Anti-Naughty

Eric was kind enough to have on the Anti-Naughty Podcast, which he just recently launched. It would seem I that I am the second guest he's had on. Eric and I had a good time doing the interview, and hopefully all of you will enjoy it as well.

Topics discussed include my background and how I got into conspiracy blogging; my mixed emotions concerning the presidency of Richard Nixon and his war with the China Lobby/Kuomintang and the Corsican mafia; Robert Maxwell and the rest of the family (most notably Ghislaine and Kevin); legendary private detective Robert Maheu; Resorts International and Intetel; the various mobsters that frequented Trump Tower, R. Kelly's sexual forays there as well as the infamous 2016 meeting with Russian lobbyists; the Sovereign Order of Malta and the Knights Templar/Freemasons; the possible link between the headless John the Baptist symbolism used by various esoteric orders and the Bornless Ritual; Propaganda Due; Le Cercle, Norman Lamont and their connections to the Maxwells; the Phoenix Program and John DeCamp; the relationship between political warfare and special operations; and an update on the latest progress concerning my book projects.

The interview can be found here.

For those of you looking additional information on the topics discussed, follow these links:

Le Cercle
Propaganda Due
Trump's mob/deep state ties
Robert Maheu's entrapment operations
The Maxwell family's ties to Le Cercle
Robert Maxwell's background

And with that, I shall sign off for now. As always, stay tuned until next time readers. 

Russian Games

In the aftermath of the release of the Mueller report earlier this year (2019), I wrote an article debunking many of the so-called "smoking guns" behind what is often referred to as "Russiagate." Inevitably, I addressed both Fusion GPS, the private intelligence firm that produced the infamous "Steele dossier"; and Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russia attorney who allegedly offered Donald Trump Jr. and company dirt on Hillary Clinton at the equally infamous 2016 Trump Tower meeting.

In said article, I noted that Veselnitskaya had actually met with Glenn Simpson, a co-founder of Fusion GPS, on the same exact morning as the Trump Tower meeting, which occurred later that day. As Fusion GPS was already compiling opposition research on Trump at the time, the Veselnitskaya-Simpson pow-wow has the air of improbable coincidence to it.

But there is no disputing that Veselnitskaya and Simpson were working in conjunction for the same client at the time. Further, the interests of this client reportedly dominated the conversion at the Trump Tower meeting. And no, that client was not Hillary Clinton.

Rather, it was Denis Katsyv, a Russian business man most well known for his holdings in the company Prevezon. Prevezon, in turn, is said to have been engaged in money laundering and tax fraud. These charges were reportedly first uncovered by the Russian accountant Sergei Magnitsky, whom the Magnitsky Act was named after.

Katsyv

The Magnitsky Act was passed by the US Congress with bipartisan support in 2012 and was soon signed into law by then-President Barack Obama. The law effectively allowed the US government to freeze the assets of Russians the government deemed guilty of human rights abuses, or something along those lines. Thus far, the effects of the Magnitsky Act have been minimum, with only some $20 million in Russia assets frozen and a few minor officials being barred from these United States. While this is rather inconsequential, Russian elites are said to keep nearly $500 billion in assets in Western banks. The Magnitsky Act would pave the way for seizures of this largess, which has probably caused a few sleepless nights in Moscow.

But let us return to Fusion GPS for a moment. When not doing opposition research on Donald Trump, the private intelligence provider was snooping around the chief architect of the Magnitsky Act: hedge fund manager Bill Browder.

Browder

Browder is a figure your humble researcher had never looked too deeply into. But thanks to the efforts of a regular reader, it was brought to my attention that Browder has curious links to several figures that have featured prominently on this blog in recent weeks. As such, I thought the rest of you may be intrigued by a closer look at Mr. Browder.

Crusader or Intelligence Asset?

For years, the mainstream media has worked tirelessly to depict Browder as a heroic reformer engaged in a herculean struggle against Putin, and presumably the forces of evil and darkness as well. Browder is the CEO and co-founder of Hermitage Capital Management, which was the largest foreign portfolio investor in Russia from 1996 until 2005. Hermitage was able to massively cash in on the mass privatization efforts that unfolded in Russia during the 1990s.

Browder's acquisitions came in the midst of economic collapse and spiraling death rates then unfolding in post-Soviet Russia. By contrast, the American Browder was doing so well by 1998 that he renounced his American citizenship to avoid paying taxes. Ever since then he's been a subject of Her Royal Majesty the Queen. 

Browder initially made a name for himself in Russia by investigating corruption amongst the privatization bonanza. For instance, he exposed a certain fire sale Gazprom was engaged in involving gas fields being sold for pittances between 1996 and 1999. The newly-elected Vladimir Putin was impressed at first, and duly sacked Gazprom's CEO in 2001. 

Things had soured badly by 2005, however. During that year Browder was blacklisted by the Russia government and expelled from the country due to his business practices. This included (again) avoiding paying taxes, and, in a bit of irony, attempting to use Russian citizens to buy a controlling stake in Gazprom. 

Putin was not amused and this led to a protracted legal battle. Browder's surrogate was Magnitsky, whose creative accounting had enabled his tax fraud and other such business practices. Eventually, the accountant was arrested in 2008. He died in a Russian prison ten months later, in 2009. Naturally, Mr. Browder accused the Russian government of murdering Magnitsky while he was in their custody.

Magnitsky

This allegedly sparked Browder's crusade abroad to regain his lost assets, which the Russian government had seized in the mean time. He alleged that Mr. Magnitsky was his attorney, and that he had uncovered damning evidence of the corruption of Putin's regime. This had led to his imprisonment, torture, and ultimate murder at the hands of the Russian state. 

The stage was now set for 2012's Magnitsky Act. Browder would continue to hammer away at Russia in the aftermath, publishing the expose' Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man's Fight for Justice. He also continued to name companies and individuals who had participated in the death of Magnitsky and the assault on Hermitage. One of the former was Prevezon.

As a result of the Magnitsky Act and Browder's efforts, property owned by Prevezon in NYC was seized by the US Department of Justice amidst an investigation. Prevezon fought back, however, and accused Browder of defrauding his own company. Enter Fusion GPS and Miss Veselnitskaya. 

Further muddying the waters are persistent allegations that Mr. Browder is some type of intelligence asset. Some sources have accused him of working for MI6, while others have questioned the legitimacy of these allegations. As with many things in the Cold War 2.0, the truth is not an easy thing to come by. But based upon his past history, it seems highly probable that Mr. Browder had some type of relationship with Western intelligence. And that brings me to his very curious background. 

Commies and Capitalists

Browder's family is quite colorful, to put it mildly. His father was Felix Browder, a famed mathematician who served as the president of the American Mathematical Society (1999-2000) and who won National Medal of Science in 1999. Felix had two brothers, both of whom were also mathematicians as well. His brother William had also served as president of the American Mathematical Society.

