Secret Societies, Narcoterrorism, International Fascism, and the the World Anti-Communist League Part IV

 

Come together

Together as one
Come together

For Lucifer's son

--Ghost B.C.,"Monstrance Clock"



Welcome to the fourth installment in my examination of the World Anti-Communist League (WACL). While the general tendency of those who have examined the WACL (and they are few and far between) is to liken it to a conservative rival to "liberal" establishment international think tanks such as the Round Table groups or the Trilateral Commission the reality is far more complex.

While both the Round Table groups and the Trilateral Commission have long been linked to the US intelligence community their primary purpose in this capacity seems to of been as a propaganda organ. The WACL also performed such a role, but in many ways it functioned as a full-blown intelligence network unto itself. As has been discussed a great lengths in the prior three installments (which can be found here, here, and here), the WACL was deeply immersed in the international drug trade shortly after the end of the Second World War. By the 1980s it had become one of the largest (arguably the largest) drug cartels in the entire world, with long-standing ties to the international heroin trade and eventually assuming a major role in Latin American cocaine trafficking as well.

Due to such activities the group naturally had close ties to the US intelligence community. Many researchers have even gone so far as to dismiss the WACL as a total construct of said community, but this would be a mistake in this researcher's opinion. The WACL had its origins with two organizations (officially) – the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN) and the Asian People's Anti-Communist League (APACL). Both organizations, but especially the latter, had wealthy patrons behind them – patrons who formed close relationships with high-ranking figures in the US military and intelligence community. These figures in turn would continue to support the forces behind the ABN and the APACL even when such forces have become pariahs amongst "mainstream" (i.e., the much fabled Eastern Establishment) American powerbrokers.

As was noted in part one of this series, the APACL received much of its financial support from Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang (KMT) party and Yoshio Kodama, an Imperial Japan war criminal and the longtime head of the yakuza. For decades Chiang and Kodama were the two largest drug lords in the Far East, achieving a near-monopoly over the world heroin supply in the early 1970s. They had already become fabulously wealthy from the drug trade long before this and put much of this money towards supporting far right wing causes the world over.

Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek (top) and Yoshio Kodama (bottom)

They were initially given support for this endeavor by General Douglas MacArthur and his longtime intelligence chief, General Charles Willoughby. This is a topic that will be discussed in much greater depth in a future series though for the time being the curious reader can find much more information on MacArthur and Willoughby in the final installment of a series I wrote on the American Security Council (another far right wing lobby group that was closely linked to the WACL for decades). For our purposes here it is important to note the latter backers Chiang and Kodama acquired, namely those from the OSS ( and later, the CIA).

General MacArthur (top) and General Willoughby (bottom)

These assets seemingly formed close ties with Chiang Kai-shek and the KMT during the Generalissimo's last stand on mainland China before the Maoist revolution was complete and the KMT fled to Formosa (later Taiwan). As a result, many researchers generally referred to them as the "China Cowboys." Some of the more colorful figures in this merry band include: General John K. Singlaub (the future chairman of the entire WACL); longtime CIA man Ray S. Cline (another figure who played a key role in the WACL, as we shall see in a moment); famed mercenary and arms dealer Mitchell WerBell III (who also played some type of role with the WACL, as noted in part three); businessman William Pawley (who would become deeply involved with the American Security Council), Watergate "plumber" E. Howard Hunt, General Claire Chennault (founder of Civil Air Transport, later known as Air America, a key cog in the KMT opium network) and Paul Helliwell (another major player in Civil Air Transport).

Mitch WerBell III (top), William Pawley (middle) and E. Howard Hunt (bottom), three of the more notorious "China Cowboys"

Aside from Singlaub, Cline probably had the most significant (and likely longest standing) involvement in the WACL. He also played a key role in establishing (along with Chiang Kai-shek's son, Chiang Ching-kuo) Taiwan's Political Warfare Cadres Academy, an institution that would factor heavily into the WACL's intelligence operations.

"Chiang Ching-kuo had graduated from the Sun Yat-Sen University in Moscow in 1927. Deemed a 'revolutionary cadre' by his communist instructors, he was appointed as an alternative member of the Communist Party. He had also attended the Whampoa Academy, a Soviet-run school in China than instructed its pupils, both communists and Nationalist, in the art of political warfare. The generalissimo's son put his instruction to good use; by the time of his affiliation with Cline, he had already been in control of the Kuomintang's secret police... for at least a decade and had personally overseen purges in which dozens of Kuomintang officers were executed. Throughout his subsequent rise to the top, from defense minister to premier and, finally, to president, Chiang Ching-kuo had a steadfast ally in Ray Cline.

