A Fringe Digression: The Pioneer Fund and the Christian Right

Regular readers of this blog are no doubt aware that for the past several months I've been posting regular installment in a series entitled "Fringe: The Strange and Terrible History of the Far Right in High Weirdness." This series has chronicled the exploits of the far right in a host of arcane topics including psi, human potential, UFOs, Tesla weapons and so on. Regarding the far right, I've been examining this elite faction through the prism of various think tanks --but most notably the Committee on the Present Danger Mach I and the American Security Council --that are closely aligned to the American military-industrial complex.

The response to this series among the readership has been overwhelmingly positive and many of you have been sending me various pieces of information related to this topic for the past few weeks. That has put me behind on responding to emails and comments (very sorry about that, BTW) but has provided me with a treasure trove of new information relating to this topic.

Upon reviewing some of my own research on this topic, I've also realized that there were a few key connections that had totally slipped my mind when the original nine installments were being written. I've been accumulating material of this subject for several years now and with the additional material passed on from you readers, I'm a bit overwhelmed with data to sort through and determine how it should be presented.

As I'm still researching part ten of the "Fringe" series I thought I might put some of this information to use that has been passed along to me or that I had previously forgotten to include. As some of you have complained how digressive the series has become, I decided to present this post as kind of an intermission to the broader series rather than part of the series as a whole. As such, I'll try to make this post somewhat sell contained, so those of you just joining me don't have to try and tackle all nine prior "Fringe" installments in order to follow this post.

Before we get going, I would like to provide a big thank you to regular reader and commentor "AW" and Unification Church defector "Don Dilligent" for largely providing the bulk of the information presented in this post on the Christian Right.

The Dark Life of William Shockley

But before getting to the Christian Right I need to once again address a figure that we've already encountered on several occasions throughout this series: physicist William Shockley. 

Shockley is easily one the most pivotal scientific figures of the twentieth century. While working at the legendary Bell Labs in the late 1940s he managed a research group that was responsible for the creation of the modern transistor. As such, Shockley himself is often created as the inventor of the transistor, though these claims have been hotly debated. Many of Shockley's former colleagues at Bell have accused him of stealing their research to boot. 

What's more, among Ufologists there is a longstanding theory that the modern transistor did not in fact have Earthly origins, but that it had been acquired by humanity from "other sources." As was noted in the Fringe series, the Roswell incident has long been linked to the actual origins of the transistor. The Secret Sun's Christopher Knowles, in his groundbreaking Lucifer's Technologies series, also addresses the linkage of the transistor to Roswell as well as the very murky history of said invention.

a replica of the alleged first working transistor

But Shockley is my concern here and not the transistor per se, so let us return to the matter at hand. By 1954 Shockley had greatly alienated his colleagues at Bell for reasons indicated above. As such, he decided to relocate to the West Coast in 1956 and found his own lab, Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory, in Mountain View, California of the famed Santa Clara County. The parent of Shockley's lab, Beckman Instruments, was the first company working on silicon semiconductors in what would come to be known as "Silicon Valley."

After grossly alienating his subordinates at Bell, Shockley picked right up where he left off in California. In late 1957 several of Shockley's researchers, who would go on to be dubbed the "traitorous eight," left Shockley Semiconductors to form Fairchild Semiconductors. Fairchild would go on to become a pioneer in manufacturing transistors and integrated circuit boards. Twenty years after the traitorous eight deflected from Shockley over 65 new enterprises had emerged in the Valley with employee connections tracing back to Fairchild.

Fairchild was effectively then the parents of Silicon Valley. And that would make William Shockley the grandfather as none of what has played out in Silicon Valley would have come to pass had Shockley not established his own lab there in the mid-1950s.

If Shockley did not in fact then invent the transistor, he was done quite an honor by being widely credited as the inventor of the transistor by TPTB. It gave him a considerable legacy and his efforts in northern California ensured that he will be viewed as one of the most visionary scientists of the modern era for years to come.

All of this makes his post-Shockley Superconductor pursuits all the more disturbing.

For approximately the final two decades of his life Shockley dedicated himself to the promotion of eugenics, a pursuit that he reportedly considered even more important than his work with the transistor. Shockley became obsessed with the notion that the genetically inferior were out breeding their betters, presumably leading to an Idiocracy-esque dystopia. To counter this grim prospect, Shockley became a vocal proponent of voluntary sterilization:

"Under Shockley's proposal, non-taxpayers with an IQ below 100 would have been paid $1,000 for each of their IQ points under 100 if they agreed to be sterilized. Such an intervention in the gene pool was necessary, he argued, to curb what he called 'dysgenics,' overbreeding among the 'genetically disadvantaged.' "

Funding for these pursuits in the early years came from a curious but hardly unexpected source: the Pioneer Fund and its vile founder, Colonel Wickliffe Preston Draper. The scion of a wealthy New England family (with ample doses of Southern gentry), Draper served in Army intelligence during World War I and insisted upon being addressed as "Colonel" for the rest of his life. Draper had ample deep state ties and the great John Bevilaqua has compelling linked him to the Kennedy assassination in the classic JFK -The Final Solution. Much more information on Draper can be found here.

In 1937 Draper founded the Pioneer Fund, a nonprofit organization principally dedicated to the research of eugenics. While such a venture was not especially uncommon in the 1930s, Draper would continue to use Pioneer as a vehicle from promoting his racialist philosophy into the postwar years. As such, Pioneer became the leading source of funding for the American eugenics movement up till the twenty-first century, almost single-handedly sustaining the movement throughout the second half of the twentieth century.

When Shockley began to publicly embrace eugenics in 1965, he was almost immediately identified by Draper's network as a crucial alley. A Nobel Prize winner would lend them unprecedented credibility. As such, Shockley's "research" was being heavily subsidized by Pioneer by the late 1960s, with the Colonel himself providing Shockley with personal "gifts" in addition to the money being handed out by Pioneer:

"... Before Draper's death, the physicist found himself, as had George, Kuttner, Garrett, and others before him, the direct recipient of regular cash gifts, transmitted by Weyher on behalf of an unnamed client who wanted to provide the funds 'as a token of his esteem' for Shockley's work. Shockley's gifts were more substantial than those for previous recipients, coming to more than $22,000 between 1968 and 1970 ($109,000 AFI)... In addition, other gifts in the form of securities from Morgan Guaranty Trust, totaling $76,000 ($370,000 AFI) between 1968 in 1971, were also sent to Stanford to be used for Shockley's 'research,' accompanied by telegrams from same bank official who had forwarded the Colonel's contributions to the Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, requesting as usual that 'the fact and amount of the gift be kept confidential.'

"Finally, there were two types of acknowledged assistance from Pioneer. Between 1969 and 1976, the fund contributed almost $175,000 ($689,000 AFI) in grants to Stanford to support Shockley's 'research into the factors which affect genetic potential.' Pioneer also provided $54,500 ($169,000 AFI) to Shockley's own nonprofit organization to promote eugenics – the Foundation for Research and Education on Eugenics and Dysgenics (FREED) – which had begun with a $10,000 ($44,000 AFI) contribution from Weyher, probably another gift from the Colonel. Although FREED was Shockley's idea, George S. Leonard, previously a member of the CCFAF and one of the attorneys for the intervenors in the attempt to overturn Brown, actually drafted the bylaws and executed the necessary paperwork for its creation. The organization's purpose, according to Leonard's bylaws, was to engage in activities designed to 'further public understanding, legal utilization, and academic acceptance' of scientific information on differences in the 'natures, capabilities, and potentialities of men.' In practice, FREED functioned as a publicist for Shockley, producing a newsletter with descriptions of his public appearances, his press releases, and copies of articles written by and about him. And like any good public relations operation, FREED sought to increase its base, requesting permission from recipients of the newsletter to have their written support for eugenics circulated 'to other people who live in your neighborhood'; apparently Shockley was ready to organize a eugenics movement door-to-door. Between the various gifts and grants, Shockley received $337,500 (almost $1.4 million AFI) altogether from the 'throne in New York.' "

(The Funding of Scientific Racism, William H. Tucker, pgs. 144-145)

William Shockley

Via his contacts with the Draper network, Shockley also forged ties with the broader far right. Early support for his positions on eugenics came from a fellow Stanford staff member, the Hoover Institute's Stefan Possony (who was extensively involved in high weirdness, as was noted before here), a longstanding and well-connected member of the American Security Council who defended Shockley in the pages of Mankind Quarterly (a "scientific" journal dedicated to eugenics that was sponsored by Pioneer for many years) in 1974.

