Le Cercle: Clerical Fascism and the Pedophocracy Part II

Welcome to the second installment in my examination of the mysterious body known as Le Cercle (sometimes referred to as as the Pinay Group for Pinay Cercle/Circle). The origins of the group, which are a bit murky, date to the early 1950s when it emerged from various Pan-European and conservative Catholic interests that were taking shape in the wake of the Second World War. Described as little more than a forum to bring together various right wing organizations by apologists, Le Cercle has none the less played a role in various deep events across the several continents.

As was noted in the first installment, Le Cercle was deeply connected to various intelligence agencies in Western Europe as well as the United States and it had access to some of the most powerful elites of the Cold War era. David Rockefeller, Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezenski all had dealings with Le Cercle for a time. That being said, it would be a gross mistake to dismiss the organization as little more than extension of the Bilderberg Group, as many have (as was noted in part one, there was a fair degree of overlap between early Bilderberg and Le Cercle membership).

In point of fact, Le Cercle seems to have been under the domination of Catholic cults and orders of knighthood such as Opus Dei and the Sovereign Military Order of Malta for much of its existence. While these groups shared some of the objectives of the Bilderbergers, such as a United Europe, they ultimately seemed to have been pursing a kind of new Holy Roman Empire.

Pinay

At some point more will be said on the differences of these competing faction. For the time being I would like to begin examining the backgrounds of two of the chief figures behind the Cercle in its early days. The first was the famed French statesman and Bilderberger co-founder Antoine Pinay, one of the most connected individuals in the French state during the post-WWII years and the sometimes namesake of the Cercle.

Pinay entered politics in 1929 when he was elected mayor of Saint-Chamond, Loire. By 1940 he had worked his way up to the Senate. Pinay was initially given the post of Conseil National during the onset of the Vichy regime, but he resigned within a few months. He remained in France as mayor of Saint-Chamond, Loire throughout the Occupation. Whether or not he was a collaborator with the Nazis has been a topic of some debate.

It was not, however, until after the War that Pinay's career really took off:

"One of the most prominent members of the new Bilderberg Group was the French politician Antoine Pinay who served as Minister of Public Works, Transport and Tourism from July 1950 to March 1952 before becoming President of the Council (Prime Minister) and Minister of Finance until January 1953. In December 1953, Pinay stood unsuccessfully as the candidate for the Centre National des Indépendants et Paysans (CNIP) in the eighth round of voting of the last presidential elections of the Fourth Republic; the thirteenth round would finally see the victory of René Coty, also of the CNIP. Pinay would later serve under President Coty as Minister for Foreign Affairs from February 1955 until February 1956, and Minister of Finance again under Prime Minister and then President Charles de Gaulle from June 1958 to January 1960 when he introduced the new French franc (13). Apart from his distinguished career in public office, Antoine Pinay had other less obvious attributes – and not just within the select club of Bilderbergers. In 1952-53, at the same time as the Bilderberg Group was being set up, French Prime Minister Pinay and German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer created the Cercle Pinay as a confidential forum for Franco-German policy coordination via personal contacts between Pinay, Adenauer and other Christian Democrat Heads of State."

(Rogue Agents, David Teacher, pg. 20)

Pinay

Pinay would remain extensively involved with the group that bore his name from its foundation up until the 1970s, frequently serving as the group's chairman during this period. He would still remain active in the group up till the 1980s, at which point his health had deteriorated to the point he was no longer able to be a participant. Pinay died in 1994 seventeen days shy of his 103rd birthday.

Sniffer Planes of the Alchemists

While Pinay may have been the front man for much of Cercle's early years, the man generally credited with turning it into a major international player is the mysterious Frenchman known as Jean Violet. Violet is generally depicted as a rather buffoonish figure in the few mainstream accounts profiling the man. This is in no small part due to his involvement in a bizarre scandal involving "sniffer airplanes" that rocked France (and, to lesser extent, Italy and Spain) in the 1970s.

"The story of the sniffer airplane begins in 1965 when a Belgian count (Comte Allain de Villegas) and an Italian TV repairman-turned-self-proclaimed nuclear physicist (Aldo Bonassoli). Both 'scientists' had a passionate belief in alchemy and UFOs, and they established a Geneva-based company to finance 'scientific discoveries.' The first project was to develop desalination technology, which made Geneva natural place for their headquarters...

"The failure of the desalination scheme led logically to the next one. If they could not get the salt out of water, the next best thing was to find new sources of fresh water through a device that could 'sniff' underground reservoirs. It was at this point that their paths crossed that of Jean Violet...

"Violet's Vatican connections gave the inventors the financial backing they required to proceed with their experiments. The first stop was Spain, where Opus Dei supporters in the Franco government assured official aid for the project. Financial backing also came from another Vatican-linked source."

(Hot Money, R.T. Naylor, pgs. 258-259)

Comte de Villegas (top) and Bonassoli (bottom)

That would be the Italian businessman Carlo Pesenti, at the time one of the wealthiest individuals in Italy. As was noted in part one, Pesenti was also a key figure in the Cercle during the early years, possibly even serving as chairman for a time in the 1960s and early 1970s. In his Memoirs, David Rockefeller referred to Le Cercle as the Pesenti Group after the Italian concrete magnet.

At the time of his involvement with the sniffer plane (i.e. the 1970s), Pesenti was engaged in a protracted battle with the Mafia-linked financier Michele Sindona, a member of Propaganda Due. Sindona had hopes of taking over Pesenti's empire. Pesenti emerged victorious, but not without taking a beating. Ironically, his business empire would receive much needed funding later in the decade from Banco Ambrosiano, headed by another Mafia-linked P2 member known as Robero Calvi. Pesenti became the largest minority shareholder of Banco Ambrosiano. Both Sindona and Calvi would play a key role in the Vatican banking scandal, as noted before here, here and here. But back to the sniffer plane:

"Alas for inventors and investors alike, no water was found but that dampened the enthusiasm only of Carlo Pesenti, who by then was more concerned with the water in his stock than the lack of it in his cement. For the others the failure simply whetted their appetites for further discoveries. In the tradition of the medieval alchemists, the team of inventors set out to convert a base material, namely water into black gold. The supposition was that if the sniffer device could not smell water, perhaps it could smell oil.

