Fear and Loathing in the American Security Council Part IV

Welcome to the fourth installment in my examination of the American Security Council (ASC). While the alternative media is awash with accounts of the influence think tank long aligned with the so-called "Eastern Establishment" such as the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the Trilateral Commission have upon the national debate little attention has been paid to the rising power of various far right think tanks that began to emerge in the second half the 20th century. Chief among these was the ASC, which for years served as the "voice" of the military-industrial complex (and to some extent, the oil industry), not unlike the function the CFR serves for Wall Street to this day.

The ASC brought together the titans of the defense and (to a lesser extent) oil industries (including some elements of the declining blueblood Eastern Establishment) into collaboration with the far right wing nouveau riche of the Southern Rim and extremist elements within the US intelligence community and military to form what would become a crucial component of the overall American Establishment by the end of the century. In this capacity, the ASC served as both a lobby and propaganda outfit for the institutionalization of the military-industrial complex.

But beyond this, it also pursued a rabidly anti-Communist agenda under the auspices of industrial security, a little talked about netherworld that brings together various elements of the defense industry, FBI, CIA and military as well as various private security firms and "patriotic groups" (some "overworld," such as the American Legion, and some outside the "mainstream," such as the John Birch Society) in a vast intelligence apparatus that served a far right political agenda from its very inception. In the most recent installment of this series I traced the origins of this system to World War I and the industrial security apparatus established by General Ralph Van Deman, the so-called father of military intelligence. While Van Deman's apparatus was officially disbanded in the early 1920s he was put on the payroll of both the military and the FBI in 1927 to continue his work. With the advent of World War II, the system that Van Deman had developed – which brought together intelligence from the military and FBI as well as from the security divisions of various corporations,  large-scale private detective agencies in the above-mentioned "patriot groups" – became institutionalized.

General Van Deman

It is my contention that the ASC was designed as a kind of clearinghouse for intelligence reports provided by the above-mentioned sources much as Van Deman had done in the years before the  Second World War, but on a much wider scale. At its height in the 1970s the ASC had compiled a massive collection of names of alleged "subversives" provided by the various groups – i.e., the FBI, CIA, military, Wackenhut, American Legion, the Minutemen, the John Birch Society and various pre-WWII era "non-interventionist" groups such as the American Vigilante Intelligence Federation and the American Collation of Patriotic Societies – it had mustarded in its crusade against communism (which increasingly was defined as anything to the left of Rockefeller Republicanism by the overworld). To this end, the ASC engaged in blacklisting for years in an attempt to financially marginalize as many opponents of the growing military-industrial as possible. The ASC allegedly got out of the intelligence racket in the 1970s just as public outrage over domestic spying was beginning to mount but organizations it was affiliated with continued to maintain intelligence gathering operations for years afterwards.

But while the ASC had an overworld function – i.e. the perpetuation of the military-industrial complex through lobbying and propaganda and its various intelligence functions, including stealth economic warfare –it also featured various factions within its power structure with their own agendas. In many cases these agendas were not beyond the pale of the overworld elements within the American Security Council but there were at times radical departures, especially in regards to the "Prussian" (a term I'm using to define the especially radical military and intelligence individuals within the Council) element that sought the defeat of communism at any cost. Over the course of this installment I shall examine two of the most prominent factions (which also have much overlap), with a special emphasis on the high weirdness and cultic elements surrounding them.

With this in mind, let us begin with the inevitable Nazi faction within the Council. I've already touched on this faction before – in the first two installments (which can be found here and here) I noted the ties between the ASC and the America First Committee, a notorious pre-WWII "non-interventionist" group with numerous ties to the Nazis. In the third installment I briefly considered General Albert Wedemeyer, a German-American who had been educated at the German War College during the 1930s, and who had develop close ties with members of the German military and the Nazi party during his time there. Wedemeyer was later suspected of leaking the Rainbow 5 documents, a battle plan developed by the military in case war broke out against the Axis Powers, to the Chicago Tribune (which published the plans on December 4, 1941). After the war Wedemeyer would contribute heavily to the modern day "patriot movement," but more on that in another series.

 

These were of course hardly the only ties the ASC had to Nazi Germany and its Quislings. These elements were evident from early on in the ASC's history, especially in regards to its National Military Industrial Conferences (which were discussed in greater depth in part two of this series).

"... It cosponsored a series of annual meetings 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...

"Another sponsor of the conferences was the Aircraft Industries Association (AIA). According to Clarence Lasby's Project Paperclip, the AIA pressured the U.S. government in the 1950s to get Nazi scientists into the United States. Warner von Braun who worked on the Nazi rocket program, and General John Medaris, who supervised the Nazi scientists in the U.S. (and has opposed the investigation of the program by the Justice Department's OSI), were both conference participants...

"... In 1959, the National Military-Industrial Conferences established an Advisory Committee on Foreign Affairs that included a number of representatives of big business. Also included, however, were three political figures of the anti-Semitic extreme right...  Also a member of the Advisory Committee was Martin Blank, from Germany. Blank's entry in Who's Who in Germany described him as having worked in Berlin for a mine and steel mill business group from 1922 to 1945. A study of backers of German nazism, Who Financed Hitler, says that Blank represented a secret group of twelve Ruhr industrialists called the Ruhrlade, 'the most powerful secret organization of big business that existed during the Weimer period.' Ruhrlade and its political emissary, Martin Blank, became involved in funding the rise of Hitler. The 1959 Military-Industrial Conference bulletin identifies him as a representative of German industry.

"A third member of the committee was Baron Frederick August von der Heydte, who had also been active with the 1958 conference. His entry in Who's Who in Germany and other sources say that he was an 'active officer 1935-47' in the German army. Heydte, whose family was close to the exiled Hohenzollen monarch, was reported to have written in 1953 that 'democracy is linked with collapse, defeat and foreign uniforms stalking German soil,' and that 'democracy was brought by the victorious enemy together with the army of occupation.' Von der Heydt was a cofounder and ideological leader of the Christian Democratic Union, a party that brought a variety of Nazi elements into its fold after the first postwar German elections. In recent years von der Heydte has formed an association with Lyndon LaRouche's neofascist cult group. The only foreign members of the National Military-Industrial Conference's Foreign Affairs Committee during this period were Blank and von der Heydte."

(Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party, Russ Bellant, pgs. 33-36) 

Baron von der Heydte

Beyond these curious German businessmen with suspect pasts were various émigré groups of Eastern Europeans in the ASC's Coalition of Peace Through Strength network (discussed more in part two of this series) that had direct ties to the Baltic Quisling regimes the Nazi party established through the 1930s-40s.

"While the Coalition for Peace Through Strength became more involved in elections and lobbying for Reagan Administration priorities, the number of organizations in the Coalition grew from about forty in 1978 to 171 in 1986. As the Coalition grew, more bizarre groups were brought in. Many of the groups mentioned earlier are part of the Coalition: the Republican Heritage Groups Council and its Slavic, Romanian, Italian, Chinese, and Cossack Republican units; the Slavic World Congress, the Bulgarian National Front, the Byelorussian-American Association, and several other émigré fascist groups."

(ibid, pg. 41)

Earlier in the classic Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party author Russ Bellant noted that many of these Republican Heritage Groups Council organizations sitting on the ASC's Coalition for Peace Through Strength were dominated by former Nazi collaborators and fascist activists.

"Laszlo Pasztor: The founding chair in a key figure in Counsel, Pasztor began his political career and a Hungarian pro-Nazi party and served in Berlin at the end of World War II. He continues to be involved in ultrarightist groups and fascist networks while working with the GOP.

"Radi Slavoff: The Republican Heritage Groups Council's executive director is a member of a Bulgarian fascist group and leader of the Bulgarian GOP unit of the Council. He was able to get the leader of his Bulgarian nationalist group a White House invitation even though that leader was being investigated for concealing alleged World War II war crimes. He is also active in other émigré fascist groups.

"Nicolas Nazarenko: A former World War II officer in the German SS Cossack Division, Nazarenko heads a Cossack GOP unit of the Republican Heritage Groups Council, but declares that Jews are his 'ideological enemy.' He is still active with pro-Nazi elements in the U.S.

"Florian Galdau: A close associate and defender of Valerian Trifa, the Romanian archbishop prosecuted for concealing his involvement in war crimes of the pro-Nazi Romanian Iron Guard in World War II. Charged by former Iron Guardists and others with being the East Coast recruiter for the Iron Guard in the U.S., Galdau heads the Romanian Republican unit of the Republican Heritage Groups Council.

"Method Balco: Head of the Slovak GOP unit, which is filled with supporters and at least one former diplomat of the Slovak Nazi government of World War II. Balco also organizes annual commemorations of the Slovak Nazi regime.

"Walter Melianovich: Head of the Byelorussian GOP unit, which has had collaborators of the Nazi World War II occupation in leadership roles, Melianovich has worked with other fascist groups.

"Croatian GOP: Their group wrote an apology for the Croatian Ustashi's World War II alliance with Hitler, which appeared in a Republican Heritage Groups Council publication signed by GOP chair Frank Fahrenkopf."