Then there's Bill's grandfather, Earl Browder, who just so happened to have been the chairman of the American Communist Party for nearly eleven years (1934-1945). He had also been the General Secretary of said party for fifteen years (1930-1945) and ran for the presidency twice on this particular ticket. Browder was later expelled from the Communist Party in 1946 after he broke with the Stalinist line, but would continue to serve as a kind of "literary agent" for the Soviets for some years afterwards. There is ample evidence that since at least the 1930s he had collaborated with Soviet intelligence, most notably the NKVD, one of the predecessors of the KGB. This collaboration appears to have continued even after he was expelled from Communist Party USA.

Earl Browder

Nor was Earl the only family member linked to Soviet intelligence. Browder's younger sister, Marguerite, had worked for the NKVD in various European countries during the 1930s. His niece, Helen Lowry, married NKVD officer Iskhak Akhmerov and assisted him in his espionage activities in the US during the late 1930s. 

And then there's Kitty Harris. Born in London's East End, Harris was likely the daughter of Russian emigres. Her family migrated to Canada in the early twentieth century, with Kitty making the scene in Chicago by the 1920s. There she met Earl Browder and allegedly married him. The marriage turned out to be bigamous, but Harris still followed Browder to Shanghai and later Moscow. During this period she was talent-scouted by Soviet intelligence and began to formally work for them in 1931. By the end of the decade she become linked to a member of the infamous Cambridge Five, a UK-based Soviet spy ring that ravaged British intelligence for decades. Specifically, Kitty allegedly carried on an affair with Donald Maclean while serving as his cut-out for Soviet intelligence.

Kitty Haris

So, to recap: Earl Browder himself, his younger sister, his niece, and his onetime wife had all worked for Soviet intelligence at some point. Two of his three children were also born in Soviet Moscow, including Bill Browder's father. 

As such, it is not entirely surprising that Browder's first significant employer also had longstanding ties to Soviet intelligence. This would be none other than Robert Maxwell, whom Browder worked for briefly during the early '90s at the MCC conglomerate. According to Tom Bower in Maxwell: The Final Verdict, Maxwell had first established ties with the KGB in the immediate aftermath of World War II and had agreed to work as an asset by 1946.

Maxwell's first publisher was Pergamon Press, which specialized in scientific publications. In 1954, Maxwell traveled to Moscow and parlayed his KGB contacts into access to the Soviet Union's scientific publications.

"... Maxwell wanted to negotiate the right to translate and publish Soviet scientific journals and books in the West alongside his German and British publications. After weeks of patient waiting, playing chess and drinking vodka, he eventually persuaded the KGB to approve his venture. Yuri Gradov, the lawyer at Mezhdunarodnaya Kniga, the Soviets copyright agency, was told that the KGB had approved Maxwell's venture: 'I was ordered to conclude a deal at any price.' Indeed, the price paid by Maxwell was astonishingly low. To Gradov's surprise, the Britain was allowed to meet Russia's most important scientists and to sleep in room 107 at Moscow's National Hotel, which had been occupied in 1917 by Lenin..."

(Maxwell: The Final Verdict, Tom Bower, pg. 159)

Robert Maxwell

As was noted above, Earl Browder had been working as "literary agent" for the Soviet Union in the early postwar years. This was around the time Maxwell first came into contact with the KGB. This researcher has been unable to determine if Browder was still operating in this function by the time Maxwell approached the KGB about publishing rights, but there is certainly a distinct possibility that Maxwell encountered Bill Browder's grandfather at some point during this time frame.

Even if he had not, there is still a possibility that the Browder family's ties to the KGB had contributed to Browder being hired by Maxwell during the early 1990s. By this point in time, Maxwell's ties to the KGB were a close as ever. Indeed, Maxwell factored heavily into the KGB's plans for perestroika, the initial efforts to privatize the Soviet Union's economy. Maxwell's role in these efforts have been approved by Vladimir Kryuchkov, the KGB head whom Maxwell had known for years prior to his chairmanship. Shortly after being tapped to lead the KGB in 1988, Kryuchkov met with Maxwell to lay out his vision for perestroika.

"... Even more fearful at the pace at which perestroika was accelerating, Kruychkov said that for the KGB to remain a potent force he wanted to establish 'over six hundred commercial enterprises'. They would all have links to the West. Just as Maxwell's companies provided cover for Mossad's katsas, Kryuchkov envisaged his companies would provide similar protection for KGB operatives. The Russian companies would operate on sound business principles, just like any other corporation in the West. The profits from the Russian concerns would go to the KGB and help fund its foreign intelligence operations. Maxwell was assured none of these would be against the State of Israel.

"Kryuchkov had explained that behind his immediate plan was a long-term one. The six hundred companies would each employ a quota of senior party members to provide them with an income during the difficult days ahead in the transition from Communism to capitalism. Through genuine trading links, the companies would obtain access to the very heart of capitalism: Wall Street and the City of London and the Bourses of the Western Europe. Its staffs would then learn the innermost secrets of the West's banking system, the wellspring of all capitalism. Eventually it might even be possible to destabilize Western economies – and pave the way for the return of Communism."

(Robert Maxwell, Israel's Superspy, Gordon Thomas & Martin Dillon, pgs. 172-173)

Kryuchkov

Obviously, things didn't quite go according to plan, though whether the plan was ever to return to Communism is highly debatable. Regardless, the opening of the Soviet economy led to widespread exploitation by the West during the 1990s, as was noted above. Rather than the KGB gaining control of the West's banking system, it was the US and UK who seized control of many of Russia's precious natural resources. Since Putin and his KGB cronies returned to power in 2000, there has been an ongoing struggle to wrest control of these resources back from the West.

And Bill Browder, the grandson of a former prominent American Communist and a onetime Maxwell employee, was at the heart of these efforts. When Browder launched Hermitage Capital in 1996, he had a curious partner in this endeavor: billionaire banker Edmond Safra, founder of the Republic National Bank of New York. Safra was both a longtime friend and business partner of Maxwell's, and an individual who had his own extensive ties to the Russian Mafia. Indeed, Safra's bizarre 1999 death may have been related to his dealings with Russian gangsters. More on this strange death can be found here.

Enter Lord Lamont

Easily the most curious figure in this whole netherworld is Lord Norman Lamont, a leading official in the Tory party under Thatcher and Major. The apex of Lamont's political career occurred under the latter when Lamont was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer, the UK's equivalent of the Secretary of Treasury here in the US. The Chancellorship was a crucial stepping stone for Tory politicians during the second half of the twentieth century. Both Major and Harold Macmillan had served as the Chancellor prior to becoming the Prime Minister. Lamont's political career was derailed by Black Wednesday, however, and he was effectively driven out of the Cabinet by Major in 1993. Lamont was finally voted out of office in 1997, and accepted a peerage the following year. 

But while Lamont's political career was over, this was hardly the end of his involvement in politics. I'm greatly indebted to a bio on Lamont on the great Institute for the Study of Globalization and Covert Politics for much of the following material. Among it is the fact that Lamont is an arch Eurosceptic and a leading figure in the Bruges Group. Founded in 1989, Burges has been keeping the flame of Euroscepticism alive now for four decades. Unsurprisingly, it played a key role in Brexit, with Lamont campaigning vigorously in support of "Leave."

Am I alone in thinking Lord Lamont subsists on human blood? 