"The international situation was certainly favorable. Synchronizing the launching of the new scheme was the oil-price revolution of 1973, the syndicate attracted other associates. Among them was the government of South Africa, whom Jean Violet and friends regarded as a bulwark of Western Christian civilization. South Africa needed oil self-sufficiency as insurance against the embargo orchestrated by the heathen hordes into whose hands the world's energy lifeline had fallen. However, early experiments with the server device failed, and the South Africans lost interest. No matter, for Jean Violet had even more distinguished and generous patrons to take their place.

"For the government of France in general, and the French state oil company ELF-Aquitaine in particular, the project held out many attractions --if it worked. ELF-Aquitaine could secure sources of crude oil of the sort lost after the Algerian Revolution, making it a major world supplier, and the invention would put it at the forefront of world petroleum technology. France itself would be relieved of the dollar drain of paying for imported oil if sources could be found either domestically or in France's African tributaries. Furthermore, incumbent president Valery Giscard d'Estaing was close to Violet's political and Opus Dei circles. Violet was also well connected with French intelligence, which in turn had influence with ELF-Aquitaine.

"With the president himself giving the clearance for ELF-Aquitaine to ignore normal government accounting procedures and exchange controls, it pumped hundreds of millions of Swiss francs into the project. Under the supervision of the investors' financial agent, UBS chief Philippe de Weck, the funds earmarked for payments to various Italian 'creditors' were allegedly funneled via a Zürich company called Ultrafin, owned by Milan's Banco Ambrosiano.

"Interestingly, Philippe de Weck was one of four Catholic experts that the Vatican later called on to report on the IOR's involvement with the Calvi catastrophe, and to devise reasons why the Vatican should not share the resulting costs. That task he undertook with distinction; but when the French government asked him to explain his sniffer airplane financial maneuvers that made so much French taxpayer money disappear, he declined – good Swiss banker that he was – to violate client confidentiality.

"The sniffer enterprise was a complete fiasco – a fact that may have had some influence on the 1981 crash of the Opus Dei-influenced Banco Occidental in Spain. French President Giscard d'Estaing managed a cover-up, in which his successor, Francois Mitterrand, cooperated. But late in 1983 a tax-department clerk, investigating the route by which 800 million French francs had left the country (340 million without a trace), and inadvertently blew their cover. By then, however, the French government had more important things on its mind."

(Hot Money, R.T. Naylor, pgs, 259-260)

Valery Giscard d'Estaing, another French politician closely linked to Cercle

The Opus Dei-linked Banco Occidential also had ties to Calvi's Banco Ambrosiano and was ultimately dragged into the Vatican banking scandal. As I noted before here, there is a school of thought that the money being drained out of these various Catholic-centric financial institutions via back door methods was to fund some of the Vatican's intrigues in both the Polish Solidarity movement as well in Central America. These were certainly projects, especially in regards to the Latin American death squads the most reactionary elements of the Vatican frequently found themselves aligned with, that needed to be kept from the public at large. The murky netherworld of shadow financing could accomplish so much more while providing the Vatican with political cover.

Jean Violet: International Man of Mystery

The sniffer plane scandal may then have been another front to raise money (in this case, primarily from the government of France) superficially for this curious invention but in actuality was meant to funnel money (after a generous skim by the major players) to such causes the Vatican had become obsessed with under Pope John Paul II (whose rise to power had been greatly aided by Opus Dei, as noted before here). Considering Jean Violet's extensive intelligence background and high-ranking contacts within the Vatican, such a possibility seems all the more plausible. As to that background and those contacts, consider:

"It was in 1951 that Antoine Pinay first met Violet, a Parisian lawyer close to the CNPF, the French employers' federation. Pinay sought out Violet for legal advice about war reparations payments for a Geneva-based firm whose German factory had been seized during the war. Pinay was evidently satisfied with Violet's work as he recommended the lawyer to Pierre Boursicot, head of the French secret service, the Service de Documentation Extérieure et Contre-Espionnage (SDECE). Violet helped the SDECE where he could; as he has said: "Aware of the fact that I could be of some use to my country thanks to my professional situation on the international chessboard, I chose to fight for France within the ranks of the SDECE" (14).

"After the arrival of General Grossin as head of the SDECE in 1957, Violet was taken on as an agent and given missions of increasing political importance. Violet would rise to become perhaps the SDECE's most valued 'Honourable Correspondent' with the title of Special Advocate to the service. One indication of Violet’s significance as a veteran covert operator is the fact that throughout his fifteen years of service with the SDECE, his case officer was the head of the service - first Grossin from 1957 to 1962, then Jacquier from 1962 to 1966, and then finally Guibaud until 1970. Reporting directly to General Grossin, "Violet was masterminding a Service Spécial to promote the General's [de Gaulle's] objectives in defence and foreign policy" (15), a rather ironic fact bearing in mind that Brian Crozier, Violet's future associate in the Cercle, was monitoring de Gaulle’s defence and foreign initiatives with some suspicion from the other side of the Channel.

"An early associate of Violet's in his work for the SDECE was former Chaplain to the French Far East Expeditionary Force in Indochina Reverend Father Yves- Marc Dubois, 'foreign policy spokesman' for the Dominican order and an unofficial member of the Pontifical Delegation to the UN, who was believed by the SDECE to be the head of the Vatican secret service. Violet and Dubois were active in the United Nations from the mid-1950s on when Violet was attached to the French delegation headed by Pinay, at that time Minister of Foreign Affairs. Violet's tasks at the UN included ensuring the Lebanon did not break off relations with France after its involvement in the 1956 Suez fiasco and winning over Latin American republics to block UN condemnation of France's Algerian policy in 1959. Violet's lobbying in the UN would also pave the way for de Gaulle's tour of Latin America in 1964. Another major focus for Violet and Dubois' activities for the SDECE was Eastern Europe: they received half a million francs a month from General Grossin to run the "Church of Silence", Catholic networks behind the Iron Curtain. These activities focused on the countries in what was sometimes referred to as the "Catholic Curtain": Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania (16)*.

