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

On August 5, 2012, something rather strange and terrible unfolded in the town of Oak Creek, Wisconsin. One Wade Michael Page, a military veteran, marched into a Sikh temple there and open fired on the crowd of worshipers. When all was said and done six were dead with an additional four wounded.

Something about this incident has always struck this researcher as highly curious. Page, a hardcore white supremacist, was depicted as an ignorant redneck who had mistakenly shot up a Sikh temple in a effort to kill Muslims by the mainstream media. But this doesn't pass the sniff test. Consider Page's military background:

"He served approximately from 1992 to 1998, and was assigned to psychological operations - the specialists who analyze, develop and distribute intelligence used for information and psychological effect.

" 'That is very exclusive,' said John Liebert, a psychiatrist who performs fitness examinations for the military and is an expert on suicidal mass murderers. 'It's like going from the lobby to the 20th floor.' "

Page was apparently intelligence enough to qualify as a psych ops officer and be detached to a highly prestigious posting (more on that in a moment) and yet he was unable to realize that he was killing Sikhs, and not Muslims?

Wade Michael Page

Perhaps his blind hatred of people of color led him decide that it was irrelevant who he shot so long as they were not white, but nonetheless Sikhs are a curious target. White supremacist typically target blacks, Hispanics, Jews, Muslims or possibly even homosexuals. While Sikhs are theoretically fair game, they certainly do not draw anywhere near the ire as the other groups in such circles. Page lived in Cudahy, located just two miles outside of Milwaukee, where there are any number of ethnic communities he could have terrorized. And yet he drove into the suburbs to shoot up the temple of a religion largely unknown in America.

The Fort Bragg Connection

Further muddying the waters is Page's tenure in the Army. Here are some more details about his time in Psy-Ops:

"Fred Allen Lucas, a Bloomington, Ind., man who served with Page at Fort Bragg, N.C., in a psychological operations battalion, recalled that he spoke of the need for securing a homeland for white people and referred to all non-whites as 'dirt people.'..

"Lucas said he met Page in 1995, the same year that the killings of a black couple in Fayetteville by two members of the 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg revealed the presence of a white-supremacist movement among soldiers on the base."

This mention of Fort Bragg should tingle the spidey senses of regular readers of this blog. Fort Bragg is of course the home of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), which has begun to emerge as a major power in the deep state with the election of Donald Trump (noted before here). The JSOC is not the only tie the Trump team has to Fort Bragg either.

General Keith Kellogg, who has been described as one of Trump's closet advisers and who was recently named as chief of staff and executive secretary of Trump's National Security Council, has longstanding ties to Fort Bragg. He spent much of military career with 101 and 82nd Airborne Divisions, both of which are based out of Fort Bragg. He took command of the 82nd in 1996, the year after two of its members were convicted of murdering a black couple in a racially motivated attack, and had been its assistant division commander for operations as recently as 1992. During this era Fort Bragg was reportedly a haven for white supremacism:

"In 1995, three years after Page joined the Army at age 20, the Colorado native arrived at Fort Bragg, a sprawling installation in Fayetteville, N.C., that’s home to the 82nd Airborne Division as well as the Army’s Special Forces Command.

"When Page was transferred there, it also served as the home base for a brazen cadre of white supremacist soldiers. Nazi flags flew and party music endorsed the killing of African-Americans and Jews. And, according to the Military Law Review, soldiers openly sought recruits for the National Alliance, then the most dangerous and best organized neo-Nazi group in the country. A billboard just outside the base even advertised for the National Alliance.

"That same year, three paratroopers from Fort Bragg murdered a black man and a black woman in Fayetteville to earn their spider web tattoos, racist badges of honor that sometimes signify that their bearers have killed non-whites. The soldiers went to prison for life, and 19 other paratroopers were discharged for participating in neo-Nazi activities. The scandal prompted congressional hearings and led to new military regulations aimed at preventing extremist activity. But as an investigation by the Intelligence Report a decade later showed, the new rules did not go nearly far enough." 

Page is widely believed to have radicalized during his stay at Fort Bragg, during the same time frame Kellogg was commanding the 82nd Airborne there. Whether this is significant or not is unknown, but the mid-1990s was not the only time Army Special Operations personnel have been linked to white supremacism. Consider this incident from the 1960s:

"... Headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama, the U.S. Army's Twentieth Special Forces Group sought out members of the Ku Klux Klan and instructed them to gather information on civil rights demonstrators. 'In return for paramilitary training at a farm in Cullman, Alabama, Klasmen soon became the 20th's intelligence network, whose information was passed to the Pentagon,' the Memphis Commercial Appeal reported years later."

(The Beast Reawakens, Martin A. Lee, pg. 165) 

the insignia of the 20th Special Forces Group

The 20th Special Forces Group is a part of U.S. Army Special Forces, more commonly referred to as the Green Berets. And like the JSOC and the 18th Airborne Corps (which includes both the 82nd and 101 Airborne Divisions), the Green Berets are headquartered at Fort Bragg. The Green Berets and Fort Bragg would play a key role for years in Operation Gladio as well.

"Next to the Pentagon the US Special Forces were also directly involved in the secret war against the Communists in Western Europe, as together with the SAS they trained the members of the stay-behind network. After the US wartime secret service OSS had been disbanded after the end of the war the US Special Forces were reborn with headquarters at Fort Bragg, Virginia, in 1952. General Aaron Bank established a Psychological Warfare Center in Fort Bragg and in the summer of 1952 the first Special Forces unit, somewhat misleadingly called the 10th Special Forces Group, started its training under Colonel Aaron Bank. The 10th Special Forces Group was organized according to the OSS experience during the Second World War, and directly inherited the latter's mission to carry out, like the British SAS, sabotage missions and recruit, equip and train guerrillas in order to exploit the resistance potential in both Eastern and Western Europe...

"Defeated Germany was the first nation to which the newly created American Special Forces were deployed. In November 1953 the 10th Special Forces Group erected its first overseas base in a former Nazi SS building that had been set up during Hitler's reign in 1937, the Flint Kaserne at Bad Tolz in Bavaria. Later, headquarters for US Special Forces operations in Latin America were set up in Panama, and Special Forces operations in South East Asia were run by headquarters set up in Okinawa on the territory of defeated Japan. After the Gladio scandal broke in 1990 it was revealed that Gladiators been trained at the camp of the 10th Special Forces Group at Bad Tolz in Germany and that European Gladiators from numerous countries had received special training from the US Green Berets, allegedly also in Fort Bragg in the USA."

(NATO's Secret Armies, Daniele Ganser, pg. 58)

the insignia of the "Green Berets"

For our purposes here this is most interesting as these European "Gladiators" were often recruited from elements of the far right. As was noted before here, the Italian Gladiators were almost entirely compromised of "former" fascists and worked closely with the infamous P2 Masonic Lodge, whose nominal leader, Licio Gelli, was a former Blackshirt and SS man. There is also ample evidence that Belgian Gladio forces were closely tied to the far right as well (noted before here and here).