Lamont also played a crucial role in privatization efforts in the Soviet Union during the late 1980s and early 1990s as well. During this time frame personally advised both Gorbachev and Yeltsin on economic reforms in the Soviet sphere. After being appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lamont became the Chairman of the G7 Group of Finance Ministers, which played a crucial role in securing IMF loans for Russia. Indeed, Lamont appears to have been at the forefront of these efforts. Thus, Lamont laid the stage of the economic rape of Russia during the 1990s as much as anyone. What's more, it has been suggested that Edmond Safra's death was related to diverted IMF earmarked for Russia --presumably the same funds Lamont had helped procure. 

But let us return to the matter at hand. Lamont appears to have had deep ties to both Robert Maxwell and Bill Browder. In Maxwell: The Final Verdict, Tom Bower notes that Maxwell had periodic lunches with Lamont by the late 1980s, and implies that they were a kind of liaisons with Thatcher's government. As was noted here, Maxwell also had access to Thatcher herself, and appears to have had quite a warm relationship with the Iron Lady. John Major was much less taken with Maxwell, but Lamont would continue to meet with Maxwell until at least February of 1991. Their last known meeting occurred at 11 Downing Street, the official residence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

11 Downing Street

Superficially, this relationship may seem strange. After all, Maxwell had longstanding ties to both Soviet Intelligence and the Labour Party (he had served as a Labour MP from 1964-1970). And yet Maxwell also had extensive dealings with British intelligence and the Tories, as I noted before here. Maxwell is known to have had a warm relationship with Gorbachev, and with Lamont actively playing a  crucial role in privatization efforts in Russia, it is certainly possible Maxwell was acting as a kind of back channel between Gorbachev and Lamont in what amounted to setting terms for the aftermath of the Cold War.

However, there is another potential explanation for their meetings: Arms trafficking. 

Under Thatcher, the UK had became a major player in the arms trade. The Iran-Iraq War in particular had been a major boon to the British arms industry. The Tories were of course making a killing off of this state of affairs. At the forefront was the so-called "Savoy Mafia," which included Mark Thatcher, the son of the Prime Minister. Labour was not doing nearly as well, but were no doubt getting something out of this racket for their silence. It is probable that Maxwell's extensive financial contributions to Labour during the 1980s were in part were being funded by arms trafficking. Former Israeli spy Ari Ben-Menashe has gone on record stating that the Labour Party was engaged in selling arms to Iran "through Robert Maxwell" (Maggie's Hammer, Geoffrey Gilson, pg. 205).

Mark Thatcher

As for Lamont, it is likely that he was Maxwell's liaison with the Tories in this bonanza. In either 1996 or 1997, Lamont became the chairman of Le Cercle, a far right foreign policy think tank and private intelligence network. Le Cercle emerged in the 1952-1953 period as an auxiliary to the infamous Bilderberg group, but always had a much more rightward drift. Much of the early membership was dominated by members of especially reactionary Catholic orders such as the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and Opus Dei. Much more information on Le Cercle can be found here. 

Beginning in the 1970s, Le Cercle forged close ties with reactionaries among the British Tories. This clique took over the Cercle by the 1980s, with every chairman having been British since then. Gerald James, a British arms merchant and Monday Club member (for years, the Monday Club was at the heart of the Tory far right), was recruited into the Savoy Mafia during the late 1980s. James later published a tell-all book on these experiences called In the Public Interest. There, he remarked upon the overlap between the Savoy Mafia and Le Cercle.

In particular, James notes that future Cercle chairman Jonathan Aitken was especially close to the Savoy clique. Elsewhere, the great Geoffrey Gilson recounts in Maggie's Hammer how Kevin Maxwell had dealings with Aitken in the aftermath of his father's death and that these were potentially related to arms trafficking as well. As recently as 2003, Kevin Maxwell and his then-wife Pandora were spotted at Aitken's wedding.

Aitken

Elsewhere, Aitken turned up at a gathering of the Kit-Kat Club in 2004. This outfit was founded by none other than Ghislaine Maxwell, Robert's favorite daughter and Jeffrey Epstein's alleged madam. Ghislaine's Kit-Kat Club was supposedly established to help women in commerce and industry, which sounds both hysterical and sad in equal measures in 2019.

Regardless, it would seem that the Maxwells and various Cercle chairmen had established a certain simpatico by the early twenty-first century, if not much sooner. I have not been able to confirm when Lamont joined the Cercle, but it does not seem like the type of organization to appoint someone its chairman who had only been with the outfit for a few years. Lamont was almost surely a member by the time of his last meeting with Robert Maxwell in 1991, putting the Maxwells in the group's orbit by time frame if not much sooner.

So much for the Maxwells. As for Browder, he has clearly been in the orbit of the Cercle for some time as well. At least one Belgian member of the Cercle complex had used Edmond Safra's Republic National Bank of New York to launder funds produced from arms trafficking during the early 1990s. But beyond that, Hermitage Capital had acquired an interesting board member by 2011: Lord Norman Lamont.

And not only was the former Cercle chairman on Hermitage's board, but Lamont was also poised to assist Browder in his quest for further sanctions against Russia by lobbying Cameron's government. Curiously, Lamont was joined in these efforts by Tory MP Julian Lewis. Lewis has had dealings with the Cercle since the 1980s. He was a protege' of another Cercle chairman, Brian Crozier. Naturally, Lewis is also a Knight of Malta. More information on him can be found here.

Conclusions: The Dilemma of the Tories

Superficially, it is a little surprising that an arch Eurosceptic like Lamont would be so gung-ho to support Browder's crusade. But then again, the same could be said of Fusion GPS's decision to investigate Browder at the same time it was digging up dirt on Trump's Russian ties. And then there's the curious coincidence that this dirt was compiled by Christopher Steele, a former MI6 officer who served in Moscow between 1990 and 1993. Naturally, this is the same exact time frame Lamont was meeting regularly with Gorbachev and Yeltsin about their IMF bailout. Of course, the UK is alleged to have played a crucial role in launching Russiagate. 

Steele

So, what gives? Well, the motives of the American players are a little more enigmatic. But as far as the British are concerned, the rise of Trump is both a blessing and a curse. Men like Lamont have worked for years to bring about Brexit. Indeed, the origins of this agenda may go back to Quigley's Round Table movement, which was always about forging an Anglo-American Union (noted before here) despite what you may have read. Already, there are warnings that a post-Brexit trade deal with the US will lay the foundation for a more perfect Union. 

The Tories (and much of the British Establishment) have been working towards this goal for a very, very long time. And now, they finally have a president in place to give them their Union. The only real snag appears to be the whole Russian thing. 

The Tories, and pretty much all of the British Establishment for that matter, have greatly enriched themselves via Russia's natural resources ever since the end of the Cold War. But once Putin came to power, the gravy train has gradually been put back in the hands of actual Russians. As a board member of Hermitage, Lord Lamont surely has a considerable financial stake in what is going on in Russia. He is hardly alone, either. 

