Showing posts with label Florida. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Florida. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 1, 2020

Exploring the Mysteries of the Manchurian Candidate with John Bevilaqua



As longtime readers of this blog are no doubt well aware by now, Recluse is quite obsessed with the mysterious network of self-styled chivalric orders commonly referred to as the Sovereign Order of Saint John (SOSJ). Virtually all of these orders in turn trace back to one particular outfit, long based out of Shickshinny, Pennsylvania. This group claimed to be the legitimate Knights of Malta, via the Russian line of succession, with the "official" Sovereign Military Order of Malta group being the impostor.

Whatever the case, by the 1960s it emerged with a roster top heavy with former military and intelligence officers, and extensive ties to the far right paramilitary underground. Bizarrely enough, it also featured an abundance of cult connections as well. One of the most blood-stained were those with Christian Identity "theology," which were explored before here. However, they also possessed even stranger links to various metaphysical circles, ranging from UFO contactees, ceremonial magicians, and even one known, self-described "orgone specialist." These connections and more will soon be explored in a forth coming work by your's truly.

Today, however, I would like to shine a light on a book that got me started on this mysterious journey. It's called J.F.K. -The Final Solution by the great John Bevilaqua. John has been on the trial of the Kennedy assassins for sometime and he has come to believe that the SOSJ was instrumental.


Recently I was able to sit down for a chat with John on The Farm. In order to introduce everybody to the vast body of John's research, I thought a good starting point may be The Manchurian Candidate, both the Richard Condon novel and the 1962 film version. Have you ever wondered, for instance, why Condon selected Manchuria of all places for the title and such a crucial plot point? Well, here you'll find out about all the strange groups and characters active there in the aftermath of the First World War and beyond. One of them is the future Nazi and Ufologist William Dudley Pelley, whom you're going to be hearing a lot more about in the coming weeks here.

But this is only scratching the surface. Bevilaqua also covers such notorious and little known figures as Count Anastasy Vonsiatsky and Colonel Wickliffe Preston Draper; his own "twilight language"-esque approach to both Condon's work and a far right code system; and even a bizarre connection to the legendary Illuminatus! Trilogy. Be sure to check this one out guys, it's a good one.


It can be found here or on the sidebar.

John also provided some addition thoughts here that I'm reprinting now for context:

"The significance of Hunt and Rockwell attending Brown while Vonsiatsky still attended football games is that Annie and/or Draper probably recruited him and paid him to start the ANP. And Hunt named his son St. John after Vonsiatsky's Order of St. John."
"It is also important to note that the Rev Gerald L K Smith was not only part of The Winnipeg Airport Incident but he knew both William Dudley Pelley from their mutual Silver Shirts work during World War II and Father Charles Coughlin when they were both part of the Demagogues of the Depression in the 1930's and the early 1940's. And Anastase Vonsiatsky also attended the Winnipeg Airport Incident meeting as well and probably flew to Wichita, KS the home of Koch Family Empire where they were expecting to be paid off for the murder of JFK. Edwin Walker's grandfather gave the Koch family their financial start in America. His last name was deGanahl and Charles deGanahl Koch was given his name as his middle name as a symbol of thanks. Walker, Willoughby, Gale and Fellers were ALL working for Douglas MacArthur during the Korean War and even after that as private citizens. And Walker, Fellers and Willoughby through MacArthur were all implicated by Condon in Man Cand anagrams or key words. Fighting Francis Bollinger is an anagram for Bonner Fellers. Fellers was stationed in Cairo during World War II and was given Montgomery's tank movements as part of a scheme to undermine his efforts at evading the Desert Fox, Erwin Rommel who was not really a Fox at all. Fellers forwarded these proposed tank movements to James Angleton in Rome where he was stationed and he in turn sent these messages to Erwin Rommel.
"Mark Schulman Did not know that. S&C's early work with mergers between Boston Fruit and United Fruit bears that out. I thought they just did the legal work on that deal. Looks like they did both ends of the deal now. When did the Dulles Brothers join the firm? Other heads of the OSJ over time included Frank Capell, Revilo Oliver's pal, Charles Thurout Pichel, Hitler's American contact, John B. Trevor, Draper's Pioneer Fund crony and some M.D. from Florida. Vonsiatsky was also the international leader of the SMOSJ. Col. Philip J. Corso, OSJ a UFO nut working for Strom Thurmond was knighted into OSJ for running the Nazi Rat Lines from the Vatican for the eventual Pope Paul VI through Grace Steamship Lines of Peter Grace, OSJ. Angleton and Colby were also OSJ Knights. Spoiler Alert: Angleton was revered by the Israelis for saving Judaism from the evil Arabs AND for saving the R.C. Church from the Commies by siding with the Nazis at one point. Very versatile and accommodating guy. Angleton may also have helped the Israelis with their Dimona Nuclear Reactor secret program by removing any obstacles or blockers to that program. Hint, hint. Samuel Zemurray's agents from United Fruit funded Homer Echevarria's plots against JFK by his own admission IMHO."
As always guys, I hope everyone enjoys. Best to all in these troubled times and as always, stay tuned till next time.


Sunday, November 17, 2019

The Farm and the State of High Weirdness



Christopher Knowles of The Secret Sun and myself were back on the Farm this past Friday with our hosts, Frank Zero and Jeremy Knight of ZeroKnight. Jeremy graciously handled the technical aspects so that the rest of us could gab for nearly an hour an a half. On the whole, I felt the results were quite excellent despite Frank and I having personal stuff that effected our prep and Knowles being a little under the weather. Regardless, this podcast turned out much better than our first effort, which wasn't to shabby in and of itself. This time around, everyone seemed more comfortable together, leading to the chat taking some epic turns.