And for years the Green Berets worked closely with these forces, frequently providing them with training in "counterinsurgency." Gladio was theoretically designed to provide Europe with a "stay-behind" force in the event that it was invaded by the Soviets, but much of the evidence suggests that the primary purpose of Gladio was to keep Europe in the American sphere of influence. To this end, the Gladiators were frequently used to destabilize nations such as Italy and Belgium via terrorism during the so-called "Years of Lead" and the "Bloody Eighties," respectively.

All of this tends to indicate the Special Operations Forces based out of Fort Bragg not only promoted white supremacism at times, but were active partners with a vast fascist underground throughout the Cold War. As unsettling as this may be (especially in today's climate), there may well have been even more terrible projects on the docket at Fort Bragg by the 1980s. But more on that in a future installment. Let us return now to the matter at hand.

Sinister Possibilities

Page's tenure then in PsyOps at Fort Bragg is ripe with possibilities. Was Page then a part of some type of Gladio-style terror campaign? Certainly Nazis and militia types have long constituted the American wing of Gladio (the Patriot movement's ties to the Pentagon and US intelligence community was addressed before here).

But there are a few peculiarities about Page's rampage. One curious aspect is the lack of a manifesto. Typically these type of incidents, which the perpetrator in many ways view as a statement, are accompanied by some type of written document that attempts to add clarity to their motives. Page, who was also in white supremacist band, certainly seems articulate enough. And yet he left no kind of written statement, leaving his motives and intentions a mystery. And, as outlined above, Page's choice of victims seems curious.

Even more curious, however, is the lack of media attention this incident has spurred. In many ways it is similar to the Charleston church shooting in which white supremacist Dylann Roof killed nine African American church goers. Page killed six people in a Sikh temple and had even more extensive ties to the neo-Nazi underground to say nothing of his time at Fort Bragg when a racially motivated murder was conducted by white supremacist soldiers. Surely Page's shooting should elicit similar outrage and questions and yet the incident has largely been forgotten a little over four years later.

Dylann Roof

As I noted before here, one of the more eyebrow raising aspects of the Charleston church shooting were the political aspirations of one of the victims. The Sikh temple shooting featured a victim that raises even more strange and terrible questions.

The temple was founded by an individual known as Satwant Singh Kaleka, who was also killed during the shooting. And it just so happens that Kaleka is the father of filmmaker Amar Kaleka. At the time of the shooting Kaleka was working on a film titled Sirius that was based upon the work of controversial Ufologist Steven Greer, whom Kaleka is close too.

Amar Kaleka

Greer is one of the most well-connected Ufologists out there. The founder of the Center for the Study of Extraterrestrial Intelligence and the Disclosure Project, Greer's 2006 work Hidden Truth, Forbidden Knowledge reads like a who's who of deep state players. While some of Greer's assertions have been questioned (such as his alleged brief of James Woolsey when he was the Director of the CIA), there is little dispute that Greer received ample patronage from Laurence Rockefeller over the years.

More recently Greer has been back in the news for his allegations of briefing John Podesta on UFOs in 2009 as Obama was taking office. Yes, John "Spirit Cooking" Podesta.

High Weirdness 2016

2016 marked not only the most contested and divisive America election of the modern era, but the strangest. Not only did "spirit cooking" became a household phrase, but the UFO question reentered the national debate on scale not seen since at least the 1990s. This was also due to Mr. Podesta. While he had already been talking up the UFO question in the spring, Wikileaks laid bare the extent of Podesta's obsession in the weeks leading up to the election. The Washington Times notes:

"It’s no secret that the Hillary Clinton campaign chairman is a UFO buff, but the recent WikiLeaks dump of Mr. Podesta’s hacked account sheds new light on how deeply interested he is in extraterrestrial conspiracy theories.

"Messages between Mr. Podesta and fellow alien enthusiasts — including a former Apollo astronaut and the guitarist of pop-punk band Blink 182 — came as a welcome surprise to UFO researchers. They are more convinced than ever that a Clinton administration would bring about the declassification of some of the federal government’s deepest secrets, including what really happened at Roswell, New Mexico; activities inside the notorious Area 51; and other pieces of a complex puzzle involving alien craft and space travel...

"Within Mr. Podesta’s private account is a trove of messages related to UFOs, aliens and conspiracies. Some are relatively benign, such as links to news stories about the return of the Fox TV show 'The X-Files.' 

"But others show a much deeper level of interest, seemingly confirming Mr. Podesta’s stated desire for secret government documents to be made public."

John Podesta

Podesta has been a key cog in the Clinton machine since the late 1990s. During the 2016 presidential election he was Hillary's campaign chairman and likely would have been her chief of staff had she pulled out the election. Podesta is thus no marginal figure and yet his interests seem to be far more inclined towards the bizarre --be they UFOs or spirit cooking --than conventional politics.

That Podesta would link up with Greer at some point seems inevitable. The Clintons' interest in UFOs seems to have been driven by Greer's longtime patron, Laurence Rockefeller, and one suspects that Podesta was even more convinced on the reality of UFOs after his tenure in the Clinton White House.

But Hillary was hardly the only candidate surrounded by high weirdness in this election cycle. Not by a long shot.

While The Donald and his close aids have been rather tight-lipped about such things, his supporters have enthusiastically embraced "meme magic" on a massive scale. More than a few have credited The Donald's victory to the power of one particular meme. Motherboard provides some interesting details:

"On the morning of November 9, Théodore Ferréol sat in front of his computer in Paris and wondered what had just happened. Ferréol is not an American citizen and so hadn’t voted for Donald Trump personally. But as an occult researcher, he knew about those who claimed responsibility for Trump’s upset election victory: an online group that spreads images of a cartoon frog.

"This group largely identifies with the so-called 'alt right', a white nationalist group, and believes the frog, named Pepe, is imbued with a magical power to bring Trump into office—as long as devotees plaster the frog’s image everywhere, like a flyer for takeout food. 

" 'I've been observing [this phenomena] first hand for quite some time now,' Ferréol told me. 'And I'm fascinated at the way internet folklore is turning into something new—not exactly activism, not exactly religion, but something close to a new form of magic and animism in an era when communities have transformed into tribes. And they are savage, creative and, as we now know, really powerful,' he added, referring to the online communities where Pepe is literally considered a god. 

"Ferréol is detailing what he calls 'memetic warfare.' The technique involves charging a symbol, which will then act as a proxy for a clandestine plan. In occult tradition, this is known as chaos magic. The image could be something as abstract as a hieroglyphic doodle, which a group decides will bring them, say, jobs or food or spouses. The image just has to be widely seen, even subliminally, so that it can seed the minds of the larger population and bring about real world results. (If you think this sounds a bit like hypnotism, you’re right.)

