Stranger In a Strange Land: The Curious Times of Ronald Stark Part II

Welcome to the second installment in my examination of the life and times of enigmatic LSD baron Ronald Hadley Stark. As has been noted before, but it bares mentioning again, I'm deeply indebted to Skilluminati/Brainsturbator for some of the resources used in this series and the reader is advised to check out that site's excellent account of Stark. But moving along.

With the first installment of this series I briefly broke down Stark's early years, with a special emphasis on his alleged ties to Bellevue Medical Hospital and his claims that several patent he sold had come from Nazi Germany via his father. As I wrapped up with that installment I noted his initial meeting with the legendary "hippie mafia" known as the Brotherhood of Eternal Love.

members of the Brotherhood

There it was also noted that Stark proclaimed himself a kind of revolutionary. As several sources have noted, Stark had a very specific reference point for his idea of revolution: Robert A. Heinlein's The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress. Any sci-fi fan or libertarian worth their salt is well aware of this work, but given the influence it had on Stark it is was worth considering in depth:

"One of Stark's favorite books was Robert Heinlein's sci-fi classic of 1965, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. He saw it is a revolutionary 'handbook,' every bit as inspirational as the writings of Che Guevera. Heinlein's novel, a hard-boiled political fairytale set in the year 2075, is about a penal colony on the moon. The 3 million inhabitants – who are housed in huge domes containing artificial atmospheres – are either Earth deportees or their descendants. They cannot return because once their bodies adept to the moon's gravity they can never readapt to the gravity of the Earth (though on the plus side they live longer). The lunar prison is brutally administered by a United Nations-appointed governor, who the revolutionaries try to overthrow. One of them, a character called 'the Prof' explains:

"'... revolutions are not won by enlisting the masses. Revolution is a science for the few who are competent to practice it. It depends on correct organization and, above all, on communications.'

"The conspiracy starts with three people (more than three 'can't agree on where to have dinner' he says). These three in turn recruit two other people to form three new cells. This recruitment process continues until a large network of cells is built up. The advantage of the structure is that if cell members do not know each other's sub-cells, then they cannot give them away if captured. The drawback is that if a single cadre is arrested and cannot resist interrogation, then the enemy can arrest the half-a-dozen comrades he or she knows and thus reach the sub-cells. Thus, it becomes possible for the authorities to break the revolutionaries' chain of command and communication.

"A more sophisticated system discussed in Heinlein's book is a pyramid-of pyramids set-up – a sort of 'Internet' without the computers:

"'Where vertices are in common, each bloke knows one in an adjoining cell... Communications never break down because they run sideways as well as up and down. Something like a neural net.'

"Damage can be stemmed and repair because the cell member who discovers a breach in the network can pass warnings without having to know who receives the message.

"The notion of revolutionary organisation as an imitation of a 'natural' and 'organic' hierarchy is not new. Historically, August Blanqui, the most accomplished revolutionary conspirator in 19th-century France, had very similar ideas about revolutionary organisation. In Heinlein's futuristic version, however, the notion is given a neat twist: the conspiracy is helped by a miraculous super-computer, which is so powerful and complex that it 'wakes up' and becomes 'self-conscious'. The computer develops a sense of 'humour' about the 'stupidity' of the colony administrators, plus a 'rational will' to overthrow them.

"The conspirators use the computer to set up front companies and fraudulently appropriated funds on the terrestrial stock exchanges. They then use the money to set up secret facilities for development of revolutionary war technology. In this scenario, then, Big Brother's Brain, as scientific rationality, can be detached from ruling class control and harnessed to the revolution.

"As a 'rational anarchist' the Prof believes that the concept of the State has no existence except as 'physically exemplified in the acts of self-responsible individuals'. This implies that collaboration with the state is justifiable as a disguise within the strategy of undermining it from the inside. The revolutionary leader practices systematic deception of everyone apart from those who are required to be 'in the know' for particular functions.

"Stark's keen interest in these ideas is perhaps a pointer to his modus operandi..."

(Acid: A New Secret History of LSD, David Black, pgs. 149-151)

Over the course of his "career," Stark would have his fingers in a variety of pies spread out across the globe with the various regional players being scarcely aware of one another's existence. Stark was many things to many different people as we shall explore over the course of this series. It would seem that the organization of his various ventures were partly inspired by some of the ideas presented in Moon.

Before leaving Heinlein, it worth addressing in brief his curious life. Heinlein was a sixth generation German-American who hailed from a family deeply committed to the US Armed Forces: a family tradition held that Heinleins had fought in every American war since the Revolution. Heinlein's brother, Lawrence, was a career military man who served in the US Army, Air Force and Missouri National Guard, where he attained the rank of major general. Heinlein himself would serve in the Navy during his early days before ending up in California. Of this time frame, David McGowan writes:

"Another famous resident of Laurel Canyon was science-fiction writer Robert Heinlein, who resided at 8775 Lookout Mountain Avenue. Like so many other characters in this story, Heinlein was a graduate of the US Naval Academy at Annapolis and he had served as a naval officer. After that, he embarked on a successful writing career. And despite the fact that he was, by any objective measure, a rabid right-winger, his work was warmly embraced by the flower-power generation...

"Heinlein's best-known work is the novel Stranger in a Strange Land, which many in the Laurel Canyon scene found to be hugely influential. Ed Sanders has written, in The Family, that the book 'helped provide a theoretical basis for Manson's Family.' Charlie frequently used Strange Land terminology when addressing his flock, and he named his first Family-born son Valentine Michael Manson in honor of the book's lead character.

"David Crosby was a big Heinlein fan as well. In his autobiography, he references Heinlein on more than one occasion, and proclaims that, 'In a society where people can go armed, it makes everybody a little more polite, as Robert Heinlein says in his books.' Frank Zappa was also a member of the Robert Heinlein fan club. Barry Miles notes in his biography of the rock icon that his home contained 'a copy of Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince and other essential sixties reading, including Robert Heinlein's sci-fi classic, Stranger in a Strange Land, from which Zappa borrowed the word "discorporate" for [the song] Absolutely Free.'"

(Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon, David McGowan, pgs. 58-59)

Heinlein

As indicated above, Heinlein's work would have an enormous influence on the 60s counterculture despite the rather contemptuous attitude Heinlein had towards such things. After flirting with progressive politics during the 1930s, Heinlein became a far right reactionary at the onset of the Cold War. Some of his later works, most notably Starship Troopers, romanticized fascist military dictatorships and in general Heinlein's work fanatically glorified militarism. Heinlein was a staunch supporter of the McCarthy hearings, Vietnam, and the nuclear arms race.

On the other hand, his works works were frequently hostile to Christianity and organized religion in general. Wile Heinlein is commonly depicted as an early proponent of "free love," his version went to extremes the counterculture largely avoided: incest and even pedophilia are gloried in many of Heinlein's later works, especially the Lazarus Long books that began with 1973's Time Enough For Love. Prior to the 1970s, however, Heinlein showed some restraint and Stranger in a Strange Land would have a especially profound effect on the counterculture and other, more unsavory, elements.

"Robert E. Heinlein was another sci-fi giant to emerge from the pages of Astounding. His Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), in which a Martian, Michael Valentine Smith, arrives on Earth and inaugurates a free-love cult, is rife with themes, ideas and philosophies that come right out of the pages of Crowley's writing, especially The Book of the Law. The practice of water sharing, that runs throughout the book, is taken from Crowley's Gnostic Mass. Other occult references abound: the psychic Madame Alexandria Vesant seems a combination of Madame Blavatsky and Annie Besant, and the catchphrase 'Thou art God' is like the ancient Hindu Tat twam asi, 'That thou art,' a formula of the unity of Atman and Brahma which Hess employs in Steppenwolf. 

"Like Tolkien and Lord of the Rings, Heinlein and Stranger in a Strange Land would achieve cult status by the mid-sixties. Also like Tolkien, Heinlein would contribute a word to the language. 'Grok,' Heinlein's term for an immediate, intuitive grasp of a person or situation, soon became a counterculture buzzword; at one point Heinlein was asked to lead a seminar at Big Sur's Esalen Institute, sharing the bill with Alan Watts. Ironically, a book that became a kind of Bible among the leftist love-and-peace generation was written by an author with right-wing political sympathies, and exposed a kind of mystical elitism, with a superhuman leader who had no qualms about 'discorporating' individuals who interfered with his plans.

"Stranger in a Strange Land acquired a darker cachet when it became known that, along with Siddhartha, it was one of the few books, it was one of the few books Charles Manson allowed the members of his Family to read. In 1970, Heinlein even received a fan letter from one of the Family, sent from a jail in Independence, California. The link between the book and Manson was so strong that Heinlein turned down an interview with Playboy because Hugh Hefner wanted to ask questions about its influence on the Family.

"That Heinlein was aware of the links between his own libertarian philosophy and that of Crowley is clear from a letter sent to a group of fans who asked permission to use material in Stranger in a Strange Land at their meetings. Heinlein refused – wisely shy of associating his name with any cult – and closes his letter saying that 'Do what thou wilt' may indeed be the 'whole of the law', perhaps even 'a law of nature', but that it was a more complicated idea than most people supposed. Heinlein's book, however, was the inspiration for at least one cult. In the late sixties, a group of students at Westminster College, Missouri, founded a weather brother fraternity, and later established the Church of All Worlds, what they described as a 'Neo-Pagan Earth Religion'."

(Turn Off Your Mind, Gary Lachman, pgs. 223-224)

The Church of All Worlds still exists to this day, but largely as a paper organization. It has struggled along for years with few members and even less funding. In the 1960s, however, Stranger influenced a variety of different movements and sects, including the Manson Family.

There is no doubt that Heinlein was aware of Crowley's writings by this date and considerably earlier. During the 1940s, when Heinlein was living in the infamous Laurel Canyon, he made the acquaintance of Jack Parsons, the legendary rocket scientist who invented the jet fuel used for years by modern space crafts and aided in the founding of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It is not Parsons' scientific achievements, however, that he is most widely remembered for nowadays. What is endlessly analyzed is his infamous occult activities that involved a relationship with Crowley and in time the US branch of the Thelemite Ordo Templi Orientis. It was against this back drop that Parsons struck up his little acknowledged friendship with Heinlein.

"As the worlds of science and science fiction continued to coalesce, so Parsons himself was spending more time in the company of professional science fiction writers. He had become a regular guest of the Manana Literary Society, a group of authors who met at the Laurel Canyon home of the writer Robert Heinlein. Lead and intelligent, with a pencil-thin mustache and a penchant for ascots, Heinlein was swiftly winning fame as the preeminent writer in science fiction. When Parsons first met him in 1942, he was thirty-five years old, having begun his career late as a science fiction writer. He had spent some time in the navy before being invalidated out of the service, and he had gone on to a brief career in politics, which culminated in a run for the California State Assembly as a member of Upton Sinclair's left-wing EPIC (End Poverty in California) movement. Beaten by the Republican incumbent, he turned to the pupls for quick money and now, along with Isaac Asimov and L. Sprague de Camp, was rewriting the rules of the traditional science fiction story, crafting realistic characters and beautifully wrought depictions of the future. His stories of lone geniuses as proficient with their fists as with their slide rules proved remarkably popular in the pages of the pulps, and his fame would only increase in the post-war years when he published such best-selling novels as Starship Troopers and Stranger in a Strange Land.

"Heinlein met Parsons at a meeting of the Los Angeles Science Fiction Society. As one of the earliest members of the American Interplanetary Society, the first rocket society in America, he was impressed by the freethinking rocket scientist and invited him to the Manana society, so named 'for all the stories that would be written tomorrow.' Here some of the finest science fiction pulp writers of the time met to drink cheap sherry and talk over new stories.