"In the late 1950s they joined forces to create an instrument of war that continues to have a hidden impact of events throughout the world: the Political Warfare Cadres Academy. Today, much of the international recruitment for this academy is coordinated through the World Anti-Communist League.

"Although the regime describes political warfare as a system 'to remove obstacles to national unity within and to resist aggression from without,' political warfare is actually the ideological base that the Kuomintang has used to maintain Taiwan as a police state and to infiltrate, expose, and liquidate any opposition that may be suspected to exist at any level of society, even down to the family level. Through the use of political warfare, armed with the fiat of permanent martial law, the nationalists have built what is probably one of the most pervasive internal security and spy networks in existence. Fully one-fifth of the population is believed to be involved in this warfare, and activities ranging from lecturing soldiers and workers in political 'correctness' to surveilling one's own children, parents, and neighbors for the authorities. The tool used to perpetuate the system is the Political Warfare Cadres Academy, housed on a hillside in Peitou, just outside the capital.

"Patterned after the Soviet model of political officers, commissars, and informants, the academy is the training ground for the General Political Warfare Department, a branch of the Minister of National Defense. It's primary function, as with the Soviet model, is to ensure party (in this case, Kuomintang) control of the military through political indoctrination. Kuomintang cells, called 'political departments' and composed graduates of the academy, are established in every military unit down to company size. These political commissars watch over troops, as well as the non-academy officers, test their political awareness, and submit regular status reports to the General Political Warfare Department on each person. 'The surveillance or inspection function of the company political officer is by far his most ominous duty. Each member of the unit has the responsibility to report on dissidence and deviant political attitudes, which may be observed on the part of his comrades.' The commissars' primary loyalty is not to the military, but to the Party, and according to former American advisers in Taiwan, in disputes between army and political officers, the latter always win.

"The General Political Warfare Department conducts a vast array of operations. It runs radio stations, publishing houses, and even movie studios. It also has counterintelligence units to locate subversives and psychological warfare units to supervise political warfare campaigns and promulgate propaganda, as well as civil affairs units for the purpose of infiltrating behind enemy lines during an invasion to generate support for the Kuomintang. All of these different units undergo training at the academy."

(Inside the League, Scott & Jon Lee Anderson, pgs. 56-57)

Chiang Ching-kuo (top) and Ray S. Cline (bottom)

The Political Warfare Cadres Academy would go on to play a major role in training in the Central American death squads of the 1980s, among other things.

"To achieve unity with anti-communist countries, the 'General Political Warfare Department enlisted cultural, educational, social and economic organizations in this campaign. Virtually all individual and governmental activities, domestic and international, were expected to proceed from an ideological perspective.' To this end, the Nationalists expanded the League throughout Latin America, creating the regional affiliate, the Latin American Anti-Communist Confederation (CAL) in 1972. The Kuomintang did not view such organizations as mere public relations forums, but rather as the 'organizational warfare' aspect of their global political warfare scheme.

"In their search for new allies and in their efforts to retain old ones, the Nationalists in Taiwan were willing to do much more than simply orate about the need for a common anti-communist strategy at League conferences. They also use their League connections to render a mutually beneficial service to their right-wing allies in South and Central America. Through the offices of the World anti-Communist League, they offered to train the police, military, and security forces of the region in unconventional warfare, interrogation, and counterterror tactics at their Political Warfare Cadres Academy in Peitou.

"In the past decade, most Latin American nations accepted the Taiwanese offer; this has created a continental fraternity of thousands of high-ranking officers who are united by their anti-communist convictions and the Kuomintang-taught creed, 'you have to be as cruel as the enemy' to win...

"The Kuomintang scheme is conducted through one of their 'organizational warfare' arms, the World Anti-Communist League. This Taiwanese version of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers in Latin America is developed in two stages, each coordinated through the offices of the League. The plan has already been pursued and accomplished in countries such as El Salvador and Guatemala.

