Secret Armies and the Origins of the Cercle Complex Part V

Welcome to the fifth installment in my ongoing examination of the origins of the mysterious outfit variously known as Le Cercle, the Pinay Circle, the Pesenti Group, and so on. The Cercle complex had its origins during the early 1950s, beginning as an auxiliary of the infamous Bilderberg group. But while Le Cercle had its fair share of wealthy capitalist backers, the core of its membership has typically derived from the European aristocracy and reactionary Catholic orders such as Opus Dei and the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM). As such, the politics of the Cercle complex have tended to be much more right wing than those of their globalists counterparts in Bidlerberg. Indeed, these factions appear to have become increasingly antagonistic of one another throughout the 1970s, leading an eventual break with the Rockefeller family around this time.

But the purpose of this series is the Cercle complex's origins, not what its been up to over the past seven decades. For more on these sordid details, check out my prior series of Le Cercle, which can be found here.

As the title of this particular series implies, it is my contention that the Cercle complex had its origins in the various "stay-behind" networks that the intelligence services of the UK and US established in the immediate aftermath of the Second World War across Western Europe and beyond. In theory, these networks would wage a guerrilla war with the support of UK and US special operations forces in the event of a Soviet invasion, but considerable evidence has come out since the 1990s that these networks were frequently used to destabilize host nations, ensuring their subservience to US (and to a much lesser extent, UK) interests.

These networks had their origins in resistance and stay-behind networks established by the UK's Special Operations Executive (SOE), the US's Office of Strategic Services (OSS), and Nazi Germany's Amt VI-S of the Reich Main Security Office (RHSA) during WWII. The first installment of this series provided additional details about these organizations and their secret armies. Part two explained how many of these SOE, OSS, and Amt VI-S assets were transferred to the private sector in the aftermath of the war via conglomerates such as the British American Canadian Corporation (BACC), the World Commerce Corporation (WCC) and SOFINDUS. Eventually, the BACC and SOFINDUS fell under the umbrella of the WCC, which became a kind of super private intelligence agency specializing in covert operations. As such, the WCC was considered in further detail in the third installment.

the insignia of the SOE, OSS and SD (Amt VI)

The fourth and most recent installment shifted gears a bit and began to focus on the early post-war stay-behind networks. There this researcher attempted to show evidence of multiple stay-behind networks in nations that have been particularly ravaged by terror. In the case of both Italy and Belgium, there appear to have been private stay-behind networks under the control of Cercle-connected politicians in those respective nations in addition to the "official" stay-behind networks under the control of the intelligence services of those countries.

From there, I turned my attention to France. As the Cercle complex was largely a French initiative in the early days, the history of French stay-behind networks is especially relevant to this series. As was noted there, the initial French stay-behind network was known as Plan Bleu. It was established in 1946 and exposed by the French Socialist government during the next year. The Socialists, however, appear to have objected more to the far right elements the UK and US had recruited into this network rather than the idea of a stay-behind network in and of itself. To wit, the Socialist government would greenlight the establishment of a second stay-behind network, this one known as Rose des Vents (Compass Rose).

Indeed, the French Socialists would prove to be vigorously anti-Communist and appear to have taken the lead in anti-Communist efforts during the late 1940s. As such, I would like to focus on the initiates taken by the French Socialists during this period as their efforts may have contributed to the creation of Le Cercle.

The Mysterious Jules Moch

Jules Moch was a long serving French politician of the Socialist persuasion. During the 1930s he was a member of the mysterious X-Crise group, of which much more will be said in a future installment. By the late 1930s he procured a place in the Socialist administration of Leon Blum, first serving as Under-secretary of State (1937) and later as Minister of Public Works (1938). During the war, the Jewish Moch remained in Paris but supported the French Resistance. He would reach the pinnacle of his power in the immediate post-war years, when he became an eight time cabinet minister during the Fourth Republic. 

Moch was able to hang on as a minister throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s even after the French Socialist party was voted out after 1947. Indeed, upon the election of Christian Democrat (MPR) Robert Schuman as Prime Minister in November of that year, Moch was bumped up to Minister of the Interior after having previously served as Minister of Public Works and Transportation in the administration of Socialist Paul Ramadier. Curiously David Rockefeller sites Schuman, a founder of the European Union, as also being a founding member of Le Cercle in Memoirs. While it is debatable as to whether Schuman was actually a founder, there is little doubt that he was involved with the group during the early years.

Schuman

It was not long after being promoted to the Minister of the Interior that Moch appears to have become involved in the stay-behind operations. For his part, he handled efforts organized by the French police. 

"... the CIA in the Fourth Republic targeted also the French police. After in the spring of 1947 when the Communist Ministers had been expelled from the French government the whole administration was purged from Communists while the anti-Communists were promoted in the police forces. Prominent among them was commissar Jean Dides who during the Second World War had closely cooperated with the OSS and now was promoted to become the commander of a clandestine French paramilitary anti-Communist police unit operating under Interior Minister Jules Moch. The embassy of the United States was pleased with progress made..."

(NATO's Secret Armies, Daniele Ganser, pg. 89) 

Moch

This does not appear to be the only stay-behind initiative that Moch launched either. According to Ralph P. Ganis in The Skorzeny Papers, it was also Moch who supported the creation of Paix et Liberté (Peace and Liberty), one of the first post-war efforts to create an transnational anti-Communist network. In the "Paix et liberte: A Transnational Anti-Communist Network" essay appearing in the invaluable Transnational Anti-Communism and the Cold War collection, Bernard Ludwig also credits Prime Minister René Pleven with the organization's creation.

Pleven served as French Prime Minister twice in the postwar years, first from 1950-51, and again from 1951-52. Cercle founder Antoine Pinay served in both of Pleven's administrations as Minister of Public Works, Transport, and Tourism, while Moch also served as Minister of Defense during the first administration. Pinay and Moch would also serve together in the third administration (1951) of Henri Queuille in the same cabinet posts as well.

Paix

While there is some dispute as to just when exactly Paix et Liberte was founded, the general consensus is that it was up and running by 1950. Its' official founder was regarded as a rising star in French politics.

"It was during this period that French politician Jean-Paul David, with the backing of the French government, attempted to fill the gap. His organization, Paix et Liberte, made its appearance in France in September 1950. Prime Minister René Pleven had called a meeting of like-minded political leaders to propose the formation of a new organization to confront communist 'fifth column' infiltration in French society. David, at 37 the leader of the Rassemblement des gauches republicaines (RGR), deputy for Seine et Oise, and mayor of Mantes-la-Jolie, 'was not an intellectual but an organizing genius, a courageous man endowed with some straightforward ideas, notably an urgent need to combat Marxist influence'. Finance in the region of two to three million francs a year was assembled from French industry and banks, and a high-profile campaign was begun utilizing posters, brochures explaining the communist threat and the reality of concentration camps, radio transmissions, and even a film, Creve-Coeur, about the French battalion fighting in the Korean War. Links were also made with like-minded groups across Western Europe..."

(Western Anti-Communism and the Interdoc Network, Giles Scott-Smith, pgs. 21-22) 

Before getting to those "like-minded groups," a few points need to be made. Let us start with the Rassemblement des gauches republicaines (RGR: Rally of Republican Lefts). This was a political coalition that brought together several largely center-right parties in opposition to the Communists, the Socialists and the Christian Democrats. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, it dominated French politics. And it was the 37 year-old Jean-Paul David who led it. As such, David was clearly a major player in French politics by this point despite having never held a cabinet position or other such prestigious postings.