"In the case of Trump’s victory, though, the supposedly responsible image is Pepe, who’s widely seen on social media. This is a new era of chaos magic, fueled by viral sharing: enter the world of meme magic. According to this occult online army, Trump is set to be sworn in as the 45th President of the United States thanks to their viral efforts. Not the economy. Not voter psychology. Not Paul Horner, purveyor of fake Trump news. But a frog meme...

"The rabbit hole goes deeper. Pepe’s followers look for synchronicity everywhere, building up a mythos from something that began as an innocuous cartoon character. This is the power of meta-history. When residents on notorious image-based online bulletin board 4chan dug up an Egyptian frog god named Kek, they learned he was a disruptive deity that shakes up basic etiquette and assumptions. Thus they reasoned: Pepe is just a modern day Kek, and both of these frog gods are like the iconoclastic Trump.

"From there, these same 4channers have found other strange frog connections, and gotten into the habit of making an unusual kind of bet. When someone posts a message or picture on a 4chan thread, their entry is marked with a multiple-digit, randomly-generated number in the comment thread, like a personal UPC. In other words, no one knows what the number will be beforehand. So Pepe enthusiasts started betting that posts featuring Pepe would end in double digits.

"When those posts did in fact end in double digits, the community believed to have found its greatest validation yet. It was as if the internet was saying yes, meme magic exists, and the electronic medium is standing by to spread the message that Donald Trump should be president."

a depiction of The Donald with Pepe/Kek

But it wasn't just nerds living in their parents basement practicing meme magic hailing Pepe/Kek. An even more curious figures got into the act: Richard "Heil Trump" Spencer, president of the unabashedly white supremacist National Policy Institute (NPI) and the individual who coined the term "alt right." Spencer appears to have wholeheartedly embraced Pepe/Kek in the months leading up to the election. Mother Jones notes:

"We are well into our third round of Arrogant Frog, a merlot that Spencer chose because its name reminds him of Pepe, the cartoon frog commandeered as a mascot by the 'alt-right' movement that has been thrust from the shadows by Donald Trump's presidential campaign. Spencer says Pepe could also be seen as the reincarnation of an ancient Egyptian frog deity, Kek: 'He is basically using the alt-right to unleash chaos and change the world,' he says, looking slightly annoyed when I crack a smile. 'You might say, "Wow," but this is literally how religions arise.'

Kek even received a shot out during Spencer's infamous "Heil Trump" speech that unfolded in late November of 2016:

"Spencer, who has a masters degree in humanities from a fairly prestigious university, even mentioned 'Kek' in his speech, at which point a man in the back of the room yelled 'praise Kek.' He was sitting at a table with a man dressed in a hooded cloak resembling that of a Wiccan priest." 

the Kek druid is to the right

While Spencer's proclamations of Kek as the idol of a new religion may be a bit premature, there can be little doubt that his backers have ties to network long engaged in variety of high weirdness. Consider who put Spencer in the driver's seat at the NPI:

"In Spencer's telling, he steadily evolved Taki's into a magazine aimed at white nationalists. By 2009 he'd published essays by Jared Taylor and was regularly using the term "alternative right" in its pages to describe his youthful brand of anti-war, anti-immigration, pro-white conservatism. In December 2009, Spencer left Taki's to start AlternativeRight.com. The site caught the attention of the conservative publisher William Regnery II, who'd tried to start a whites-only online dating service, and, more recently, funded the white nationalist National Policy Institute. (His grandfather, William Regnery I, had bankrolled the America First Committee's campaign against fighting Nazi Germany during World War II, and his uncle, Henry, founded the conservative Regnery Publishing, which is known for printing Ann Coulter's books). With Regnery's backing, Spencer took over NPI in 2011 and began championing its message."

As was noted before here, the Regnery family had longstanding ties to the infamous American Security Council (ASC). While now largely a shadow of its former self, during the Cold War era the ASC was the principal lobby group/think tank for the military-industrial complex, with ample financial heft thanks to the backing it received from defense contractor heavies like General Electric, General Dynamics, Motorola and Lockheed.

But its lobby efforts only scratched the surface of the ASC's function. It was also a vast private intelligence network, heavily staffed with former CIA, FBI and military men. Its intelligence function initially revolved around blacklisting --the ASC maintained files on millions of Americans and used a host of questionable sources to compile them (which included private detective agencies such as Pinkerton and Wackenhut as well as "patriot" organizations such as the John Birch Society, the Liberty Lobby and the Minutemen). However, as the Cold War wore on, it became embroiled in some of the darkest corners of the deep state: drug and arms trafficking, terrorism, the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, Iran-Contra, Project ARTICHOKE and so on. Much more information on the ASC can be found here. Its links to the Kennedy assassination were discussed here while information in its involvement in Watergate and potentially ARTICHOKE can be found here.

Rivalries

As the Cold War progressed, the ASC and allied groups (i.e. the World Anti-Communist League [WACL, addressed before here] and Le Cercle [addressed before here]) increasingly found themselves at odds with Overworld establishment groups such as the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Trilateral Commission and the Bilderberg group. At the heart of this dispute was the question of how to deal with the Soviet Union.

Initially both factions had forged an uneasy alliance around the doctrine of Containment. But as the Vietnam War turned into a quagmire, the Overworld groups increasingly began to support the policy of detente, mutual coexistence. The conspiratorial right (which was largely a creation of the ASC, as noted before here) has long portrayed this as some grandiose communist conspiracy, but the reality boiled down to dollars and cents.

The CFR and their allies have long been dominated by banking, which reaps heavy profits off of trade. As such, the longstanding obsession of this faction has revolved around free trade and globalization. They aspire to turn the world into a giant free trade zone in which multinational corporations (but especially financials) will be beyond the reach of national governments.This has always been the real New World Order.

Thus, this faction increasingly favored normalizing relations with the Soviets so as to facilitate trade. This would make the Soviet Union more dependent upon the global financial order and thus more easy for the bankers to sway. 

The ASC and their allies, by contrast, were much more ideological driven. Many believed in the destruction of the Soviet Union on principal: Communism was evil and had to be utterly defeated. More than a few of these individuals reached this conclusion in no small part due to their religious extremism. As such, this faction favored rollback: a policy geared toward diminishing the Soviet Union's holdings and ultimately turning back the Bolshevik Revolution, even if it meant nuclear war.

In the end both factions won: the process of One World Free Trade is well underway while the Soviet Union is long gone and Communism is largely discredited across the globe. This led to a brief period of peace between the two factions (aided in no small part by the post-Cold War disarray of the Right), but the old rivalries began to reemerge during the Bush II years and may well lead the country into a second civil war during the Trump junta.

This struggle for the hearts and minds (or to put the knife in, depending upon the circumstances) has led both factions to some very strange pursuits. The Rockefeller family, long one of the cornerstones of the Overworld, has lavished millions of dollars on a host of arcane topics: UFOs, New Age tenets, psychedelics and so forth. The efforts of the Rockefellers and their allies in this regard are well documented. For those of you unaware, it is highly recommended that you check out the great Institute for the Study of Globalization and Covert Politics (ISGP)'s outstanding article on this subject. 