"First, through its liaisons in the League, the Kuomintang identifies the political party in a Latin country that is the most militantly anti-communist. The political party chosen to be represented in the League is invariably the one that has already actively proven its anti-Communist mettle or else displays the ability and will to do so. Following the Kuomintang model, the chosen party establishes a nationwide intelligence and counterterror network. These paramilitary groups are then gradually incorporated into the nation's armed forces. This is usually accomplished when, in a moment of national crisis, the army turns to the civilian bands for support, or when it is too impotent to curb them.

"In so doing, the paramilitary 'party' effectively takes over those branches of the military with which it operates, just as the Kuomintang did in prerevolutionary China.

"The first phase of the Kuomintang model was well illustrated in Guatemala and El Salvador. In each, the death squad apparatus that became institutionalized in the military was first created by a psuedopolitical party. In Guatemala, this party was the National Liberation Movement (MLN) of Mario Sandoval Alarcon; in El Salvador, it was first the National Conciliation Party (PCN) and later the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA) of Roberto D'Aubuisson. It is no coincidence that the World Anti-Communist League chapters from Guatemala and El Salvador have predominantly been composed from these parties. Nor is it coincidence that El Salvador's ARENA, the so-called 'death squad party,' has a structure remarkably similar to the Kuomintang."

(ibid, pgs. 134-136)

the seal of the Political Warfare Cadres Academy

The Kuomintang was likely not the only organization in the WACL that contributed to the spread of death squads throughout Latin America (and beyond) in the post-WWII era, however. As was briefly noted in part one, the rise of Nazi Quisling regimes in Eastern Europe followed a path remarkably similar to the one taken by death squads in Latin America. Many of the Quislings also began as paramilitary "political parties" engaged in vigilantism that contributed to the destabilization of their respective regimes and opening the door for a fascist take over. And like the Kuomintang-trained parties of Latin America, these Quislings put loyalty to their party as well as the Nazi party (which frequently provided financial support, among other things, for their Quislings) above the interests of the nation.

After WWII many of the Quisling parties became involved with the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (ABN), one of the two founding organizations behind the WACL. Indeed, it has long been assumed that the Quislings totally dominated the ABN and while this is almost certainly true, it would appear that there was an even more sinister (and powerful) organization behind the Quislings in the ABN. Researcher Kevin Coogan dubbed it "the Order," though there is no indication this name was actually used. Regardless, "the Order" was likely a reality, was well-funded, and maintained a European-wide (and later international) network of affiliate groups, many of them also linked to the WACL.

One of the key figures in this network appeared to be the notorious Italian fascist and occultist Julius Evola. While many may scoff at such a notion consider that Evola was deeply involved with SD, the chief intelligence organ of the SS, throughout the war (and possibly even before). His work during the final few years of it are especially bizarre.

"Evola's SD work you at the end of the war is shrouded in mystery. Historian Richard Drake says that while he was in Vienna, 'Evola performed  vital liaison services for the SS as Nazi Germany sought to recruit a European army for the defense of the Continent against the Soviet Union and the United States.' According to his own account, Evola spent his time living incognito while doing 'intellectual' research. But what kind of research?

"While Evola was in Vienna, the SD supplied him with a series of arcane text plundered from private libraries and rare book collections. The SD bureau that provided him with these documents was Amt VII, an obscure branch that served as an RSHA research library. With this precious archive, Evola closely studied masonic rituals and translated certain 'esoteric text' for a book called Historie Secrete des Societes Secretes. It never appeared because Evola claimed that all his documents were lost during the Russian bombardment.

"I believe that Evola's Vienna project was intimately linked to the development of what I call 'the Order,' a new kind of Knights Templar designed to successfully function sub rosa. Well before the end of World War II, the intelligence and financial networks of the Third Reich were hard at work preparing underground networks to survive the coming Allied occupation. Escape lines to South America and the Middle East were organized. Bank accounts were created in Switzerland and other neutral nations to finance the underground with plunder the Nazis had looted from occupied Europe. But how was this secret empire to be managed, except by a virtually invisible 'government in exile'?