We started out discussing Andrija Puharich and The Nine, and from there things started to take on a life of their own. The various blue-bloods who backed Puharich were considered, as well as the Pentagon behavior modification program he cut his teeth in. Knowles addressed Puharich's old stomping grounds of Maine and all of the strange stuff that was going on in the surrounding area, as well as the mysterious Rear Admiral Herbert B. Knowles (no relation to Chris). Naturally, I found time to expound on the differences between ARTICHOKE and MK-ULTRA. From there, Chris started to breakdown some of the more Nine-centric Hollywood productions, most notably the Star Trek franchise (especially The Original Series and The Animated Series) and the original The Outer Limits. Naturally, the creators of these two franchises, Gene Roddenberry and Leslie Stevens respectively, got a lot of air time as well.

Puharich
From there, Frank delved into some of the mysterious tropes that appeared in the cartoons we kids from the 1980s and 1990s grew up with. I then started to break down the murky origins of the Association of Former intelligence Officers and its sinister Las Vegas chapter. This led to a discussion of the Las Vegas shooting of 2017, To the Stars Academy, and the sinister Mellon family of Pittsburgh. Things wrapped up with Chris and I discussing Lovecraft and what he may have been up to during his numerous journeys across the US. I also found the time to elaborate on the occult significance of the atomic explosion at Trinity.

All in all, pretty epic. The chat can be found here. Please check it out and like it. We'd like to make these chats a regular thing if the interest is there. Certainly, they're a lot of fun for us and here's hoping you guys are enjoying them as well.

For more information on the topics discussed, it is recommended you listen to the first podcast as this one builds off of the earlier one.

Also of interest:

Also of interest is the classic Lucifer's Technologies series on the Secret Sun that largely inspired my fringe series.

A big thank you again to Chris, Frank, and Jeremy for making these chats possible. And with that, I shall sign off for now. Until next time dear readers, stay tuned.


Sunday, May 26, 2019

Recluse Back on the Liminalist


The great Jasun Horsley of Auticulture was kind enough to have back on his show. Ironically, the first podcast I ever did for this blog was with Jasun back in 2016. That podcast was actually recorded shortly before I moved from Florida to West Virginia and was, I believe, the last post I made as a Floridian.

Regular readers of this blog may recall that I haven't had the best luck doing podcasts from my isolated cabin in the Mountaineer state (anecdotes can be found here and here). Fortunately, I was not sick for this one, and there was no extreme weather knocking out the Internet and/or power. As such, this podcast went extremely well. In fact, it may be the best one I've done to date.

That being said, I'm not promising that my pronunciation are going to be any better for this one. I tried to brush up a bit before hand, but Jasun brought up a few topics I had not prepped for. At least I think I got Opus Dei right this time.

On the whole, a host of topics were discussed over the course of this two hour plus chat. Many of the usual suspects turned up --Le Cercle, Donald Trump and Julian Amery, among others. In fact, we discussed the British deep state quite a bit. I attempted to lay out a premise I've been working on that a covert civil war played out in the UK beginning with the Profumo affair and ending with the election of Thatcher in '79. In particular, I attempted to highlight the bizarre relationship future Cercle chairman Brian Crozier appears to have had with the Fabian Socialists, most notably David Owen. For those of you unaware, Jasun is quite taken with the Fabians. His most recent book, Vice of Kings, deals heavily with this topic.

the seal of the Fabian Society

As should come as little surprise to those of you familiar with our respective work, we also found the time to discuss pedophile rings in the UK. More compelling, however, was our discussion concerning the differences in the systems of Aleister Crowley and Julius Evola. I think many of you who are more esoterically inclined will find this particular segment of our conversation quite fascinating.


Crowley (top) and Evola (bottom)
The podcast can be found here. My series on Le Cercle can be found here. More information on the forces behind Trump can be found here and here. Additional details on my thoughts concerning the burning of Notre Dame can be found here.

As always dear readers, I hope that you enjoy. Stay tuned until next time.


Sunday, March 25, 2018

Goodfellas Part IV: Lavender Mafia Edition



Welcome to the fourth installment in a series that began as an examination of the ties between President Donald J. Trump and organized crime. This series grew out of a prior blog I had published in October of 2017 that considered his brief tenure as CEO of the infamous gaming interest known as Resorts International.

As was noted there, Resorts was a major powerhouse during its heyday of the early 1970s. Its famed casino on Paradise Island in the Bahamas frequently attracted such Overworld figures as President Richard M. Nixon and reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes during this era. But in addition to Hughes, guests also included rogue financier Robert Vesco and Vatican bank head Paul Marcinkus (noted before here), who would end up knee deep in his own financial scandals by the early 1980s.

But in addition to the rogue financiers, there was also shareholders such as William Mellon Hitchcock, who at one time was the banker for the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, the largest LSD smuggling network in the world. Hitchcock and other shareholders had their accounts managed by the Castle Bank & Trust, an infamous CIA-linked institution that has long been used to launder the proceeds from drug and arms sells. And the casino itself was heavily staffed by various Mafioso, many linked to Meyer Lansky.