Another key backer was the infamous Roger Pearson. Pearson had founded the Northern League, a neo-Nazi organization, in England in 1958. By the mid-1960s he had relocated to the United States. Not long afterwards he would hook up with the Draper network and would receive substantial funding from Pioneer until the end of the twentieth century. By the 1970s he had become involved with a host of powerful, intelligence-connected right wing organizations.

"... With his move to the capital, Pearson also endeavored to create a new, more respectable image as a mainstream conservative, eventually gaining membership on the editorial boards of such think tanks as the Heritage Foundation, the Foreign Policy Research Institute, and the American Security Council. At the same time, however, he made one more attempt to form a Nazi international, taking control of a new United States chapter of the World Anti-Communist League (WACL) after the old chapter renounced its membership, complaining, in an internal memo, that Pearson had filled the organization with 'neo-Nazi, ex-Nazi, fascist, neo-fascist, and anti-Semitic groups,' including former S.S. officers who have been members of the Northern League. According to two journalist, the numerous ex-Nazi collaborators and war criminals directly recruited to the WACL by Pearson 'represented one of the greatest fascist blocs in postwar Europe.' Previous conservative groups that had been constituent members of the organization resigned, offended by its new direction." 

(The Funding of Scientific Racism, William H. Tucker, pg. 170)

Roger Pearson

The World Anti-Communist League (WACL) was a fascinating network that brought together international arms and drug traffickers, assorted terrorists and religious fanatics and aging Nazi war criminals and budding neo-fascists into contact with a far right wing assortment of US intelligence and military officers. This blog was addressed the WACL in depth before here. Keep it in mind dear reader as we shall be returning to it again before this blog is finished.

Pearson was so radical that the WACL had no choice but to kick him out in the late 1970s. He would go on to become a major backer of Shockley's theories, among other things. Pearson would eventually edit a self-published book that collected Shockley's thoughts on eugenics.

Thus William Shockley, a man whom powerful forces appear to have set up to be one of the most highly regarded scientists of the twentieth century, was also a fanatical supporter of eugenics who eventually fell in with men like Wickliffe Preston Draper and Roger Pearson, the most extreme elements of the far right. There are some truly disturbing implications to this that I don't think need to be spelled out.

The Moonies

Now that I've addressed the sinister legacy of William Shockley, let us move along to the Christian Right and their links to high weirdness. At the forefront of this strange netherworld is a certain cult leader whom regular readers of this blog are no doubt familiar with. Still, a bit of introduction is in order for the uninitiated.

The Unification Church, founded by the charismatic cult leader Sun Myung Moon (the followers of whom are sometimes referred to as "Moonies"), is central to our narrative here, so let us begin by briefly considering the origins of the church and its curious beliefs:

"After studying electrical engineering in Japan during World War II, Moon return to Pyongyang (now the capital of North Korea) to found his first church. 'It was no different from many other unorthodox Christian sects except for the ritual of "blood separation," involving female members of the church. They were required to have sexual relations with Moon, to clear themselves of "the taint of Satan." '

"Moon was arrested by the communist authorities twice and in 1947 was sentenced to five years in Hungnam prison. Although he maintains that he was just another example of communist persecution of religion, other sources, including former Korean government officials, say the charges were in response to the Church's reported orgiastic practices.

"Eventually freed by United Nations troops in their advance north during the Korean War, Moon fled to Pusan, in South Korea. There he founded the Holy Spirit Association for the Unification of World Christianity or, simply, the Unification Church. 

"Moon's ministry found quite a few converts among the homeless and impoverished refugees who flooded Pusan, but the strange tenets he espoused were met with suspicion and hostility by both the rulers of South Korea and the established Catholic clergy. Moon could count among his disciples, however, a number of well-connected young army officers. When he was again arrested in 1955, this time on a morals charge for staying the night in a 'love hotel' with a follower, Moon's military contacts managed to get the charge changed to violation of military conscription law and it was eventually dropped."

(Inside the League, Scott and Jon Anderson, pgs. 65-66) 

Moon's ties to the Korean (and likely US) intelligence services would play a key role in the meteoric rise of the Unification Church from a obscure Christian cult in a (then) poor country to a major international power in the span of just a little over a decade. But more on that in a moment. Here are a few more details on the curious beliefs of Moon as outlined by the Anderson brothers:

"... Moon's life took a dramatic turn when, walking through the hills around his village, he was visited by Jesus Christ. 'You are the son I have been seeking,' Christ informed the startled sixteen-year-old, 'the one who can begin my eternal history.'..

"Unification theology is a potpourri of Christianity, Confucianism, mysticism, patriotism, anti-communism, and Moon's own megalomania. It Moon's eyes, Christ technically falls into the category of a failure, for although he established a spiritual kingdom, he didn't establish a physical or political one. Moon is here to rectify that oversight; he is anointed as the man to complete Jesus' original mission.

"Because it rejected Jesus, Israel is no longer God's chosen land (though the Jews were finally cleansed by suffering six million dead in World War II); God had to find a new Messiah and a new Adam country. Moon and Korea were uniquely designated for this purpose, for one of the most original aspects of Unificationism is its attribution of spirituality and gender to nations based upon their topographically..."

(Inside the League, Scott and Jon Anderson, pg. 64)

Sun Myung Moon

Moon is also reputed to have rituals based upon the glorification General Douglas MacArthur (who was addressed in the Fringe series), whose UN "peacekeeping" mission is what rescued Moon, though I have been unable to reliably confirm these allegations.

As for Moon's ties to the national security establishments of South Korea and the United States, they were quite extensive by the late 1980s:

"The history of the Unification Church is inextricably links with the history of U.S. support for the military government of South Korea and with the post-World War II activities of leading Japanese war criminals and industrialists. By the mid-1970s, the Unification Church was implicated in a scandal called 'Koreagate,' involving Korean government influence buying within the United States. In 1977, a congressional investigative committee chaired by Rep. Donald Fraser (D-MN), revealed that after the 1961 coup which brought Korea's Park Chung Hee to power, the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) decided to organize and utilize the Unification Church as a 'political tool' within the United States. KCIA agents were found to have infiltrated the staffs Rep. Cornelius Gallagher (D-NJ) and House Majority Leader Carl Albert (D-OK), and numerous Moonies landed volunteer positions in Congressional offices.

"The Fraser Committee found that one of the early KCIA/Moon projects was the Korean Cultural Freedom Foundation, a supposedly nonprofit organization which was actually a propaganda campaign on behalf of South Korea. By the spring of 1964, KCFF was raising funds from Americans for the Freedom Center; the latter was a project of the Asian People's Anti-Communist League (APACL), promoted and subsidized by the Korean government. The Freedom Center is the secretarial headquarters of the World Anti-Communist League (WACL), a multinational network Nazi war criminals, Latin American death squad leaders, North American racists and anti-Semites, and fascist politicians from every continent."

