The Orlando Massacre and the Legacy of Wackenhut -Updated 6/15/16

By now I'm sure regular readers of this blog have some notion of the events that unfolded in Orlando early Sunday morning (6/12/16) in Orlando, but for those of you living under a rock or discovering the article in the future, here is a brief rundown:

At roughly 2 AM one Omar Mateen, 29, walked into a Orlando-based LGBT club known as Pulse and opened fired with an assault weapon. When the smoke cleared, nearly a third of the club goers (the venue could hold around 300 people) were wounded. At present (6/13/16) 49 are reported dead and another 53 were wounded. The shooter was allegedly killed by a SWAT team around 5 AM after it raided the club. Mr. Mateen had apparently been holed up in the club for several hours with dozens of hostages before the SWAT team intervened. It is at present unknown how this effected the situation.

Mr. Mateen claimed to be a member of ISIS, and the group claimed credit for the attack,but it is unknown at this point if he actually had contact with the terror network, or was merely a supporter. The FBI had apparently investigated Mr. Mateen for terrorist ties in both 2013 and 2014, but naturally found nothing. Mr. Mateen's parents were from Afghanistan though he was reportedly born in New York. Given his age, it is possible that his parents immigrated to the United States during the Soviet-Afghan War. This simply speculation on this researcher's part, however, as I have found nothing credible to confirm this.

Marteen

Easily the biggest red flag thus far revealed about Mr. Mateen was his employment with G4S, the notorious British security firm. RawStory reports:

"Omar Mateen, 29, a Florida resident and U.S. citizen who was the son of immigrants from Afghanistan, had worked for G4S since 2007, and was employed at a gated retirement community in South Florida, the company said in a statement late on Sunday.

"He underwent two instances of company screening and background checks – once when he was hired in 2007, and again in 2013.

"In 2013, the company learned that Mateen had been questioned by the FBI but that the inquiries were then closed...

"G4S, which employs 620,000 people and operates in more than 110 countries, provides security services to a slew of U.S. government agencies, including the State Department, Justice Department, U.S. Army and Air Force, and Department of Homeland Security, according to a brochure on its U.S. website.

"Mateen was an armed security officer for G4S, and the company was trying to ascertain whether any guns used in the attack were related to Mateen’s work, said a spokesman who declined to be named...

"The company is no stranger to controversy. It has come under fire from rights advocates for providing services to Israeli prisons holding Palestinian detainees, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation said in 2014 it sold its stake in G4S.

"Three of the firm’s security guards were acquitted of manslaughter charges in 2014 in the cardiac arrest death of an Angolan aboard a flight from London whom they were repatriating to his native country."

This is only scratching the surface and does not even address the controversy surrounding a subsidiary of GS4, the infamous Wackenhut security firm. Wackenhut was one of the trailblazers of the private security racket and has been a lightening rod for controversy decades before it became a part of G4S in 2004. It was originally founded in 1954 in Coral Gables, FL, by George Wackenhut, a former FBI man. While Wackenhut seems to have originally been founded as a private detective agency, it soon added guard services to its wares and soon thereafter its profile began to skyrocket.

George Wackenhut

By the 1960s it had won lucrative contracts to guard the Kennedy Space Center and the Atomic Energy Commission's nuclear test site in Nevada. Most famously, however, are the guard services Wackenhut provided to Area 51. Stories of amateur Ufologists being chased off the the site by brown-uniformed Wackenhut men are legion.

Unsurprisingly, there have long been allegations that Wackenhut had ties to the US intelligence community:

"Of all the articles written about Wackenhut Corporation, probably the most provocative was written by John Connolly for SPY magazine, published in September 1992, pp. 46-54. Connolly, a former New York police officer turned writer, began his story with the following introduction 'What? A big private company – one with a board of former CIA, FBI and Pentagon official; one in charge of protecting nuclear-weapons facilities, nuclear reactors, the Alaskan oil pipeline and more than a dozen American embassies abroad; one with long-standing ties to a radical right-wing organization; one with 30,000 men and women underarms – secretly helped Iraq in its effort to obtain sophisticated weapons? And fueled unrest in Venezuela? This is all the plot of a new best-selling thriller, right? Or The ravings of some overheated conspiracy buff, right? Right? wrong'.

