Goodfellas Part V: The Bedroom Dick

Welcome to the fifth installment in what began as a series examining the ties between President Donald J. Trump (aka the Orange One) and organized crime. Since then the series has taken on a life of its own, covering a host of scandals and shadowy figures that constitute the hidden history of the United States following the end of the Second World War. For those of you just joining us, I'll try my best to recap what has been previously examined.

This series grew out of a prior blog I had written in October of 2017 considering Trump's brief tenure as CEO of the gaming interest known as Resorts International. Resorts originated in the early 1960s as a company known as the Mary Carter Paint Company, which was widely believed to be a CIA front involved in anti-Castro operations in Florida during the Bay of Pigs era. By the end of the decade, Mary Carter had been rechristened Resorts International and had gotten into the casino industry. It established the first casino in the Bahamas at Paradise Island, which cemented its place as one the premier gaming destinations in the world.

From the get-go Resorts' contacts were impeccable. Overworld figures like President Richard M. Nixon and reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes were regular guests. At the other end of spectrum, various associates of Meyer Lanksy were directly employed by the Resorts casino on Paradise Island while stockholders included Richard Mellon Hitchcock, who at one point was the banker for the largest LSD smuggling syndicate in the world, and other clients of Castle Bank & Trust, a notorious CIA front that specialized in laundering money generated from drug and arms trafficking.

Meyer Lansky, a looming presence in this series

Most curious of all was a subsidiary of Resorts known as Intertel. Intertel, with a staff comprised largely of "former" US intelligence agents, was a private intelligence agency that first gained notoriety in 1970 for its "rescue" of Howard Hughes from one of his Las Vegas casinos. Intertel would continue to provide security for Hughes up until the time of his death in 1976. During this timeframe Hughes was rarely seen in the flesh outside of Intertel agents, which has led more than a few researcher to wonder if Intertel had in fact stealthy taken over his vast business empire.

Intertel was a still a part of Resorts when Trump briefly became its CEO in 1986. Resorts had played a key role in opening up Atlantic City to legalized gambling and Trump had nominally wanted to acquire more casinos in the city. Eventually Trump was bought out by Merv Griffin, but maintained possession of what was supposed to be Resorts' crown jewel, the Taj Mahal.

While Resorts is often depicted as a minor episode in Trump's business career, it likely announced his arrival as a major player in certain circles as Resorts had longstanding ties to both organized crime and the US intelligence community. Indeed, it seems especially ominous in light of ties Trump had been cultivating for nearly a decade leading up to his bid to take over Resorts.

As was noted in the first installment of this series, it appears that Trump had forged close ties to organized crime elements by at least the beginning of the 1980s and that by the middle of the decade his flagship, Trump Tower, was being used as a vast center of money laundering by said elements. As I was wrapping up that installment, I noted one of his early backers was the mysterious Edward "Biff" Halloran, a reputed member of the Genovese crime family (the same family Meyer Lansky had long collaborated with) who disappeared in 1996.

Trump Tower

With the second installment, I considered a curious former business partner of Halloran's, namely Kentuckian Bradley Bryant. By the late 1970s Bryant, with the aid of fellow Kentuckian Andrew "Drew" Thornton, had established an elaborate, nationwide drugs and arm trafficking network known as "the Company." They recruited heavily among former US military personnel via Soldier of Fortune magazine, which was run by former Green Beret Robert K. Brown. Brown was himself heavily involved in the Bay of Pigs and related anti-Castro operations and would later play a role in the supply network for Iran-Contra.

During the third installment, I noted other ties Trump had to the Company, most notably former Kentucky Governor John Y. Brown, who set up shop in Trump Tower after losing his reelection bid in 1983 (thanks in no small part to allegations concerning his ties to the Company) just as the Tower was becoming a major center of money laundering. Previously Brown was alleged to have been a silent owner of Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, which the Company used to launder money and which Trump was a frequent guest of in the late 1970s.

As I wrapped up that installment, I began to consider the figure who likely initiated Trump into this netherworld: his longtime attorney and political mentor Roy Cohn. Cohn had first risen to prominence during the 1950s when he served as Joseph McCarthy's lead attorney in his Communist witch hunts. During this time Cohn became a bitter foe of the Kennedy family as well. Later, he was reputed to be a member of Permindex, a shadowy international trade organization originally based in Basel, Switzerland that has long been linked to the JFK assassination. Cohn would also become the attorney for Greek shipping magnet Aristotle Onassis, who has been accused of putting up the money for RFK's assassination.