(Spiritual Warfare, Sara Diamond, pg. 59)

For many years Moon was one of the principal backers of the WACL. This came to a head during Iran-Contra, when Moonies played a crucial role in the Contra supply network principally organized by the WACL with the blessing of the Reagan administration.

Moon was, in other words, a major player in the international far right. In addition to the WACL, he would also massively subsidize the Christian Right in the United States. On the whole, the fundies never had any real qualms about taking Moon's money despite the fact that the beliefs he promoted were far outside the Christian mainstream, to put it mildly. But beyond claims of being divinely appointed to finish the work of Jesus Christ, Moon appears to have held some other beliefs that surely would have horrified the rank-and-file of the Christian Right as well.

Moon and the New Age

Over the years the Unification Church was linked to several New Age-type organizations, many of them deeply interested in parapsychology and Ufology. Along these lines the group most closely associated with the Moonies appears to have been the Spiritual Frontiers Fellowship. Moon received several readings (such as this one) from its founder, Arthur Ford.

Moon was brought into Ford's orbit by Anthony Brooke, the last of the "white rajahs" to rule Sarawak (now part of Malaysia) and British army intelligence veteran of the Second World War. After a brief struggle to retain his meager monarchy petered out in the late 1950s (amidst intrigues) Brooke became an "ambassador of global consciousness." Brooke first encountered Moon in 1964 and was immediately taken with him. He would go on to write glowingly of the Unification founder in Revelation for the New Age and Towards Human Unity.

Anthony Brooke

Brooke spent time at Findhorn Foundation, an early New Age outpost located in Scotland. It was co-founded by Dorothy Maclean, a former employee of the British Security Coordination in New York City during the 1940s that helped establish the Office of Strategic Services (OSS, the precursor the CIA). Beyond this, the founders reportedly believed they were in psychic contact with aliens:

"Yes, aliens. The official Findhorn website states: 'The Findhorn Community was begun in 1962 by Peter and Eileen Caddy and Dorothy Maclean. All three had followed disciplined spiritual paths for many years and had been specifically trained to follow God’s will'. But 1962 was merely when Peter, Eileen and Dorothy moved to Findhorn. The Findhorn Community’s true origins lie in the 1950s, in the maelstrom of post-war fringe ideas and philosophies which eventually settled out as what we now call the ‘New Age’. Central to Findhorn’s origins lies a secret which the current leaders of the community would very much like to play down; flying saucers. For all their talk of the Community being formed by the guidance of God one of the core beliefs held by Findhorn’s founders in the ’50s and 60s was that flying saucers existed, existed and their occupants were in psychic contact with them. It was also an article of faith that physical contact with the saucers was not only possible, it was certain.

Dorothy Maclean

It appears that for a brief time in 1970 Doris Orme, allegedly the first Western Unification convert, taught classes at Findhorn. While there she met her future husband, who left Findhorn with her. Orme was brought there by Brooke, who at this time was prone to referring to Moon as "the messiah" when not trying to contact UFOs.

Unsurprisingly, Moon appears to have had a keen interest in psychic phenomenon that spanned several decades. For instance, in 1974 while kicking off the third annual International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences (ICUS), Moon stated:

"The study of extrasensory perception has drawn the attention of quite a number of scholars in the academic community. In particular, the discovery that a dolphin can communicate with human beings intelligently deserves notice. Along the same lines, it has been observed that plants respond to the love and other emotional states of human beings. These discoveries suggest that our present view that the animal and plant worlds are lacking in consciousness and reason may be limited. We may now as well envision a universe in which a harmonious co-existence may be brought about between human beings and other creatures, where man, being the center of all things, may serve as the spokes of the wheel turning the whole universe in ultimate harmony and oneness."

Much of the interest was expressed via the International Cultural Foundation (ICF), an international umbrella organization that coordinated a variety of Unification projects. The ICF is generally overlooked by many critics of the Unification Church despite some of the curious interests it has promoted and several of its executive members. In 1983, for instance, its editorial board featured Neil Salonen, a longtime Moonie representative at the WACL, and Dr. Jose Delgado, a psychiatrist long linked to CIA behavior modification experiments and a friend of  ARTICHOKE scientist (and channeller of The Nine) Andrija Puharich.

The most well known projects of the ICF were the above-mentioned annual International Conference on the Unity of the Sciences (ICUS) events that sought to build a bridge between science and religion. Frequently they ended up endorsing a host of arcane topics. For instance J.B. Rhine, the famed parapsychologist who operated out of Duke University for many years, addressed one such ICUS confab.

But parapsychology was hardly the extent of Moon's interest in fringe disciplines. Extraterrestrial life was also addressed by the ICUS at least three times at its conferences, first in 1977 (addressed by a committee chaired by longtime American Security Council science adviser Eugene Wigner), again in 1978 with an entire group dedicated to the question this time around (this same group also held lectures on the nature of consciousness, with one being given by Wigner) and finally in 1985.

The 1985 conference featured a discussion led by Bruce Maccabee, a optical physicist long employed by the Navy who worked on the Strategic Defense Initiative (a topic discussed at length during the regular Fringe series). Maccabee has a longstanding interest in Ufology and became a member of NICAP in 1969 and a member of MUFON in 1973 all the while working for the Navy. As was noted in another installment of Fringe, NICAP featured ample representation from the American Security Council, which also provided a lot of the public relations support for the SDI. I suspect Maccabee has probably had ample dealings with the old ASC crowd.

Bruce Maccabee

Another Ufologist associated with the ICUS is journalist Hal Corbett McKenzie. McKenzie joined the Unification Church in 1969 shortly thereafter found himself working with the ICUS. He wrote professionally about UFOs since the 1970s and interviewed several Ufologist linked to the old ASC network such J. Allen Hynek and Budd Hopkins. In 2003 he began running a website, Cosmic Tribune, that focused on UFOs. He was also a member of Exopolitics. Naturally, McKenzie appears to have been a visitor of the World Anti-Communist League as well.

Again, I would like to provide a big thank you to Don Diligent, a Unification defector, for his herculean efforts in uncovering this crucial information in providing insights into the Unification Church's ties to the New Age. All the data in this section was provided by Don.

Edgar Mitchell: Agent of the Christian Right?

By far Moon's interesting tie to the New Age, however, is Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell. As I'm sure many of my readers are well aware. Mitchell had a keen interest in psi and UFOs. He reportedly conducted a private ESP experiment from space during the Apollo 14 mission and would remain a public advocate of Ufology all his life. Most recently emails on this topic from Mitchell to John Podesta, the former chairman of Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign, were revealed by Wikileaks during said campaign and showed Mitchell's advocacy on this topic continued practically up to the time of his death.

In addition to UFOs, Mitchell has been deeply involved with psi for years and played a crucial role in launching the famed SRI remote viewing experiments during the early 1970s. Specifically, Mitchell enabled SRI to test famed Israeli magician Uri Geller under laboratory conditions on behalf of the CIA.

"With the imminent arrival of Uri Geller in November 1972, CIA anticipation was high and secrecy was paramount. Kit Green had been personally handling the Geller matter since he was assigned the job by CIA director Richard Helms. Declassified memos reveal two focused concerns during this time. One was Geller's celebrity, and the other was the presence of Andrija Puharich, who had by now taken on a Svengali-like role as Geller's official manager. Given Puharich's notorious background, the CIA needed to keep him at arms length from any Agency affiliation. This issue was temporarily solved by using Edgar Mitchell's newly formed Mind Science Institute of Los Angeles (later the Institute of Noetic Sciences) as a conduit for payments to Puharich and Geller..."