 (ibid, pgs. 2-3)

some of the Quislings

As the above indicates, many of these groups had direct links to such notorious Nazi Quislings as the Romanian Iron Guard and the Croatian Ustashi. There is also much overlap between the Republican Heritage Groups Council and the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations, an organization founded in 1943 in Nazi Germany by many of the Central and Eastern European Quisling regimes. The Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations would go on to play a significant role in the founding of the World Anti-Communist League (WACL), an organization with very close ties to the American Security Council. Much more will be said about the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations and the World Anti-Communist League in a future series.

There are other strange and extremist groups in the ASC's Coalition for Peace Though Strength, one of which we will consider in much further depth later in this piece. But before we can get there, we must consider another of the significant factions within the ASC, namely the group of military officers who served either under or with Douglas MacArthur in the Second World War and/or Korea. While its generally been forgotten in this day and age, there was very much a cult of personality surrounding MacArthur in the mid-20th century, especially amongst the far right. To them he became a kind of modern day Flavius Aetius, the last of the American Prussians to make a real stand against communism.

MacArthur (top) and American Nazi Party founder George Lincoln Rockwell (bottom), who adopted the smoking of a corncob pipe in honor of the general 

MacArthur's removal by Truman was one of the defining, if little addressed, events of the modern conservative movement. It, combined with the reorganization of the War Department into the Department of Defense, radicalized countless military men who had cut their teeth in the prior era. Old soldiers never die, you see, nor do they ever really fade away as MacArthur and his merry band proved.

Thus, to grok this faction as well as the ASC itself, it helps to understand a bit about MacArthur's removal from command in Korea. The heart of the dispute was US policy concerning China. MacArthur, like many military and CIA men who served in the Far East, developed close ties to Chiang Kai-shek and his Kuomintang (KMT) regime. After the KMT was driven out of mainland China in the wake of the communist takeover MacArthur and countless other military and intelligence personnel began plotting ways to get him back in control of China.

Chiang Kai-shek

This was in stark contrast to the goals of Eastern Establishment, who were aware of the strain between Mao and the Soviet Union as early as the late 1940s. Even then they believed that pulling Mao and his forces (who had proven to be slightly more adept managers of China than the KMT, whose chief concern was their opium trade) into the US camp would greatly isolate the USSR. And indeed, the normalization of relations with the PCR was a crucial component of the US's Cold War victory but countless Prussian-types vigorously opposed it for decades. The Truman-MacArthur conflict represented the first major split in the American Establishment in the post-WWII era.

"The Chinese intervention in Korea, which began on October 15, 1950, was a much greater surprise than Inchon, and gave rise to one of the most bitter controversies in American political history, the so-called Truman-MacArthur controversy. The dispute arose from the fact that McArthur did not accept his government's strategic and political plans, and systematically sought to undermine and redirect them, while in constant communication with the press and with leaders of the opposition political party for this purpose.

"The Truman administration, after the victory at Inchon, did not intend to stop at the 38th parallel, and hope to reunite the country under the Seoul government. It is probable that this alone triggered the Chinese intervention, but, to reduce that possibility, Washington set certain restrictions on MacArthur's actions which he soon sought to evade. Washington and Tokyo both knew that the Chinese had about 300,000 troops ready for action in Manchuria north of the Yalu and that neither Russian or China was attempting to reequip the shattered North Korean forces. To discourage any Chinese intervention, the White House forbade any attack by Chiang on the Chinese coast, any naval blockade of China itself..., or any attack on China or Siberia north of the Yalu, or the use of non-Korean troops in the immediate vicinity of the Yalu as the conquest of North Korea was completed.

"On October 9, 1950, two of MacArthur's planes attacked a Russian airbase sixty-two miles inside Russian territory in only eighteen miles from Vladivostok. To make certain that McArthur understood the reasons for these restrictions, President Truman the next day instructed MacArthur to meet him at Wake Island on October 15. The two leaders had a lengthy discussion, in which these restrictions were reiterated, but within two months of his return to Japan, MacArthur recommenced his almost daily interviews and letters agitating against these limits.

"At Wake Island, General MacArthur assured President Truman that any Chinese intervention in the Korea would be  most unlikely, and, in any case, would be on a scale which could be handled. Even as he spoke, the first Chinese units were already crossing the Yalu River from Manchuria in the North Korea...

"The Chinese attack in MacArthur's mind reduced the American situation in the Far East to a simple choice between two extreme alternatives: either all-out war on China, and possibly Russia, to destroy world Communism once for all or the immediate evacuation of our forces from Korea. The former would have given the Soviet Union a free hand in Europe; the letter would have made it impossible for us to obtain resistance against Communist nibbling from any small states or even from our greater allies elsewhere in the world and would have destroyed our prestige in Asia and Africa. A rapid visit by  Generals J. Lawton Collins and Hoyt S. Vandenberg to Korea in January, 12-17, 1951, convinced them that the middle alternative, which was still Washington's policy, namely, to maintain the independence of South Korea, was still possible.

"Rather than accept this alternative, MacArthur intensified his press barrage against the Administration, as well as his numerous messages to isolationist Republican politicians in Washington. A directive of December 6, which ordered him to clear his public statements on foreign and military policy with the respective departments was violated, for some months, with impunity..."

(Tragedy and Hope, Carroll Quigley, pgs. 975-977)

While MacArthur's supporters have long insisted that he only bucked against the restrictions placed upon him by Truman because they hindered his ability to force a quick peace by bluffing with the nuclear card his own comments seem to indicate that he was quite serious about  going nuclear. George Mason University's History News Network notes:

"In interviews published posthumously, MacArthur said he had a plan that would have won the war in 10 days: 'I would have dropped 30 or so atomic bombs . . . strung across the neck of Manchuria.' Then he would have introduced half a million Chinese Nationalist troops at the Yalu and then 'spread behind us -- from the Sea of Japan to the Yellow Sea -- a belt of radioactive cobalt . . . it has an active life of between 60 and 120 years. For at least 60 years there could have been no land invasion of Korea from the North.' He was certain that the Russians would have done nothing about this extreme strategy: 'My plan was a cinch.'"

Apparently the Eastern Establishment didn't view dropping over two dozen nukes and turning northern Korea into a nuclear wasteland as a "cinch." This view was surely not driven by any kind of humanitarian concerns, but purely by dollars and cents. The Eastern Establishment was totally committed to the defeat of communism, contrary to the long-standing claims of the conspiratorial right. But they were not willing to embrace any type of policy that would've put their long-term plans (namely, turning the entire world into a free trade zone dominated by transnational corporations) at risk and a possible nuclear war between the United States and the USSR over Korea could have been a major hindrance to such things. Beyond this, they surely were already aware of the economic potentials of mainland China, and were seemingly confident that its market would eventually be reopen to Western interests.

To MacArthur and many of the military men and intelligence personnel who had rallied to him over the years, this was irrefutable evidence that the Eastern Establishment was soft on (f not in league with) Communism. It was unconscionable to them that the US would sell out a staunch anticommunist fighter like Chiang Kai-shek in favor of normalizing relations with the PRC, a maneuver that would continue to divide the overall American Establishment for decades afterwards. MacArthur and Chiang Kai-shek would be at the forefront of this growing opposition both before and after the Second World War.

"Washington was fearful that Chiang Kai-shek, since he could not reconquer China himself and hoped America would do it for him, might seek to precipitate such a war by making an attack from Formosa on mainland China. There was also a strong chance that McArthur might encourage or allow Chiang to do so because that haughty general agreed with Chiang that Europe was of no importance, and that the Far East should be primary, almost the only, area of operations for American foreign policy. He had bitterly opposed the 'Germany First' strategy throughout World War II and had begrudged men or supplies sent there on the grounds that these diversions delayed his triumphant return to the Philippines. As the war drew to its close, he had said: 'Europe is a dying system. It is worn out and run down and will become an economic and industrial hegemony of Soviet Russia... The lands touching the Pacific with their billions of inhabitants will determine the course of history for the next ten thousand years.'

"These views were shared by the Right-wing isolationist groups of the Republican Party, with whom MacArthur had been in close touch for much of his life and to whom he owed some of his success. In American politics these groups had power to do considerable damage because of their influence on the Republican congressional party and the fact that the bipartisan foreign policy under Senator Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan, which operated elsewhere in the world, did not exist in regard to the Far East. The danger of any Chiang-MacArthur cooperation to build the Korean action up into a major war was intensified by the fact that this will be opposed by the United Nations and by our allies, neither of whom was considered important by the neo-isolationist or by McArthur, but whom the Truman Administration refused alienate unnecessarily because they were essential, as bases, in the containment of Russia."

(Tragedy and Hope, Carroll Quigley, pgs. 973-974)

MacArthur and Chiang Kai-shek

The possibility that Korea could have turned into World War III was very real and MacArthur was at the forefront of the push toward it. This alienated MacArthur not only from the deeply Eurocentric Eastern Establishment, but likely even gave some of his backers in the defense and oil industries pause. And yet the ASC would never shy away from invoking the specter of nuclear war. ASC member Admiral Felix Stump would call for nukes to be used in Vietnam at the height of the conflict (as discussed in part three of this series) while the ASC would back Jerry Falwell's Rapture-ization of nuclear war (discussed in part two) as recently as the 1980s.