Roy Cohn

With the fourth installment I began to consider the longstanding allegations that Cohn was a key figure in a nationwide pedophile ring. His links to Robert Keith Gray and Craig Spence were considered, as was the broader ties all three men had to the Franklin scandal, as well as their relationship to infamous CIA Director William Casey. Casey was himself a part of a broader international network of far right figures linked to pedophile networks geared towards compromising Western governments. The European branch of this network is known as Le Cercle (noted before here) while the broader international front was for years the World Anti-Communist League (WACL, addressed at length before here).

Cohn himself had impeccable links to this network via its American branch, which for many years was fronted by the American Security Council network (ASC, noted before here). Links between the Trump administration and the old ASC network have already been addressed before here and here. Cohn himself was involved in the more extreme offshoots of the ASC, such as the John Birch Society and the Western Goals Foundation, a private intelligence network launched by the ASC and JBS during the early 1980s. Cohn briefly served as Western Goals' director. A member of Western Goals' advisory board during this time was General John Singlaub, who was also the chairman of the WACL and Robert K. Brown's old boss during Vietnam. As was noted in part two of this series, General Singlaub would later use Brown in his efforts to set up supply lines as part of Iran-Contra.

But in addition to Cohn's extensive ties to the international right (or Fascist International, if one prefers) there is ample evidence that Cohn and his acolytes were involved in honey trapping decades before the Franklin scandal was exposed and many of them remained active in such practices years after Cohn's death. A likely instance of this was the prostitute scandal that brought down New York Governor Eliot Spitzer in 2008.

Eliot Spitzer

The man who outed Spitzer? None other than Cohn's longtime friend and protege, Roger Stone. Yes, the same Roger Stone who would play in key role in Trump's conquest of the White House. Stone had been hired in 2007 by New York state Republicans close to Wall Street to take down Spitzer after he had launched corruption probes against said monied interests. At one point Stone even made a threatening phone call to Spitzer's father. Stone alleged to have found out about Spitzer's involvement in a prostitution ring via a Miami-based friend of his involved in the "sex industry."

But Stone's activities against Spitzer are child's play compared to the decades-spanning activites of a certain international man of mystery.

Corbally: The Early Years

His name was Thomas "Tom" Corbally and nominally he had worked for many years as a private detective. Corbally's family had been involved in detective work since the 1920s, when his grandfather (also named Thomas) had founded the Corbally Detective Agency in Newark, New Jersey. Corbally's father and uncles all worked for Agency and Tom himself was working over 30 hours a week there before he was 18. 

The Corbally family also had extensive ties to organized crime by this time as well. Corbally had been kidnapped as a child and the Corbally's had looked to members of what is now referred to as Genovese crime family to arrange for his safe return. We've already encountered the Genovese family extensively throughout this series. As noted above, Biff Halloran was believed to be made member of the Genovese family while Meyer Lansky had a decades-spanning association with them. 

Unsurprisingly, it would seem that Corbally had ties to some intelligence organization by the onset of WWII as well. Initially, his contacts appear to have been with the British:

"Before Pearl Harbor, America First isolationists were determined to keep the United States out of the raging European war, making any recruitment effort politically sensitive. Corbally, determined to get in the fight, made contact with the Clayton Knight Committee — an unsanctioned operation designed by the Canadian government to bring willing Americans north even as the US government maintained strict official neutrality in the war. Very few people knew the Clayton Knight Committee had its unadvertised headquarters right in the lavish surroundings of the Waldorf Astoria on New York’s Park Avenue."

the Waldorf Astoria, which will appear again in this ssaga

During this time frame, the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York appears to been one of the key meeting places for the Pilgrim's Society, the absolute pinnacle of the Anglo-American establishment.  We shall return to such circles in just a moment, so do keep it in mind.

Corbally did some time with the Royal Canadian Air Force during the early 1940s, but eventually washed out, alleged due to his insubordination (which was quite a feat during an era when Western governments were trying to get their hands on all able-bodied men they could find). Eventually, he turned up again in Germany at the end of the war, apparently working for some branch of the US intelligence community:

"He popped up in Germany, where he served as a civilian with the US military occupation until at least June 1949. Officially, Corbally was attached to the Combined Travel Board, which helped determine who could and could not come in and out of Germany after the war.