David

It was not until 1952 that another coalition, the even more conservative Centre National des Indépendants et Paysans (CNIP: National Centre of Independents and Peasants), that the RGR suffered an electoral set back. 1952 witnessed the election Cercle co-founder Antoine Pinay as Prime Minister. Pinay was a member of the CNIP. Despite this, Paix et Liberte still received support from the French government, even if it doesn't appear to have been as vigorous as when the RGR was the leading coalition. Nonetheless, David began to push an ambitious agenda for Paix et Liberte while Pinay was initially Prime Minister.

"... Nevertheless David, who gained notoriety as the network's spokesman, became the point man for a determined attempt in 1952-53 to take it a step further by establishing a psychological warfare section within NATO itself. With the backing of French Foreign Minister Georges Bidault, David carried out an intensive rolling tour of NATO countries during this period in order to raise governmental understanding and support for psychological warfare activities. Always received at the highest levels, David's visit to the US in February 1952 was recorded in the New York Times and was intended to link up with like-minded American organizations and send a strong message that Europe was rearming not only militarily but also psychologically in the struggle against communism..."

(Western Anti-Communism and the Interdoc Network, Giles Scott-Smith, pg. 22) 

Georges Bidault was the foreign minister in the administration of René Mayer, the RGR candidate who succeeded Pinay as the Prime Minister in 1953. But Pinay was the Prime Minister during David's initial foray into the United States in 1952. Given that Paix et Liberte was sponsored by the French government, Pinay must have approved of David's efforts on some level. Despite different coalitions holding power in France during the crucial 1952-1952 period (the same time frame Le Cercle was founded, incidentally) the rise of Paix et Liberte appears to have continued unabated.

Pinay

And that brings me to my next point: the extent of the involvement of French security services had in Paix et Liberte. Scott-Smith notes that SDECE (France's principal foreign intelligence service at the time and a crucial player in the stay-behind networks, as was noted in the prior installment) contributed members to a "brain trust" the French government provided to Paix et Liberte. Elsewhere, the great Daniele Ganser notes that the above-mentioned Jean Dides (the police commissar tasked with establishing an anti-Communist police unit under the direction of Jules Moch) "regularly took part in the meetings" (NATO's Secret Armies, pg. 89) of the group.

Finally, David himself and key figures of Paix such as Pierre Rostini were veterans of the Resistance. What's more, Ludwig (writing in the Transnational Anti-Communism and the Cold War collection) describes other early supporters as "various militants from the RPF [Rassemblement du peuple francais]" (pg. 82). This is almost surely a reference to the Service d'Order du RPF mentioned in the last installment. This network was essentially a private intelligence service within the SDECE loyal to de Gaulle. It eventually became the dreaded Service d'Action Civique (SAC). Both networks were deeply involved with establishing the French stay-behind networks. As such, there are clear links between Paix et Liberte and French security services involved in stay-behind operations.

Finally, there's the question of American involvement in Paix. For years, it has been alleged that Paix et Liberte was principally funded by the CIA. For instance, Ganser writes: "American historian Christopher Simpson estimated that covert action units such as 'Paix et Liberte' were funded by the CIA during the secret war against the Communists with 'well over a billion dollars yearly'..." (NATO's Secret Armies, pg. 89). Of course, Paix was but one organization among many that this billion dollars was earmarked for. While there seems to be little question that some funding was provided by the CIA, Scott-Smith calls into question the general assumption that it was largely a CIA project.

"... The Dutch report on September 1953 does state that 'it cannot be denied that the movement in France is mainly sustained from American funds' but does not say what information this remark is based on. Regnier contends that even if American funding was involved it must have been a small percentage of the overall budget provided by French professionals and employers organizations..."

(Western Anti-Communism and the Interdoc Network, Giles Scott-Smith, pg. 270 n36)

Accounts of what some of the regional partners received appear to confirm Scott-Smith's instance that these funds were not substantial. Writing in Puppetmasters, Philip Willan notes: "A secret service report declared that the Milan office of the United States Information Service (USIS) 'appears recently to have made a payment of 3 million Lire... to the Peace and Freedom Association for their anti-communist struggle...' " (pg. 108). While this may sound impressive, 3 million Lire is only akin to several thousand US dollars --hardly enough for any kind of significant operations. As such, it seems likely that private sources of income is what chiefly fueled Paix.

Scott-Smith noted that David had met with high ranking figures in the US intelligence community such as Allen Dulles and Walter Bedell Smith in 1953 to pitch his concept of Paix leading NATO psychological warfare efforts. The Americans were unmoved, however, and refused to back Paix as a NATO venture. As such, while there can be no question that the Americans had some involvement, Paix et Liberte appears to have been principally a European project, and one largely controlled by the French.

Despite being rejected for a formal role by the Americans, David was undeterred. He continued to build up his network both domestically and across Europe. In France, one of the crucial partners he picked up was a Georges Albertini, a former socialist turned Nazi collaborator. Albertini would become a leading figure in European anti-Communist circles throughout the Cold War, in addition to a crucial figure in the Cercle's French section for decades. Much more information on Albertini can be found here.

the enigmatic Georges Albertini

Elsewhere, David began aggressively expanding Paix's European reach. By at least 1951 he was busy setting up sister organizations across Europe, with an eye towards uniting them under an executive committee. For now, let us consider several of David's partners.

The Partners

"Incidentally" (or not), at the exact time David was launching Paix, a similar effort was underway in Germany.  This organization was known as the Volksbund fur Frieden und Freiheit (VFF: the People's League for Peace and Freedom). But unlike Paix, which principally drew from the ranks of former Resistance figures such as David, the VFF had a far more dubious origin.

"...The Volksbund, ostensibly a civil society organization, was put to use as the strong arm of the government, particularly by the Ministry for All-German Affairs. Unlike Paix et liberte, which was led by a politician, the protagonists from the VFF were – or had been – close to government circles, and took advantage of connections with intelligence circles. This was particularly so in the case of the founder of the organization, Eberhard Taubert, a former executive in the National Socialist Ministry of Propaganda. In 1933 he had created an association similar to the VFF, the Antikomintern. The anchoring of the VFF at the heart of the state apparatus was made possible by the extensive anti-communist consensus that reigned in Bonn, built particularly around the Christian Democratic Party (CDU) and its extended network. A key figure for the VFF was its vice president, Arthur Ruppert, a journalist and CDU militant from the Ruhr who had participated in the party's reconstitution in Hamburg and across the British zone, making him a key contact for the future chancellor Konrad Adenauer."

(Transnational Anti-Communism and the Cold War, "Paix et Liberte: A Transnational Anti-Communist Network," Bernard Ludwig, pg. 82)

In other words, it had its origins in Nazi Germany. Hence the reason that Paix took the lead in establishing a European wide network despite the VFF predating it and arguably having even more elite connections. Indeed, the VFF appears to have had a direct line to Konrad Adenauer, another Cercle co-founder. But Adenauer was hardly the only VIP in post-war Germany VFF founder Eberhard Taubert could count among his network.

He would later go to serve as an "adviser" to another Cercle co-founder, future German Defense Minister Franz Josef Strauss. Even more curious is the individual he sought out to pitch what became the VFF in 1948: Per Ludwig, it was none other than US diplomat Robert D. Murphy. Murphy was one of the most powerful State Department officials of his era, and also a member of the Bilderberg group's steering committee. He reportedly played a role in the stay-behind networks, with Ralph Ganis alleging in The Skorzeny Papers that it was Murphy who greenlighted the use of the World Commerce Corporation to participate in such activities. Much more will be said of Murphy in a future installment, so do keep him in mind dear reader.

