Man's Son or the Children of the Sun?

As no doubt many of you are aware, infamous American cult leader and goth/heavy metal icon Charles Manson shed his mortal coil on November 19, 2017. Manson's death came at a time when Charlie had been enjoying something of a pop culture Renaissance. The ill-fated David Duchovny series Aquarius most recently dealt with some of the more conspiratorial notions surrounding Manson while a reenactment of the Tate murders was crucial to the most reason season of AMC's American Horror Story: Cult. A few years ago it was announced that rocker-turned director Rob Zombie would team with American Psycho author Bret Easton Ellis for their own Manson TV series, but despite such pedigree, nothing seems to have come of it.

Most recently acclaimed hack director Quentin Tarantino was said to be developing his own Manson project, which hit a snag of late due to the ongoing fallout surround longtime Tarantino associate Harvey Weinstein. Even shock rocker Marilyn Manson, who took part of his stage name and persona from Charlie, has been back in the headlines of late in wake of as the Las Vegas shooting.

Marilyn Manson

I'm sure many regular readers of this blog are quite aware of many of the conspiracy theories surrounding Manson, especially in relation to the Process Church of the Final Judgment. I've dealt with this topic before here and here (and with the Process itself in this series) and will thus not delve into these topics at length here. What I would like to consider here in brief is Manson's ties to various far right networks and the truly global reach of these networks.

Fear and Loathing in Southern California

As many of you are no doubt aware, Manson is often depicted as the quintessential burned out hippie who ushered in the dark side of the Age of Aquarius, or something to that effect. But a closer examination reveals that when one looks past the sex, drugs and rock 'n roll, Manson and his cult had far more in common with later right wing organizations than with the 1960s counterculture.

To wit, Manson and his cult departed from San Francisco, the absolute heart of the 1960s counterculture (at the end of the  of Summer of Love no less) and relocated to Southern California. Manson explained this move as an effort to escape the "bad vibes" of San Francisco. But surely things would have been hardly any better for a hippie cult in Southern California at this time, especially around the Los Angeles area.

While pop culture often depicts California as awash in the counterculture statewide in the 1960s nowadays, this was far from the reality. In fact, Southern California (outside of Hollywood) was the absolute heartland of far right organizations during this era. The most well known was of course the John Birch Society (JBS), who had their largest national presence in Southern California at this time, but they were hardly alone.

"The geographical distribution of Birch strength corresponds roughly to the concentrations of petty conservatism around country. The midwestern Bible Belt is fertile soil, and the Mormon-settled state of Utah, Idaho, Washington container membership out of proportion to their population. The eastern seaboard and Chicago largely turned their backs on the society. The Texas, Florida, in Southern California are Birch country.

"Southern California is the lotus land not only for the society but for ultra conservatism in general. When the Australian Dr. Fred Schwarz first set up his theological anti-communism shop in the United States, it was in Waterloo, Iowa, but the siren call of the California southland soon lured him to San Pedro and now Long Beach, where his Christian Anti-Communism Crusade has been anchored since 1958. Possibly nowhere in the nation is there a denser concentration of rightist activity than in Greater Los Angeles. Two well-known outfits are the Liberty Amendment Committee (not to be confused with the Liberty Lobby), which from national headquarters at 6413 Franklin Boulevard pushes for repel of the graduated income tax, and the Free Enterprise Division of Coast and Southern Federal Savings and Loan Association, which supports a staff of paid propagandists struggling 'to preserve the climate of economic opinion favorable to Americanism.' The First National Directory of Rightist Groups, published in 1968 by the Alert Americans Association, lists literally dozens of smaller groups and fronts. Glendale alone boasts the United Patriotic People of the USA, and Community Crusades for Americanism, the Network of Patriotic Letter Writers, Pilots for the American Republic, and the Reverend W. Stuart McBirnie, who originates a daily radio program from his United Community Church and subscribes to the motto 'Free Enterprise under God.' This is in addition to active branches of the National States Rights Party, the American Nazi Party, Young Americans for Freedom, the Constitution Party, and Pro-America."

(Power on the Right, William Turner, pgs. 22-23)

the JBS in Southern California during the 1960s

Turner would go on to note that Southern California was also ground zero for the emerging American militia movement, with numerous right wing paramilitary organizations cropping up there throughout the 1960s. One of the most notorious was related to Christian Identity minister (and former Army intelligence officer) William Potter Gale, who was addressed at length before here.

Little remarked upon are the similarities between the Manson Family and later militia groups. Manson and his followers were allegedly preoccupied with a coming race war. In preparation for it, they began to stock pile firearms while searching for isolated compounds in the California desert to dwell in. There are shades of the Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord here and it is certainly possible that various right wing paramilitary groups in Southern California at the time took inspiration from the Family. But moving along.

After Manson's arrest, the Family would briefly forge close ties with the Aryan Brotherhood, the notorious white supremacist prison gang. Curiously this chapter of the Manson Family is little reported upon, even by alternative researchers, despite producing some of the cult's most shocking post-Tate/LaBianca moments. The alliance began in 1971 and quickly produced several striking moments of violence.

"In the summer of 1971, Manson formed an alliance with the Aryan Brotherhood (A.B.) at Folsom Prison by arranging visits between A.B. members and his girls, who – following Charlie's orders – gave the A.B.-ers hand jobs and lap dances in the Folsom Prison visiting room. Charlie swung a deal with the A.B. where they would protect him against prison beatings and homosexual assaults on the inside and, in return, Charlie's girls would look after A.B. members on the outside.

"The first A.B. member to join the Manson fold was Kenneth Como, who led a group of Manson Family members on a ten-minute shootout during an attempted robbery of the Western Surplus Store in Los Angeles on August 21, 1971. This incident later became known as 'The Hawthorne Shoot-Out.' Others involved in the robbery included Mary Brunner, Gypsy, Charles Lovett (aka. Chuckleberry), Little Larry and Dennis Rice...

