17 Over Blackfriars -Updated 6/21/15

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hoffman

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jones

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

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

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

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

a patch used by Italian Gladio "Gladiators"

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

Moro during his alleged kidnapping by the Communist Red Brigades

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

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

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

the emblem of The Order

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

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

the logo of Stormfront

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

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

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

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

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

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

Calvi's dead body

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

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

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

UPDATE 6/21/15:

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

the Colonel

Propaganda Due: A Strange and Terrible Journey Into the Heart of the Deep State Part VI

Welcome to the sixth installment in my examination of the Propaganda Due Masonic lodge, commonly referred to as P2. For years the lodge has been surrounded by rumors of dark intrigues ranging from terror attacks, drug trafficking and political assassinations. With the first installment of this series I considered the background of the lodge's Venerable Grand Master, former Blackshirt and SS man Licio Gelli.

With the second installment I outlined the lodge's links to a series of bombings that rocked Italy during a period known as the "Years of Lead" as well as P2's ties to the neo-fascist terror network known as Aginter Press as well as the notorious World Anti-Communist League (WACL). The WACL was a global network that brought together a bizarre assortment of US military and intelligence officers, religious extremists of various stripes, international drug and arms traffickers, assorted Third World dictators and neo-fascist terrorists along with the inevitable unreconstructed Nazi war criminals. This researcher has considered the WACL at great length before here.

With the third installment I began to chronicle P2's links to what is commonly referred to as the "Great Vatican banking scandal" or the "Banco Ambrosiano affair" by focusing in on its three key players: Bishop Paul Marcinkus and financiers Michele Sindona and Roberto Calvi. Sindona nd Calvi were both P2 members while Marcinkus was suspected of being an initiate. It is known that Sindona also had extensive dealings with the Mafia and such ties likely existed with Marcinkus and especially Calvi.

Marcinkus (top), Sindona (middle) and Calvi (bottom)

During part four I outlined the likely catalyst of the Vatican banking scandal, namely the arming of the Somoza in Nicaragua and the later funds made available for arms to various groups in Central America that became known as the Contras. With the fifth and most recent installment I considered the involvement of the Rothschild banking dynasty in the scandal, a series of bizarre robberies involving militant neo-fascist and Nazi groups typically involving Brinks armored cars and the even more bizarre, ritualistic death of Roberto Calvi.

Having thus pretty thoroughly addressed the Vatican banking scandal, it is now time to move along to the various prominent political assassinations P2 is suspected of playing a role in. I would like to begin with the kidnapping and eventual murder of Italian statesman Aldo Moro.

The Moro assassination has often been described as Italy's Kennedy assassination and not without reason. Moro was abducted on March 16, 1978 shortly after the Christian Democrat luminary agreed to the "Historic Compromise," a move that would have allowed members of the Italian Communist Party (PCI) into a coalition government. This move was strongly opposed by the United States inevitably on the basis of the domino theory: namely, a democratically elected Communist Party in Western Europe would have led to another and another until all of NATO was red.

Many would perceive this as a major boon for Communism. Thus, it has long baffled researchers as to why Moro would be abducted by the Red Brigades, a revolutionary Marxist outfit, at this juncture. Or at least that is the official version of Moro's kidnapping and murder. But as I noted extensively before here, here and here, there is ample reason to believe the US intelligence community and P2 were the actual puppetmasters behind the Moro kidnapping. Interestingly, the notorious LSD baron Ronald Hadley Stark likely played a key role in this operation.

Stark

As I've already dealt with Moro's kidnapping and murder at length in that series, I would like to focus here on the role P2 played in the affair. For starters, its interesting to note that the Moro Crisis Committee, the body appointed by the Italian government to handle Moro's kidnapping, was stacked with P2 members.

"In practice, the search for Moro's prison was co-ordinated by the Interior Ministry and a special crisis committee, many of whose members belonged to or later joined P2, the right-wing masonic lodge which opposed Moro's policy toward the PCI. Among the eight P2 members appointed to the committee were the heads of the domestic and military intelligence services, the head of the finance police and the regional commander of the carabinieri. Given their political orientation it would not be entirely surprising if they did less than their utmost to secure Moro's release. The minutes of the committee's meeting on 17 March give an idea of the quality of their contribution to the task at hand. SISMI Director Giuseppe Santovito informed the group that he believed two Japanese and a West German had participated in the Via Fani attack. He also drew the committee's attention to the imminent arrival of a ship from Cyprus at the port of Marina di Grosseto. There is no evidence whatever that his contribution had any grounding in fact. Santovito continued to provide the committee with misleading information, reporting the next day on the need for increased patrols on the Yugoslav border.

"On 24 October 1977, Parliament had passed a bill reforming the secret services, replacing the Defensive Information Service (SID) with the Military Security Information Service (SISMI) and the domestic Democratic Security Information Service (SISDE). This reorganization would be used as an excuse to argue that the security services were 'without eyes and without ears' at the time of the Moro kidnap. The reform effectively led to the demolition of the most reliable anti-terrorism organization and to the appointment of P2 members at the top of the new agencies..."

 (Puppetmasters, Philip Willan, pg. 225)

General Giuseppe Santovito, one of the more notorious P2 initiates in the Italian secret services

During investigations following Moro's murder Licio Gelli's name came up repeatedly.

"There are a number of testimonies that appear to implicate Gelli in the Moro affair. One of them was found among notes confiscated from the home of Gelli's secretary, Nara Lazzerini, who worked for the P2 boss in Rome between 1976 and 1981. The documents described a meeting with Gelli on the day of Moro's kidnapping, news which comes over the radio as Lazzerini is driven by taxi from the station to Gelli's headquarters in the Hotel Excelsior, on the prestigious Via Veneto. Lazzerini wants to 'freshen up' and is accompanied by Gelli to his bedroom. 'While I am in the bedroom to tidy myself up, Licio receives two people in the sitting room whom I'm unable to see, but I hear them say: "The major part is over. Now we'll see the reactions." ' Questioned by a magistrate from Bologna, Lazzerini was confident that she had not misheard. 'The phrase struck with me and I noted it down that same morning in the hotel, taking advantage of the fact that Gelli had left,' she said, adding that she had received frequent death threats in the years following Gelli's flight from Italy. The P2 Commission found her evidence altogether too embarrassing and turned down a proposal that she should be called as a witness. Christian Democrat commissioner Bernardo D'Arezzo, in particular, opposed the suggestion on the grounds of the witness's morality: Lazzerini had been Gelli's mistress. This high moral stand contrasts with the remarkable patience shown by the commission in the face of the lies and evasions of secret service chiefs who had belonged to Gelli's lodge.