(Rogue Agents, David Teacher, pgs. 20-21)

possibly Jean Violet

Violet's association with the Reverend Father Dubois, of whom more will be said in a moment, would later get the Frenchman into trouble with the SDECE. In 1970 he was drummed out due to suspicious as to where his true loyalties lay.

"... Violet was made a Chevalier de Legion d'Honneur by General de Gaulle. He claimed to British author Godfrey Hodgson that he was in charge of covert political operations for SDECE until he retired as an active spy in 1970. According to Count Alexandre de Marcenches, the chief lifeguard from 1970 to 1981, Violet was 'given the heave' because he cost the French government more than any other spy on SDECE's long list of secret agents. De Marenches further claimed that Violet have been a triple agent working in addition for the Vatican and the West German BND. Other sources said that he was in fact fired because he knew too much about the sexual follies of one of France's leading ladies..."

(Their Kingdom Come, Robert Hutchison, pg. 156)

The possibility that Violet was acting as a triple agent is quite plausible. In Rogue Agents, David Teacher notes that Violet was widely credited in foreign policy circles for playing a key role in Franco-German rapprochement in the post-WWII years. It is quite possible that while being engaged in these endeavors Violet developed contacts with the BND (West Germany's primary intelligence agency) and the agency's notorious spymaster Reinhard Gehlen. Gehlen had been in charge of all military intelligence in the Eastern Front for Nazi Germany. Reputedly, he narrowly avoided being charged with war crimes due to the extensive files he had on the Soviet Union. Thus, Gehlen became a key figure for US intelligence during the Cold War despite the fact his intelligence often proved to be inaccurate and his network (often referred to as the Gehlen Org) was riddled with both hardened Nazi war criminals and Soviet double agents.

Teacher reports that at least one German investigator linked Violet to Gehlen:

"In the secret intelligence reports he wrote on the Cercle Pinay in 1979-80, Hans Langemann, the top Bavarian civil servant in charge of security matters, reported that General Jacquier, head of SDECE from 1962 to 1966, had been giving Violet DM 72,000 a year and that Violet had been getting the same sum from the BND's General Gehlen."

(Rogue Agents, David Teacher, pg. 59)

Gehlen

This researcher has not been able to directly link Gehlen and his network to Le Cerlce, but both organizations certainly appear to have traveled in many of the same circles. What's more Gehlen, like many of the upper echelon of L Cercle (as noted in part one) had ties to the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.

That Violet was outed from the SDECE by Count Alexandre de Marenches is most curious as well. De Marenches was also a member of Le Cerlce in addition to being a Knight of Malta. Despite the fact these two men shared some of the same associates, Violet and de Marenches have long been portrayed as antagonists of one another. Brian Crozier, who collaborated with both men, sheds some light on their relationship (or lack therefor of) to one another:

"Inevitably, he had made enemies. One of them was a close friend of the Comte de Marenches who, on being appointed Director-General of the SDECE in 1970, closed down Violet's office without notice. The two men –Marenches and Violet – never met."

(Free Agent, Brian Crozier, pg. 191)

Crozier goes on to claim that Violet had green-lighted a 1980 meeting between himself and De Marenches, who claimed he had never met up to that point. Of course, Crozier also claims that de Marenches was not involved in Le Cercle during the years he was active with the organization (allegedly from 1971 to 1985). This does not seem especially plausible as Le Cercle appears to have established ties with the notorious Safari Club (of which de Marenches was a co-founder of) during this period. But more on that later.

de Marenches

What's more, the sniffer plane scandal was ongoing after Violet was dropped from the SDECE by de Marenches. To believe this you have to believe that de Marenches had already came to the conclusion that Violet was nothing more than a swindler by this point and yet he would allow his fellow Frenchman to entangle the state-owned oil company, ELF-Aquitaine, in a highly dubious investment promoted by Violet that would ultimately cost the French government millions of francs. Given the close ties that oil and intelligence frequently have to one another, it seems inexplicable that de Marenches would have allowed Violet to cheat the French government in this fashion if he truly considered Violet to be a fraud. It is more likely that Violet was engaged in an intelligence operation that de Marenches and the SDECE wanted to distance themselves from if it blew up. Such tactics would ensure everyone had "plausible deniability." And on that note, let us return to Violet's other major intelligence contact.

Not only then was Violet well connected with the SDECE, but he was also engaged with Reverend Father Yves-Marc Dubois in running Catholic networks in the Eastern Bloc. Violet then would have been well positioned to provide covert funding to Solidarity through these channels.  And the Reverend Father Dubois certainly would have had the connections to pull off such an operation. Here's a bit more on Dubois and his network:

"In his journeys, Violet came to know Father Yves-Marc Dubois, a French Dominican who was in charge of international relations for his Order. But Dubois represented more than the foreign-policy interests of the black friars of Faubourg Saint Honore. He was described as a 'member of the Vatican's intelligence network, if not its head.' He popped up from time to time as an unofficial member of the Holy See's delegation to the United Nations. When in Paris, he stayed in the Dominican chapter house at 222 rue Faubourg Saint Honore, in the Eighth Arrondissement, within walking distance of Jean Violet's apartment at 46 rue de Provence, in the Ninth Arrondissement.

"Dubois introduced Violet to his 'Swiss correspondent', Father Henri Marmier, the 'official' of the diocese of Fribourg and editor-in-chief of APIC, the Catholic International Press Agency based in Fribourg. Father Marmier and a Polish Dominican, Father Joseph-Marie Bochenski, founded under the auspices of the University of Fribourg the Institute of Sovietology. The Institute's extracurricular activities included the running of a clandestine network the provided aid to Catholic groups behind the Iron Curtain, particularly Poland. The Institute was in part funded by what officials in Fribourg enthusiastically called 'the American grant'. According to the register's office at the University of Fribourg, Opus Dei sent several its members to the Institute."

(Their Kingdom Come, Robert Hutchison, pgs. 155-156) 

the old Paris-based Dominican headquarters Dubois used to operate out of

So yes, the alleged break Violet had with the SDECE and de Marenches should be taken with a heaping dose of salt. It seems most likely that Violet's chief patrons, the SDECE and the Vatican, wanted it to appear as though Violet was a kind of rogue who was ultimately fleeced by a pair of charlatans. Violet was by all accounts a highly intelligent man. It is far more plausible he was involved in deep intrigues rather than being hoodwinked by a "sniffer airplane."