"On one document, Corbally wrote that his title in Germany was 'chief clerk.' Intriguingly, he also wrote that a military regulation 'precludes a description of several classified phrases [sic] of my employment' with the occupation government. He continued, 'However, I feel that the experience gained by my working with [US Army Counterintelligence Corps] and the War Department Detachment in Germany is worthy of note.'

"In that sentence, Corbally left an enormous clue about his true role in Germany. The 'War Department Detachment' sounds like some bland bureaucratic entity — but a historian at the US Army Center of Military History tells me that it was in fact the cover name used by the CIA in postwar Germany. 

"It’s difficult to tease out of the limited written record what Corbally’s missions actually were. But a once-classified memo on the CIA website shows that the War Department Detachment was tasked with securing 'all available data which you may obtain on political, economic, and sociological developments in other zones of occupied Germany.' The entity had license to roam far outside its borders, including Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Austria...

"The War Department Detachment identified and tracked down top German officials after the war and came in contact with some of the most murderous Nazis, including the infamous Nikolaus 'Klaus' Barbie — an SS and Gestapo officer known as 'the Butcher of Lyon' for his torture of French prisoners. The Detachment would eventually develop a relationship with Barbie after the war as it recruited German allies to help subvert the growing communist presence in Soviet-controlled East Germany. For his help, US intelligence officials later helped Barbie escape to South America — where he would live undetected until the 1970s."

The War Department Detachment was in fact a front for the Central Intelligence Group, the precursor to the CIA. Corbally's work with the Army's Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) is also interesting. While little remarked upon now, the CIC was an extremely powerful organization in the postwar years and took the lead role in Germany initially of establishing the so-called "Ratlines" there. They also appear to have been involved in setting up the earliest efforts to create "stay-behind armies," which eventually became a part of what is commonly referred to as Operation Gladio (Gladio was in fact only the name of the Italian branch).

In theory, Gladio and related networks were established in Western Europe by the Pentagon and CIA to wage guerrilla war against the Soviet Union in the event of the invasion. In actuality, considerable evidence has emerged over the years that these networks were engaged in terror campaigns in NATO nations to ensure that said nations remained vassals of the United States during the Cold War. Frequently these networks recruited heavily among "former" fascists and Nazis, who in turn engaged in what is often referred to as a "strategy of tension." In many instances, fascists infiltrated left wing and communist organizations and used them to carry out terror campaigns that were then linked to the Soviet Union by equally compromised intelligence services in NATO nations. Much more information on how these networks functioned can be found in my series concerning the infamous Propaganda Due Masonic lodge whose grand master, Licio Gelli, was linked to Permindex along with Roy Cohn (noted in part three of this series).

The above-mentioned Klaus Barbie was a key part of the initial efforts to establish the German component of the "stay behind" networks.

"The U.S. Army's General Staff Top Secret March 28, 1949 Overall Strategic Concepts highlighted that Germany 'has an excellent potential of trained men for both underground and Secret Army Reserves [stay-behind units]. Effective resistance can and should be organized.' On the orders of the Pentagon in Washington the newly created US Counter Intelligence Corps (CIC) tracked down German Nazis and brought them to the Nurnberg trials, while the CIC also secretly recruited selected right-wing extremist for the anti-Communist army. This practice of the Pentagon was revealed only in 1986 when the US Department of Justice in a large press conference – which had maybe drawn the biggest crowd of journalists in Washington since the Watergate days – admitted that the CIC had recruited a high-ranking Nazi in the post-war years. Specifically a 600-page long study, compiled by Allan Ryan for the US Justice Department, confirmed that SS and Gestapo officer Klaus Barbie had been recruited by the CIC in 1947, had thereafter been hidden from the war crimes investigators and had then been spirited out of Europe to Argentina through a clandestine 'ratline' in 1951.

"Barbie was saved not because the United States secret service officers were impressed with his moral record, but because he was most useful in the setting up of the German stay-behind network. 'Among those who were recruited and did some recruiting for the scheme in the first years,' the British press reported during the Gladio revelations, 'were and ex-SS Obersturmfuhrer, Hans Otto, and other smaller fish. But the prize catch was Klaus Barbie who functioned as a recruiter for ex-Nazis and members of the fascist Bund Deutscher Jugend (BDJ).' Barbie, during the war known as the 'Butcher of Lyon,' had during his stay in the French town from 1943 to 1944 been responsible for the murder of at least 4,000 resistance workers and Jews, as well as the deportation of another 15,000 to concentration death camps. Barbie was condemned to death in absentia by a French court soon after the war for crimes against humanity as witnesses described him as a sadistic torturer, who terrified men, women and children with his whip and Alsatian dog."