These were almost surely views held by the "Prussian" component of the ASC and not the business elements. Thus, it would seem that the Prussians were capable of interjecting their views into the national debate regardless of how weary overworld elements may have been of such views. This is hardly surprising as funding was never a problem for MacArthur or his ilk. They had access to wealthy patrons who were every bit as extremist as themselves, many of whom had built their fortunes on the black market. But more on that later.

Some websites claim that MacArthur was a member of the American Security Council but I have been unable to verify this. But whether or not MacArthur was a member is meaningless as some of his most vigorous supporters held key positions in the ASC during the early years and seemingly had a great deal of influence on its agendas for decades to come. First and foremost was General Robert E. Wood, one of the chief architects of the ASC (as discussed in part one of this series). Wood had served under MacArthur during the First World War and would attempt to mount a presidential campaign for The Pipe in both 1944 and 1948.

General Wood

Another imposing figure in the ASC closely linked to MacArthur was his former intelligence chief, General Charles Willoughby, who will be considered at length in just a moment. Other noteworthy members of the ASC with links to MacArthur include: General Curtis LeMay (who directed MacArthur's air campaign in the final months of the Pacific theater of WWII), the above-mentioned General Albert Wedemeyer (who had links to MacArthur through the KMT) and Admiral Felix Stump (who served with MacArthur in the Pacific theater of WWII), General Edward Lansdale (who served under MacArthur and Willoughby in the Philippines at the end of WWII) and most likely General John Singlaub (I haven't been able to conclusively link Singlaub to MacArthur/Willoughby, but the CIA's official website claims he was working for military intelligence during Korea).

Lemay (top), Lansdale (middle), and Singlaub (bottom), the later of whom played a major role in both the ASC and WACL in the 1980s

Clearly, the MacArthur faction within the ASC was not insignificant. The ringleader of said faction was almost surely MacArthur's dear friend, Charles Willoughby. Willoughby is in many ways of the poster boy for the "unintended consequences" the Eastern Establishment's global empire unleashed. As MacArthur's intelligence chief from 1941 to 1951 he was able to erect a vast apparatus throughout the Far East. By all accounts this intelligence network was under the firm control of MacArthur and Willoughby and was openly hostile to the OSS and later, the CIA (though Willoughby nonetheless had close ties to several members of OSS/CIA).

"During World War II, MacArthur and Willoughby successfully staved off all efforts by the fledgling OSS to encroach on their Pacific territory. When the Korean War broke out and the CIA bivouacked a thousand-man force at the Atsugi base in Tokyo, Willoughby went so far as to put CIA personnel under surveillance by Japanese policeman working for him. As far as MacArthur and Willoughby were concerned, certain elements of the OSS/CIA had a left-wing tinge that could not be trusted."

(The Man Who Knew Too Much, Dick Russell, pg. 67)

Typically Willoughby is depicted as a rather inept and buffoonish figure in conventional accounts of the general and not without reason. He was rather inept at conventional types of military intelligence, such as assessing the strength and movements of enemy troops, and much disaster ensued throughout various campaigns. But the perception that Willoughby was only kept around because of his fierce loyalty to MacArthur is not entirely accurate either. Willoughby did in fact show a considerable degree of talent for the more nefarious aspects of intelligence work that would become increasingly crucial to the emerging American Empire: political blackmail and assassinations, terrorism, and the managing of death squads/organized crime (elements of which being frequently necessary to perform the prior listed functions).

What's more, when Willoughby "retired" in the wake of MacArthur being sacked the intelligence apparatus he had established did not simply disappear (a problem that would continue to confront the Eastern Establishment time and again when assets like Willoughby "retire"). In point of fact, he would continue to manage a rather vast private intelligence network built upon the contacts he had forged during his time in the military for years after leaving it. And yet, even the very few researchers who have addressed this network have tended to depict Willoughby as a rather marginal figure.

"... the Foreign Intelligence Digest network compounded for the Texas Hunt family by General Willoughby, with both very broad ideological goals and more hidden practical intentions, such as the entry of the Hunt Oil Company (for which General Willoughby became an agent) into Mozambique.

"Despite the Hunt family wealth, this network remained marginal, virtually impotent to achieve its stated goals. Like all other transnational connections transcending national boundaries, however, it enjoyed one relevant advantage: it was relatively unaccountable. For this very reason, it entered into play with other, better establish networks, such as the Gehlen Organization, which despite its technical nationalization into the West German intelligence agency, the BND, remained largely an unaccountable multinational transnational connection itself."

(Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, Peter Dale Scott, pg. 301-302)

The Gehlen Organization, or simply the Org, was one of the chief international fascists networks for decades after WWII. Naturally it was littered with former Nazis.

"With Germany looming as a pivotal battleground for the Cold War, Gehlen had a mandate from the Americans to revive his old Foreign Armies East department –or what was left of it –as quickly as possible. Upon returning to Germany in July 1946, he immediately pulled together the makings of a sophisticated intelligence apparatus known as 'the Org.' Supported by regular subsidies from the U.S. taxpayers and wealthy German industrialist, he set up his base of operations inside a mysterious, high-walled compound near Munich that had once housed the staff of Rudolf Hess and Martin Bormann, Hitler's deputies. Gehlen's most urgent task was to gather up-to-date information from the East. His American sponsors were particularly hungry for details on troop movements and other military matters in the Soviet zone of occupation in Germany.

"Although Gehlen was ostensibly under U.S. Army supervision, the Org quickly threw its doors wide open to Gestapo, Wehrmacht, and SS veterans, despite his solemn promise to U.S. officials that he would not employ hard-core Nazis. Even the vilest of the vile –the senior bureaucrats who ran the central administrative apparatus of the Holocaust – were welcome in the Org..."

(The Beast Reawakens, Martin A. Lee, pg. 35)

Reinhard Gehlen, founder of the Org

Needless to say, the Org was not lacking for funds. And nor were other associates of MacArthur and Willoughby. They also had very close ties to Chiang Kai-shek's KMT regime as well as elements in the Japanese yakuzas, both of whom were major international drug traffickers. What's more, MacArthur and Willoughby had also been deeply involved in the recovery of the gold Imperial Japan had plundered during their nearly half-century long military adventures in the East. This cache, sometimes known as the Golden Lilly, was a rather staggering amount of gold and other precious metals that were used for dirty tricks in Japan and elsewhere for decades afterwards. The involvement of Willoughby and MacArthur in the Eastern drug and black market gold trade will be discussed in much greater depth in a future series.

Another likely source of funding was cult leader Sun Myung Moon, the founder of the Unification Church. Moon was rescued from the North Korean communists by MacArthur in the aftermath of the Battle of Inchon. I have not been able to establish whether or not they had a relationship but the Reverend Moon certainly seemed to have held MacArthur in reverence. The Institute for the Study of Globalization and Covert Politics makes some especially peculiar allegations:

"Looking at all the times the cult has expressed its appreciation for General Douglas MacArthur, the Moonie Cult could just as well be dubbed the "MacArthur Cult". The cult's 'little angels' still regularly conduct ceremonies in honor of MacArthur."

I have been unable to confirm these charges. But the Unification Church did back one of the largest box office failures in the history of cinema in a bid to glorify The Pipe and the circumstances around it were most unusual. TV Guide reports:

"One of the worst films of all time, this recounting of the Inchon landing during the Korean War comprises mostly mismatched action shots. Amidst tanks, troops, and explosions, Laurence Olivier essays the role of Gen. Douglas MacArthur in a cheap wig, latex chin, and putty nose, using a W.C. Fields-like speech pattern (recommended by one-time secretary of state Alexander Haig, who claimed MacArthur sounded like the great comedian). Not surprisingly, the story behind the making of INCHON is infinitely more interesting than the film. Determined to finance a movie, Unification Church leader Rev. Sun Myung Moon and Japanese newspaper publisher Mitsuharu Ishii considered the lives of Jesus and Elvis Presley as suitable subjects before settling on the Inchon landing. Using psychic Jeanne Dixon as an intermediary, Ishii then endeavored to consult MacArthur himself and was assured that the late general was behind the project 100 percent. Dixon also chose the film's director, Terence Young (DR. NO; FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE; THUNDERBALL). Shot on location, the film was beset with myriad problems, from bad weather to Jacqueline Bisset's laryngitis to political difficulties between the Korean government and the Unification Church. Later participants in the project stampeded to disavow any knowledge of the "Moonie" money that was behind the $50 million film, which took in only about $1.9 million in the US and Canada."

Beyond the film Inchon (which has rarely been seen since it was pulled from theaters due to never having been released on VHS or DVD), the Unification Church seems to have been heavily subsided by individuals associated with MacArthur, a topic that will be touched upon in a future series. Finally, Douglas MacArthur II (The Pipe's nephew) was a member of the advisory board of The Washington Times, a paper that was founded by the Reverend Moon, for some time.

Douglas MacArthur II, who was a rather dubious figure in his own right

With such ties it is grossly inaccurate to characterize MacArthur or Willoughby as marginal figures. In point of fact, they seemingly had a tremendous (if little acknowledged) influence on the modern conservative movement. They exerted a great degree of influence in both overworld organization such as the American Security Council as well as the two chief "grassroots" movements in modern conservatism: Christian fundamentalists and the "patriot" movement.