"After the arrest of the Manson Family Six, it was learned that the same group had been responsible for the August 13th robbery of a Covina beer distributorship. The motive behind these robberies was to collect an arsenal of weapons to break Manson out of prison. According to Vincent Bugliosi, their madcap plan included using the stolen weapons to hijack a 747 and kill one passenger every hour until Manson – and all other incarcerated Family members – were released...

"Como in due time became a clan leader in his own right, as those Manson Family members who had followed him into armed battle now became his followers. Gypsy declared herself to Como, look, along with Mary Brunner, Charlie's first Manson Family convert. This resulted in a dispute between Manson and Como that soon came to a head, leading to the subsequent breakdown of the pact between the Aryan Brotherhood, and Charlie's Family." 

(The Shadow Over Santa Susana, Adam Gorightly, pgs. 144-145)

the aftermath of the Hawthorne Shoot-Out

The Aryan Brotherhood pact also resulted in one of the most mysterious pair of murders linked to the Manson Family. Nominally these killings appear to be related to the death of Ronald Hughes, an early defense attorney for the Family who disappeared in the midst of the trial. His body later turned up and Family member Sandra Good alleged that he had been murdered by the cult.

This all unfolded around late 1970. A little less than a year later the A.B. appears to have assisted the Family in tying up loose ends.

"Family members were still involved in murder and attempted murder. Brenda McCann, aka. Nancy Pitman, was arrested on November 11, 1972 in Stockton, California. Brenda had been Bruce Davis' girlfriend, with whom she had been on the lam in the Los Angeles sewers for months before they turn themselves in during December 1970. This time, she was found in a house which contained a body buried in the basement, that of Lauren Willett (19), who had been shot in the head. Along with McCann were two members of the Aryan Brotherhood, as well as another woman named Priscilla Cooper (21). Both women had X's carved into their foreheads, identifying them as Manson Family members. What alerted police to the house was the fact that a car parked outside belonged to a man who been murdered a few days earlier in Northern California. James T. Willett was a former Marine, and had been found in his Marine uniform: killed with a shotgun and decapitated. As the police were busy arresting the four people in the house – which contained a small arsenal of weapons – Lynette 'Squeaky' Fromme called and asked to be picked up, evidently in the slain Mr. Willett's car. The police were only too happy to oblige.

"The motive for the murders remains unknown to this day. It is known that the Willetts have been associates of the Family for some time, at least a year if not longer according to Bugliosi. Bugliosi also wondered if James and Lauren Willett were the same James and Lauren who had driven Ronald Hughes to his campsite; if so, their deaths would be in accord with the Family's tradition of murder-as-cover-up. Bugliosi was unable to find the original James and Lauren, who had long since moved from their last known address. Eventually, the two men of the Aryan Brotherhood confessed to the crimes and were sentenced, as were Nancy Pitman and Priscilla Cooper. There was nothing to hold Lynnette Fromme, so she was set free."

(Sinister Forces Book II, Peter Levenda, pg. 121)

The relationship between the Manson family and the A.B. later soured, allegedly on account of Charlie not being racist enough for the A.B.'s liking. Manson assaulted Como in prison while the A.B. reportedly retaliated by  slipping Charlie some rat poison. The eventual deflections proved to be costly for Manson as well. Not only was Mary Brunner Manson's first convert, so was also the mother of his son Valentine Michael.

A.B.-er Kenneth Como relaxing with a Manson Family member

Despite these setbacks, Manson would continue to forge alliances with Nazi-leaning organizations. One of the most notable and longest standing has been with James N. Mason of the Universal Order. Mason was a veteran of George Lincoln Rockwell's American Nazi Party (ANP) and after Rockwell's death, signed up with the militant National Socialist Liberation Front (NSLF), an organization founded by fellow American Nazi Party member Joseph Charles Tommasi in Southern California during the 1970s. After engaging in a dialogue with Manson, Mason launched the Universal Order during the early 1980s.

"... In 1980 James N. Mason (n. 1952), a violent Nazi who had joined Rockwell in the mid-sixties, revived the NASL (it had lapsed with Tommasi's assassination in 1975) as a forerunner of new militant American whites supremacist movements committed to an armed struggle against the so-called Zionist Occupied Government (ZOG), a current far-right epiphet for the U.S. government as a Jewish-controlled puppet regime. Mason relaunched Siege, in which he preached violence, racial strife and an all-out war against the hated system. In his quest for extremist mentors, Mason then became obsessed Charles Manson (b. 1934), the notorious killer serving life in prison for conspiracy in the murders of the actress Sharon Tate and others in 1969. Although Manson had carved a swastika into his forehead, his politics were vague. However, Mason regarded Manson as the supreme outlaw and adopted the convicted criminal as the spiritual leader of his neo-Nazi group, the Universal Order (the name came from Manson). Mason's Nazi religion embraced both Hitler and Manson as saviors, thereby combining Koehl's messianic piety with the millenarian violence of Tommasi. In the pages of Siege, Mason paid extravagant tribute to Hitler, Tommasi, Manson and Savitri Devi."

(Black Sun, Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, pg. 19) 

James N. Mason

In addition to Joseph Charles Tommasi, another former American Nazi Party member was gaining a following in Southern California during the Family's most active years. This would be James K Warner, who relocated to Los Angeles in 1966. There he became a high priest the Odinist Religion and Nordic Faith Movement. He later made contact with the Odinist Fellowship of Else Christensen. I've found no evidence of contact between Warner and Manson, but one can imagine them having some degree of shared interests. But lets us return to James N. Mason for a moment.

Else Christensen

Mason's ties to the American Nazi Party are especially interesting in light on the long reputed ties between Manson and the Process Church of the Final Judgment. As was noted before here, the Process (an organization which also had a morbid fascination with Nazism) had been in contact with George Lincoln Rockwell shortly before his assassination. And here is Manson helping a former ANP member establish his own neo-Nazi outfit while other members of the ANP were active in Southern California at peak Family years. In the case of the pot-smoking Tommasi, he actively tried to recruit among the counterculture. Unfortunately, few investigators have explored these links. But moving along.