And that brings us to Violet's pre-World War II activities. There are indications that Violet had been involved with intrigues involving secret societies as far back as the 1930s.

"Violet's political formation came in the 1930s in le Comite' secret pour l'action (CSAR). A far-right political cult modeled on a Freemasonic movement, complete with Masonic-style rites and rituals (although committed to ridding France of left-wing subversion the bona fide Freemasons allegedly represented), CSAR was a sort of French predecessor of Licio Gelli's P-2. It was intensely secretive in all but it's admiration of Franco and Mussolini, and after the war some of its members were accused of being Nazi collaborators. In the 1950s, with his own record pronounced clean, Violet became a close collaborator of French intelligence, and an active supporter of Opus Dei..."

(Hot Money, R.T. Naylor, pg. 258)

Synarchy and Martinism

What then is this secret organization, often referred to as "La Cagoule," that Naylor describes as a "far-right political cult modeled on a Freemasonic movement"? Here's a bit of background on the Cagoule from famed historian William L. Shirer:

"... The second was called CSAR (Comite Secret d'Action Revolutionnaire) and was popularly known as 'La Cagoule' and its members as 'Le Cagoulards,' 'the hooded ones.' This last was deliberately terrorist, resorting to murder and dynamiting, and its aim was to overthrow the Republic and set up an authoritarian regime on the model of the fascist state of Mussolini, who furnished some of its arms and most of it secret funds and in whose behalf it murdered two leading anti-Fascist Italian exiles. Its leader was a former naval engineer named Eugene Deloncle and the head of its military section was General Duseigneur, a retired Air Force officer. Marshal Franchet d'Esperey would become one of the main links between the two secret groups and help raise funds for them. Marshal Petain would be kept informed of their work through Loustaunau-Lacau. The two marshals could hardly have been ignorant of the fact that though professing to be anti-Communist both secret organizations, specially the Cagoule, were also antirepublican."

(The Collapse of the Third Republic, William L. Shirer, pgs. 227-228) 

Here's a few more details on the order's antirepublican activities:

"The Cagoule had a military organization and recruited heavily from other secret societies on the French right-wing. Arms from Germany, Italy, and Spain provided the wherewithal for the planned seizure of power. An attempt to fake left-wing bombings of industrial employers' associations in Paris in September 1937, though, brought the attention of the authorities down on the would-be revolutionaries. The Cagoule's leader, Eugene Deloncle, was arrested the following month, and the organization's arms dumps surfaced shortly thereafter. Stripped of their weapons and publicly humiliated, the Cagoule sank into insignificance, though many of its members collaborated with the Nazis in the Vichy regime after the French defeat in 1940."

(The Element Encyclopedia of Secret Societies and Hidden History, John Michael Greer, pg. 135) 

the aftermath of one of La Cagoule's terror attacks

On the one hand then La Cagoule was another fascist militia like the ones that had terrorized multiple Western European nations during the Cold War era (such Italian organizations were noted before here while their Belgium counterparts were addressed here; both these Italian and Belgium groups had ties to Le Cerlce, as we shall see). It is especially interesting that La Cagoule would try pinning a series of bombings on left wing organizations. This was the modus operandi on many fascist groups that became involved in the US/NATO stay-behind networks often referred to as Operation Gladio (noted before here and here). Like those organizations, La Cagoule sought to destabilize a democratic government and replace it with a fascist regime. But there was also a fundamentally occult nature to La Cagoule.

"French for hood. Popular name of the Organisation Secrete de l'Action Revolutionnaire Nationale (Secret Organization of National Revolutionary Action), a French right-wing secret society founded in 1935 to oppose the Third Republic and prepare the way for a fascist takeover. Some of its members borrowed the Ku Klux Klan's custom of wearing hoods to conceal their identity, thus their popular name, and the Klan's activities in America seem to have been a source of inspiration for the Cagoule's leaders. Much of the Cagoule's ideology, however, came from synarchy, a right-wing political ideology popular among French secret societies in the early 20th century..."

(The Element Encyclopedia of Secret Societies and Hidden History, John Michael Greer, pg. 135)

The concept of synarchy first appeared during the late nineteenth century in the writings Joseph Alexandre Saint-Yves. Saint-Yves seems to have been deeply influenced by the works of Antoine Fabre d'Olivet, one of the most prominent occultists during the French Revolutionary era. Forty yeas after d'Olivet's death, Saint-Yves allegedly acquired some of d'Olivet's unpublished writings from one of his former students shortly after Saint-Yves had been decommissioned from the French army.

Fabre d'Olivet

These writings would greatly influence Saint-Yves, who had the resources to bring arcane concepts to a wider audience. He married  Countess Marie de Riznitch-Keller, allegedly a Russian aristocrat who was apparently friendly with Empress Eugénie de Montijo. Saint-Yves was also a friend of the Earl of Lytton, the Viceroy of India, and through him had a channel to Queen Victoria herself. Interestingly, the Earl of Lytton was the son of famed novelist Edward Bulwer-Lytton who wrote The Coming Race. This work, which first introduced the concept of "Vril forces," and several of Lytton's other works seem to have influenced Saint-Yves.

Saint-Yves would prove to be an enormously influential occultist. He is largely the man responsible for introducing the concept of Agartha (allegedly an underground city in the Hollow Earth where Ascended Masters reside) to the Western world. He would also play a key role in linking the Great Sphinx with the lost continent of Atlantis (which is frequently linked to Agartha as a kind of adversary). His influence of Theosophy and Rudolf Steiner is also noteworthy.

As for his concept of synarchy, here's a general breakdown:

"Whereas Fabre d'Olivet used world history to demonstrate the workings of his three principles, Providence, Destiny, and Will, Saint-Yves used it to support his ideal political system that he called Synarchy – the opposite of Anarchy. Later uses of the term, and indeed Saint-Yves' own writings, make Synarchy a complicated and controversial matter, connected with conspiracy theory, accusations of fascism, globalization, and so on. In its simplest form, it represents government through the equilibrium of three separate powers, respectively controlling the Economy, Legislation (including the military), and Culture (including religion and education). It is international in scale and run by an esoterically minded elite. In a way, Synarchy reaffirms the ideally cooperative but separate roles of the three 'twice-born' castes of Hinduism: merchants (vaishyas), warriors and princes (kshatriyas), priests and teachers (brahmins)...