In terms of Christian fundamentalists, Willoughby himself would join the advisory board for the Reverend Billy James Hargis, one of the chief architects of the modern day Christian fundamentalist movement, and would regularly appear at rallies and speaking engagements organized by the reverend. The Hunt family, one of the major patrons of MacArthur and Willoughby, donated generously to the Reverend Hargis and would continue to provide funding to the Christian fundies for years afterwards (H.L. Hunt was one of the early benefactors of Pat Robertson, for instance, as I noted before here). The Unification Church would also become a major backer of the Christian right.

"... the Coalition for Religious Freedom, established by the Unification Church while cult leader Sun Myung Moon was in prison for tax fraud, perjury, and obstruction of justice. In 1984 and 1985, Moon's followers spent millions of dollars courting Christian ministers to support Moon as a victim of government 'persecution.' Some of the Coalition for Religious Freedom ministers tried to distance themselves from the Unification Church after unflattering press reports of Tim LaHaye's acceptance of 'Moonie' money..."

(Roads to Dominion, Sara Diamond, pg. 242)

H.L. Hunt (top) and the Reverend Sun Myung Moon (bottom), two major sugar daddies for the modern day Christian right

The ties between MacArthur and Willoughby and the patriot movement will be addressed in much greater depth in a future series but, suffice to say, virtually every major figure and organization in the early patriot movement had ties to the dynamic duo. Several former military men who served with/under MacArthur and/or Willoughby and who later became involved in the patriot movement include: General Albert Wedemeyer, General Curtis LeMay, General Pedro del Valle, General Bonner Fellers, General Laurence Bunker, General Edwin Walker and the one and only, Colonel William Potter Gale.

from top to bottom: Wedemeyer, del Valle, Fellers, Walker and Gale

Now, here's where things start to get weird. As is generally the case when secretive factions such as these are involved there's usually some type of secret order involved and Willoughby and the ASC are no exception. Willoughby was a member of a group known as the Shickshinny Knights of Malta, the American branch of an even more mysterious group known as the Sovereign Order of Saint John of Jerusalem, Knights of Malta (SOSJ). This group did in fact claim descent from the medieval order known as the Knights Hospitalers, but through the Russian line of succession that sprang into being after the order was driven from Malta at the end of the 18th century. The SOSJ considered themselves to be the true successors to the medieval Knights Hospitalers, and viewed the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM, the "official" successor organization to the Hospitalers) to be usurpers, and later pawns of the good old Freemasonic-Judaic-Communist conspiracy. And yet, there would seem to be significant collaboration between the SOSJ and SMOM in certain instances, as will be discussed in a bit.

the SOSJ goes to Washington

Even stranger, the SOSJ was a member of the ASC's Coalition of Peace Through Strength network (discussed at the beginning of this piece). When discussing groups involved in the Coalition of Peace Through Strength, researcher Russ Bellant said of the SOSJ:

"Although it poses as a Catholic organization, the Order of St. John is a Masonic group that claims to be the real Knights of Malta. Its Grand Master for fifty years, until his death several years ago was Charles Pichel, an advisor (via correspondence from the U.S.) to Hitler aide Ernst Hanfstaengl. Pichel's Order is a secret society led by anti-Semites who have worked with quasi-Nazi Liberty Lobby, and with neofascist Lyndon LaRocuhe groups."

(Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party, Russ Bellant, pg. 45) 

Whether or not the SOSJ was some type of Masonic order is highly debatable though it did seem to have occultic rituals, at least according to Jim Bevilaqua in his brilliant JFK -The Final Solution (the only real study of the SOSJ published aside from Pichel's heavily embellished history of the group). Much of its membership over the years consisted of hardcore Orthodox and traditionalist Catholic followers, which immediately brings to mind Peter Levenda's "wandering bishops" (occultists have frequently sought to become ordained bishops in Catholic or Orthodox denominations so that they could perform Satanic rituals, such as an "authentic" Black Mass). The Order was still active in the 1990s under the leadership of John Grady.

"Established in Shickshinny, Pennsylvania, in 1908, the OSJ claims to be the legitimate successor to the medieval Knights of Malta. The organization is opposed both to the council and the new Mass, and claims that the contemporary church has been 'infiltrated by Freemasons, Jews, Marxist, homosexuals, and radical feminist...' Currently based in Benton, Tennessee, the organization operates about fifty chapels (or traditionalist Mass centers) and three elementary schools across the country..."

(The Smoke of Satan, Michael W. Cuneo, pg. 197) 

The SOSJ being linked to the historic Knights Hospitalers is of course highly debatable but its origins being earlier than the mid-1950s, where skeptics have typically placed it, is entirely possible. The historical outline of the group written by Grady (or someone linked to him) on the group's official website (seriously) claims that the Order operated in a murky underworld of military intelligence officers, industrial security interests, Nazis and their Quislings, fanatical traditionalist Catholics and Orthodox anticommunists, pre-WWII "non-interventionists" and such like throughout the early and mid 20th century. While there are no doubt many embellishments in this account it is so like the same murky underworld that spawned the American Security Council I do not believe it can be easily dismissed.

the cross of the historic Knights Hospitalers and later the SOSJ as well as the Sovereign Military Order of Malta

Stranger still, as recently as the early 1990s, the SOSJ would be considered a terror threat by the FBI while it was operating in the same scene and era that spawned Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. Foreign Affairs reports (also, a hat-tip to the blog Bartholomew's Notes on Religion, which chronicled many of the latter day exploits of the SOSJ, as well as commenter "John Roy Carlson," mentioned here):

"Through his contacts with Posey, Rossi secured an introduction to John Grady, head of the Tennessee-based American Pistol and Rifle Association (APRA), a militant version of the National Rifle Association that the FBI suspected of training and advising white supremacists and other extremists. Through multiple informants and Rossi, the FBI again compiled an alarming list of leads, including reports that Grady was part of Posey's Patriot alliance and that APRA had deployed six-man teams around the country to carry out acts of terrorism and infrastructure sabotage.  

"Excerpts from several FBI documents containing these allegations were e-mailed to Grady, who responded in a telephone interview.  

"'Every statement that you've shown me is false,' Grady said. He disputed the contention in FBI documents that the APRA was white supremacist in nature and said he had only a passing acquaintance with Posey.  

"A source with knowledge of the investigation and documentary materials affirmed some of the allegations found in the case file, but others did not check out. For instance, FBI records sourced to Rossi indicated that an October 1992 speech by Grady said 'a person was better off to take out as many people as they could than to be arrested and taken to jail,' but a videotape of the speech obtained from a source did not match the description.
While the intelligence continued to flow, the criminal investigation again foundered, failing to produce any evidence on which to base a prosecution.  

"In April 1993, an FBI committee reviewing the investigation of Grady expressed concern that agents were 'only obtaining intelligence and not moving forward with the criminal investigation.' PATCON undercover agents were cautioned to limit their reporting to criminal activity, rather than 'speeches or rhetoric protected by the First Amendment.' In July 1993, FBI headquarters determined 'that insufficient justification exists to justify' continued investigation.   

"Both the Grady case and the undercover operation were terminated. Agents were instructed in unusually strong terms that they 'should conduct no further investigation regarding either [The Order of St. John]...'"

John Grady (center), the Order's current Grand Master

Long time readers of this blog will remember that I've argued before that the Willoughby network led to the Oklahoma City bombing, so I find it most curious that a secret order he was involved with was still operating in the same timeframe as McVeigh. Its especially intriguing that the FBI ordered field agents to quit investigating the SOSJ in the early 1990s. But I digress.

There were also strange links between the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (the "official" Knights of Malta) and the ASC as well. But before going any further I'd like to give a shout out to the great H.P. Albarelli Jr., whose mind-blowing Amazon review of Bevilaqua's JFK -The Final Solution and most recent book, A Secret Order, were crucial in alerting me to the SMOM angle (as well as Bevilaqua's book, of course). Do yourself a favor dear reader, and pick up both works if you haven't already done so. But back to the SMOM.

 William Donovan, founder of the OSS and a major figure in creating Air America (with ASC member William Pawley, as discussed in part three of this series) was a member of the Knights of Malta. So to was James Jesus Angleton, another ASC member seemingly linked to the drug trade. And then there was CIA director William Casey, a Knight of Malta who conscripted the SMOS as well as the ASC, the Moonies, the Christian right and the World Anti-Communist League (WACL) into one final show down with communism in the 1980s. But more on that in a future series addressing the WACL.

William "Wild Bill" Donovan (top), James Jesus Angleton (middle) and William Casey (bottom), three of the most powerful figures in the history of US intelligence and all members of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta

What then are we to make of this obscure order, the SOSJ, that nonetheless attracted former high ranking military officers (many of whom with a background in intelligence) as members and which was given a seat in the ASC's Coalition for Peace Through Strength? Why did it seem to be operating as a terror network a decade after the height of the ASC? And what links does it have to the equally mysterious SMOM? And where do the Nazis fit into all of this (Reinhard Gehlen, founder of the Gehlen Org, is cited as a member of the SMOM across the blogosphere but I have been unable to verify this)?

And it is here that I shall wrap things up with one final observation: While the ASC and the WACL (among others) have faded away in recent decades the SMOM is still going strong and suspected of playing a curious role during America's recent Crusade in the Middle East. It even made a bizarre appearance recently in Bridgeport, Connecticut (site of the Sandy Hook school shooting) as I noted here. And yet the SMOM (as well as groups linked to it such as the ASC and WACL) is among the least written on topics in all of the "alternative media" and 99% of what has been written on it is the typical "Illuminati/Freemasonry" claptrap (the overwhelming majority of which having been dreamed up by several of the wonderful groups and individuals featured in this series). Hopefully I will be able to correct this state of affairs in the coming months. Stay tuned.