Beyond Southern California

Now that the Process has been brought up, I simply must address Maury Terry's allegations on a nation-spanning cult network that Manson was a part of. Per Terry the cult, often referred to as the "Four P-movement," originated with the Process Church of the Final Judgment and had links not only to the Manson Family, but also the Son of Sam killing spree (which have long been suspected of being committed by more than one person), the Cotton Club murder, and the Atlanta child murders, among others.

As I noted before here, I find Terry's claims to be dubious on some levels. But his raw data is compelling even though I believe his sources (including the Son of Sam himself, David Berkowitz) led him to conclusions that are questionable. Most glaring is Terry's blindness to the extent of which this alleged cult dovetailed with assorted right wing groups despite the frequent references to Nazism in Terry's investigation.

Consider for instance a reputed member of the Son of Sam cult, "Big" Fred Cowan. A bodybuilder and "former" member of he US Army (like Berkowitz himself, any number of militia types and, increasingly, mass shooters in general), Cowan went on a rampage in 1977 in New Rochelle, New York at his workplace that left six people dead on Valentine's Day. By all accounts Cowan was an unabashed neo-Nazi.

"No piker when it came to racism, Cowan decorated his attic apartment with portraits of Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler, Wermacht helmets, vintage German weapons, and a Nazi battle flag. He joined the fanatical, Georgia-based National States Rights Party and stocked up on anti-Semitic literature, but friends still thought he was joking when Cowan spoke about the possibility of 'shooting up a synagogue.' In Cowan's view of life, 'Nothing is lower than blacks and Jews except the police who protect them.' "

(Raising Hell, Michael Newton, pg. 113) 

"Big" Fred

Curiously, FBI informant and multiple murderer Frazier Glenn Miller was affiliated with the National States Rights Party (NSRP) in the 1970s. Miller, also an Army veteran, would go on to shoot up a synagogue in 2014. In fairness, Miller and Cowan were surely not the only white supremacists to contemplate shooting up a synagogue. It is interesting to note, however, that the NSRP had a strong presence in southern California at this time as well. In Power on the Right, former FBI agent William Turner notes that the NSRP was frequently used as a recruiting ground for the budding patriot militias there. It may well have been a recruiting pool for something else as well. But moving along.

the banner of the National States Rights Party

For Terry, one of the key connections between Manson and the Son of Sam killings was the figure of William Mentzer, a low rent hitman convicted in the Cotton Club murder. Mentzer reportedly knew Manson in LA back in the late 1960s and then did work for the Son of Sam cult nearly a decade later as part of a nation wide cult network.

While none of this has ever been proven, it is beyond question that Mentzer was involved in the murder of millionaire Roy Radin in LA. At the time Radin had been assisting famed Hollywood producer Robert Evans, who was already then legendary for his involvement in The Godfather and Chinatown (which was directed by Sharon Tate's husband, Roman Polanski), procure funding for his latest picture, the Francis Ford Coppola-directed Cotton Club. Evans now has something of a cult following thanks to the documentary The Kid Stays in the Picture that glamorized his life and even had a cartoon based upon him at one point. Needless to say, this episode of his life is rarely addressed by "serious" movie buffs.

Reportedly Radin's murder was contracted by a drug trafficker known as Karen Jacobs, who had been using Evans' movie to launder drug money in addition to breaking into Hollywood. At the time of Radin's death Jacobs was married to Larry Greenberger, a member of the Medellin cartel and close associate of the infamous Carlos Lehder. As was noted before here, the Hitler-worshiping Lehder had extensive ties to the Fascist International.

Carlos Lehder

According to Steve Wick in Bad Company, Greenberger had also had dealings with fugitive financier Robert Vesco. As was noted before here, Vesco also had frequent dealings with the far right during the 1970s. But back to Mentzer for the time being.

Mentzer, whom Terry dubbed "Manson II," frequently collaborated with another killer known as Alex Marti. An Argentine national, Marti also reportedly had a soft spot for Nazism.

"... Marti, an Argentine and reputed for death squad member was more violent of the two, and also a Hitler to Cody who had a portrait of your in his home, a Third Reich library, and who admired the Nazi method of execution: a single gunshot to the back of the head."

(Sinister Forces Book III, Peter Levenda, pg. 218)

Marti assisted Mentzer in killing Radin and reportedly in other murders. Both men appear to have first encountered one another while working as bodyguards for famed pornographer Larry Flynt, the founder of Hustler. In this capacity both men worked for one William Rider, who at the time was Flynt's brother-in-law and the head of his security force. Rider, who was a crucial source for both Steve Wick and Maury Terry concerning Mentzer, was also a curious fellow. During the trials revolving around Mentzer, Rider was accused of poisoning "former" OSS officer, and renowned drug and arms trafficker Mitchell WerBell III, another Flynt security man and luminary of the Fascist International.

WerBell

As was noted before here, WerBell was also very close to the above-mentioned financier Robert Vesco. I also speculated there that he may have been supplying sub-machine guns to Italian to Italian neo-fascist terror organization during this time frame, a point that we shall return to again in a moment.

Rider was accused of poisoning WerBell by a private detective known as A. Michael Pascal. Reportedly Psacal, who had also employed Mentzer and Marti, had claimed to be a former CIA agent on more than one occasion. Eventually Pascal was linked to another murder Marti and Mentzer had carried out and reached a plea bargain as his health was failing. Pascal's claims do not appear to have been given much merit by either Terry or Wick, two of the only researchers to examine the Cotton Club murders in depth (surprisingly, there have been few attempts to chronicle this salacious tale despite the fame of Evans and director Francis Ford Coppola).

