Bloody 37th

Hellier fans are no doubt anticipating the upcoming Penny Royal podcast. It's going to provide a much more in-depth account of the mysterious Somerset, KY that plays such a crucial role in the second season of Hellier. Satanic cults allegedly linked to the military and implicated in drug and sex trafficking are hardly the only curiosities that Somerset has witnessed over the years. Not by a long shot. 

As I'm involved in the Penny Royal project I'm not doubt biased in this regard. But the synchronicities are quite incredible, as I hope to illustrate in this post. One particular aspect of Somerset and Hellier that the show invoked was the location of either town upon the mysterious 37th parallel. In recent years, the 37th has developed a reputation as the "UFO Highway" or "Paranormal Highway" due to the staggering amount of high weirdness reported along it:

"Stretching from the Chesapeake Bay to Santa Cruz, CA, the 37th Parallel has been called the “UFO Highway” and the “Paranormal Highway.” From sea to shining sea, this line on the map is littered with histories of cattle mutilations, UFO sightings, reports of underground military bases, and ancient native sacred sites. The phenomena zone stretches about 70 miles either side of the 37th — roughly, the area between the 36th and 38th parallels, 150 miles of anomalous real estate."

Its not just high weirdness that has an uncanny ability of cropping up along the 37th, however. Indeed, there are some disturbing indications that something darker is at a play. Let's just consider a few of the other locations along the 37th parallel. 

In my beloved West Virginia, the 37th stretches through Mingo County. One local history dubbed this region one of "the bloodiest counties in America." It played a significant role in the infamous Hatfield-McCoy feud and the Battle of Matewan. The latter paved the way for the Battle of Blair Mountain, the nation's largest ever labor uprising and the largest armed insurrection since the Civil War. Mingo provided many of the miners who fought at Blair Mountain, which unfolded in neighboring Logan County. Naturally, Logan is also on the 37th. 

The kind of lawlessness that long characterized Mingo can be seen in a place like Dingess. Between 1900 and 1972, some seventeen local lawmen were murdered in addition to numerous other residents. In recent years, Mingo has been decimated by opioid abuse and resulting crime. More painkillers were shipped to this county than anywhere in the US, with just three pharmacies there receiving over 30 million opioid pain pills. It probably goes without saying, but this strongly indicates a massive drug ring was operating there well into the second decade of the twenty-first century. 

So yeah, that's Mingo. More on some of the strangeness in this area, including what appears to be a ritual murder committed during the early 1930s, can be found here. 

Lost Boys

What about sunny California? The 37th stretches through there and it's every bit as disturbing as the ghosts of Mingo. In particular, the 37th runs through the city of Santa Cruz, The beloved 1980s vampire flick The Lost Boys was set in Santa Clara, which the film proclaimed to be "the murder capital of the world." Santa Clara was actually a fictionalized version of Santa Cruz, which bulked at the murder capital designation. While an exaggeration, it wasn't that far from the mark, at least during the late 1960s and 1970s. 

"To briefly recap, no fewer than six serial killers/mass murderers – Charles Manson, Stanley Baker, Edmund Kemper, Herbert Mullen, John Lindsey Frazier, and the Zodiac – were all spawned from the Santa Cruz/San Francisco metropolitan area in the span of just over four years, at a time when 'serial killers' were a rare enough phenomenon that they hadn't yet acquired a name. And another serial killer was said to be at work not far away during the same timeframe. As Bundy chronicler Richard Larson recounts, the bodies of at least fourteen young women and girls were found, nude and with their belongings missing, in Northern California between December 1969 and December 1973. In the immediate vicinity of each of the bodies 'was found an elaborate witchcraft symbol of twigs and rocks.' Remarkably enough, the crimes collectively attributed to these men did not even account for all the ritualized homicides that occurred in the Bay Area during that time. For example, the murder of Fred Bennett, the captain of the Oakland chapter of the Black Panthers whose mutilated remains were found scattered in the Santa Cruz hills, was never solved. And many of the young students who were reported missing from local campuses were never found, either dead or alive, and were therefore never listed as homicide victims.

"On December 12, 1974, the birthday of Aleister Crowley, student Arliss Perry was brutally murdered and left on display in the Stanford Memorial Church on the campus of Stanford University, nestled in the shadows of the Santa Cruz Mountains. Perry was left lying on her back, with her head toward the altar and her legs spread wide. She was nude from the waist down and an altar candle protruded from her vagina; another altar candle was wedged between her exposed breast. Her jeans had been neatly arranged in an inverted V-shape placed across her splayed legs, forming the Masonic symbol of the compass on the square..."

(Programmed to Kill: The Politics of Serial Murder, David McGowan, pgs. 136-137)

In addition to the serial killers, there were also a litany of cults active in the Bay area (which is largely located along the 37th) during this time. There was of course the Manson family and the Process Church of the Final Judgment. Also present were Jim Jones' Peoples Temple and a rogue branch of the Nation of Islam implicated in the Zebra murders. The Church of Satan was founded and long headquartered in San Francisco while Colonel Michael Aquino pimped the breakaway Temple of Set while stationed at the Presidio during the 1980s. Yes, the same Presidio (which is certainly located along the 37th) that turned up in the daycare abuse of children during the 1980s. 

Finally, there were the radical political groups --the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA) and the Weather Underground had a significant presence the Bay area, while Oakland housed one of the more storied chapters of the Black Panther Party. Years ago I did an extensive series of the Zebra killings and a lot of these other curiosities in the Bay area during that era, which can be found here. 

Interestingly, the campuses of both Stanford and SRI (which were united until 1969) are located along the 37th parallel. Those of you who caught my Strange Realities Con presentation will recognize the significance of this. For those of you who did not, it revolved around those two campuses embarking upon the most epic experimentation in human consciousness ever. This is a topic that I will be exploring in much greater depth during the next year. I may drop a few more hints when I appear on Skeptico in a few weeks, so stay tuned on that front. 

Mormon Best Friends

For now, let us turn our attention to another super creepy locale off the 37th: Colorado City, AZ. Colorado City, former Short Creek, is the home base of one of the most infamous "fundamentalist" Mormon sects, the aptly named Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS). In recent years, this cult has been taken over by Warren Jeffs, whose currently runs this outfit from prison. He's serving life for child sexual assault. 

Jeffs

For decades, the FLDS has ruled Colorado City as a full blown theocracy, controlling all aspects of the local government and police. Jeffs himself "married" multiple girls while still teenagers, including one as young as 12. He kept a series of safehouses across the American West where he could entertain these "wives" and other such girls.  