Fear and Loathing in the American Security Council Part III

Welcome to the third installment in my examination of the American Security Council, one of the most mysterious and notorious "think tanks" of the second half of the twentieth century. As was briefly considered in part one of this series, such think tanks have been used as propaganda organs by elites for well over a century. The most well known instance of these is the Council on Foreign Relations, the long time "voice" of the Eastern Establishment/Wall Street in public debate.

While the CFR clique and their Round Table group backers in Europe dominated the American political landscape for much of the early twentieth century they began to face a serious challenge by the 1950s from another faction, one loosely comprised of the emerging military-industrial complex, pre-WWII "non-interventionists," oil companies originating in the South/West and fanatical former military men whom I have dubbed "the Prussians." This faction would establish the ASC in the mid-1950s as a counter to the Wall Street (read: banking) dominated CFR.

 

Many of the old-monied Eastern families (and their closely related British counterparts) who supported the CFR were also deeply involved in the founding of the OSS and later the CIA. As such, the CFR became involved in the intelligence operations of this faction.

"... the espionage Establishment --people like Bill Donovan and David Bruce --who conspired with their British cousins to create tax-exempt foundations to fund surveys abroad and to promulgate unstated policy through journalists, academics, and businessmen attached to the Council on Foreign Relations and the Foreign Policy Association."

(The Strength of the Wolf, Douglas Valentine, pg. 106)

William "Wild Boy" Donovan (top) and David Bruce (bottom), who married into the blue blood Mellon clan

The ASC was very much engaged in these type of activities as well, which was addressed in depth in the second installment of this series. In that installment I also revealed that the ASC's intelligence efforts went far beyond propaganda. In point of fact, the ASC became a kind of clearing house for intelligence reports on "subversives" from a host of different sources --reputable, "overworld" groups such as the American Legion as well as the notorious private security firm Wackenhut; but also from fringe organizations such as the American Vigilante Intelligence Federation and even 'patriot' groups such as the John Birch Society and the Minutemen.

What's more, this intelligence database was seemingly made use of by the various corporate sponsor behind the ASC to screen potential employees. As the ASC's intelligence services went well beyond routine background checks and typically focused in on the politics of a subject, it's highly likely that the ASC and their corporate sponsers engaged in blacklisting. We will examine this possibility in much greater depth in this installment.

Beyond that, however, I would also like to begin examining just who or what was behind the ASC. So, with this task in mind, let us begin considering the corporations and key figures that collaborated with the ASC in the early years. First, the corporations: By the early 1970s the ASC would have an impressive roster of dues paying members to be sure.

"Industrial members include General Electric, Lockheed, Motorola, Allstate, Insurance, Standard Oil of California, General Dynamics (San Diego), Reynolds Metals, Quarter Oats, Honeywell, U.S. Steel, Kraft Foods, Stewart-Warner, Schick-Eversharp, Illinois Central Railroad, and, of course, Sears, Roebuck. The publishing industry is represented by the Detroit News, the St. Louis Globe-Democrat, the Oakland Tribune, and the Henry Regnery book house in Chicago. The financial, university, and foundation worlds are also represented. All told, the ASC members have 'millions of employees,' presumably all of them loyal to free enterprise."

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

Henry Regnery, the founder of Regnery Publishing, is especially noteworthy as he was a major financial backer. Regnery had also been involved with the America First Committee, the primier pre-WWII "non-interventionist" group. As was noted in the first two installments, many key figures from the Nazi-linked AFC played a major role in the founding of the ASC. Regnery was one of the chief publishing houses behind the American conservative movement in general in the second half of the twentieth century. It also dipped into the waters of the conspiratorial right a time or two as well. Even stranger, he also published books by major UFO researchers such as Jacques Vallee and J. Allen Hynek as well as Sybil, the first major book on Multiple Personality/Dissociative Identity Disorder.

"Henry Regnery also was one of the founders of the American Security Council; his son, Alfred, later replaced him. The American Security Council had a great influence on the Reagan administration, and on many of the more hotly debated issues of the 1950s-1980s. Regnery and two other isolationists began broadcasting 'Human Events' and, in 1947, started Regnery Publishing. Interestingly enough, the first two titles published by Regnery were critical of the Nuremberg Trials. The third was another pro-Nazi book attacking the Allied air campaign. In 1954, Regnery published two books for the John Birch Society. He also was the publisher of William F. Buckley Jr.'s God and Man at Yale. According to Howard Hunt, the CIA subsidized Regnery Publishing because of its pro-Nazi stance."

 (The Nazi Hydra in America, Glen Yeadon & John Hawkins, pg. 224) 

the curious taste of Regnery Publishing

Several of the major defense contractors linked to the ASC, most notably General Dynamics and Lockheed, as well as a few of the oil companies, would play a major role in funding the ASC but as a whole corporate America was seemingly a bit lukewarm toward the Council, at least in the early years. ASC tended to depend more on the largess of far right donors (such as Patrick J. Frawley, the longtime owner of Schick) and possibly even drug money for the bulk of its funding. Still, ASC would play an invaluable role in bringing together long established Eastern companies with the emerging military-industrial complex and new money from the Southern Rim. Eventually this led to an American Security Council-ization of the overworld in general.

As far as staff for the ASC is concerned, it has long used former FBI personnell as front men. Indeed, the longtime head of the ASC was former Bureau man John M. Fisher (Fisher's son, Henry A, is to this day still president and CEO of the ASC) who would firmly establish a pipeline between the FBI and ASC.

"Expanding rapidly, the Mid-American Research Library was renamed the American Security Council in 1956, when former FBI agent John M. Fisher, who had come to Sears as a 'personnel consultant' with J. Edgar Hoover's blessing in 1953, was installed as president and executive director. Before long Fisher had surrounded himself Bureau-trained men. Jack E. Ison was appointed operating director and Willaim K. Lambie Jr. research director; both had put in a few years with the FBI; both are still in those positions. W. Cleon Skousen, who was named field director, had been an agent from 1940 to 1951 and is well known in right-wing circles as the author of The Naked Capitalist and The Communist Attack on U.S. Police. Skousen left the ASC in 1960 to become a John Birch functionary, and is a perennial figure on the society's circuit. In time, retired FBI assistant director Stanley J. Tracey was brought in to sit on the strategy staff. Among the non-staff officers with a history under Hoover are Senior Vice President Kenneth M. Piper, 'director of human relations' for Motorola; Vice President Stephen L. Donchess, a U.S. Steel executive; and Vice President Russel E. White, a General Electric security consultant."

(Power on the Right, William Turner, pg. 200)

Cleon

Skousen, whose book The Naked Capitalist (along with Gary Allen's None Dare Call It Conspiracy) was for years the general public's chief account of Carroll Quigley's notorious Tragedy and Hope (what is effectively a history of the CFR/Round Table group, among many other things), is a figure we shall encounter time and again in a forthcoming series. I'm not going to address him in depth here, but keep in mind that he almost surely never gave up his investigative functions with the ASC when he went to work for the Birchers.

The appearance of so many former Bureau men in the ASC immediatley brings to mind the "Old Boy Network" Turner (who was himself a former FBI agent), along with co-author Warren Hinkle, brilliantly outlined in a later work.

"... Old Boys, less decorously referred to in some law enforcement circles as the FBI Mafia. That description is imprecise since the Old Boy lineup, although top-heavy with ex-FBI types, includes row upon row of former CIA agents, Justice Department officials, IRS investigators --even some retired Canadian Royal Mounties.

"The Old Boy network in its clubby, discreet manner has afforded the CIA a powerful extracurricular arm in mounting covert operations overseas and at home, where the ever-ready Old Boys have afforded the agency a better than arm's length posture in its extralegal domestic activities. The CIA's deployment of the Old Boy network while camouflaging the agency's at-home operations has at the same time greatly complicated the task of tracing just where a CIA operation ends and private knavery begins. The Old Boys tend to mix covert intelligence activites both legal and illegal with the ordinary pursuit of private gain."

(Deadly Secrets, Warren Hinkle and William Turner, pgs. 336-337)

ASC certainly seems to be a part of some type of Old Boys network and more than a few ASC affliates were quietly engaged in illegal activities for private gain. But just how much influence the CIA had over the ASC is debatable. To be sure, there were more than a few notorious former OSS (the predecessor organization to CIA) and CIA men involved with the ASC over the years. Some of the more noteworthy ones include James Jesus Angleton (the individual of whom Matt Damon's character in The Good Shepherd is based), William Pawley (who was never technically in OSS or, later, CIA, but who worked closely with them on various projects), General Edward Lansdale, Admiral Felix B. Stump (who again, was not technically with the Agency), General Daniel O. Graham (who bounced back and forth between CIA and the military and who later went on to head the Defense Intelligence Agency), Ray S. Cline and General John Singlaub, who we briefly encountered in the prior installment.

