whether Downard and Hoffman's theory of an alchemical destruction of matter is true or not. What does matter is that this theory has become relatively widespread in the group mind, beginning in 2000 with the release of shock rocker Marilyn Manson's Holy Wood album which lyrically incorporated various aspects of Downard and Hoffman's King-Kill 33 essay. Downard and Hoffman's theories would only become more widespread as the decade rolled along and Bush II's presidency became increasingly unpopular. By now Downard and Hoffman's theories have become viable aspects of popular culture. Thus, places like the Jornada del Muerto, Truth or Consequence and Cape Canaveral/Kennedy Space Center have very specific meanings in certain circles.

What's more, we also have two locations --Roswell and Kennedy Space Center --that are closely linked with modern UFO lore and thus loaded with even more conspiratorial associations. Researchers with radically different world views than Downard or Hoffman such as Richard C. Hoagland have developed their own occult-laden conspiracy theories concerning the Kennedy assassination, NASA, the Apollo moon flights and the Kennedy Space Center. This doesn't add legitimacy to Downard and Hoffman's theories, it just shows that these locations and names have gained power in the group mind.

And now they're being connected to the United States' budding drone warfare program. This, combined with decades of predictive programming in film and TV, should be a clear warning that the Cryptocracy has bold plans for drones in the coming years. We may even be at a pivotal moment that will pave the way for the rise of the drone. On the flip side of the coin, the association of the drone with Jornada del Muerto, Roswell, Truth or Consequence, and Cape Canaveral further steps up the paranoia that is gripping a certain (and ever growing) segment of the population. Drones are flaunted as a kind of end game, instilling both a sense of hopelessness and rage in the group mind simultaneously. Undoubtedly the Cryptocracy hopes the latter will descend into violence among the more disturbed and paranoid segments of the population who ideally will feel compelled to act before its to late. And that brings me to my next point.   

I chose to write this piece now in part because of the gun debate currently raging in the United States due to a rash of mass shootings in Aurora and the Sikh temple in Wisconsin, among others. Personally, I'm staunch believer in the right to own and possess firearms. That being said, it seems clear to me that the gun culture that has arisen in the United States over the past three decades has largely been created to give the American populace a false sense of security. 'Mainstream' conspiracy blogs are once again abuzz with the well-worn urban myth that UN Peacekeepers are poised to disarm the America populace. Meanwhile, followers of such notions take solace in their stockpiles of arms and the lessons they're going to give the blue berets once they touch down on America soil.

The absurdity of such notions should be especially obvious when one considers the prospects of drones and the clues the Cryptocracy has been dropping about them for years. Conventional firearms will be all but obsolete in a few years when a new generation of drones, designed with the lessons learned in combat zones in Pakistan, Yemen and other locations, begin hitting the streets domestically. The Cryptocracy will have a largely robotic army at their disposal, unhindered by the pesky streaks of morality that have traditionally restrained human combat forces.

With such weapons only years away, the Cryptocracy has no real fear of conventional firearms. Indeed, the paranoia America gun culture is increasingly descending into will only ensure a steady stream of 'lone wolf' killers to terrorize the masses. It is especially concerning that two of the most recent public shootings the media have been hyping, the one that occurred near the Texas A & M campus and the most recent at Saint John the Baptist Parish, LA, were directed at police officers. This only helps to further the perception that the police are incapable of dealing with such threats, thus necessitating a need for other militant solutions.

And this is the best possible scenario for the Cryptocracy, for it will make it all that much easier to convince the America people to accept the drone as part of every day life.