Interestingly, about 40 minutes away is Kanab, UT, the longtime headquarters of the Best Friends Animal Society (BFAS). While now largely seen in a positive light due to its association with the popular show DogTown, the BFAS actually has its origins in the Process Church of the Final Judgment. It arrived in Kanab in 1984, while working under the name of the Foundation Faith of the Millennium. This was a Christian fundie rebranding the Process undertook to cash-in on the Jesus Freak movement during the 1970s. 

As longtime readers of this blog are well aware, this researcher is very dubious in regards to the longstanding allegations surrounding the Process. Still, one of the most disturbing and widely acknowledged aspects of the Process is especially relevant here: the abuse and disappearance of various children under the care of the Process. In particular, what became of many of the children sired by Process members still remains a mystery, many having disappeared off the face of the earth. This is especially ominous in light of allegations that a fundamentalist Mormon sect in Mexico was providing the NXIVM cult with teenage girls. 

I should emphasize that there is no direct evidence of a connection with these Mexican Mormon fundamentalists (who are related to the infamous LeBaron family, a cult in their own right) and Jeffs' outfit. What is curious is the disturbing habit some fundamentalist Mormon sects have of "losing" the children they produce. The Process had a similar problem, which is why its so interesting that its successor ended up within close proximity one of the most storied fundamentalist Mormon sites in these United States.

Colorado City was known for its polygamist ways for decades. There's no way the Process/Best Friends were unaware of what their neighbors were up to when they relocated there. And conversely, with the kind of control the FLDS exorcised over Colorado City and the surrounding area, its unlikely they were not aware of the origins of the Best Friends when they relocated there either. But apparently both were okay with one another, which isn't especially surprising. Birds of a feather and all. 

One of the Hellier team first being told about the alleged Satanic cults in Somerset

 

Throughout this scene he's wearing a Best Friends Animal Society T-shirt

Closing Thoughts

As our brief examination of the 37th parallel has hopefully demonstrated, high weirdness was hardly the only thing unfolding along that thread. In the cases of Mingo County, WV; Santa Cruz/San Fran; and Colorado City/Kanab; there are some disturbing patterns present. On the one hand, regions along the 37th parallel appear to be lightening rods for violent and bizarre crime, addiction, and mental instability. As such, it's hardly surprising that many of these same regions also feature staggering amounts of radicals, serial killers, and cults. 

Whether some type of Byzantine conspiracy is at play is highly debatable. But certainly these are some odd and disturbing synchronicities none the less. Synchomystics, Ufologists, occultists and other chronicler of high weirdness tend to focus on Fortean phenomena that congregate in certain geographical regions. But as this small sample seems to indicate, certain regions can also have tragic effects on the people who inhabit them. 

And Somerset, KY, and the broader Pike County appears to attract the same type of sinister forces. Be sure to tune on October 21st for the launch of Penny Royal to see how this enigmatic region of Kentucky measures up. And with that, I'll be signing off for now. As always dear readers, stay tuned till next time.

Fear and Loathing in St. Petersburg Part II

Welcome to the second installment in my examination of the curious cast of characters who flocked to the sleepy Florida city of St. Petersburg in the post-WWII years. Located slightly south of Tampa, St. Petersburg is publicly perceived as a pensioner's paradise but has an underbelly as dark and mysterious as anything in the state of Florida (which, given the Sunshine state's uber city seedy features, is saying something).

During the first installment of this series I chiefly focused upon the bizarre figure of "Count" Anastase "Annie" Vonsiatsky, a White Russian noble-pretender who allegedly played a role in fascist intrigues in the years leading up to WWII. Vonsiatsky operated out of Thompson, Connecticut during the pre-war years, but relocated to St. Petersburg shortly after being released from prison in 1946 (the Count had been convicted of supporting Nazi agents in 1942). The great John Bevilaqua, in his JFK--The Final Solution, has compiled compelling evidence that Vonsiatsky continued to be a major player in the post-WWII fascist underground after he relocated to St. Petersburg in 1948.

Vonsiatsky

With this installment I would like to shift gears a bit and consider one of the more notorious residents of nearby Tampa: Santo Trafficante Jr. For many years Trafficante was the most powerful figure in organized crime and a major architect of the international narcotics market. While based out of Tampa, Trafficante made heavy use of St. Petersburg during his hey day as well. Thus, a run down of such a curious patron is in order. So let us begin.

In the land mark and groundbreaking The Great Heroin Coup, Henrik Kruger notes:

"Meyer Lansky, the Syndicate's financial wizard and its chairman from around 1947, began building his Cuban empire in the early forties. When free elections chased his close friend and dictator Fulgencio Batista from office in 1944, Lansky also left the island, entrusting his empire to the Trafficante family headed by Santo, Sr. Lansky and Batista settled in Hollywood, Florida, just north of Miami. Before long, Lansky was running an illegal casino empire on the coast, and in 1947 he eliminated Bugsy Siegel and moved into Los Vegas.

"All the while Lansky expanded the narcotics trade founded by Lucky Luciano. The older Mafia dons deemed the trade taboo, so Lansky's wing of the Syndicate cornered the market, with Trafficante's eldest son, Santos, Jr., overseeing the heroin traffic.

"When Florida's illegal casinos were shut down in 1950, Lansky promoted Batista's return to power in Cuba. The drive bore fruit in 1952. With Trafficante, Sr.'s death in 1954, Santo, Jr. became Lansky's right-hand man and manager of his Cuban interests. Until then, he had managed the Sans Souci Casino, a base for running Havana's tourist trade and keeping tabs on heroin shipments from Marseilles to New York via Florida and Cuba.

"Trafficante, Jr. has proven more talented than his father. Extraordinarily intelligent and energetic, he has handled the most acute crises with detached calm. Luciano characterized him as '... a guy who always managed to hug the background, but he is rough and reliable. In fact, he's one of the few guys in the whole country that Meyer Lansky would never tangle with.'

"In no time, Trafficante, Jr. ingratiated himself with dictator Batista, while remaining loyal to Lansky, who appointed him manager of his own Florida interests in addition to those in Cuba. Lansky needed to spend increasing amounts of time in New York, between travels to Los Vegas, Rome, Marseilles, Beirut, and Geneva...

"According to Peter Dale Scott, 'certain U.S. business interests collaborated with the narcotics-linked American Mafia in Cuba --as they did with similar networks in China and later in Vietnam --for the Mafia supplied the necessary local intelligence, cash and muscle against the threat of communist takeover.' As Scott wrote those words in 1973, Cuban-Americans recruited by the CIA were suspected by federal and city authorities to be 'involved in everything from narcotics to extortion rackets and bombings.' The Church committee and other Senate and law enforcement reports would confirm these allegations.