"Those present included William White, also known by the name Anthony Boucher and a hundred other pseudonyms, whose murder mystery stories were infused with Catholic iconography. Cleve Cartmill, a beat reporter crippled from polio, whose atomic bomb story would so alarm the Manhattan Project, had already met Parsons and visited the OTO on Winona Boulevard. Jack Williamson, who also knew Parsons, could be found in a corner of the room, mulling over stories that mixed parallel time streams with Amazonian dominatrices from the future. Visiting guess from outside Los Angeles would also appear at the society's meetings: L. Ron Hubbard, who could type 2,000 words an hour without revision and who seemed like a character in some of his dizzying tales of psychic powers and strong-jawed supermen; the film director Fritz Lang, whose early German pictures Die Drau im Monde and Metropolis had been two of the earliest science fiction films; and Lang's fellow German ex-patriot Willy Ley, who was now doing his best to popularize the idea of space travel through his factual science articles in the pulps Astounding Science Fiction and Amazing Stories. Into this eclectic group came Parsons, with his talk of rocketry and magick."

(Strange Angel, George Pendle, pgs. 228-230)

Parsons

The Manana Society likely spurred the first meeting between Parsons and L. Ron Hubbard, himself a former Naval officer and the future founder of the Church of Scientology. Hubbard, who would later claim that he befriended Parsons as part of an operation for the Office of Naval Intelligence, performed a bizarre ritual with Parsons known as the Babalon Working that has been the center of much speculation over the years. Hubbard would also scam Parsons out of a considerable amount of money and run off with the rocket scientist's girlfriend.

Hubbard

It seems clear that Heinlein played a key role in introducing Parsons to Hubbard. After Hubbard moved into Parsons' abode, Heinlein would occasionally drop by to fence with his fellow sword enthusiasts. Heinlein also introduced Parsons to the physicist and engineer Robert Cornog, whom he would later dedicate Stranger in a Strange Land to. Cornog would play a key role in developing the atomic bomb while working on the Manhattan Project and would continue to develop missile system throughout the rest of his life. For a time he would also live with Parsons.

A few other interesting points that should be made concerning Heinlein before returning to our regularly scheduled programming: As noted above, Heinlein was living in the notorious Laurel Canyon by the early 1940s. This was roughly at the same time the bizarre facility known as Lookout Mountain Laboratory became operational there (as noted above, Heinlein reportedly lived on Lookout Mountain Avenue during this time frame, indicating he was probably very close to he facility). "Incidentally," this was also when Heinlein decided to launch what would become a highly prolific writing career. A bit about Lookout Mountain:

"What would become known as Lookout Mountain Laboratory was originally envisioned as a fortified air defense center. Built in 1941 and nestled in two-and-a-half secluded acres off what is now Wonderland Park Avenue, the installation was hidden from view and surrounded by an electrified fence. By 1947, the facility featured a fully operational movie studio. In fact, it is claimed that it was the world's only completely self-contained movie studio. With 100,000 square feet of floor space, the covert studio included sound stages, screening rooms, film processing labs, editing facilities, an animation department, and seventeen climate-controlled film vaults. It also had a helicopter pad and a bomb shelter.

"Over its lifetime, the studio produced some 19,000 classified motion pictures – more than all the Hollywood studios combined (which I guess makes little canyon the real 'motion picture capital of the world'). Officially, the facility was run by the US Air Force and did nothing more nefarious than process AEC footage of atomic and nuclear bomb tests. The studio, however, was clearly equipped to do far more than just process film. There are indications that Lookout Mountain Laboratory had an advanced research and development department that was on the cutting edge of new film technologies. Such technological advances as 3-D effects were apparently first developed at the Laurel Canyon site. And Hollywood luminaries like John Ford, Jimmy Stewart, Howard Hawks, Ronald Reagan, Bing Crosby, Walt Disney, Hedda Hopper and Marilyn Monroe were given clearance to work at the facility on undisclosed project. There is no indication that any of them ever spoke of their work at the clandestine studio."

(Weird Scenes Inside the Canyon, David McGowan, pgs. 55-56)

During World War II Heinlein, along with Issac Asimov and L. Sprague de Camp, was dispatched to work at the research laboratory at the Philadelphia Naval Yard. While there were rumors that these prominent science fiction writers were part of a think tank pondering super weapons, the writers have long insisted that their work consisted of little more than investigating hydraulic valves and such like. Its interesting to note, however, that Heinlein, Asimov and de Camp seem to have been stationed at the Philadelphia Naval Yard at roughly the same time the Philadelphia Experiment was taking place. The Philadelphia Experiment is almost surely a hoax, however.

the Philadelphia Naval Yard

Heinlein met his future wife,Virginia Gerstenfeld, during this time. Many of Heinlein's female characters would be based upon her and she reportedly had an enormous influence on his later conservative political leanings.

Towards the end of his life Heinlein would become involved with an organization known as Citizens Advisory Council on National Space Policy. This committee, which met at science fiction writer Larry Niven's house, was one of several lobby groups for the Strategic Defense Initiative, more commonly referred to as "Star Wars." Reportedly Heinlein contributed to Ronald Reagan's 1983 "Star Wars" speech through this organization.

The council also included legendary astronaut and Freemason Buzz Aldrin and General Daniel O. Graham, who served as deputy director of the CIA and director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. After departing the DIA in 1976 Graham became involved with various far right organization with deep ties to the US intelligence community such as the World Anti-Communist League and the American Security Council. Much more information on Graham and these organizations can be found here and here.

Heinlein dedicated one of his Lazarus Long books, The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, to this group. But moving along.

Heinlein and his rather curious associations has of course been rather sparingly addressed by many conspiracy theorists. This is hardly surprising considering how much The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is revered in libertarian and paramilitary circles in the United States. While the nefarious influence Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land has gotten far more attention, its likely Moon has had an even more devastating influence. While the former work may have partially inspired the Manson Family, Moon seems to have been at the heart of Stark's continent spanning network.

Moon... is a work revered by the counterculture and libertarian circles despite the author's unabashed worship of military dictatorships (to say nothing of his likely ties to the US intelligence community). I suppose this is rather fitting considering the influence Stranger had on the Family, a cult that more closely resembled a paramilitary Christian Identity sect than the common perception of hippies (as I've noted before here) but is none the less held up as the "dark side" of the 1960s counterculture. And then there is Stark, a self proclaimed acidified revolutionary who none the less would forge curious ties with at least one fascist cult in Italy. But more on that later.

Let us now finally return to Stark in earnest. In the prior installment I noted Stark's initial meeting with the Brotherhood of Eternal Love in 1969 but I did not mention his earlier ventures into the emerging 1960s counterculture. At this point these encounters should be noted before moving forward. Let us start with his time in France:

"... On the streets during the Paris riots in May 1969 he bumped into a fellow American expatriate. The casual meeting was to have great importance. The two got talking about drugs and the other American, a student at Cambridge, England, mentioned that a drug expert and writer had settled in the university town. Stark tucked the name away for future reference..."

(The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, Stewart Tendler & David May, pg. 140)

We'll get to this so-called "drug expert" in a little bit, so do keep him in mind. For the time being it should be noted that the above-mentioned Paris riots took place in 1968, and not 1969. This event, commonly referred to as "May of '68" or simply "May 68", was one of the most turbulent and striking events of the emerging 60s counterculture. Of it, the legendary rock critic Greil Marcus remarked:

"... when apparently trivial disruptions on a university campus in the Paris suburbs had begun a chain reaction of refusal – when first students, then factory workers, then clerks, professors, nurses, doctors, athletes, bus drivers, and artist refused to work, took to the streets, threw up barricades and fought off the police, or turned back upon their workplaces, occupied them, fought off their unions, and transformed their workplaces into laboratories of debating and critique, when the walls of Paris bled with unusual slogans – when ten million people brought a signal version of modern society to a standstill. 'In the confusion and tumult of the May revolt,' Bernard E Brown wrote in Protest in Paris, his unique academic account of May 68, 'the slogans and shouts of the students were considered expressions of mass spontaneity and individual ingenuity. Only afterwards was it evident that the slogans were fragments of a consistent and seductive ideology that had virtually all appeared in situationist tracts and publications... Mainly through their agency there welled up in the May revolt an immense force of protest against the modern world and all its works, blending passion, mystery, and the primeval.' 'The explosion,' said President Charles de Gaulle in the June speech with which he recapture power, 'was provoked by a few groups in revolt against modern society, against consumer society, against technological society, whether communist in the East or capitalist in the West – groups, moreover, which do not know what they would put in its place, but which delight in negation.' 'The Beginning of an Epoch,' proclaimed the lead article in the twelfth and last number of the journal Internationale situationniste in 1969. 'The death rattle of the historical irrelevants,' said Zbigniew Brzezinski."

(Lipstick Traces, Greil Marcus, pgs. 31-32)

some of the slogans of May 68

Earlier Marcus noted the ideological underpinnings of May 68:

"... a critique of modern society once set out by a small group of Paris-based intellectuals. First organized in 1952 as the Lettrist International, and refounded in 1957 at a conference of European avant-garde artists as the Situationist International, the group gained its greatest notoriety during the French revolt of May 1968, when the premises of its critique were distilled into crudely poetic slogans and spray-painted across the walls of Paris, after which the critique was given up to history and the group disappeared. The group looked back to the surrealist of the 1920s, the dadaists who made their names during and just after the First World War, the young Karl Marx, Saint-Just, various medieval heretics, and the Knights of the Round Table."

(Lipstick Traces, Greil Marcus, pg. 18)

a publication of the Situationist International

A full scale discussion of the Situationists is vastly beyond the scope of this series, but suffice to say they are one of the least addressed and yet most effective of the various fringe counterculture sects that developed during the 1960s. And here was Stark during May 1968 making the scene in Paris during the SI's greatest triumph. A year later Stark would once again find himself within the ranks of Situationists, this time in London.

SI member Charles Radcliffe became involved with an underground magazine called Friends, later renamed Frendz, that ran from 1969 till 1972. Besides Radcliffe, several others involved with the magazine had also been influenced by the Situationists and may even have been directly involved with them. In some accounts this politically radical magazine received a curious source of funding: Ronald Stark.

"Stark had first met the group producing Frendz magazine in 1969, weeks before he introduced himself to the Brotherhood of Eternal Love in California. Developments around the magazine from 1969 to 71 show, Abrams believes, that something fishy was going on:

"'Dick Pontain take Stark off to Frendz magazine. It appears that Stark takes over the funding – there's an overpaid editor, a staff of 17, a fleet of hire cars and they never sold more than 5,000 copies an issue. Now you have this magazine, acting as spokesman for the Angry Brigade, and involved with Jim McCann, who is close to the IRA. Enter, at the beginning of 1971, Howard Marks, who's doing some dope business with Alan Marcuson and Charles Radcliffe of Frendz magazine.'"

(Acid: A New Secret History of LSD, David Black, pg. 98)

What this means is essentially that this magazine, begun kids influenced by the Situationists, would develop ties with terror organizations (the IRA and the Angry Brigade) after Stark arrives on the scene and seemingly takes over the magazine's funding. And the one member directly tied to the Situationists, Charles Radcliffe, also becomes involved in trafficking hashish. His partner in this endeavor was the above-mentioned Howard Marks, a figure with a deep background in his own right:

 "According to Marks, it was nearly two years later, at the end of 1972, when Hamilton McMillan – an MI6 officer and an old chum from Balliol College, Oxford – recruited him as an agent to help in 'unspecified operations.' McMillan apparently thought that as a 'Balliol man, through and through,' Marks would be discreet and useful to Queen and Country."

(Acid: A New Secret History of LSD, David Black, pg. 98)

So, an associate of the magazine, and one involved in a drug smuggling ring with Radcliffe, was eventually recruited as a British intelligence asset. And guess what ties another member of Marks' network happened to have:

"At that time Marks was engaged in a number of smuggling operations. One was a deal with Ernie Coombes of the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. They had an arrangement with various Middle and Near East diplomats and playboys to fly large loads of Afghani hash to America through Europe. Marks, Coombes, and another old Oxford University friend, Graham Plinston, developed a clever scam by setting up a front company to transport PA systems for British rock bands touring the United States. Afghan hash stuffed into speaker cabinets going into the US and replaced with marijuana for the return trip by Brotherhood contacts in the New York Mafia."