Probably the most curious aspect of Resorts, however, was its ownership of a private intelligence agency known as Intertel. Staffed extensively by many "former" US intelligence assets, Intertel first gained notoriety in 1970 when it "rescued" Howard Hughes from his Las Vegas residence. Hughes was rarely seen in the flesh again after this event and there has been much speculation for years that Intertel had kidnapped Hughes with an eye towards taking over his vast business empire.

Howard Hughes
Intertel was still a part of Resorts when Trump became CEO in 1986. His control of Resorts was brief, with the Orange One selling his share to Merv Griffin in exchange for the Taj Mahal in 1988. Still, Trump would come into contact with some major figures in both the organized crime and intelligence communities during his tenure as CEO of the gaming interest.

But, as we saw in part one of this series, Trump was already well acquainted with the Syndicate by this time. When of his key early backers was a reputed member of the Genovese crime family known as Edward "Biff" Halloran. As was noted in the second installment of this series, Halloran was a former business partner of Bradley Bryant, who by the late 1970s was operating a vast drug and arms trafficking network known as "the Company." Halloran played a key role in getting the Company off the ground during the late 1970s when had also begun to work with Trump.

Both Bryant and his business partner, Andrew "Drew" Thornton, were both military veterans and the Company recruited heavily from such ranks to staff their operation. They leaned heavily on Soldier of Fortune magazine for personnel. The magazine's founder, Robert K. Brown, had very extensive ties to the CIA. In general, it was widely believed by law enforcement personnel that investigated the Company that it had some type of relationship with the CIA.


As was noted in part three, Halloran was not Trump's only tie to the Company. Beginning in the mid-1970s, Trump began making frequent pilgrimages to Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, which was being used extensively by the Company to launder drug money at the time. By the early 1980s he had become a regular on the Kentucky Derby set, which featured many Kentucky politicians and business people in league with the Company. One of them was Governor John Y. Brown, who would go on to move into Trump Tower in 1984 after he lost his reelection bid, thanks in no small part to allegations concerning his ties to the Company. Around this time Trump Tower become a mecca for laundering dirty money, as was noted in part one, not unlike how Caesars Palace had been used in the prior decade. As was noted in part three, John Y. was believed to be a hidden owner of Caesars during this era before moving on to Trump Tower in the 1980s.

As I wrapped up the installment, I began to consider the background of the man who likely initiated Trump into these circles, namely his longtime attorney and political mentor Roy Cohn. Cohn was a longtime darling of the far right --he had served as Joseph McCarthy's lead council during his communist witch hunts in the 1950s. During this time he also developed an intense hatred for the Kennedy family.

By the early 1960s Cohn was close to the mob and reportedly a member of Permindex, an organization long linked to the JFK assassination. Not long afterwards he would also become the New York City attorney for Greek shipping magnet Aristotle Onassis, who is alleged to have put up the money for RFK's assassination.


Big Ed and the Gray Ghost

While Cohn was first introduced the conspiratorial lexicon around 1970 thanks to the references to him in the controversial "Torbitt document," it wasn't until the early 1990s that rumors began to emerge concerning the incredible lengths to which his relationship with the US intelligence community went. Amusingly, these allegations were started by a former CIA officer who had participated in the highly controversial Phoenix Program.

I am of course referring to former Nebraska state senator John DeCamp, who claimed:
"... According to the former head of the vice squad for one of America's biggest cities, 'Cohn's job was to run the little boys. Say you had an admiral, a general, a congressman, who did not want to go along with the program. Cohn's job was to set them up, then they would go along. Cohn told me that himself.' "
(The Frankln Cover-Up, John DeCamp, pg. 179)
As I've noted over the years, I'm not a huge fan of DeCamp's and corroboration for his claims in this regard is mixed at best. DeCamp also alleges that one of Cohn's key collaborators in this work was infamous DC lobbyist and public relations guru Robert Keith Gray. To establish Gray's bonafides as a honey trap specialist for the CIA, DeCamp repeats claims initially made by the great Jim Hougan that disgraced CIA veteran Edwin Wilson (addressed before here) was running sexual blackmail operations out of a certain D.C.-based club Gray was an early president and frequent guest of beginning in the late 1960s. Here is the relevant passage from Hougan's classic Secret Agenda, which DeCamp also quotes at length:
"According to fugitive ex-CIA officer Frank Terpil, CIA-directed sexual blackmailing operations were intensive in Washington about the time of the Watergate scandal. One of those operations, Terpil claims, was run by his former partner, Ed Wilson. Wilson's base of operations for arranging trysts for the politically powerful was, Terpil says, Korean agent Tong Sun Park's George Town Club..."
(Secret Agenda, Jim Hougan, pg. 120)
"Big" Ed Wilson
The problem with these allegations is that Terpil is, as far as this researcher can determine, the only individual to have ever made these claims. Wilson himself denied them, as have various other former US intelligence officers who have addressed Wilson's misadventures. Wilson did however know Gray, and used the lobbyist as a director for the board of a front company Wilson had set up for the US intelligence community known as Consultants International. But while the two men eventually became partners of a sort, Wilson alleges that he originally approached Gray on behalf of the CIA to determine what exactly was going on at the George Town Club.
"Wilson's immediate motive for meeting Gray was to discover the relationship between Gray and a young Korean named Tongsun Park who first came to the United States in 1956 to attend Georgetown University. Park subsequently dropped out of college, but for a college drop-out he was rubbing elbows with some of the biggest names in Washington society, thanks largely to introductions from Gray. Park came from a family with long ties to Korean intelligence, and American oil companies that did business in Korea.
"By 1965 the CIA became interested in young Park because, with Gray's help, he had formed a new, exclusive social club named The George Town Club after its location. Park had been working on organizing the club for years. He was loading his new social club with founders, members, and management with ties to U.S. intelligence. Park put up the money and, with introductions from Gray and others, recruited founders for the club like the late Marine General Graves B. Erskine, who had an active intelligence career. Anna Chennault, the powerful advocate in America for Nationalist China, became a force in the club. Others followed, and most, like Gray, had the same conservative political outlook, connections to the intelligence world, or 'congressional overtones.' "
(The Power House, Susan B. Trento, pgs. 97-98)
Tongsun Park
Tongsun Park was later revealed to be an agent for the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA) while Anna Chennault was the longtime figure head of the powerful "China Lobby," the US front for the opium-sponsored regime of Chiang Kai-shek in Taiwan. The KCIA and the China Lobby were key players in establishing the Asian Peoples' Anti-Communist League (APACL), which eventually became a part of the broader World Anti-Communist League (WACL), which was addressed at length here. The WACL was more or less the visible face of the Fascist International for many decades. Compromised of various drug and arms traffickers, dictators and the inevitable "former" Nazi war criminals and US intelligence officers, the WACL became a powerful private intelligence network with an international reach by the 1970s.