(NATO's Secret Armies, Daniele Ganser, pg. 190)

Klaus Barbie

It should be emphasized that there is no evidence that Corbally ever met Barbie, or that he was involved in setting up early stay-behind networks, especially since he left the Army in 1949, just as these networks were first being put into place. Its interesting to note that some believed he left the Army under some distress. Reportedly, he briefly considered becoming a priest for some time after he left the service.

Kroll

His time with the CIC and War Department Detachment was almost surely not Corbally's last brush with the US intelligence community, however. In the early 1970s, he began a long association with the infamous Kroll and Associates who, along with similar outfits such as Wackenhut and Intertel, were at the forefront of the private intelligence revolution. Nominally Kroll is involved in corporate investigations and risk consultations, and as such has had a longstanding association with Wall Street. Kroll has also long been reputed to work as an arm of  both the US and British security services. It first gained infamy in that regard when its ties to 9/11 began to emerge.

"... After the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Kroll acquired the contract from the Port Authority of New York to upgrade security at the World Trade Center, in the process beating out two other firms. Kroll continued with the WTC security contract through the period leading up to the September 11 attacks. One of Kroll's directors, Jerome Hauer, also managed New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's Office of Emergency Management, which was located on the 23rd floor of WTC-7, which was also destroyed on September 11. Kroll's contract gave it unfettered access to all the buildings destroyed in New York on 9/11."

(Black 9/11, Mark H. Gaffney, pgs. 31-32)

Curiously, the above-mentioned Jerome Hauer was also who hired former FBI counter-terrorism expert John P. O'Neill to oversee security at the World Trade Center. O'Neill, who died in the WTC on 9/11, had previously spent years tracking Osama bin Laden for the FBI and is at the center of many conspiracy theories surrounding 911.

John P. O'Neill

It is also interesting to note that at the time of 9/11, Kroll was partially owned by the American International Group, better known as AIG. AIG had longstanding ties to the US intelligence community going back to its founder, Cornelius Vander Starr, who worked for the OSS during WWII and who opened up his company to the CIA for years afterwards. This relationship was carried on by Vander Starr's handpicked successor, Maurice Greenberg, who was AIG's chairman and CEO at the time of 9/11 Greenberg had been a close friend of William Casey, who we dealt with at length in the prior installment. At one point Casey had tried to recruit Greenberg to be his deputy director at the CIA during the Reagan years.

Greenberg was ultimately forced out of AIG in 2005 in the midst of various fraud investigations being conducted by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the US Justice Department and the New York Attorney General's Office. And the New York Attorney General who went after Greenberg? None other than Eliot Spitzer, who brought various civil complaints against Greenberg. Spitzer would go on to be elected New York Governor in 2006 and was taken out in 2008 by Roger Stone, as was noted above. While Greenberg's downfall was surely not the only reason why Spitzer was removed from office, Greenberg was an Old Boy par excellence and surely his downfall ruffled a few feathers.

Maurice Greenberg

But back to the matter at hand, namely Thomas Corbally. Corbally appears to have left Kroll around the time of 9/11, thus it is unlikely he played a role though he reportedly remained well informed up to the time of his death in 2004. Regardless, it seems likely Corbally helped initiate Kroll into the US deep state. He was reportedly responsible for some of their more unsavory international connections:

"Corbally introduced Kroll operatives to French Resistance and intelligence veterans in Paris, and explained how the Vatican Bank was used by the mafia to launder money in Italy. One time, he set up a seemingly promising meeting with an aristocratic British judge at the fabulous Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong, with its rows of gleaming Rolls-Royces lining the driveway — only for the poor Kroll investigator to find out that what the posh judge really wanted was a Newark-style bribe."

But when not moonlighting for Kroll, Corbally appears to have been up to some incredible intrigues.

Cohn and Honey Trapping

Corbally first met Roy Cohn at some point during the 1950s and soon fell under his spell. Cohn would go on to have an enormous influence on Corbally:

"Cohn’s law practice, and its seemingly never-ending flow of corporate conflicts, political intrigue, and society maneuvering, provided a steady stream of investigative work for... Corbally. And it was through Cohn that Corbally later met and socialized with future president Donald Trump, who, like Corbally, enjoyed being around beautiful women."