"A memorandum sent in 1982 to the office of the Florence public prosecutor by Federico Federici, a Florentine time lawyer and P2 member, makes a similar claim. In it Federici said he had been told that Gelli reacted to the news of the kidnap with the words: 'We have finally resolved the Moro problem.' Federici, who died of a heart attack in 1988 while he was defense lawyer for a number of suspects in the Bologna bomb trial, is by no means a reliable witness. He was, however, close enough to Gelli to have access to sensitive information and it is interesting that both he and Lazzerini should have drawn attention to a possible link between the Master of P2 and the Moro affair. As we shall see later, Gelli himself found it expedient to do likewise, making it clear to the journalist Marcelo Coppetti that he was privy to inside knowledge about the kidnap.

"Gelli may have been dropping a hint to this effect when he granted an interview to the Corriere della Sera newspaper in 1980 (five October). The interviewer was a fellow lodge member, Maurizio Costanzo, and the article appeared as part of a series on 'The Discreet Charm of Secret Power.' 'What is democracy for you?' Costanzo  asked half-way through the interview. 'I'll tell you about a meeting I had with Moro when he was Minister of Foreign Affairs,' Gelli replied. 'He said to me: "You mustn't hurry things. Democracy is like a saucepan of beans: to be good they must cook very, very slowly." I interrupted him, saying: "Be careful that the beans don't boil dry, minister, because then you might burn them." ' Reading between the lines, one may perhaps discern the message: I warned Moro and we all know what happened to him."

(Puppetmasters, Philip Willan, pgs. 228-229)

Gelli

It is interesting to note that at the time of this interview Gelli's colleague and fellow P2 member Roberto Calvi was attempting to purchase the Rizzoli publishing empire (addressed in parts four and five), which owned Corriere della Sera. So yes, these remarks were made among very favorable company. But continuing with Wilan:

"The Moro Commission raised the issue of P2's role during the Moro kidnap in its majority report. It highlighted the presence of lodge members at the head of the security services and the fact that the organization represented political and material interests that would have been severely threatened if Moro's policy of accommodation with the PCI have been implemented. The commission said there was no proof that the failures and omissions of the security apparatus during the fifty-five days of Moro's imprisonment were deliberate. But it added that very grave examples of negligence had been recorded, 'which appear to be inexplicable unless they were motivated by a desire not to see a positive conclusion to the drama or by a substantial lack of interest in what was happening.' The commission also declared that it did not exclude the possibility of direct P2 involvement in the activities of the Red Brigades, given the shared objectives of 'those who seek an authoritarian change and those who prepare the ground for it with  blind and irresponsible violence.' The commission concluded that it should not rush to grave conclusions in the absence of a serious investigation of the subject. The P2 Commission failed to carry the investigation forward, giving the distinct impression that many of the commissioners considered the matter was simply too delicate to tackle..."

(Puppetmasters, Philip Willan, pgs. 230-231)

Moro

But enough on Moro and P2's links. Researchers looking for a more in depth examination of Moro's kidnapping and murder are again pointed towards my series on the notorious LSD baron Ronald Stark. For the time being let us move along to P2's involvement in the long rumored murder of Pope John Paul I.

The death of John Paul I (Albino Luciani) has long puzzled Vatican watchers as did much about his papacy. He was a surprise choice to succeed Paul VI in August of 1978 and then promptly died thirty-three days later in September. Largely unknown outside of Italy, official accounts of John Paul I typically depict him as a frail and sickly moderate with a strong conservative streak. But both John Paul's health and politics have been strongly contested.

Many close friends and associated have described his health as exceptional for a 65 year old man. John Paul was an early advocate of exercise and seems to have been committed to a healthy existence in era in which such things were not widely accepted. And if his health was as poor as official Vatican accounts often make it out to be, it begs the question: why elect a man to the papacy with practically both feet in the grave already? Certainly popes have been elected in failing health before as part of internal Curia politics but not one seemingly poised to buy the farm at any given moment. The process of electing a pope can be both complex and costly --something the Curia would likely want to buy themselves at least a few years reprieve from before undergoing the whole ordeal all over again.

John Paul I

And then there are John Paul's politics. Compelling evidence has emerged in recent years indicating that this pope was politically quite liberal. His father had been either a socialist or a full blown Communist and Pope John Paul I seems to have been greatly influenced by both his family and his impoverished childhood in the Veneto region of Northern Italy. Pope John Paul embraced liberation theology and is alleged to have favored a less militant stance against the Soviet Union and the Communist world. He had forged close ties with Metropolitan Nikodim, one of the highest officials in the Russian Orthodox Church. Nikodim has long been alleged to have been a KGB agent. He would die suddenly in Rome in 1978 while attending the installation of John Paul as the new pope at the ripe old age of 48. Needless to say, much suspicion surrounds his death as well.

John Paul greeting Metropolitan Nikodim

Thus, at roughly the same time Aldo Moro was pursuing his "Historic Comprise" with the PCI (Italian Communist Party) a new pope much more favorably disposed to Moscow was about to take a seat upon the Chair of Saint Peter. And, "incidentally," both men would be dead before the year had ended. And also, no doubt "incidentally," the specter of P2 would lurk in the background of both deaths. But first, let us consider the night of John Paul's death, an event that has been clouded in mystery for decades now.

"During that night, after only thirty-three days in office, John Paul I died. The scrambling that followed for his succession bore the markings of a minutely prepared coup d'etat. However much one might wish to believe otherwise, the surprise Pope in whom so many had placed such hope was unlikely to have died from natural causes and – in spite of all that has been written and said on the subject – the indications are strong that a cover-up of the real cause of death was engineered by a Vatican clique convinced it was acting to protect the Church and her sacred teachings.