It is interesting to note than many of the individuals and organizations linked to the Company in the second installment of this series such as Robert K. Brown, Mitchell WerBell III and the Medellin Cartel, had extensive ties to the WACL as well. The links between the Medellin Cartel and the WACL, noted before here, are especially interesting and relevant to the series, as shall be revealed in a future installment. But moving along.

The George Town Club appears then to have been a front for this network, especially the APACL associates and their American backers. This researcher tends to believe Wilson's claims that he was dispatched by the CIA to keep tabs on what was going on at the George Town Club as factions of the US intelligence community and Overworld were becoming quite disillusioned with the China Lobby at the time.

Let us now return to DeCamp's allegations, which essentially were that Robert Keith Gray was involved in sexual blackmail operations and that he was a protege of Roy Cohn's. As to the former, there are some indications that Gray may have had dealings in a certain honey trap operation by the 1980s (more on that in a moment), but evidence for such things happening at the George Town Club is quite scarce. While there can be little doubt that the club was used to influence American politicians, as far as this researcher can tell, this was accomplished through good old fashioned bribes, not trysts.

The George Town Club
The closet thing I could find to a honey trap involved another KCIA agent known as Suzi Thompson. Thompson and the activities of the George Town Club came to light in the late 1970s with the scandal often referred to as Koreagate in which several KCIA assets were investigated by Congress for their influence pedaling. Tongsun Park's activities at George Town were exposed during this process. It also came to light that fellow KCIA asset Suzi Thompson was sleeping with a Democratic member of the House of Representatives during this time, but it does not appear that Thompson was especially active in the George Town Club. She was a Congressional staffer and the affair appears to have developed out of this connection and not George Town.

Several years after the George Town/Koreagate scandal had subsided, Gray was implicated in a D.C.-based prostitution ring with deep implications.
"In June 1982, the FBI began investigating allegations made by a male congressional page (a high school student working for the Congress, usually as a messenger) that he had been solicited by a congressman, and that several of his fellow pages had told him about sexual activities with members of Congress. A couple weeks later, on July 1, Congressman Louis Stokes, the chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Standards of Official Conduct, known as the Ethics Committee, announced that the Committee was joining the FBI and local law enforcement in their investigations. Stokes said the Ethics Committee would widen the scope of the investigation to include a range of alleged irregularities on Capitol Hill including sexual relations between pages and congressmen and charges that a cocaine and marijuana ring operated in Congress and used pages and congressional employees as couriers... 
"Gray's name first surfaced as the result of an anonymous tip to the House Ethics Committee accusing Gray of using drugs and sexual activity to lobby Congressman..."
(The Power House, Susan Trento, pg. 176)
Gray was accused of being in league with a D.C.-based male prostitution ring being run by a former Justice Department official then working as a consultant to Congress and a photographer who ran a local photoshop. Nothing ultimately came of these allegations, though certainly the investigation was not helped by the fact that several of the private detectives being used by Congress were also working for Gray at the same time. But moving along.

Robert Keith Gray
As to Gray's relationship with Roy Cohn, this is also rather ambiguous. Extensive Google sleuthing turned up no ties between the two men except for DeCamp's claims. It was only after I picked up a copy of The Power House, Susan Trento's excellent biography of Gray, that I determined that the two men did know one another and had some type of relationship, though it is unknown as to how close they actually were.

Certainly it is tempting to speculate that their relationship was much closer than what is publicly known. Both men first rose to prominence in D.C. during the 1950s, though Cohn's time there was winding down by 1956 when Gray first made the scene. Both men traveled in the same circles and appear to have been especially close to a certain CIA director whom shall be addressed in a moment. And both men were gay Republicans in era when such things were kept deep in the closet. But when all is said and done, there does not appear to be any definitive evidence concerning the extent of their relationship, only that they traveled in the same social circles and knew one another. It is interesting to note, however, that Tom Fortuin, Gray's attorney during the prostitution ring allegations, hailed from New York City and was apparently a good friend of Cohn's.