"For years Evola had been fascinated by knightly orders as expressions of the Kshatriya caste of warrior aristocrats. In the former structure of the SS, he saw the precursor to a new Ordenstaat, a State ruled by an Order. He also understood the great advantages provided by medieval orders of chivalry due to their transnational composition. Proceeding orders, like the Knights Templar and the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, were pan-European, the separate national sections... unified through a Council, presided over by a Grand Master. After the collapse of fascist state power, a new Order, an 'invisible college' of sorts, was needed not only to manipulate bank accounts and travel schedules, but to have policymaking functions. Nor could it simply be run under the auspices of the Vatican, since Evola believed that Rome's downfall had been caused by the acceptance of Christianity by the dominant faction of the Roman elite. The Emperor Constantine's official embrace of the 'gentle Nazarene' in 313 A.D. had accumulated, a hundred years later, in Alaric's sack of Rome. With the American chewing-gum imperials threatening in the West, and the new Hun sweeping in from the East, was the situation in 1945 really so different? The Order was a vessel for those 'Hermetic' elements of the Conservative Revolution, old ruling class, and new Nazi elite not entirely beholden to the political, cultural, and religious 'Guelf' wing of the European aristocracy, which remained ideologically loyal to the continued propagation of the ruling Christian mythology.

"This account of the origins of the Order is obviously speculative, and I advance it is hypothesis, not fact. Yet if I'm correct the SD really did have a need for Evola's unique talents. With his extensive knowledge of matters esoteric and occult; his fascination with secret societies and knightly Orders; his Waffen SS transnationalism; his ties to some of the highest figures in fascism, Nazism, and movements like the Iron Guard; and his loyal service to the SD, Baron Evola was a perfect candidate to help theorize a new underground Order. As the SD's equivalent of Albert Pike, the former Confederate Army general who designed the rituals for the Scottish Rite Masons in the late 1800s, Evola's task was to help create the inner organizational and ritual structure for the Grand Masters of a secret Shamballah whose financial nerve center was carefully hidden away in Swiss bank accounts.

"With the war rapidly coming to an end, however, the Order lacked the time to implement its plans. With support from the top RSHA leadership, a deception game was begun with both Allied intelligence and the Catholic Church. Utilizing Wall Street and Vatican fears of communism, some of Himmler's top cronies, like SS General Karl Wolff, became Damascus-road converts to a 'kinder, gentler' SS eager to establish friendly relations with both the Americans and the Holy See."

(Dreamer of the Day, Kevin Coogan, pgs. 320-321)

Baron Julius Evola

Within the post-WWII fascist underground (especially in Europe) these two separate camps – the "traditionalist" who favored a close alliance with the United States, industrial and religious leaders (most especially the Vatican, which had long been fascinated with the notion of fascism as a counterbalance to communism), the military, and the old guard aristocracy; and the "revolutionary" camp that pursued Evola's pagan Order – at times came into conflict with one another (especially over whether the United States or the Soviet Union represented the greatest threat to Europe), but more often than not they favored collaboration.

In some ways this is best exemplified by the Iron Guard, one of the most notorious Eastern European Quislings. Publicly the Guard was fanatically Orthodox but it also seemed to have possessed some type of occult doctrine, as noted in the third installment of the series. Not only did the Guard have ties to Baron Evola, but also the famous mythologist Mircea Eliade, who was an actual member of the Guard.

the logo of the Guard

But more on the Guard in a moment. Coogan goes to speculate that "the Order" also acquired its own powerful patrons within the CIA at the end of WWII.

"Behind the strategy of tension there lurked what appears to have been a devil's pact between the Order and Allen Dulles. Until Dulles was named CIA director by President Eisenhower (and his brother, John Foster Dulles, became secretary of state), operational links to the Nazi underground came primarily from the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), headed by Dulles protégé Frank Wisner, the former chief of OSS operations in Bucharest, Romania. After the war, Dulles, Wisner, Angleton, and the OPC's Carmel Office virtually ran covert operations in Italy as their private affair.

"The OPC's budget was $4.7 million in 1949. Three years later, when Dulles was still only CIA deputy director, if it reached $82 million. OPC personnel then jump from 302 to 6,954. OPC was officially incorporated into the CIA in 1952, as the Agency's Directorate of Plans. In 1956, after President Eisenhower established the Killian Commission to investigate the Agency, it was discovered that more than half of the CIA's personnel and 80 percent of its budget had been devoted not to intelligence-gathering, but to psychological and political warfare programs. Throughout this entire time, the Dulles network was intimately involved in complex deals with factions inside the postwar SS.

"Did Dulles offer to protect elements of the SS in return for its support for CIA-backed anti-Soviet operations in Europe and the Third World? Did he think that granting the Order a certain autonomy was a small price to pay for bring it into the American camp? Might he even have been personally compromised in some way, or manipulated by the Dulles family psychiatrist, Carl Jung? Men Among the Ruins, then, may have been less a concession by Evola to American power than a signal that some sort of understanding reached by Dulles and Wolff at the end of the war was now fully operational."