"The facts surrounding the discovery of the Pope's death are bizarre to say the least. They prove that the Vatican did not, in the first instance, tell the truth and may not still be telling the truth. The first fact it attempted to hide was that Sister Vincenza found the Pope dead at 5 a.m. when she brought him his thermos of coffee. She said he was sitting upright in bed, his lips twisted. She noticed that he was clutching a sheaf of papers. An unsettled dispute persists as to the nature these papers, for they have disappeared. One explanation is that certain members of the Curia  did not want the outside world to know that a power struggle was in progress inside the Vatican... The papers allegedly detailed the changes that Luciani had intended to decree that same day. But according to Vatican news bulletins, he was holding a copy of The Imitation of Christ.

"Rumours concerning the missing papers and other anomalies surrounding John Paul I's death continued to surface during the next six years until finally, in June 1984 –  intended to dispense with the rumours once and for all – an unsigned memorandum was prepared for a conference of bishops that brushed aside The Imitation of Christ story as a pure invention of the press!

"This account was just as untrue as the first, produced in an attempt to rewrite history. The same memorandum suggested that the papers seem by Sister Vncenza were nothing more than the Pope's notes for his sermon at the Wednesday audience and the Angelus talk on the following Sunday. But the report neglected to mention that the original Vatican communiqué claimed the Pope had been found by Father John Magee, one of the two papal secretaries.

"Sister Vincenza in fact check called Father Magee. His first reaction had been to summon Cardinal Villot from his apartment two floors below. Villot appeared in the papal bedroom a little after 5 a.m. and as camerlingo immediately took charge. According to others present, he did a quick tour of the room, stopping at the Pope's bedside table and at his desk. After his initial visit to the bedroom, a small bottle of Effortil, a liquid medicine used to alleviate low blood pressure, that John Paul kept on his bedside table, went missing. The sheaf of notes also disappeared. No autopsy was requested, no forensic tests were undertaken.

"The Vatican doctor, Renato Buzzonetti, arrived in the bedroom at 6 a.m. and made a brief examination of the body. Buzzonetti informed Villot  that the cause of death was infarto miocardico acuto – a massive heart attack – and he estimated the time of death at about 11 .p.m. on the previous evening. Without further ado, Villot called for the rapid embalming of the body.

"Almost immediately the other secretary, Father Diego Lorenzi, who had been Luciani's  aide in Venice, telephone the Pope's personal physician, Antonio Da Ros, who had looked after Luciani for more than twenty years in Venice. 'He was shocked. Stunned. Unable to believe it... he said he would come to Rome immediately,' Lorenzi reported. Da Ros had been in Rome two weeks before to examine his patient, and remarked, 'Non sta bene, ma benone'  – 'You're not well, but very well.' But when Da Ros arrived later that same day, he was not allowed near the body...

"... the Vatican information department began creating the legend of the Pope's ill health. But if the Pope's health was so frail, why were no medicines – other than Effortil  – to be found in the papal apartments? And whatever happened to that missing bottle of Effortil? Why was Cardinal Villot never questioned about it? Also not to be forgotten, Edoardo Luciani, the dead pope's brother, was on record as stating that Albino had no history of heart trouble.

"The controversy surrounding Papa Luciani's death hung over the pre-Conclave General Congregations. As camerlingo,Villot found himself under attack by the more progressive cardinals. He admitted that the Vatican Press Office had given misleading information. The dissident cardinals wanted to know why no autopsy have been performed, nor an official death certificate issued, and they pushed for a collegial statement on the Pope's death. The Conservatives reject the idea.

"No more reactionary figure existed in the Roman Curia than Cardinal Silvio Oddi... The Italian authorities had demanded an autopsy, but Oddi claimed that he had already carried out an investigation for the College of Cardinals and found no evidence of foul play. Therefore he opposed an autopsy on the grounds that it would create a precedent, which was untrue. Autopsies have been carried out before. Indeed, Oddi was quoted as saying: 'The College of Cardinals will not examine the possibility of another inquiry at all, and will not accept any supervision from anyone, and will not even discuss the subject... We know... In all certainty that the death of John Paul I was due to the fact that his heart stopped beating from perfectly natural causes.'

"Then on 12 October 1978,  as the second Conclave opened, Father Panciroli, the Vatican spokesman, announced that after all a death certificate had been signed by Professor Mario Fontana and Dr Renato Buzzonetti. The certificate was not, however, a public document. With good reason. It contained a mere five typewritten lines affirming in Italian that the Pope had died in the Apostolic Palace at 23:00 on 28 September 1978 by morte improvvisa – da infarto miocardico acuto. Such a document would not have passed muster in jurisdictions where developed notions of civil law existed."

(Their Kingdom Come, Robert Hutchison, pgs. 253-256)

The conspiratorial right has long latched on to the fact that John Paul I died thirty-three days into his reign as evidence of a grand Masonic conspiracy. Thirty-three is of course the highest degree in the Scottish Rite of Freemasonry and long attributed much occult significance (a brief discussion of this can be found here). But there is indeed compelling evidence that P2, which was hardly a a conventional Masonic lodge by any stretch of the imagination and largely outside the purview of mainline Freemasonry, played a role in the Pope's death.

David Yallop, the British researcher who first offered a scholarly critique of the official Vatican line, is convinced that Pope John Paul I was murdered by Licio Gelli and his P2 associates to protect Roberto Calvi's fancy accounting involving the Vatican bank (discussed in parts four and five of this series).

"Before Luciani's murder, Calvi associates in P2 had demonstrated their capacity to kill with a variety of appalling bomb outrages. Their ability to kill specific subject was demonstrated with the murder of Vittorio Occorsio. After the death of the Pope, murder and mayhem began to match the tempo of the gigantic thefts in which Calvi was indulging. The fact that Emilio Alessandrini, Mino Pecorelli, Giorgio Ambrosoli, Antonio Varisco and Boris Giuliano are all dead, is the most telling evidence of the kind of company that Roberto Calvi kept. The fact that the Governor of the Bank of Italy and one of his most trusted colleagues could be falsely charged, that Sarcinelli was forced to endure two weeks of imprisonment, that for years men who knew the truth were frightened to act, is a demonstration of the terrifying power at the command of Calvi:  power that came from many sources including Licio Gelli, Grand Master of P2.