"Again we observe the Cuba/Southeast Asia/CIA triangle, and it's no secret who managed the Cuban side. There Trafficante, Jr. hired the fast-learning natives, while dictator Batista's men made the empire safe for organized crime, often appearing more loyal to Trafficante than Batista himself. In return the Cubans learned the business.

"With Fidel Castro's 1 January 1959 ouster of Batista, Lansky and Trafficante were in trouble. Though they were expelled from their Cuban kingdom, nearly a year elapsed before the Syndicate departed and the casinos were closed. Along with Trafficante and Lansky, half a million Cubans left the island in the years following Castro's takeover...

"Out of the Trafficante-trained corps of Cuban officers, security staffers and politicians, a Cuban Mafia emerged under the mobster's control. It specialized in narcotics, first Latin American cocaine, then Marseilles heroin. With his Cubans Trafficante also grabbed control of La Bolita, the numbers game that took Florida by storm and became a Syndicate gold mine...

"Trafficante settled in Tampa, but continued to run some of his activities from Jimmy Hoffa's Teamster Local 320 in Miami. Trafficante and David Yaras of Sam Giancana's Chicago mob were instrumental in founding Local 320, which, according to the McClellan hearings, was a front for Syndicate narcotics activities.

"After losing his Havana paradise, far-sighted Meyer Lansky used straw men to buy up much of Grand Bahama Island and erected a new gambling center around the city of Nassau. But though Lansky and Trafficante each survived in style, neither they nor the Cuban exiles relinquished hope of a return to Cuba. Moreover, they were not alone in dreaming of overthrowing Castro. The CIA in particular let its imagination run wild to this end. Its covert operations expert, General Edward Lansdale, seriously planned to send a submarine to the shore outside Havana, where it would create an inferno of light. At the same time, Cuba-based agents would warn religious natives of the second coming of Christ and the Savior's distaste for Fidel Castro. However, 'Elimination by Illumination' was shelved in favor of less fantastic suggestions for Castro's assassination. The latter brought together the CIA, Cuban exiles, and the Syndicate in the person of Santo Trafficante.

"In 1960 the CIA asked its contact agent Robert Maheu to contact mobster John Roselli. Roselli introduced Maheu to Trafficante and Sam Giancana, the Chicago capo, and the strange bedfellows arranged an attempt on the life of Castro. The agency had previously stationed an agent on Cuba who was to flash the green light when assassination opportunities arose. He was Frank Angelo Fiorini, a one-time smuggler of weapons to Castro's revolutionary army, to whom Castro had entrusted the liquidation of the gambling casinos. Through the latter assignment Fiorini had made the acquaintance of Trafficante.

"In February 1961 Maheu, Trafficante and Roselli met at Miami's Fountainebleu Hotel. There Maheu gave the hoods untraceable poison capsules for delivery to a Cuban exile connected with the Trafficante mob. Other Cubans were to smuggle them to the island and poison Castro; but the attempt failed. Trafficante engineered more attempts, including one in September 1962, and his organization also provided Cubans for the Bay of Pigs invasion."

(The Great Heroin Coup, Henrik Kruger, pgs. 141-144)

"Frank Angelo Fiorini"

The above-mentioned Frank Angelo Fiorini would go on to change his name to Frank Sturgis. Sturgis is most well remembered in this day and age for the role he played in Watergate as one of the infamous "plumbers." Sturgis was not seemingly the only "plumber" with ties to Trafficante, as we shall see.

At this point, however, it should be noted that Trafficante's dedication to the elimination of Fidel Castro has long been questioned. Compelling evidence has emerged that he was a kind of double agent.

"Santo Trafficante was the indispensable man in the Castro assassination plot, even though he was listed as No. 234 in the FBN's International List book, and even though there were serious doubts about his loyalty. The CIA knew, for example, that during the four months he'd been detained in Cuba, Trafficante had lived in relative luxury while he negotiated the return of seized Mafia assets with Fidel Castro's brother Raoul. The CIA also knew that after his release, Trafficante traveled freely to and from Havana. But the doubts were set aside because he was intimately connected to leaders in the anti-Castro Cuban exile community and could contact secret agents in Cuba. One of the purported secret agents, Juan Orta Cordova, was the director of Fidel Castro's ministerial office in Havana. On the assumption that Orta was willing and able to kill Castro, CIA security Edwards had Trafficante arrange the delivery of MKULTRA poison pills to him. The plan was that Orta would drop the pills in Castro's coffee. But Cuban security officials discovered that Orta was a counterrevolutionary, and a Mafia flunky, and he was fired on 26 January 1961. By the time the pills arrived in February, he was unavailable to do the job.

"Immediately after this plan failed, Trafficante --not the CIA --allegedly devised a second assassination plot in which one of Castro's mistresses, Marita Lorenz, was (like Orta) to administer a lethal dose of MKULTRA poison to the prime minister. This hit, for which Trafficante was to be paid $150,000, was contingent on his business partner, Dr. Manuel Antonio de Varona. Linked with former Cuban president Carlos Prio Socarras, Tony Varona in 1961 headed the Meyer Lansky-financed, CIA-created, avidly anti-Castro political front, the Frente Revolucionario Democratico, in Miami.

"After Trafficante had introduced the various conspirators to one another, CIA officer Jim O'Connell passed a handful of poison pills to mobster Johnny Roselli. On 13 March 1961, Roselii, in the Boom Boom room in Miami's Fountainebleau Hotel, passed them to Varona's son-in-law for delivery to femme fatale, Marita Lorenz. But the Bay of Pigs invasion disrupted that particular scheme and, three months later, in July 1961, Siragusa denounced Trafficante as a double agent. He insisted that Castro had jailed the Mafioso as a ruse, and that Trafficante was in fact working with Castro's agents in the lucrative bolita gambling business in Miami. The implication was that he had sabotaged the CIA's first assassination attempt on Castro, and had probably betrayed the CIA in other ways as well. Trafficante... was never arrested for treason or drug trafficking, and though closely monitored, continued to manage his bolita and narcotics trafficking businesses with impunity.

"How could this be, one might ask? The answer is quite simple: so that Trafficante, and other international drug smugglers and degenerate hoods like Johnny Roselli, could arrange assassinations for the CIA."

(The Strength of the Wolf, Douglas Valentine, pgs. 224-225)

Santo Jr

Trafficante's apparent expertise in assassinations will be quite relevant in a moment. For now, let us briefly consider Trafficante's heyday in the late 1960s through the mid-1970s:

"From 1968 on, Trafficante's Cubans were in effective control of the traffic in heroin and cocaine throughout the United States. The Florida capo's only gangland partner of any significance was the Cotroni family in Montreal.