This puts Lord Lamont and his cronies in a delicate situation. On the one hand, Trump's support of Brexit is a dream come true. On the other hand, if he normalizes relations with Russia, Lamont's bottom line could take a real beating. Thus, promoting (or even creating) the Russiagate narrative could be viewed as cudgel to keep an otherwise friendly president committed to sanctions against the Bear. And if Russia is not willing to play ball, there are always those $500 billion worth of assets in Western banks that could offset Lord Lamont's losses. Hence the importance of the Magnitsky Act and why the arch Eurosceptics of the Cercle complex are so keen on supporting it. 

As such, discussions concerning the Magnitsky Act at the infamous 2016 Trump Tower meeting are far more significant than any alleged dirt the Russians may have had on Hillary. A lot of people's livelihoods depend on how this plays out, to put it mildly. As such, the Russians probably could have done better than Fusion GPS as far as private intelligence is concerned. Just try and read the Steele dossier without breaking into fits of laughter.

But then again, if Russiagate was never meant to be a serious threat to Trump's presidency, Fusion GPS found a fine way to discredit itself by doing opposition research against the Orange One after it was already working for Prevezon since at least 2015. Surely, the British must have smiled when MI6 man Chris Steele turned his dossier over to them as well. 

And with that I shall sign off for now dear readers. Until the next time, stay tuned. 

Secret Armies and the Origins of the Cercle Complex Part V

Welcome to the fifth installment in my ongoing examination of the origins of the mysterious outfit variously known as Le Cercle, the Pinay Circle, the Pesenti Group, and so on. The Cercle complex had its origins during the early 1950s, beginning as an auxiliary of the infamous Bilderberg group. But while Le Cercle had its fair share of wealthy capitalist backers, the core of its membership has typically derived from the European aristocracy and reactionary Catholic orders such as Opus Dei and the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM). As such, the politics of the Cercle complex have tended to be much more right wing than those of their globalists counterparts in Bidlerberg. Indeed, these factions appear to have become increasingly antagonistic of one another throughout the 1970s, leading an eventual break with the Rockefeller family around this time.

But the purpose of this series is the Cercle complex's origins, not what its been up to over the past seven decades. For more on these sordid details, check out my prior series of Le Cercle, which can be found here.

As the title of this particular series implies, it is my contention that the Cercle complex had its origins in the various "stay-behind" networks that the intelligence services of the UK and US established in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War across Western Europe and beyond. In theory, these networks would wage a guerrilla war with the support of UK and US special operations forces in the event of a Soviet invasion, but considerable evidence has come out since the 1990s that these networks were frequently used to destabilize host nations, ensuring their subservience to US (and to a much lesser extent, UK) interests.

These networks had their origins in resistance and stay-behind networks established by the UK's Special Operations Executive (SOE), the US's Office of Strategic Services (OSS), and Nazi Germany's Amt VI-S of the Reich Main Security Office (RHSA) during WWII. The first installment of this series provided additional details about these organizations and their secret armies. Part two explained how many of these SOE, OSS, and Amt VI-S assets were transferred to the private sector in the aftermath of the war via conglomerates such as the British American Canadian Corporation (BACC), the World Commerce Corporation (WCC) and SOFINDUS. Eventually, the BACC and SOFINDUS fell under the umbrella of the WCC, which became a kind of super private intelligence agency specializing in covert operations. As such, the WCC was considered in further detail in the third installment.

the insignia of the SOE, OSS and SD (Amt VI)

The fourth and most recent installment shifted gears a bit and began to focus on the early post-war stay-behind networks. There this researcher attempted to show evidence of multiple stay-behind networks in nations that have been particularly ravaged by terror. In the case of both Italy and Belgium, there appear to have been private stay-behind networks under the control of Cercle-connected politicians in those respective nations in addition to the "official" stay-behind networks under the control of the intelligence services of those countries.

From there, I turned my attention to France. As the Cercle complex was largely a French initiative in the early days, the history of French stay-behind networks is especially relevant to this series. As was noted there, the initial French stay-behind network was known as Plan Bleu. It was established in 1946 and exposed by the French Socialist government during the next year. The Socialists, however, appear to have objected more to the far right elements the UK and US had recruited into this network rather than the idea of a stay-behind network in and of itself. To wit, the Socialist government would greenlight the establishment of a second stay-behind network, this one known as Rose des Vents (Compass Rose).

Indeed, the French Socialists would prove to be vigorously anti-Communist and appear to have taken the lead in anti-Communist efforts during the late 1940s. As such, I would like to focus on the initiates taken by the French Socialists during this period as their efforts may have contributed to the creation of Le Cercle.

The Mysterious Jules Moch

Jules Moch was a long serving French politician of the Socialist persuasion. During the 1930s he was a member of the mysterious X-Crise group, of which much more will be said in a future installment. By the late 1930s he procured a place in the Socialist administration of Leon Blum, first serving as Under-secretary of State (1937) and later as Minister of Public Works (1938). During the war, the Jewish Moch remained in Paris but supported the French Resistance. He would reach the pinnacle of his power in the immediate post-war years, when he became an eight time cabinet minister during the Fourth Republic. 

Moch was able to hang on as a minister throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s even after the French Socialist party was voted out after 1947. Indeed, upon the election of Christian Democrat (MPR) Robert Schuman as Prime Minister in November of that year, Moch was bumped up to Minister of the Interior after having previously served as Minister of Public Works and Transportation in the administration of Socialist Paul Ramadier. Curiously David Rockefeller sites Schuman, a founder of the European Union, as also being a founding member of Le Cercle in Memoirs. While it is debatable as to whether Schuman was actually a founder, there is little doubt that he was involved with the group during the early years.

Schuman

It was not long after being promoted to the Minister of the Interior that Moch appears to have become involved in the stay-behind operations. For his part, he handled efforts organized by the French police. 

"... the CIA in the Fourth Republic targeted also the French police. After in the spring of 1947 when the Communist Ministers had been expelled from the French government the whole administration was purged from Communists while the anti-Communists were promoted in the police forces. Prominent among them was commissar Jean Dides who during the Second World War had closely cooperated with the OSS and now was promoted to become the commander of a clandestine French paramilitary anti-Communist police unit operating under Interior Minister Jules Moch. The embassy of the United States was pleased with progress made..."

(NATO's Secret Armies, Daniele Ganser, pg. 89) 

Moch

This does not appear to be the only stay-behind initiative that Moch launched either. According to Ralph P. Ganis in The Skorzeny Papers, it was also Moch who supported the creation of Paix et Liberté (Peace and Liberty), one of the first post-war efforts to create an transnational anti-Communist network. In the "Paix et liberte: A Transnational Anti-Communist Network" essay appearing in the invaluable Transnational Anti-Communism and the Cold War collection, Bernard Ludwig also credits Prime Minister René Pleven with the organization's creation.

Pleven served as French Prime Minister twice in the postwar years, first from 1950-51, and again from 1951-52. Cercle founder Antoine Pinay served in both of Pleven's administrations as Minister of Public Works, Transport, and Tourism, while Moch also served as Minister of Defense during the first administration. Pinay and Moch would also serve together in the third administration (1951) of Henri Queuille in the same cabinet posts as well.

Paix

While there is some dispute as to just when exactly Paix et Liberte was founded, the general consensus is that it was up and running by 1950. Its' official founder was regarded as a rising star in French politics.