(ibid, pg. 334)

Allen Dulles

Was the emergence of the World Anti-Communist League a part of this arrangement? As noted above, Evola had maintained close ties to the Iron Guard throughout World War II. Members of the Guard, most notably Horia Sima, would go on to play a major role in the founding of the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations, the European chapter of the League. Two Italian neo-fascist groups with close ties to Evola, Movimento Sociale Italiano (MSI) and Ordine Nuovo, also developed relations with the League by at least the 1970s.

What's more, the Iron Guard also formed close ties with Los Tecos, a secret society overseen for years by a Mexican national who spent World War II as a guest of the Nazi regime in Berlin. The Tecos, who were superficially a fanatical traditionalist Catholic order yet still possessed occult overtones, would go on to found the Latin American Anti-Communist Confederation (CAL). This served as the Latin American chapter of the League from 1972 until 1984 when it was kicked out over revelations of the Tecos involvement. Many believed the Tecos still maintained ties to the League for years afterwards, however. But I digress – Much more information on Los Tecos, especially their possible role in the Latin American cocaine trade, can be found in part three.

Carlos Cuesta Gallardo, the long time head of Los Tecos

Thus, Evola's network may have had ties not just throughout the European chapter of the League, but also amongst the Latin American members as well. This raises the possibility that behind the curtain of the WACL was a vast international fascist network that brought together veterans of Imperial Japan as well as Nazi Germany and affiliated Quisling regimes into a pact with powerful far right forces within the CIA and US military. What's more, the value of the League would only grown to the latter as the years went on.

The relationship between the League and the CIA became especially crucial when countless CIA and military men were purged in the 1970s following the revelations of the Rockefeller Commission and Church Committee and continuing through the Carter administration. In many cases the individuals purged were among the most right-wing and reactionary elements in the CIA and military, more than a few of them with ties to the WACL (most notably Cline and Singlaub). In many cases they continued their own personal intelligence operations in conjunction with the WACL and like organizations as well as sympathetic elements still within the US intelligence community and military years after their service was officially terminated.

One of the probable fruits of this collaboration was the notorious Operation Condor, a joint operation involving various intelligence agencies from nations within South America's Southern Cone. Many of these South American nations in turn had ties to the WACL, most notably Argentina's notorious Argentine Anti-Communist Alliance (AAA). What 's more, while Operation Condor is generally depicted as only involving South American nations it also included members of European neo-fascist groups, anti-Castro Cubans, and even American "contract" agents, among others.

"The brainchild of the Chilean secret police (DINA), Operation Condor was created in 1976 to coordinate the security forces of Latin American right-wing governments, enabling them to track and hunt down their enemies. Through joint intelligence-gathering and -sharing, a leftist who had fled Brazil, for example, can be located in Argentina. Then 'Phase Three' could be initiated.

"Phase Three, according to a top-secret 1979 report of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that was obtained by columnist Jack Anderson, 'involves the formation of special teams from member countries assigned to travel anywhere in the world to non-member countries to carry out "sanctions" – including assassination – against Condor enemies...'

"It now seems likely that the car-bomb killing of Chilean dissident Orlando Letelier in Washington in 1976 (orchestrated by an American contract agent of the Chilean secret police and conducted by anti-Castro Cuban exiles) and the attempted murder of Bernardo Leighton (shot by an Italian fascist on orders from Chile, with the 'credit' taken by Cuban exiles) are examples of the work of Condor. There are other cases throughout Latin America with Condor imprint, from liberal Uruguayan politicians murdered in Argentina to Chilean dissidents killed in Bolivia.

"Officially, Operation Condor was dismantled after American authorities became aware of it and exerted strong pressure on the dictators responsible. In reality, it is simply change form; Latin American governments continue to carry out 'trans-national terror,' now often contracting out its assignments to private groups. One of those private groups was the World Anti-Communist League, specifically its Latin American affiliate, the CAL."

(Inside the League, Scott & Jon Lee Anderson, pgs. 142-143)

the victims of Operation Condor

As noted above, I suspect the League was involved in such shenanigans well before 1977 – they are the most obvious organization to have the international contacts necessary for operations on such as scale. It was not, however, until 1980 and the election of Ronald Reagan to the presidency of the United States that the WACL truly became a well oiled killing machine. This path was set when William Casey assumed the black throne of the CIA upon taking the directorship. Casey had a very novel idea for how the Agency could engage in the "dirty work" that would be necessary to end the Cold War once and for all in the post-Church Committee era.