What is far less well known is the role the ASC and their allies have played in this regard and their ongoing rivalry with the Overworld in such endeavors. The bizarre Sikh temple shooting may be one such manifestation of this rivalry. Over the course of this series I shall chronicle the far right's history in the medium of high weirdness from the Cold War to present and consider the implications of these interests on the Trump junta. Stay tuned dear reader.

Knives Out

"I hear all the paranoid discussions

Trying to distract me from my functions

But I don't care what they say

I'm not afraid of the Russians"

-- "March of the Chrome Police," Chrome

It seems like every day now more signs emerge that the ongoing cold war among American power elites will inevitably turn hot at some point. As I'm sure many of you are aware, the CIA has come out and accused Russia of intervening in US elections in a bid to get The Donald elected. Not to be out done, The Donald fired back, questioning the credibility of the CIA after the Agency's total intelligence failure concerning WMDs in Iraq. Pundits now worried that Trump and the CIA are on a "collision course" as the FBI entered the fray, questioning the conclusions of their longtime rival.

While the knives coming out was probably unavoidable, the timing begs the question: what spurred the sudden CIA attack on Trump? Effectively accusing the president-elect of being in league with the Russians is provocative, to say the least, for an agency that prefers to stay in the shadows. This researcher suspects that this attack was spurred in part by another cabinet nominee that was leaked the same weekend the CIA accusations surfaced: potential Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

Tillerson's name surfaced at a time when lawmakers already seemed poised to go on the attack at the prospect of General David Petraeus being given the nod. Nominally this was chalked up to the militarization of Trump's cabinet, but I suspect that the real objections centered upon the old boys network at the State Department feeling threatened. It is an open secret that the State Department has been dominated (some would say almost totally controlled) by the infamous Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), the Atlanticist-centric foreign policy think tank that was established as part of the British Round Table network, for decades now. Typically a budding Secretary of State is groomed for such a position, initially in the Ivy Leagues, and later in one of the major foreign policy think tanks such as the CFR or Brookings.

General David Petraeus was very much of this world. He has attended Princeton and Georgetown at different points in his life and is a member of the CFR. Still, Petraeus is perceived is being far more hawkish than many individuals from such a background. It is important to remember that Petraeus was not born into this world, however, but was admitted into it after working his way up through the military. A career military men, Petraeus belonged to the Pentagon long before before he made more prestigious inroads. His conflicts with the CIA while serving as the Agency's director (noted before here) indicate that his foreign policy aims were not in keeping with those of his peers.

General David Petraeus

But if Petraeus's potential nomination was blocked because of his outsider stance, then Trump has really thrown down the gauntlet with Exxon CEO Tillerson. Tillerson has never attended the Ivy League and while having addressed the CFR before, does not appear to have ever been a member. He does, however, belong to one prominent foreign policy think tank linked to the Ivy League: the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), long based out of Georgetown (a school especially known for grooming national security hawks). The CSIS has long had a curious composition:

"The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), formerly based at Georgetown University in Washington, appears to be the leading contender for the super-think tank of the post-Reagan period. CSIS is a prime link between Rollnet operatives, neoconservative policymakers, and conservative realists. Most of CSIS's initial money came from such right-wing funders as Richard Scaife and Justin Dart. Former CIA officer and Rollnet activist Ray Clines resides at CSIS. Rollnet and Contragate actor Michael Ledeen also works there. Most recently CSIS has attracted more prominent foreign-policy experts, including neoconservative Jeane Kirkpatrick and hardline 'realists' Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and ex-Rand analyst James Schlesinger. CSIS sponsors hundreds of seminars and congressional study groups for administration and congressional staffers, and had 4,100 contacts with the press in 1985. CSIS publishes The Washington Quarterly, which has gained significant influence in foreign policy circles. CSIS mixes right-wing and traditional conservative funds, getting its $8.7 million budget from both Richard Scaife and from the Rockefeller, Ford and Carnegie foundations."

(Rollback, Thomas Bodenheimer & Robert Gould, pg. 184)

The presence of Kissinger and Brzezinski, two long time Rockefeller agents, indicates the CFR had some sway at the CSIS, but its origins resided more with the old American Security Council (ASC, addressed at length here)/World Anti-Communist League (WACL, addressed here)/Le Cercle (addressed here) network than their counterparts with the CFR, Trilateral Commission and Bilderberg. As was noted before here, Richard Mellon Scaife is a longtime backer of the far right while Ray Cline, the longtime executive director of CSIS, was also a key player in the WACL (noted before here). On the whole, the relationship between the CSIS and the CFR appears to be rather antagonistic:

"... Foreign-policy, where [American Enterprise Institute --Recluse] AEI and its affiliate, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSI as) at Georgetown, set themselves up in competition with such august bodies as the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission. CSIS also established The Washington Quarterly as a rival to Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy. Writing in the New Republic Morton Kondracke speculated that: 'If the Trilateral administration should flop, it could be suceeded by one strongly influenced by Georgetown – headed by a mainstream Republican or perhaps, by a Democrat such as Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan.' Henry Kissinger's decision to domicile himself at CSIS and to become a part of AEI was perhaps indicative of capitulation by the Trilateral Commission itself, giving Kissinger's close relationship with David Rockefeller, the Commission's patron.

"CSIS's director Ray Cline, a CPD member and former deputy director of the CIA, was a harsh critic of Kissinger during his detente-years, as were many in the Georgetown CPD-CDM stronghold..."

(Peddlers of Crisis, Jerry Sanders, pg. 221)

Thus the CSIS appears to be more moderate and closer to the CFR/Eastern Establishment clique than other think tanks that emerged out of the old ASC network such as the Heritage Foundation, the Center for Security Policy and the Council for National Policy, but it does seem to very much have its origins in said network and was always far more beholden to the national security apparatus than the financial interests behind the CFR and related think tanks.

This is certainly not the standard background for a budding Secretary of State. But even more striking, however, is the hostility that Tillerson has drawn from the Rockefeller family. Back in 2008, when the Rockefeller family was pushing Exxon to acknowledge climate change and pursue alternative energy, Tillerson's position with the company also came under assault. At the time The New York Times noted:

"The family members have thrown their support behind a shareholder rebellion that is ruffling feathers at Exxon Mobil, the giant oil company descended from John D. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil Trust.

"Three of the resolutions, to be voted on at the company’s shareholder meeting on Wednesday, are considered unlikely to pass, even with Rockefeller family support...

"One resolution would urge the company to study the impact of global warming on poor countries, another would encourage Exxon to reduce its emissions and a third would encourage it to do more research on renewable energy sources like solar panels and wind turbines.