 "Connolly highlighted George Wackenhut as a 'hard-line right-winger' who was able to profit from his beliefs by building dossiers on Americans suspected of being Communists or left-leaning 'subversives and synthesizers' and selling the information to interested parties. By 1965, Wackenhut was boasting to potential investors that the company maintained files on 2.5 million suspected dissidents – one and 46 American adults then living.

"In 1966, after acquiring the private files of Karl Barslaag, a former staff member of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, Wackenhut could confidently maintain that with more than 4 million names, it had the largest privately held file on suspected dissidents in America.

"Connolly wrote that it was not possible to overstate the special relationship that Wackenhut enjoys with the federal government. Richard Babayan, claiming to be a CIA contract employee, told SPY that 'Wackenhut has been used by the CIA and other intelligence agencies for years. When they [the CIA] needed cover, Wackenhut is there to provide it for them.'

"Another CIA agent, Bruce Berckmans, who was assigned to the CIA station in Mexico City, but left the agency in January 1975 (putatively) to become a Wackenhut international-operations vice president, told SPY that he had seen a formal proposal submitted by George Wackenhut to the CIA offering Wackenhut offices throughout the world as fronts for CIA activities. In 1981 Berckmans joined with other senior Wackenhut executives to form the company's Special Projects Division... 

"SPY also printed testimony from William Corbett, a terrorism expert who spent 18 years as a CIA analyst and is now an ABC news consultant in Europe. Said Corbett, 'For years Wackenhut has been involved with the CIA and other intelligence organizations, including the DEA. Wackenhut would allow the CIA to occupy positions within the company [in order to carry out] clandestine operations. Additionally, Corbett said that Wackenhut supplied intelligence agencies with information, and it was compensated for this – 'in a quid pro quo arrangement' – with government contracts worth billions of dollars over the years."

(The Last Circle, Cheri Seymour, pgs. 46-47) 

Even more ominous are the ties Wackenhut had to the Westland New Post, a Belgian neo-fascist paramilitary outfit that has long been linked to the Brabant massacres that rocked Belgium during the 1980s.

"... Wackenhut also drew for some of its employees on the Westland New Post paramilitaries. One of these was a known bomber and hitman, the Frenchman Jean-Francois Calmette, a notorious veteran of the OAS rebellion against de Gaulle and a close conspirator of Yves Guerin-Serac. He was director of the Belgian division of Wackenhut up until 1981, while doubling as a senior Westland New Post commander. These were curious relationships for such a prominent businessman in the security business...

"In 1982, Barbier was assigned as a Wackenhut security guard to the synagogue on the Rue de la Regence in Brussels. During his watch, it mysteriously blew up. The plans of the building were later found in Barbier's home. This same Marcel Barbier was later discovered to be a close personal associate Paul Latinus, effectively his deputy. The plot thickened. Security duties agreed with the Belgian Army involved the strange melting away of Wackenhut security patrols during a number of incidents in which these bases were supposedly attacked by revolutionary forces. In every case, the Strategy of Tension assaults were mounted by paramilitary units, with Westland New Post to the fore...

"In the mid-1980s, Wackenhut closed down in Belgium, amid reports of marching orders from the Ministry of Defense. It may have been that things got too hot for comfort, and the chief clients wanted the show out of town. Judged in the light of later events, Wackenhut's activities in Belgium anticipated mercenary activities by trigger-happy private security contractors of several decades later, notably the infamous Blackwater outfit."

(Gladio: NATO's Dagger at the Heart of Europe, Richard Cottrell, pgs. 306-307)

Marcel Barbier

Much more information on Wackenhut's involvement in what was likely false flag terrorism in Belgium during the 1980s can be found here.

At this point I would like to stress that all of this is highly speculative and many facts are still coming in regarding the Orlando Massacre. But this researcher believes that Wackenhut's history in Belgium is highly suggestive of how deep intrigues may have played a part in the Orlando Massacre. Obviously Wackenhut is no more and now a part of G4S. But clearly G4S has its own deep intrigues as well and it is certainly possible that it may provide similar services to the CIA or other American and/or Europe intelligence agencies.