"Licio Gelli was the Puppet Master with a few thousand strings from which to select. Strings appear to have led everywhere: to the heart of the Vatican, to the White House, to the presidential palaces in a wide range of countries. It was Gelli who gave his singular device to senior P2 members that they should always carry a fatal dose of digitalis. A lethal dose will cause, to use a lay term, a heart attack. In a subsequent examination by a doctor that is merely external, will confirm that death has been caused by a myocardial infraction. The drug is odorless and is impossible to trace unless an autopsy is performed.

"Why did Licio Gelli use such a strange codename, 'Luciani', whenever he called his P2 paymaster on the special hotline? Was mere mention of the name enough to send the millions upon millions flowing from Calvi into Gelli's various bank accounts?

"According to the members of Calvi's family, he attributed all his problems to 'the priests.' He made it clear which priest he had in mind – those in the Vatican. In September 1978 one priest in particular represented to Roberto Calvi the greatest threat with which he had ever been confronted. Calvi was with Gelli... in South America in August 1978, planning new schemes. Can anyone really believe that Gelli...  would merely shrugged their shoulders when Calvi told them that Albino Luciani was about to take a course of action that would mean the party was over?

"The murder of a magistrate or a judge or a policeman could be effected openly. The death would remain a mystery or be blamed on one of the many terrorist organizations then rampaging throughout Italy. But the murder of a Pope to cover up what was ultimately a billion dollar theft would have to be achieved by stealth. It would have to arouse as little concern as possible. For the murder to achieve its aim, the death would have to appear natural.

"The cost, no matter how high, in bribes, contracts, fees or commissions, was irrelevant. If the object of the Pope's death was to protect and sustain Roberto Calvi while he continued to steal millions, then there was a virtual well truth to draw upon. The problem of deputy chairman Roberto Rosone, which Calvi discussed at great length with fellow Mason Carboni, was intended to be resolved with the contract murder of Rosone. He lived, but Carboni still paid 530,000 dollars, the day after the attack, to the surviving gangster Ernesto Diotavelli. Half a million for a deputy chairman. How much for a Pope? When you have an entire bank at your disposal?...

"This book has already recorded many instances of the power and influence that Gelli  has exerted. At the time of Albino Luciani's death in September 1978, Licio Gelli, to all practical purposes, ran Italy. His access to any person or any place within the Vatican City State was unrivaled. The fact that he was in South America at the time of Luciani's  death is no alibi in the conventional legal sense. Sindona was enjoying an early evening dry Martini in New York at the precise moment that Giorgio Ambrosoli was murdered by William Arico in Milan..."

(In God's Name, David Yallop, pgs. 296-298)

Gelli

In this researcher's estimation Yallop only misses the mark by a narrow margin. Calvi's financial intrigues likely did not begin in earnest until after Pope John Paul I's death, when John Paul II was sitting upon the throne of Saint Peter. It is much more likely, as noted above, that Pope John Paul's lax attitude concerning Communism and support for liberation theology was deemed a major threat to powerful forces without the US and Italian deep states and that these forces had him promptly removed and replaced with Pope who was more agreeable (and a certain attempted assassination that shall be addressed in the next installment surely quashed any flights of fancy John Paul II may have been considering).

Researcher Lucien Gregoire, whose Murder in the Vatican,is possibly the most thorough examination of John Paul I's death, recounted an interesting conversation he had with Bishop Paul Marcinkus in 2005. Macinkus is of course not the most reliable source as he was a possible member of P2 and involved with Calvi in his intrigues. None the less, the bishop had few qualms about implicating P2.

"He began, 'It makes sense members of P2 who were maintenance workers in the Vatican concealed themselves in the valet's quarters and waited for the early hours of the morning. The only other rooms not occupied at night were the dining room, kitchen and salon – often visited into the wee hours. Lorenzi happened to be sleeping in the secretary's office which otherwise would have been vacant.'

" 'Yes, I told him, 'it was a godsend the valet's brother happened to have died a few days before John Paul's death.'

" 'If P2 was involved,' he corrected me, 'it was no godsend.'

" 'They would have had to vacate one of the quarters. The valet's rooms were annexed the Pope's rooms were best suited. This does not necessarily mean Casaroli and Caprio or other men-of-the-cloth could not have been sharing the valet's rooms that night; just that they would have been fools to have committed the deed itself.

"Regardless, the day following Marcinkus' call, I searched the library microfilm for the obituary of the valet's brother.

"The thirty-year-old had fallen from a sixth floor balcony in Arezzo south of Florence. Unwitnessed, police could not determine if it was an accident or suicide. By providential coincidence, the Grand Master of P2, Licio Gelli, had his villa in Arezzo."

(Murder in the Vatican, Lucien Gregoire, pg. 287)

an aged Marcinkus

Could P2 have used maintenance workers to have reached the papal apartments? Certainly the numbers of individuals with access was severely limited. But P2 had acquired extensive access to the Vatican by this point, had ample motive to assassinate pope John Paul I and likely would be receiving vigorous prompting for this project from their US backers. Given that all of this was unfolding shortly after Moro's kidnapping and murder, of which ample indications of US involvement have emerged, it is hardly a stretch to speculate that similar plans could have been made for a Pope who would resist the US line at a time when the nation was still reeling from its defeat in Vietnam and the following loss of international prestige.

A democratically elected Communist regime in Italy, one of the core nations of NATO, would have been an even more devastating blow. Given what was at stake, it is not hard to see the US taking steps to remove potential threats such as Aldo Moro and Pope John Paul I. And P2, with its extensive ties to US intelligence on the one hand, and organized crime on the other, would have been an idea candidate to carry out such operations.

And with that I shall wrap things up for now. With the next installment I shall move along to the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II. Stay tuned till then dear reader.

Dr. Strangelove: A Strange and Terrible Glimpse Into the Deep State Part III

Welcome to the third installment in my examination of legendary filmmaker Stanley Kubrick's 1964 "nightmare comedy" Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. During the first installment in this series I addressed several of the popular conspiracy theories surrounding Kubrick as well the background of Dr. Strangelove, including an incident that occurred during the Cuban missile crisis that may have partly inspired the film. During the second installment I did an analysis of the film's major characters, with a special emphasis on their symbolism and the historical figures who may have inspired them. It is highly recommended that those of you just joining me read the first two installments (especially the second one) before delving in. It is also strongly recommended that one already have a familiarity with Strangelove's plot line as this series is spoiler heavy.