However, virtually all of these individuals are CIA men with asterisks. Many of them have strong ties to the military while several (Pawley, Singlaub, and Cline) were a part of CIA's so-called "China Cowboys" clique, a group of assets with strong ties to Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang (KMT) regime (which put them at odds with the Eastern Establishment over recognition of the People's Republic of China), for instance. Several of these assets seem to have been plagued by divided loyalties and at times worked far outside the "mainstream" (i.e., Wall Street controlled) CIA. Only Angleton was firmly entrenched amongst the Eastern blue bloods who dominated the CIA in the early decades.

What's more, virtually all of the above-mentioned CIA men were deeply involved in the agency's dealings with drug trafficking. Pawley, for instance, became an owner of the notorious Air America airline, the fleet of agency planes that were used to traffick drugs frequently.

"Air America was dreamed up by Donovan and Old China Hands William Pawley, Whitting Willauer and General Claire Chennault. In the 1930s, Pawley had set up Central Aircraft Manufacturing Company (CAMCO) for Madame Chiang Kai-shek, to assemble planes for what were later called the Flying Tigers. Pawley was paid lavishly by the Chiang regime, the Soong family, druglord Du Yueh-sheng. In 1950, Donovan and Pawley bought out Chennault, having persuaded the China Lobby to pay him $5-million for his beat-up airline. Pawley then 'retired' to Havana where he went into business with Meyer Lansky. He spent lavishly, buying sugar plantations, an airline and a bus company. When Fidel Castro seized control of Cuba from the Batista regime, Pawley escaped to Miami where he continued his alliance with Lansky, using a Miami bus company ass his front. Meanwhile, Pawley helped Donovan persuade right-wing Texas oil man H. L. Hunt to support the KMT regime with millions of dollars for covert operations."

(Gold Warriors, Sterling & Peggy Seagrave, pg. 270)

Pawley

"Incidentally," Admiral Felix B. Stump also happened to be involved with Air America. Stump was also chomping at the bit to go nuclear in Vietnam at the same time he was a board chairman of the airline.

"Retired Admiral Felix B. Stump, until 1958 U.S. commander-in-chief, Pacific, and Air America's board chairman after 1959, told a Los Angeles audience in April 1960, 'World War III has already started, and we are deeply involved in it.' Later he declared it was 'high time' the nation won over communism in the Far East, and he called for the use of tactical nuclear weapons if necessary. Containment was not enough: we must 'move beyond this limited objective.'"

(Drugs, Oil, and War, Peter Dale Scott, pg. 137)

Admiral Stump

Rest assured, Stump was hardly the only individual in the ASC that dreamed of going nuclear in the war against communism. Elsewhere, General Edward Lansdale would also find himself knee deep in the drug trade from time to time.

"Lansdale's resume included experience in an array of political and psychological warfare operations that involve drugs. In 1953, he had viewed the Laotian opium fields, and in 1955, he had chased the French out of Saigon and installed the Catholic Ngo regime. The Ngo regime's own drug smuggling operation was directed by Diem's brother Nhu... through his secret police chief, Dr. Tran Ki Tyen... In 1960, Lansdale had investigated SDECE's involvement in drug smuggling, and in 1962 he employed drug smuggling Mafiosi in the CIA shadow war against Cuba and its KGB adversaries. Possessed of a wild imagination, Lansdale had even proposed the introduction of cheap marijuana as a way of undermining Cuba's economy.

"In mid-1965, Lansdale assembled a team of American unconventional warfare experts and Filipino mercenaries to wage, undercover of the RD Program, a secret war against French nationals supporting the insurgents. His arrival in Vietnam also occur just as 'political upheavals' forced the Corsican airlines in Laos out of business. According to Professor Alfred McCoy, the first thing Lansdale did was to arrange a 'truce' with the Corsican drug smugglers in Saigon. Lansdale's motives was to protect himself from anyone who might still be holding a grudge from the sale guerre of 1955. In return for a guarantee that he would not be harmed, Lansdale gave the Corsicans free passage and thus enabled them, their Mafia associates, and a group of Vietnamese officials to control Saigon's lucrative drug market."

(The Strength of the Wolf, Douglas Valentine, pg. 417)

General Lansdale

Lansdale, and possibly John Singlaub, also seem to have been involved with a faction of military officers with close ties to General Douglas MacArthur and his longtime chief of intelligence, General Charles Willoughby (who was also a member of the ASC, and a highly powerful one at that). But more on that later.

Unsurprisingly, even the most prestigious CIA men involved with the ASC, James Jesus Angleton, was long suspected of being involved in the drug trade as well.

"... The CIA formed a narcotics smuggling organization shortly after the Second World War through the AFL-CIO's overseas representative, Irving Brown... referred to it as 'the Brown-Angleton' network because James Angleton, the CIA's counter-intelligence chief, managed it was certain FBN agents and the aftermentioned mob attorney-cum-CIA agent Mario Brod.

"Angleton, Brod and FBN agent Charlie Siragusa had served together in Italy in the Second World War. As head of the FBN office in Rome, and as the FBN's liaisons to the CIA until his retirement in December 1963, Siragusa worked closely with Angleton, who relied heavily on Siragusa's underworld contacts. CIA officer Vincent Thill, as part of an operation put together by Angleton and William Harvey, asked Siragusa to recruit Mafia and Corsican hit men for the CIA, although Siragusa denied having done so.

"... the Brown-Angleton history, which began when Brown, using CIA funds, formed 'compatible left' unions in Marseille and hired Italian and Corsican thugs to break a strike by communist longshoremen. The gangsters, including a young Corsican named Maurice Castellani, were rewarded with free passage to smuggle drugs without interference."

(The Strength of the Pack, Douglas Valentine, pgs. 99-100)

Angleton

While the CIA surely had some type of involvement in the ASC I suspect that they, or at least "mainline" elements, were relatively minor players. For the real power behind the throne we have to turn to the former military men who seemingly dominated the Council. We've already met a few of them, but here's a rundown of the ASC's roster circa 1970:

"Prominent among the twenty-one aging military men on board are General Albert C. Wedemeyer; Admiral Lewis L. Strauss, former Atomic Energy Commission chairman; General Curtis LeMay; General Nathan F. Twining, ex-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; General Paul B. Adams, once headed the U.S. Strike Command; Admiral Ben Moreell, a Birch Society ally; General Bernard A. Schreiver, former chief of the Air Force Systems Command; and General Thomas S. Power, former commander of the Strategic Air Command."

(Power on the Right, William Turner, pg. 207)

General Bernard A. Schriever was already mentioned in the prior installment. He, along with the ASC's National Strategy Committee co-chairman Lloyd Wright, both held membership in the ASC will simultaneously serving on the board of Wackenhut, the notorious private security firm. The rest of the above-mentioned roster is practically a who's who of reactionary post-WWII military men. It is beyond the scope of this series to address them all, but there are two names in the above list that warrant special attention.

First we shall consider is General Curtis LeMay, the man who directed the "strategic" bombing campaigns against Japanese cities in the final months of the Second World War. LeMay's campaigns are among the most brutal the Allies embarked upon in the entire war in either theater. When it was all said and done some 63 Japanese cities had been firebombed and over half a million civilians were dead while an additional 8 million homeless. Of these efforts, LeMay once stated: "I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal." Indeed.


General LeMay (top), who some believe was the inspiration for the character of General Jack D. Ripper (bottom) in the Kubrick classic Dr. Strangelove (a film far closer to reality than many would believe possible)

His post military life was no less radical. In point of fact, LeMay became deeply involved with the so-called "patriot movement." It all came to a head in 1968 when LeMay became arch-segregationist George Wallace's running mate on the American Independent Party ticket. The backers of the 1968 presidential run read like a who's who of the "patriot movement" during that era.

"Carto and Liberty Lobby supported Wallace instinctively. Liberty Lobby produced a pro-Wallace pamphlet in 1965, Stand Up for America: The Story of George C. Wallace, and mailed out 175,000 copies to its own supporters. Another 150,000 copies belonged to Wallace's campaign, which regularly distributed the Liberty Lobby publication on its own. When Wallace's speechwriter convened in a meeting of racist and far right leaders in 1966 to jump-start a 1968 bid, Carto was invited and sent a representative.

"Wallace decided to run a third party presidential campaign outside both the Republican and Democratic parties in 1968. He named his third-party the American Independent Party, but never called a national convention or other serious steps to build a party apparatus free of his campaign. Instead, his most trusted lieutenants run a top-down operation from headquarters in Montgomery. Nevertheless, outside the Alabama home base, far right groups provided much of the campaign's muscle. Paramilitary outfits such as the Minutemen in the Midwest and the Klan in the South found themselves Wallace allies. Larger groups such as the John Birch Society worked in tandem with smaller sects. Segregationist rubbed elbows with men from the national socialist world. Within this milieu, Liberty Lobby blipped on screen much like any other group."

(Blood and Politics, Leonard Zeskind, pgs. 13-14)

Willis Carto

Such was the crowd that LeMay found himself running with in 1968. In fairness to the ASC, they did drop LeMay from the roster shortly after he opted to join George Wallace's presidential run. But given the already established overlap between the ASC and "patriot" groups such as the Minutemen, the John Birch Society, and the Liberty Lobby (Roger Pearson, a longtime collaborator with Carto and the Lobby, was the editor of the ASC's Journal of International Relations), it seems like this was purely a public relations ploy as opposed to any kind of ideological rejection.