(Acid: A New Secret History of LSD, David Black, pg. 98)

Marks

So it would appear Starks' Brotherhood connections went into business with Howard Marks, a some time MI6 asset, after their partnership with Stark had been cemented. This was not the only questionable company the Brotherhood attracted after establishing ties with Stark.

"In speculating on Ron Stark's possible role as an 'anti counter-culture agent', Stewart Tendler and David May, authors of The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, note that Stark began working with the Brotherhood 'at just the time when they were involved with the Weathermen', but fail to come up with any direct link that the Weather Underground might have had with either Stark or the Brotherhood at that time (late summer 1969). However, as we have seen, Stark had already been flirting with 'armed struggle' politics in London in 1969. Even before he met the Brotherhood, when he was hanging out with the Frendz magazine collective whose ranks included associates of the Black Mask/Motherfuckers group in New York.

"It was in fact a year or so after Stark's arrival at Idylwild that the Brotherhood 'connected' with the Weather Underground for the purpose of springing Leary from prison in smuggling him and his wife Rosemary to Algeria as guests of the Black Panthers. In spring 1970 an Orange County judge had passed a ludicrous sentence of up to 22 years' imprisonment on Larry for petty marijuana offenses. As Leary's friends organized a defense campaign, the Brotherhood of Eternal Love paid the Weather Underground $25,000 to free him, a task made much easier by his transfer from Fulsom Prison to the minimum security establishment at San Luis Obispo...

"Given that Hoover's FBI had just denounced the Panthers and the Weather Underground as the most dangerous groups in America, the Leary escape – which was reportedly masterminded by his lawyer, Michael Kennedy – was a brilliant coup, which conjured Hoover's hyperbole into the spectre of a revolutionary coalition that in reality barely existed. However, when Leary appeared to buy the Weatherpeople's skyed-out politics and issued a statement from hiding arguing that 'To shoot a genocidal robot policeman in defense of life is sacred act,' he alienated many of his old friends, many of whom were pacifist..."

(Acid: A New Secret History of LSD, David Black, pgs. 116-117)

a wanted poster for various members of the Weather Underground

Thus, the Brotherhood had transformed from a proto-human potential sect into an idealist drug cartel and finally, after Stark came on board, began involved in the "armed struggle." Leary's escape and subsequent actions of course forever damaged his credibility. And much the same could be said for what the armed struggle did for the New Left in the 1960s. And here was Ronald Stark in the background just before the Frendz collective and the Brotherhood became involved in these elements. As I'm sure many of you are aware, there is a host of speculation concerning the Weather Underground's ties to the US intelligence community. Such a topic is far beyond the scope of this series, but when one considers the presence of men like Stark and Howard Marks in the midst of these groups, such a notion must be given consideration. But moving along.

By the early 1970s the heat was on the Brotherhood of Eternal Love.

"By this time a federal task force composed of thirteen agencies – including the FBI, CIA, BNDD, IRS, Customs, and the State Department – were gearing up for a major crackdown on the Brotherhood. Operation BEL, as the Brotherhood sting was called, scored its first major victory in August 1972, when narcotics agents arrested forty people in three different states. The predawn raids were ordered on the basis of twenty-nine secret indictments handed down by an Orange County grand jury. They marked the accumulation of a year-long investigation that netted a million and a half LSD tablets, two and a half tons of hashish, thirty gallons of hash oil, and $20,000 in cash. Cecil Hicks, the district attorney of Orange County, fingered Leary as 'the Godfather' of the largest drug smuggling network in the world and vowed to press for his extradition from Switzerland. 'Leary is responsible for destroying more lives than any other human being,' Hicks declared."

(Acid Dreams, Martin A. Lee & Bruce Shlain, pg. 271)

a wanted poster for the Brotherhood

In all, several hundred members of the Brotherhood were arrested. At least twenty members chose the fugitive route so as to avoid serving time. In virtually all cases the government relentlessly pursued criminal charges against these individuals, even years after the fact. As recently as 2010, a former member of the Brotherhood was arrested on nearly 40 year old charges. The most famous of these fugitives was of course Nick Sand, who jumped bail in 1976 and became a fugitive for nearly two decades. But he too eventually served time for the charges relating to his time with the Brotherhood.

As one might imagine, there was but one specific individual whom the government did not pursue their case against.

"... When the DEA were putting together a case against Stark in 1972, they had great difficulty in pinning down his personal details and were never able to get his FBI file from New York. Their reports in California and the details passed on to Europe only showed what Stark was not, not what he actually was.

"The silence was finally ended late in 1982. Stark was arrested in Holland on a charge involving 16 kilos of hashish. In the summer of 1983, he was released from custody and thrown out of Holland where he had claimed to be a Lebanese bound for New York. He was arrested on arrival in the United States on a passport violation and DEA agents began to reconstruct the original San Francisco LSD case against him. They found it impossible to do so after such a long time and Stark was released."

(The Brotherhood of  Eternal Love, Stewart Tendler & David May, pgs. 230-231)

Stark

Authorities seemingly had no problem reconstructing cases against lesser members of the Brotherhood, even decades after the fact. But when confronted with Ron Stark, the man who effectively ran the organization by the early 1970s and who would remain a player in international drug trafficking for years to come, they couldn't put together a case. And be assured, Stark's criminal activities by this point in time were legion, having left a paper trail in several countries. In the next installment we shall consider some of these things beginning with the LSD ring that replaced the Brotherhood and its links to Stark. Stay tuned.

Stranger In a Strange Land: The Curious Times of Ronald Stark Part I

Easily one of the most enigmatic figures in the murky history of LSD is a man commonly known as Ronald Hadley Stark. Allegedly born as Ronald Shitsky in New York during September 1938, Stark became the key figure in the illicit LSD trade by 1969 and would remain a force throughout the 1970s. While he was famously involved with the notorious "hippie mafia" known as the Brotherhood of Eternal Love as well as the lesser known but even more prolific British outfit dubbed the "Microdot Gang", Stark's involvement in the manufacturing of LSD began prior to his association with the Brotherhood in '69.

the ever elusive Stark

It is these activities as well as his general involvement in international drug trafficking and revolutionary leftist politics that have typically fascinated alternative researchers and conspiracy theorists though this is but a part of Stark's tangled story. The only online source this researcher has encountered that has offered a thorough account of Stark's life is one offered by Brainsturbator (formerly Skilluminati), to which this series will be greatly indebted. This is a fine account of Stark's involvement in the LSD trade with fringe counterculture groups. My interest, however, in approaching Stark is to address an aspect of his career rarely examined at length: his ties to what is commonly referred to as "Operation Gladio." But to get to that point I most first examine the more known aspects of the man's "career." So let's get on with the show.

Some background on Mr. Stark's early days:

"The official record leaves plenty of room for embroidery and subterfuge. Stark was born in New York in September 1938, as Ronald Shitsky. In adult life he is recorded as being five feet eight inches tall, weighing 210 lb, with brown hair, blue eyes, balding with a scar on his abdomen. In 1962 he was convicted of filing a false application for a government job and became FBI Number 812020E. He failed to abide by the terms of his probation was sent to a federal detention centre, and then to Lewisburg Prison, Pennsylvania. Shitsky was changing identity. He was convicted as Ronald Hadley Clark. When jailed, he was now calling himself. Ronald H. Stark. While in custody he spent a period of time in Bellevue mental hospital. Under the heading of employment, his record merely says 'research laboratory.' In 1967, the record notes he was worth $3000, but the next year in excess of $1 million."

(The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, Stewart Tendler & David May, pg. 137)

Stark's alleged association with Bellevue Hospital Center is most curious. In Acid: A New Secret History of LSD David Black records that Stark describes himself as having studied there rather than having been institutionalized. The legitimacy of either one of these associations, much like everything having to do with Stark's life, is difficult to discern, but such ties open up some interesting possibilities.

Bellevue Hospital was the long time base of operation for the well known child neuropsychiatrist Dr. Lauretta Bender. At Bellevue Hospital and nearby facilities Bender and associations conducted a host of bizarre experiments beginning by at least the 1940s. Some of them involved children. Bender would later go on to develop close links with several of the doctors involved in the CIA/Pentagon behavior modification experiments conducted under auspices of MK-Ultra, Artichoke and other such projects.

"Not a great deal is known about experimental activities conducted in New York on children because the CIA, in 1973, destroyed all its files related to such experiments under the rationale that 'the public would be too outraged over such activities and would not appreciate the Agency's objectives behind such work,' but what is known is shocking. Experiments appear to have initially started in New York City, at Bellevue Hospital from early 1940 to 1956. There, Dr. Lauretta Bender, a highly respected child neuropsychiatrist, experimented extensively with electroshock therapy on children who had been diagnosed, some incorrectly, with 'autistic schizophrenia.'

"In all, it has been reported in several medical journals, as well as in at least two medical texts written by Dr. Bender, that she administered electroconvulsive therapy to about 100 children ranging in age from 3 years old to 13 years, with additional reports indicating the total may be twice that number. One source reports that, inclusive of Dr. Bender's work, electroconvulsive treatment was used on more than 500 children at Bellevue Hospital from 1942 to 1956, and then at Creedmoor State Hospital Children's Service from 1956 to 1969...

"Interesting to note, is that Dr. Bender's work at Bellevue Hospital involving children followed earlier 'depatterning' electroconvulsive experiments conducted at the hospital, then termed 'annihilation' therapy. The so-called therapy began in the mid-1940s and followed earlier efforts using insulin and Metrazol shock therapy practiced on well over 500 adult patients and an undetermined number of children at several New York hospitals. In January 1937, Dr. Bender as part of a large contingent of Bellevue hospital physicians, including Drs. Joseph Wortis and Karl Bowman, accompanied by Dr. Harold E. Himwich, from Albany Medical College, attended a joint meeting of the New York Neurological Society and the psychiatric branch of the New York Academy of Medicine. The gathering featured a virtual who's-who of practitioners of insulin and Metrazol shock therapy, supposed cures for mental illness that, following sound discrediting of both techniques triggered a stampede towards electroshock therapy as a credible technique.

"Also attending this joint meeting as a presenter was Dr. D. Ewen Cameron, who, according to historian Dr. David Healy, 'in March 1936, introduced insulin coma at Worcester State Hospital in Massachusetts.' Cameron, who would eventually head up infamous MK/ULTRA Subproject 68 in Montréal, also conducted extensive experiments at Worcester Hospital with a seizure-inducing drug called Metrazol, as did physicians at Bellevue Hospital and the U.S. Army's Edgewood Arsenal, where Dr. Howard E. Himwich served as research director. It is unknown how many, if any, children were subjects in these experiments, but funding for Cameron's Worcester activities was provided by the Child Neurology Research, which was part of the Friedsam Foundation."

(A Secret Order, H.P. Albarelli, pgs. 36-37)

Dr. Bender

This researcher has found no reference to Stark being linked to Bellevue until 1962, after these barbaric experiments on children had ceased at that facility (at least officially). There has been some speculation that Stark received his first dose of LSD at Bellevue during this period, but there is no solid evidence for this. As noted above, Stark was born in New York in 1938, and thus would have been at an ideal age by the time the experiments at Bellevue were in full swing, but again, there is no evidence of an association before 1962. Still, this is one of the most compelling aspects of Mr. Stark's official background that has never really received the attention that it deserves. But moving along.

Stark was still living in New York City during the mid-1960s and already indulging in a curious lifestyle.

"Friends in New York in the mid-1960s remembered him as living in a tenement in the centre of the Little Italy area of the city. They thought he was a biochemist or something at Cornell University. 'He was short and fat. The kind of guy who could pass as ethnic anything and aged between 25 and 45. He was an interesting guy', said one acquaintance. Stark also seemed a little eccentric. He had a six-room apartment, but lived in only two of them, throwing his garbage into the other four rooms. When the place filled up, he left. The friends understood he got his money from a breakthrough in his research, and they saw documents would seemed to back up the story. One of the friends tried to get hold of Stark at his Cornell laboratory, used by Noble Prize winner, but no one had heard of him.