Certainly Pascal seems to have embellished more than a few things, but Rider seems to have deserved far more scrutiny that either Wick or Terry applied to him. Rider was apparently aware of Radin's murder for some time before reporting it to authorities and "involuntarily" showed Menzer and Marti the spot where Radin's body was ultimately found.

apparently William Rider (left) and William Mentzer (right)

And in another murder involving a prostitute, Rider apparently "lent" Mentzer the pistol that was used for the killing. He was then able to conveniently produce it for the police, linking Mentzer to a crime police had been struggling with for some time. This was also the murder Pascal was implicated in, by the way. But moving along.

Thus, we are left with Mentzer, reputedly a member of a nationwide cult network who is only a few degrees of separation removed from Carlos Lehder and potentially even Mitchell WerBell, key figures in the Fascist International at the time. What's more, Mentzer was frequently working with an Argentine national alleged to have been involved in the death squads there. During this era the Argentine death squads were closely linked to the World Anti-Communist League (addressed at length before here) and Operation Condor, two linchpins of the Fascist International.

Is it absurd to think that Terry's alleged cult network could have this type of international reach?

Not when one considers another alleged associate of Charles Manson. As was noted before here, there are strong indications that Manson knew infamous LSD trafficker Ronald Hadley Stark during his time in L.A., that Stark may even have been a source of the drugs the Manson Family was known to traffick in. Regular readers of this blog are no doubt familiar with Stark, whom I examined at length before here, as are many of you who have studied the murky history of LSD.

Ronald Hadley Stark

As such, many of you no doubt are aware that not only was Stark the largest LSD distributor in the West for almost a decade but also that he was almost surely an agent of some branch of the US intelligence community. Some of you may not be aware, however, to his ties to the Italian neo-fascist community, which were extensive.

What's more, many of these neo-fascists were involved in the murky netherworld of what is commonly referred to as Operation Gladio. For the unaware, here are a few details concerning Gladio:

"Operation Gladio was first made public in August 1990, when then-Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti admitted its existence to the Italian Parliamentary Committee on Terrorism. To this day much about Gladio remains mysterious. It seems that planning for the operation began to take shape in 1951... On paper, Gladio was a NATO-backed 'Stay Behind' operation: any Soviet attack on Italy would encounter a pre-established resistance network, a militarily-trained underground with access to secret arms caches hidden across the country...

"The Italian governments initially claimed the Gladio was part of the general agreement within NATO. NATO, however, officially denied any involvement. Revelations that Gladio-type organizations existed in non-NATO nations like Austria, Spain, and Switzerland further eroded the NATO cover story. Gladio really seems to of been what its name means: a double-edge sword to be used against both the Soviets and any elements inside Italy, from either the left or the right, that might try to take Italy out of NATO. Gladio also served as the backdrop for the 'strategy of tension,' which repeatedly destabilized Italian politics with bombings and other terrorist acts. Popular fear of terrorism, from either the 'left' or 'right,' could then be used to justify suspension of constitutional law or even, in a worst-case scenario, a military-backed Pinochet-like 'white coup' to ensure Italy's continued allegiance to the West."

(Dreamer of the Day, Kevin Coogan, pg. 332)

a patch used by Gladio recruits

As was noted before here, Gladio heavily recruited among "former" Nazis and vigorous neo-fascists. In many cases, the latter were used to infiltrate left wing organizations and push them towards acts of terrorism. What's more, there is compelling evidence that occultism was used among the lower levels to condition would-be terrorists. The ideology of the philosopher and occultist Julius Evola (whom Steven Bannon infamously addressed of late) was especially popular. Some of his acolytes among such ranks referred to themselves as the "Children of the Sun." Curiously, Terry claims that the East Coast branch of his alleged cult network called themselves "the Children."

As for Evola, his ideology appears to have been useful on more than philosophical levels.

"One of the principal influences on the ideology of Ordine Nuovo, and of the neo-fascist in general, was the philosopher Julius Evola. Evola rejected what he saw as the decadence of the modern world in favor of the nobility of 'tradition,' based on a blend of mythology, occultism and esotericism. It has been suggested that the remarkable control exercised by the leaders of the extreme right over some of their teenage followers could in part be explained by their dabbling in black magic and esotericism..."

(Puppetmasters, Philip Willan, pg. 43)

Evola

Not unlike the remarkable control Charlie displayed over his followers as well. And if the Pentagon and the US intelligence community were willing to sign off on these methods in Europe, would they not do so here as part of an American version of Gladio?

To be sure there is quite a considerable amount of evidence of these and cults like the Manson Family along with various neo-Nazi and militia groups were at the forefront of these operations. I have gathered much more evidence of this over the years that what is presented here. Those of you who follow the links and look at some of the older articles sited here will no doubt be able to fill in some of the gaps.

At some point I'll hopefully be able to return to this topic to fill in the remaining pieces. Until then, stay tuned dear reader.

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

Welcome to the seventh installment in my examination of the high weirdness that has intrigued the far right over the decades. Over the course of this series I've used high weirdness as a catch all for a host of fringe topics such as UFOs, psi, psychedelics, the occult, human potential and so on. As for the far right, I have primarily been looking at it through the prism of several key NGOs and think tanks such as the Committee on the Present Danger (CPD) Mach I and the American Security Council that are closely aligned with the American military-industrial complex.

With first installment of this series I considered the bizarre Sikh temple shooting of 2012 and the possible deep political implications behind it as well as the high weirdness of the 2016 US presidential election cycle. Also briefly touched upon were the two primary US elite factions, the traditional conservative establishment largely centered around the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and other such think tanks, and the far right. Part two moved on to the origins of the military-industrial complex, which can be traced to a group of middle managers close to Secretary of War (and Bonesman) Henry Stimson and the emerging class of technocrats groomed by Vannevar Bush in the National Defense Research Committee (NDRC) and the Office of Scientific Research and Development (OSRD).

The third installment primarily focused on the rise of the far right within the military-industrial complex, a shift that was largely driven by a cabal of military officers that had served under/with General Douglas MacArthur in the Pacific Theater of World War II and/or Korea. Many of these military officers also turn up in the Roswell incident and would later go on to found the American Security Council, the premier lobby group for the military-industrial complex throughout the Cold War. Part four continued to examine Roswell, and the alleged technology recovered from it.