 "Saint-Yves would boast: 'I have drowned the eclecticism of Fabre d'Olivet in my universalist and rational Christianity.' The curious thing is that such a strong-minded and self-important figure should have accepted Fabre d'Olivet's version of prehistory wholesale, with every semblance of belief in it. This is what Saint-Yves did in the early chapters of Mission des Juifs, often quoting Histoire philosphique verbatim and in general paraphrasing it, without indicating his source. We meet again the four colored races, dominating the world in turns; the Celts and the exile of Ram the Druid; his conquests and Universal Empire in India, which, following Saint-Yves' agenda, becomes the first Synarchic government; the origin of the zodiac; the 3,500 years peace until 3200 BCE, when the Schism of Irshou established the worship of the female principle; the coming of Krishna, Fo-Hi, and the Egyptian mysteries; the invasions of the Assyrians and the exodus of Abraham from their territory. With this last episode, Saint-Yves diverges from Fabre d'Olivet to pursue his restitution of Synarchy by Moses, its renovation by Jesus Christ, and its fortunes and historical periods."

(Atlantis and the Cycles of Time, Joscelyn Godwin, pgs. 44)

Saint-Yves

In other words, then, Saint-Yves envisioned a universal empire controlled by an initiated elite. Saint-Yves, like many thinkers along these lines, seems to have been greatly influenced by the ancient caste system of India. It is important to note, however, the Saint-Yves very much considered himself to be a Christian mystic first and foremost.

Much of Saint-Yves' ideology was transferred to the general masses via one of his greatest admirers, the legendary French occultist and physician Gerard Encausse, often referred to simply as Papus. Papus, while little known in the English speaking world, was one of the most influential and well connected occultists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He rubbed elbows with occult superstars like Aleister Crowley and Theodor Reuss while participating in many of the major esoteric organizations of his day, including the Theosophical Society, the OTO and the Golden Dawn. He even reputedly had contacts with Tsar Nicholas II and his wife, Tsarina Alexandra. As such, Papus remains one of the most influential occultists on Continental Europe to this day.

One of Papus' most enduring legacies was his revival of the Martinist Order. Martinism has its roots with two eighteenth century occultists, Martinez de Pasqually and the legendary Louis-Claude de Saint-Martin. Martinism was essentially a system of ceremonial magic rooted in Freemasonry. Saint-Martin later broke with Pasqually and embraced the Christian mysticism of Jakob Bohme. He would later on devise his own ceremonial magic that incorporated this philosophical shift. By the time of the French Revolution, however, these systems had largely gone out of existence. It was not until the late nineteenth century that the revival began.

"... Saint-Martin's turn came in 1884, when one of the most important members of the French occult community, Papus... launched a revived Martinist Order. The new organization had only secondhand links to Saint-Martin's original Rite of Martinism, and borrowed its degree ceremonies from other sources –Cagliostro's Egyptian Rite, while the Beneficent Chevaliers of the Holy City, a degree created by Saint-Martin's fellow student Jean-Baptiste Willermoz, provided another – but it became the fount from which essentially all later Martinist orders descend..."

(The Element Encyclopedia of Secret Societies and Hidden History, John Michael Greer, pg. 383)

Saint-Martin

It was likely through the Martinist Order that Saint-Yves' concept of synarchy spread through Parisian occult circles and later onto the populace at large. To the outsider, the Martinist Order may appear to be a conventional Masonic lodge, which could explain why Hot Money author R.T. Naylor referred to La Cagoule as "a far-right political cult modeled on a Freemasonic movement." Both Saint-Yves and Papus would have surely taken objection to this description, however. As noted above, Saint-Yves seems to have largely considered himself to be a Christian mystic. Papus apparently entertained similar notions. This excellent biography of the physician notes:

"Papus never became a regular (Grand Orient) Freemason. He opposed Masonry as being atheistic, in contrast to the Esoteric Christianity of the Gnostic Church, the K.O.R.C. and the Martinist Order. Despite this, he organized what was announced as an "International Masonic Conference" in Paris on June 24, 1908, and at this conference he received a patent from Theodor Reuss to establish a "Supreme Grand Council General of the Unified Rites of Antient and Primitive Masonry for the Grand Orient of France and its Dependencies at Paris." It was probably on the same occasion that Reuss conferred upon Papus the X° of O.T.O. for France, and Papus in turn assisted Reuss in the formation of the O.T.O. Gnostic Catholic Church as a child of l'Église Gnostique de France. When John Yarker died in 1913, Papus was elected as his successor to the office of Grand Hierophant (international head) of the Antient and Primitive Rites of Memphis and Mizraim."

Papus

The Rite of Memphis and Mizraim is the above-mentioned Egyptian Rite that Papus incorporated into the Martinist Order. This was also considered to be an irregular Masonic rite. On the whole then it would not be inaccurate to state that Papus rejected mainline Freemasonry and only embraced those strands that he deemed to be consistent with "esoteric Christianity."

I am spending so much time delving into this topic because the presence of synarchy and Martinism has already be noted concerning another group linked to Le Cercle that I chronicled: Propaganda Due (P2). Licio Gelli is alleged to have been a member of a Martinist Order (as noted before here) and several of the neo-fascist militias linked to P2 featured followers of the philosopher and occultist Julius Evola. Evola's system has been widely linked to Traditionalism, a movement closely related to Perennialism. Papus played a role in fostering the more arcane strains of these ideologies.

"The occult group that Guenon joined in 1906, and from which he derived his 'Vedanta-Perennialism,' was the Martinist Order. It had been established in about 1890 by Gerard Encausse (famous as Papus), a central figure in the early development of Traditionalism. Encausse was a physician and the son of an alternative medical practitioner who had invented the 'Encausse generator,' a patent machine for passing medicines through the skin by means of hot water; it had never enjoyed the success that its inventor had hoped for. Encausse became a qualified physician (unlike his father) but continued the family interest in alternative therapies such as homeopathy and mesmerism. In 1887, while studying at the Faculty of Medicine in Paris, Encausse joined Isis, the Paris lodge of the Theosophical Society, one important source of the Martinist Order's Perennialism, and so of Traditionalist Perennialism."