"Stark's explanation of his wealth to friends in the drug world revolved around his connections with the Whitney family, one of America's richest clans. Calling himself, George Ronald Hadley Whitney Stark, he claimed to have been born into an Austrian branch of the family. He was given money from the family's trust funds which he put to good use and increased. Stark said he was at Harvard at the time of President Kennedy's election and, on graduating, joined the administration, like many other young Harvard men recruited by the Kennedys. He served under McNamara in the Defense Department on work which was secret but the (unspecified) tasks eventually so disgusted him that he resigned. His break with the American establishment was completed in the mid-1960s, when he first took LSD.

"The conversion to LSD was omitted when Stark spoke to his lawyers. The story here was that his father had been a biochemist in Europe during the 1930s who had moved his funds from Nazi Germany to Switzerland. Stark inherited the funds because his mother wanted nothing to do with anything connected with the Nazis and in 1968 Stark sold patents, implying that they might have been his father's, to a Californian corporation for $900,000, plus an annual royalty payment guaranteed at never less than $24,000. A graduate of Harvard, the Rockefeller University, and in New York teaching hospital, Stark took his PhD in biochemistry and his MD and, with his new fortune, moved into the international business community.

"In Accra, capital of Ghana, in 1967 Stark again claimed connections with the Whitneys. He acquired a genuine 40 per-cent holding in the Ghanaian state pharmaceutical house, in the hope of eventually buying out the government. While there, he enlisted the aid of an economic specialist at the US embassy to press his bid. Entertained at the diplomat's home, he boasted of his collection of large, fast cars and houses in Rome, Paris, and other capital cities. Further along the coast in Nigeria, he claimed to be an important member of a company called West Africa Services and talked of plans to open a pharmaceutical company. His business card announced him as part of Interbiochem Ghana – which the card said it had replaced the state pharmaceutical house.

"In fact, he was never a graduate of Harvard – or of anywhere else, for that matter. The firm to which he is supposed to sold his patents says merely that they had some dealings with him in the mid-1960s, and did not wish to comment further..."

(The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, Stewart Tendler & David May, pgs. 137-139)

William Collins Whitney, patriarch of the prominent American dynasty to which Stark claimed a relation

At this point let us pause and briefly consider one of Stark's accounts of how he acquired his wealth: from patents his father smuggled into Switzerland from Nazi Germany during the 1930s, or possibly later. This account is compelling. Every year more and more information comes out revealing the disturbing extent to which Nazis and their capital departed Germany as the war went sour. The highly controversial "Red House Report" raises some very unsettling possibilities as to what the motivations were behind these departures. Of it rogue historian Peter Levenda notes:

"The Red House Report was only one indication that the Nazis were planning for their survival almost a year before the surrender in May of 1945. They had ample time to move gold and valuables out by truck and submarine to points all around the world, and the evidence shows that they did. They had a network of agents in the Americas, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East who would facilitate these transfers, as well as the transfer of personnel, and these networks were all in place before the end of 1944...

"... The flight of Nazis to South America, especially to Argentina, has become something of a cliché and the subject of novels, films, documentaries, and academic research and reportage. However, one aspect of the Nazi post-war strategy that often has been overlooked by popularizers and Hollywood screenwriters is the flight of capital. This is an essential aspect of the Nazi exit strategy – as evidenced by the Red House Report – and the ready availability of cash meant that the Nazi underground could continue to function without worrying about how they would finance their operations. The amount of gold and other treasure that was taken out of Europe has yet to be adequately calculated, but it was enough to ensure – with careful planning and investments, legal and illegal – an operating fund that was the equal of the budgets of small countries.

"Due to the complexity of international trade and finance and the obscurity of offshore accounts, encoded wire transfers, and foreign currency transactions – as well as the involvement in the trafficking of Nazi gold by other members of the Axis powers and sympathizers, including Argentina, Chile, Spain, Portugal, Switzerland and most notably Japan – this aspect of the ODESSA story resists all attempts to accurate accounting..."

(The Hitler Legacy, Peter Levenda, pgs. 120-122)

the controversial "Red House Report"

According to Levenda, Switzerland was especially important to the financial aspect of the post-war Nazi International.

"In Switzerland, however, plans for salvaging Germany's wealth had been in motion long before the invasion and the subsequent assassination attempt on Hitler. This was at the offices of the Bank of International Settlements (BIS), a financial institution that was the brainchild of Hjalmar Schacht, ostensibly as a device for handling Germany's World War One reparations as required by the Treaty of Versailles.

"BIS was created by Bank of England chairman Montagu Norman in collaboration with Schacht; the first, tumultuous meetings that finally gave the BIS its formal blessing involved American financier Charles G. Dawes and American industrialist Owen D. Young. Dawes was chairman of the board of City National Bank and Trust of Chicago, and had been a director of the US Bureau of the Budget, involved with German reparations arrangements after World War One. Young was the founder of the RCA Corporation and chairman of General Electric. The idea was to create a kind of clearinghouse for the funds. The Germany would pay (to the tune of over 130 million gold marks per year, as per the Versailles Treaty, a sum that increased to more than 500 million marks per year as the discussions evolved) as reparations to those countries that had lost blood and treasure in the war. BIS would be 'the central banker's central bank,' a kind of super-bank, whose members included representatives from Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, Japan, and the United Kingdom. It would be immune from any country's laws and politics, the luggage of its members not subject to search by the police forces of any nation. The members of BIS were and are economic and financial diplomats, whose loyalty is not to the countries that sired them, but to the Bank itself. Until 1977, in fact, the location of its headquarters in the Swiss town of Basel, hidden behind a chocolate shop, was a secret known only to a few. Outsiders were – and are – not permitted to observe meetings, or even to view the rooms were meetings were held. Its deliberations are secret, save for the annual reports, which presumably have been sanitized of any incriminating evidence.

"Schacht, as president of the Reichsbank at the time of the founding of BIS (January 20, 1930), was deeply involved in its inspiration and creation. He saw BIS as a tool that could be used to move money around discretely, paying off Germany's war debts in the kind of sleight-of-hand for which Schacht was understandably famous...

"For all intents and purposes, BIS was the Nazi bank during the war years – essentially the foreign branch of the Reichsbank, where deals could be cut in safety and secrecy with the heads of other central banks, including the consortium of American banks that were represented by Thomas H. McKittrick.

"In 1944, meetings were being held at the highest level at the BIS headquarters in Basel to determine how to best allow the Nazi machine to survival what was seen as its inevitable defeat on the battlefield. It was a surreal composition, and if the documentation did not support it, we would have a difficult time believing it. The bankers present at these meetings included representatives from countries that were currently at war with each other, discussing how to hide and move Nazi gold to ensure the continuity of the German economy in the post-war period. Indeed, according to US Treasury Secretary Morgenthau – a devoted anti-Nazi – at the 1944 Bretton Woods meeting that created the International Monetary Fund, there was a total of fourteen BIS directors, of which twelve were Nazis or members of regimes controlled by the Nazis (such as the Czechs who had to surrender all their gold to the Reich's accounts at BIS). Morgenthau's efforts to shut down the BIS were doomed to failure when the Swiss bankers threaten to walk out of the conference."

(The Hitler Legacy, Peter Levenda, pgs. 129-131)

the modern BIS

Levenda notes that besides personnel and gold, technical know-how and scientific research was also smuggled out of Nazi Germany during the war years. Is it possible the patents Stark claimed his father had acquired during the 1930s in Nazi Germany were such contraband? As outlandish as this possibility may sound, Stark would appear to move rather comfortably amongst neo-fascist sects in Italy and beyond by the 1970s despite years of rubbing shoulders with and enabling radical leftists. But more on that latter. Suffice to say, however, the patents do seem to be real and the company that acquired them was not anxious to offer any real details on them. Unfortunately, little information is available concerning this mysterious company.

But on with Stark's early years:

"... Department of Defense records in Washington do not go back further than 1973. There is a Ronald Harry Stark living a perfectly ordinary life in the Midwest. The Stark has genuine connections to various forms of research; somewhere, although he cannot remember anyone like his 'namesake,' the fictitious Stark discovered him and his useful identity. The two men are the same age, the same build and the real Mr. Stark says he has never been out of the United States. 'Stark's' mother is still alive and living in New York, but neither she nor his lawyer would comment about the background of her son.

"In all the autobiographies Stark issued, one thing was missing which could have explained more about his wealth: Stark was a very successful LSD entrepreneur. At some point he worked for a corporation which sold erotamine tartrate in the United States – a company for which Druce once acted as agent and the one Stark is supposed to have sold his patents to – and a comparison of street prices for LSD and the wholesale price of ergotamine would have made interesting reading for a man out to make a fortune. Or, while at Bellevue, did Stark received his first LSD as part of a course of treatment? The story about the squalor of his New York apartment is interesting when compared with Sand's early career in similar circumstances. Perhaps Stark tried to make his own LSD and the squalor was either a cover or the result.

"Exactly when he moved into large-scale production abroad, or why, is not known; but several sources independent of each other report a production run in Rome at the time when he suddenly became wealthy. By the late 1960s, Stark had again moved, to France, embellishing his operations with legitimate chemical companies as a front. He was established in the thirteenth arrondissement of Paris with two other Americans, working at night after the regular staff had gone."

(The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, Stewart Tendler & David May, pgs. 139-140)

Despite seemingly being one of the world's first "LSD entrepreneurs" Stark's mythos did not begin in earnest until 1969 when he hooked up with the legendary Brotherhood of Eternal Love. An in depth examination of the Brotherhood is far beyond the scope of this series, but in brief: Founded in 1966 by "Farmer" John Griggs and members of an Anaheim "car club" (and not a motorcycle gang, as is commonly claimed), the Brotherhood would become the largest LSD smuggling network in the world by the late 1960s.

"Farmer" John (right) with Timothy Leary (center)

 The origins of the Brotherhood began with an acid trip Griggs took that inspired him to travel across the country, to Millbrook, New York, and consult with Timothy Leary there. At the time Leary was holed up at an estate in the area owned by William Mellon Hitchcock, a relation of the wealthy and intelligence-connected Mellon dynasty. Grigg's conversations with Leary inspired Griggs to found the Brotherhood upon his return to California.

Hitchcock to the right

After the arrest of the legendary Augustus Owsley "Bear" Stanley III, the grandson of a US Senator from Kentucky, the Brotherhood moved to fill the void with the assistance of Hitchcock. Hitchcock provided the Brotherhood with the capital as well as two chemists, Tim Scully (a former assistant to Owsley) and Nick Sand, to begin a new LSD production ring. I've written much more about Hitchcock's dealings with the Brotherhood as well as the mysterious Mellon clan before here.

By 1969 Hitchcock began to distance himself from the Brotherhood once law enforcement began to take notice of his more curious business ventures. It was at this point that Stark entered the picture.

"It was at this point that a mysterious figure named Ronald Hadley Stark appeared on the scene. The first time anyone heard of Stark was when one of his emissaries turned up in New York to see Hitchcock. The man claimed to represent a large French LSD operation. He was seeking to unload his product through covert channels. Hitchcock, who was then trying to distance himself from the drug trade, directed his visitor to the Brotherhood ranch. A few weeks later, Stark and his assistant travel to Idylwild.

"The Brothers were hesitant initially, but after some verbal sparring Stark proved his sincerity by showing them a kilo of pure LSD. This is a rather impressive credential, to say the least. None of the Brothers had ever seen that much acid in one place before. Stark informed them that he had discovered a new quick process of making high-quality LSD. He laid out his plan to turn on the world – not just the West, but the Soviet Union and the communist countries as well. Stark had business contacts with the Japanese Mafia, and they could smuggle drugs into the Chinese mainland. He also knew a high-placed Tibetan close to the Dalai Lama. Why not offer him enough LSD to does all the Chinese troops occupying Tibet? The CIA was training Tibetan exiles for guerrilla action in their former homeland, and the hallucinogen could come in handy. The Brothers dug his rap. 'We were definitely very gullible in believing the stuff he told us,' Scully said."