(Phenomena, Annie Jacobsen, pgs. 140-141)

As was noted above, Puharich was a former ARTICHOKE scientist (noted before here) and the channeler of The Nine, alleged extraterrestrial intelligences supposedly first contacted in the 1950s and which reappeared in the Geller saga (all of which was addressed before here).

But back to the matter at hand. Mitchell would remain involved with the SRI project throughout the 1970s and would show ample deep state connections throughout the process. For instance, when a new project was found to continue funding, SRI asked Mitchell to lobby the CIA. He secured an appointment with a certain director.

"For Puthoff and Targ, a new funding opportunity was now at hand. The SRI scientists called on the ambassador of psychic research, Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, for help. Mitchell had created a nonprofit institute and Petaluma, California, called the Institute of Noetic Sciences, where he worked on metaphysical and consciousness studies full-time. On behalf of Puthoff and Targ, Ed Mitchell was able to secure a meeting with CIA director George H. W. Bush. Mitchell traveled to agency headquarters, in Langley, Virginia, where the CIA director listened intently, Mitchell recalled in 2015..."

(Phenomena, Annie Jacobsen, pg. 200)

Edgar Mitchell

This was not the only time Mitchell had met with Bush in regards to psychic phenomena, either. As I hope all of this has illustrated, Mitchell was a major player in deep state interest in psi during the 1970s and continued to be consulted on topics such as UFOs by insiders up to the time of his death.

With this in mind, it makes Mitchell's ties to the Christian Right all the more curious. His affiliation with the Moonies dated back to the 1970s. In 1973, for instance, he appeared at a Moonies function in California along with long time ASC luminary Stefan Possony. As was noted in the "Fringe" series, Possony had a longstanding interest in UFOs and was reputed to have worked with Mankind Research Unlimited (MRU) during the 1970s, another think tank alleged to be involved in exploring psychic phenomena on behalf of the US intelligence community.

As such, Possony's presence at this event with Mitchell in 1973 is most eyebrow raising as the SRI experiments were in full swing by that point as well. At the time Possony was a fellow of the Hoover Institute, based out of Stanford, which SRI had been a part of until 1970. Was Possony keeping tabs on what was going at SRI around the same time he is reputed to have been involved with MRU?

Stefan T. Possony

But back to Mitchell. During the 1980 ICUS conference Mitchell moderated a group panel on psychic phenomena. He was joined in this endeavor by former SRI scientist and then-president of Noetic Sciences Willis Harman.

And that brings me to the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), where Mitchell's most damning link to the Christian Right resides. A co-founder of IONS and its chief financial patron in the early years was one Paul N. Temple, a former Standard Oil executive. He would go on to serve as the IONS's chairman of the board of directors for seventeen years.

But for many years prior to Temple's affiliation with Noetic Science and the New Age, he had supported quite a different religious agenda: The Family/Fellowship. After beginning as a union busting organization during the 1930s, the Family would emerge by the end of World War II as a wealthy and well-connected international organization with ties to the heart of the emerging deep state. The organization's National Prayer Breakfast has been attended by every sitting US president since Eisenhower. Much more information on The Family can be found here.

It would appear that Temple played a key role in The Family's rise. He was one of the key financial backers for years. In 2002 the L.A. Times noted:

"The Fellowship does not solicit money. A handful of wealthy backers, including Detroit lawyer and GOP donor Michael Timmis, Denver oilman Jerome A. Lewis and former Maryland investor Paul N. Temple, support the Fellowship with personal contributions. Private foundations they control also contribute hundreds of thousands yearly to the International Foundation, tax records show."

Paul N. Temple

This raises some intriguing possibilities, one of which is that Temple, the primary source of funding for Noetic Science in the early years, would have been the one to handle the covert CIA funds to SRI. Thus, we are left with the prospect that a crucial financier of The Family, one of the most notorious cults the Christian Right has yet produced, was a covert supporter of the SRI experiments. The same SRI experiments that were greatly aided by Temple's Noetic Science co-founder and Moonie affiliate Edgar Mitchell.

And less we forget, Possony and William Shockley were also active at nearby Stanford University during this time. And the SRI experiments also featured the participation of ARTICHOKE scientist Andrija Puharich. As was noted before here, several key ARTICHOKE men in the CIA had ties to far right organizations like the American Security Council.

Again, all I can do is marvel at the extent elements of the far right have latched onto New Age-centric pursuits. While sponsorship of the New Age has long been linked to Rockefeller money, I hope this post and the "Fringe" series have helped lay bare the extent that the far right and the closely related military-industrial complex had infiltrated such topics.

The comfort that men like Edgar Mitchell show in both worlds is striking. And this overlap is mirrored by organizations like The Family. As was noted before here, Hillary Clinton, while not a member, is regarded as "friend of The Family." And it was her campaign chairman, John Podesta, whom Mitchell was contact with concerning the UFO question.

But The Family is also close to the Trump administration. As was noted before here, key members of the administration such as Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, Secretary of Justice Jeff Sessions and Vice-President Mike Pence are also Family members. And yet the Trump campaign certainly put arcane and occultic practices to use on the campaign trail (noted here).

The more one peels back the layers of this netherworld, the more on is left with mysteries wrapped in enigmas shrouded in riddles. And with that I leave you for now dear readers. A big thank you again to "Don Dilligent" and "AW" for their crucial contributions to this post.

Fringe: The Strange and Terrible History of the Far Right and High Weirdness Part VIII

Welcome to the eight installment in my epic examination of the involvement of the far right in "high weirdness." Over the course of this series I have used "high weirdness" as a catchall for a host of arcane topics ranging from psi, psychedelics, UFOs, human potential and the occult. As for the far right, I have largely examined them through the lens of think tanks closely aligned to the American military-industrial complex such as the Committee on the Present Danger Mach I (CPD) and the infamous American Security Council (ASC). 

With the first installment of this series I briefly considered the bizarre Sikh temple shooting of 2012, the high weirdness of the 2016 US presidential election and the differences between the far right and the traditional conservative establishment centered around the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the like. Part two moved on to the origins of the military-industrial complex, which resided with a clique of middle managers brought into government by Bonesman and Secretary of War Henry Stimson and the merging technocratic class personified by Vannevar Bush. 

The third installment traced the merger of the military-industrial complex and the far right to a clique of military officers who had served under/along side General Douglas MacArthur in either Pacific Theater of World War II or Korea. "Coincidentally," many of these military officers would play a key role in establishing the American Security Council as well frequently turning up in the literature concerning the Roswell incident. Part four expanded upon the ties of the ASC and these military officers to Roswell, as well as my theory concerning what really happened. 

Part five delved into the extensive overlap between the ASC and the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP), for years the premier civilian UFO organization. The sixth installment moved along to the ASC's role in distributing the Hangar 18 mythos/disinformation as well as the role it played in publishing the early works Jacques Vallee, J. Allen Hynek and other UFOlogy who developed rather arcane and mystical takes on the phenomenon.

famed UFOlogists J. Allen Hynek (left) and Jacques Vallee (right)

The seventh installment was a bit of a departure. Up to this point I had primarily been concerned with UFOlogy and the involvement of the far right in such things via think tanks like the ASC. But with part seven I considered the far right's influence on the human potential movement via Werner Erhard and his notorious est sessions. There it was noted that one of Erhard's greatest influences was the mysterious businessman known as William Penn Patrick. Prior to becoming involved in the human potential movement Patrick had been deeply active in far right politics and the ASC network. His Leadership Dynamics, which likely had a considerable influence on Erhard, may well have been a behavior modification experiment he was carrying out for unknown backers.