Before leaving this topic there are two interesting points worth making. One was the suspected ties between the Company and the arms smuggling operation of Ed Wilson in Libya.
"Defense and Treasury Department investigators intensified their probe of the China Lake thefts, searching for links to ex-spies Wilson and Terpil. Like the Bryants, Wilson and Terpil had recruited China Lake employees to build bombs destined for Libya, and had sponsored repeated thefts from China Lake. Larry Barcella, assistant U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., was on the brink of seeking a federal indictment for Wilson and Terpil for their role in supplying weapons and terrorist training to Qaddafi. Interviewed by ATF agents about the matter, Barcella said he had no evidence a connection existed between the Wilson/Terpil network and Bradley Bryant. Although there was a great deal of suspicion that some of the items Bradley Bryant had in his possession in Philadelphia were bound for Libya, coupled with the insistence by the Philadelphia police that Terpil had visited Bryant at the Sheraton prior to Bryant's arrest, Barcella was unable to prove that a relationship existed."
(The Bluegrass Conspiracy, Sally Denton, pg. 129)
Denton indicates, however, that many law enforcement personnel believed that a connection existed. Certainly there were more than a few similarities between the operations being overseen by Wilson, especially there emphasis on gunrunning and the use of "former" US military personnel to assist in these activities. For more information on the Company's use of mercenaries and their thefts from China Lake, check the second installment.

The other point worth mentioning is a certain woman who played a crucial role in Gray's rise to prominence in D.C. during the 1950s: socialite and heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post. Post inherited the General Foods corporation from her father at age 27 and by the early twentieth century was reportedly the richest woman in the United States. Gray was a regular attendee at her D.C.-based parties in the 1950s and she seems to have played a key role in introducing him to a clique of powerful, rightward leaning women such as Anna Chennault and Clare Booth Luce who would remain key backer of Gray's for decades.

the legendary Mrs. Post
By the late 1960s Post had reportedly become a regular at the George Town Club.
"... Wilson recalled that Gray and Park entertained most of Washington society at The George Town Club, including the late Marjorie Merriweather Post. Gray would arrange to invite senators and congressmen down to Mara Largo, her vast Palm Beach mansion. Ed Wilson said he sometimes went on these trips. 'Mrs. Post used to come in quite a bit because Gray was very close to Mrs. Post. When she went down to Florida to her big mansion down there, he [Gray] used to fly senators and stuff down there and they had contact. I don't think it was business, just social. I used to see her all the time down there.' "
(The Power House, Susan Trento, pg. 101)
Yes dear reader, the Mar-a-Lago mentioned above is the same Florida mansion that the Orange One is presently using as the White House South. By the time Trump purchased it in 1985, Post had been dead since 1973. At the time of Post's death, the mansion had been willed to the United States Department of the Interior as a national landmark and a possible presidential retreat.

But throughout the 1970s Congressman Paul G. Rogers urged that the estate should be returned to the Post Foundation, a trust Post had established to manage her estate. Curiously, Rogers was the brother of Doyle Rogers, Post's longtime attorney who was tasked with managing her estate via the Post Foundation. When Mar-a-Lago was returned to Post Foundation in 1980, Doyle became the one tasked with selling the mansion.

Doyle eventually agreed to sell Mar-a-Lago to Trump in 1985, after the Orange One had been making bids on it since 1983. Reportedly a more lucrative offer was on the table from an interest based out of Houston at the time, but Doyle Rogers opted to sell the propriety to Trump anyway. Shortly thereafter he became Trump's Palm Beach attorney and frequented represented the Orange against complaints emanating from his use of Mar-a-Lago.

Mar-a-Lago
Post appears to have been very active in the same ring wing circles as Gray and Roy Cohn, and as such, it is most interest that Trump was the one to end up with Mar-a-Lago and is now using it as a presidential retreat, as Mrs. Post had originally envisioned. Did some one in the same circles that Gray, Cohn and Post traveled in intercede on Trump's behalf to close the deal in his favor while a better offer was on the table? Gray would certainly be an obvious candidate, though I've been unable to turn up any relationship with the famed lobbyist and Trump nor can I determine if Cohn had some type of relationship with the Post family. But nonetheless, this whole circle is a little to incestuous to be mere chance. But moving along.


Bill and the Boys

Can we then dismiss DeCamp's claims that Cohn was some type of sexual blackmail specialist out of hand? It is tempting, considering how problematic some of his allegations are concerning Robert Keith Gray, but as I kept digging into Cohn's activities, I turned up far more compelling evidence of such things. One of the most curious omissions from DeCamp's work is the known relationship between Roy Cohn and another notorious D.C.-based lobbyist named Craig Spence.

Spence originally began his professional career as a journalist, serving as ABC's Vietnam correspondent during the war's height in the late 1970s. He then left ABC and Vietnam in 1970 and relocated to Japan. There he developed contacts with the aristocratic Shiina family, who were very prominent in the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party, which has almost exclusively ruled Japan since the end of World War II. As was noted before here, the Liberal Democratic Party was very close to both the Yakuza and the old Asian People's Anti-Communist League clique noted above.