Trump was also mentioned as a contact of Corbally's back in his 2004 obituary. It would seem that Corbally had a longstanding relationship to the Orange One stemming from Roy Cohn and that likely laid the basis for Trump's rise to the presidency. For you see, it would appear that Corbally was Cohn's chief sexual blackmail specialist.

This aspect of Corbally's career has occasionally bubbled to the surface over the years, most recently in the early 1990s. It was then that the scandal of the "Hollywood Madam," Heidi Fleiss, was making the rounds. In 1993 Fleiss had first been charged with pandering and rumors soon began to emerge that she provided services for many of Hollywood's leading stars and studio executives. As Fleiss' legal woes mounted, Corbally was there for her:

"Over the course of their relationship, Corbally would become a client and confidant of the 'Hollywood Madam,' who ran an escort service for the rich and famous. Later, when Corbally found out Fleiss was snorting crystal meth, he told her to stop — and he set an example with his own sober lifestyle. And after her 1993 arrest for pandering, pimping, and narcotics possession, Corbally gave her tens of thousands of dollars in cash to help Fleiss pay her mounting legal bills. When she was facing jail time, Fleiss turned to Corbally to concoct a desperate plan to flee the country. Corbally instead counseled her to stay and do whatever time she was sentenced to. After all, he said, she was still a young woman with plenty of time ahead of her. Better a few years in prison than a lifetime running from US law enforcement."

Heidi Fleiss

It would also appear that Corbally subtly threatened her to not name any of her clients:

"When she was at her most vulnerable — even contemplating suicide — Corbally came forward with much-needed cash to help Fleiss’s legal defense. One payment to her law firm was as much as $20,000. But it was delivered with a stern message: Heidi must not name names. Her wealthy, powerful clients had to be protected."

It seems to have worked, as only a few names had come out until recently. Curiously, one of the first names to have surfaced was that of famed producer Robert Evans. Evans had produced the Syndicate-glorifying Godfather as well Chinatown, a private detective movie starring Jack Nicholson and directed by convicted pedophile Roman Polanski. Evans and Polanski had previously collaborated together on the infamous Rosemary's Baby, which has been a lightening rod for a host of sinister and strange synchronicities over the years. And Polanski was of course married to Sharon Tate at the time of her murder at the hands of the Manson family.

Corbally had likely known Evans for several years prior to their mutual involvement with Fleiss. This connection will be most significant in a future installment, so do keep it in mind dear reader.

Robert Evans

Before moving along, it is also worth noting the sex scandals currently rocking Hollywood. Most notably, several prominent Democrats such as Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey have been laid low by the #MeToo movement, no doubt to the delight of the Orange One. This researcher and no doubt many others have wondered if the sudden exposure of the infamous casting couch may have been driven at least in part by the leaking of control files by someone close to Trump.

As far as this researcher can tell, none of the celebs who have been outed as former clients of Fleiss' have turned up as arch offenders in the #MeToo fallout. That being said, a comprehensive list of Fleiss' clients has never been revealed. But beyond that, Corbally was apparently quite active in Hollywood for decades. He surely had encountered other sex rings over the years.

As we shall see, it seems that Corbally was keeping tabs on numerous VIP sex rings across the globe for years. With a figure like this active in Hollywood for many years, Trump may well have numerous smoking guns in his possession in regards to Tinseltown. It would be interesting to see how things play out as Hollywood becomes more combative towards the Orange One. Certainly anyone who encountered Corbally back in the day should think twice before throwing in with the "Resistance."

Cliveden

Of course, the fallout from Heidi Fleiss' arrest was hardly the first time Corbally's name had turned up in a high profile sex scandal. The first instance was linked to events that ultimately toppled the government in the UK and may even have involved a beloved American president. 

I am of course referring to the Profumo affair. As I'm sure many of my American readers only have a vague understanding of Profumo, here's a brief rundown: In 1961 John Profumo, the Secretary of State for War in the Conservative government of Harold Macmillan began an affair with a barely legal model named Christine Keeler. The affair was not revealed to the public at large until 1963, long after Profumo had ceased seeing Keeler.

John Profumo

What really made the affair scandalous was the fact Keeler had also been sleeping with Captain Yevgeny Ivanov, a Soviet naval attache, at the same time she was seeing Profumo. Ivanov was working on behalf on the GRU, the Soviet Union's military intelligence, during his time in the UK. This led to concerns that Keeler was being used by Ivanov to ply state secrets from Profumo.