Eugenics and UFOs

After digressing into the bizarre pursuits of Patrick with the prior installment I would once again like to consider the activities of the ASC, or at least one particular member, in the same time frame (late 1960s/early 1970s). This individual was one Stefan T. Possony, a major deep state player who does not receive remotely as much attention as his nefarious career warrants. 

Possony was an Austrian emigre that arrived in the United States around 1941 after fleeing the Nazis in Austria, Czechoslovakia and finally France. Despite his opposition to Nazism, he appears to have been quite comfortable with many of the party's tenets. Possony embraced a form of nationalism and eugenics and attacked the US's efforts to integrate African Americans during the Cold War years on the basis of their intellectual inferiority. He also denounced the dismantlement of Colonialism on this basis as well. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Shortly after arriving in the United States, Possony found himself employed simultaneously by Princeton's Institute for Advanced Studies and the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI). After the war he also became an intelligence adviser to the Air Force and likely the CIA as well. He was apparently a co-founder of the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI), a think tank long linked to the CIA and which has recently reemerged as a critic of "fake news." The FPRI also played a key role in establishing the ASC and the military-industrial complex on the whole. And Possony was right in the center of things.

"Although the ASC began as an antilabor operation with support from Sears... and other businesses, it soon became involved in foreign policy issues. It cosponsored a series of annual meetings from 1955 to 1961 called National Military-Industrial Conferences in which elements of the Pentagon, National Security Council, and organizations linked to the CIA discussed cold war strategy with leaders of many large corporations, such as United Fruit, Standard Oil, Honeywell, U.S. Steel, and of course, Sears Roebuck. Robert Wood was the key organizer of these events. One conference 'cooperating organization' was the CIA-linked Foreign Policy Research Institute.

"The Institute's foreign policy thesis during this period was spelled out in a book, A Forward Strategy for America by Robert Strausz-Hupe, William R. Kintner, and Stefan T. Possony. In discussing nuclear-option scenarios in a hypothetical expanding U.S.-Soviet conflict, the book makes the following statement:

Even at a moment when the United States faces defeat because, for example, Europe, Asia and Africa have fallen to communist domination, a sudden nuclear attack against the Soviet Union could at least avenge the disaster and deprive the opponent of the ultimate triumph. While such a reversal at the last moment almost certainly would result in severe American casualties, it might still nullify all previous Soviet conquests.

(Old Nazis, New Right, and the Republican Party, Russ Bellant, pgs. 33-35)

Having the weapons capability to destroy the planet many times over would become a major obsession of Possony's, as we shall see. As might be expected, the ASC liked what they saw in Possony's thesis and he would officially become a member of the ASC's National Strategy Committee in 1962. This association would last for decades. 

A little before Possony's propaganda efforts for the military-industrial complex began in earnest, he became involved in the UFO question. In early 1953 Possony participated in the infamous Robertson Panel, a CIA-Pentagon committee that debated the UFO question for several days before recommending a massive disinformation campaign concerning UFOs. Also present was J. Allen Hynek, who as noted in part six also has indirect links to the ASC. The CIA was largely represented by personnel from the Office of Scientific Intelligence (OSI), which was also deeply involved in Project ARTICHOKE during this time. 

The OSI was headed by H. Marshall Chadwell, a close associate of Vannever Bush who had worked with him in the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) during WWII. Howard P. Robertson, who headed the panel and gave it its name, had also worked with Bush and Chadwell in the NDRC. As was noted in part two, Bush played a key role in establishing the military-industrial complex. He would become an unabashed cheerleader of it with the Committee on the Present Danger Mach I, members of which later join alliances with the ASC by the late 1970s. Possony, an academic who ended up working in Ivy League circles after the war, appears to be one of the earliest links between Bush's technocrats and the far right. Interestingly, Possony would go on to work closely with another Bush lieutenant, Edward Teller, in the ASC. But more on that later.

Edward Teller (left) and his former boss in the NDRC, Vannevar Bush (right)

Possony's involvement in UFOs appears to have predated even the Robinson Panel, however. During the early 1950s he apparently ran a "Special Study Group" out of the office of General John Samford, then-director of Air Force Intelligence. Samford would eventually become the head of the National Security Agency in 1956 and would hold the post until his retirement in 1960. Project Blue Book was initiated during his time directing Air Force Intelligence. As such, he is often mentioned in UFO literature.

The "Special Study Group" is one of the most enigmatic UFO study groups from this era. Very little is known about, though it appears Possony was representing the Special Study Group when he appeared before the Robertson Panel. Here are some more details:

"Although not well documented, there are just enough fragments of information to make it legitimate at least to mention another Pentagon figure and his activities around this period. This man was Stefan Possony, and he ran a 'Special Study Group' right inside General Samford's office. This group was quite involved with UFOs. What was this all about? How could a special study group be going on in the highest office of the Air Force Intelligence?...

"In 1951 Possony was regularly involved at very high levels the intelligence community. Late in that year, he was in General Samford's office as the brain trust behind something called the Special Study Group. The exact purpose of the group is not known for certain, but it may have been exactly as stated in a Memorandum for Record (anonymously written by Possony or Lt. Col. E Sterling, the military chief) of April 29, 1952. This is an astonishing memorandum of 5 1/2 pages entirely about Special Study Group thinking and why Sterling and Possony should go to Europe to assess certain possible threats to national security.

"The memo states that the Air Force is pursuing technology at an accelerating pace and the Soviets will be doing so as well. The main area of unpredictability is not the weapons themselves but the types and effectiveness of their delivery systems. Because of the pace of advances, we cannot be sure of where the Soviets are. Then it says this:

The Special Study Group has undertaken a comprehensive study of Russian capabilities in the field of advanced aerial delivery systems, the strategic implications, and probable timetables as to development and operational availability. As an important side product, it is hoped that some much needed light can be shed on the vexing 'flying saucer' problem. 

"The text goes on to enumerate the technologies that Sterling and Possony would investigate. The list included 'flying saucers,' and addressed them specifically:

In connection with flying saucers, the Group is attempting to develop a proper framework for fruitful analysis. The Air Force cannot assume that flying saucers are of non-terrestrial origin, and hence, they could be Soviet.

"The rest of the memorandum was an extended set of reasons why the working hypothesis that the saucers were a nascent Soviet delivery system must not be ignored. In the narrative, one case example was utilized to make the argument that, whereas the behavior of the objects was beyond U.S. capability, it was not beyond theoretical capability, and therefore could have been an advanced terrestrially produced device. This argument was based on the sightings reported to Commander McLaughlin by Charles Moore and the General Mills balloon team. Possony used this case study with explicit faith in the reality of its details, including the velocity estimates at slightly greater than gravitational escape velocity, which he found significant. Possony and Sterling believed such sources were not from outer space, based on the testimony of astronomers that indicated that the astronomers would have seen the objects coming.

"Possony and Sterling returned from Europe in about five weeks and had become convinced that the discs were not Soviet, after all. Possony, however remained interested in the phenomenon. He, according to Ruppelt, attended many relevant Pentagon meetings and always severely challenged persons dismissive of the reality of the incidents. He asked his civilian assisting, Les Rosenweig, to bring together materials for desktop studies on topics such as the possible propulsion systems used by the disks, and potential methods to contact him. Possony often put ideas in Major Fournet's ear and may have played a role in his 'motion study' of flying disc maneuverability, from which Fournet concluded that the flight capabilities of UFOs were well beyond terrestrial technology..."