Murphy

In addition to these "overworld" figures, Taubert was (unsurprisingly) well connected within the Nazi underground as well. According the great Jeffrey Bale in the first volume of his groundbreaking The Darkest Side of Politics, Taubert was also part of the network on Werner Naumann, a towering figure in the post-war Nazi diaspora. Naumann had joined the Nazi party in 1928, and by 1933 had become a general in the SA (Brown Shirts). He was also a member of the SD, and eventually joined the Ministry of Propaganda. He succeeded Goebbels' as its head shortly before Hitler's suicide. Indeed, Naumann had been a regular fixture in Hitler's bunker during the final weeks of the war, showing just how close he was to the remaining Nazi hierarchy.

Naumann was especially close to Martin Bormann, the head of the Nazi party apparatus. Indeed it was Naumann who first raised the specter of Bormann's survival during 1953. Bormann managing the post-war Nazi international from some distant location in South America would become a popular conspiracy theory in the second half of the twentieth century, with proponents that included elements of the Mossad, and high ranking intelligence officers in both the USSR and US such as Lev Bezymenski and Frank Wisner, respectively. Curiously, Naumann alleged that Bormann was a Soviet spy who fled to Moscow in the aftermath of the war.

This was hardly the only intrigue Naumann became involved in during the postwar years either. Indeed, the great Kevin Coogan in his classic Dreamer of the Day notes that Naumann was one of the key figures in the postwar SS underground. Naumann was a member of the Bruderschaft (Brotherhood), a crucial postwar Nazi network involved in smuggling various war criminals to South America and the Middle East.

Naumann

The group had more ambitious plans beyond this, however, hoping to lead a gradual Nazi revival in Germany. Naumann was reportedly selected as the front man for this plot. To this end, he founded the Naumann Kreis (Circle), a shadowy network of former Nazis that sought to establish cells inside the Free Democratic Party (FDP), a moderate right wing group. At the time, the FDP was part of Adenauer's coalition government.

Around this time, Naumann also became the manager of the H.S. Lucht Company, which was then owned by the widow of another former Ministry of Propaganda man. The Madrid business manager of the company was none other than Otto Skorzeny, who as noted in part one was essentially the figure head of the postwar SS underground.

All of this was unfolding during the early 1950s as Taubert was setting up the VFF. As such, there is a strong chance that Taubert himself was part of these intrigues due to his access to the well-funded Paix network. Naumann was arrested by British authorities in 1953, bringing an end to these plots, though Taubert appears to have emerged mostly unscathed. This researcher suspects that Taubert was effectively a bridge between "overworld" figures like Adenauer, Strauss, and Murphy on the one hand, and the SS underground on the other.

***

The German section was hardly the only wing featuring curious figures, either. Consider the Belgian branch:

"... At the end of spring 1951, a Paix et liberte committee was also set up in Brussels under the leadership of Marcel Paternostre, president of the World Committee of Political Refugees from Central Europe and member of the Belgian section of the Comite international de defense de la civilisation chretienne (CIDCC). But the true architects of the Belgian wing, officially created on 4 October 1951, were Marcel De Roover and Maurice Keyaerts. De Roover had run the Societe d'etudes politiques, economiques et sociales (SEPES), a private anti-Communist organization that represented the Belgian section of the EIA, from behind the scenes prior to the Second World War. At the start of 1951 he served as David's intermediary in the creation of a Dutch Paix et liberte committee (Vrede en Vrijheid) under the leadership of E. P. van Dam Isselt, secretary of the Benelux committee, the body for trilateral cooperation."

(Transnational Anti-Communism and the Cold War, "Paix et liberte: A Transnational Anti-Communist Network," Bernard Ludwig, pg. 84) 

As was noted before here, the Comite international de defense de la civilisation chretienne (CIDCC: International Committee for the Defense of Christian Civilization) shared a lot of members in common with the Cercle complex, including founders Antoine Pinay and Jean Violet. Another Belgian CIDCC member who later became involved with Paix was the uber-connected Paul van Zeeland. He was a former Belgian Prime Minister and a founding member of the Bilderberg group. According to Ludwig, Van Zeeland became the president of Paix's international committee in 1954, shortly before the organization was rechristened the Comite international d'action sociale (CIAS).

Van Zeeland

Elsewhere, Chevalier Marcel de Roover (sometimes referred to as the "Black Knight") was an unabashed fascist who, according to David Teacher in the classic and long suppressed Rogue Agents, played a role in setting up early Belgian stay-behind networks. As was noted before here, de Roover was a key member of the Academie Europeenne des Sciences Politiques (AESP), another organization with an extensive overlap among the Cercle complex (and the Belgian stay-behind networks).

***

Intrigues were the order of the day for the Italian section of Paix. Here the key figure was another colorful character, one Count Edgardo Sogno. 

"... Sogno advocated a Gaullist-style presidency in the government of technocrats to tackle what he saw as the moral and economic decline of the country. He became a member of P2 in 1979. Born into an aristocratic family in Turin in 1915, Sogno had been a hero of the Resistance, working with the forces of the British Special Operations Executive and winning an American Bronze Star for his bravery during the war. As such he was an ideal leader for the anti-communist struggle, being untainted by fascist associations. After the war he became a diplomat, serving at the Italian consulate in Paris before becoming director of the NATO Planning and Co-ordinating Group in London in 1954. He returned to Paris, to the NATO Defense College, which he addressed on one occasion on 'The communist menace in Italy'. It was during the 1950s that he made his contribution to the Cold War by founding the Peace and Freedom Association (Pace e Liberta), which became a vehicle for a rabidly anti-communist propaganda campaign. He was ably assisted in this endeavor by Luigi Cavallo, a former communist journalist and secret service agent provocateur. In the 1960s Sogno moved to the United States, where he served in the consulate in Philadelphia and then as a counsellor at the Washington embassy, before ending up as an ambassador in Rangoon, Burma. He returned to Italy in the 1970s, just in time to play his part in saving the country from chaos and communism."

(Puppetmasters, Philip Willan, pgs. 107-108)

Sogno

We'll get to Sogno's role in "defending" Italy from chaos and Communism a little later in this installment. For now, its worth highlighting Sogno's role in the British Special Operations Executive (SOE). As was noted in the first installment of this series, the SOE was the inspiration for the various stay-behind networks, while many former SOE hands would later come to dominate the British section of Le Cercle. As was noted in part two, SOE veterans would also play a key role in setting up the British American Canadian Corporation (BACC), which was later incorporated into the WCC. The WCC also acquired Nazi Germany's SOFINDUS conglomerate, which was initially intended to sponsor a clandestine, post-war Nazi revival. Otto Skorzeny became an agent of SOFINDUS around the time it was acquired by the WCC.

The above-mentioned P2 was of course Propaganda Due, the notorious Masonic lodge that has also been linked extensively to Italian stay-behind efforts (noted before here). P2 also had compelling links to the above-mentioned Belgian AESP, as was noted before here). Through the AESP, P2 also had links to the Cercle complex.