"In the 1980s Casey and Vice President Bush, using convert networks, embarked on a number of their own initiatives. Some of these were actively opposed by other cabinet members and also – in the case of the Contras – by the Democratic-controlled Congress. The result was the conduct of operations by a cabal of inner cadres, working with proxies and off-the-boats assets like the Saudi GID and BCCI. Americans do not yet have access to the true history of that era."

(The Road to 9/11, Peter Dale Scott, pg. 116)

William Casey

This lack of access was in no small part due to the private aid network established by Casey and Bush I during the final showdown of the Cold War. It was an ambitious plan that plunged Soviet Quislings into brutal "unconventional" wars in Central Asia (most notably Afghanistan), southern Africa, and Central America. The organization that seemingly took the lead in this private aid network, which would destabilize massive chunks of the Third World throughout the 1980s, was the World Anti-Communist League.

"... At the center of the 'private aid' network was the World Anti-Communist League (WACL). WACL was born in the late 1960s as an outgrowth of the Asian People's Anti-Communist League, a consortium of right-wing Asian government leaders... by the 1970s WACL had become a meeting ground for U.S. rightists, European neo-Nazis, and Latin American death squad figures. In 1981, the rotating leadership of WACL went to (retired) Major General John Singlaub's U.S. chapter, the American Council for World Freedom (ACWF). Singlaub volunteered himself as a 'private aid' coordinator for the Reagan administration. Through his worldwide WACL contacts, Singlaub offered military advisers to the Nicaraguan Contras, and brokered some of the administration's third-country, covert supply deals.

"The fatal September 1984 helicopter crash of two U.S. mercenaries on a supply mission over Nicaragua punctuated the role of the 'private' Contra supply network. By then, the leading Contra fundraisers in the United States fell into several categories: paramilitary mercenary outfits (Soldier of Fortune magazine, Civilian Military Assistance, the Air Commando Association), Christian Right 'ministries' (Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network, the Catholic Knights of Malta), and the network of conservative movement political lobbies (American Security Council, Citizens for America, the Council for Inter-America Security, and numerous others). As early as 1984, Pat Robertson had used his tax-exempt 'religious' television broadcasts to raise a reported $3 million for the Contras' Fuerza Democratica Nicaraguense (FDN). The Reverend Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, through its various front groups, likewise became a mainstay of the Contra supply network. In 1985, in one project that made for strange political bedfellows, the Unification Church-owned Washington Times established the Nicaraguan Freedom Fund with an additional $100,000 donation from Moonie leader Bo Hi Pak, and an additional $20,000 from Jeane Kirkpatrick. The fund's board members included neoconservative activist Michael Novak and Midge Decter. At the height of the fundraising campaign, in the mid-1980s, journalist investigators wondered about the credibility of the supply network's claims of 'private' donations, estimated at $25 million. Many of the fundraising groups welcomed media attention for the delivery of supplies and their meeting with Contra forces. No doubt, 'private' supply missions were approved – if not arranged – by field officers of U.S. intelligence agencies responsible for covert operations in the staging area of southern Honduras. For public relations purposes, the 'private' Condor benefactors had an interest in exaggerating their fundraising successes. As with any effective covert operation, the element of 'plausible deniability' was key. Citizen Singlaub's 'private' network performed the role of an overt lightening rod for much of public criticism over the Contra aid. Only after the Iran-Contra scandal began to unravel did the scope and size of the Contra funding operation begin to come to life."

(Roads to Dominion, Sara Diamond, pgs. 219-220)

General John Singluab

Much of the funding Singlaub procured for the Contras likely was "private," in that it came from CIA-protected drug traffickers within the WACL. This source of funding was instrumental in achieving the objectives of the Reagan administration in Central America. As was discussed in part two, the WACL and its close alley, the American Security Council (which shared a lot of membership overlap with the WACL), likely played a key role in supporting the Mujahedin in Afghanistan as well. The WACL and the American Security Council (ASC) were also involved in procuring aid for "anti-communist" forces in southern Africa, most notably Angola's UNITA and the Apartheid South Africa-backed RENAMO party of Mozambique.