Spence used his ties with the Shiina family to establish himself as a powerful Republican lobbyist in the D.C. area by the early 1980s. It was the Shiina family that provided Spence with the money he used to procure his home in D.C.'s Kalorama area, which reportedly was used to entrap various VIPs in the city. Spence ran up a nearly $20,000-a month tab with a local homosexual escort service to provide entertainment at his famed parties there in addition to providing ample amounts of cocaine. More than a few guests believed that the drug-fueled sexual escapades were being recorded by an elaborate surveillance system Spence had throughout the house.
"... the Washington Times expanded considerable amounts of ink fleshing out Spence's blackmail enterprise: A Washington Times article from June 1989, 'Power Broker Served Drugs, Sex at Parties Bugged for Blackmail,' revealed the strange goings-on at Spence's DC home: 'Several former associate said his house on Wyoming Avenue was bugged and had a secret two-way mirror, and that he attempted to ensnare visitors into compromising sexual encounters that he could then uses leverage.'
"According to interviews conducted by Washington Times reporters, Spence had an eight-foot-long, two-way mirror overlooking his library they gave him a prime vantage point for 'spying on guests.' Bugs were also scattered throughout various nooks and crannies within his house... 
"A former Reagan administration official who worked at the US Information Agency attended soirees at Spence's home, and he disclosed to Washington Times reporters that he personally observed a cornucopia of recording and taping equipment. 'It was my clear impression that the house was bugged,' he said. An Air Force sergeant whom Spence employed as a bodyguard corroborated accounts of blackmail: 'The house was definitely bugged. I can't say what he was doing with the information. I don't know that. But he was recording whatever occurred there.' "
(The Franklin Scandal, Nick Bryant, pgs. 301-302)
Craig J. Spence
Later, it was alleged that Spence had even provided midnight guided tours of the White House for several of the escorts in his employment. Unsurprisingly, Spence claimed ties to the CIA and darkly hinted at Agency approval for what appears to have been a major blackmail operation.

Spence has also been fingered as an associate of former Nebraska state representative Larry E. King by numerous eyewitnesses. King was the head of the now defunct Franklin Community Federal Credit Union in Omaha, Nebraska. Franklin collapsed in 1988 as part of the unfolding savings and loan crisis of the late 1980s. As investigators began to take a look at King and Franklin, allegations began to emerge that King was a leading figure in a nationwide pedophile ring that recruited children from the Omaha area. Several of these kids would go on to allege encounters with Spence via King.

Henry Vinson, the so-called "D.C. Madam" who provided many of the male escorts for Spence's parties, also alleged to have seen King and Spence together and to have overheard them speaking of a pedophile ring they were both involved in. He also alleged that Spence repeatedly pushed him to procure underage boys for his parties, which Vinson refused to do.

The allegations concerning King, often referred to as the "Franklin scandal," remain highly controversial. Charges against King involving pedophilia were thrown out years ago, but several of his reputed underage prostitutes managed to successfully sue King in the late 1990s and numerous witnesses have come forward over the years to corroborate the claims against him. As such, many astute researchers consider Franklin to be a cover-up of epic proportions. And at the heart of it was Spence, who appears to have been the key figure for this ring in Washington D.C.

Larry E. King
And it would seem that Spence was close to Roy Cohn as well.
"... Spence's soirees also attracted high-ranking military and intelligence officials. In fact, CIA Director William Casey seemed to be particularly fond of Spence and his high-flying get-togethers. Spence once threw a glitzy birthday bash for his friend and right-wing closet homosexual Roy Cohn, and his friend William Casey was one of the guests of honor. Larry King, as you will recall, discussed his friendship with William Casey in an article in Omaha's Metropolitan."
(The Franklin Scandal, Nick Bryant, pg. 296) 
Thus, Cohn was not only friendly with Spence, but the infamous Bill Casey would attend a birthday bash for Cohn as a guest of honor. As was noted in the prior installment, Cohn was instrumental in setting up media mogul Rupert Murdoch as a propagandist for the CIA during the Reagan years. Casey was the CIA director during this time and personally participated in the talks to sponsor Murdoch, along with US Information Agency director Charles Wick, a friend of Gray's. It is likely Cohn used his relationship with Casey to make these arrangements.

Casey is surely one of the most controversial CIA directors of all time, playing a key role in Iran-Contra. But beyond that, Casey appears to have been a leading figure in both the Fascist International and pedophile rings linked to it, as was noted before here.

William Casey
Casey was also very close to Gray and had been a member of the George Town Club since at least the early 1970s, when his relationship with Gray appears to have begun. According to DeCamp, Gray was also very close to Omaha World-Herald publisher Harold Andersen, reportedly a key figure in the Franklin pedophile ring, but I have been unable to confirm any of this. Still Gray, who hailed from Nebraska, took frequent trips back to the state throughout his adult life, nominally to keep in touch with his family. These trips continued throughout the Franklin era.

But let us return to Cohn. It would appear that the man potentially had ties to two individuals, fellow Republican homosexuals, who were engaged in honey trapping. In the case of Craig Spence, there can be little doubt that he was involved in some type of sexual blackmail. The evidence is far more circumstantial for Gray, but allegations have dogged him for years and he was apparently quite notorious among D.C. vice officers.

There are also indications that Spence and Gray were involved in the long alleged Franklin pedophile ring managed by Larry King. The evidence for Spence is far more compelling. In point of fact, there isn't especially credible evidence linking Gray to it other than his connections and his frequent trips to Nebraska. Still, both men were close to Bill Casey, who appears to be plugged into a broader international pedophile network. And Cohn had relationships with all three men, being especially close to Casey and Spence and potentially providing Gray with an attorney when he was implicated in a vice ring.