***

Paix et liberte never quite managed to establish a proper branch in the UK, but it did forge ties with a curious organization known as Common Cause. This organization was distinct from the progressive organization founded in American during 1970. As for the older Common Cause, there were actually two of them, one originating in America, the other in the UK. The American Common Cause was slightly older, having been organized in 1947. It featured many VIPs such Eugene Lyons, Arthur Bliss Lane, and Adolf Berle. Many of the backers of the American Common Cause would later go to work for CIA-linked organizations such as the American Committee for Liberation from Bolshevism (Amcomlib). 

The British Common Cause was likely founded sometime around 1951 by Dr. C. A. Smith, a former socialist. Smith had spent the war years backing the Common Wealth Party, a far left party Smith eventually became the chairman of in 1944. But with the onset of the Cold War Smith became increasingly anti-Communist, and with several other "reformed" liberals would go on to found Common Cause. This marked quite a remarkable political transformation. The first co-chair of the British Common Cause was Lord Malcolm Douglas-Hamilton.

the Lord and Lady Douglas-Hamilton

Douglas-Hamilton's brother, the Duke of Hamilton (Douglas Douglas-Hamilton) had maintained close ties to the Nazi regime since the 1930s. When Rudolf Hess made his mysterious flight to Scotland in 1940, it was the Duke of Hamilton who was to be his host. 

Lord Douglas-Hamilton appears to have been every bit as right wing as his brother, possibly even more so. He had help set up the American branch of the International Association for the Advancement of Ethnology and Eugenics (IAAEE), an organization founded in Scotland during the late 1950s. The IAAEE is beyond question the leading post-WWII eugenics organization in the English speaking world. Per Russ Bellant in Old Nazis, the New Right, and the Republican Party, Douglas-Hamilton's widow, the Lady Douglas-Hamilton, later became a member of the American Security Council Foundation (ASC). As was noted before here, the ASC was the leading far right think tank in the United States throughout the Cold War. 

As for the two anti-Communist Common Causes, there is still much dispute as to whether there were ties between these organizations prior to the mid-1950s. The general consensus is "no," but it is certainly quite curious that these two organizations would spring up at practically the same time with similar objectives. Much more information on the origins of the two Common Causes can be found here. 

As David Teacher reports in Rogue Agents, leading Cercle figure Brian Crozier would regularly collaborate with Common Cause beginning in the late 1960s. He appears to have been in contact with the organization by the early 1960s as part of his work with another transnational anti-Communist organization known as Interdoc, according to Giles Scott-Smith. By the 1980s, Common Cause firmly a part of Crozier's network, and by extension, the Cercle complex. Through Interdoc, Crozier likely had some dealings with Paix by the early 1960s, but he would not join the Cercle until the early 1970s, by which point Paix and its successors were largely defunct.  

***

And that brings us to the American branch of Paix, called the American Friends of Paix et Liberte. The organization was based out of New York and run by the mysterious figure known as Clifford Forster. What little is known about Forster was largely unearthed by Ralph P. Ganis for his brilliant The Skorzeny Papers. Nominally, Forster comes off as pure Eastern Establishment. He was a law graduate of Yale and worked for a time with the ACLU. And yet Forster was a business partner of Otto Skorzeny and Merwin K. Hart. Hart had been a pre-WWII "isolationist" who founded the deeply anti-Semitic National Economic Council during the 1930s to attack the policies of FDR. 

Another figure in the American branch of Paix was Issac Don Levine. A Russian-born Jew, Levine had become a successful journalist in the United States by the 1940s. At the onset of the Cold War, he went to work for the CIA. Levine had help set up the American Committee for Liberation from Bolshevism, later known simply as the American Committee for Liberation (Amcomlib). As Christopher Simpson notes in Blowback, much of the funding for Amcomlib came from the Office of Policy Coordination (OPC), which eventually became the CIA's Directorate of Operations. Simpson had also linked the CIA funding for Paix to the OPC as well. Funding for both Paix and Amcomlib ultimately originated from the 1950s-era Psychological Strategy Board (PSB), per Simpson.

Levine

As such, the presence of Levine in the American Friends of... is quite interesting. He may well have been the American bagman for Paix. At the same time, there was also much overlap between Amcomlib and other projects sponsored by the PSB and the American Common Cause. Indeed, it is likely all US funding for Amcomlib, Paix, and the American Common Cause originated from the efforts of the PBS and OPC. This is all quite incestuous.

Assassinations and Coups

Before wrapping up, I would like to briefly address some of the more extreme controversies surrounding the Paix network. There's little question that the bulk of Paix's efforts focused upon propaganda. This has led to charges that it was effectively a propaganda bureau for the various stay-behind networks the US and UK (and potentially, the SS underground) were establishing around Europe at the onset of the Cold War. 

But some have argued that the Paix network went beyond mere propaganda and employed some very extreme measures against the spread of Communism. This appears to be especially true of the Belgian and Italian sections. For instance, Ganis highlights this incredible allegation concerning the Belgian branch:

"Paix et Liberte operations may also have included assassination as described in Europe Since 1945: An Encyclopedia: 'Several leading Peace and Liberty activists were directly implicated in anti-constitutional political activity, including serious acts of violence and anti-government coup plots.' A former member of the Belgian Paix et Liberte organization 'confessed on his deathbed' that the group had carried out the 1950 assassination of Julien Lahaut, head of the Communist Party of Belgium."

(The Skorzeny Papers, Ralph P. Ganis, pg. 134)

Such allegations are not without merit. As was noted above, the principal figure behind the Belgian branch of Paix was Mercel de Roover, who later became a leading figure in the Belgian-based AESP, an organization with extensive ties Italian and Belgian terrorists, in addition to the infamous Aginter Press. As was noted before here and here, was a right wing terror network founded by former Organisation armée secrète (OAS: Secret Army Organization) militants after their efforts to topple de Gaulle failed. As was noted in the prior installment, the OAS appears to have used elements of the French stay-behind network in the efforts to overthrow de Gaulle.

De Roover was not the only member of Paix's Belgian section that was later linked to the OAS.

"Perhaps even more important was the role played by Pierre Joly's Jeunesses Nationales. Joly began his political career as a member of the left-wing Etudiants Progressistes (Progressive Students) at the University of Liege in 1949 and 1950, but then quit and began actively collaborating with the Belgian branch of the Union Democratique pour la Paix et la Liberte (Peace and Freedom Democratic Union) organization, an international CIA-funded anti-Communist front created in Paris in March 1949. In 1952, he founded a short-lived Ecole Internationale de Cadres Anti-Communistes (International School for Anti-Communists Cadres) and published a pamphlet praising Franco and Salazar. Later that same year he appeared in Algiers right around the time of the notorious bazooka attack on General Raoul Salan. Five years later he published an anonymous treatise on counterrevolutionary warfare that synthesize the writing of some of the most influential guerre revolutionnaire specialist within the French Army, such as Commandant Jacques Hogard and Colonels Gabriel Bonnet, Charles Lacheroy, and Roger Trinquier, which soon became a sort of vademecum for right-wing subversives in Algeria and Europe. In May 1958, he participated in the Algiers demonstration which precipitated the collapse of the Fourth Republic alongside Pierre Lagaillarde, a right-wing student activist and future leader of the OAS. He then worked closely with the Mouvement Populaire 13 (MP13: Popular Movement 13 [May], commemorating the 13 May 1958 military coup in Algeria), and became the Belgian spokesman for Joseph Ortiz upon his return home. Indeed, up until September 1961, Joly collected money for Ortiz using the Aide Mutuelle Europeene (European Mutual Aid) organization as a cover. Between 1960 and 1961, he helped sponsor and contributed to the monthly publication Reac, the organ of the Etudiants Nationales. His own Jeunesses Nationales organization was the first Belgian group to establish a close relation with French activists, and after the assassination of FLN activist Akli Aissou and pro-FLN professor René-Georges Laperches in Belgium by the so-called Main Rouge (Red Hand), a front group created by the French secret service that was used to carry a politically sensitive operations ponctuelles, Joly's organization was suspected of having lent its support to the killers. In January 1962, Joly and René Boussart were accused of sheltering General Salan in Liege, although this was never actually proven..."