"Some of the same New Right groups active in the supply network to the Nicaraguan Contras joined forces on behalf of UNITA and RENAMO. These included the World Anti-Communist League (WACL), Soldier of Fortune mercenary magazine, Howard Phillips' Conservative Caucus, Jack Wheeler's Freedom Research Foundation, Lewis Lehrman's Citizens for America, and many others. Jerry Falwell spoke publicly on behalf of South African president P. W. Botha and pledged to work to defeat a proposed sanctions bill. Christian Voice-member and publisher David Balsiger organized the RAMBO collation to coordinate Christian Right and New Right supporters of southern African 'freedom fighters.' The RAMBO coalition held demonstrations against Chevron Oil Corporation's business dealings with Angola and distributed propaganda subsidized by the South African government to hundreds of thousands of U.S. readers.

"As in the case of Central American 'freedom fighter' projects, these 'private' groups evaded government scrutiny on a variety of potential legal violations, including tax-exempt status, the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and the Neutrality Act. While U.S. intelligence agencies surveilled and disrupted law-abiding liberal and leftist foreign-policy groups, the federal government turned an acquiescent eye toward all manner of anticommunist movement activity."

(ibid, pg. 223) 

UNITA (top) and RENAMO (bottom) banners

Thus, the WACL's activities went far beyond their "public" role in Central America and also stretched into other major "unconventional warfare" fronts in Central Asia and southern Africa. As the head organization behind this "private" aid network they provided both funding (that was likely heavily derived from drug trafficking by WACL member groups) and training to these "freedom fighters." It's long been suspected that the WACL's role went beyond even this, and also involved recruiting mercenaries from member groups to further assist the "freedom fighters." These things combined with the decades-spanning relations WACL affiliates had with death squads and international intelligence operations such as Operation Condor seem to indicate that the WACL did not simply assist Casey and Bush I, but were deeply involved in the planning of this epic showdown with the Soviet Union.

Before wrapping things up, it behooves me to point out the bizarre appearance of yet another secret society in this bloody narrative, namely the legendary Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM), better known as the Knights of Malta. As noted above, the SMOM was involved in the "private" aid network, but it's influence likely stretched far beyond this role. You see, CIA director William Casey was himself a Knight of Malta and this seems to have played heavily into the director's actions. Salon noted:

"...the membership of Reagan-era CIA director Bill Casey in the Knights of Malta has been a fact widely reported in the press and never denied by Casey himself. Historian Joseph E. Persico, a former Republican speechwriter for Vice President Nelson Rockefeller and the co-author of Colin Powell’s autobiography, includes Casey’s membership in a routine list of charitable accomplishments, in his sympathetic biography Casey: from the OSS to the CIA (Penguin 1990). (Casey’s membership is asserted on Page 105 of the paperback.)

"Years earlier, Casey was listed publicly as a member in both Mother Jones (07/1983) and the Washington Post (12/27/1984). The implications of Casey’s membership are even alluded to in Bob Woodward’s “Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981-1987,” in which Casey’s deep Catholicism and the Catholic Church’s opposition to Nicaragua’s left-leaning Sandinista government are both recurring topics..."

Knights of Malta cross

Casey was not the first SMOM member to forge close ties with the WACL and its affiliate groups either. As noted above, the three individuals chiefly responsible for conscripting Julius Evola's WACL-linked "Order" into the CIA's Cold War strategy for Europe were Allen Dulles, Frank Wisner, and James Jesus Angleton. Of these three men, at least two were members of the SMOM: Dulles and Angleton. This researcher has seen Wisner widely cited as a member of the SMOM as well but has been unable to confirm this in a reputable source.

Angleton would go on to join the American Security Council (ASC) after he was drummed out of the CIA in the mid-1970s. He has also been widely linked to the Agency's drug trafficking schemes, as I noted before here in my examination of the ASC.

Angleton

Another SMOM member who became involved with WACL affiliates was William "Wild Bill" Donovan, the founder of the OSS, the predecessor organization to the CIA. Donovan was involved, along with ASC member and old China Cowboy William Pawley, in setting up Civil Air Transport (CAT). CAT, later known as Air America, would become deeply involved in the CIA's joint drug trafficking operations with Chiang Kei-Shek's KMT party.