Roy Cohn
Before wrapping up, it is worth mentioning again Cohn's alleged membership in Permindex, the notorious trade organization originally headquartered in Basel, Switzerland that has long been linked to the Kennedy assassination. Its linkage to the Kennedy assassination in turn is largely based upon the membership of New Orleans businessman and alleged CIA asset Clay Shaw had in the organization. Shaw was famously indicted by New Orleans attorney Jim Garrison for his role in the Kennedy assassination during the late 1960s.

Shaw, like Cohn, Gray and Spence, was a Republican closet homosexual. Over the course of Garrison's investigation, Shaw was repeatedly linked to the curious figure of David Ferrie. Ferrie worked with Lee Harvey Oswald out of the office of New Orleans private detective Guy Banister during the summer of 1963. Both Banister and Ferrie were linked to a host of far right wing organizations (as was noted before here) many of them tied to the same anti-Castro network I linked the Company to in the second installment of this series.

But beyond that, Ferrie was also linked extensively to the Syndicate and, more ominously, an interstate prostitute ring that was essentially a gloried form of sexual slavery (noted before here). Most disturbing of all, however, is the fact that Ferrie was an arch pedophile who may have molested dozens of kids in the New Orleans area. As noted before here, there are some indications that Shaw and Ferrie were both involved in an especially sadistic pedophile ring in New Orleans. What's more, Shaw had ties to the same international network that Casey was a part of, as I noted before here.

Clay Shaw
Another alleged member of Permindex was Licio Gelli, the notorious Grand Master of Italy's Propaganda Due (P2) Masonic Lodge (noted before here). P2, which was linked to a host of outrageous in Italy, including various assassinations and terrorism, has been repeatedly described as a state within a state. Compromised largely of high ranking figures in the Vatican and the Italian political and business communities (to say nothing of the military and intelligence agencies), P2 served as something of a shadow government for Italy throughout the 1970s and early 1980s. This blog has considered the lodge in depth before here.

P2 and Gelli derived much of their power from a collection of files Gelli kept with comprising material on numerous figures that he used for blackmail purposes. Whether or not these files contained sexual material is unknown, but would hardly be surprising. The respective operations of Cohn, Shaw and Gelli all seem to follow a similar modus operandi.

And be assured, Spence and Gray were hardly the extent of Cohn's ties to sexual blackmail. In fact, one of his proteges appears to have spent decades springing various honey traps across the globe. He shall be considered in the next installment. Stay tuned dear reader.


Sunday, November 6, 2016

A Rock of Ravens



As regular readers of this blog may be aware, your humble writer is in the process of moving. This adventure began on September 9, 2016, when I departed Florida, my home for nearly a quarter of a century. It entered into a new stage on October 31 when I purchased a new house (yes, the closing was on Halloween). While I don't normally do blogs that revolve around myself, I've been rather struck by a lot of the history and curious synchronicities surrounding my new home.

Of course even the dating is rather apt. Over two thousand years ago September 9, 9 A.D. witnessed the storied defeat of Varus by a confederation of Germanic tribes under the control of the Roman-trained military officer Arminius at the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest. This was one of the most stunning defeats the Roman Empire ever experienced, one that had a profound effect on the course of the Empire. This battle would later play an enormous role in the emerging German nationalism of the nineteenth century and would develop a practical cult around it during the Nazi era (Himmler and several of his mystics in the SS were obsessed with the battle). Given the amount of time this blog has dedicated to exploring esoteric Nazism, I suppose there is a certain symmetry to the date. And Halloween needs no explanation.


The character I purchased the house from has a certain spooky air about him. I shall refer to him as "Pete" due to his striking similarity to the character of Pete Martell (Jack Nance) in the soon-to-be-revived Twin Peaks. This individual is a dead ringer right down to the look, the voice and the outdoors man air to the point that I was tempted to ask him if he had ever met anyone named David Lynch or Mark Frost a time or two.

Pete Martell
"Pete" is a well traveled individual who had had filled the house with various treasures from around the world. He has a special interest in Buddhism and Hinduism and owned many exotic religious pieces from the Far East. During the turbulent 1960s he had been drafted, went to Vietnam and then ended up in San Francisco in 1967, right on Haight-Ashbury no less. He claimed that no less than Janis Joplin had babysat his daughter for a time. I was rather dubious of this bit, but he could certainly spin a yarn.


Pete can tell many others about his travels around the world, which were frequent. The house was littered with pictures of him across the Far East, before the Great Pyramid of Giza and at Al-Khazneh, among man others. My girlfriend and I asked him several times what he had done for a living and he skillfully evaded the question every time. We had begun to suspect something spooky when one of his former neighbors, who had lived near him for nearly thirty years, made a curious unsolicited statement: Pete had worked for the government, had traveled frequently and had never offered any details concerning his work. While he was well liked, many neighbors suspected his work was highly classified.

While doing my own digging, I realized Pete had lived in Arlington, VA during the 1980s while the cabin we purchased from him was being built. His old address did not appear to be far from the Pentagon. Certainly the possibilities are endless. But moving along.

The house is located a little off of U.S Route 50, which stretches from West Sacramento, California to Ocean City, Maryland, and features such destinations as Kansas City, St. Louis and even Washington, D.C. The stretch through Nevada is known as "The Loneliest Road in America" while the one in my new location runs through the Appalachian Mountains, with much of it paralleling the historic Northwestern Turnpike. The turn off is between Romney, West Virginia and Winchester, Virginia. This was one of the bloodiest stretches of the Civil War, with both towns be hotly contested by the Union and the Confederacy.