"It was during this period that French politician Jean-Paul David, with the backing of the French government, attempted to fill the gap. His organization, Paix et Liberte, made its appearance in France in September 1950. Prime Minister René Pleven had called a meeting of like-minded political leaders to propose the formation of a new organization to confront communist 'fifth column' infiltration in French society. David, at 37 the leader of the Rassemblement des gauches republicaines (RGR), deputy for Seine et Oise, and mayor of Mantes-la-Jolie, 'was not an intellectual but an organizing genius, a courageous man endowed with some straightforward ideas, notably an urgent need to combat Marxist influence'. Finance in the region of two to three million francs a year was assembled from French industry and banks, and a high-profile campaign was begun utilizing posters, brochures explaining the communist threat and the reality of concentration camps, radio transmissions, and even a film, Creve-Coeur, about the French battalion fighting in the Korean War. Links were also made with like-minded groups across Western Europe..."

(Western Anti-Communism and the Interdoc Network, Giles Scott-Smith, pgs. 21-22) 

Before getting to those "like-minded groups," a few points need to be made. Let us start with the Rassemblement des gauches republicaines (RGR: Rally of Republican Lefts). This was a political coalition that brought together several largely center-right parties in opposition to the Communists, the Socialists and the Christian Democrats. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, it dominated French politics. And it was the 37 year-old Jean-Paul David who led it. As such, David was clearly a major player in French politics by this point despite having never held a cabinet position or other such prestigious postings.

David

It was not until 1952 that another coalition, the even more conservative Centre National des Indépendants et Paysans (CNIP: National Centre of Independents and Peasants), that the RGR suffered an electoral set back. 1952 witnessed the election Cercle co-founder Antoine Pinay as Prime Minister. Pinay was a member of the CNIP. Despite this, Paix et Liberte still received support from the French government, even if it doesn't appear to have been as vigorous as when the RGR was the leading coalition. Nonetheless, David began to push an ambitious agenda for Paix et Liberte while Pinay was initially Prime Minister.

"... Nevertheless David, who gained notoriety as the network's spokesman, became the point man for a determined attempt in 1952-53 to take it a step further by establishing a psychological warfare section within NATO itself. With the backing of French Foreign Minister Georges Bidault, David carried out an intensive rolling tour of NATO countries during this period in order to raise governmental understanding and support for psychological warfare activities. Always received at the highest levels, David's visit to the US in February 1952 was recorded in the New York Times and was intended to link up with like-minded American organizations and send a strong message that Europe was rearming not only militarily but also psychologically in the struggle against communism..."

(Western Anti-Communism and the Interdoc Network, Giles Scott-Smith, pg. 22) 

Georges Bidault was the foreign minister in the administration of René Mayer, the RGR candidate who succeeded Pinay as the Prime Minister in 1953. But Pinay was the Prime Minister during David's initial foray into the United States in 1952. Given that Paix et Liberte was sponsored by the French government, Pinay must have approved of David's efforts on some level. Despite different coalitions holding power in France during the crucial 1952-1952 period (the same time frame Le Cercle was founded, incidentally) the rise of Paix et Liberte appears to have continued unabated.

Pinay

And that brings me to my next point: the extent of the involvement of French security services had in Paix et Liberte. Scott-Smith notes that SDECE (France's principal foreign intelligence service at the time and a crucial player in the stay-behind networks, as was noted in the prior installment) contributed members to a "brain trust" the French government provided to Paix et Liberte. Elsewhere, the great Daniele Ganser notes that the above-mentioned Jean Dides (the police commissar tasked with establishing an anti-Communist police unit under the direction of Jules Moch) "regularly took part in the meetings" (NATO's Secret Armies, pg. 89) of the group.

Finally, David himself and key figures of Paix such as Pierre Rostini were veterans of the Resistance. What's more, Ludwig (writing in the Transnational Anti-Communism and the Cold War collection) describes other early supporters as "various militants from the RPF [Rassemblement du peuple francais]" (pg. 82). This is almost surely a reference to the Service d'Order du RPF mentioned in the last installment. This network was essentially a private intelligence service within the SDECE loyal to de Gaulle. It eventually became the dreaded Service d'Action Civique (SAC). Both networks were deeply involved with establishing the French stay-behind networks. As such, there are clear links between Paix et Liberte and French security services involved in stay-behind operations.

Finally, there's the question of American involvement in Paix. For years, it has been alleged that Paix et Liberte was principally funded by the CIA. For instance, Ganser writes: "American historian Christopher Simpson estimated that covert action units such as 'Paix et Liberte' were funded by the CIA during the secret war against the Communists with 'well over a billion dollars yearly'..." (NATO's Secret Armies, pg. 89). Of course, Paix was but one organization among many that this billion dollars was earmarked for. While there seems to be little question that some funding was provided by the CIA, Scott-Smith calls into question the general assumption that it was largely a CIA project.

"... The Dutch report on September 1953 does state that 'it cannot be denied that the movement in France is mainly sustained from American funds' but does not say what information this remark is based on. Regnier contends that even if American funding was involved it must have been a small percentage of the overall budget provided by French professionals and employers organizations..."

(Western Anti-Communism and the Interdoc Network, Giles Scott-Smith, pg. 270 n36)

Accounts of what some of the regional partners received appear to confirm Scott-Smith's instance that these funds were not substantial. Writing in Puppetmasters, Philip Willan notes: "A secret service report declared that the Milan office of the United States Information Service (USIS) 'appears recently to have made a payment of 3 million Lire... to the Peace and Freedom Association for their anti-communist struggle...' " (pg. 108). While this may sound impressive, 3 million Lire is only akin to several thousand US dollars --hardly enough for any kind of significant operations. As such, it seems likely that private sources of income is what chiefly fueled Paix.

Scott-Smith noted that David had met with high ranking figures in the US intelligence community such as Allen Dulles and Walter Bedell Smith in 1953 to pitch his concept of Paix leading NATO psychological warfare efforts. The Americans were unmoved, however, and refused to back Paix as a NATO venture. As such, while there can be no question that the Americans had some involvement, Paix et Liberte appears to have been principally a European project, and one largely controlled by the French.

Despite being rejected for a formal role by the Americans, David was undeterred. He continued to build up his network both domestically and across Europe. In France, one of the crucial partners he picked up was a Georges Albertini, a former socialist turned Nazi collaborator. Albertini would become a leading figure in European anti-Communist circles throughout the Cold War, in addition to a crucial figure in the Cercle's French section for decades. Much more information on Albertini can be found here.

the enigmatic Georges Albertini

Elsewhere, David began aggressively expanding Paix's European reach. By at least 1951 he was busy setting up sister organizations across Europe, with an eye towards uniting them under an executive committee. For now, let us consider several of David's partners.

The Partners

"Incidentally" (or not), at the exact time David was launching Paix, a similar effort was underway in Germany.  This organization was known as the Volksbund fur Frieden und Freiheit (VFF: the People's League for Peace and Freedom). But unlike Paix, which principally drew from the ranks of former Resistance figures such as David, the VFF had a far more dubious origin.

