A Fringe Digression: The Pioneer Fund and the Christian Right

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

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

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

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

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

The Dark Life of William Shockley

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

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

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

a replica of the alleged first working transistor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

William Shockley

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

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

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

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

Roger Pearson

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

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

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

The Moonies

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sun Myung Moon

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

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

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

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

(Spiritual Warfare, Sara Diamond, pg. 59)

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

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

Moon and the New Age

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

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

Anthony Brooke

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

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

Dorothy Maclean

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bruce Maccabee

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

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

Edgar Mitchell: Agent of the Christian Right?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Phenomena, Annie Jacobsen, pg. 200)

Edgar Mitchell

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

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

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

Stefan T. Possony

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

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

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

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

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

Paul N. Temple

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

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

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

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

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

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