However, LeMay is ultimately small potatoes compared to General Albert Wedemeyer. Wedemeyer was a German-American officer in the U.S. Army who spend extensive amount of time in the Fatherland between the World Wars.

"Colonel Wedemeyer had an interesting history. His father's parents were born in Germany, and he himself had been educated in part at the German War College, in Berlin. He rented his apartment in the German capital from a member of the Nazi Party, Gerhard Rossbach, and during his sojourn became a great friend of General Ludwig Beck, chief of the German General Staff. His introductions to Beck were arranged by Lieutenant General Frederick von Boetticher, German military attaché in Washington. He corresponded regularly with his German contacts until the advent of World War II in Europe.

"He was friendly with Charles Lindbergh and acted as his interpreter in German uniform when the Lone Eagle visited various Nazi factories and army post, and he was a keen supporter General Robert Wood, the head of America First. Rightly or wrongly, he was regarded by the German Embassy in Washington as part of the pro-German military clique in the War Department. There is no question that he was a convinced isolationist who sincerely believe that the United States was not obliged commit itself to war on behalf of Great Britain."

(American Swastika, Charles Higham, pg. 137)

General Wedemeyer

According to Colonel William Potter Gale (who was prone to embellishments from time to time), an officer who served under Wedemeyer for a time in the War Department, Wedemeyer was instrumental in rearranging the United States military along the lines of Germany's.

"'A lot of people don't know it,' said Gale, reaching over his files for a cup of coffee, 'but Generals Stratemeyer and Wedemeyer... our war plans officers who happened to be all Germans, went over to Germany after World War I, after Versailles, and studied what was known as the German General Staff Concept.' He chuckled, amused.

"'You see, in the Versailles Treaty at the end of World War I, Germany was limited to a 150,000-man army in total. You know what they did? They trained all 150,000 men to be qualified general staff officers! Even though they were privates in the army, they were trained and qualified general staff corp officers! These men were trained in officer leadership, combat and command, and even general staff concepts of cadries, to fill in with the troops.'

"He withdrew his feet from under the sleeping cat, and pushed his chair back into a reclining position. Clasping his hands behind his head, he mused ruefully; 'We learned everything from the Germans and we used against them in World War II! It [the German General Staff Concept] was taught in our General Staff College, and the Infantry School and various service schools of the military. And, that's what our United States Army had in our general officers who were planners – war plan officers General Stratemeyer, General Wedemeyer and all those in Washington, which was the group I was assigned to, called Operations Division of the War Department. My theatre section consisted of General Marshall and General MacArthur.'"

(The Committee of the States, Cheri Seymour, pgs. 39-40)

General Stratemeyer

I've seen General George E. Stratemeyer listed as a member of the American Security Council as well, but I've not been able to confirm this. Colonel Gale, while not directly involved with the ASC, is a figure that we shall encounter time and again throughout the saga. So keep him in mind.

Beyond bringing the German General Staff Concept to the United States, Wedemeyer also seemingly contributed to a deeply racist and conspiratorial subculture that had been developing in the US Military for some time. Indeed, Wedemeyer would play a major role in contributing to many of the post-World War II conspiracy theories, but more on that in a future series. For our purposes here I would like to address one other aspect of Wedemeyer's curious career before moving on, namely his possible collaboration with the Nazis. Prior to America's entry into WWII the army's battle plan for Europe was leaked to the Chicago Tribune (the same newspaper owned by Colonel Robert McCormick, who played a role in the launching of the ASC, as discussed in part one) by Senator Burton K. Wheeler. Wedemeyer has long been suspected as being the military man who turned the dpcument over to the senator.

"Rainbow 5 was the battle plan developed by the military in case war broke out. Publishing the plan or leaking information about it would be the equivalent of publishing or leaking the battle order of the Pentagon during the Cold War – unquestionably, an act of treason. In Hitler speech declaring war against the United States on Dec. 11, 1941, he cited the final straw: 'With no attempt at an official denial there has now been revealed in America, President Roosevelt's plan by which, at the latest in 1943, Germany and Italy are to be attacked in Europe by military means.'

"The government failed to charge anyone with treason or sedition: neither the Chicago Tribune, nor Wheeler or nor the Army officer who delivered the papers to him, despite an FBI investigation. Fewer than a dozen copies of the top-secret contingency plan existed.

"The author of the report on Rainbow 5 was Colonel Albert Wedemeyer, who had been educated at the German War College...

"Hoover strongly believed that Wedemeyer leaked the plans to Wheeler. Of special note, Reagan resurrected Wedemeyer's career as a special military advisor in the 1980s, yet another of the many seemingly innocent connections between Reagan and the Nazis."

(The Nazi Hydra in America, Glen Yeadon & John Hawkins, pg. 242)

This was not the only connection between the ASC and the Nazis, either. This topic will be examined in much further depth in the next installment. For the time being, I would like to focus on another military man who may hold the key to the overworld purpose of the ASC: Admiral Robert W. Berry.

"...  Also working with the ASC... Admiral Robert W. Berry, Pacific coast director for the rarely mentioned the powerful National Security Industrial Association...

"An additional word should be said here about the NSIA, which describes itself as a 'non-lobbying organization of more than 400 [defense contractors] conceived by James Forrestal in 1944': 'NSIA has won a reputation with both industry and government for fair dealing by expressing only those points of view which can provide a strong national defense program...'"

The NSIA (now the National Defense Industrial Association [NDIA]) is likely a major player in the murky and rarely mentioned world of industrial security and intelligence.

"... All defense contractors were eventually required by law to conduct industrial-security investigations, under legislation for which both the FBI and the American Legion had helped to lobby. This legislation created work both for veterans and for the Legion itself. During World War II the Legion had build up a network of confidential information contacts, on the model of the so-called vigilantes of the American Protective League during World War I..."

(Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, Peter Dale Scott, pg. 244)

While CIA no doubt played a role in industrial security both the FBI and military intelligence had become deeply immersed in it almost a quarter of a century before the OSS (the predecessor to CIA) was even founded. For the remainder of this piece I want to examine the origins of America's industrial security apparatus as it is essential to understanding the ways of the ASC.

The architect of the nation's industrial security was General Ralph van Deman, a man generally referred to as the father of military intelligence. America had only recently begun to dip its toe into the black arts of intelligence prior to its entry into the First World War. As such, Van Deman had few men or viable intelligence networks to guard the nation's factories from sabotage by spies. For this crucial task Van Deman turned to various super patriot groups, most notably the above-mentioned American Protective League, to guard the nation against sabotage.

"Patriots also formed 'dozens of organizations... devoted to running down of spies,' something Major Van Deman called 'an extremely dangerous development'. Yet, with MID requiring millions of man hours for its burgeoning domestic security operations, he also saw potential in these groups, feeling that a national organization of civilian spies 'might be of great value to the government.'

"The most promising of these groups, the American Protective League, had been formed in the first weeks of war when a Chicago businessman, Albert M. Briggs, convinced the Bureau of Investigation's regional supervisor to collaborate with a  citizen surveillance network. For the first nine months of the war, the APL's executive operated out of Chicago under a so-called War Board with representatives from nine agencies including the Bureau of Investigation and MID – the latter represented by Maj. Thomas B Crockett, the APL's assistant chief, now commission into the Army. After conducting a very careful investigation of this and other civilian organizations, Major Van Deman summoned the APL's leadership to offer him both the commission and a mission on the assurance that his members would be willing 'to do absolutely nothing except what they were requested to do by the Military Intelligence Branch.' Through what the Army's chief of staff described as an 'arrangement with the Justice Department,' the APL was now placed 'at the disposal of M.I.D.' After moving its headquarters to Washington in November, the APL reformed its executive to include just two government representatives, a lieutenant and captain from MID assigned to monitor the leaks counterintelligence mission. Working closely with BI director Bruce Bielaski, Van Deman presided over the APL's transformation into a civilian counterintelligence auxiliary. It deployed over 350,000 volunteer agents in 1,400 local units who... amassed over a million pages of surveillance reports of German-Americans. In just 14 months, the league had conducted a total of three million wartime investigations for the government, including 440,000 cases of suspected subversion for MID."

(Policing America's Empire. Alfred McCoy, pg. 301)

The APL and other patriot groups that collaborated with the FBI and the Military Intelligence Division (MID) quickly became a lightening rod for controversy, however. They were accused of a whole host of civil liberties violations as well as becoming a glorified strike breaking force for capital. This led to a brief disbandment of the League, but then the nation's first Red Scare began to set in. With the Bolshevik Revolution in full swing in Russia the climate was perfect for Van Deman's intelligence apparatus to do its thing.

"In this changed climate MID and the Justice Department revived their network of civilian adjuncts, activating the APL and organizing returning white war veterans into the American Legion for both systematic surveillance and vigilante violence against the left. Throughout 1919 MID promoted the American Legion as its main civilian adjunct, lobbying it's leadership for an antiradical commitment and encouraging its initial growth to a membership of 120,000 in thirty-one states... Beyond these two stalwarts, MID encourage multiple military networks for domestic surveillance, including, at Van Deman's suggestion, an organization of MID's own veterans and regular monitoring by Army recruiters who should, MID ordered, submit weekly reports on 'the numerical strength of the extreme radical or "Red" element in your district.