(The Darkest Sides of Politics, I, Jeffrey Bale, pgs. 97-08)

Clearly, the Belgian branch of Paix had its fair share of militants, and given their later ties to the OAS and the Belgian strategy of tension, the possibility that this organization was used to carry out assassinations cannot be dismissed out of hand. As for coups, at least one member would later turn up in such efforts in France during the early 1960s.

The Italian branch of Paix offers even more striking evidence. There can be little doubt that this branch was engaged in espionage under the auspices of the stay-behind networks.

"... Pace e Liberta was an offshoot of a French anti-Communist organization, Paix et Liberte... One of the principal activities of the Italian branch was spying on Fiat workers with communist sympathies and drawing up intelligence dossiers on them. This was the work of Cavallo, who was paid for it by both Fiat and the secret service Office of Economic and Industrial research, run by Colonel Rocca."

(Puppetmasters, Philip Willan, pg. 108)

According to Ganser in NATO's Secret Armies, it was Colonel Renzo Rocca who headed Ufficio R within the Italian secret service. As was noted in the prior installment, it was this office that oversaw stay-behind efforts in Italy. The above-mentioned Cavallo was Luigi Cavallo, a former journalist and intelligence asset who became Count Edgardo Sogno's chief collaborator in the Italian branch of Paix. Later both men would get up to quite a bit of mischief together.

"The culmination of Sogno's plans was to have been reached in August 1974 with the seizure of the presidential Quirinale Palace. President Giovanni Leone would be forced to dissolve Parliament and appoint a government of technocrats headed by Randolfo Pacciardi, another non-communist Resistance hero and a former Defense Minister. The plan was never implemented as the secret services had got wind of it but, more importantly, because there was insufficient political and military support to guarantee its success. Sogno and Cavallo were arrested in 1976 and charge with trying to overthrow the government by violent means. The nature of their project was clearly outlined in the number of documents confiscated from Cavallo..."

(Puppetmasters, Philip Willan, pg. 109)

There were numerous coups plotted in Italy during the 1970s, but Willan insists that Sogno's had the greatest chance of success. This is a bit debatable, as it never seems to have gotten off the ground to the extent of the Borghese coup, but there's no question Sogno had support at the highest levels of NATO. This was likely due to his war time background with the Special Operations Executive. Willan suggests that the growing threat from the Communist Red Brigades (RB) played a role in the decision to call off the coup as it was felt that the RB would pave the way for a democratic center-right coup like the one Sogno had plotted. Naturally, Sogno and Cavallo were ultimately cleared of all charges and the aborted coup was promptly swept under the rug.

Conclusions

Where exactly Paix et Liberte fits into this labyrinth is difficult to discern. While clearly receiving support from these United States, it appears to have principally been a European venture. And while there's much overlap with what became the Cercle complex, there appears to have been only one actual Cercle member (Georges Albertini) who actually belonged to Paix. 

What can be said with certainty is that the Cercle was clearly operating on a higher level than Paix. With few exceptions (such as Sogno and especially van Zeeland), most Paix members were mid-level operators at best. Conversely, Cercle was founded by heads of state and defense ministers, with the exception of the mysterious Jean Violet. 

As has been argued over the course of this series, the Cercle complex appears to have taken over the management of the various stay-behind networks at some point during the Cold War. As such, it may have stealthy taken over management of Paix at some point after 1953. Paix founder Jean-Paul David and longtime Cercle chairman Antoine Pinay were from different political movements in France. Indeed, Paix appears to have grown out of the efforts of moderate Socialists and conservatives to form an anti-Communist front that could rival the efforts of the far right in this department. When the deep history of France is considered in a future installment, the desire of these moderates (especially the Socialists) to launch such a movement will become more clear.  

The rise of Pinay's fellow Bilderberger Paul van Zeeland in Paix at the expense of David likely signaled that this takeover was complete. Van Zeeland was put forth as the head of Paix's international body by the VFF, the German section. As was noted above, this section had ample ties to Bilderberg and Cercle members. 

Paix appears to have gradually petered out after this coup. This was likely the result of internal events in France that put Cercle and its Atlanticist aspirations in a predicament. These events will also be discussed in a future installment. 

But before getting to the curious events that rocked France, I must briefly make an interlude to Germany in the next installment. There we shall consider the role the German Cercle partners played in the stay-behind efforts. Until then, stay tuned dear readers. 

As Above, Revolt Below

After posting some initial thoughts about Russiagate last week, especially in relation to Trump's ambiguous relationship with the FBI, I wanted to follow up this week with a more in-depth analysis. Here I would like to explore the potential reasons for this disastrous hoax, while also considering the motives behind those involved. So grab the popcorn, as this particular exploration is quite the comedy of errors.

One of the most interesting developments in the wake of the Mueller report are revived allegations that various Western intelligence agencies, including those in these United States, attempted to entrap various officials working for the Trump campaign. While these allegations have been floating around for well over a year now, the disastrous fallout from the Mueller report has added additional credence to such charges. Several days after the report was delivered to US Attorney General William Barr, Senator Rand Paul(R-Ky) charged: "So they sent spies into the Trump campaign, they tried to entrap Trump officials to admit they were working with Russia."

Paul alleged to have insider sources feeding him this information, but having direct access to the US intelligence community isn't necessary to gauge the validity of these claims. Indeed, after a precursory examination, it is not difficult to see how sketchy several of the "smoking gun" meetings linked to Russian collusion truly are.

A Few Lowlights

Take, for instance, the much-hyped June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Don Jr. and Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya. Also present were Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and lobbyist Paul Manafort, a long time associate of the Orange One. Initially, this meeting was portrayed as a bid by the Trump campaign to receive damaging information on Hillary Clinton from a Russian national who, presumably, had acquired it from Russian intelligence. Veselnitskaya has long insisted, however, that all that was discussed at the meeting were sanctions.

At the time, Veselnitskaya was working for a Russian company known as Prevezon. As part of her efforts on behalf this client, Veselnitskaya had hired Fusion GPS to conduct investigations. That would be the same Fusion GPS, a private intelligence company, that produced the infamous Steele dossier. Indeed, Fusion had just been retained at the time to conduct opposition research into the Trump campaign and Veselnitskaya had even met with Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson on the same morning as the Trump Tower meeting. Both parties have insisted this meeting was unrelated to the later Trump Tower meeting, which would make the meeting highly coincidental and fortuitous at best. At worst, it has a strong whiff of skulduggery about it.

Veselnitskaya

And what of the ominous Trump Tower Moscow project that was initiated in 2015 and continued throughout the 2016 presidential elections? Trump's former attorney, Michael Cohen, worked closely on this project and later lied to Congress about how long Trump was involved in it. Financing for the project was to be provided by the VTB Bank, an institution owned by the Russia government and under sanctions at the time. What's more, the loan had been procured by a former GRU (Russian military intelligence) officer.