(UFOs and Government: A Historical Inquiry, Michael Swords & Robert Powell, pgs. 150-152)



possibly Stefan T. Possony

On the whole then Possony appears to have been deeply involved in the UFO question at high levels of the intelligence community from very early on. As was noted above, Possony found himself recruited into the Ivy League and the ONI shortly after moving to the United States and by the late 1940s was also working for Air Force Intelligence. By at least the mid-1950s he had likely been recruited into the CIA, as evidenced by his work with FPRI. By the end of the decade he was actively working with the ASC in the National Military-Industrial Conferences, and would officially join the National Stratgegy Committee in 1962. There he would have found himself in the company of numerous "former" high ranking military officers with a keen interest in UFOs, many of whom have been linked to Roswell. Possony surely would have felt right at home after his time in the "Special Study Group."

MRU

But UFOs may not have been Possony's only brush with high weirdness. Much of the following information is highly speculative, but I thought it was compelling enough to warrant inclusion here. It is alleged that at some point in the mid-1970s Possony became involved with a curious New York-based outfit known as Mankind Research Unlimited (MRU). MRU apparently began as a subsidiary of Systems Consultants Inc (SCI), a defense contractor that allegedly received much of its funding from the Navy, in 1966. By 1973 MRU had apparently severed its ties to SCI, though this has been hotly debated.

MRU and its potential ties to the CIA were first exposed in 1980 by A.J. Weberman in an article entitled "Mind Control: The Story of Mankind Research Unlimited, Inc" (which can be found here) that initially appeared in an issue of Covert Action Information Bulletin. Weberman is a highly controversial researcher and much of the information concerning MRU is based upon his initial expose. Thus, everything one encounters concerning MRU should be taken with a heaping grain of salt.

The following information was primarily written by Iona Miller, whose credibility should also be questioned. However, she does appear to be in contact with former employees of MRU, which is more than numerous others who have explored this topic have managed. On MRU and its mysterious director, Dr. Carl W. Schleicher, Miller notes:

"Mankind Research Unlimited, Inc. (MRU, and the later nonprofit Foundation, MRF) was a much less publicized eastcoast thinktank like Stanford Research Institute (SRI). MRU was purchased from parent company SCI on August 13, 1973 to become an independent company with its own Board operating through the Director's lifetime. Located in the Washington, D.C. area, it operated from the early 1970s to 1999. Like SRI, many strange phenomena were investigated and developed there, often at government expense. 

"MRU’s Director, Carl W. Schleicher, Ph.D. has been accused, along with Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, of being the mind control mad-genius behind MK Ultra and the ‘Manchurian Candidate’ in both Feral Press (Constantine, 1995) and by A.J. Weberman (1) online. Called the 'Father of the Cyborg,' in CIA Mind Control Operations in the USA, Schleicher heartily denied it to his death in 1999. He was preparing to sue Weberman for theft of MRU files and false allegations, according to close associates.  

"All research was conducted on a 'need to know' basis. No one seems able to make a coherent story of it, though rumors about connections of Director Schleicher to MK Ultra run rampant. What is known is he had ten active years of military service (1955-1966) for the Navy as a 'war games expert,' and spy in Europe.

"Sources say he was stationed for a time on the electronic intelligence ship,USS Liberty. He retired shortly before the SigInt ship was mysteriously attacked in the 1967 Six-Day War. He then went into 'exotic areas of knowledge' with a mandate to 'peek discretely into the unknown'. He avoided marriage, saying, 'My mission is different.' He always claimed his mission was 'humanitarian.'

"Schleicher attended the Naval Academy, worked overseas in operations research, and spoke six languages, then went into war games, publishing in The Journal of Electronic Warfare. An interest in dowsing got him into the paranormal - but not dowsing for water – dowsing for Vietcong in tunnels in Khe Sanh for the Marines. This led to a meeting with Ostrander and Schroeder, authors of Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain, and the game was afoot. He accepted their unfiltered pile of Soviet research and paid $5000 for translations. 

"Schleicher had a gruff military personality. His cohorts included former OSS, CIA and military intelligence officers, physicians, psychologists, scientists, anti-gravity investigators, healers, chemists, psychics, dowsers, and remote viewers. MRU developed a low-frequency electronic device that 'interferes with insects' antennae. But, in typical Schleicher fashion, he tersely declined explanation with a pat answer, 'I can say no more.'..

"MRU's capability and experience is divided into four fields, including biophysics -- Biological Effects of Magnetic Fields,' 'Research in Magneto-fluid Dynamics,' 'Planetary Electro-Hydro-Dynamics' and 'Geo-pathic Efforts on Living Organisms.' The latter focuses on the induction of illness by altering the magnetic nature of the geography. MRU first researched the area of Biological Effects of Magnetic Fields focusing on the induction of illness by altering the magnetic nature of the geography.  

"Mankind Research Unlimited distributed a CIA directive, summarized in a brochure on the 'Cybernetic Technique'. It discussed the Agency's development of a 'means by which information in modest rate can be fed to humans utilizing other senses than sight or hearing. 'The Cybernetic Technique,' based on Eastern European research,' involves beaming information to individual nerve cells. The purpose, the directive states, is the enhancement of mental and physical performance. To protect MK Ultra, the CIA subcontracted research and development to universities, prisons, private laboratories and hospitals...  

"This inside source discredits accusations of Schleicher working for either the CIA or The Aviary, infamous UFO debukers.He says MRF was associated with Rockefeller Foundation and NSA, producing several books for them. Recent admissions (2) about covert mind control experiments have come from Naval Intelligence. Approval authority is now required for all 'severe or unusual intrusions, either physical or psychological, on human subjects (such as consciousness-altering drugs or mind control techniques),' implying they had done so in the past." 

Carl W. Schleicher

Funding from the Rockefeller Foundation and the NSA (and possibly the Navy, whom Schleicher apparently kept in the loop) makes for an interesting combination. As I noted before here, it seems probable that the Rockefeller family did provide funding for MK-Ultra. But the presence of the NSA and Navy also indicate military interest and these forces have not always seen eye to eye with the Rockefeller interests. Possony's presence here indicates that the ASC and their allies were also monitoring these developments. Reportedly other military men were also involved, but most of  the high profile members came from the type of Ivy League backgrounds the Rockefellers love to recruit from.

In addition to Possony, some other curious characters have been linked to MRU include: Christopher Bird, Stanley Krippner and Berthold E. Schwarz, among others. Bird was a writer and anthropologist while both Krippner and Schwarz were psychologists. Unsurprisingly, all three men harbored a keen interest in telepathy.

Bird was even a co-author of The Secret Life of Plants, which addressed the consciousness of vegetation. He was also an authority on dowsing, and is considered to be the premier America authority on it in the second half of the twentieth century. Schwarz had a longstanding interest in UFOlogy, and was highly regarded in the field. He appears to have had a much more esoteric take on the phenomenon that seems to be more in line with ideas of Jacques Vallee.

Krippner was a major advocate of LSD, and was also one of the leading parapsychologist in these United States at the onset of the 1960s counterculture. He performed psi experiments as part of the so-called "Dream Laboratory" that predated both MRU and the more well known research at SRI.

"In his work at the Dream Laboratory at Maimonides Medical Center, Montague Ullman, along with psychologist Stanley Krippner and researcher Charles Honorton, produced compelling evidence that accurate precognitive information can also be obtained in dreams. In their study, volunteers were asked to spend eight consecutive nights at the sleep laboratory, and each night they were asked to try to dream about a picture that would be chosen at random the next day and shown to them. Ullman and his colleagues hoped to get one success out of eight, but found that some subjects could score as many as five 'hits' out of eight."