"Trafficante carried out his business in a cool and collected manner. Never out of line with the national Syndicate, he enjoyed relative anonymity while other, less prominent gangsters wrote their names in history with blood. His organization was so airtight that when narcotics investigators finally realized how big a fish he was, they had to admit he was untouchable. The BNDD tried to nab him in its 1969-70 Operation Eagle, then the most extensive action ever directed against a single narcotics network. The Bureau arrested over 120 traffickers, wholesalers, and pushers, but made no real dent. Within days, well-trained Cubans moved into the vacated slots.

"To the BNDD's surprise, a very large number of those arrested in Operation Eagle were CIA-trained veterans of the Bay of Pigs and Operation 40. Among them were Juan Cesar Restoy, a former Cuban senator under Batista, Allen Eric Rudd-Marrero, a pilot, and Mario Escandar. Their fates were most unusual. Escandar and Restoy, alleged leaders of the narcotics network, were arrested in June 1970 but fled from Miami City Jail in August. Escandar turned himself in, but was released soon afterward when it was established that Attorney General John Mitchell had neglected to sign authorization for the wiretap that incriminated Escandar. He returned to narcotics and was arrested in 1978 for kidnapping, a crime punishable by life, but for which he got only six months...

"Juan Restoy, on the other hand, turned to blackmail. He threatened to expose a close friend of Richard Nixon's as a narcotics trafficker, if not given his freedom and $350,000. Restoy was shot and killed by narcotics agents, as was Rudd-Marrero.

"In late 1970, in the wake of Operation Eagle, Bay of Pigs veteran Guillermo Hernandez-Cartaya set up the World Finance Corporation (WFC), a large company alleged to be a conduit for Trafficante investments and for the income from his narcotics activities. Duney Perez-Alamo, a CIA-trained explosives expert involved with several Cuban exile terrorist groups, was the building manager for the WFC. Juan Romanach, a close Trafficante associate, was a WFC bank director..."

(The Great Heroin Coup, Henrik Kruger, pgs. 147-148)

Hernandez-Cartaya was the alleged founder of World Finance Corporation

Long time students of the CIA's drug trafficking endeavors will no doubt recognize the name World Financial Corporation (WFC). Throughout the 1970s, until its demise in 1978, the WFC was seemingly a go-to financial institution for the laundering of drug money by CIA-approved traffickers. The WFC collapse was also an aspect of the Vatican banking scandal, which the enigmatic Opus Dei played a crucial role in. The Opusians seem to have forged close ties with Mafiosi in Italy, so it would hardly be surprising if their counterparts from overseas were also included. But moving along.

the seal of Opus Dei

As noted above, there are indications that Richard Nixon also had ties to Trafficante that may have helped bring down his presidency. The key figure in this regard was the notorious Charles "Bebe" Rebozo.

"Nixon was also compromised through his friendship with Charles 'Bebe' Rebozo, a Cuban American with ties to Santo Trafficante and Mafioso Al Polizzi in Florida. Rebozo allegedly laundered drug money generated by anti-Castro terrorists; and his brother William and William's son were busted on a narcotic charge in March 1969.

"Nixon also maintained ties to organized crime figures. His pardon of James R. 'Jimmy' Hoffa in 1971 earned him the votes of the Teamsters Union and garnered its support for his wage/price freeze and war in Vietnam. But every veteran FBN agent knew that some teamsters provided cover for Mafia drug traffickers. Frank Coppola was godfather to Hoffa's foster son and in return, Hoffa protected Coppola's narcotics receivers in Detriot 'by assigning them to Teamsters Local 985.' Frank Dioguardia, the Mafia Teamster boss busted in the 1965 Nebbia case, provided Trafficante with an office that served as a front for his mob's narcotics activities.

"While in prison Hoffa befriended Carmine Galante, the former narcotics boss of the Bonanno family, and an ally of Santo Trafficante. Galante in the early 1950s set up major smuggling routes out of Cuba and Montreal. In testimony before the Senate Rackets Committee in 1958, Jack Cusack linked Carlos Marcello and Santo Trafficante with Jimmy Hoffa --and gunrunning to Cuba.

"Having served as President Eisenhower's 'action officer' during the planning stages of the CIA's failed Cuban Bay of Pigs invasion, Nixon was certainly aware of Hoffa's activities on behalf of the CIA. Hoffa is said to have been 'the original liaison' between the mob and the CIA in its plots to assassinate Fidel Castro, and to have brought numerous Mafiosi into the conspiracy. It was a criminal conspiracy that forever bound the Mafia, the CIA, and Nixon."

(The Strength of the Pact, Douglas Valentine, pgs. 94-95)

As noted above, Trafficante seems to have had a business relationship with at least one of the Watergate "plumbers": Frank Sturgis. It would seem that one of the most notorious of the plumbers also ran in the same circles as Trafficante's Cuban Mafia.

"Manuel Artime is a perfect example of the CIA's lackadaisical attitude toward the drug smuggling activities of anti-Castro Cubans. After his release from prison in December 1962, Artime's case officer, E. Howard Hunt, placed him in a leadership role in the terrorist Cuban Revolutionary Council (CRC) in Miami. Hunt certainly knew that Artime was using drug money to finance his operations in Miami, as did Hunt's bosses, James Angleton, Richard Helms, and Tracy Barnes...

"And indeed, the drug smuggling Cubans were involved in MKULTRA operations by 1963. CIA execution expert Bill Harvey met with Johnny Roselli in June, at the same time that Trafficante's Cuban associate, assassin Tony Varona, visited Artime's CRC offices in New Orleans and Miami. Harvey stayed in touch with Roselli after his exile to Rome, and thus had a open channel to Trafficante and Varona."

(The Strength of the Wolf, Douglas Valentine, pgs. 305-306) 

Tony Varona, a Trafficante associate who forges ties with an exile Cuban group backed by E. Howard Hunt

Trafficante's possible involvement with MK-Ultra will be discussed in the next installment. On the topic of E. Howard Hunt, its also interesting to note that Hunt was a Brown alumni, as was St. Petersburg resident Anastase Vonsiatsky. The curious cast of characters who have found there way to Brown University over the years was discussed in part one of this series. But moving along.

Brown man E. Howard Hunt

Trafficante also seems to have been on good terms with at least one member staple of the far right as well. Consider yet another of the Cuban intrigues Trafficante's associates became involved in:

"In the JM/Wave period a great expansion in China Lobby-Trafficante-Cuban exile-CIA connections occurred. William Pawley financed a mysterious summer 1963 boat raid against Cuba in his own yacht, the Flying Tiger II. Besides Pawley himself, the crew included mafioso John Martino, who had operated roulette wheels in one of Trafficante's Havana casinos; CIA agents code-named Rip, Mike, and Ken; the ubiquitous Rolando Martinez; and a dozen other Cuban exiles led by Eddie Bayo and Eduardo Perez, many of whom eventually disappeared mysteriously. Loren Hall, another former Trafficante casino employee, claimed that both his boss and Sam Giancana had helped plan the raid..."