Keeler was set up with both Profumo and Ivanov by a osteopath named Stephen Ward. Ward had ample connections in British high society and was known to supply barely legal girls to many of his aristocratic friends. It is also widely believed that Ward was working on behalf of MI5 (and possibly MI6 as well) when he set up Keeler with Ivanov. There are even allegations that British intelligence was attempting to use Ward's friendship with Ivanov as a kind of back channel to the Soviet Union during the Cuban missile crisis.

Stephen Ward

Ward's chief patron among the aristocracy was Lord William Waldorf Astor II, who may have also been his handler for some branch of British intelligence. Certainly Astor had extensive contacts among such circles.

"Astor had extensive involvement with intelligence, professionally and personally. As the naval intelligence representative to the 31 Committee, he had regular contact with MI5 and MI6 officers in the Middle East. Later, in London, he had continued to work in intelligence at the Admiralty. His first wife, Sarah, have been a translator at Bletchley, where Germany's Enigma code was broken. His second wife, Philippa, was the daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Hunloke, MI5's man in Jerusalem during the war."

(The Secret World of Stephen Ward, Anthony Summers & Stephen Dorril, pg. 77)

Beginning in the late 1950s, Astor began to rent out a cottage on his family's estate at Cliveden to Ward for use on the weekends. Ward in turn frequently brought young girls with him to Cliveden to entertain Lord Astor and other visiting aristocrats. These parties became quite notorious once the Profumo affair was exposed. It was at Cliveden that Profumo had first been introduced to Christine Keeler, after all.

It would seem that Lord Astor consented to these parties in part at the behest of British intelligence.

"MI6... was interested in Ward from the early 1950s. According to the agent who monitored Ward's activity, MI6 concluded, moreover that it sister service, MI5, used Lord Astor and his estate at Cliveden for 'honeytrap' operations – operations designed to entrap intelligence targets by compromising them sexually. Lord Astor, an MI6 officer said, was 'on friendly terms with senior members of MI5, and was happy to help him, and in his view the country, when asked to do so... When they needed to make use of Ward, to provide suitable women for visiting heads of state, they went through his friend Lord Astor.' "

(The Secret Life of Stephen Ward, Anthony Summers & Stephen Dorril, pg. 79)

Lord William Waldorf Astor II

At this point I need to pause and give the reader a little background on Lord Astor and his estate at Cliveden. As I'm sure many of you are aware, the Astor family is one of the most powerful in the history of both the US and UK. The patriarch is generally considered to be John Jacob Astor, the first American multimillionaire and one of the wealthiest men in history. Officially Astor made his money in the fur trade, but some of it in fact came from smuggling opium. As such, he's not only one of the richest men to ever live, but one of the most powerful drug dealers as well.

John Jacob Astor

Astor came to American shortly after the time of the Revolutionary War from Germany by way of England. He was born in Waldorf, now part of Germany, then a part of the Holy Roman Empire. Astor lived there until he was 16, at which point he left for London. He eventually settled in New York and for many decades afterwards his family would remain one of the most powerful in both the state and city that bares its name. Still, the family seems to have retained a fondness for their German heritage as many subsequent generations of Astors have used Waldorf in the names of their children (and at last one notable building). This is interesting in light of the Astor family's later support for a strong Germany. But more on that in a moment.

The British branch of the Astor family was established by John Jacob Astor III, a grandson of the first John Jacob, and the wealthiest Astor of his generation. While John Jacob III spent much of his life in these United States, he became increasingly fixated upon London in his later years. His son, William Waldorf Astor, became the first Lord Astor in 1899 after permanently moving to the UK in 1891.

The Astor family soon emerged at the absolute pinnacle of the Anglo-American Establishment. As such, they have long been one of the leading families in the Pilgrims Society. As was noted above, Thomas Corbally was originally recruited into British intelligence at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in New York City, which was long a meeting place of the Pilgrim in the US. And as I'm sure many of you have guessed by now, the Waldorf was built and long managed by the Astor family.

The Pilgrims Society is one of the most powerful elite societies in modern history, though it is little known among most conspiracy researchers, who continue to fixate upon one of its most notorious offshoots: the Round Table Group. As is well known by now, the Round Table Group served as the basis for the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), for many years the leading think tank for the Eastern Establishment in the United States, and its British counterpart, the Royal Institute for International Affairs.