(Holographic Universe, Michael Talbot, pg. 206)

Stanley Krippner

Like Schwarz, Krippner also appears to have a keen interest in UFOs. The same is almost surely true of Bird as well. And, as was noted above, Possony was deeply involved in the UFO question for almost two decades prior to the founding of MRU.

Unsurprisingly, Possony does not appear to be the only one of these associates with deep state ties either. Christopher Bird has acknowledged that he was employee of the CIA during the 1950s, but it is likely this connection never ended. Curiously, Peter Tompkins, who he co-wrote Secret Life... with Bird, had been an OSS agent during WWII. Bird was also reputedly a member of convicted murderer Ira Einhorn's "psychic mafia."

"... the 'Mind Over Matter' conference that Einhorn organized on the Penn campus in late January 1977. It was one of several gatherings of the psychic mafia that Ira midwifed. The key players were all in attendance. Andrija Puharich, the ringmaster of the paranormal, speaking about the Space Kids. Chris Bird, an expert in odd corners of the paranormal with reputed CIA connections, talking about dowsing, as well as the biological implications dealt with in his best-selling book, The Secret Life of Plants. Tom Bearden, a retired Air Force colonel whose raucous self-published The Excalibur Briefing postulated a grand alternative view of reality, 'a theory of biofields which unites mental phenomena with physics.' The theory also encompassed UFOs and cattle mutilations." 

(The Unicorn's Secret, Steven Levy, pgs. 189-190) 

Christopher Bird

Andrija Puharich is figure regular readers of this blog should be well aware of. He reputedly channeled beings known as "The Nine," later alleged to be an extraterrestrial intelligence, during the early 1950s as part of a seance with possible deep state implications. He was also a scientist used by Project ARTICHOKE and his initial channeling of The Nine may have been a part of the project (as was noted before here). ARTICHOKE was overseen by the CIA's Office of Security, which had numerous ties to the far right and especially the American Security Council (as was noted before here).

Colonel Thomas Bearden, a close associate of Puharich's, was also reputed to have been a member of MRU, but I have been unable to reliably conform this. Still, Bearden may provide some insights into why Possony, a political strategist rather than a psychologist or scientist (unlike the bulk of the other figures involved in MRU), became involved with MRU. The thing Puharich, Bearden, Bird, Possony and longtime MRU director Carl W. Schleicher (and likely Krippner and Schwarz) all seem to have in common is a keen interest in Tesla technology. A lot of MRU's research seems to have involved electromagnetism and was based upon Tesla's theories concerning it.

In some accounts, this is said to be the force behind telepathy.

"Roughly speaking, the conventional picture of electromagnetism is shown by Bearden to be incomplete. Electromagnetism is 'nested' in dimensions deeper than the 3-D world. It arises from supersensible realms of existence or hyperspaces which Bearden refers to as 'nested levels of the virtual state.' The vacuum of space is actually a plenum, according to modern physics. Using the scalar electromagnetic wave, which is prior to the vector electromagnetic wave that produces electromagnetic fields, Bearden says, the vacuum of space itself can be engineered. He shows in quantum physical terms that energy may be produced directly at a distant site or extracted from it, without energy transmission through space. Essentially, beams of pure potential may be deliberately produced and intersected at a distance to cause effects. Thus, the entire range of extra-sensory and psychokinetic phenomena now appear to have an elegant explanation, albeit one which requires a radical modification of classical physics."

(Psychic Warfare, Appendix I, John White, pgs. 217-218)

Colonel Thomas Bearden

This theoretical form of electromagnetism, typically depicted as some type of extremely low frequency (ELF) wave, is also believed to be what powers UFOs in such circles. But the "psychic mafia" was not alone in these conclusions. Likely Bircher Peter Beter (one of the first researchers to link UFOs to the ASC), briefly addressed in part five, was also adamant about the prospect of UFOs being powered by electromagnetism by the late 1970s as well.

But beyond this, electromagnetism is also believed to be capable of producing some extremely terrible weapons. And it would appear that this is what lay behind Possony's interest in such things, if articles he wrote such as "Scientific Advances Hold Dramatic Prospects for Psy-Strat" and "The Tesla Connection" for Defense & Foreign Affairs during the early 1980s are any indication.

And that brings us to one of the longstanding obsessions of the ASC.

Space: The Final Defense Contract? 

In 1965 an interesting book was published entitled Strike From Space. It dealt with the alleged growing threat of Soviet space-based weapons, and would be one of the first serious tracts bemoaning the gap in such defenses. By the late 1970s, any number of conservative pundits (and even a few members of the "psychic mafia") would join the chorus, pointing to the mythical Soviet advances in a host of futuristic weapons systems. But the first formal salvo appears to have been fired here and it was penned by the recently deceased Dame of Malta Phyllis Schlafly (whose funeral Trump attended) and Admiral Chester Ward, a long time luminary of the American Security Council.

Possony would join the fray in 1970 and would continue to sound the alarm for well over a decade. Eventually he would become one of the chief architects of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), more commonly referred to as "Star Wars." The great Institute for the Study of Globalization and Covert Politics (ISGP) provides an excellent run down of the ASC's Possony-driven march towards the weaponization of space. Here's brief recap of the most important points:

• Possony joined the ASC national strategy committee in 1962 at the height of the Cuban Missile crisis along with nuclear physicist Edward Teller; both men who would work closely together in the ASC for two decades and would play leading roles in developing the SDI
• Possony's 1970 work The Strategy of Technology: Winning the Decisive War was popular with hawkish Pentagon officials in the 1970s; it advocated the development of expensive weapon systems that would be to high tech and expensive for other nations to reproduce without collapsing their economies
• by the late 1970s a host of ASC-linked organizations such as High Frontier (founded by ASC national strategy committee member General Daniel Graham and also featuring another national strategy committee member, General Robert C. Richardson III) and the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization, directed by the ASC's General James Abrahamson. The origins of these organizations lay with the Heritage Foundation's SDI Panel for Reagan, chaired by the ASC's Karl Bendetsen (who, like Possony, was a fellow of the Hoover Institute) and also featuring Graham and Teller. 
• By 1981 Graham's High Frontier group broke with the Bendesten camp; Graham wanted to go with something using "off-the -shelf weapons while Benesten and associated wanted to peruse a host of exotic weapons such as rail guns, lasers and particle beam weapons (General George Keenan, another ASC member associated with the Benesten camp, tried to convince the Carter administration the Soviets already had them, as shall be addressed in a moment)
• While the Bendesten camp was the favorite of Reagan, Graham's High Frontier group prevailed as it was deemed to be the more practical. 

It has of course long been insisted that some of the more exotic weapons proposed by Teller and the like were in fact developed in private. UFOlogist in particular fixated upon SDI and there was much speculation as to whether it was actually designed to protect the United States not from the Soviet Union, but an extraterrestrial power. In 1997 Colonel Philip J. Corso would go to great lengths in linking SDI to an alleged EBE threat. Corso, who was addressed in part four, was not a member of the ASC per se, but he was an initiate of the mysterious secret society known as the Sovereign Order of Saint John, which in turn a part of the ASC-sponsored Coalition for Peace Through Strength (noted before here).

But in addition to UFOs, Corso would also link SDI to Tesla weapons:

"For over fifty years, now, the war against UFOs has continued as we tried to defend ourselves against their intrusions. The Hughes hunter-killer satellites of the 1970s were our first step in applying a planetary defense system that held any real threat against EBEs. When, late in the 1970s, we realized that a directed-energy weapon and high-energy laser were even more effective than exploding satellites, our defensive ability was enhanced even further. We recognized that by applying both the technology we found at Roswell and Tesla's vision of a particle beam to our own antisatellite missiles and laser targeting equipment, we could achieve the rapid aim/rapid fire capability that these type of defenses demanded. But we were still playing cover-up games even though the Russians were now finally acknowledging that maybe cooperation between the superpowers was called for to meet a common threat.