(The Great Heroin Coup, Henrik Kruger, pg. 146)

William Pawley

William Pawley was a major figure in the far right lobby group known as the American Security Council (ASC). The ASC would quickly forge extensive ties with the Pentagon and the US intelligence community and has been involved in a host of shenanigans spanning multiple decades. This researcher has chronicled the ASC extensively before here.

And it is here that I shall wrap up for now dear readers. Obviously St. Petersburg did not factor in heavily in this installment but with the next I shall get to the really good stuff, namely: St. Petersburg's ties to MK-Ultra, the Kennedy assassination and the conspiratorial right. Stay tuned.

The Family Part V

Welcome to the fifth installment in my examination of the elite and highly secretive Christian sect variously known as "The Family" or "The Fellowship." In the first installment of this series Abraham (Abram) Vereide, the founder of the organization, and the religious vision that served as his inspiration for the Family were considered as well as a "chance" encounter with a "former" military officer of some means who provided early financial backing for the organization.

Vereide

Part two moved along to the Family's early efforts in union busting and the possibility that it had forged ties with the Pentagon and the US intelligence community at a very early date via the murky netherworld sometimes referred to as "industrial security." The third installment of this series considered the Family's extensive dealings with the US fascist underground prior to the Second World War while part four examined the organization's efforts to recruit numerous "former" Nazis in the ruins of post-war Germany.

With this installment I would say a word about the next generation of leadership that had began to supplant Vereide in the late 1950s and which laid the ground work for the truly international efforts of the Family during the second half of the twentieth century. Several of these individuals show indications of a "deep" background. Consider, for instance, Clifton J. Robinson, supposedly a mild-mannered missionary who specialized in Asia, opening several key frontiers for the Family. Robinson's missionary work was reportedly influenced by a most curious source he encountered during his time in the Far East.

"Among his most fruitful meetings was time spent with William H. Sullivan, U.S. ambassador to Laos. As chairman of the State Department's Vietnam Working Group in 1963, Sullivan had been one of the architects of the war, a de facto 'field marshal,' according to General William Westmoreland. Such a man was an unlikely source of inspiration for Robinson, who called himself a Quaker. But preaching Abram's ideal overseas had put him at odds with the Society of Friends. Like another lapsed Quaker, Richard Nixon, Robinson had no patience for pacifism. He saw himself as a man of action, a 'jungle' missionary on the move. He spoke with a quick velvety voice of an old-time radio announcer and used it to dispense axioms and analogies about the need for key men in the Cold War, Bruce Barton jingles as interpreted by James Jesus Angleton, top man religion as geopolitical strategy. Sullivan provided fodder for Robinson's commando theology.

"'He said the strategy of the VC was the same as International Christian Leadership's,' gushed Robinson, 'except applied physically and militarily.' Robinson's vision of Worldwide Spiritual Offensive could not yet accommodate Ho Chi Minh's tactics, but Sullivan convinced him their enemy was a worthy one. 'They spent hours, days, weeks, whatever time is necessary setting up for the LEADERS and then either by ambush, assassination, or other intrigue, they do away with them – not the people, the leaders. He said to kill  32 top level people' – as the Vietcong had done the previous month – 'was tantamount to immobilizing thousands.'

"The lesson was that the Fellowship should understand itself as a guerrilla force on the spiritual battlefield. Specifically, Sullivan, who directed the CIA's 'secret air war' in Laos and turned its Hmong minority into cannon fodder against the North Vietnamese, wanted the Fellowship to recruit Buddhist businessmen to collaboration by matching them with Jaycees under the guise of a ' "brotherhood of leadership" – or some such slogan.' Robinson also took Sullivan's words as an endorsement of Abram's key man strategy...

"Evangelical steamroller such as the Billy Graham Crusade might win millions, but the Fellowship could neutralize the enemy – 'bold satanic forces,' as Abram described it, the Vietcong's 'sweep of communism,' America's 'secular cyclone' – by conquering the select few souls of the strong. 'Assassination' was just a figure of speech to Robinson; Abram wanted elites to 'die to the self,' to submit totally to Jesus of their own volition even as they held on tightly to the power that could advance His kingdom. Long after Abram's death –  and Ho's total victory in Vietnam – the Fellowship would distribute a tract purporting to be 'ten steps to commitment from a Vietcong soldier.' "

(The Family, Jeff Sharlet, pgs. 206-207)

Sullivan

Ambassador William H Sullivan is a man with a most curious history. At the time that he was advising Robinson from Laos, some very strange things were unfolding in that country as well as in surrounding nations.

"The junction of Burma, Thailand, and Laos, the Golden Triangle, is the site of the bulk of the world's opium production and thereby the source of enormous fortunes for the French and later the Americans. The French held effective control over the Southeast Asian opium traffic until 1965. Between 1946 and 1955 the Mixed Airborne Commando Group (MACG) and the French Air Force managed the shipment of opium from Burma to Laos. A guerrilla corps comprised mostly of Laotian Meo tribesmen and led by Colonel Roger Trinquier,  MACG remained unusually independent despite its direct connection to the SDECE and Deuxieme (Second) Bureau. To finance their secret Indochina operations, these organizations turned to the smuggling of gold and opium, with MACG in charge of the latter. Large quantities of opium were shipped to French Saigon headquarters and passed on to the Corsican Mafia, who in turn smuggled the drug to Marseilles.

"When the French withdrew from Indochina  in1955 after their defeat by the Vietminh, and after the CIA pushed aside the SDECE, MACG leaders communicating through CIA agent Lucien Conein offered the Americans their entire guerrilla force. Against Conein's advice they refused. History would cast doubt on the wisdom of that decision.

"In 1955 CIA agent General Edward Lansdale began a war to liquidate the Corsican supply network. While Lansdale was cracking down on the French infrastructure, his employer the CIA was running proprietaries, like Sea Supply and CAT, that worked hand-in-hand with the opium-smuggling Nationalist Chinese of the Golden Triangle, and with the corrupt Thai border police.

"The Lansdale/Corsican vendetta lasted several years, during which many attempts were made on Lansdale's life. Oddly enough, his principal informant on Corsican drug routes and connections was the former French Foreign Legionnaire, Lucien Conein, then of the CIA. Conein knew just about every opium field, smuggler, trail, airstrip, and Corsican in Southeast Asia. He spent his free time with the Corsicans, who considered him one of their own. Apparently they never realized it was he who was turning them in.