The fifth installment moved along to the extensive overlap between the ASC and the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP). With the sixth and most recent installment I went to examine the ASC's involvement in spreading the Hangar 18 mythos and the flurry of UFO-related books Regnery (the family of which had helped found the ASC, as was noted before here) published during the late 1960s and early 1970s that profoundly influenced the development of UFOlogy. The early works of Jacques Vallee were largely published by Regnery and have proven to be especially influential in this regard.

Erhard and Patrick

Up to this point I've primarily focused on the far right's ties to Ufology, but by the early 1970s they appear to have publicly branched out to some other arcane and fringe topics. On the whole, this was a heady time for the American deep state. Project MKOFTEN had been initiated in 1966 and it appears to have represented the CIA and Pentagon's boldest forays into high weirdness yet. It was that kind of era.

Amidst the backdrop of the emerging counterculture countless Americans developed an interest in these same types of previously esoteric subjects. One particular American was a salesman who was given the name Jack Rosenberg at his birth. After abandoning in his wife and small children in Philadelphia he began a trek westward that would end with him emerging as a charismatic guru known as Werner Erhard in California. It was there that he would make his fortune as the founder of est, a peculiar form of self-improvement specializing in Large Group Awareness training.

"...This was est (Erhard Sensitivity Training), the organization founded in 1971 by Werner Erhard, a former Scientologist – and used car salesman – who decided to exploit and adapt some of Scientology's concepts and techniques for his own self-improvement system. The now notorious est held seminars that attracted such celebrities as Buzz Aldrin, Yoko Ono, John Denver and the future UFO abduction researcher John Mack, but it wasn't long before est became a dirty word. Attendees were disturbed by the fascistic regime and zombielike demeanor of the members, as well as Erhard's own dictatorial control of the organization. Media disapproval was intense, and soon est was relegated to the scrapheap of dangerous cult. Erhard himself fled from the United States after press revelations about his private life and financial affairs. He is now believed to be somewhere in Russia.

"Tellingly, Erhard's real name was Jack Rosenberg, but it is said that he changed his name 'to replace Jewish weakness with German strength'. (His father was Jewish, but he converted to Episcopal Christianity.) Erhard had close links with Esalen Institute and gave funds to SRI's remote viewing project..."

(The Stargate Conspiracy, Lynn Pickneet & Clive Prince, pg. 235)

Since the publication of The Stargate Conspiracy in 1999 Werner Erhard has once gain returned to respectability. He routinely lectures at prestigious universities (and seems especially loved by Harvard) while his leadership courses are embraced by numerous multinationals. Many swear by Erhard's methods, which were compiled from a host of curious sources. Scientology was of course one of them, along with more conventional self-improvement gurus such as Dale Carnegie.

Werner Erhard

One of the most intriguing interesting influences came from writer-producer Leslie Stevens, who credited the original The Outer Limits, among many other franchises. Under the name L. Clark Stevens, Stevens published a science fiction work posing as nonfiction entitled est: The Steersman Handbook in 1970. Erhard became obsessed with this work shortly after its publication and copied the name for his own Erhard Sensitivity Training racket.

"... Earlier in the year, a friend had handed Erhard a science fiction novel called est: The Steersman Handbook, written by an author named L. Clark Stevens. In his book, Stevens wrote that 'est' stood for 'electronic social transformation,' and heralded the arrival of 'est people' bent on transforming society. Erhard was excited about Steven's message and made sure other staff members read the book. It wouldn't be long before he borrowed 'est' to fit his own needs."

(Outrageous Betrayal, Steven Pressman, pg. 40) 

Curiously, both Stevens and Erhard also appear to have gotten mixed up in the bizarre saga of The Nine as well, although it does not appear that the two men ever met. The connections that either man had to The Nine are extremely fascinating, but well beyond the scope of this series. The great Christopher Knowles of The Secret Sun had does incredible work on this topic here.

Let us return now to Erhard's influences. Two other crucial ones appear to be equally dubious self-improvement organizations Erhard was involved with in the early 1970s called Mind Dynamics and Leadership Dynamics. There was much overlap between these two companies as well with a third, Holiday Magic, a company specializing in hawking cosmetics door to door that was revealed to have been a massive pyramid scheme in federal courts by the mid-1970s. But more on that in a moment.

Mind Dynamics was the organization that appears to have had the greatest and most direct influence on Erhard's path to self-improvement. Mind Dynamic and its methods were largely the creation of an Englishman known as Alexander Everett. While little known nowadays, Everett is generally considered one of the early pioneers in Large Group Awareness training and the Human Potential Movement in general. Everett largely devised his methods in the mid-1960s while living in Texas. There he found a most curious mentor.

"Launched in the Bay Area only a few months earlier, Mind Dynamics was the hybrid creation of Alexander Everett, a former English schoolmaster whose own fascination with mind-cure principles had begun in the 1950s, when he worked in Kansas City for one of the Unity Schools of Christianity, a mind-cure offshoot. From there Everett had wandered down to Texas, where he found work as an assistant principal at an exclusive private school in Fort Worth. It was in Texas that Everett ran across a man named José Silva who years earlier had concocted something called Mind Control that purported to teach its adherents over the course of four twelve-hour sessions how to relax and harness the power of their minds. By controlling the brain's alpha waves, Mind Control held out the promise of extraordinary results, from waking up without an alarm clock to ridding the body of dangerously addictive habits.

"By the late 1960s Everett had created a similar mental exercise program called Mind Dynamics. After a few courses in Texas, he soon realized that California with its free-spirited environment, might provide a more hospitable climate for his metaphysical theories about brain waves. Everett settled in San Francisco in the early spring of 1970. Not long after he began selling for $200 a thirty-two-hour course on controlling the brain's alpha waves. By mastering Mind Dynamics, students supposedly could achieve almost any goal they set, from improving their IQs and ending insomnia to curing cancer while learning to avoid other life-threatening illnesses.