"A fourth resolution, which the Rockefellers are most united in supporting, is considered more likely to pass. It would strip Rex W. Tillerson of his position as chairman of Exxon’s board, forcing the company to separate that job from the chief executive’s job.

"A shareholder vote in favor of that idea would be a rebuke of Mr. Tillerson, who is widely perceived as more resistant than other oil chieftains to investing in alternative energy...

"Fifteen members of the family are sponsoring or co-sponsoring the four resolutions, but it appears that some have much more solid support in the sprawling family than others. 

"Mr. O’Neill said that 73 out of 78 adult descendants of John D. Rockefeller were supporting the family effort to divide the chief executive and chairman positions. The goal of that resolution is to improve the management of the company, which could strengthen its environmental policies and improve more traditional pursuits like exploring more aggressively for new oil reserves.

"David Rockefeller, retired chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank and patriarch of the family, issued a statement saying, 'I support my family’s efforts to sharpen Exxon Mobil’s focus on the environmental crisis facing all of us.' "

David Rockefeller 

Despite the considerable push from the Rockefeller family, Tillerson was able to weather the storm. He would continue to serve as Exxon's chairman of the board and CEO for these past eight years and is now poised to enter the public sector as Secretary of State. He was also able to hold the fort on Exxon's efforts to develop alternative energy as well.

The bad blood between Exxon and the Rockefellers would continue, resulting in the family totally dumping its Exxon shares in 2016 and escalating their public relations campaign against the oil giant:

"Descendants of John D. Rockefeller sold their Exxon Mobil Corp. stock and plan to dump all other fossil-fuel investments in the latest move against the industry that made their fortune.

"The Rockefeller Family Fund concluded there’s “no sane rationale” for companies to explore for oil as governments contemplate cracking down on carbon emissions, according to a statement on the website of the New York-based philanthropic foundation Wednesday.

"The fund singled out Exxon, the world’s biggest oil explorer by market value, for what it called 'morally reprehensible conduct,' a reference to a series of articles last year by InsideClimate News that alleged the oil titan knew about global warming as far back as the 1970s and sought to hide what it knew from investors, policymakers and the public. The Rockefeller Family Fund and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund both are listed as financial backers of InsideClimate News on its website."

Not to be out done, Exxon has gone on the war path against the Rockefellers in recent months. The New York Times notes:

"Exxon Mobil, under fire over its past efforts to undercut climate science, is accusing the Rockefeller family of masterminding a conspiracy against it. Yes, that Rockefeller family...

"But the oil and gas giant has directed some of its fiercest fire at the descendants of John D. Rockefeller, who in 1870 founded Standard Oil, the company that became Exxon Mobil. Rockefeller family charities, longtime backers of environmental causes, have supported much of the research and reporting that has called the company to account for its climate policies, and Exxon Mobil is crying foul...

"The company is attacking the role of the Rockefeller family in encouraging, and in some cases bankrolling, the investigations and campaigns against it. Both journalism organizations that investigated the company were financed, at least in part, by Rockefeller philanthropies, though the organizations say that their donors have no control over what they write.

"The Rockefeller funds have also provided support to groups like Greenpeace and 350.org that have investigated and criticized the company.

"A conference in January to discuss activism and education efforts surrounding Exxon Mobil’s climate work was held at the offices shared by two Rockefeller family funds. One potential subject of discussion suggested by a participant was 'to establish in public’s mind that Exxon is a corrupt institution that has pushed humanity (and all creation) toward climate chaos and grave harm.' 

"Alan Jeffers, an Exxon Mobil spokesman, said in an interview, 'At every turn, as we saw the company coming under attack, there was a link back to either the Rockefeller Brothers Fund or the Rockefeller Family Fund.'..

"The company and its allies have turned up the heat on its founding family and other opponents.

"Industry-backed policy groups like Energy in Depth generate stories that attack the family and its philanthropy. Their charges are echoed in conservative news outlets like The Wall Street Journal's opinion page and The Daily Caller. Breitbart News has called the collaboration among environmental groups to urge the investigation of Exxon a 'RICO conspiracy,' using the acronym for the federal racketeering law, and the industry-oriented site Natural Gas Now published an article declaring, 'It’s time to RICO the Rockefellers.'..

"Exxon Mobil has also pulled the Rockefeller philanthropies into its legal battles against the attorneys general investigating it, sending the groups a subpoena demanding documents and communications related to their activism. 

"The Rockefeller funds have also received subpoenas from another friend of Exxon Mobil, the chairman of the House Science Committee, Rep. Lamar S. Smith, a Texas Republican. Mr. Smith has harshly criticized the attorneys general over their investigations, and has accused the Rockefeller funds of taking part in 'a coordinated effort to deprive companies, nonprofit organizations and scientists of their First Amendment rights and ability to fund and conduct scientific research free from intimidation and threats of prosecution.' "

Rex Tillerson

Effectively then under Tillerson's tenure as Exxon CEO he's faced an assault by the Rockefellers on his position, has faced a protracted propaganda campaign launched against his company by their very well-funded NGOs, the dumping of his stock by these NGOs and has now even launched a legal assault against said NGOs. It would certainly appear as though Tillerson has been engaged in a full scale war against the Rockefeller family, one in which he has been holding his own.

And this is the man Trump has tapped to take over the State Department, a longtime fiefdom of the Rockefeller family and the CFR clique surrounding them. This is clearly an affront to the longtime rulers of State. While Tillerson appears to be as staunch a free trader as anyone who has spoken before the CFR (and a TPP supporter to boot), he has also been a longtime climate change initiative foe and has very close ties to Putin. His appointment signals that two would-be wars State has been promoting --against climate change and Russia --are on hold with this appointment.

Nor is Tillerson the only shot across the bow heading to State. Tillerson will likely be joined in State by arch neocon John Bolton as the Deputy Secretary of State and Mike Pompeo as Director of the CIA. While Pompeo has some ties to the Ivy League, he also entered after an extended service in the military and his political patronage has largely derived from another energy giant: Koch Industries (noted before here).

John Bolton (top) and Mike Pompeo (bottom)

In this context then it is hardly surprising that the hierarchy of the CIA is openly playing the Russian card against Trump. After all, it appears as though CFR control of the State Department is under a full scale assault by The Donald.

Where the nation goes from here is difficult to say, but this researcher believes that the current hoopla over the Electoral College and the recounts will prove to be much ado about nothing. As to the latter, the Democratic Party has good reason to be weary of recount as evidence has already emerged that they were involved in fraud as well. Currently they have the moral high ground by winning the popular vote and they are not going to put that in question.

As to the former, this researcher does not believe the forces opposing Trump are willing to risk that type of confrontation at this point. The Donald clearly has the support of the military and the FBI, as well as the vast majority of the police forces in this country. As such, any type of open coup at this point would almost inevitably fail.

the police love them some Donald

Same may believe that the accusations of Russian intervention in the presidential election are another bid to force Trump to take a more hawkish stance against Putin, but the Tillerson pick indicates that The Donald is digging in on this point. If Tillerson's nomination is later within drawn in favor a more acceptable (i.e. anti-Russian) pick such as Mitt Romney, then Trump may well have capitulated. But clearly that is not the case right now.