"When Lansdale returned from Vietnam in the late fifties, the Corsicans recouped some of their losses, chartering aging aircraft to establish Air Opium, which functioned until around 1965. That year, the Corsicans' nemesis Lansdale returned to Vietnam as advisor to Ambabassador Lodge. There was also an upheaval in the narcotics traffic, and perhaps the two were connected. CIA-backed South Vietnamese and Laotian generals began taking over the opium traffic – and as they did so, increasing amounts of morphine and low-quality heroin began showing up on the Saigon market.

"The first heroin refineries sprang up in Laos under the control General Ouane Rattikone. President Ky in Saigon was initially in charge of smuggling from the Laotian refineries to the South Vietnamese; and Lansdale's office, it is to be remembered, was working closely with Ky. Lansdale himself was one of Ky's heartiest supporters, and Conein went along with whatever Lansdale said.

"One result of the smuggling takeover by the generals was the end of the Corsican's Air Opium. The KMT Chinese and Meo tribesmen who cultivated raw opium either transported it themselves to the refineries or had flown there by the CIA via CAT and its successor, Air America, another agency proprietary. Though the Corsicans still sent drugs to Marseilles, the price was becoming prohibitive, since they were forced to buy opium and morphine in Saigon and Vientiane rather than pick up the opium for peanuts in the mountains.

"In 1967, a three-sided opium war broke out in Laos between a Burmese Shan State warlord, KMT Chinese and General Rattikone's Laotian army. Rattikone emerged victorious, capturing the opium shipment with the help of U.S.-supplied aircraft. The KMT, for its part, managed to reassert its dominance over the warlord. The smuggling picture was becoming simplified, with Southeast Asian opium divided among fewer hands, and most of the Corsicans out of the way.

 "General Lansdale returned to the U.S. in 1967, leaving Conein in Vietnam. The next year Conein greeted a new boss, William Colby. Since 1962 Colby had run the agency's special division for covert operations in Southeast Asia, where his responsibilities included the 'secret' CIA war in Laos with its 30,000-man Meo army. He shared that responsibility with the U.S. ambassador in Laos, William H. Sullivan, who would later preside over the Tehran embassy during the fall of the Shah."

(The Great Heroin Coup, Henrik Kruger, pgs. 133-134)

There is evidence that not only was Sullivan knee deep in one of the hottest drug trafficking zones in the entire world at the time, but that he was actively protecting Agency-backed drug trafficking occurring there. Consider, for instance, an account given by Federal Bureau of Narcotics (FBN, the predecessor agency to the DEA) agent Al Habib, who was sent there to investigate the heroin trafficking:

"...  Eager to get back abroad, Habib took his place. 'I went on a ninety-day TDY,' he recalls, 'and after the initial shock, I wound up staying two years.'

"The initial shock, of course, was the CIA. 'Taylor had gotten in trouble in Laos,' Habib recalls, 'and eventually he sent me there to patch things up. I reported to the Embassy in  Vientiane, where I was met by a CIA officer. He asked me what I wanted, and I told him I was there to make narcotics cases. Well, that made him nervous, so he called the marine guard. Then he told me to "Stay here until we come to get you." And I sat there under guard until they took me to see Ambassador William Sullivan.'

"Habib laughs sarcastically. 'I'm sitting in Sullivan's office surrounded by a gang of menacing CIA officers. Sullivan introduces himself and asked if I would please explain what I'm doing in Laos. I say I'm there to work undercover with the police, to locate morphine labs. To which he replies, "Are you serious?" At which point a CIA officer says to me, "You! Don't do anything!" Meanwhile Sullivan goes to his office and composes a yard-line telegram to Secretary Rusk saying, in effect, "Don't they know that Laos [which had withdrawn from the Single Convention in 1963] is off-limits?" Then they tell me how Taylor set up an undercover buy from a guy. He got a flash roll together and went to the meet covered by the Vientiane police. When the guy stepped out of the car and opens the trunk, the police see it's the king of the Meos. The police run away, and Taylor busts General Vang Pao, alone...'

"Habib returns to his story. 'A few days after Sullivan sends his telegram, Rusk writes back and says, "Let him at them." So Sullivan calls me into his office and says, "Okay. You can work. But don't forget, they're fighting a war for us."'

"In effect, Sullivan limited Habib's investigation of the regional heroin traffic to the involvement of non-CIA Americans. Sullivan referred have up to Public Safety Advisor Paul Skuse in this regard, and Skuse said that no Americans were involved, that Air Force General Ouane Rattikone was the drug lord, but that the Laotian prime minister protected him. The local US Information Service officers likewise said no Americans  were involved, as did Robert Rosselot, president of the CIA-connected Continental Air Service..."

(The Strength of the Wolf, Douglas Valentine, pgs. 333-335)

Ouane Rattikone

So it would seem that at roughly the same time that Sullivan was protecting CIA-sanctioned drug traffickers from investigation by the FBN, he was also advising Family man Clifton Robinson on "spiritual offensives" and requesting that he recruit Buddhist businessmen into "collaboration." But that real question is, did either man ever use the expression "Heroin for Jesus" (a concept hardly without president, as noted before here).

Nor was Robinson the only member of the Family's upper hierarchy with such contacts. There was also Richard Halverson (who, along with Robinson and Doug Coe, was one of the three men vying to be Abram's heir apparent).

"Halverson's story, like that of the Family's, began in 1935, when he got off the bus in Hollywood fresh from North Dakota, where he'd grown up with the unlikely ambition of being an actor. Blandly handsome by small-town standards, in Los Angeles he hardly looked like movie star material: his lips were too full, his cheeks too chubby, his eyes too deeply set. He wasn't bad looking, but he wasn't Clark Gable, either. His strength was a certain gee-whiz sincerity, an earnestness augmented by intelligence. Dick Halverson wasn't a good guy because he didn't know any better; he was a good guy because he calculated the angles and concluded that decency was his best bet in this world.

"Thereafter, he pursued it mightily. In later years, Halverson would  help build up one of the world's largest relief agencies, World Vision, a Christian outfit that supplies food for the starving and medicine for the wounded and gospel tracks only to those who ask. Although it has long been plagued by accusations of serving as a CIA front, World Vision's verifiable record is admirable – the sort of Christian efforts which Abram paid lip service and nothing more. But Halverson also helped build the Fellowship into a network of truly international scope, introducing the American Christ to any number of nations. Halverson, in other words, was an imperialist of the old school, bringing light to the natives and clearing the way for other men to extract a dollar. He was no hypocrite. He believed with all his heart he was helping, and he never thought too deeply about whom. Halverson loved public speaking, and he was good at it, too, invited to preach in  pulpits around the world. He wrote popular books and mailed out newsletters and presided over a conservative Presbyterian church outside of Washington that was popular with politicians. In 1981, Ronald Reagan would make him Senate chaplain, the pinnacle of his career."  