(Outrageous Betray, Steven Pressman, pg. 34)

possibly Alexander Everett

Jose Silva and his famed "Silva Mind Control Method" (more recently shortened to the "Silva Method") are most curious. Silva appears to have devised the name "Mind Control" for his method in either the 1950s or early 1960s, before the phrase had taken on a very specific meaning. In this context, the "mind control" is more literal with the student learning how to utilize untapped regions of his or her brain. As such, Silva's techniques are far more closely related to remote viewing than what is generally thought to have been investigated under the auspices of ARTICHOKE and MK-Ultra. As such, the Silva Method appears to have been chiefly concerned with ESP and the like.

As far as this researcher can determine, Silva's methods do not appear to have been investigated directly by the national security apparatus. In point of fact, Silva apparently offered his methods and techniques to the US government in the mid-1960s only to be rebuffed. He served in the Army during WWII in the Signals Corp, and this appears to have been the extent of his involvement in national security.

It is possible, however, that Silva's theories indirectly influenced later interest of the deep state. And it has been reported that Silva had contact was famed parapsychologist J.B. Rhine of Duke University. As was noted before here, Rhine's parapsychological experiments at Duke were of especial interest to Project ARTICHOKE. It is possible Silva's theories were discovered in those heady days and indiscreetly investigated. Mind Dynamics may even have been such a project.

Jose Silva

I say this because of the man who eventually became Everett's silent partner in Mind Dynamics. This would be one William Penn Patrick, who also founded Holiday Magic and Leadership Dynamics. Patrick died at the age of forty-three in 1973 while piloting a P-51 Mustang (apparently one of his hobbies was flying old WWII-era fighter planes), but left a strange and long lasting legacy in the time that he had. Here's a rundown of his largely illegal activities and how he became involved in Mind Dynamics:

"To reach more people, Everett needed a better marketing plan than simply the promise of untapped human potential. He found one in William Penn Patrick, a ruggedly handsome and self-confidence master salesman, who presided at the time over a worldwide pyramid-sales network of companies that sold products ranging from motor oil additives to banana-flavored body lotion. Patrick, a former door-to-door salesman in Illinois, was impressed with Everett's seeming ability to motivate people and quickly realized that Mind Dynamics could play a part in expanding his own business empire. Together he and Everett created the unlikely marriage of mass-marketing sales techniques and the human potential movement.

"Six years earlier, at the age of thirty-three, Patrick had begun a pyramid-sales company called Holiday Magic that ostensibly sold a line of fruit-flavor cosmetics. Holding out the tantalizing promise of handsome profits, Patrick sold distribution franchises to thousands of men and women for coast to coast. More often than not, the hapless distributors ended up with basements or garages stacked to the ceiling with jars of avocado face cream or cases of Sta-Pro motor oil additive while they vainly searched for other 'distributors' to keep the endless chain letter of marketing in motion. At the top of the pyramid stood Patrick, who amassed a fortune estimated at $200 million and lived on a 6,000-acre ranch north of San Francisco, where he pursued his hobby of restoring and flying vintage military airplanes. 

"Patrick's decision in 1970 to add Mind Dynamics to his stable of pyramid-sales companies came at a time when other pieces of his enterprise were coming under increasing legal attack. By then the California attorney general's office had received a rash of complaints about Patrick's business methods at Holiday Magic. Around the time he met Alexander Everett, Patrick had added an even more bizarre new program called Leadership Dynamics, which eventually created additional legal headaches. The four-day 'sensitivity' course put participants through a physically and mentally abusive regime in the name of offering them a 'more creative and constructive life.'

(Outrageous Betrayal, Steven Pressman, pgs. 34-35)

Holiday Magic is still studied to this day as one of the earliest and most notorious pyramid schemes. It was initially denounced in the US Senate in 1974 and is still used an example of such in graduate level criminal justice coursework to analyze corporate scams. For our purposes here, however, it was his other 1970 business venture that is most intriguing.

Leadership Dynamics

Leadership Dynamics was exposed to the public at large in a 1972 work called The Pit: A Group Encounter Defiled. It was principally the work of Gene Church, a Mind Dynamics employee who later joined a class action lawsuit against Leadership Dynamics. At the onset of this work Church laid out the stated aims of Leadership Dynamics:

"Leadership Dynamics Institute was formed on the principles outlined in a booklet entitled 'Happiness and Success Through Principal' written in 1967 by William Penn Patrick, the founder and corporate king of Holiday Magic, Inc., and apparent co-owner of LDI. The foremost principle set forth by Patrick is honesty, complete and total honesty, both toward yourself and others. Another attribute stressed is courage, courage to stand up and fight for what you believe.

"A further major principle put forth by Patrick is the necessity to differentiate between selfishness and greed. Selfishness is a normal and necessary human quality that everyone has and uses. If we, as individuals, were not selfish we would never have anything. Selfishness to Patrick means that you want something and are willing to work to get it. Greed, on the other hand, is an extension of selfishness to the point of wanting something for nothing." 

(The Pit, Gene Church & Conrad D. Carnes, pg. 2)

The Pit was later adapted into the above film, also known as Circle of Power

The latter principal may indicate Patrick had a fondness of Randism, which would hardly be surprising given his politics (more on that in a moment). The first principal outlined would be embraced wholeheartedly by est, which frequently imposed radical honesty on participants. But they never went anywhere near the extremes that Leadership Dynamics did.

The Leadership Dynamics course lasted four grueling days and cost participants $1000 each, no small sum of money in the early 1970s. Before the training began participants were required to sign waivers (a process later adopted by est up to a certain point) that gave the Leadership Dynamics trainers free reign to do virtually anything to their chargers short of killing them.