"From November 1919 to January 1920, the nation's internal security agencies, BI and MID, unleashed their civilian adjuncts for three months of aggressive action against the left known as the 'red scare' or the 'Palmer raids.' From MID's regional office in Chicago, Major Crockett oversaw the American Legion's attacks on socialists across the Midwest. The Chicago post announced a plan for 'some night riding or what is known as "Ku Klux" work... destroying stores that sell radical literature.' The legion's Milwaukee post raided the local IWW offices, confiscating their literature. In Cincinnati eight hundred legionaries ransacked radical offices, burning hundreds of pounds of socialist text. In the Pacific Northwest, the legion launched a 'war of extermination against members of the I.W.W.' that, in the view of one historian, 'practically destroyed the Wobblies' in that region. During these months of red scare, veterans' posts in cities such as San Diego and Stockton harassed union leaders with violence that swept along the West Coast, cumulating in an armed legion attack on the IWW hall at Centralia, Washington. At the urging of the local Lumberman's Association, the town's legion post decided to 'burn 'em out' as a way to celebrate Armistice Day 1919. But the unions fought back, killing four of the attacking legionaries. That night the veterans evened the score by publicly torturing, mutilating, and lynching an IWW member."

(ibid, pgs. 314-315)

Eventually cooler heads prevailed and the APL and much of the Military Intelligence Division was put on the shelf. Van Deman himself retired from military in the 1920s after his career began to stall. But then, in 1927, he started assembling a vast private intelligence network with support from the FBI and the military.

"From his comfortable home at 3141 Curlew Street in San Diego, Van Deman and his wife, childless and increasingly friendless, worked tirelessly for nearly a quarter century. Their incessant typing, filing, and cross-referencing animated an elaborate information exchange among members of the states public-private security network:  army and navy intelligence, police red squads, and civilian groups across California. Though long retired from government service, the general continued to receive classified reports from federal, state, and local agencies. Van Deman's private archive swelled over time to a quarter million files on suspected subversives by the time of his death in 1952. But following his trademark method in Manila and Washington, this massive documentation was reduced to a single card for each suspect. His modest bungalow thus became a veritable search engine for intelligence professionals struggling to lift the mask of aliases that the Communist Party had donned since the red-scare roundup of 1919-20. Apart from the raw documents, the general maintained a reference library of rare communist publications and an archive of identification photos. Beyond typing and filing, Van Deman's web also included operatives inside the state ethnic communities, an undercover agent in the aircraft industry, assets with access to Hollywood's leftist circles, private eyes in the hire of anticommunist groups, and citizen sleuths from across the state – all with their names carefully concealed by a numbered code system that the Army and FBI would struggle to decipher after his death.

"Though Van Deman remains an obscure figure, specialists noted his central role in the anticommunist movement. The Aamy analysts who assessed his files in 1971 wrote years later, as a distinguished historian, that Van Deman, absent any federal agency 'fighting the radicals,' built an influential information clearinghouse that 'left the other patriot groups in the dust.' With funds from the FBI and army, he 'ruled a large and sophisticated spy network.' A leading lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union called the general 'one of the giants of anti-communism, a super-hawk,... a phobic nativist red hunter' whose undercover network penetrated not only the Communist Party but a whole spectrum of liberal targets, including religious, civil rights, and labor organizations. Through his single-minded focus, unequaled experience, and ceaseless efforts, Van Deman became the spider at the center of a spreading web of domestic surveillance."

(Policing America's Empire. Alfred McCoy, pgs. 320-321)

General Van Deman

Van Deman's apparatus was once again officially incorporated into the government leading up to World War II.

"... In December, FBI headquarters issued 'special instructions' for a San Diego agent to 'devote himself exclusively to the task of reviewing general Van Deman's files and extracting all information of value to the Bureau.' Three years later the liaison officer between the FBI and G-2, Col. Leslie R. Forney, assigned two full-time clerks to his San Diego archive, paid from the 'army's confidential fund'... This unique quasi-official status, moreover, allowed the general to insert unverified civilian suspicions into government files and later to disseminate military intelligence to civilian activists – making him a catalyst for the renewed public-private alliance that would animate the postwar anticommunist movement."

"... While serving as an advisor to the War Department from 1941 to 1946, for which he later received the Legion of Merit, Van Deman spent the war in San Diego presiding over an ever-increasing exchange of information via his private-public network."

(ibid, pg. 328) 

Naturally Van Deman contributed to the McCarthyism that emerged during the early years of the Cold War. Van Deman have been keeping tabs on Hollywood liberals for decades and his files were instrumental in the Hollywood blacklists that Senator Joseph McCarthy became notorious for. While Van Deman died in 1952 it would seem that his concept of a public-private intelligence network to guard the nation's leading industries against "subversives" lived on long after him. The military assumed his files upon Van Deman's death and would use them as an intelligence source until 1968, when mounting public outrage over the domestic surveillance programs of various US intelligence agencies forced them to officially retire Van Deman's archive. But the public-private network he established never entirely went away.

"... Just as Philippines Constabulary had destroyed reputations through revelations of sexual or financial irregularities in occupied Manila, so the U.S. internal security apparatus would attack suspected subversives not by formal prosecution but by a similar social ostracism exercise through public listing or 'blacklisting.' Not only did Van Deman's civilian apparatus later identify Hollywood communist for blacklisting during the 1940s, but some sources argue his network also played a key role in the political rise of Richard Nixon, providing his early congressional campaigns with confidential intelligence to red-bait liberal opponents...

"Although American intelligence officer serving overseas practiced a clandestine tradecraft similar to that of their European allies, U.S. domestic security emerged from the world war as a distinctive public-private or state-society collaboration. Just as the Philippines Constabulary relied on hundreds of Filipino operatives, so the wartime Military Intelligence Division amplified its research through the three hundred thousand civilian spies of the American Protective League. Established in 1917-18, this alliance of state security and civilian adjuncts continued, under different names, for the next 50 years as a sub rosa matrix that honeycombed American society with active informers, secretive civilian organizations, and government security agencies, federal and local. In each succeeding global crisis, this covert nexus expanded its domestic operations, producing new contraventions of civil liberties, from the systematic surveillance of German Americans during World War I through the secret blacklisting of suspected communist during the Cold War. Police worldwide had long relied on low-life informers known by derogatory terms of 'snitch' or 'phizz gig.' Secret services in Europe and Japan had paid individual spies, informers, and agent provocateurs for the better part of a century. The U.S. internal security was now developing a unique profile as an institutional fusion of federal agencies and civilian organizations, investing this distinctive nexus with both the social force of a mass movement and the institutional resilience of a state agency – attributes that would define its operations for the next half-century."

(ibid, pgs. 295-296) 

I've been unable to find anything linking Van Deman or anyone associated with him to the American Security Council directly but there is the American Legion link. Van Deman helped establish the Legion as a spy network and later the Legion would join up with the ASC via the figure of former FBI man and sometime CIA asset Lee Pennington. Pennington brought a massive file collection he had established with the Legion to the ASC in the 1950s when he transferred to the later. Pennington and the ties between the ASC and the League were discussed briefly in the second installment of this series.

It seems clear that the ASC took over the function Van Deman had been serving for years – namely, as a clearinghouse for intelligence reports provided from a host of public and private sources concerning industry. The modus operandi for either was quite similar – With backing from corporate America, the FBI and military they brought together intelligence provided by government officials (i.e. FBI men, state and local police, etc), "reputable" private organizations (i.e. the security divisions of corporations, the American Legion and major private detective firms, which typically feature a former FBI man or a dozen) and various "superpatriot" groups, of which the APL was the first.

Indeed, the ASC may even have been an attempt by the military and the FBI (and likely the CIA as well) to re-create Deman's public-private network on a national scale (the general's network largely only covered California for most of his lifetime). But beyond industrial security, it also serve to reinforce the rabid anti-Communism that was necessary to perpetuating the Cold War, thus further lining the pockets of the defense industry and fulfilling the ideological objectives of the military brass and fellow travelers. Beyond that, it also helped to financially marginalize liberals deemed "to radical" via blacklisting so that courses if action remained limited.

as I hope this series has illustrated thus far, anticommunist hysteria didn't spring into being with McCarthyism in the late 1940s but had in fact been institutionalized into the nation's psyche for decades; Allan Pinkerton, founder of the notorious Pinkerton National Detective Agency (the country's first major nation wide intelligence apparatus), was one of the first to bang the drumbeat of the "communist threat" as far back as the late 19th century

The ASC theoretically got out of the industrial intelligence racket in the early 1970s when the FBI, CIA and military were winding down their own domestic surveillance operations. Public outrage over the abuses of said agencies was growing by the day in the early 1970s making such a course of action highly prudent on the ASC's part. It remained in the shadows pursuing its various agendas largely outside the glare of public scrutiny. And when the time was right, it seems to have continued its intelligence gathering activities while using the "patriot movement" as a front for such endeavors. This topic will be discussed in much greater depth in a future series on the patriot movement.

But while the ASC's overworld function was to serve the industrial security complex as a propaganda and intelligence network there were also other factions in the ASC that seemingly had their own objectives. In the next installment in this series we shall examine some of these factions, with a special emphasis on the occult and high weirdness aspects surrounding them. Stay tuned.