"...The Volksbund, ostensibly a civil society organization, was put to use as the strong arm of the government, particularly by the Ministry for All-German Affairs. Unlike Paix et liberte, which was led by a politician, the protagonists from the VFF were – or had been – close to government circles, and took advantage of connections with intelligence circles. This was particularly so in the case of the founder of the organization, Eberhard Taubert, a former executive in the National Socialist Ministry of Propaganda. In 1933 he had created an association similar to the VFF, the Antikomintern. The anchoring of the VFF at the heart of the state apparatus was made possible by the extensive anti-communist consensus that reigned in Bonn, built particularly around the Christian Democratic Party (CDU) and its extended network. A key figure for the VFF was its vice president, Arthur Ruppert, a journalist and CDU militant from the Ruhr who had participated in the party's reconstitution in Hamburg and across the British zone, making him a key contact for the future chancellor Konrad Adenauer."

(Transnational Anti-Communism and the Cold War, "Paix et Liberte: A Transnational Anti-Communist Network," Bernard Ludwig, pg. 82)

In other words, it had its origins in Nazi Germany. Hence the reason that Paix took the lead in establishing a European wide network despite the VFF predating it and arguably having even more elite connections. Indeed, the VFF appears to have had a direct line to Konrad Adenauer, another Cercle co-founder. But Adenauer was hardly the only VIP in post-war Germany VFF founder Eberhard Taubert could count among his network.

He would later go to serve as an "adviser" to another Cercle co-founder, future German Defense Minister Franz Josef Strauss. Even more curious is the individual he sought out to pitch what became the VFF in 1948: Per Ludwig, it was none other than US diplomat Robert D. Murphy. Murphy was one of the most powerful State Department officials of his era, and also a member of the Bilderberg group's steering committee. He reportedly played a role in the stay-behind networks, with Ralph Ganis alleging in The Skorzeny Papers that it was Murphy who greenlighted the use of the World Commerce Corporation to participate in such activities. Much more will be said of Murphy in a future installment, so do keep him in mind dear reader.

Murphy

In addition to these "overworld" figures, Taubert was (unsurprisingly) well connected within the Nazi underground as well. According the great Jeffrey Bale in the first volume of his groundbreaking The Darkest Side of Politics, Taubert was also part of the network on Werner Naumann, a towering figure in the post-war Nazi diaspora. Naumann had joined the Nazi party in 1928, and by 1933 had become a general in the SA (Brown Shirts). He was also a member of the SD, and eventually joined the Ministry of Propaganda. He succeeded Goebbels' as its head shortly before Hitler's suicide. Indeed, Naumann had been a regular fixture in Hitler's bunker during the final weeks of the war, showing just how close he was to the remaining Nazi hierarchy.

Naumann was especially close to Martin Bormann, the head of the Nazi party apparatus. Indeed it was Naumann who first raised the specter of Bormann's survival during 1953. Bormann managing the post-war Nazi international from some distant location in South America would become a popular conspiracy theory in the second half of the twentieth century, with proponents that included elements of the Mossad, and high ranking intelligence officers in both the USSR and US such as Lev Bezymenski and Frank Wisner, respectively. Curiously, Naumann alleged that Bormann was a Soviet spy who fled to Moscow in the aftermath of the war.

This was hardly the only intrigue Naumann became involved in during the postwar years either. Indeed, the great Kevin Coogan in his classic Dreamer of the Day notes that Naumann was one of the key figures in the postwar SS underground. Naumann was a member of the Bruderschaft (Brotherhood), a crucial postwar Nazi network involved in smuggling various war criminals to South America and the Middle East.

Naumann

The group had more ambitious plans beyond this, however, hoping to lead a gradual Nazi revival in Germany. Naumann was reportedly selected as the front man for this plot. To this end, he founded the Naumann Kreis (Circle), a shadowy network of former Nazis that sought to establish cells inside the Free Democratic Party (FDP), a moderate right wing group. At the time, the FDP was part of Adenauer's coalition government.

Around this time, Naumann also became the manager of the H.S. Lucht Company, which was then owned by the widow of another former Ministry of Propaganda man. The Madrid business manager of the company was none other than Otto Skorzeny, who as noted in part one was essentially the figure head of the postwar SS underground.

All of this was unfolding during the early 1950s as Taubert was setting up the VFF. As such, there is a strong chance that Taubert himself was part of these intrigues due to his access to the well-funded Paix network. Naumann was arrested by British authorities in 1953, bringing an end to these plots, though Taubert appears to have emerged mostly unscathed. This researcher suspects that Taubert was effectively a bridge between "overworld" figures like Adenauer, Strauss, and Murphy on the one hand, and the SS underground on the other.

***

The German section was hardly the only wing featuring curious figures, either. Consider the Belgian branch:

"... At the end of spring 1951, a Paix et liberte committee was also set up in Brussels under the leadership of Marcel Paternostre, president of the World Committee of Political Refugees from Central Europe and member of the Belgian section of the Comite international de defense de la civilisation chretienne (CIDCC). But the true architects of the Belgian wing, officially created on 4 October 1951, were Marcel De Roover and Maurice Keyaerts. De Roover had run the Societe d'etudes politiques, economiques et sociales (SEPES), a private anti-Communist organization that represented the Belgian section of the EIA, from behind the scenes prior to the Second World War. At the start of 1951 he served as David's intermediary in the creation of a Dutch Paix et liberte committee (Vrede en Vrijheid) under the leadership of E. P. van Dam Isselt, secretary of the Benelux committee, the body for trilateral cooperation."

(Transnational Anti-Communism and the Cold War, "Paix et liberte: A Transnational Anti-Communist Network," Bernard Ludwig, pg. 84) 

As was noted before here, the Comite international de defense de la civilisation chretienne (CIDCC: International Committee for the Defense of Christian Civilization) shared a lot of members in common with the Cercle complex, including founders Antoine Pinay and Jean Violet. Another Belgian CIDCC member who later became involved with Paix was the uber-connected Paul van Zeeland. He was a former Belgian Prime Minister and a founding member of the Bilderberg group. According to Ludwig, Van Zeeland became the president of Paix's international committee in 1954, shortly before the organization was rechristened the Comite international d'action sociale (CIAS).

Van Zeeland

Elsewhere, Chevalier Marcel de Roover (sometimes referred to as the "Black Knight") was an unabashed fascist who, according to David Teacher in the classic and long suppressed Rogue Agents, played a role in setting up early Belgian stay-behind networks. As was noted before here, de Roover was a key member of the Academie Europeenne des Sciences Politiques (AESP), another organization with an extensive overlap among the Cercle complex (and the Belgian stay-behind networks).

***

Intrigues were the order of the day for the Italian section of Paix. Here the key figure was another colorful character, one Count Edgardo Sogno. 