Sounds pretty serious, right? But here's the catch: the former Russian military intelligence officer has also worked with US intelligence, including passing on information related to Russian military technology, the satellite phone numbers of Osama bin Laden, and photographs of a North Korean official purchasing nuclear materials. Further, the long time backer of a Trump Tower in Moscow is a mysterious figure known as Felix Sater, the former managing director of Bayrock Group LLC who is reputed to have extensive ties to organized crime. Sater had been a senior adviser to Trump and The Trump Organization since the early '00s and had been working on developing a Trump Tower in Moscow since at least 2005.

It was Sater who brought the former GRU officer into the project. And like this former GRU officer, Sater has worked with US intelligence community for years, beginning as an FBI informant during the late '90s. In other words, the alleged links to the sanctioned VTB Bank were facilitated by a GRU officer and a gangster with links to the US intelligence community, the latter having maintained ties for nearly two decades.

Mr. Sater, whom we shall encounter again before this piece is finished

Easily the most pathetic effort are the allegations that Roger Stone met with a purported Russian agent to acquire dirt on Hillary during May of 2016. The individual in question, who used the alias "Henry Greenberg," is a Russian national with a criminal history in the these United States. Stone alleges that Greenberg asked for two million dollars in exchange for the information he possessed on Hillary. Stone promptly dismissed Greenberg as a crackpot and that was the end of that.

Later, Stone would allege that Greenberg had in actuality been an FBI informant, a claim of some merit. "Greenberg" did in fact make regular trips between Russia and the United States on behest of the FBI between 2008-2012 and would continue working with the Bureau officially until 2013. The three year gap between Greenberg's work with Bureau and his meeting with Stone has been used as evidence that Greenberg had gone back to work with the Russians. The Atlantic even dredged up a former FBI special agent, one Frank Montoya Jr., to proclaim: "My read on Greenberg is that he was either working at the behest of the Russians or he was freelancing (which means it was at the behest of the Russians)."

Ah yes, because the famed Russian intelligence services would task a man who had just worked with the American FBI three year prior with contacting the Trump campaign in a bid to steal the 2016 election. Its not like this would have been a sensitive operation or anything, so why not enlist a man with a criminal background who had recently collaborated with the US intelligence community?

The International Man of Mystery

But as sketchy as the Trump Tower meeting and Stone's May 2016 face-to-face with Greenberg are, nothing can quite surpass the curious fortunes of George Papadopoulos, the man who allegedly spurred the FBI's investigation after drunkenly boasting to an Australian diplomat that the Russians were in possession of material that could be damaging to Hillary Clinton (emails were never discussed in this meeting, as is often claimed). As with Stone's curious meeting with Mr. Greenberg, this occurred in May of 2016. The diplomat in question later reported this conversation to the FBI, setting in motion the Trump-Russia collusion narrative.

Papadopoulos

Papadopoulos had officially joined Trump's campaign as a foreign policy adviser on March 21, 2016. Earlier that month, Papadopoulos had visited Link Campus University in Rome, a university that has been used to train Western intelligence agents, including those from the FBI and CIA. It was during this time that he first met a highly mysterious figure known as Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese national who allegedly helped set up the Link Campus. Mifsud is an absolutely crucial figure to the Russiagate narrative --arguably the linchpin. Mifsud has been widely described as a Russian intelligence agent by the Western media.

During their time together in Rome, Mifsud alleged to Papadopoulos that he had high level contacts within the Russian government. Three days after officially joining Trump's campaign, Papadopoulos met again with Mifsud, this time in London. Mifsud was accompanied by a woman whom he allegedly introduced as a relative of Vladimir Putin (Mifsud himself later denied this claim). Papadopoulos would again meet with Mifsud in London a little over a month later (April 26, 2016, to be exact). This time, Mifsud allegedly boasted to Papadopoulos that the Russians had dirt on Hillary in the form of thousands of emails. Apparently, it was this particular claim that spurred Papadopoulos' ill conceived boasts to the Australian ambassador.

The question then becomes, how plausible is it that Mifsud was an agent of the Russian government?

Mifsud

 The answer: Not very likely.

While there is no question that Mifsud had dealings with Russian officials at times, and was a regular participant in the Valdai Discussion Club and the Russian International Affairs Council, Russia-based think tanks with ties to the government there, the bulk of his contacts were with fellow academics (Mifsud himself is a professor). Mifsud's highest level contact in the Russian government appears to have been academic Ivan Timofeev, who is involved with both of the above-mentioned think tanks. While Timofeev is highly respected in academic circles in Russia and linked to the nation's Foreign Affairs Ministry, he appears to be a minor official at best.

Conversely, Mifsud appears to have longstanding ties to Western intelligence services. One of his principal patrons at the Link Campus was Vincenzo Scotti, a former Italian Interior Minister and intelligence asset. He also had a longstanding relationship with British diplomat Claire Smith, a former member of the UK's Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC). The JIC oversees the UK's entire intelligence community, including GCHQ (the UK's NSA), MI5, and MI6. It is the senior intelligence assessment body in the UK and a part of the Cabinet Office. As such, Smith would have access to much of the intelligence being generated by the UK's secret services.

Another curious link of Mifsud's is to an Riyadh-based think tank, likely the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies. The think tank was run by Prince Turki al Faisal, who headed Saudi intelligence for nearly a quarter of a century before becoming an ambassador to the UK and US in the wake of 9/11. Prince Turki has long maintained close ties to the Bush family and especially the US intelligence community.

"Prince Turki had been a subject of CIA interest ever since his father had sent him to prep school at The Lawrenceville School in New Jersey. Agency talent spotters on the faculty at Georgetown University kept close track of Turki until he dropped out of Georgetown to return home at the outbreak of the 1967 war with Israel. After later completing his education in England, Turki again returned home to prepare himself to eventually succeed his uncle Kamal Adham as director of Saudi Intelligence...

"Both Prince Turki and Sheikh Kamal Adham would play enormous roles in servicing a spy network designed to replace the official CIA while it was under congressional scrutiny between the time of Watergate and the end of the Carter administration. The idea of using the Saudi royal family to bypass the American Constitution did not originate in the Kingdom. Adham was initially approached by one of the most respected and powerful men in Washington, Clark Clifford, who rose to power under Harry Truman and had enjoyed a relationship with the intelligence community for years...

"Prince Turki himself acknowledge the private network for the first time in an uncharacteristically candid speech given to Georgetown University alumni in February 2002: 'And now I will go back to the secret that I promised to tell you. In 1976, after the Watergate matters took place here, your intelligence community was literally tied up by Congress. It could not do anything. It could not send spies, it could not write reports, and it could not pay money. In order to compensate for that, a group of countries got together in the hope of fighting Communism and established what was called the Safari Club. The Safari Club included France, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Iran. The principal aim of this club was that we would share information with each other and help each other in countering Soviet influence worldwide, and especially in Africa. In the 1970s, there were still some countries in Africa that were coming out of colonialism, among them Mozambique, Angola, and I think Djibouti. The main concern of everybody was that the spread of Communism was taking place while the main country that would oppose Communism was tied up. Congress had literally paralyzed the work not only of the US intelligence community but of its foreign service as well. And so the Kingdom, with these countries, helped in some way, I believe, to keep the world safe at the time when the United States was not able to do that. That, I think, is a secret that many of you don't know. I'm not saying it because I look to tell secrets, but because the time has gone and many of the actors are gone as well. 