(The Family, Jeff Sharlet, pgs. 209-210)

 The accusations that World Vision, the organization for which Halverson fronted for, was a CIA front are quite compelling.

"World Vision, the largest evangelical relief and development agency, was started in 1950 by Bob Pierce, a spiritual 'brother' of Billy Graham. Pierce helped Graham build the Youth for Christ teams after World War II... 

"Like Wycliffe Bible Translators, World Vision is theologically evangelical but not 'charismatic.' From a sprawling corporate offices in southern California, World Vision administers hundreds of millions of dollars worth of relief projects in 80 countries. The largest projects are in Africa, followed by Latin America and Asia. World Vision's 1987 budget was over $145 million, with more than 20 percent coming from the US Agency for International Development (AID) and 'gifts in kind,' meaning government supplied food.

"World Vision's accounting practices make it difficult to determine exactly how the government money is spent. In 1987, for example, World Vision reported that 46 percent of its income was used for the broad category 'Relief, Development, and Christian Leadership,' without breaking down which portions of the funds go for strictly evangelistic purposes.

"The U.S. AID is an arm of the U.S. State Department, and its relief and development projects are designed to increase Third World political and economic dependence on the United States. Because World Vision's evangelicalism and humanitarian programs are woven together in a seamless web, AID directly finances World Vision's proselytization of Third World aid recipients...

"In tandem with its food distribution and leadership training for indigenous believers, World Vision has on a number of occasions functioned as an intelligence gathering arm of the U.S. government. In the 1970s, World Vision was charged with having collected field data for the CIA in Vietnam. After U.S. troops left the region, World Vision played a major role in the administration of refugee camps.

"By the early 1980s, World Vision was in charge of medical services for Hmong refugees in northern Thailand camps... World Vision also became a crucial player in the 'yellow rain' campaign  to discredit the Soviet Union. In 1981, Secretary of State Alexander Haig announced that the Vietnamese, with help from the Soviets, were waging biological warfare in Laos. Haig's evidence was a supposedly toxic leaf and twig provided to him by Soldier of Fortune mercenaries in the area and refugee testimonies that they had seen yellow raindrops from aircraft over Laos. The administration never produce a single piece of ordinance to bolster the charges. The scientific community was generally skeptical of the biological warfare thesis, and instead offered varying hypotheses that the yellow substance might have been bee feces or naturally occurring fungal toxins. World Vision was drawn into the plot when the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok requested that the relief agency send medical samples taken from Hmong refugees who claimed to have been poisoned by 'yellow rain.' According to a missionary working with refugees in Thailand, World Vision's dependence on U.S. grant money obligated it to comply with requests that refugee blood samples be sent to the U.S. embassy rather than to more impartial investigators.

"By 1988, the mission agency was again involved in Vietnam. World Vision president Robert Seiple, who as a former marine piloted 300 bombing missions over North Vietnam, returned to the country he helped destroy to offer prostatic devices for some of Vietnam's 60,000 amputees.

"In July 1980, World Vision became one of five agencies working with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to provide food, shelter and other services to more than 20,000 Salvadoran refugees who had fled into Honduras. From the start, World Vision was openly critical of CEDEN, the mainstream Protestant aid organization appointed by the United Nations to coordinate relief efforts. Inside the camps, World Vision workers preached against the 'communist religious workers' from the other refugee agencies.

"The most serious incident occurred in May 1981, when World Vision played a role in the deaths of three Salvadoran refugees. One evening, two new Salvadoran refugees arrived at the Colomoncagua camp after the immigration office had closed for the day. Instead of waiting to register them in the morning, as was the usual practice, the World Vision camp coordinator took them to the local Honduran army post where they were immediately arrested. A short time later, Honduran soldiers entered the camp and arrested two of the refugees. World Vision administrators did not report the incident to the other relief agencies. The next day, one of the rest of refugees was released, but three days later the bodies of the other three were found shot to death on the Salvadoran side of the border.

"World Vision insisted that the incident was accidental and uncharacteristic of its ministry in the camps, but admitted that its credibility problem in Central America began when it allowed its staff to come under the control of an anticommunist Cuban exile, a Nicaraguan exile evangelist and a group of Honduran military veterans. One person on the World Vision staff was a member of the Honduran military. Aside from these 'bad apples,' World Vision – as a policy – maintained records on all Salvadoran aid recipients and filed daily reports by telephone and telex with the World Vision office in Costa Rica. World Vision's extensive information-gathering procedures bolster charges that the group is collaborating with the CIA."

(Spiritual Warfare, Sara Diamond, pgs. 220-222)

The U.S. Agency for International Development (AID), from which a good chunk of World Vision's funding was provided year in and year out, had a long standing relationship with the CIA as well. Consider, for instance, this one particular bit of collaboration:

"Until 1974 the training of torturers and members of Latin American death squads came under the auspices of the CIA and USAID's Office of Public Safety. Some 100,000 Brazilian policemen, for example, were trained and 523 of them were chosen for courses in the U.S.A. They were trained at the International Police Academy in Georgetown, Washington, D.C. and at a secret CIA center in the same city on R Street, under cover of International Police Services, Inc. When school was out the prize pupils returned home to work, besides CIA advisers, as functionaries or torturers in such effective repression apparatuses as Sao Paulo's Operaco Bandeirantes Many would moonlight with the Death Squads."

(The Great Heroin Coup, Henrik Kruger, pgs. 164-165)

The above-mentioned Hmong tribesmen had been deeply involved in the heroin trafficking of Laos during the Vietnam war and for several years afterwards. In other words, these were the same individuals Ambassador William Sullivan was protecting during his tour in Laos. Certainly it is curious that these two men, Clifton Robinson and Richard Halverson, who would vie for control of the Family as Vereide's health began to decline seem to have traveled within the orbit of Southeast Asian heroin trafficking.

Before moving along to the man who actually succeeded Vereide, another point must be made about World Vision: The group's founder, Bob Pierce, cut his teeth with an organization known as Youth for Christ. The movement features more than a few names that should be immediately familiar to regular readers of this blog:

"An important item in evangelical folklore is the story of how William Randolph Hearst of newspaper empire fame and Henry Luce, head of Time, Inc., helped launch the career of an itinerant evangelist named Billy Graham. After World War II, when the national preoccupation with the Communist Menace coincided with the birth of Graham's Youth for Christ organization, the two media moguls decided to promote Graham and his conservative message in their respective media outlets. In late 1949, so the story goes, Hearst send a telegram to all of his editors: 'Puff Graham,' which the editors dutifully did in Hearst-controlled newspapers, magazines, movies and newsreels. Luce likewise promoted Billy Graham, who by the mid-1950s was preaching: 'Either communism must die, or Christianity must die.' That worldview no doubt is what made Graham eligible for a Time cover story in October 1954.