"... Sogno advocated a Gaullist-style presidency in the government of technocrats to tackle what he saw as the moral and economic decline of the country. He became a member of P2 in 1979. Born into an aristocratic family in Turin in 1915, Sogno had been a hero of the Resistance, working with the forces of the British Special Operations Executive and winning an American Bronze Star for his bravery during the war. As such he was an ideal leader for the anti-communist struggle, being untainted by fascist associations. After the war he became a diplomat, serving at the Italian consulate in Paris before becoming director of the NATO Planning and Co-ordinating Group in London in 1954. He returned to Paris, to the NATO Defense College, which he addressed on one occasion on 'The communist menace in Italy'. It was during the 1950s that he made his contribution to the Cold War by founding the Peace and Freedom Association (Pace e Liberta), which became a vehicle for a rabidly anti-communist propaganda campaign. He was ably assisted in this endeavor by Luigi Cavallo, a former communist journalist and secret service agent provocateur. In the 1960s Sogno moved to the United States, where he served in the consulate in Philadelphia and then as a counsellor at the Washington embassy, before ending up as an ambassador in Rangoon, Burma. He returned to Italy in the 1970s, just in time to play his part in saving the country from chaos and communism."

(Puppetmasters, Philip Willan, pgs. 107-108)

Sogno

We'll get to Sogno's role in "defending" Italy from chaos and Communism a little later in this installment. For now, its worth highlighting Sogno's role in the British Special Operations Executive (SOE). As was noted in the first installment of this series, the SOE was the inspiration for the various stay-behind networks, while many former SOE hands would later come to dominate the British section of Le Cercle. As was noted in part two, SOE veterans would also play a key role in setting up the British American Canadian Corporation (BACC), which was later incorporated into the WCC. The WCC also acquired Nazi Germany's SOFINDUS conglomerate, which was initially intended to sponsor a clandestine, post-war Nazi revival. Otto Skorzeny became an agent of SOFINDUS around the time it was acquired by the WCC.

The above-mentioned P2 was of course Propaganda Due, the notorious Masonic lodge that has also been linked extensively to Italian stay-behind efforts (noted before here). P2 also had compelling links to the above-mentioned Belgian AESP, as was noted before here). Through the AESP, P2 also had links to the Cercle complex.

***

Paix et liberte never quite managed to establish a proper branch in the UK, but it did forge ties with a curious organization known as Common Cause. This organization was distinct from the progressive organization founded in American during 1970. As for the older Common Cause, there were actually two of them, one originating in America, the other in the UK. The American Common Cause was slightly older, having been organized in 1947. It featured many VIPs such Eugene Lyons, Arthur Bliss Lane, and Adolf Berle. Many of the backers of the American Common Cause would later go to work for CIA-linked organizations such as the American Committee for Liberation from Bolshevism (Amcomlib). 

The British Common Cause was likely founded sometime around 1951 by Dr. C. A. Smith, a former socialist. Smith had spent the war years backing the Common Wealth Party, a far left party Smith eventually became the chairman of in 1944. But with the onset of the Cold War Smith became increasingly anti-Communist, and with several other "reformed" liberals would go on to found Common Cause. This marked quite a remarkable political transformation. The first co-chair of the British Common Cause was Lord Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton.

the Lord and Lady Douglas-Hamilton

Douglas-Hamilton's brother, the Duke of Hamilton (Douglas Douglas-Hamilton) had maintained close ties to the Nazi regime since the 1930s. When Rudolf Hess made his mysterious flight to Scotland in 1940, it was the Duke of Hamilton who was to be his host. 

Lord Douglas-Hamilton appears to have been every bit as right wing as his brother, possibly even more so. He had help set up the American branch of the International Association for the Advancement of Ethnology and Eugenics (IAAEE), an organization founded in Scotland during the late 1950s. The IAAEE is beyond question the leading post-WWII eugenics organization in the English speaking world. Per Russ Bellant in Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party, Douglas-Hamilton's widow, the Lady Douglas-Hamilton, later became a member of the American Security Council Foundation (ASC). As was noted before here, the ASC was the leading far right think tank in the United States throughout the Cold War. 

As for the two anti-Communist Common Causes, there is still much dispute as to whether there were ties between these organizations prior to the mid-1950s. The general consensus is "no," but it is certainly quite curious that these two organizations would spring up at practically the same time with similar objectives. Much more information on the origins of the two Common Causes can be found here. 

As David Teacher reports in Rogue Agents, leading Cercle figure Brian Crozier would regularly collaborate with Common Cause beginning in the late 1960s. He appears to have been in contact with the organization by the early 1960s as part of his work with another transnational anti-Communist organization known as Interdoc, according to Giles Scott-Smith. By the 1980s, Common Cause firmly a part of Crozier's network, and by extension, the Cercle complex. Through Interdoc, Crozier likely had some dealings with Paix by the early 1960s, but he would not join the Cercle until the early 1970s, by which point Paix and its successors were largely defunct.  

***

And that brings us to the American branch of Paix, called the American Friends of Paix et Liberte. The organization was based out of New York and run by the mysterious figure known as Clifford Forster. What little is known about Forster was largely unearthed by Ralph P. Ganis for his brilliant The Skorzeny Papers. Nominally, Forster comes off as pure Eastern Establishment. He was a law graduate of Yale and worked for a time with the ACLU. And yet Forster was a business partner of Otto Skorzeny and Merwin K. Hart. Hart had been a pre-WWII "isolationist" who founded the deeply anti-Semitic National Economic Council during the 1930s to attack the policies of FDR. 

Another figure in the American branch of Paix was Issac Don Levine. A Russian-born Jew, Levine had become a successful journalist in the United States by the 1940s. At the onset of the Cold War, he went to work for the CIA. Levine had help set up the American Committee for Liberation from Bolshevism, later known simply as the American Committee for Liberation (Amcomlib). As Christopher Simpson notes in Blowback, much of the funding for Amcomlib came from the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), which eventually became the CIA's Directorate of Operations. Simpson had also linked the CIA funding for Paix to the OPC as well. Funding for both Paix and Amcomlib ultimately originated from the 1950s-era Psychological Strategy Board (PSB), per Simpson.

Levine

As such, the presence of Levine in the American Friends of... is quite interesting. He may well have been the American bagman for Paix. At the same time, there was also much overlap between Amcomlib and other projects sponsored by the PSB and the American Common Cause. Indeed, it is likely all US funding for Amcomlib, Paix, and the American Common Cause originated from the efforts of the PBS and OPC. This is all quite incestuous.

Assassinations and Coups

Before wrapping up, I would like to briefly address some of the more extreme controversies surrounding the Paix network. There's little question that the bulk of Paix's efforts focused upon propaganda. This has led to charges that it was effectively a propaganda bureau for the various stay-behind networks the US and UK (and potentially, the SS underground) were establishing around Europe at the onset of the Cold War. 

But some have argued that the Paix network went beyond mere propaganda and employed some very extreme measures against the spread of Communism. This appears to be especially true of the Belgian and Italian sections. For instance, Ganis highlights this incredible allegation concerning the Belgian branch:

"Paix et Liberte operations may also have included assassination as described in Europe Since 1945: An Encyclopedia: 'Several leading Peace and Liberty activists were directly implicated in anti-constitutional political activity, including serious acts of violence and anti-government coup plots.' A former member of the Belgian Paix et Liberte organization 'confessed on his deathbed' that the group had carried out the 1950 assassination of Julien Lahaut, head of the Communist Party of Belgium."