"Turki's 'secret' was that the Saudi royal family had taken over intelligence financing for the United States. It was during this time period that the Saudis opened up a series of covert accounts at Riggs Bank in Washington. Starting in the mid-1970s, bank investigators say, these accounts show that tens of millions of dollars were being transferred between CIA operational accounts and accounts controlled by Saudi companies and the Saudi embassy itself. Turki worked directly with agency operatives like Sarkis Soghanalian and Ed Wilson..."

(Prelude to Terror, Joseph J. Trento, pgs. 100-102)

Prince Turki

Turki had then effectively helped set up a "private CIA" to circumvent Congress during the mid-1970s. The CIA director at the time? George H.W. Bush. For more information on the infamous Safari Club, one of the chief fronts for this private CIA, check here.

Curiously, Mifsud was also director for a time of an entity known as the Centre for War and Peace Studies, a research center based out of the Link Campus University. Link was one of the two principal sponsors behind the Centre, the other being a Saudi charity known as Essam & Dalal Obaid Foundation (EDOF). EDOF is headed by an individual with longstanding links to Prince Turki and Saudi intelligence.

Mifsud's links to the Saudis, besides strongly suggesting connections to the Western security services, also places him firmly within the camp of the neo-liberal/globalist elite. This connection is further bolstered by his friendship with Link Campus colleague Gianni Pittella, a member of the European Parliament who headed the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats group in the parliament from 2014-2018. Pittella attended the 2016 Democratic National Convention where he made a big splash by taking a very vocal position against Republican candidate Donald Trump while also endorsing Hillary. Pittella has had a longstanding friendship with Mifsud.

Pittella

Needless to say, all of this should raise serious doubts about the notion that Mifsud was officially connected to the Russia government, or some type of spy for said government. These notions are further discredited by the actions of US officials after Papadopoulos had first mentioned Mifsud to the FBI on January 27, 2017. The FBI would then interview Mifsud between February 8-12 of that year, with no arrest occurring. Mifsud would continue to meet with senior UK officials during 2017, with the US seemingly taking no actions to warn their European counterparts about Mifsud's potential links to Russian intelligence.

If Mifsud was in fact a Russian spy playing a central role in establishing a channel to the Trump campaign, these actions are completely inexplicable. Further exasperating the credibility of Mifsud-as-a-Russian-spy are the inaction against his former colleagues in the wake of his 2018 disappearance. If in fact Mifsud was a spy for the Russians, he arguably was one of the most well placed in history. Through Link, he had established ample contacts throughout Western intelligence and diplomatic services, meaning that any number of his former colleagues could also be Russian agents. Surely this would have been of great concern to various Western intelligence services, and yet little effort has been made to find Mifsud since his disappearance so as to determine who he had compromised and/or recruited.

In other words, the lack of action on the part of Western security services strongly indicates that they do not take seriously the allegations that Mifsud is a Russian spy. If they did, he surely would have been arrested by the FBI in February of 2017 as he was allegedly the chief point of contact between Trump and the Russians. That he was let go speaks volumes. That no serious effort has been made to find him, despite colleagues insisting that he is hiding out in the Italian countryside with the aid of Italian intelligence (which was worked closely with the CIA since the end of WWII) should close the door on the notion that he is a Russian spy.

A Theater of the Absurd

Of course, the Steele dossier and what appears to have been numerous efforts to entrap Trump officials were not all that was on display. Who can forget the bizarre role of Stefan Halper, an acknowledged FBI informant placed in the Trump campaign. As was noted before here, Halper is a lifelong Republican with strong ties to the Bush family --to the point that he appears to have been running a spy ring within the Carter White House leading up to the 1980 Presidential Election on behalf of former CIA director and vice-presidential candidate George H.W. Bush. Halper had been working with Jeb Bush's campaign (it is widely believed supporters of Jeb are who initially hired Fusion GPS to investigate Trump) for the 2016 elections, and then appears to have latched onto Trump's team in the spring of that year with the intention of spying.

Special Agent Walrus

Halper targeted the hapless Papadopoulos, among others. Halper met Papadopoulos several times in London with a Turkish woman described as his assistant. During at least one of these meetings, Halper brought up the the DNC email hack allegedly leaked by the Russians. He reportedly pressed Papadopoulos on this issue, leading the Trump official to believe that Halper was recording him with the intention of entrapping him. Halper's assistant, a woman named Azra Turk, also brought up the emails with Papadopoulos over drinks. She also allegedly flirted with him aggressively and invited him to meet her in Chicago (Papadopoulos lived there at the time). As such, the possibility exists that in addition to being targeted by two separate informants, a honey trap was also being laid for Papadopoulos. How big of a dupe did they think this guy is?

Using Halper was certainly a bizarre choice. After all, Roger Stone had recently written a book (with the son of E. Howard Hunt no less) attacking Jeb Bush and noting Halper's role in 1980 election intrigues on the part of Bush I. Surely, a few red flags were raised when Halper began cozying up to Trump officials. After all, even George Papadopoulos appears to have figured out that something was amiss with the man. But the coup de grace had to have been Halper openly endorsing Hillary right before the election.

***

Then question then becomes --why did the anti-Trumpers go to such great lengths to fabricate Russian collusion within the Trump campaign? After all, its not like there weren't any number of actual crimes that could have been used to stop Trump. If you want collusion with a foreign government, why not address the numerous improprieties between Trump officials and Israel? And what of Trump's numerous links to organized crime, which this blog has chronicled here, here, and here. 

Well, the problem with going after actual collusion with a foreign government is that both parties are thoroughly compromised in this sense, as I noted before here. And as for going after Trump's ample ties to organized crime, well, that might turn up somethings that would be very damaging to Democratic royalty as well. Consider, for instance, Trump's potential ties to a Kentucky-based crime syndicate known as the Company, noted before here and here. The Company. whose heyday was during the late 1970s and early 1980s, was comprised largely of former military and law enforcement personnel, was deeply involved in illegal drug and arms trafficking, and appears to have close ties to the administration of Kentucky governor John Y. Brown. During the early 1980s, Trump appears to have become close with John Y. and his wife, Phyllis George.

And so too did the Clintons during this era. As such, a thorough investigation into the Company would potential cause as many issues for the Clintons as Trump. The same could be set for Trump's mafia ties in NYC, where the mob had worked closely with the Democratic Party for decades. Do TPTB really want to dig too deeply into these murky waters?

John Y. Brown, Phyllis George, and Trump are standing for this picture taken during early 1980s in the midst of the Kentucky Derby season. Hillary Clinton looks on at the far left

There are no easy explanations for why anti-Trump forces felt the need to fabricate largely wholesale this Russian collusion narrative. As indicated above, it may have simply been because they needed something that wouldn't blow back on the forces behind the anti-Trumpers. Of course, fabricating this narrative is not without risks, as I'm sure John O. Brennan and James Clapper are just now starting to realize. Was it hubris, a mistaken belief that they could unseat Trump before light was shed on this bogus narrative, that drove them to embrace Russiagate? Or were both factions working together for a more sinister agenda?

Brennan and The Clap

Given the close ties Brennan and Clapper have to the private intelligence racket, and the close links various Trump officials have to the private military industry, such a possibility can not be discounted. Keep in mind, Erik Prince has been vigorously pushing to outsource the war in Afghanistan, potentially the first of further moves to privatize the national security state. If Russiagate proves to be as disastrous to the US intelligence community as the Iraqi WMDs debacle, Prince's proposal could gain real traction. 