Would the reader then be surprised to learn that the Astor family and their estate at Cliveden played a key role in establishing the Round Table network that the CFR grew out of? Consider:

"... the Round Table group, and came later to be called, somewhat inaccurately, the Cliveden Set, after the country estate of Lord and Lady Astor. It included Lord Milner, Leopold Amery, and Edward Grigg (Lord Altrincham), as well as Lord Lothian, Smuts, Lord Astor, Lord Brand (brother-in-law of Lady Astor and managing director of Lazard Brothers, the international bankers), Lionel Curtis, Geoffrey Dawson (editor of The Times), and their associates. This group wielded great influence because it controlled the Rhodes Trust, the Beit Trust, The Times of London, The Observer, the influential and highly anonymous quarterly review known as The Round Table (founded in 1910 with money supplied by Sir Abe Bailey and the Rhodes Trust, and with Lothian as editor), and it dominated the Royal Institute of International Affairs, called 'Chatham House' (of which Sir Abe Bailey and the Astors were the chief financial supporters, while Lionel Curtis was the actual founder), the Carnegie United Kingdom Trust, and All Souls College, Oxford. The Round Table group formed the core of the three-bloc-world supporters, and differed from the anti-Bolsheviks like D'Abernon in that they sought to contain the Soviet Union between a German-dominated Europe and an English-speaking bloc rather than to destroy it as the anti-Bolsheviks wanted. Relationships between the two groups were very close and friendly, and some people, like Smuts, were in both."

(Tragedy and Hope, Carroll Quigley, pg. 581) 

Cliveden

Cliveden then served as a frequent meeting place for this group during the first half of the twentieth century, where they plotted to reshape the world in their own image. As such, it is typical to conceive of this group as dyed-in-the-wool globalists in this day in age but this is not accurate. The chief concern of the Round Table Group/Cliveden Set in the early days was the expansion of the British Empire, with the hopes of an eventual reconciliation with the United States. They were aided in this project by their American partners, who were headed by J.P. Morgan.

After the First World War, they had become staunch backers of a strong Germany as a counterbalance to the Soviet Union. As such, they played an enormous role in rearming Germany and the rise of the Nazi Party on the British end. Their appeasement of Germany, however, appears to have set the stage for the loss on control of the Round Table network in the postwar years.

During the Second World War there was a dramatic shakeup within the Anglo-American Establishment. Up till this point in time the British had been the dominate partners in the relationship, but after WWII, with the UK effectively bankrupt, the United States was in the driver's seat. What's more, within the American Establishment the Morgan faction had been replaced by the Rockefeller family.

The Rockefellers, more than anyone, were who launched the modern era of globalism, largely with the aid of the same Round Table network that was initially created for the preservation of the British Empire. The British partners, faced with the loss of their Empire now, had little choice but to go along with it.

At the time of the Profumo affair, many of the descendants of the Cliveden Set such as Lord Astor still tentatively supported this project. They formed much of the elite support for the government of Harold Macmillan in the Tories (the British Conservative Party). By 1961, however, dissent had begun to emerge as several of the Cliveden Set children, most notably Julian Amery, signed up with the Monday Club. The Monday Club was formed initially in protest towards Macmillan's policies concerning Apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), namely growing opposition to white rule in these African nations. As such, the Monday Club soon became a rallying point for the far right among the Tories.

Eventually Amery and several other Cliveden babies ended up in senior roles in the above-mentioned Le Cercle. The British partners in Le Cercle in turn have been at the forefront of the growing Eurosceptic movement and played a key role in the UK opting to leave the EU. As was noted before here, many of these British Le Cercle partners have also been extensively linked to pedophile rings in the UK. This is most interesting in light of the fact that many of the girls who turned up at Cliveden during the Ward era were barely legal and some still minors. And as I stressed in the prior installment, Roy Cohn's friend William Casey (himself closely linked to the Franklin scandal) was also involved extensively with Le Cercle.

Given the rather unabashed support the original Cliveden Set had for Nazi Germany and the more recent support their descendants have given to the far right, including separatist movements (at least in Europe countries), it would be a mistake to believe that this group was some type of quasi-Communistic one-worlders.

And with that, I shall wrap things up for now. In the next installment we will get into Corbally's actual role in Profumo, its broader implications in regards to the US deep state and the strange going-ons at Cliveden. Stay tuned dear reader.