(Against the Modern World, Mark Sedgwick, pg. 40)

Guenon

The above-mentioned Guenon is Rene Guenon, the French philosopher who is easily the most influential figure in Traditionalism. Guenon was an initiate of the Martinist Order and would later correspond with Evola for several years. Evola then was surely exposed to Martinist and synarchist concepts in some form or another, though his own occult system is very unique. Still, Evola's perception of the Hindu caste system (which he believed was the most sacred model for social order) certainly echoed certain aspects of Saint-Yves' synarchy.

But I have digressed enough. The possibility that Martinism and synarchy were underlining influences behind some of the more bizarre aspects of the Le Cercle network will be explored more fully in a future installment. In the next installment, however, I would to begin addressing some of the more noteworthy groups that comprised this network. Stay tuned.

Le Cercle: Clerical Fascism and the Pedophocracy Part I

Le Cercle, sometimes referred to as the Pinay Group or the Pinay Cercle/Circle (in some accounts the Pinay Group was held to be the inner circle of Le Cercle), is one of the most mysterious international bodies one is apt to encounter in the annuals of conspiracy literature. Over the years it has rarely been addressed in the English language and when it has, it is typically depicted as a mere auxiliary of the Bilderberg Group and other neo-liberal/globalist bodies (i.e. the Round Table groups, the Trilateral Commission and other long time bugaboos of the conspiratorial right). This has ensured that serious research into the organization has remained at the absolute fringes of conspiracy culture.

For many years, the only in depth examination of Le Cercle came from its former chairman Brian Crozier in his 1991 autobiography Free Agent. There Crozier provided a highly sanitized version of Le Cercle and the international network that it operated in, largely depicting it as an ineffectual body desperately trying to hold the line against the Communist menace. Of course Crozier held that he himself was little more than a much maligned journalist and historian under relentless attack from the forces of the Left. If only we could be so lucky.

There have been, to be sure, efforts to bring Le Cercle and its more nefarious activities to the attention of a wider audience. David Teacher, a former translator for the European Union in Brussels and an international administrator in Geneva, first shined a critical spotlight on this organization back in the late 1980s via several articles in Lobster magazine. In 1993 he had readied a full length account of the "Paneuropean" network, of which Le Cercle was a major figure in, entitled Rogue Agents (obviously a dig at Crozier's autobiography) for publication. It was rejected by every publisher out there and would lay dormant for 15 years before it finally saw the light of day.

It was not until 2006 that the great Institute for the Study of Globalization and Covert Politics (ISGP, which ultimately published Teacher's book online in 2008) first published a full length examination of the group in English. At the time Joel van der Reijden, the principal author and researcher for ISGP, had managed to get several of his prior articles re-posted on Alex Jones' Infowars website. The Le Cercle piece suffered quite a different fate. Reijden noted that it was censored and in hindsight made perfect sense as it focused upon the international far right, which also includes such organizations as the American Security Council, the World Anti-Communist League, the John Birch Society and the Council for National Policy, rather than the Anglo-American network. Jones is quite protective of the former.

Alex Jones

As longtime readers of this blog are well aware, this researcher has himself written extensively on the American Security Council, the World Anti-Communist League (WACL) and the John Birch Society, and can attest to the conspiratorial blackout that comes from delving into these types of organizations. Proclaiming the same type of disinformation that countless other bloggers and researchers have repeated endlessly concerning groups such as the Bilderbergers and the Council on Foreign Relations can lead to highly lucrative websites such as the above-mentioned Infowars or Vigilant Citizen while attempting original research on Le Cercle or the American Security Council is both rather expensive and grossly under appreciated.

But I digress. Let us return to the matter at hand, namely Le Cercle. Superficially the organization was a kind of off-the-record transnational discuss group that brought together major Western figures drawn from the ranks of the political and financial classes as well as ample "former" military and intelligence personnel. Brian Crozier, a key Cercle member long suspected of ties to US and British intelligence, has insisted that the group was little more than a forum for various interests.

"The Pinay Cercle was a natural offshoot of Jean Violet's Franco-German activities. To describe it as a 'forum' is strictly accurate. There were no members in a formal sense. It was an informal group of broadly like-minded people, who met twice a year, once in America, once in Europe. Usually, some distinguished figure was invited to speak. Among the guest speakers at times when I was present were Strauss, Henry Kissinger (for whom I interpreted), Zbigniew Brzezinski, David Rockefeller, and Guilio Andreotti.

"Within the wider Cercle, a small gathering called the Pinay Group met on occasion to discuss possible action. In 1980, Violet, who had serious health problems, asked me to take over the Pinay Cercle. In practice, I mostly shared the burden with a leading German member of the Cercle, Franz-Joseph Bach, who had run Adenauer's secretariat and later served as ambassador and Tehran.

"In Pinay's day, the old man himself presided over the meetings, but the chairmanship of each session was shared out among others, including Pesenti, Sir Peter Tennent, and myself. On my initiative, Julian Amery, MP (later Lord Amery), took over the presidency. I retired from the Cercle in 1985, having decided that it was making excessive demands on my staff and office time.

"Some outsiders have jumped to the wrong conclusion that the Pinay Cercle was the same as my 'secret' organisation. One of them was a CIA veteran whom I had known since my FWF days. There was in fact some minor overlapping, but the functions of The 61, which I have been describing, were quite different. Some members of The 61's 'Politburo' also attended the Cercle meetings; others did not. Most members of the Cercle were unaware of the existence of The 61. Many of The 61's networks had no connection with the Cercle."

(Free Agent, Brian Crozier, pgs. 192-193)

The actual name of the "61" was in fact the 6I (apparently short for "Sixth International"), a full blown private intelligence network that Crozier ran for around a decade during the late 1970s and 1980s. There is compelling evidence that it had more than a passing overlap with the Cercle. Much more will be said of this network in a future installment. As to whether or not the Pinay Group constituted an inner circle to to Le Cercle, this is unknown to this researcher.