With those disclaimers out of the way let us move along to the matter at hand. This installment will be concerned with Strangelove's plot line, so let's get to it.

The film opens (after a short disclaimer added by Columbia Pictures) with images of the fog-shrouded Zhokov Mountains (a fictions location) with a voice over narrator warning of the Soviet Union crafting a Doomsday Machine in this isolated location. From there Kubrick cuts to images of nuclear-armed B-52s refilling in mid-air to the strands of "Try a Little Tenderness" over an opening credits sequence. This marks the first of what are an endless series of sexual innuendos and symbols that appear throughout the film. Of course sex is hardly the only thing being alluded in Strangelove --political, philosophical and occult references abound as well.

a B-52 being "penetrated" by another plane over the title

But Kubrick's insistent in peppering many of his targets with both these physical (i.e. sexual) references as well as those of a more metaphysical variety is in itself an advanced occult concept. It is an allusion to the duel exoteric and esoteric nature of many important occult concepts.

"... The most ancient mysteries were of a physical, not a metaphysical nature. There was an esoteric and an exoteric version of them, but corresponding to the written and oral Law of the Jews. But, contrary to what is usually supposed, the metaphysical was the exoteric version, not vice versa. This is proved conclusively by the seventeenth chapter of The Book of the Dead, which is certainly the oldest body of written teachings known to man. Here, side by side with the text which was intended for general use, appears the interpolated gloss of the initiated priest, explaining the text after the manner of the Gnosis, or Magical Tradition. The secret oral, hidden wisdom embodied in the gloss, refers to the physical origins of the abstract concepts which appear in the text; spiritual matters are explained in terms of physical, more precisely, a physiological, phenomena. These explanations were usually reserved for initiates, and the reason for their concealment was due to the physical nature of the Gnosis, which became, in truth, the forbidden wisdom of later ages. The ancient may not have been acquainted with psychology, sexology and endocrinology as known today, but they most certainly were acquainted with the occult uses of the sexual current, the improper handling of which leads to disaster; and they were infinitely more knowledgeable concerning sexual sciences than our Western psychologist today."

(The Magical Revival, Kenneth Grant, pgs. 2-3)

As was noted in part one of this series, Kubrick hints throughout the film that sexual repression lurks at the heart of the psychosis displayed on the screen. But there are also indications that Kubrick was aware of the physical aspect of these occult traditions mentioned above. As was also noted in part one, the character of Major Kong (Slim Pickens) is associated with the Egyptian god Set through both his role as a destroyer as well as the sexual taboos (transsexuality and homosexuality) the character symbolically breaks during his quest to deliver his "payload."

Kong straddles, and ultimately rides, a bomb with "Hi There!" (a popular homosexual come on during the era) written on the rear

But on top of all this, the lines that indicates the character's willingness to cross dress for his cause could also be a hint of the conspiracy surround JFK during the filming of Strangelove. Specifically, this reference occurs while Kong is reading out the contents of the emergency kits he and the rest of the B-52 crew are given as the set off on their bomb run:

"Survival kit contents check. In them you'll find: one forty-five caliber automatic; two boxes of ammunition; four days' concentrated emergency rations; one drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills; one miniature combination Russian phrase book and Bible; one hundred dollars in rubles; one hundred dollars in gold; nine packs of chewing gum; one issue of prophylactics; three lipsticks; three pair of nylon stockings. Shoot, a fella' could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff."

Besides being issued some good drugs, the men are also inexplicably given three pairs each of lipsticks and nylon stockings (but only one prophylactic...). The appearance of two threes could of course be a reference to the number thirty-three, a number with numerous occult and Masonic associations. Of it thirty-third degree Freemason Manly P. Hall writes:

"... Consider the number 33. The first temple of Solomon stood for thirty-three years in its pristine splendor. At the end of that time it was pillaged by the Egyptian King Shishak, and finally (588 B.C.). It was completely destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar and the people of Jerusalem were led into captivity to Babylon... Also, King David ruled for thirty-three years in Jerusalem; the Masonic Order is divided into thirty-three symbolic degrees; there are thirty-three segments in the human spinal column; and Jesus was crucified in the thirty-third year of his life."

(The Secret Teachings of All Ages, Manly P. Hall, pgs. 238-239)

Even more curious is the fact that original city mentioned in the final line of the above monologue was Dallas and not Las Vegas. "Vegas" was overdubbed in the wake of the Kennedy assassination, though Vegas was surely a more practical city for a man to be in possession of lipstick and nylon stockings in 1964 than Dallas. Or so the general public would think.

The strange thing is, there have long been allegations than many of the figures involved in the Kennedy assassination were either gay or bisexual. What's more, Dallas was rumored to be the heart of this scene.

"I was told several years ago by my high-level source in Dallas, 'George Healey,' (a former FBI man) that there was a common link between many of the conspirators. I was a little leery because at first I thought his job was fielding out-of-towners and other assorted greenhorns and giving them a few bum steers, then send them on their way. But I came to have great trust and a personal liking for 'Healey,' as he evidently had for me.

"He told me that the circle of conspirators were homosexual or bisexual and had their own network and coded language and communications, which made it easier for them to plan without anyone knowing what was going on...

"Rose Cheramie told doctors and police in a hospital that Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald slept together.

"Ruby was known to be a homosexual, and many said that he had slept with Lee Harvey Oswald. John Crawford (a.k.a. 'Larry Crafard'), who was very close to Ruby, was also a homosexual. Crafard suggested during his testimony to the Warren commission that both Ruby and his roommate, George Senator were the same. 

"So was Clint Murchison, Sr., and J. Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson, his assistant. So was General Edwin Walker, who was arrested more than once in compromising situations in a public men's rooms. Sid Richardson was long rumored to be Clint Murchison's secret lover. The closeness of Hoover and Murchison had to have been based to a great extent on their mutual sexual orientation...