"In the 1980s, both President Reagan and Chairman Gorbachev recognize the need for cooperation against a common enemy. While neither officially owned up to the threat of EBEs and alien hostilities, both acknowledge that if the United States and the Soviet Union could lay aside their differences and participate in a shared policy to defend the space around the earth, then both superpowers would benefit. For his part, President Reagan pushed hard for the rapid development and deployment of a space-based defense technology to defend the planet. Called the Strategic Defense Initiative, and derisively dubbed 'Star Wars' by the press, the SDI was described in 1985 in President Reagan's own words as 'a defense shield that won't hurt people but will knock down nuclear weapons before they can hurt people.'

"Briefly, the Strategic Defense Initiative was described by the White House and the military as a space-based defense system to protect the United States from an all-out nuclear attack by the Soviet Union. It would include satellites that could detect the massive nuclear launch within seconds, orbiting lasers to destroy the first wave of missiles, laser-equipped submarines that could defend against the next round of attacks, and a ground-based missile system providing the last line of defense. In addition, the SDI also included what I thought was the best of its weapons, a missile-launched kinetic energy beam weapon that locked onto incoming warheads or low-orbiting space vehicles and knocked out their electronics with a particle beam. The elegant aspect to the kinetic energy beam weapon was that you couldn't really defend against it. Lasers, even high-energy lasers, had their shortcomings in that once a laser beam bounced off the surface, the surrounding energy envelope protected the surface from subsequent pulses. You either knocked out your target right away or shielded against subsequent hits. But with a particle-beam weapon, you penetrated the surface, just like microwaving a piece of meat, destroyed its electronics to render it useless, and then broken apart or melded it from within.

"Amidst the warnings that the SDI wouldn't work, was a giant unscientific gamble and a corporate giveaway, couldn't provide the massive shield against nuclear missiles, would violate the ABM treaty President Johnson had negotiated with the Russians, and was a giant waste of the taxpayers money, guess what? 

"It worked!

"We didn't have to shoot down thousands of Soviet incoming warheads, and the Soviets never really cared about the ABM treaty in the first place because they knew they weren't going to launch a first strike and neither would we. We both knew who the real targets of the SDI were, and it wasn't a bunch of ICBM warheads. It was the UFOs, alien spacecraft thinking themselves invulnerable and invisible as they soared around the edges of our atmosphere, swooping down at will to destroy our communications with EMP bursts, buzz our spacecrafts, colonize our lunar surface, mutilate cattle in their own horrendous biological experiments, and even abduct human beings for their medical tests and hybridization of their species. And what was worse, we had to let them do it because we had no weapons to defend ourselves."

(The Day After Roswell, Philip J. Corso & William J. Birnes, pgs. 290-292)

At least, presumably, till the SDI was functional, despite widespread claims that the more exotic weapons such as those particle beams were never developed. As was indicated above by Corso, in most accounts these particular brand of death rays said to be based upon concepts developed by Tesla.

"In the 1930s Tesla announced other bizarre and terrible weapons: a death ray, a weapon to destroy hundreds or even thousands of aircraft at hundreds of miles range, and his ultimate weapon to end all war – the Tesla shield, which nothing could penetrate. However, by this time no one any longer paid any real attention to the forgotten great genius. Tesla died in 1943 without ever revealing the secret of these great weapons and inventions.

"Unfortunately, today the Soviet Union has long since discovered and weaponized the Tesla scalar wave effects. Here we only have time to detail the most powerful of these frightening Tesla weapons – which Brezhnev undoubtedly was referring to in 1975 when the Soviet side at the SALT talks suddenly suggested limiting the development of new weapons 'more frightening than the mind of man had imagined.' One of these weapons is the Tesla howitzer recently completed at the Saryshagan missile range and presently considered to be either a high energy laser or a particle beam weapon..."

(Psychic Warfare, "Tesla's Secrets and the New Soviet Superweapons," Thomas Bearden, pg. 178) 

Those alleged Soviet supwerweapons shall be addressed in just a moment, but an overview of these claims is warranted here. Particle beams on the whole had come a common staple of this type of conspiracy literature by the 1990s. Peter Beter had been railing against them since at least the late 1970s. In his narrative, the Soviets had developed highly advanced particle beam weapons by this time that were deployed first via satellites, and then upon a moon base. American had originally set up a moon base in the early 1960s (a claim Corso also made) with the idea of establishing our own beam weapons there. The Soviets were one step ahead of us, however, and launched a sneak attack with their own particle beam weapons as well as electromagnetic-powered UFOs that easily over powered US space-based weapons. After the conquest of space, the Soviets then began their stealth conquest of America...

Peter Beter

As incredible as all of this sounds, General George Keegan, the head of Air Force Intelligence in the mid-1970s and a luminary of the American Security Council after his retirement, warned about Soviet particle beam weapons for years. His first proclamations came in a sensation account given to Aviation Week and Space Technology in 1977 and he would continue to beat the drum throughout the creation of the SDI. Stefan Possony himself soon got into the act and also began to bemoan the growing particle beam gap between the US and the USSR.

General George Keegan

But it does not appear to have been the far right alone that feared the particle beam gap. While the above-mentioned Andrija Puharich and his close associate Colonel Thomas Bearden were more concerned about other US-USSR gaps in Tesla technology, they couldn't resist dredging out the particle beam boogie man to frighten New Agers on occasion as well. The above account of Soviet particle beam weapons was pinned by Bearden and widely promoted by both here and Puharich during this era.

Nor were the only New Agers feeling Tesla weapon anxiety. Elizabeth Clare Prophet, the founder of the Church Universal and Triumphant cult, became obsessed with an apocalyptic war during the 1980s. She urged followers to prepare for nuclear war and build bomb shelters. She also became an adamant proponent of SDI. At one point she even invited long time ASC luminary and High Frontier founder General Daniel Graham to address her cult to promote the benefits of the Star Wars.

SDI supporter Elizabeth Clare Prophet

On the whole one is struck by the degree of paranoia present on both the far right and fringe left concerning particle beams and other such technologies during the late 1970s and early 1980s. The United States was perpetually depicted as falling behind the super weapons race, creating a climate of apocalyptic dread that made something like the final version of the Strategic Defense Initiative sound perfectly reasonable in contrast.

In the twenty-first century, with the USSR long confined to the dustbin of history, this all sounds perfectly ludicrous. By the climate of fear nourished by such claims made those Congressional dollars flow like water into a host of arcane of weapons research. So while the particle beam gap was surely an elaborate propaganda campaign, it may have been crucial in the eventual creation of such weapons. There have of course been rumors for years (including from the scientist who claims to have provided the designs) that HAARP was an offshoot of SDI advances in Tesla technology. All of this is highly, highly speculative, and I have long dismissed many of the claims surround HAARP, but am deeply unnerved by the decades-spanning obsession of many luminaries of the far right in developing such things.

the HAARP facility in Alaska

Perhaps it was all in fact one elaborate boondoggle for the defense industry. The ASC was, after all, a lobby group for the military-industrial complex and its patrons were no doubt well rewarded for its Herculean efforts in legitimizing Star Wars. But it is truly chilling to think that this is the best case scenario.

And with that I shall wrap things up for now. We shall consider these alleged super technologies again, but in the next installment I shall address some of the other curious pursuits and characters that latched onto the ASC network in the 1980s. Stay tuned.