Historically, one of the primary concerns of Le Cercle was European integration. Certainly this was also a major topic for the Bilderberg Group and the broader European Movement (EM) that it sponsored. Crozier is quick to point to the presence of many American Eastern Establishment (who were and are closely aligned to the Bilderberg network) staples such Henry Kissinger, Zbigniew Brzezenski and the one and only David Rockefeller being active in Le Cercle. It was, however, frequently linked to far more reactionary circles.

"Many Pan-European members belonged to a right-wing association that had little formal structure but became known as the 'Pinay Group', after Antoine Pinay, a former French prime minister. In a since it was broader than the Union because its participants were not exclusively Catholic and its meetings were regularly attended by right-wing Americans. These included former CIA director William Colby, banker David Rockefeller and public relations pioneer Crosby M. Kelly. But the Pinay Group was essentially a European Community lobby established to counter Marxism. It was plugged into virtually every west European intelligence service. Although it met under the auspices of Pinay, the co-ordinator for the group was Jean Violet, a right-wing Gaullist friend of Giulio Andreotti..."

(Their Kingdom Come, Robert Hutchison, pgs. 154-155) 

former DCI William Colby

David Rockefeller actually provided one of the more compelling descriptions of the group (in the English language, at least) from his Memoirs, in which it is referred to as the "Pesenti Group." Therein he provides considerable insight into the factions active in Le Cercle:

"Bilderberg overlapped for a time with my membership in a relatively obscure but potentially even more controversial body known as the Pesenti Group. I had first learned about it in October 1967 when Carlo Pesenti, the owner of a number of important Italian corporations, took me aside at a Chase investment forum in Paris and invited me to join his group, which discussed contemporary trends in Europe and world politics. It was a select group, he told me, mostly Europeans. Since Pesenti was an important Chase customer and he assured me the other members were interesting and congenial, I accepted his invitation.

"Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman, and Konrad Adenauer were founding members of the group, but by the time I joined, they have been replaced by an equally prominent roster that included Antoine Pinay, a former French president; Guilio Andreotti, several times prime minister of Italy; and Franz-Joseph Strauss, the head of the Christian Social Union in Bavaria and a perennial contender for the chancellorship of the Federal Republic of Germany. The discussions were conducted in French, and usually I was the sole American present, although on a few occasions when the group assembled in Washington, Henry Kissinger, at the time President Nixon's national security advisor, joined us for dinner. 

"Members of the Pesenti Group were all committed to European political and economic integration, but a few – Archduke Otto of Austria, the head of the house of Hapsburg and claimant to all the lands of the Austro-Hungarian empire; Monsignor Alberto Giovanetti of the Vatican and a prominent member of Opus Dei, the conservative Catholic organization; and Jean-Paul Leon Violet, a conservative French intellectuel – were preoccupied by the Soviet threat and the inexorable rise to power of the Communist parties of France and Italy.

"Pesenti set the agenda for our thrice-yearly meetings, and Maitre Violet, who had close connections with the Deuxieme Bureau of the Service des Renseignements (the French CIA), provided lengthy background briefings. Using an overhead projector, Violet displayed transparency after transparency filled with data documenting Soviet infiltration of governments around the world and supporting his belief that the threat of global communist victory was quite real. While all of us knew the Soviets were behind the 'wars of national liberation' in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, I was not personally convinced the Red Menace was quite as menacing as Maitre Violet portrayed it to be, but my views were a minority one in that group. Even though I found the discussions fascinating, the ultraconservative politics of some of the participants were more than a bit unnerving. My Chase associates, who feared my membership could be constructed as 'consorting with reactionaries,' eventually prevailed upon me to withdraw."

(Memoirs, David Rockefeller, pgs. 412-413) 

David Rockefeller

With these four paragraphs David Rockefeller provides us with a fascinating glimpse into the dynamics of Le Cercle. First let us turn to Carlo Pesenti, the individual whom Rockefeller named Le Cercle after in his account of the group. At one point Pesinti owned the largest financial holding company in all of Italy, which was no doubt of great interest to Rockefeller. Pesenti also traveled in more than a few of the same circles already explored by this blog.

"The foundations of Carlo Pesenti's business empire were set in concrete by an uncle who was close to Mussolini. He thereby secured privileged treatment in the export of cement to Italian-conquered Ethiopia. At the end of the war, Carlo tried to clean up the family firm's image; and under his direction, with the spiritual and material support of the Vatican and the Christian Democratic party, the firm became a financial empire involved in banking, insurance, newspapers, and a host of other enterprises...

"Pesenti's financial involvement with the inventors appears to have been episodic, perhaps because his empire was already on the skids. It was Pesenti's financial holding company, Italmobiliare, and more specifically its finance and insurance subsidiary, Bastogi I.R.B.S. S.p.A., that Michele Sindona had targeted for a takeover in the early 1970s, when he was trying to fulfill his ambition of becoming financial overlord of Italy. Pesenti rescued his firm from Sindona with the aid of another prominent Catholic financier, Philippe de Weck, chief of the Union de Banques Suisses. But Italmobiliare emerged from the fray considerably weakened, forced to sell off assets, including a string of banks, and dependent on the IOR and subsequently on Banco Ambrosiano for infusions of funds to keep it alive."

(Hot Money, R.T. Naylor, pg. 259)

Pesenti

By the early 1980s Pesenti had become the single largest nominal shareholder in Banco Ambrosiano, according to Naylor. Banco Ambrosiano at the time was headed by "God's banker," Roberto Calvi. Calvi was a Mafia affiliate and Propaganda Due (P2) member who would eventually end up dangling from a rope attached to London's Blackfriars Bridge. Michele Sindona, the individual who had first put Pesenti's empire in dire straits, was also a notorious P2 member with extensive ties to organized crime as well. Both men would play key roles in the Vatican bank (the above-mentioned IOR) scandal that finally emerged in Italy during the early 1980s. Pesenti was hardly the only connection P2 had to Le Cercle, as we shall see. Much more information on Sindona, Calvi and the Vatican banking scandal can be found here and here.