"Gordon McLendon was one of Dallas's most famous transvestite. He showed up at many society parties in drag, and one might wonder about his sexual orientation. Merely being a cross dresser is not enough to convict, but McLendon certainly knew all of the key players in the plot who are well known as homosexuals, but we don't have evidence that he practiced this way of life.

"Walter Jenkins, a key aide to Lyndon Johnson when he was in the White House, was also arrested from homosexual activities, seriously embarrassing President Johnson. It is felt that Jenkins was one of those on the operational level of the conspiracy. A source told me the Jenkins was the connection between LBJ and Clay Shaw, also a homosexual, a CIA asset in New Orleans prosecuted for conspiring to kill John Kennedy. Jenkins was closely connected to Congressman Albert Thomas of Houston, who was a creature Brown & Root, the vast construction outfit that was a key backer of Lyndon Johnson and which benefited so greatly from the Vietnam War, and years later, the Iraq War...

"Tommy Cox was Clay Shaw's lover and was a frequent visitor in Dallas.

"Let us not forget David Ferrie, who was fired from flying planes for Eastern Airlines for his homosexual activities and arrests with young boys. Ferrie knew Oswald since he was a teenager, and worked from Marcello."

(The Radical Right and the Murder of John F. Kennedy, Harrison E. Livingstone, pgs. 133-134)

the Dallas-based General Edwin Walker, one of the chief inspirations for the character of General Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden) in Strangelove, was long reputed to be a closet homosexual

Beyond this, the Marcello syndicate, anti-Castro Cubans and various far right groups seem to have been involved in a drug and prostitution smuggling network that stretched from New Orleans to Houston, as I noted before here. The main drug for this network at the time was heroin, which of course derives from opiates, as does morphine (this network was rumored to deal in methamphetamines as well, which may have been what "pep pills" alluded too). So yes, a fella probably could have had a good time in Dallas with such things during this era. But I'm getting a head of myself.

After the film's opening credits finishes Kubrick cuts to Burpelson Air Force Base, where General Jack D. Ripper is planning on launching an assault on the Soviet Union with the planes under his command. He calls in the order to Group Captain Lionel Mandrake (Peter Sellers) from his office. As Ripper is sending the world on a course to Nuclear Armageddon the camera cuts back and forth between Ripper's office and what is presumably the base's command center. In both locations the Orwellian phrase "Peace Is Our Profession" is displayed. As the movie progresses it is eerily displayed throughout the base in the midst of various calamities. This is a form of inducing what the highly controversial revisionist historian (and fascist sympathizer) Michael A. Hoffman II referred to as the "double mind", a state of such blatant double standards and hypocrisy that it requires a near disassociative break to accept such contradictions.

The common soldiers Kubrick depicts largely perform the task of launching a nuclear assault with no real moral qualms or intellectual debate, all the while various slogans plastered across the base assure them of the "peaceful" purpose of their mission. The signs are especially humorous as the base is turned into a war zone after rank-and-file soldiers heed Ripper's warnings of Soviet forces coming dressed in US military uniforms and begin firing on an Army detachment sent to arrest the general. It would appear the propaganda the US began extensively subjecting its GIs to during WWII was having the intended anti-intellectual effect and then some. Of this propaganda, the great Peter Levenda wrote:

"By comparison, American propaganda films made during the war show a casual, wise-cracking, gum-chewing, sloppy, unshaven, and generally disheveled GI as the epitome of Allied resistance to the Nazi threat. That was supposed to make Americans feel better. The enemy was impeccably dressed, spoke fluent English with an exotic accent (our boys knew about four words in German, two of them being 'mach schnell'), and never had a hair out of place, and had Continental manners even when torturing spies. And, of course, scenes of the concentration camps and the mass murder of Jews virtually never appear in these films as it took years before the Allies would officially admit that the death factories even existed. The anti-intellectual, deliberately unsophisticated pose of the typical American GI – as depicted by Hollywood – was supposed to be somehow equivalent to moral superiority: a troubling perspective that exist to this day, in our entertainment media, and even among our politicians and religious leaders. Brilliant students are portrayed in television sit-coms as hopeless, socially maladjusted 'nerds' in vain competition with the handsome but brain-dead jocks who have become teen idols. Former vice president and convicted felon Spiro Agnew was famous for his attacks on what he called 'pseudo-intellectuals,' and a glance at former President George Bush's bedside reading would make a high school English teacher blush. Nixon himself, besieged on all sides by protesting college kids, had an abhorrence of the intelligensia, as revealed in his famous Watergate tapes...

"Somewhere along the line, somewhere between Joe Goebbels and Joe McCarthy, Americans began believing – and embracing – their own propaganda."

(Unholy Alliance, Peter Levenda, pg. 281) 

Various scenes from Burpelson Air Force Base certainly echo the above sentiments while General Turgidson wedges stick after stick of chewing gum in his jaw while displaying little concern for the gravity of the situation he is in. But more on that later.

The inducement of the double mind continues in Kong's B-52 after the attack orders have come in. As the crew solemnly goes about their mission to begin a nuclear war Kong reassures them by saying:

"If this thing turns out to be half as important as it just might be, I'd say your all in line for some promotions and personal citations when that's over with. And that goes for everyone of you, regardless of your race, your color, or your creed..."

Thus even when bringing about the end of the world the possibility of promotion is ever present in the military mind. During this sequence Kong has his crew employ the famed "CRM-114" to jam transmissions coming into the plane unless they are preceded by the proper code. This is not the only time Kubrick would use the numbers. In his later film, A Clockwork Orange, they appeared as "Serum 114", a kind of "truth drug" given to the film's narrator. Recluse suspects the number 114 in both cases is meant as a reference to the National Security Agency: The NSA was officially formed on November 4, 1952, by Truman.

From here Kubrick cuts to a luxurious hotel suite where General Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott) is located with his "secretary", Miss Scott (the only female character to appear on screen in the entire film). The general is in a restroom and seemingly constipated (did Miss Scott hint at wanting a monogamous relationship with him?) when a call comes in bearing tidings of Ripper's designs. Miss Scott serves as an intermediary until Turgidson becomes sufficiently alarmed to take the call himself. After hanging up he decides to head down to the War Room, but not before telling Miss Scott to start her "countdown."