Interestingly, Romney features the largest of the remaining Indian mounds in West Virginia's Eastern Panhandle in the form of the Indian Mound Cemetery. It is believed to have been to have been constructed by the mysterious Hopewell peoples. As I've noted before here, West Virginia has witnessed a lot of high weirdness, and Indian mounds frequently appear against the backdrop.

The land that Recluse's new home resides upon was originally owned by Lord Fairfax and was deeded to Dr. James Craik in 1766. Craik was George Washington's personal physician while Fairfax had first encountered Washington when the future president was but 16. Fairfax employed him as a surveyor for three years. Naturally both Fairfax and Craik were prominent Freemasons. There is some speculation that Fairfax first introduced Washington to Masonry.


Lord Fairfax (top) and James Craik (bottom)
"Pete," the former owner, dubbed the cabin "Ravens' Rock." This was allegedly due to the rocks at the top of a nearby mountain barring this same name. This would apparently not be the only rock formation on a mountain or location in West Virginia being named Raven Rocks. Curiously, there is also a highly secret military facility in Pennsylvania called Raven Rock Mountain Complex. Effectively it is a nuclear bunker that serves as an "underground Pentagon." It contains emergency operating centers for the US Army, Navy and Air Force. Allegedly, the "War Room" is located here.


Beyond the potential intelligence allusions, the raven itself is also littered with symbolism. The great Tech-Gnostic provides some interesting insights:
"Throughout the ages, birds have been harbingers of fortuitousness... of consequence. Owls, crows and especially the crow’s big brother… the Raven… have foretold of ominous events. It is widely known that a gathering of crows is known as a 'murder of crows.' It may not be as well known that a gathering of Ravens is called a 'Conspiracy of Ravens.'...
"Common ravens have coexisted with humans for thousands of years. Over the centuries, they have been the subject of mythology, folklore, art, and literature. In many cultures, including the indigenous cultures of Scandinavia, ancient Ireland and Wales, Bhutan, the northwest coast of North America, and Siberia and northeast Asia, the raven has been revered as a spiritual figure or 'Trickster' god."

Here are some more insights into the associations of the raven in folklore:
"In Ancient Greece, too, the raven was a solar bird sacred to Apollo. Although Puharich says that the eagles determined the sitting of the omphalos at Delphi, Strabo states that this task was performed by ravens. At least both birds have this in common, that they acted as messengers of the gods and performed prophetic roles. Ravens were also attributes of Mithras, and these were believed to be endowed with the power of casting evil spells.
"Ravens are common features of Celtic legend, in which they played prophetic roles. The Psuedo-Plutarch was undoubtedly based himself upon Gaulish tradition, translated Lugdunum (the Celtic name for Lyons) as 'Ravens' Hill' rather than the accepted 'Lug's Hill', since a flight of ravens had shown the city's founders where to build.
"In Ireland, the war-goddess took the name of 'Bobd' or carrion-crow and often appeared in this shape. The crow is the nocturnal aspect of the raven and in Ancient Greece was sacred to Athene while, as we have seen, the Raven was Apollo's bird. 
"In any case, ravens play a fundamental part in the Welsh tale, 'The Dream of Rhonabwy': when Arthur's men slaughtered Owen's ravens, the surviving birds reacted violently and in their turn hacked the soldiers to pieces. Ravens still occupy a respectable place in folklore... The birds were sacred to the Gauls and in German mythology were the companions of Wotan (Odin).
"In Scandinavian mythology, two ravens perched on Odin's throne, Hugin {Mind} and Munnin {Memory}, and a pair of wolves crouched beside the god. The two ravens stand for the creative and the two wolves for the destructive principle..."
(Dictionary of Symbols, Jean Chevalier & Alain Gheerbrant, pgs. 789-790)
The raven clearly has an extensive association with prophecy and creation. Many Native American Demiurges also take on the form of the raven. Beyond this, ravens also figured prominently in the symbolism of alchemist.
"Alchemists have always associated the stage of putrefaction, where matter becomes black, with the raven. They call this stage 'the Raven's Head': it is leprous and must be bleached by 'bathing seven times in the waters of Jordan'. These are imbibitions, sublimations, cohobations or digestion of matter, all practiced under the lordship of fire alone. This is why the black bird is so often depicted on the pages of ancient treatises of Hermetic lore..."
(Dictionary of Symbols, Jean Chevalier & Alain Gheerbrant, pgs. 790-791) 

Putrefaction, in the form of nigredo, is the first stage of alchemy's "Great Work." The Great Work is symbolically supposed to represent the journey of rebirth. The nigredo stag represents the death of the old self so that something new can spring forth. Certainly this is rather apt for my present situation. One stage of my life is finished and another is just beginning.

The world may be going more and more mad every day, but even dreams can shine forth in these dark days. I've long dreamed of writing before a roaring fire and I fulfilled it this evening. It is a small dream, but big things often have small beginnings. This is good to keep in mind as the final days of the US Election come upon us. Be wary dear reader but remain hopeful all the same.

NOTE: New posts on this blog may be scarce for the next month or so. The process of getting settled into my new home will be time consuming and will seriously cut into my writing time, but I shall do my best. Certainly there may be more than a few current events in the near future that will warrant comment. At worst, regular posts should be back again by early December. Until then, stay tuned.