Also of great interest is the presence of Archduke Otto von Habsburg in Le Cercle. Habsburg had been one of the key figures in the European integration movement for years. As I explained briefly before here, there were essentially three organizations in play for domination of the European integration movement at the onset of the Cold War: Joseph Retniger's European Movement (EM, which had very close ties to the Bilderberg Group and the CIA), Count Richard Nikolaus von Coudenhove-Kalergi's Paneuropean Union (PEU, the oldest and most controversial due to the more moderate line Coudenhove-Kalergi took toward the Soviet Union) and Habsburg's European Centre of Documentation and Information (CEDI). By the 1970s Habsburg's network had totally taken over the PEU, making it the chief rival to the Bilderberg/EM network. And be assured, there were distinctions between these two factions. Here's a bit more Habsburg's network:

"By the early 1960s some of Escriva de Balaguer's children were moving in rather rarefied spheres. Alfredo Sanchez Bella was one. He had broken with Opus Dei in the early 1940s but returned to Escriva de Balaguer's fold in the 1950s. In 1949, the year after the Communist take over Czechoslovakia, he co-founded with Archduke Otto von Habsburg the European Centre of Documentation and Information (CEDI), whose objective was to construct around the Spanish Borbons a federation of European states united in Christianity and anti-Communism. This sounded very much like a modern resurrection of the Holy Roman Empire over which Charles V had reigned. Like the Spanish empire of old, the envisaged Catholic federation was intended to have large-spectrum antennae in Latin America and the United States.

"CEDI was believed to be an auxiliary operation of Opus Dei. Although headquartered in Munich, it held its annual general meetings at the Monastery of El Escorial, near Madrid, and it continued functioning throughout the Cold War. It's tentacles spread among Catholic Monarchist circles throughout Western Europe. Archduke Otto, who was educated in Spain and completed his studies at the Catholic University of Louvain, reportedly became one of Opus Dei's most treasured old guard supernumeraries. Like Opus Dei, CEDI published no membership lists, but the president of its Belgian chapter, Chevalier Marcel de Roover, was known to have close ties with the Belgian royal family. Indeed, Archduke Otto's nephew, Lorenz von Habsburg, son of the international banker Karl von Habsburg, married Princes Astrid of Belgium, daughter of King Albert II. Astrid's aunt, the former Queen Fabiola, was related through the House of Aragon to the Spanish Borbon family. Professor Luc de Heusch of the free University of Brussels, an expert on Sacred Kingship, maintained that Queen Fabiola, a disciple of Escriva de Balaguer, introduced Opus Dei to the Catholic aristocracy of Europe."

(Their Kingdom Come, Robert Hutchison, pgs. 153-154)

Archduke Otto van Habsburg

The presence of the Belgian royal family in Archduke Otto's CEDI network is most interesting. As I noted before here, several members of the Belgian royal family have been accused of pedophilia. What's more, the CEDI had close ties to a Belgian "think tank" known as the Academie Europeenne des Sciences Politiques (AESP). The Academy had an interesting roster. Both Brian Crozier and Jean Violet (a most curious figure who for many years was the leading figure in Le Cercle and who will be addressed at length in the next installment) were involved with the Academy as were prominent Belgians such as former prime minister Paul Vanden Boeynants and aristocrat Baron Benoit de Bonvoisin. Both of these individuals were also extensively implicated in pedophilia, as noted before here. This will be quite significant in a future installment, so do keep it in mind. But for now back to the CEDI network.

Paul Vanden Boeynanys (right) and de Bonvoisin (left)

For those of you unaware, the above-mentioned Josemaria Escriva de Balaguer is the highly controversial founder of Opus Dei. Archduke Otto von Habsburg had very close ties to the Opusians ever since the onset of the Cold War. This is hardly surprising, for as David Teacher reports in Rogue Agents, Archduke Otto was the Opusian choice to rule as monarch over a united Catholic Europe (or a new Holy Roman Empire, in other words). Much of Europe's old guard aristocracy (as well as powerful factions within the Vatican) seem to have found a certain appeal in such a notion.

As such, it should hardly come as a surprise that Le Cercle has been accused of being under the dominion of Opus Dei as well:

"... The Pinay Group was said to be another Opus Dei auxiliary operation, and its principal protagonists, Pinay and Violet, were variously reported to be connected with the Work."

(Their Kingdom Come, Robert Hutchison, pg. 155)

the seal of Opus Dei

This is not strictly accurate, in this researcher's opinion. There were also a considerable amount of Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM, more commonly referred to as the Knights of Malta) in the upper echelons of Le Cercle as well. SMOM, which has direct origins to the Crusader Knights Hospitallers, is a far older and seemingly more exclusive order than Opus Dei. In Their Kingdom Come, researcher Robert Hutchison indicates the Opusians and the Maltese knights did not always have the most cordial relations. Still, Opus Dei and SMOM appear frequently working in tandem with one another. One such instance is in the case of Propaganda Due (which I addressed before here and here).

As noted during my extensive examination of P2, it appears to this researcher that the upper hierarchy of the lodge was totally dominated by Opusians and Maltese knights. That this would also be the case in Le Cercle is hardly surprising given the extensive overlap between the Le Cercle and P2 circles. I already briefly touched upon this relation to the CEDI in one of my Belgium articles before.

This could also help explain the conflict David Rockefeller and his associates ultimately had with Le Cercle. ISGP speculates that the rift was driven by the religious extremism that derived from the very conservative Paneuropean network that historically had been very close to the Vatican. There was also a divide between the Anglo-American establishment and the rest of Western Europe. Le Cercle, which was founded in the early in 1950s, may then have initiated as a counter balance to the Anglo-American-oriented Bilderberg group. The Vatican-Paneuropean network also gained close contacts with the American deep state during this time as well as it played a key role in establishing the Stay-Behind-Networks throughout Western Europe during the Cold War. My series on P2 and the Belgium deep state addressed this connection.

Knights of Malta star

While there have at times been collaboration between the Anglo-American Bilderberg establishment and far right wing Catholic factions such as Opus Dei and the Knights of Malta, these groups also repeatedly came into conflict with one another. Rockefeller's break with Le Cercle, which seems to have occurred at some point in the late 1970s, happened at a time when these hostilities were especially pronounced. The end result would be the rise of Thatcher and Reagan, both of whom were greatly aided in their electoral victories by Le Cercle and the various Catholic cults working within it. This conflict will be discussed at greater length in a future installment. Until then, stay tuned dear reader.