Upon signing the waivers, participants were subjected to what can best described as a cross between basic training for the US Army, Fight Club and an initiation ritual for Skull and Bones. Armed with swagger sticks and other curious props, the Leadership Dynamics instructors subjected their charges to a host of bizarre psychological, physical and sexual abuse.

"... the Leadership Dynamics course had become the target of lawsuits brought by participants who had signed up only to find themselves the unwitting victims of cruel physical and emotional abuse during the sessions. In some cases instructors ordered participants into closed coffins. Others were hung onto large wooden crosses for hours at a time. Still others were forced to take off all their clothes while fellow participants taunted them with cruel insults. In one session, a man was forced to perform fellatio on an artificial penis while women attending a separate Leadership Dynamics class were brought in to watch...

"In depositions and other court documents, Patrick and other Leadership Dynamics officials acknowledged the accuracy of some of the charges leveled against them in several lawsuits that stemmed from the brutality of the courses. Asked about simulated sex with an artificial penis, Patrick responded: 'Well, to put it bluntly, there are a lot of men that come to class that have forgotten how to use theirs in their marriage.' Patrick also admitted that it was common practice to hit people during the sessions. 'I slap my children from time to time. It serves a useful function,' he told lawyers during his deposition. The lawsuits eventually settled out of court, and Leadership Dynamics soon after when out of business."

(Outrageous Betrayal, Steven Pressman, pg. 41)

Every Leadership Dynamics participant was forced to stand in "the pit," an area in the conference room outlined by chairs and such, that served as a ring and confessional in one. Typically men and women entered the pit in the nude and were forced to tell their greatest secrets. Frequently they were assaulted throughout these confessions. Sometimes they were forced to fight one another in "the pit." As was noted above, mock-crucifixions were also performed while participants were sometimes left in closed coffins overnight.

If you are wondering why anyone would go through four days of this, Leadership Dynamics had two effective methods of keeping their audiences captive: On the one hand participants were assigned a partner to room with and if one individual fled the course, his or her roomie would also be thrown out and both individuals' nonrefundable $1000 was down the drain. This encouraged participants to spy on one another and inform the instructors if someone was contemplating escape.

There was an even more effective method, however: Patrick required participation in Leadership Dynamics to advance in his other business ventures:

"Leadership Dynamics Institute (LDI) was a required seminar for anyone wishing to take a managerial position with the Holiday Magic organization.

"Though not then employed by Holiday Magic, I had not strayed for long from the Holiday Magic family. Earlier in my life I had been a distributor for their home care and cosmetic products, and now I was involved in another Holiday Magic affiliate, Mind Dynamics. It had been make clear to me by my superiors within Mind Dynamics that Leadership Dynamics Institute would be an important rung in my personal ladder of success..."

(The Pit, Gene Church & Conrad D. Carnes, pgs. 1-2)

Most other LDI participants were sent there by family and close friends. This made the LDI courses especially brutal as the instructors were able to gather intelligence on their next batch of students from coworkers and family. This led to some extremely awkward confessions in "the pit." Many Holiday Magic employees carried out extramarital affairs with one another, for instance, and these were frequently exposed in "the pit."

In one incredible confession described by Church, a Holiday Magic employee is forced to acknowledge that he had witnessed his mother having sex with another woman as a child and was later molested by his father. The instructors were told of these traumas by the participant's own mother, who also a Holiday Magic employee.

When est's ties to Patrick's business enterprises come up, whatever influences Erhard derived from them is attributed to Mind Dynamics, which Erhard also worked for in the early 1970s. And yet est on the whole bares more of the confrontational style of Life Dynamics, at times coming off as a watered down version of Patrick's pressure cooker. After witnessing the numerous lawsuits Patrick and Leadership Dynamics were subjected too, Erhard no doubt realized that there were certain lines he couldn't cross. So while est featured ample verbal abuse from the instructors, a certain degree of physical discomfort from the length of the sessions and frequently traumatic confessions, the shocking physical abuse of Leadership Dynamics was largely dropped. At least for the rank and file est participants, anyway.

At least one of Erhard's early lieutenants, the Australian Stewart Emery, had been through Leadership  Dynamics. In 1971 Erhard asked Emery to put himself and his chief aides through the same type of techniques. Emery obliged and Erhard was apparently impressed. He appears to have later developed his own version of Leadership Dynamics for est trainers and other important officials and his family. It was dubbed the "fish bowl" rather than "the pit." There are much disputed accounts of Erhard subjecting his then-wife to extreme physical abuse during one of these "fish bowl" sessions in 1977 that resulted in one of Erhard's aides nearly choking her to death.

Who Was William Penn Patrick?

Clearly Patrick seems to have had a much greater influence on est than is generally acknowledged. But who was this mysterious businessman who inserted himself via capital investments into the Human Potential Movement just as it was gaining mainstream acceptance?

Naturally very little is known about Patrick's doings until the mid-1960s, after he had established Holiday Magic as a viable source of income. But once the big bucks began rolling in Patrick wasted no time in become active in politics. And would you be surprised to learn, dear reader, that his politics appear to have been to the right of Joseph McCarthy?

Prior to becoming involved with Everett and Mind Dynamic, Patrick had forged ties with Robert DePugh, founder of the Minutemen. The Minutemen in turn were the first large scale right wing paramilitary network of the Cold War era. And not long after DePugh got the Minutemen off the ground, he was approached by Colonel William Potter Gale, a former military intelligence officer and Christian Identity minister who would go on to establish the Posse Comitatus.

Gale would establish his own paramilitary outfit, the California Rifles, not long after DePugh got the Minutemen off the ground. There was much overlap between Gale and DePugh's organizations in the early years, but DePugh broke with Gale in the mid-1960s after he became concerned that Gale was co-opting his organization and working for some branch of US intelligence.

Just how serious the break was is highly debatable, as Gale and DePugh appeared to have patched things up by the mid-1970s, after DePugh was released from prison for arms smuggling charges. They appear to have remained in contact up until the time of Gale's death in 1988. This bizarre chain of events was addressed on this blog before here.