"Wild Bill"

Thus, it would seem that the SMOM had established strong ties to the WACL and the fascist underground behind it years before the WACL was officially founded. In this context, it makes Casey's decision to lean on the WACL to guide his "freedom fighters" strategy rather inevitable. The SMOM and WACL were well acquainted with one another by then and implicitly aware of the "dirty work" that would soon be necessary.

Here we are confronted with yet another shadowy, little addressed secret society lurking behind the WACL. While there is much written online about the SMOM, it is virtually all nonsense. The conspiratorial right has long insisted that the Knights of Malta were interchangeable with the Knights Templar and part of the broader "Masonic conspiracy." And yet researcher John J. Robertson, whose Born in Blood is generally regarded as the most compelling work linking the medieval Knights Templar to Freemasonry, argued that the Knights of Malta and the Knights Templar/Freemasons were mortal enemies of one another. In the Encyclopedia of Freemasonry and Its Kindred Sciences thirty-third degree Freemason Albert Mackey says of the Knights of Malta:

"The Knights of Malta are the militia of the Pope, and are sworn to total obedience by a blood oath which is taken extremely seriously and to the death. The Pope as the head of the Vatican is also the head of a foreign national power."

Knights of Malta banner

Needless to say, I don't put much credence in the Masonic linkages. But regardless, the appearance of the SMOM in the WACL --along with other such secret societies as the Triads, the Green Gang, the yakuza, the Black Dragon Society (all of which were briefly addressed in part one), Los Tecos, "the Order," etc --and the power these groups wielded in it, is most curious. The WACL seemingly functioned in much the same way the conspiratorial right has long believed organizations such as the Round Table groups were controlled by the "Illuminati," and yet many WACL members were even more obsessed with the Freemasonic-Judaic-Communist conspiracy than the average Alex Jones listener. But I digress --Back to the wrap up.

When it was all said and done the Soviet Union lay broken and shattered to the four winds amidst wave after wave of nationalist uprisings throughout the Third World and later even Eastern Europe. Meanwhile, Germany emerged reunited and at the center of a pan-European political structure that had been the dream of the Evolan wing the Fascist International since the rise of the SS. And it all came about at the cost of a colossal loss of life throughout the globe.

The number of deaths that the WACL and its affiliates are responsible for is difficult to calculate. One would have to begin by factoring in the lives lost both in the Korean War and Vietnam, as KMT drug money was used to fund the extensive lobbying necessary to plunge the United States into both wars (a topic discussed in part one of this series). From there one would have to factor in the numerous political assassinations and terror acts committed by WACL affiliates throughout the 1970s as part of Operation Condor and other such projects.

Then there are the hundreds of thousands (likely millions) of individuals who were murdered by the Latin American death squads the WACL had spent decades funding and training. There are also the millions more who lost their lives in Afghanistan and the "unconventional warfare" zones in southern Africa where WACL affiliates also lent their "expertise" and funding support. Then there are the deaths that are still occurring, most notably in war-ravaged Afghanistan and drug cartel-ravaged Mexico (the role the WACL played in the rise of the Mexican cartels was noted in part three), as a result of the WACL's foreign policy.

And yet, this is only scratching the surface. As one of the largest drug cartels in the world for decades, the WACL also bears ample responsibility for the millions of individuals who lost their lives to drug addiction and drug trafficking. Given that long-time WACL affiliates such as Jesse Helms and members of the Christian Right were heavily involved in crafting the War on Drugs, the WACL must also be held accountable for the untold number of ruined lives and broken homes (to say nothing of the epic prison population in the United States) brought about by the decision to treat drug addiction as a crime and not a health problem in he United States.

Needless to say, this leaves a rather considerable amount of blood on the hands of the WACL, the ASC, the SMOM and their handmaidens in the Christian Right. Certainly the US military, the CIA and other branches of the US intelligence community also deserve a far share of the blame, but these private groups frequently played a crucial role in role in the shadow Cold War that has rarely been acknowledged. Even the alternative media, especially the conspiratorial right, has opted to almost totally ignore this globe-spanning blood shed of these organizations while continuing to crow about the "One-World-Communist-Dictatorship-Under-the-UN." While communism is not doubt an abomination also responsible for the deaths of millions the alternative presented by the WACL and the Fascist International can hardly be said to possess any type of moral high ground whatsoever.

But it is the former to which the conspiratorial right has focused the bulk of its efforts while engaging in a total blackout of the later. As we shall see in the next series, there is a very damning, if little explored, reason for this state of affairs. Stay tuned.