(Acid Dreams, Martin A. Lee & Bruce Shalin, pgs. 248-249)

And it is here that I shall wrap things up for now. In the next installment I shall consider Stark's alleged revolutionary inspiration, the fate of the Brothers and the ties Stark had with the Microdot Gang. Stay tuned.

The JFK Assassination: A Strange and Terrible Saga Part V

Welcome to the fifth installment in my examination of the assassination of JFK. Over the course of the first two parts of this series I considered the strange individuals and happenings in the two areas of the country --Dallas/Fort Worth (examined in part one) and New Orleans (part two) --that Oswald resided in leading up to the assassination. In the third installment I pulled things back a bit and considered the potential plotters behind the assassination. In the most recent installment I considered the curious links the JFK assassination and plotters had to the Project Artichoke.

And with that out of the way let us now consider the purpose of this installment: Here I am going to focus in on the bizarre secrets societies surrounding the JFK assassination, for they are legion. Of course, conspiracy culture is littered with references to secret societies implicated in the Kennedy assassination, the most common of which being the Freemasons. James Shelby Downard and hardline traditionalist Catholic Michael A. Hoffman II famously argued that the Kennedy assassination is a re-enactment of the ancient "Killing of the Divine King" rite that Sir James George Frazer based the legendary mythology study The Golden Bough around.

The Internet is of course littered with accounts of the Killing of the King and Masonic involvement in the assassination and as such I will not concern myself with it here. For those of you who have somehow not stumbled upon the Dowanardian interruption of the assassination a copy of the essay "King Kill 33" in which this concept was first addressed at length can be found here. The famed cryptozoologist Loren Coleman recently published an excellent outline of the Masonic implications of the Kennedy assassination as well, which can be found here.

the legendary James Shelby Downard

With the Masons now accounted for let us move along to another longtime whipping boy of the conspiratorial right: Skull and Bones.

Founded in 1832 by William Huntington Russell and Alphonso Taft (whose son, fellow Bonesman William Howard Taft, would become the twenty-seventh president of the United States and, later, a Supreme Court Justice), Skull and Bones claimed to be the first American chapter of a mysterious of German secret society that has never been revealed. Conspiracy theorists have long alleged that there is a link between Skull and Bones and the infamous Bavarian Illuminati, but most credible accounts of the Illuminati indicate that it had been defunct decades before the founding of Skull and Bones.

It is interesting to note, however, that the order's symbol --the skull and crossbones --was used frequently by various German paramilitary organizations as earlier as the eighteenth century. The symbol, called the totenkopf, was first used by the Prussian army via a Hussar regiment during the War of the Austrian Succession. Prussian and Brunswick armies continued to use the totenkopf up until the end of the First World War in 1918.

a Prussian Hussar displaying the totenkopf on his uniform

Afterwards and throughout the interwar period the totenkopf was used by the Freikorps, paramilitary units comprised primarily of World War I veterans who combated communist forces (sometimes in full scale pitched battles) throughout Germany during the Weimar Republic days. When the Nazi regime came to power, the totenkopf was infamously adopted by the SS to be the order's insignia. Bizarrely, the totenkopf was also adopted by several White Russian regiments as well. As we have seen through out this series and earlier ones, White Russians seem to appear frequently amongst far right circles from the early to mid-twentieth century (and sometimes beyond). But so much for the totenkopf.

a Freikorps member displaying the totenkopf (above) and one of the death's head rings (bottom) all SS men were given upon being initiated into the order

As was examined in the third installment of this series, several of the major participants in the assassination plot (in both the upper and lower levels) seem to have also been involved in drug trafficking, especially heroin. Skull and Bones has of course been linked to the opium trade as a result of the order's co-founder, the above-mentioned William Huntington Russell. Russell came from a wealthy family that was reputed to have been deeply involved in the opium trade. This business was managed through Russell & Company, the largest American trading house in China for much of the second half of the nineteenth century.

"Russell & Co. was the largest American opium smuggler, and the third largest in the world, behind the British Dent firm and the largest smuggler of all, the Scottish merchants Jardine-Matheson. For many years. Russell a& Co and Jardine-Matheson  worked together and were known as the 'Combination.' They virtually controlled the trade, manipulating market forces towards maximizing profits.

"Russell & Co. was started in 1824 by Samuel Russell, of Middletown, Connecticut. In 1828 it 'absorbed' the T. H. Perkins opium concern of Boston and became America's dominant force in China. Russell & Co. was very much family affair, with uncles, cousins, brothers, fathers and sons dominating the firm and its allied banks and fronts.

"The Russell was family steeped in Yale College history. The Rev. Nodiah Russell was a Yale founder. And in 1832, General William Huntington Russell, Samuel Russell's cousin, founded one of the US' most famous secret societies: the Order of Skull and Bones, along with Alphonso Taft., Taft's son, future President William Howard Taft (S & B 1878), would play many roles in the creation of international  narcotics controls and the US Drug War."

(Fleshing Out Skull & Bones, "Black Market Bones," Kris Millegan, pg. 153)

William Huntington Russell

William Huntington Russell would later go on, along with fellow Bonesman Daniel Coit Gilman, to establish the Russell Trust Association for Skull and Bones. Because of his family's extensive dealings in the opium trade (as well as the dealings of other notable New England families who also ended up in Skull and Bones) it has been presumed that opium money was used to establish the trust, an assertion certainly not without merit. What's more, over a century later certain powerful Bonesmen would continue to be implicated in drug trafficking.

Before moving alone to the Bonesmen involved in the Kennedy assassination, there's a curious synchronicity concerning Dealey Plaza that warrants mentioning. Dealey Plaza is of course the location where JFK was assassinated. According to the Masonic interpretation of the assassination put forth by James Shelby Downard and Michael A. Hoffman, the latitude line upon which the killing occurred is significant because Dallas is located at the thirty-third parallel north. Thirty-three is the number of the highest grade that can be attained in Scottish Rite Freemasonry and is generally alleged to be highly significant to Masonry. For this reason, some have alleged that many sinister acts are deliberately committed on or near the thirty-third parallel north, as noted before here.

While this is an interesting observation, there is one problem: Dallas is not located at the thirty-third parallel. Rather, it is upon the thirty-second, which may well be even more significant. As conspiracy buffs are well aware, the number 322 is highly significant to Skull and Bones (sometimes the Order is known simply as Chapter 322). The significance of this number has long puzzled conspiracy researchers.

"What is the significance of the '322' in Chapter 322? William Russell imported the society from Germany and so it has been argued the 322 stands for '32 (from 1832), the second chapter, of this German organization. Possibly a chapter 320 and a chapter 321 may exist somewhere and 323 is the designation of a room within the Skull and Bones temple at Yale.

"Another interpretation is that the Order is descended from a Greek fraternal society dating back to Demosthenes in 322 B.C. This has perhaps some credibility because Bones records are dated by adding 322 to the current year, i.e. records originating in 1950 are dated Anno - Demostheni 2272."

(America's Secret Establishment, Anthony C. Sutton, pg. 6)

The number 32 in and of itself is sometimes thought to be used as a stand in for 322, possibly because the Order was founded in 1832, as noted above. So perhaps the assassination occurring at the third-second parallel north had a more precise meaning that the long revered Masonic interpretation. But moving along.

As to the Kennedy assassination, families linked to Skull and Bones appear throughout. This is most notable in the case of Michael Paine, the Bell Helicopter employee who befriended, along with his wife Ruth, the Oswalds in the Dallas/Forth Worth area upon their return to the United States from the Soviet Union. As noted in the first installment of this series, Michael Paine was related to three prominent New England families: the Paines, the Forbes, and the Cabots. Both the Paine and Forbes families have their ranks represented in Skull and Bones.

Ruth and Michael Paine

Another figure that lurks in the backdrop of the assassination with ties to Skull and Bones is Colonel Wickliffe Preston Draper. Draper is most well known today as the founder of the Pioneer Fund, a nonprofit organization that became the chief sponsor of eugenics-based research in the post-World War II era. Draper, the offspring of wealthy New England and Antebellum South dynasties, was also a major backer of the Liberty Lobby, Holocaust revisionism, and the anti-desegregation movement in the America South in the post-Brown v. Board of Education era. It is possibly that through the latter Draper may have had ties to Guy Banister, the New Orleans-based private detective long linked to the assassination. As noted in the second installment of this series, Banister was a member of the State Sovereignty Committee, an anti-desegregation organization chiefly funded by Draper. Banister may also have had links to Draper via his ties to Senator James Eastland, who distributed money for a fund established by Draper. At least two of Draper's relations, Arthur Joy Draper and William Henry Draper III, were members of Skull and Bones.

Colonel Wickliffe Preston Draper

Probably the most commonly linked Bonesman to the assassination was George H.W. Bush, the eventual forty-first president of these United States. Along the way Bush also played the part of an oil tycoon, the director of the CIA and the vice-President. Many researchers believe that Bush I's ties to the US intelligence community began well before he assumed the directorship of the CIA. There have long been rumblings of Bush I's dealings in the illegal drug trade as well, especially during the 1980s.

"... It is significant to note that Bush is the only figure in public life who has been a key player in the drug wars of three administrations.

"In 1971 Bush was first brought into the anti-drug war by Richard Nixon, who appointed him to the White House Cabinet Committee on International Narcotics Control. This 'war' proved useful for Nixon as a cover for the White House plumbers and the other hijinks that ended in Watergate. It was also useful for the CIA, which tucked its agents under deep cover in the Drug Enforcement Agency and thus tasted the forbidden fruit of domestic operations – like assassination plots and wide-scale electronic eavesdropping. And there were the CIA-favored drug traffickers who enjoyed a certain immunity as long as they did the agency's bidding...

"Thus began the second phase of George Bush's war on drugs. Once in office President Reagan began his holy war against the Sandinistas. He put Vice President Bush in charge of the War on Drugs and the War on Terrorism, and the cowboys enjoyed a magnificent restoration. Under Bush's dual commands the CIA's airlines began to fly again; the Miami station, once the biggest spy post in the world during the anti-Castro plots of the sixties, was retrofitted; Noriega was put back on the payroll; and in the name of helping the Contras, the ineffable exceptions to the crackdown on drug traffickers were made. The war on drugs again provided cover for the pursuit of certain foreign policy goals.

"The CIA's history of cooperating with drug-dealing nations for Cold War purposes has been described as early as 1972, in Alfred McCoy's classic study, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia, which detailed the agency's role in the heroin kingdoms of the Golden Triangle – Laos, Burma, and Thailand. In a more contemporary example, on May 13, 1990, the Washington Post front-paged a story detailing the Bush administration's failure to act on persistent reports of drug trafficking among U.S.-backed factions in the Afghan civil war. 'The U.S. government has for several years received, but declined to investigate, reports of heroin trafficking by some Afghan guerrillas and Pakistani military officers with whom it cooperates in the war against Soviet influence in Afghanistan,' the Post story began.

"Flashback to May 15, 1984, when the Veep George Bush was visiting Pakistan, the first ranking U.S. official to come to Islamabad since Gen. Mohammed Zia ul-Haq took power at the barrel of a gun in 1977. General Zia's gratitude knew few bounds and the Vice President was treated like royalty. At a magnificent state banquet George Bush rose to acknowledge the applause of the beribboned Pakistani generals, and speaking as America's had narc praised the Zia government's antinarcotics efforts as a 'personal' satisfaction. The general beamed in self-congratulation. When Bush left Pakistan three days later, he announced an extraordinary outpouring from the U.S. treasury – $3.2 billion in new U.S. military aid, and another $2 billion for the Pakistani army, which was the arms pipeline to the CIA-supplied Afghan rebels...

"At this time Pakistan was providing as much as 70 percent of the high-great heroin entering the world market. The dope came courtesy of an elite Pakistani military unit, which managed the truck convoys carrying the CIA's arms to Afghanistan. (The trucking company, owned by the Pakistani army, was the largest transportation business in the country.) The trucks deliver their cargoes of weapons and returned from Afghanistan laden with poppy; fabulous profits were spread throughout the military hierarchy all the way to General Zia himself...