Turgidson and Miss Scott (Tracy Reed)

Back at Burpelson Air Force Base, Mandrake has become suspicious of Ripper's orders. He confronts the general, who makes little effort to conceal the fact he's gone rogue. He justifies himself by citing Clemenceau's reflections on leaving war to the generals, telling Mandrake:

"He said war was too important to be left to the generals. When he said that, 50 years ago, he might have been right. But today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids."

Georges Clemenceau

This is the first mention of Ripper's obsession with the nation's "precious bodily fluids." Bodily fluids are of course highly important in Tantra and sexually oriented ceremonial magic. Consider, for instance, the central part of what occultist Kenneth Grant seems to have dubbed "Dream Control by Sexual Magick", a kind of "initiated" version of  Crowley's "Gnostic Mass":

"The central part of the ritual now takes place, which involves the priestess raising Kundalini. According to Grant, this transpires as she is being sexually aroused by the magician who is performing certain mudras over her body, not necessarily touching her, but making passes directly over her erogenous zones (with a wand or with his hands) and raising her to a fever pitch. The goal of this process is to activate Kundalini, to raise it gradually to the higher chakras so that they may be 'burned' by the power of the Serpent Goddess and thus release their potencies into the bloodstream of the priestess. The chakras should have been previously opened by the priestess through Kundalini yoga or some other technique, otherwise opening them for the first time this way can be dangerous to her. The magician should bring the priestess to the point of orgasm, but stop just before orgasm is reached. The magician may have sexual intercourse with the priestess if it is considered necessary to bring the priestess to the desired pitch of excitement, but neither priest nor priestess should achieve orgasm at this point because it is premature to 'ground' or 'earth' the energy before it has been fully utilized. (This is in contradiction to much normative Tantra which requires the orgasms of both parties, and even the ejaculation of the male in order for the rite to be 'perfect.') It is necessary that there is a flow of secretions from the female genital outlet. These kalas will be collected by the magician – either orally, as in cunnilingus, if the intention is to increase the occult power of the magician or to bring him into contact with supermundane forces, etc.; or on a specially constructed talisman of metal or parchment, or on the leaf of a sacred plan, or some other way if the intention is to store it for future use. The magician will then energize them magically so that they become ojas."

(The Dark Lord, Peter Levenda, pg. 246)

Bizarrely, Ripper's periodic discussions of the nation's bodily could be taken as references to sex magick. But more on that later.

From here the film cuts briefly to the Pentagon, a symbolically loaded structure if ever there was one. It of course contains the shape of the pentagram within the pentagonal structure.

"Pentagrams take either pentagonal or star shape. Their symbolism is manifold, but is always based upon that of the number five, which expresses the conjunction of inequalities. The five points of the pentagram come together in fruitful marriage of three (the male principle) with two (the female principle). In this context, the pentagram symbolizes hermaphrodism. Pentagrams were used as recognition signs between members of the same group or society, as for example the followers of Pythagoras in classical antiquity. The pentagram united them: it was one of the keys to Higher Knowledge and opened the door to what was secret...

"In Europe the pentagram of Pythagoras became that of Hermes Trismegistus and was regarded, not simply as a symbol of knowledge, but as the means of casting spells and of attaining power... Sorcerers used representations of the pentagram to exercise their powers and there were pentagram specific to love, ill luck and so on."

(Dictionary of Symbols, Jean Chevalier & Alain Gheerbrant, pg. 747)

the Pentagon

The pentagram's association with ceremonial magic is interesting. The Pentagon itself was deeply engaged in the engineering of reality by this stage with extensive PSYOPs activities. Naturally the CIA was also up to its heels in these activities and frequently in league with their military counterparts --activities that bore striking similarities to the age old objectives of magicians everywhere.

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

(Sinister Forces -Book One: The Nine, Peter Levenda, pg. 144)

The assault on consciousness via the military's propaganda is referenced throughout Dr. Strangelove (i.e. the absurd "Peace Is Our Profession" slogans plastered all over Burpelson Air Force Base). Characters frequently act upon psychotic orders in no small part due to the ruthless effectiveness of the indoctrination they've been put through. Virtually none of the rank-and-file soldiers seen in the film raise any real objectives to the insanity they are asked to carry out. This would seem to indicate that the sorcerers of the Pentagon are quite adept indeed.

After the quick shot of the Pentagon's exterior Kubrick cuts to the War Room, one of the most celebrated sets in cinematic history. It is also symbolically loaded and was designed by the legendary Ken Adam (who also worked on many of the equally symbolically loaded early James Bond films, which was very briefly addressed in part one). Apparently Kubrick insisted on changes to Adam's design at the last minute.

"To design the all-important War Room set, Adam began to do conceptual drawings to develop his ideas. His original notion was an amphitheater with a second level that had a glassed-in control room. Kubrick was very enthusiastic when he saw the drawings, telling Adam, 'Gee, Ken, it's great, great!' Thinking this constituted approval, Adam went forward and assigned his staff to create the necessary working drawings and models to design and build the set. After three or four weeks of mulling over the idea, Kubrick came into the design department, which by that time was far advanced on the amphitheater concept, and said, 'You know, Ken, that second level up there, I need at least sixty or seventy extras and they have to be sitting around all the time. What are they going to do? It could be costly. Come up with something else.'

"'It through me completely,' Ken Adam recalled. 'Then once I started calming down, my mind started ticking again, thank God. Stanley used to come and was practically standing behind me when I was drawing. Then this triangular concept evolved and he liked it. I had the answer when he said, "Yes, it's all very well with the triangle, what material do you think you're going to do it in?" and I said, "Concrete, like a bomb shelter".'

"The two men created a unique collaboration. Adam was an instinctual and imaginative designer with strong architectural training and a penchant for heightened reality. Kubrick was a director who questioned everything and demanded a rationale for every detail in his movie. Adam intuitively felt that the table that the President and his men set around should be large and round. When Kubrick saw the design for the table he asked Adam if it could be covered with green baize, even though the film was being shot in stark black and white. 'Sure,' Adam said and Kubrick replied, 'It should be like a poker table – the President, the Russian Ambassador, and the generals playing a game of poker for the fate of the world.'"