At this point, the major hope of the Rockefellers and their allies is to make these United States ungovernable. The infrastructure for the kind of mass civil unrest needed to accomplish such an aim is already in place with "activist" movements such as Black Lives Matter (which has been extensively bankrolled by the "liberal" faction of the CIA) And in the long run the flap over the recounts, the Electoral College and the pathetic attempts by the CIA to claim that the Russians stole the election for Trump only serves this purpose by putting the legitimacy of Trump's presidency in further question. Already we see anti-Trump protests and movements springing up literally over night while the MSM encourages Democrats to refuse to pay taxes in protest of the legitimacy of the elections.

Trump seems to realize that he is facing a full on Color Revolution emerging against him and has acted accordingly. The great Christopher Knowles has described Trump's nominees as a "War Cabinet" and this is as apt a description as any. With military men set to hold key positions such as National Security Advisor, Secretary of Defense, Director of National Intelligence, Director of the CIA and especially Secretary of Homeland Security (which oversees many federal law enforcement agencies and works closely with police forces across the country), Trump is clearly developing a siege-like mentality. The war drums are rumbling.

The Return of the ASC Part II

Welcome to the second installment in my look at the resurgence of the old American Security Council (ASC) network in conjunction with the rise of The Donald. Nowadays the ASC is largely a marginal organization, but in its heyday (1950s-1980s) it was at the heart of the some the darkest corners of the deep state --political assassinations, blacklisting, state-sanctioned drug and arms trafficking, terrorism --while nominally masquerading as lobby group/think tank for the military industrial complex. This blog has considered the ASC in depth before here. The great Institute for the Study of Globalization and Covert Politics (ISGP) has an excellent article on the ASC as well that is highly recommended.

With the first installment I considered Secretary of Defense-nominee General James "Mad Dog" Mattis' tenure with General Dynamics, for years one of the key financial backers of the ASC as well as William Regnery II's sponsorship of the now infamous National Policy Institute and its president, Richard "Hail Trump" Spencer. Regnery is a member of the infamous textile and publishing dynasty that has sponsored the far right for decades now. William II's grandfather and namesake was a co-founder of the Nazi-appeasing America First Committee (a slogan Trump appropriated). He would go on to help establish the ASC in the 1950s along with William II's uncle, publishing mogul Henry Regnery.

Mr. Jones

Next up for consideration is one of Trump's earliest and most vigorous supporters: talk show host Alex Jones. Jones and his intelligence ties has already been thoroughly exposed by ISGP in must read article that can be found here. For our purposes here, I would like to consider the links Jones has to the old ASC network.

Jones

First up are his ties to Joseph Farah. Farah, a regular guest on Jones' radio broadcast, is the founder of the far right wing news site World Net Daily (WND). While little discussed nowadays, Jones was a freelancer for WND back in the late '90s and the website has continued to plug Jones' work ever since.

This is most interesting when one considers one of Farah's former patrons: arch conservative financier Richard Mellon Scaife. While Scaife and Farah later parted company, the media mogul played a key role in the rise of Farah's own media empire that in turn gave Jones his first nation wide exposure. Scaife was himself a major sugar daddy of the "New Right," including the ASC.

"The global rollback network did not just happen; it needed money. Right-wing businesses saw the usefulness of rollnet for economic interests and provided much of the funds to create and sustain the network through a small number of ultraconservative foundations. Richard Mellon Scaife has contributed over $100 million in recent years, with beneficiaries including CPD, Center for Strategic and International Studies, Heritage Foundation, Accuracy in Media, and the American Security Council..."

(Rollnet, Thomas Bodenheimer & Robert Gould, pg. 63)

What's more, Scaife has long been linked to US intelligence.

"... multimillionaire Richard Mellon Scaife. Scaife's ties to the intelligence community span many years – he owned and operated Forum World Features, an international CIA news outlet that supplied over 300 newspapers until its exposure 1975 – and he has been one of the most generous sugar daddies of the New Right, providing the seed money for the Heritage Foundation and for the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress."

(Spiritual Warfare, Sara Diamond, pg. 194) 

Richard Mellon Scaife

But back to Mr. Jones. It also appears that the name of Jones' website, Infowars, came from an article published on WND by Admiral Thomas Moorer calling for "information warriors." When discussing the name of his newly launched website, Jones himself heaped ample praise on Thomas Moorer. Infowars has continued to praise Admiral Moorer over the years (such as here).

This should no doubt raise the eyebrows of regular readers of this blog. As was addressed before here, it is likely that Moorer played a key role in the overthrow of the Nixon regime. Moorer's Task Force 157, working in close cooperation with the CIA's mysterious Office of Security (which oversaw Project ARTICHOKE, among other outrages), appear throughout the Watergate saga. Also present was the American Security Council, which Moorer joined several years after his tenure as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff ended.

Admiral Thomas Moorer

Another link between Jones and the old ASC network is Joel Skousen, a regular guest on the Alex Jones Show for years now. Skousen has a certain uncle who was very close to the ASC in the early days: W. Cleon Skousen. Skousen, the author of The Naked Capitalist, for year's the general public's only access to musings of Carroll Quigley and his Tragedy and Hope (which Skousen, like many researchers who followed him, selectively quoted from to distort the points Quigley was trying to make), is still revered amongst the conspiratorial right to this day. Skousen first became a celebrity in conspiracy circles during his time with the ASC.

"... W. Cleon Skousen, who was named field director, have been an agent from 1940 to 1951 and is well-known in right-wing circles as the author of The Naked Communist 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 lecture circuit..."

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

According to Sara Diamond, Skousen was active in the ASC throughout the early 1960s.

"As was characteristic of system-supportive anticommunist groups, the American Security Council functioned as an asset to the Cold War state, largely by reinforcing anticommunist ideology. By 1962 the Council boasted of the success of its 'Freedom University of the Air,' a series of sixty-five half-hour television programs hosted by former ASC field director W. Cleon Skousen..."

(Roads to Dominion, Sara Diamond, pg. 49)

W. Cleon Skousen

Skousen would later be booted out of the ASC for being too radical, or leave the ASC because it was not radical enough, depending upon whom one asks. Skousen would continue operate in the same orbit as the ASC for much of the rest of his life, however. Diamond notes that by the 1980s he was involved with the Western Goals Foundation, an organization that featured ample overlap with the ASC.

A direct ASC affiliate linked to Jones is conservative icon Phyllis Schlafly, recently deceased. Schlafly appeared several times on Jones' show over the years and he offered up ample of praise of her in the wake of her death. Donald Trump also aligned himself with Schlafly in the last year of her life and reportedly received a standing ovation at her funeral.