"The Hearst and Luce media outlets puffed much more than Billy Graham, who initially was little more than a figurehead for Youth for Christ (YFC), perhaps the most successful of the postwar 'parachurch' organizations. The idea behind Youth for Christ was both to capture new converts and to revitalize evangelical Christianity among the already converted through a network of youth groups not associated with any particular church. Beginning in 1945, YFC sponsored Saturday night rallies with contemporary music, guest appearances by war veterans and media stars, combined with exuberant preaching and finally a call for young people to commit themselves to Jesus. The formula was simple and successful: by mid-1946, the movement had grown to some 900 rallies and involved about one million young people...

"Another key was timing. Youth for Christ was launched at a time when youth was a primary focus of concern in the United States. Many young men were off fighting in the war and those returning often look for help in readjusting to civilian life. Youth for Christ focused on testimonies of teenage rebels made more stable by conversion to Christianity. 'Police chiefs, governors, newspaper editors and reportedly President Truman – all applauded the rallies' wholesome contributions to community life.' After the war, the YFC message remained relevant as the national ideological focus shifted to moral and political superiority over the Soviet Union. In fact, immediately after the war, Gen. Douglas MacArthur invited YFC missionaries to Japan to 'provide the surest foundation for the firm establishment of democracy.' "

(Spiritual Warfare, Sara Diamond, pgs. 10-11)

Billy Graham

Henry Luce, the owner of Time magazine, was Catholic and a member of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. He has also long been suspected of having extensive dealings with the CIA and even possible involvement in the Kennedy assassination, as noted before here.

Luce

General Douglas MacArthur was surrounded by a group of far right military officers who became deeply involved in a host of post-war intrigues, as noted before here. Some of these officers, most notably Major General Charles Willoughby (who controlled all US intelligence in the Far East during WWII and maintained a stranglehold over that region of the world until MacArthur was removed from command in Korea), have also been linked to the Kennedy assassination, as noted before here.

Willoughby; according to Dick Russell in The Man Who Knew to Much "Sir Charles" was on good terms with at least one "former" Nazi whom Vereide and the Family intervened on behalf of: Hans Speidel 

It seems quite possible that Bob Pierce, the founder of World Vision, was familiar with MacArthur and his associates.

"Bob Pierce led YFC teams throughout Asia and became deeply involved in relief work in Korea. In 1950, he established World Vision, one of the largest missionary relief agencies."

(Spiritual Warfare, Sara Diamond, pg. 11)

Pierce

Pierce seems to have been in Korea during the time of the war. And of course MacArthur was initially the supreme commander in Korea with Willoughby as his chief of intelligence. As noted before, these two men were involved in spawning at least one religious movement during this time: the Unification Church. As noted in part three of this series Abram Vereide's good friend, Frank Buchman, also played a key role in establishing the Unification Church. And of course Bob Pierce was himself a close friend of Vereide's. But moving along.

Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification cult

The man who ultimately succeeded Vereide was a human being known as Douglas E. Coe. On the surface Coe was a surprise successor --hailing from a small town in Oregon, Coe seemingly made little impression prior to his 20s. He did, however, cut his teeth in evangelicalism via Dawson Trotman's worldwide ministry known as the Navigators.

The Navigators was founded shortly before the Family, in 1933. And like the Family, it seems to have forged close ties with the US military very early in the organization's history. Trotman and the Navigators were also one of the first evangelical groups to make use of Colorado Springs, a location that would became a major mecca for the Christian right by the end of the twentieth century in the United States. While all of this is most suggestive, this researcher has not been able to turn up much information on Trotman or the Navigators and thus it is difficult to determine what the nature of this organization truly was/is.

By all accounts Coe, despite his unremarkable background, displayed natural leadership abilities. He also displayed a ruthless ambition with more than a few fascist tendencies, not unlike Abram.

"Coe was as much of an elitist as Abram, but differently so. Aristocracy didn't impress him; more important, he never lied to himself about the virtues or lack thereof of the top men he was courting. Coe understood early on that he would be dealing with violent characters, and that didn't bother him. Indeed, it seemed to excite him. He dreamed of their power harnessed to the new American fundamentalism, a fascination with strength and influence given clearest voice in the words of one of his disciples, attempting to grasp Coe's vision. 'I have had a great and thrilling experience reading the condensed version of The Rise and the Fall of the Third Reich,' a protégé wrote Coe, following up on reading advice Coe had given him. 'Doug, what a lesson in vision and perspective! Nazism started with 7 guys around a table in the back of an old German Beer Hall. The world has been shaped so drastically by a few men who really want it such and so. How we need the same kind of stuff as a Hitler or a Lenin.'

"Abram had thought as much, albeit phrased in stuffier terms. 'An epochal opportunity is ours,' one of his tracts had advertised to the new men of his congressional Fellowship back in 1942, 'to control the future of America by the simple strategy of controlling the character and ideals of [a] relatively small minority of [college-age] men and women. Hitler long ago perceived this strategy, and established his elaborate system of... leadership training. The democracies have been asleep.' Indeed – asleep to the Hitler method of disciplining youth into a revolutionary cadre, a concept that absent the Fuhrer's bloodlust would lead to Abram's later support for groups such as the Navigators and Campus Crusade. Neither was fascist anymore than Coe actually subscribed to the philosophies of Hitler or Lenin. It was the myth of brotherhood that Coe thought such men exemplified, the '7 guys around a table' that would become a trademark of his teaching. That such a view bore little correspondence with history – both Hitler and Lenin brutally pitted their supporters against one another – was of no concern. What mattered was the model, the seven or the twelve, circles of access to a power defined by a personality at the center: Jesus. Contrasting American fundamentalism to secularism at a Fellowship meeting in 1962, Bill Bright, the Fellowship fellow traveler who founded Campus Crusade, one of the biggest popular fundamentalist groups in the world, put it succinctly: 'We worship a person, they worship ideas.' That was American fundamentalism's Christ: a person, purged of the ideas that defined him, as if what mattered most about Jesus was the color of his eyes and the shape of his beard.

"Coe understood the cult of personality better than Cliff Robinson and Dick Halverson. He may even have understood it better than Abram, who, after all, was moved first and foremost by 'the Idea.' Not Coe. For Coe, it was Jesus plus nothing – a formula into which he could plug any values. It was a theology of total malleability, perfect for American expansion."

(The Family, Jeff Sharlet, pgs. 216-217)

Indeed. And in the next installment we shall begin to consider the results of Jesus plus nothing. Stay tuned.