"Pakistan's role in transporting raw opium gum from Afghanistan and then processing it into heroin was well known in the European intelligence community; it was well known to the American Drug Enforcement Agency and to the CIA. Certainly former CIA Director Bush knew about it – as head of the National Narcotics Border Interdiction System he was privy to worldwide narcotics intelligence."

(Deadly Secrets, Warren Hinckle & William Turner, pgs. xxxiii-xxxvi)

Then of course there was the whole Iran-Contra thing.

"According to the report issued by Kerry Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Terrorism, Narcotics, and International Operations... there were 'obvious and widespread' drug trafficking by Contra suppliers going on in the war zones of northern Costa Rica. The Kerry subcommittee found that these drugs-for-guns activities were being covered up by CIA operatives and other players in the resupply network.

"And there are indications plenty of Contra drug dealing in [Oliver] North's diaries. For instance, there is the entry on July 12, 1985: '$14M[illion] to finance came from drugs.' But North was able to contain reports of Contra drug money because Bush's Task Force on Combating Terrorism gave North the mandate and the equipment to pursue a wide range of domestic intelligence operations against opponents of the administration's Central America policy. Bush's staff brought CIA experts in propaganda and disinformation into his anti-terrorism loop, using them to confuse the American people about the situation in Central America – the line was put out that the Sandinistas were dealing drugs – and to bypass both Congress and the Constitution in the Contras resupply effort. North also coordinated fund-raising efforts to defeat anti-Contra congressmen up for re-election, and even sicced the FBI on disaffected Contra suppliers, such as Jack Terrel, who was attempting to tell about Contra drug trafficking."

(ibid, pgs. xli-xlii)

the revelations of drug trafficking in Iran-Contra were made by another Bonesman, John Forbes Kerry, a relation of Michael Paine who recently dredged up the old "communists-did-it" explanation of the JFK assassination

As for the Kennedy assassination, Bush I, like many individuals we've encountered throughout this series, had links to the Bay of Pigs debacle. Bush's involvement in Cuba seems to have begun when his oil company, Zapata Offshore, became involved in Caribbean oil wells.

"George Bush made his first real money through offshore oil drilling in the Caribbean in the late 1950s, and Castro's revolution could hardly have been constructed as anything but bad news for the freebooting oil fraternity – as it was for the CIA. At the time of the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, Bush had rigs positioned thirty miles north of Cuba near Cay Sal, coincidently an island the CIA used as a service station for covert operations."

(ibid, pg. xxix)

Evidence seems to indicate that Bush was actively engaged in supplying the Bay of Pigs invasion force.

"Zapata Offshore served as a conduit through which CIA disbursed money for operations. Sources in CIA's Directorate of Operations, told Wall Street Journal reporter Anthony Kimery that Bush 'personally served as conduit through which the Agency disbursed money for contracted services.' As a 'part-time purchasing front for CIA,' Zapata provided supplies for the Bay of Pigs operation, leasing cargo vessels and shipping CIA cargo disguised as oil drilling equipment."

(Our Man in Haiti, Joan Mellen, pg. 91)

This would put Bush in the same crowd as the anti-Castro Cubans and their CIA and military handlers who, as noted in the third installment, likely played a key role in the assassination. Even stranger, however, is the possible relationship between Bush I and George de Mohrenschildt, the White Russian petroleum geologist who befriended the Oswalds in Dallas after they arrived from the Soviet Union. At the very least Bush had attended Andover with Edward Hooker, Bush's roommate and de Mohrenschildt's step-nephew, but there are indications that the relationship went beyond this. Indeed, de Mohrenschildt wrote Bush I on at least two occasions.

The first stemmed from his adventures in Haiti in the 1960s where de Mohrenschildt was officially working for the Caribbean nation surveying oil and geological resources but was suspected of working for the CIA towards the aim of overthrowing Papa Doc. Things didn't work out and de Mohrenschildt eventually departed Haiti, but he would attempt to recoup funds from the $285,000 the Haitian government had awarded him several years afterwards. Bush was one individual he turned to for assistance in this endeavor.

"Then, in June, de Mohrenschildt  contacted his old acquaintance, George H. W. Bush... Bush was now U.S. Representative to the United Nations for President Nixon.

"Icy in his dealings with others, Bush forwarded de Mohrenschildt's letter to David A. Ross in the Haitian Affairs section of the Office of Caribbean Affairs. Ross knew what was required. Your contract with Duvalier was a 'private matter,' Ross wrote de Mohrenschildt. 'You should address your grievance in the appropriate court of competent jurisdiction.'"

(Our Man in Haiti, Joan Mellen, pg. 266)

Papa Doc

The above-mentioned letter was written in 1971. Shortly thereafter de Mohrenschildt began to have a nervous breakdown that lead to his divorce from his third wife, Jeanne, in 1973 after a brutal period of physical abuse. From there de Mohrenschildt overdosed on drugs and slit his wrists, eventually ending with him committing himself to Dallas' Parkland Hospital (yes, the hospital Kennedy died at) in April 1976. There he received nine shock treatments and insisted to his hospital roommate that the CIA was harassing him. Upon being released from the hospital he once again turned to George H.W. Bush.

"Out of the hospital on September 5, 1976, de Mohrenschildt wrote again to George H. W. Bush, who had now assumed the office of Director of Central Intelligence under President Gerald Ford. Vigilantes were pursuing him, de Mohrenschildt said in a sloppy, handwritten letter. He was being followed. His telephone was bugged.

"As he had in Port-au-Prince at the time of the Kennedy assassination, de Mohrenschildt blamed the FBI, although the reality was that it was CIA that had more recently been pursuing him. Invoking his misfortune of having known Lee Harvey Oswald, he described himself to Bush as an 'elderly man who is being punished.'

"'Could you do something to remove this net around us?' de Mohrenschildt begged Bush. 'This will be my last request for help and I will not annoy you anymore.'

"'I do know this man DeMohrenschildt,'  Bush wrote in a memo to his staff. 'He was an uncle to my Andover roommate, and knew Oswald before the assassination of President Kennedy.' Bush, as Hoover had said in 1963, had been briefed. A close friend and collaborator of CIA's WUBRINY/1, Thomas J. Devine, Bush was well aware that de Mohrenschildt had 'got involved in some controversial dealings in Haiti.'

"'My staff has been unable to find any indication of interest in your activities on the part of Federal authorities in recent years,' Bush wrote to de Mohrenschildt in a supercilious rebuff. Bush closes by hoping that his letter 'has been of some comfort to you.' Having addressed de Mohrenschildt condescendingly by his given name, he signs the letter 'George Bush.'

"Bush then turned the matter over to the appropriate CIA component. CIA Counter Intelligence now contacted the FBI. CIA requested 'information on the current activities and location of a Mr. George de Mohrenschildt, who has attempted to get in touch with the Director, CIA.' Counter Intelligence, perhaps the most arrogant of the Agency components, having assumed the personality of its long-time chief, James Angleton, requested that the matter be handled 'on a priority basis.'

(ibid, pgs. 268-269)

Baron de Mohrenschildt

Then there's a mysterious document issued shortly after the death of JFK noting that J. Edgar Hoover had debriefed a "George Bush" concerning the assassination.

 "An older document, dated November 29, 1963, initiated by J. Edgar Hoover, refers to Hoover's having debriefed 'Mr. George Bush of the Central Intelligence Agency' on the Kennedy assassination. It was an unusual Hoover locution, adding the name of the agency to which an individual was connected. Certainly it was uncharacteristic of Hoover to blow the cover of a CIA operative in an official document, but in this case he did. At the very least, it suggested a strong dislike of George H. W. Bush, if not outright personal hostility.

"Confronted by this inconvenient revelation of his connection to CIA, one he had already denied, Bush lied, again. He claimed that Hoover was referring to a 'George William Bush,' a CIA photographic analyst, and not himself, George Herbert Walker Bush. So Bush inadvertently revealed that he was a CIA insider, despite his denial to the contrary.  Had he not been, he would not have known, of course, the existence of his CIA namesake.

"In the ensuing furor that erupted when the Hoover document became public on September 21, 1988, George William Bush, a lowly CIA employee, swore under oath before the United States District Court for the District of Columbia that he had never been debriefed by Hoover anyone else in the FBI.

"Reporters demanding an explanation from CIA were told by CIA's press flack that he would 'neither confirm nor deny that Hoover was referring to George H. W. Bush...'

(ibid, pgs. 89-90)

Naturally a potential reason for why Bush I would have had to be debriefed by Hoover himself concerning the Kennedy assassination has never put forth. Still, nothing has emerged to concretely placing Bush in the plot despite his ties to Baron de Mohrenschildt.

A more tangible link between Skull and Bones and the assassination is the figure of Bonesman Henry Luce, founder of Time-Life magazine. Luce was a curious figure, to put it mildly. He was a staunch supporter Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, going so far as to put the Generalissimo on the cover of Time magazine no less than eleven times between the years 1927 and 1955. Chiang Kai-shek and his Kuomintang party would go on to play a major role in the founding of the World Anti-Communist League, an organization many figures who crop up in the assassination were affiliated with, as noted in parts two and three of this series.

the Generalissimo was also reputedly one of the largest heroin traffickers in the world for much of his lifetime

Bizarrely Luce and his wife, Clare Boothe Luce, would also become one of the earliest proponents of recreational LSD use, at least for the right social classes.

"Henry Luce, president of Time-Life, was a busy man during the Cold War. As the preeminent voice of Eisenhower, Dulles, and Pax Americana, he encouraged his correspondents to collaborate with the CIA, and his publishing empire served as a longtime propaganda asset for the Agency. But Luce managed to find the time to experiment with LSD – not for medical reasons, but simply to experience the drug and glean whatever pleasures and insights it might afford. An avid fan of psychedelics, he turned on a half-dozen times in the late 1950s and early 1960s under the supervision of Dr. Sidney Cohen. On one occasion the media magnet claimed he talked to God on the golf course and found that the Old Boy was pretty much on top of things. During another trip the tone-deaf publisher is said to have heard music so enchanting that he walked into a cactus garden and began conducting a phantom orchestra.

"Dr. Cohen, attached professionally to UCLA and the Veterans Hospital in Los Angeles, also turned on Henry's wife, Clare Boothe Luce, and a number of other influential Americans. 'Oh, sure, we all took acid, it was a creative group – my husband and I and Huxley and[Christopher] Isherwood,' recalled Mrs. Luce, who was, by all accounts, the grande dame of postwar American politics. (More recently, she served as a member of President Reagan's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, which oversees covert operations conducted by the CIA.) LSD was fine by Mrs. Luce as long as it remained strictly a drug for the doctors and their friends in the ruling class. But she didn't like the idea that others might also want to partake of the experience. 'We wouldn't want everyone doing too much of a good thing,' she explained."

(Acid Dreams, Martin A. Lee & Bruce Shlain, pg. 71)

Henry Luce

Life magazine would later one of the publication to most vigorously denounce LSD.

"... In March 1966 Life magazine ran a cover story entitled 'LSD: The Exploding Threat of the Mind Drug That Got Out of Control,' which described the psychedelic experience as chemical Russian roulette in which the player gambled with his sanity. Pictures of people on acid cowering in corners, beyond communication, were used to underscore the message that LSD 'could be a one-way trip to an asylum, prison, or grave.' Life, whose publisher, Henry Luce, had one spoken favorably of psychedelics, didn't pull any punches: 'A person ... can become permanently deranged through a single terrifying LSD experience. Hospitals report case after case where people arrive in a state of mental disorganization, unable to distinguish their bodies from their surroundings... it brings out the very worst in some people. LSD is being dropped in girls' drinks. Terrifying parties are being given with a surprise in the punch. The Humane Society is picking up disoriented dogs...'"

(ibid, pgs. 150-151)

As for the Kennedy assassination, Luce is most commonly connected to it via the purchase of the notorious Zapruder film by Time-Life almost immediately after the assassination.