But there is also a stark divide between the pro and anti Trump forces in the national security state. Brennan and Clapper, the two officials believed to have been at the forefront of launching Russiagate, are career intelligence officers with backgrounds in intelligence analysis and signals intelligence (SIGNIT), respectively. Neither man appears to have had a lot of expertise in covert operations, and appear to have been groomed for top posts in CIA and military intelligence, respectively. By contrast, the bulk of Trump backers drawn from the ranks of the national security state --which include Prince, General Michael T. Flynn, General Keith Kellogg, and General William G. Boykin (more information on this rogue's gallery can be found here) --are all special operations forces veterans with ample experience running covert operations. As such, while men like Brennan and Clapper may have set policy, it often fell to men like Prince, Flynn, Kellogg and Boykin to implement it in the field. 

What's more, there appears to be a lot of bad blood between Team Trump and the Obama administration. Of course, we can start with Trump himself. There has been much speculation that one of the catalysts for Trump's presidential run was the 2011 White House Correspondents' Association dinner where Trump was publicly humiliated by Obama himself. Assuming that this blog is correct, and Trump himself has been running black operations involving the mob and other unsavory elements since at least the late 1970s, its easy to see why being called out by a former community organizer might have got in the Orange One's craw.

Trump at the 2011 White House Correspondents dinner

And then there's Erik Prince. While still CEO of Blackwater, the company's CIA contracts were canceled once Obama assumed office. To add insult to injury, Prince's CIA work was allegedly "outed" by Leon Panetta (another anti-Trumper), Obama's original CIA director and later Secretary of Defense. Prince left Blackwater in 2010 and did not work for the US government again during the Obama years. Having lost his company and millions of dollars of government contracts surely stung Prince a bit.

Erik Prince during better days

Elsewhere, General Michael T. Flynn was forced to retire before his tenure as director of the DIA was complete due to pressure from Obama officials. One of those, incidentally, was James Clapper. Flynn was not the only Trump backer Clapper has ruffled the feathers of, either. General William G. Boykin had left government service in 2007, after Rumsfeld had been outed as Secretary of Defense and replaced by Robert Gates, a long time Bush family alley. At the time Boykin was serving a the Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, his boss being controversial neo-con Stephen Cambone. Gates quickly took steps to change this state of affairs by making Clapper the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence after Cambone resigned.

"... After taking Cambone's job, Clapper moved quickly to dismantle some of Cambone's prized programs. In April 2007, after ordering a review of the Counterintelligence Field Activity Office, he terminated CIFA's massive Talon database, which over a period of six years a compiled dossiers on thousands of U.S. citizens...

"Gates showed his cards again in May 2007, when he accepted the retirement of General William Boykin, who had overseen the Pentagon's counterterrorism operations and command of the Joint Intelligence Operations Centers. Gates replaced him with Major General Richard Zahner, the NSA's director of signals intelligence. This, too, sent a strong message: Boykin have been one of the biggest proponents of dispatching Pentagon intelligence collectors abroad to gather information for future military operations, a practice that Gates and Clapper quickly ended in 2007. Now the military's covert operations would be run by a technocrat skilled in the classified arts of electronic eavesdropping and information sharing. Putting an NSA man loyal to the DNI in Boykin's place meant, first, no more ranting about Muslims following 'the devil'; and, second, someone whose loyalties were to the national agencies – the NSA, the NGA, and the NRO – rather than to the Pentagon."

(Spies for Hire, Tim Shorrock, pgs. 181-182)

During his time as Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, Boykin had gone to great lengths to increase the Pentagon's HUMINT (human intelligence) capabilities. As Jeremy Scahill reports in Dirty Wars, a staunch opponent of this process had been John O. Brennan. Indeed, Brennan and Clapper appear to have been at the forefront to reverse Bush II era intelligence reforms that Boykin had played a key role in launching. And here Brennan and Clapper are in an all out war with the Trump regime while Boykin remains close to Keith Kellogg, whom he has known for 35 years. It is also highly likely that Prince and Flynn have had dealings with Boykin during his tenure as Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence as well.

Boykin

These connections stretch coincidence and strongly imply that there is bad blood between the pro and anti Trump factions stretching back to at least the Bush II years. As such, I do believe the civil war is quite real, and both ideological and personal in nature. In the case of Trump's national security backers, the whole thing has the air of a revolt against the bureaucratic classes within the CIA and Pentagon from their former subordinates tasked with directly waging the empire's wars. Unfortunately for Brennan and the Clap, despite the numerous high level post they've held over the years, they do not seem to be as well versed in the dark arts as the empire's field operators. And this is hardly a surprise.

Epilogue: The FBI Revolt

In the theme of a revolt from below against the bureaucracy, something similar appears to be happening in the FBI. In the companion piece to this one, I noted the longtime associate both Trump and his political mentor, Roy Cohn, had with the Bureau. There I speculated that this relationship may have influenced the actions of Robert Mueller and James Comey in reversing Trump's political fortunes in 2019 and 2016, respectively.

But upon further research, I have found compelling evidence that Mueller and Comey were being pressured from below. Specifically, from the Bureau's New York field office. Within the FBI, there appears to be a similar divide between field agents and the Washington bureaucracy that I have outlined above within the CIA and Pentagon. Reportedly, the New York office is especially resentful of their superiors in Washington and this came to a head over the Hillary Clinton email scandal. Comey allegedly committed his October Surprise weeks before the 2016 election out of fear that the New York office would soon leak the recent discovery of emails on Anthony Weiner's laptop that were considered relevant into the ongoing Clinton email investigation.

Reportedly, factions within the New York FBI office were fanatically anti-Hillary and pro-Trump. This is interesting in light of Trump's longstanding relationship with mobster and longtime FBI informant Felix Sater. Sater has had dealings with The Trump Organization since the early 2000s, eventually becoming a crucial adviser around 2006 and would continue to work with the organization up until 2016. Sater also worked as an FBI informant for much of this time as well. When Sater was first "turned" during the late 1990s, his original handler was an FBI agent known as Leo Taddeo. At the time, Taddeo was working with the New York office, which he would continue to work (after doing some work overseas) with until 2015, at which point he was the Special Agent in Charge of New York's Cyber/Special Operations Division. Given that Sater has been based out of New York for decades now, it is likely he enjoyed an ongoing relationship with the New York office.

the FBI's New York field office

Isn't it interesting that a longtime business partner of Trump's happened to be an FBI informant with links to the New York office, the same New York office that played a crucial role in forcing Comey's October Surprise? And even more interesting is the fact that several crucial members of Special Council Robert Mueller's staff also had ample dealings with Sater over the years. And what if Sater was aware of damaging information from his time as an FBI informant working with these investigators? Certainly that would have effected Mueller's investigation, to put it mildly.

Final Thoughts

The more I look at these threads, the more convinced I become that Trump's  election was driven by a revolt from the lower levels of the national security state against their DC overlords. Despite the tremendous resources these overlords have at their disposal via the neoliberal elite --including control of the media (both old school and social), academia, NGOs, most of the major cities in these United States, and so on --they're proven largely ineffectual at stemming this revolt. While this may seem surprising on the surface, the opposition largely consists of the men (and even a few women) tasked with enforcing the post-9/11 national security state. They have overseen repressive measures at home and toppled numerous countries at home throughout the twenty-first century. As such, Brennan, Clapper, Mueller, Comey, and their ilk are likely in for a very rude awakening.

As is the American public at large if this covert civil war spills out into the open.