Schlafly had longstanding ties to the ASC. Schlafly wrote three books over the years with ASC strategy board member Admiral Chester Ward: The Gravediggers (1964), Strike from Space: A Megadeath Mystery (1966) and Kissinger on the Couch (1974). During the 1980s Schlafly was a member of the Coalition for Peace Through Strength,  a group of over 170 separate organizations that the ASC had organized under its banner to achieve its political objectives.

"A perusal of the Coalition's membership, both its Congressional and 'private sector' branches, reveals that what ASC had indeed accomplished was to draw together the New Right, neoconservatives, the Cold Warrior elite, and it's a military-industrial operation into one formidable coalition...

"Appearing alongside these disgruntled hawks from the national security establishment were such prominent New Right figures as Philip Crane, Phyllis Schlafly, and Stefan Possony (Director of International Studies, Hoover Institute, Stanford University). Representing the military-industrial complex were Fischer, Durbrow, Admiral Thomas Moorer (former chairman of the Joint Chiefs), and Lt. Gen. Gordon M Graham (USAF ret.), vice-president of the Washington office of McDonnell Douglas..."

(Peddlers of Crisis, Jerry W. Sanders, pg. 226)

Schlafly then was also active in the Coalition with another Alex Jones favorite, Admiral Thomas Moorer. Schlafly also had ties to other organizations closely linked to the ASC and, more recently, the Trump campaign. One is the notorious Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM, better known as the Knights of Malta), of which Schlafly was a Dame of (the Dames of Malta are the female auxiliary of SMOM). As I've noted before here, these bizarre order of knighthood such as SMOM and the Sovereign Order of Saint John (SOSJ) appear to have formed an inner circle that dominated the ASC and other such far right networks (i.e. the closely related Le Cercle, whose ties to the ASC and SMOM were noted before here and here).

Another organization Schlafly was extensively involved with the notorious and highly secretive Council for National Policy (CNP). The CNP is an organization that Jones has gone to great lengths to defend over the years. Unsurprisingly, the CNP has ties to the ASC from the early days.

"... the Council for National Policy, a secret membership group that has included Phillips, Abramoff, then National Security Council officials Oliver North and John Lenczowski, WACL chair John Singlaub, and many others with ASC interlocks. CNP's secret quarterly meetings bring together right-wing funders (such as Joseph Coors) and foreign-policy activist. The June 1987 speaker was Richard Secord. Secord was a major player in the Iran-contragate arms for hostages private network."

(Old Nazis, the New Right and the Republican Party, Russ Bellant, pg. 83)

The above-mentioned Phillips is Howard Phillips, whom Jones has praised as well. In many ways the CNP was one of the principal groups to continue the work of the ASC after the post-Cold War realignment of the America right. Another such group, a powerful foreign policy think tank, has also emerged as staunch backers of Donald Trump.

The CSP

The Center for Security Policy (CSP), which was first established in 1988, has been described as the primary continuation of the old ASC network by ISGP. This researcher sees no reason to dispute this claim when one considers the composition of the institute by the late 1990s. 

The CSP is much more neocon-centric than the CNP, which seems to have been dominated by the Old Right and the Christian fundies. As such, the CSP has wielded much more power in recent years, most especially in the administration of Bush II.

Numerous key figures in that regime were linked to the CSP, including: Dick Cheney (a member of the CSP's advisory board at one point), Donald Rumsfeld (a recipient of the Center's "Keeper of the Eternal Flame" award and frequent attendee of their meetings), Douglas J. Feith (a former chairman of the CSP's board of directors who would serve as Undersecretary of Defense for Policy under Bush II), Elliot Abrams (a member of the CSP's National Security Advisory Council and a member of Bush II's National Security Council), Paula Dobriansky (CSP National Security Advisory Council and Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs during the Bush II administration), Richard Perle (another CSP National Security Advisory Council member and Bush II's Chairman of the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee) and Paul Wolfowitz (Bush II's Deputy Secretary of Defense and frequent speaker before the CSP).

Bush II flanked by leading neocons Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz

It probably goes without saying, but the prior list is practically a Who's Who of leading neocons during the Bush II years. And now the CSP is poised for a major comeback in the Trump administration.

Trump's links to the CSP go back to December of last year, when he cited a controversial study by the group concerning America's Islamic community. At the time, the BBC noted:

"Raising the bar once again for US political controversy, Donald Trump called on Monday for 'a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States'.

"The Republican presidential frontrunner claimed that research by the respected Pew organisation showed a 'great hatred towards Americans by large segments of the Muslim population' - but he did not refer to any specific study to support that claim, and we can't find one that does.

"Mr Trump did cite a specific a study by the Center for Security Policy - 'very highly respected people, who I know, actually' - which he said showed that 25% of Muslims in the US believed violence against America was justified 'as part of the global jihad'."  

Despite Trump's early overtures, the CSP initially threw its weight behind Ted Cruz during the Republican primary with one glaring exception: Joseph E. Schmitz. Schmitz, whose support of Trump dated back to the primaries, was the inspector general for the Defense Department during the Bush II years and was later employed by the Blackwater mercenary firm (as noted before here, Blackwater founder Erik Prince has been a key Trump supporter as well). Schmitz just happens to be a member of the Knights of Malta as well. As noted above, the Maltese knights were a major force behind the ASC.

Joseph E. Schmitz

Once Trump locked up the Republican nomination, the CSP vigorously threw its support behind The Donald. One of the most notable CSP members to sign up with The Donald as the election began to heat up was uber-connected "former" CIA director James Woolsey. Woolsey appears to be one of the most powerful figures in the deep state and his support of Trump was of great significance, as noted before here.

An SOSJ Digression

Another curious early backer of The Donald to emerge from the CSP was General William "Jerry" Boykin. As was noted before here, Boykin spent much of his military career as part of the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC, which appears to have emerged as a major player in the deep state with the election of Trump) and was also a key architect of the "enhanced" interrogation program (based upon Project ARTICHOKE) that was initiated under Bush II. But as regular reader AW pointed out to me, Boykin has even more sinister ties, most notably to the Sovereign Order of Saint John (SOSJ).

The SOSJ was another bizarre Christian military order that wielded enormous power in the ASC during its heyday. For years the SOSJ was dominated by "former" high ranking military officers, many of them with a background in intelligence. This blog has linked the SOSJ to the Kennedy assassination as well as much of the modern day militia movement (which SOSJ appears to have created as part of the American wing of Gladio). It has also been linked to The Order and the Oklahoma City bombing. The SOSJ claims descent from the Medieval Knights Hospitallers (as does the Sovereign Military Order of Malta) via the Russian line, but the organization probably hasn't existed any longer than the 1930s, but may have had its origins with the notorious Thule Society.