"By November 25, 1963, Life magazine was said to purchased the original copy, negotiating through the Passman/Jones law firm to pay Zapruder at least $150,000 for all rights. The man who made the deal was Life's publisher, C. D. Jackson, who said he was so horrified by what he saw all that he decided the film must be permanently locked away from public view. It was revealed years later that Jackson, who died in 1964, had been Time-Life founder Henry Luce's personal emissary to the CIA – approving specific arrangements to provide CIA employees with Time-Life cover.

"In its December 6, 1963, issue, Life sought to explain away the view of some of the Dallas doctors that a small wound observed in the president's throat was an entrance wound. The Life article said: 'But the 8mm [Zapruder] film shows the President turning his body far around to the right as he waves to someone in the crowd. His throat is exposed – towards the sniper's nest – just before he clutches it.'

"That account was patently false, since the film clearly showed that the president had never made such a term. But, at the time, nobody outside Time-Life or the government had seen the film. Only after Jim Garrison won a lawsuit to obtain a copy – which Time-Life fought all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court – was the Zapruder movie finally shown at the Clay Shaw trial. It aired for the first time on national TV in 1975."

(The Man Who Knew Too Much, Dick Russell, pgs. 583-584)

C.D. Jackson

In many accounts this is the end of Luce's involvement in the assassination and yet he and his wife seem to have had ties to individuals and organizations long linked to the assassination plot on every level. For instance, Luce was a long time friend and former lover of Mary Bancroft. Bancroft, as noted in part one, had also been Allen Dulles' mistress for some twenty years and also carried out assignments for the spymaster.

What's more, Luce seems to have been a major financial patron of Alpha 66, arguably the most militant of the anti-Castro Cuban groups. As noted part three of this series, Alpha 66 was closely linked to both the assassination as well as organized crime. Reportedly Luce's financial contributions to the organization were quite considerable.

"... Alpha 66 was violently anti-Kennedy in 1963. With the active support of Henry Luce and Time-Life, which is said to spent a quarter of a million dollars, Alpha 66 made a point of attacking Russian targets in Cuba, in an attempt to shatter the growing convergence of U.S. and Soviet policies in the Caribbean after the nuclear scare of the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. When the President appealed separately to Luce and to the exiles to cease their attacks, both rebuffed him..."

(Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, Peter Dale Scott, pgs. 254-255)

Clare Boothe Luce was also actively involved with the anti-Castro underground. She, along with William Pawley (a key figure in establishing Civil Air Transport/Air America, the notorious CIA-backed airline long linked to drug trafficking; as well as a member of the powerful, far right think tank the American Security Council, as noted before here), was one of the key backers of the student group Directorio Revolucionario Estudiantil (DRE). As noted in part two, it was DRE member Carlos Bringuier that Oswald had his notorious confrontation with in New Orleans while the former Marine was handing out Fair Play For Cuba Committee leaflets.

"...  the DRE was subsidized by Pawley and his friend Clare Boothe Luce ... and the DRE head office in Miami had received a report from DRE delegate Carlos Bringuier on his meetings with Oswald, along with one of Oswald's FPCC leaflets and a tape recording of the Oswald-Bringuier radio debate ..."

(ibid, pg. 120)

Later Clare Boothe Luce and the DRE would become deeply involved in an attempt to depict Oswald as a Cuban/Russian agent.

"The DRE led the charge towards a Castro-used-Oswald scenario. Jose Lanusa, the DRE's Miami chief, contacted Clare Boothe Luce and Daniel James about Oswald on November 22, 1963. Luce, the wife of Time-Life publisher Henry Luce, and free-lance writer James were both board members of the Committee to Free Cuba, which had been established in May 1963. James promptly called the FBI. 'LANUSA described OSWALD  definitely a communist and a supporter of FIDEL CASTRO,' an FBI report states. '... LANUSA also advised him that FIDEL CASTRO, in early September at a function at the Brazilian Embassy in Havana, remarked that if the United States causes him difficulty he has facilities to "knock off United States leaders."'

"Luce, a former Congresswoman and U.S. ambassador to Italy, waited longer to come forward. Then, during the Garrison and House Assassination Committee investigations, she made a point of passing along a story that originated with the DRE. Luce said she had gotten a phone call the night of the assassination and been told that the DRE had 'penetrated' Oswald's organization after he came around offering his services as a potential Castro assassin. DRE members had worked their way inside the 'Communist cell,' where Oswald was tape-recorded bragging about being 'the greatest shot in the world with telescopic rifle.' Luce said she had instructed the exiles to turn everything over to the FBI. The House Assassination Committee spent many fruitless hours looking to track down Luce's leads."

(The Man Who Knew Too Much, Dick Russell, pg. 403)

Clare Booth Luce

Nor was Mrs. Luce the only individual with ties to Skull and Bones who would vigorously champion the cause of Oswald-as-a-communist agent. Bonesman James Jesus Angleton, the figure upon whom the Matt Damon character in The Good Shepherd is based, would go to great lengths attempting to establish links to Oswald and the communists as well.

As noted in the third installment of this series, Angleton was likely one of the key plotters in the assassination and the individual who "managed" the CIA throughout the plot. Indeed, evidence has emerged indicating that Angleton may even have been the one who sent Oswald to the Soviet Union as part of a false defector operation he oversaw (as addressed in the third installment). His Counterintelligence (CI) staff began keeping records on Oswald shortly after his defection, years before he returned to the United States.

Angleton was a close friend of Allen Dulles and one of the most powerful figures in the history of the CIA (he was also deeply involved in the Agency's drug trafficking, as noted before here and here). Thus, some eyebrows were raised when he began proclaiming communist plots shortly after the assassination unfolded.

"The falsified 'Lee Harvey Oswald' cables of October 1963, which became part of a CI/SIG file on 'Lee Harvey Oswald' going back to 1960, were supervised by officers of the small Angleton-FBI veterans clique in CI. One can imagine that this clique had used their falsified file on Lee Harvey Oswald as part of the CI/SIG's search for a KGB penetration agent, or 'mole,' within the CIA's ranks. This search became particularly active in 1963, the year of falsified cable traffic about Oswald.

"It is certain however that the effect of the falsified Oswald documentation, consciously or accidentally, was to incriminate him falsely as an apparent KGB assassin. One day after the assassination, the CIA Counterintelligence staff speculated on the sinister implications of Oswald's alleged contact with Kostikov; and it continued to do so for years after. For Kostikov was not just a known KGB agent; he was suspected by Counterintelligence officials in the FBI and CIA of working for the KGB's Department Thirteen, which according to a contemporary CIA memo was 'responsible for sabotage and assassination.' This falsified picture of Oswald as a potential KGB assassin, though never used by the Warren Commission against him, almost certainly contributed to the Warren Commission's determination to close the case as the work of a lone assassin. The alleged Oswald-Kostikov-Department Thirteen connection must have seemed particularly ominous after the Commission was informed by Richard Helms that

The Thirteenth Department headquarters, according to very reliable information, conducts interviews or, as appropriate, file reviews on every former military defector to the USSR to study and to determine the possibility of utilizing the defector in his country of origin.

"CIA and FBI officials have since said that their respective agencies made mistakes in their handling of the Oswald case prior to Kennedy's murder. Yet the Counterintelligence staffs of CIA and FBI, who were responsible for the alleged mistakes, were also given responsibility for investigating the Kennedy assassination afterwards. The CI/SIG in particular, which had misrepresented Oswald within the CIA, was given responsibility for liaison on the assassination with the CI staff in the FBI, who were given secret FBI reprimands for having failed to put Oswald on the FBI's Security Index."

(Deep Politics II, Peter Dale Scott, pgs. 5-6)

Angleton

The Counterintelligence shenanigans would continue throughout the Warren Commission with a special emphasis on depicting Oswald as a communist agent, a prospect that surely terrified more than a few members of the Commission who had recently dodged World War III developing over the Cuban Missile Crisis. WWIII would have surely been inevitable if Oswald was a Cuban or Soviet agent, and Angleton ensured that this possibility was never far from the Commission's mind.

"Angleton and his Counterintelligence Staff, however, were picked in the CIA to handle the Kennedy assassination... Within the CIA, a quite parallel investigation warp, analogous to that in the FBI. There too the investigation of a possible foreign conspiracy, originally lodged with Latin American experts in the Western Hemisphere Division (WH), had after two weeks been snatched away by CIA Counterintelligence Chief James Angleton, William Sullivan's counterpart in the CIA... Angleton's pretext for doing so was a cable from Win Scott, linking Kostikov to WH's agent Rolando Cubela.

"In the CIA, as in the FBI, there are signs that some hidden agenda dictated pre-assassination handling of the Oswald file. Years later Angleton recalled that he and his office had been given the assignment of liaison with the Warren Commission because they 'knew the mechanisms of the KGB [and] of the Cuban DGI.' He spontaneously 'raised the specter of the KGB's [and Kostikov's] Department 13,' whose specialties were defined in a 1964 CIA report from his staff to the Warren Commission as 'abduction and murder.' Both Angleton and his deputy Ray Rocca are known to have argued, along with Mexico City Ambassador Thomas Mann, that Communists might have been responsible for Kennedy's murder. Given the CIA anxiety in 1993 about Departments 13's capability for murder, why then did the CIA suppress all reference to the sinister Kostikov when notifying the FBI, on October 10, 1963, of the 'Oswald' contact with the Soviet Embassy in Mexico City?

"... One has to wonder about the CIA station's handling of the 'phase one' Kostikov story as well. Was the cable about 'Cubella' a plant, to give Angleton leverage over his colleagues, and gain control the case? In any event, the JFK assassination investigation was soon dominated by two Hoover allies: by Angleton (a 'phase one' believer) on the CIA side, and on the FBI side by his very close associate Sullivan, a 'phase two' believer, but also Win Scott's former chief from the days of the wartime FBI SIS service, and an Angleton crony above all.

"A third interested party to this coterie appears to have been Allen Dulles. Now no longer in the CIA but on the Warren Commission, he remained very close to Angleton and his counterintelligence set..."

(Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, Peter Dale Scott, pgs. 66-67)

Win Scott, the Mexico City Station Chief and Angleton crony 

The above references to "phase one" and "phase two" were terms the esteemed Peter Dale Scott applied to the cover-up following the assassination, phase one being the appearance of Oswald as a communist agent and phase two (and the one to receive official endorsement) as a "lone nut." Scott and many other researchers believe that the phase one explanation of Oswald was used as means of encouraging forces outside the assassination plot from looking to deeply into the murder less they trigger a nuclear World War.

By most accounts Angleton's close friend Allen Dulles dominated the Warren Commission and ensured it avoided any serious attempts at investigating the assassination by elements that weren't totally deterred by the nuclear card.

"One reason for the Commission's ignorance about the Oswald file – and the subsequent importance of Mexico City – is that Helms actually pointed Angleton to be the main liaisons to the Commission. Unlike his predecessor in that spot, John Whitten, Angleton tried to accent Oswald's Russian period for the Commission. Whitten wanted to highlight the Cuban connection. It appears Helms did not wish that dangers grand to be explored. He therefore brought in Angleton to be the CIA's chief interface for the Commission. Since Angleton and Dulles were close colleagues from the 1940s, Dulles tipped off his friend as to what queries  they would get about Oswald from the Commission. Since there had been a rumor that Oswald was an FBI agent, Dulles informed Angleton in advance as to what the Commission queries would likely be about Oswald's possible intelligence ties. Then Angleton and William Sullivan of the FBI rehearsed and unified the responses to deny any intelligence connection to the alleged assassin. This was an important part of the cover up since it curtailed any inquiry into the question of whether or not agent Oswald was completing a mission in Mexico that he began in New Orleans. That is, was he further discrediting the FPCC by associating with communist foreign consulates and trying to gain transport Cuba? What made this even more crucial is the fact that there was an 'operational interest' in Oswald held by handful of officers in the Special Affairs Staff (SAS) of the CIA just weeks before the Kennedy assassination. This group was involved with what was left of the Kennedy campaign against Cuba, which was not very much. But as far as the Warren Commission inquiry into Mexico City goes, we have established two key points: 1.) Slawson was much too trusting of the Agency, and 2.) Angleton and Dulles were determined to keep clues about any preexisting relationship to Oswald and the CIA concealed."