(Stanley Kubrick: A Biography, Vincent Lobrutto, pgs. 234-235)

one of Adam's sketches of the War Room, which makes its triangular shape more obvious

Thus the War Room is a triangular shaped interior (though this is not especially evident during the film) with a massive, circular table at its center. This of course echoes the famous Masonic symbol of the Eye of Providence within a triangle that appears on the back of the Great Seal of the United States and on the back of all dollar bills as well. Of it, Manly P. Hall writes:

"Here is represented the Great Pyramid of Gizah, composed of thirteen rows of masonry, showing seventy-two stones. The pyramid is without a capstone, and above its upper platform floats a triangle containing the All-Seeing-Eye surrounded by rays of light...

"If incapable of artistic treatment, the great seal is susceptible of profound interpretation. The Pyramid of Gizah was believed by the ancient Egyptians to be the shrine tomb of the god Hermes, or Thot, the personification of Universal Wisdom.

"No traces ever been found of the cap of the great Pyramid. A flat platform about thirty feet square gives no indication that this part of the structure was ever otherwise finished; and this is appropriate, as the Pyramid represented human society itself, imperfect and incomplete. The structure's ascending converging angles and faces represent the common aspiration of humankind; above floats the symbol of the esoteric orders, the radiant triangle with it's all-seeing-eye. The triangle itself is in the shape of the Greek letter D, the Delta, the letter of the name of God – the divine part of nature completing the works of men."

(The Secret Destiny of America, Manly P. Hall, pgs. 127-128)

the back of the Great Seal of the United States

Thus, the denizens of the War Room are symbolically associated with the "Elect" of various esoteric traditions, those wise men who are perceived as the enlightened leaders of humanity. Kubrick further reinforces this association with the table itself, which is surely meant to invoke the Round Table of the Arthurian cycle in the viewer's mind. The symbolism of the Round Table is quite similar to that of the eye inside the triangle.

"It is reasonably certain that many legends regarding Charlemagne were later associated with Arthur, who is most famous for establishing the Order of the Round Table at Winchester. Reliable information is not to be had concerning the ceremonies and initiatory rituals of the 'Table Round.' In one story, the Table was endowed with the powers of expansion and contraction so that fifteen or fifteen hundred could be seated around it, according to whatever need might arise. The most common accounts fix the number of knights who could be seated at one time at the Round Table at either twelve or twenty-four. The twelve signified the signs of the signs of the zodiac and also the apostles of Jesus. The knights' names and also their heraldic arms were emblazoned upon their chairs. When twenty-four are shown seated at the table, each of the twelve signs of the zodiac is divided into two parts – a light and a dark half – to signify the nocturnal and diurnal phases of each sign. As each sign of the zodiac is ascending for two hours every day, so the twenty-four knights represented the hours, the twenty-four elders before the throne in Revelation, and twenty-four Persian deities who represented the spirits of the divisions of the day. In the center of the Table was the symbolic rose of the Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the symbol of resurrection in that He 'rose' from the dead. There was also a mysterious empty seat called the Siege Perilous in which none might sit, except he who was successful in his quest for the Holy Grail.

"In the personality of Arthur is to be found a new form of the ever-recurrent cosmic myth. The prince of Britain is the sun, his knights are the zodiac, and his flashing sword may be the sun's rays with which he fights and vanquishes the dragons of darkness or it may represent the earth's axis. Arthur's Round Table is the universe; the Siege Perilous the throne of the perfect man. In its terrestrial sense, Arthur was the Grand Master of a secret Christian-Masonic brotherhood of all philosophic mystics who termed themselves Knights. Arthur received the exalted position of Grand Master of these Knights because he had faithfully accomplished the withdrawal of the sword (spirit) from the anvil of the base metals (his lower nature)..."

(The Secret Teachings of All Ages, Manly P. Hall, pg. 590)

So in theory at least the men sitting around the Round Table of the War Room should be the warrior-monks or philosopher-kings of old, the Elect. In point of fact they're rather unstable bunch with some blatant evidence of psychosis. President Muffley (Peter Sellers) is a rational man, but an aloof one who at times is more concerned with his legacy than the reality of the situation. The Soviet ambassador (Peter Bull) is a walking double standard, insisting upon fresh pouched eggs and Cuban cigars from the terribly aristocratic staff and buffet that waits upon the War Room while refusing a Jamaican cigar because he doesn't support the work of "imperialist stooges." While seemingly helpful and concerned, he is later revealed to have been gathering intelligence the entire time he is in the War Room.

And then there's General Turgidson.

Upon hearing the ravings Ripper left with SAC headquarters Muffley denounces him as a psychotic to which Turgidson responds "We-he-ell, uh, I'd like to hold off judgement on a thing like that, sir, until all the facts are in." Shortly thereafter Turgidson advocates following Ripper's lead and launching a fulls scale nuclear assault upon the Soviet Union. It is during this sequence the audience gets its first glimpse of Dr. Strangelove (Sellers), and as a stand in for Nazism it is a most apt placement. Note that in this sequence he is little more than a marginal, anonymous member of the War Room gathering. That will soon change.

Strangelove is the second man to the left of Turgidson's head

Fittingly Muffley insists that he will not go down in history as "the greatest mass murderer since Adolf Hitler" to which Turgidson replies: "Perhaps it might be better, Mr. President, if you were more concerned with the American People than with your image in the history books." Turgidson, apparently like his real life inspiration, has no concern over the radioactive fall out that would result from this course of action.

As was noted in part two, Turgidson's celebrated monologue in which he advocates a full scale nuclear attack on the Soviet Union was largely based upon General Lyman Lemnitzer's pitch in 1961 to JFK to launch a preemptive nuclear strike on the Soviets by 1963 (though without the imminent threat of nuclear war that the fictional Turgidson faces). Turgidson even cites a report that sounds remarkably similar to the one Lemnitzer championed on the percentage of Soviet nukes a US strike could knock out.

So while the occupants of the War Room may be many things, "enlightened" would not be a description used by many. In point of fact, it is something of a miracle that they are able to collaborate at all. But with the collaboration that does emerge Kubrick seems to be dropping some serious hints about national policy being pursued by Kennedy in opposition to the Deep State during this era. In the next installment we shall consider the collaboration between Muffley and the Soviet Union, among other things. Stay tuned.