While the SOSJ had appeared to have finally taken its rightful place in the dustbin of history in the twenty-first century, it apparently has undergone a vigorous resurgence in recent years, with a well-connected deep state player like Boykin serving as its "Grand Chancellor." Other interesting members of its upper hierarchy are "Prince Grand Master" Nicholas Papanicolaou and suspected Dominionist Rick Joyner, who serves as a "Deputy Member of the Supreme Council" of the Order.

General William "Jerry" Boykin

The former had cut his teeth working for Aristotle Onassis (who has been linked to the deaths of both Kennedy brothers) in the early 1970s and appears to have wielded tremendous power in the Onassis Organization. Reportedly he was very close to Christina Onassis, Ari's only daughter and heir to her extensive fortune. She successfully managed her father's shipping empire up until her death in 1987. Papanicolaou, a childhood friend of Christina's, played a key role in the transition from Ari to Christina at the top of the organization in the wake of Ari's death in 1975 As such, one suspects this Greek has very, very deep pockets.

Nicholas Papanicolaou

The latter, Rick Joyner, is a founder of MorningStar Ministries and the Oak Initiative. Both Boykin and Papanicolaou are also involved in the Oak Initiative, a shadowy organization with ties to The Family (a radical Christian network with extensive ties to the deep state, as noted before here). All three men are also involved with the World Public Forum, which Papanicolaou co-founded with Vladimir Yakunin, a close associate of Vladimir Putin. This has lead to some interesting developments around the Oak Initiative crowd:

"This investigation, by the Center Against Religious Extremism (CARE), demonstrates an extensive pattern tying evangelist Rick Joyner and his Oak Initiative political organizing front, and leaders affiliated with Joyner who have pledged their lives to implement biblical law in all sectors of society, to Vladimir Putin’s inner-circle ally Vladimir Yakunin.

"d South Carolina evangelist Rick Joyner – who boasts close ties to former high-level U.S. military and intelligence community leaders, earned significant media coverage and also strong words from Military Religious Freedom Foundation founder and head Michael 'Mikey' Weinstein, who estimated that a significant fraction of officers and NCOs might be sympathetic to such an exhortation, a form of 'sedition' that crossed a 'red line' according to Weinstein...

"Currently sanctioned by the U.S. government for alleged interference in the Ukraine, Vladimir Yakunin is sometimes described as Russia’s second most powerful leader and is Putin’s close neighbor in an elite luxury dacha lakeside resort community near Russia’s border with Finland. Together with Greek-American financier Nicholas Papanicolaou – a board member of the U.S. evangelical political front the Oak Initiative that is dominated by members of the radical pro-theocracy New Apostolic Reformation movement (NAR), Yakunin is co-founder of the Russian-dominated World Public Forum, whose yearly Rhodes, Greece 'Dialogue of Civilizations' events have brought together dominionist American evangelicals with top Russian leaders."

Rick Joyner

Certainly Joyner's calls for a military coup seem increasingly prophetic in the wake of Trump's election. Even the MSM in these United States has reluctantly begun to notice the highly militarized cabinet nominations The Donald has selected. And while this researcher is reluctant to play the Russian card, it is undeniable that there are some strange links to Putin amongst the American far right, as the Oak Initiative and related organizations demonstrate. The SOSJ itself claims lineage from the Russia Knights Hospitallers and for years featured ample White Russians within its ranks. As such, the ties between American and Russian nationalists should not be as easily dismissed as many researchers are inclined to do. But moving along.

The CSP and the Trump Administration

Now it appears that the CSP's support of The Donald is paying off in spades. The controversial founder of the CSP, Frank Gaffney, was reportedly been meeting with the Trump transition team. The Boston Globe noted:

"For advice on building Trump’s national security team, his inner circle has been relying on three hawkish current and former US officials: Representative Devin Nunes, a California Republican who is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee; Peter Hoekstra, a former Republican congressman and former chairman of the intelligence committee; and Frank Gaffney, a Pentagon official during the Reagan administration and a founder of the Center for Security Policy."

Frank Gaffney

Both Gaffney and the Trump team have vigorously denied these reports, but the allegations continue to linger. At least one CSP member has confirmed being involved in the transition process, however, and he is a most curious individual. Newsmax notes:

"President-elect Donald Trump is making an excellent choice in retired Marine Corps Gen. James Mattis as Defense Secretary because 'he's going to be the chief warrior at the Pentagon,' retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely told Newsmax TV on Friday...

"Vallely said that he was among former 200 military officials who met recently with Trump — and part of their advice was to 'get away from political correctness.' "

Vallely, like many of the generals rallying around The Donald, has a background in intelligence and Special Operations. At the time of his retirement he was the Deputy Commander General of the US Army in the Pacific. He was also the first nominee for Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations under Reagan. More recently he has worked as a consultant for the Special Operations Command, which includes the Joint Special Operations Command.

On the whole, Vallely is a major proponent of the JSOC and his endorsement of General James "Mad Dog" Mattis as the Secretary of Defense indicates that the JSOC will continue to expand its power under Trump (the above-mentioned General William Boykin, who spent much of his military career in the JSOC, has also recently endorsed Mattis' nomination).

General Paul E. Vallely

General Paul Vallely is most well-known to conspiracy researchers for a certain paper he co-wrote in 1980 entitled From PSYOP to MindWar: The Psychology of Victory. Many insist that this paper continues to greatly influence US security policies, but the jury is still out. Nonetheless, Vallely co-author for this paper, of whom I'm sure regular readers of this blog are well aware, is a most interesting fellow. More will be said of him and his sigificance in the context of the far right in a future series.

Epilogue: Le Cercle

Before wrapping up, it is also interesting to note the CSP's longstanding ties to the highly secretive Le Cercle:

"Waller would also serve as Vice-President for Information Operations at the Center for Security Policy, founded in Washington in 1988, another body which involved several of Crozier's American contacts - the CSP 'National Security Advisory Council' included Kraemer, deGraffenreid and their future Pentagon bosses Douglas J. Feith and Richard Perle, as well as Edwin Feulner, Midge Decter and former CIA Director James Woolsey; Cercle member Margo Carlisle was a member of the Board of Directors..."

(Rogue Agents, David Teacher, pg. 241) 

Le Cercle has already been addressed at length on this blog, so I will not delve to deeply into it here. But suffice to say, it has been at the heart of the Fascist International for decades now. Like the ASC, its inner circle was heavily dominated by the Knights of Malta and other Christian military orders. It had extensive ties with the ASC and a host of far right wing US organizations. It also appears to be at the absolute heart of elite pedophiles rings across the globe.

While originally a part of the United Europe movement, Le Cercle has grown increasingly Eurosceptic in the twenty-first century, especially among its British backers. This researcher suspects that the Le Cercle network played a crucial role in Brexit, but it might be a while before any real evidence of this comes out. The fact that some of their American associates appear poised to play a key role in the Trump administration indicates that Le Cercle remains a major player in parapolitics and may be the key organization behind the nationalist revival sweeping the globe at present.