(Destiny Betrayed, James DiEugenio, pgs. 347-348)

Allen Dulles

"Incidentally," Dulles also happened to belong to a notorious secret society.

"How [Warren] Broglie was first introduced to the world of intelligence work is unknown, but there is evidence that he came into contact with OSS official Allen Dulles sometime during the Second World War in Basle, Switzerland. Additionally, both men, as well as Conrad Hilton, and several other high-ranking CIA officials, were directors and the Knights of Malta, a long-standing Roman Catholic lay order founded at the time of the Crusades, that today counts among its members some of the richest and most influential men in the world, including many former and current high-ranking CIA officials."

(A Secret Order, H.P. Albarelli Jr., pg. 384)

The above-mentioned Warren Broglie made a curious appearance in Oswald's saga as well, which shall be addressed in just a moment. For the time being, let us briefly consider the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM), more commonly referred to as the Knights of Malta. While the SMOM frequently appears in conspiracy literature it is typically with precious few details and those often revolve around it being an extension of Freemasonry. But researcher John J. Robinson, whose Born in Blood is generally considered the most compelling account linking Freemasonry to the Medieval Knights Templar, took a much different view. He believed that one of the three "Juwes" mentioned in the Masonic myth of the murder of Grand Master Hiram Abiff was the Knights Hospitallers (who eventually became the SMOM) and argued that this was evidence of a long standing rivalry between the two orders.

"As we search British history to find an unfinished temple as a basis for an exclusively British secret society, we find just one answer, in the religious order that often called itself by that simple name alone: the Temple. Jacques de Molay and his predecessor signed documents over the title Magister Templi, Master of the Temple. And that temple, taking its name from the Temple of Solomon, certainly was left unfinished upon the murder of its masters, who also had been tortured to reveal their secrets by three assassins that ultimately destroyed them. Not Jubela, Jubelo, and Jubelum, but Philip the Fair of France, Pope Clement V, and the order of the Knights of the Hospital of St. John of Jerusalem. Many who have read only the Catholic Church's summary of the Templar suppression may object, stating that only the king of France could be considered the 'assassin' of the Knights Templar, having done all the dirty work and having coerced a weak pope to help him. True, that is the church as usual version to this very day, but the historical facts speak somewhat to the contrary...

"When Edward II of England declined to tortured the Templars, the pope could have thrown the problem backed Edward's father-in-law, the king of France: No one forced Clement V to dispatch ten church torture specialist to London. The pope could have lived with the acquittal of the Templars on Cyprus: No one forced him to demand a new trial, or to dispatch a torture team with the power to draw upon the local the Dominicans and Franciscans if extra help was required. Nor did the king of France prevail in his desire that one of his family be made the head of the combined Hospitaller/Templar order, with full access to the combined wealth. And if Clement V had been  merely a timorous puppet Pope with Phillip pulling the strings, as church historians would have us believe, the kings of France would have been the new owners of the Templar properties in France, not the Hospitallers. The pope was much tougher, or at least much more obstinate, then we have been led to believe, and it would appear that he had contrived a plan of his own in concert with the Hospitallers.

"That order has managed to escape any criticism in the matter of the Templar suppression, but apparently only because it had kept a low profile throughout, probably for the very good reason that its role and its reward have been worked out in advance. It is well known that the papacy was in favor of the union of the Templars and the Hospitallers and had already determined that Foulques de Villaret, master of the Hospitallers, would be the Grand Master of the combined orders. The Templars, at their headquarters on Cyprus, had heard of the serious intent to combine the orders and had taken the time to prepare a written tribunal. The Hospitallers, at their own headquarters on the same island, must have received the same information, yet they prepared no rebuttal, written or verbal. In fact, de Villaret  managed to stay away from the meeting in France altogether, with no recorded papal criticism for his absence. That was undoubtedly because his presence wasn't needed and because there was no point in chancing a confrontation between the two orders, especially since the pope was already dedicated to looking after the interests of the Hospitallers. Not only did the Hospitallers offer no objection to the concept of the merger, but they made no attempt whatever to speak up for their brother warrior-monks as they were arrested and tortured. They simply stayed out of it and bided their time, until Clement V, much to the anger of King Philip, declared that all of the confiscated Templar property would go to the Knights Hospitaller and that all released Templars could be taken into the Hospitaller order, thereby achieving de facto the union he had been planning all along, with full Hospitaller approval and cooperation. If one looks for motive, the Hospitaller order was the major beneficiary of the suppression of the Templars, as had probably been the plan from the beginning. The pope and the Hospitallers together thwarted the aims of Philip of France, and there should be no doubt that the Hospitallers rank as one of the three assassins of the Order of the Temple."

(Born in Blood, John J. Robinson, pgs. 271-273)

Foulques de Villaret

At this point let us pause in our consideration of the Knights of Malta and once again consider one of theories put forth concerning the meaning of the alias, Clay (sometimes Clem) Bertrand, used by Clay Shaw (who was portrayed by Tommy Lee Jones in Oliver Stone's JFK), the man Jim Garrison tried for the murder of JFK in the late 1960s:

"The reason Shaw would pick this particular name is very likely because it derives from Pope Clement V, whose surname was Bertrand D'Agout. (It would also explain why in some instances, he used the first name Clem.) This pope had sheltered homosexuals in the fourteenth century. His legacy lived on in the cloistered homosexual community. So much so that their developed a Clement Bertrand Society which helped homosexuals with legal problems. That Shaw/Bertrand sent the gay Latins to Dean Andrew suggests that Shaw was aware of this bit of history."

(Destiny Betrayed, James DiEugenio, pg. 211)

Pope Clement V, who was apparently sheltered homosexuals while simultaneously persecuting the Templar order for a host of "immoral" acts, including sodomy...

Was Shaw also aware that this was the pope who suppressed the Templars and gave their holdings to the Knights of Malta? More than a few websites across the Internet allege that Shaw himself was a member of the Knights of Malta, but I have been unable to reliably confirm this.

Clay Shaw

But certainly there were several key Knights of Malta surrounding the assassination and the cover up. In addition to Dulles there was also Angleton himself, as well as John McCone, Director of the CIA at the time of the assassination (though he does not seem to have been involved). The ties between the SMOM and the CIA were longstanding, if little addressed. OSS (the predecessor organization to the CIA) founder William "Wild Bill" Donovan, whose OSS clique would dominate the CIA for decades, was a member of the Order. As I noted before here, SMOM member William Casey, as Director of the CIA during the Reagan administration, involved the Order in the private aid network dedicated to arming the Contras.

There have long been allegations that George H.W. Bush himself was also a member of the SMOM. I have not been able to reliably confirm this though Wikipedia (for what it's worth) claims that Bush I was brought into the pro Merito Melitensi, a branch of the SMOM described as a "knightly order of merit." Henry Luce is also widely reported to be an SMOM member as well but I was not able to conifirm this either. Clare Boothe Luce, however, was most certainly a Dame of Malta (the female branch of the SMOM).

But as far as the Kennedy assassination is concerned, the appearance of the above-mentioned SMOM member Warren Broglie is especially curious. Naturally Broglie cropped up in one of the strangest and most contested Oswald episodes leading up to the assassination: His trip to Mexico.

"... the Hotel Luma. The manager of... hotel... was Warren Broglie, a Swiss whom Arthur Greenstein recalled as being fluent in four languages. Broglie was also in charge of hotels in Acapulco and along the Yucatán and Baja peninsulas. One of these was owned by the reclusive billionaire Daniel K. Ludwig, another by American oilman J. Paul Getty. But the modest Luma served for twenty years as Broglie's 'home base' because so much of his business was transacted in Mexico City...

"Broglie's bartender and relief headwaiter at the Luma was Franz Waehauf. Of German heritage, he had served in the German military's merchant marine during World War II, afterwards ending up in Mexico. Though he never gained Mexican citizenship, Waehauf stayed on. By 1962 he had been working at the Luma for more than a decade."

(The Man Who Knew Too Much, Dick Russell, pgs. 238-239)

Waehauf has been widely linked to Czech intelligence, which at the time was aligned to the Soviet Union. Curiously Francis Parker Yockey, a key figure in the post-WWII fascist underground, would also do some work for Czech intelligence in the 1950s. Frequently the fascist underground maintained contacts with the intelligence services of both the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies. Conversely, Waehauf's boss, Broglie, had ties to various US intelligence agencies.

"... Broglie, a Swiss-national, had been a confidential informer and willing asset to the CIA (as well as to the Narcotics Bureau and FBI) for about ten years. Broglie was also quite close friends with Winston Scott as he was also with Scott's third wife, Janet Graham Leddy Scott. Indeed, Broglie was a special, head-table guest, along with David Atlee Phillips, another of his close friends, at Janet Scott's lavish 1963 birthday party reportedly held in a private room at the Hotel Luma..."

(A Secret Order, H.P. Albarelli, Jr., pg. 406)

David Atlee Phillips

As noted above, Winston Scott was the CIA Station Chief during Oswald's trip and was likely involved in the "phase one" deception (possibly unwittingly) of Oswald as a communist agent on some level. He was also a close friend of James Angleton. David Atlee Phillips, as noted in the third installment of this series, is widely believed to have played a major role in the assassination. He was the handler of the militant anti-Castro Cuban group Alpha 66 and some researchers also believe for Oswald, who may traveled to Mexico to meet with him.

Robert Buick, an American bullfighter living in Mexico City at the time, frequented the Hotel Luma in 1963. In late September of that year he would claim to see Lee Harvey Oswald (using the alias Alex Hidell) there on at least two occasions and engaged in curious conversations with Broglie and Waehauf. He recounted the following to journalist Dick Russell:

"So Buick watched Alex Hidell from a distance, watched as he huddled in conversations with bartender Waehauf and sometimes hotel town manager Broglie. 'As I recall, "Alex" wasn't in a hotel very long. I saw him once fleetingly, either leaving the bar or the lobby going out the front door. I saw them twice in the bar. There was times where him, Waehauf and Broglie, all three of them, were completely out of sight. They never all left together or came back together, but then all of a sudden one would come in. Five minutes would pass, and another shows up. Ten minutes later, the third one comes back in the bar. Sometimes as much as an hour would go by when none of them were around. So what is the conjecture there? Probably meeting in one of the vacant motel rooms, who knows?...'

"Buick claimed he did overhear snatches of conversations in the Luma bar concerning an assassination attempt against President Kennedy. 'And I related this to those gentlemen I would meet in the park. It wasn't so much what I heard at one specific moment, you understand? And it wasn't something that was directly stated, but more implied. Only in retrospect that it all come together for me...'

(The Man Who Knew Too Much, Dick Russell, pg. 378)

Robert Clayton Buick

Those gentlemen in the park Buick makes reference to were apparently agents of some branch of US intelligence who asked Buick to keep an eye out for suspicious individuals he encountered in Mexico City, or so he claims. Buick was later convicted of robbing several banks in 1966. Another individual, military intelligence officer Richard Case Nagell, who came forward with information concerning the assassination was arrest for a bank "robbery" in Texas shortly before the assassination.

While what role, if any, SMOM member Broglie had in the assassination is highly debatable his appearance in Mexico City, along with the German Waehauf, is most curious. SMOM member Allen Dulles would have contact with the Nazi regime during his stay in Switzerland for the OSS. Later on he and fellow SMOM member James Jesus Angleton would play a key role in organizing former Nazi and Quisling forces into an anti-communist network in Europe after WWII, as noted before here and here. Was SMOM member Broglie, who may have first encountered Dulles in Switzerland during WWII, a part of this network?

Besides the SMOM this anti-communist network, which would eventually crystallize under the banner of the World Anti-Communist League (which had direct links to the assassination, as noted in part two and three of this series), had ties to another bizarre and even more obscure secret society linked to the Medieval Knights Hospitallers. In the next installment of this series we shall consider this Order and its ties to the Kennedy assassination as well as the bizarre churches also linked. Stay tuned.