At some point during DePugh's break with Gale he hooked up with Patrick while in the midst of trying to launch the "Patriot Party." At a 1967 convention of said party Du Pugh endorsed Patrick as the veep on a ticket headlined by George Wallace.

"One of the more intriguing facets of this convention was the role – or non-role – of William Penn Patrick, the cosmetics tycoon from San Rafael, California. A transplanted southerner, Patrick made a name for himself in ultraright circles by a quixotic campaign in the 1966 Republican gubernatorial primary against an idol of the respectable right, Ronald Reagan. After this debut, he helped finance recall effort against liberal Senator Frank Church of Idaho. DePugh envisioned as an ideal ticket Wallace for president with moneybags Patrick as his running mate. Patrick actually flew to Kansas City for a conference with the Patriotic Party brass, and at the convention the ticket was endorsed. Two months later, however, DePugh told his membership that Patrick would have to be dropped, explaining that Patrick had been recommended in the first place 'because he had promised to provide the money necessary to keep the Patriotic Party alive, to open Patriotic Party headquarters throughout most of the major cities in the United States, and to finance the printing, the transportation, the telephones, and all the other expenses.' But not a red cent have been forthcoming."

(Power on the Right, William Turner, pgs. 79-80)

George Wallace

The Wallace/Patrick ticket was also endorsed by the California Theocratic Party in 1967, though this researcher has been unable to determine if the Theocratic Party is the same as DePugh's Patriotic Party.

Patrick's early opposition to Senator Frank Church is most interesting. As I'm sure many of you are aware, Church is the Senator who headed the infamous Church Committee of the mid-1970s in which the public first caught a glimpse of the CIA's behavior modification programs in addition to a host of other outrages. Church would draw the ire of the US intelligence community for his role in the committee that bore his name and would lose his 1980 bid for re-election under curious circumstances. It has long been speculated that the US intelligence community heavily backed his opponent, Steve Symms, in their quest to unseat him.

And here is Patrick, attacking Church in 1967 after the Senator had begun to earn a name for himself for his support of Civil Rights and opposition to the Vietnam War. Was Patrick's opposition to Church something more than political? Certainly it seems rather curious that a prominent California businessman would become invested in unseating a then largely unknown Senator from Idaho.

Frank Church

Patrick does not appear to have been directly linked to the American Security Council, and may even have drawn its ire for his campaign against Ronnie Raygun in 1966, a long time darling of the ASC. But Patrick had ample ties to organizations closely linked to the ASC network. The Minutemen are one such connection. Another was the John Birch Society (the ties between these ASC and these groups was discussed before here and here).

Multiple sites report William Penn Patrick as being a Bircher, but I have not be able to reliably confirm this. He did frequently make common cause with the Birchers, however. And by the early 1970s he had become the chief financial backer of Dan Smoot, who frequently collaborated with the John Birch Society. Smoot was a former FBI agent who remade himself as a far right wing conspiracy theorist in the mid-1950s. Initially he published the newsletter Fact Forum with financial assistance of Texas oilman H.L. Hunt (who was himself close to several ASC members).

Dan Smoot

By the late 1950s he began publishing the Dan Smoot Report, which achieved 30,000 paying subscribers during its peak in 1965. By this time Smoot had also became a prominent conservative radio personality, something of a cross between Rush Limbaugh and Alex Jones. Patrick appears to have picked up sponsorship of Smoot's radio program a few years before it was forced off the air via the Fairness Doctrine, since repelled by Ronnie Raygun.

Patrick then seems to have had ample links to the early ASC network and even bankrolled some of the most fringe elements therein throughout the late 1960s. And then, in 1970, he appears to have shifted gears, and delved head long into the emerging Human Potential Movement, but with his own fascist flair. He bankrolls Mind Dynamics and establishes his own bizarre Large Group Awareness Training institution with Leadership Dynamics several years before. Individuals who went through Leadership Dynamics, the bulk of whom were either Patrick's employees trying to get into upper management and/or their relatives, were subjected to methods often employed by cults as well as elements of the US national security apparatus to the ends of behavior modification (including the basic training the various US military branches subject recruits to).

And then, just as Patrick's business empire is under investigation on multiple fronts, he conveniently dies in a plane crash. A little under two years earlier Patrick's former employee, Werner Erhard, launches est, which will soon become a major craze by the mid-1970s. Erhard appears to have incorporated methods derived from various sources ranging from Everett, Patrick, Leslie Stevens, L. Ron Hubbard and even Dale Carnegie to cobble together est. But his inner circle was subjected to "fish bowl" sessions that were based upon methods taken from Leadership Dynamics. In both cases, Patrick and Erhard appear to have achieved a cult-like atmosphere within the upper hierarchies of their respective business empires. And Erhard recruited ample trusted aides out of the ashes of Patrick's empire.

William Penn Patrick

Needless to say, there appears to have been something very spooky about William Penn Patrick. He was obsessed with military trappings but I have been unable to determine if he ever served anywhere and in what capacity. On the whole, there is very little information available about his background prior to founding Holiday Magic and, despite his links to an infamous pyramid scheme, the far right and Werner Erhard, he has largely been forgotten. But I suspect that if more details ever come out they will be quite intriguing indeed.

And with that I shall wrap things up for now. I had meant to reach some of the ASC's shenanigans of the 1980s with this post, but I keep uncovering additional material. Perhaps we shall reach that particular decade that looks more and more relevant with each passing day. Regardless, there will be even more curiosities. Stay tuned dear reader.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wade Michael Page

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

The Fort Bragg Connection

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

the insignia of the 20th Special Forces Group

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

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

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

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

the insignia of the "Green Berets"

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

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

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

Sinister Possibilities

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

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

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

Dylann Roof

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

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

Amar Kaleka

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

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

High Weirdness 2016

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

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

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

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

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

John Podesta

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

a depiction of The Donald with Pepe/Kek

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

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

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

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

the Kek druid is to the right

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

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

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

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

Rivalries

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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