(The Skorzeny Papers, Ralph P. Ganis, pg. 134)

Such allegations are not without merit. As was noted above, the principal figure behind the Belgian branch of Paix was Mercel de Roover, who later became a leading figure in the Belgian-based AESP, an organization with extensive ties Italian and Belgian terrorists, in addition to the infamous Aginter Press. As was noted before here and here, was a right wing terror network founded by former Organisation armée secrète (OAS: Secret Army Organization) militants after their efforts to topple de Gaulle failed. As was noted in the prior installment, the OAS appears to have used elements of the French stay-behind network in the efforts to overthrow de Gaulle.

De Roover was not the only member of Paix's Belgian section that was later linked to the OAS.

"Perhaps even more important was the role played by Pierre Joly's Jeunesses Nationales. Joly began his political career as a member of the left-wing Etudiants Progressistes (Progressive Students) at the University of Liege in 1949 and 1950, but then quit and began actively collaborating with the Belgian branch of the Union Democratique pour la Paix et la Liberte (Peace and Freedom Democratic Union) organization, an international CIA-funded anti-Communist front created in Paris in March 1949. In 1952, he founded a short-lived Ecole Internationale de Cadres Anti-Communistes (International School for Anti-Communists Cadres) and published a pamphlet praising Franco and Salazar. Later that same year he appeared in Algiers right around the time of the notorious bazooka attack on General Raoul Salan. Five years later he published an anonymous treatise on counterrevolutionary warfare that synthesize the writing of some of the most influential guerre revolutionnaire specialist within the French Army, such as Commandant Jacques Hogard and Colonels Gabriel Bonnet, Charles Lacheroy, and Roger Trinquier, which soon became a sort of vademecum for right-wing subversives in Algeria and Europe. In May 1958, he participated in the Algiers demonstration which precipitated the collapse of the Fourth Republic alongside Pierre Lagaillarde, a right-wing student activist and future leader of the OAS. He then worked closely with the Mouvement Populaire 13 (MP13: Popular Movement 13 [May], commemorating the 13 May 1958 military coup in Algeria), and became the Belgian spokesman for Joseph Ortiz upon his return home. Indeed, up until September 1961, Joly collected money for Ortiz using the Aide Mutuelle Europeene (European Mutual Aid) organization as a cover. Between 1960 and 1961, he helped sponsor and contributed to the monthly publication Reac, the organ of the Etudiants Nationales. His own Jeunesses Nationales organization was the first Belgian group to establish a close relation with French activists, and after the assassination of FLN activist Akli Aissou and pro-FLN professor René-Georges Laperches in Belgium by the so-called Main Rouge (Red Hand), a front group created by the French secret service that was used to carry a politically sensitive operations ponctuelles, Joly's organization was suspected of having lent its support to the killers. In January 1962, Joly and René Boussart were accused of sheltering General Salan in Liege, although this was never actually proven..."

(The Darkest Sides of Politics, I, Jeffrey Bale, pgs. 97-08)

Clearly, the Belgian branch of Paix had its fair share of militants, and given their later ties to the OAS and the Belgian strategy of tension, the possibility that this organization was used to carry out assassinations cannot be dismissed out of hand. As for coups, at least one member would later turn up in such efforts in France during the early 1960s.

The Italian branch of Paix offers even more striking evidence. There can be little doubt that this branch was engaged in espionage under the auspices of the stay-behind networks.

"... Pace e Liberta was an offshoot of a French anti-Communist organization, Paix et Liberte... One of the principal activities of the Italian branch was spying on Fiat workers with communist sympathies and drawing up intelligence dossiers on them. This was the work of Cavallo, who was paid for it by both Fiat and the secret service Office of Economic and Industrial research, run by Colonel Rocca."

(Puppetmasters, Philip Willan, pg. 108)

According to Ganser in NATO's Secret Armies, it was Colonel Renzo Rocca who headed Ufficio R within the Italian secret service. As was noted in the prior installment, it was this office that oversaw stay-behind efforts in Italy. The above-mentioned Cavallo was Luigi Cavallo, a former journalist and intelligence asset who became Count Edgardo Sogno's chief collaborator in the Italian branch of Paix. Later both men would get up to quite a bit of mischief together.

"The culmination of Sogno's plans was to have been reached in August 1974 with the seizure of the presidential Quirinale Palace. President Giovanni Leone would be forced to dissolve Parliament and appoint a government of technocrats headed by Randolfo Pacciardi, another non-communist Resistance hero and a former Defense Minister. The plan was never implemented as the secret services had got wind of it but, more importantly, because there was insufficient political and military support to guarantee its success. Sogno and Cavallo were arrested in 1976 and charge with trying to overthrow the government by violent means. The nature of their project was clearly outlined in the number of documents confiscated from Cavallo..."

(Puppetmasters, Philip Willan, pg. 109)

There were numerous coups plotted in Italy during the 1970s, but Willan insists that Sogno's had the greatest chance of success. This is a bit debatable, as it never seems to have gotten off the ground to the extent of the Borghese coup, but there's no question Sogno had support at the highest levels of NATO. This was likely due to his war time background with the Special Operations Executive. Willan suggests that the growing threat from the Communist Red Brigades (RB) played a role in the decision to call off the coup as it was felt that the RB would pave the way for a democratic center-right coup like the one Sogno had plotted. Naturally, Sogno and Cavallo were ultimately cleared of all charges and the aborted coup was promptly swept under the rug.

Conclusions

Where exactly Paix et Liberte fits into this labyrinth is difficult to discern. While clearly receiving support from these United States, it appears to have principally been a European venture. And while there's much overlap with what became the Cercle complex, there appears to have been only one actual Cercle member (Georges Albertini) who actually belonged to Paix. 

What can be said with certainty is that the Cercle was clearly operating on a higher level than Paix. With few exceptions (such as Sogno and especially van Zeeland), most Paix members were mid-level operators at best. Conversely, Cercle was founded by heads of state and defense ministers, with the exception of the mysterious Jean Violet. 

As has been argued over the course of this series, the Cercle complex appears to have taken over the management of the various stay-behind networks at some point during the Cold War. As such, it may have stealthy taken over management of Paix at some point after 1953. Paix founder Jean-Paul David and longtime Cercle chairman Antoine Pinay were from different political movements in France. Indeed, Paix appears to have grown out of the efforts of moderate Socialists and conservatives to form an anti-Communist front that could rival the efforts of the far right in this department. When the deep history of France is considered in a future installment, the desire of these moderates (especially the Socialists) to launch such a movement will become more clear.  

The rise of Pinay's fellow Bilderberger Paul van Zeeland in Paix at the expense of David likely signaled that this takeover was complete. Van Zeeland was put forth as the head of Paix's international body by the VFF, the German section. As was noted above, this section had ample ties to Bilderberg and Cercle members. 

Paix appears to have gradually petered out after this coup. This was likely the result of internal events in France that put Cercle and its Atlanticist aspirations in a predicament. These events will also be discussed in a future installment. 

But before getting to the curious events that rocked France, I must briefly make an interlude to Germany in the next installment. There we shall consider the role the German Cercle partners played in the stay-behind efforts. Until then, stay tuned dear readers.