Update 6/15/16

Here's some more information concerning G4S and its most notorious subsidiary, Wackenhut. As to the later, it found itself implicated in a triple murder stemming from a partnership between Wackenhut and the Cabazon tribe, whose reservation resides in Coachella, California, near Indio (a part of the Palm Springs area). In 1981 the Cabazon tribe founded Cabazon Arms, an arms-manufacturing venture that has been linked to a host of intrigues. One is the above-mentioned triple murder:

"In 1982, Fred Alvarez, a Cabazon tribal leader, and two companions, were found murdered on the Indio reservation. Alvarez had been critical of Nichols' and Wackenhut's dealings with the Cabazon tribe, and he had mentioned to friends that he had received death threats. Investigative reporter Virginia McCullough later came to believe that Alvarez had discovered that monies rightfully belonging to the Indians were being embezzled by the partnership called Bingo Palace Inc. Alvarez knew what he was getting into, however. He had told the Indio Daily News, 'My life is on the line. There are people out there [on the reservation] that want to kill me."

(The Octopus, Kenn Thomas & Jim Keith, pg. 34)

Fred Alvarez

The above-mentioned Nichols is Robert Booth Nichols, a notorious alleged CIA man who has been implicated in a host of scandals, most notably the Inslaw affair and the collapse of Sam Israel's financial empire.  There are allegations Nichols attempted to use Cabazon Arms to provide equipment for the Contras:

"The crux of the Wackenhut involvement in arms development and shipments through various sources, including Peter Zokosky, Robert Booth Nichols, John Vanderwerker, and others, was tied irrevocably to the Reagan administration's efforts to aid the Nicaraguan Contras.

"A Special Operations Report emanating from the Riverside, California, District Attorney's Office which was sent to John Cohen, investigator for the House Judiciary Committee on Inslaw, provided indisputable proof that Wackenhut sold arms to the Contras.

"The Special Operations Intelligence Report entitled 'Nicaraguans and Earl Brian at Lake Cahuilla – 9/10/81' described the meeting held between two groups, the Nicaraguans and Wackenhut/Cabazon officials, at a county-owned police firing range at Lake Cahuilla in Riverside County. 

"According to the surveillance report, the purpose of the meeting was 'to test a new night vision device and weapons. All [the] weapons tested were semi-automatic. [A] new sniper rifle tested was a 50 caliber with a 308 bullet.'

"The report went on to note that 'some automatic weapons were present, but all had necessary permits through Meridian Arms. Meridian Arms [is] owned by Michael Riconosciuto, Robert Booth Nichols (no relation to John Philip Nichols), and Don Oliver – Undersheriff of San Diego County. Meeting and testing took about one hour, then all parties left.' "

(The Last Circle, Cheri Seymour, pgs. 146-147) 

Robert Booth Nichols (left) and Sam Israel (right)

George Wackenhut would no doubt be pleased that G4S has continued Wackenhut's legacy of controversy. Some of the recent allegations involving G4S and/or Wackenhut include;

"G4S has previously been accused of improperly vetting its employees. In 2009, Danny Fitzsimons, a former British paratrooper and employee of a G4S subsidiary, killed two colleagues in Iraq, claiming to be 'the antichrist' and saying he 'must satisfy' his 'bloodlust.' An official investigation concluded that his employer did not properly vet his psychological health.

"In 2007, G4S signed contracts with five Israeli prisons and 'interrogation centers,' leading to accusations that it was complicit in torture and the imprisonment of children. In 2010, three G4S security guards killed an Angolan national during a deportation flight from the U.K., by restraining him in an asphyxiating position.

"In January, five G4S officers were arrested after a BBC expose revealed systematic abuse and neglect at a G4S-run youth jails.

"G4S has also become a focal point for the Israel-focused Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement over its partnerships with Israeli prisons and military checkpoints. Activist pressure has led to divestment from the company by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the United Methodist Church, and UNICEF in Jordan. G4S has since announced that it would end its Israeli prison contracts.

"In 2002, G4S acquired the United States-based Wackenhut Corporation, a private security and prison contractor with a deeply troubled history, including the widespread sexual assault of inmates at a Texas detention center in 1999.

"Wackenhut went on to win a contract to guard the U.S. Embassy at Kabul, worth $189 million over five years. In 2009, the Project on Government Oversight sent a letter to then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton with photographic evidence that embassy guards had created a 'Lord of the Flies environment,' at the embassy, said to include guards and supervisors 'peeing on people, eating potato chips out of [buttock] cracks, vodka shots out of [buttock] cracks… [drunken] brawls, threats and intimidation from those leaders participating in this activity.'

"Nevertheless, Wackenhut was hired by the U.S. government and BP in 2010 to manage perimeter security for the Deepwater Horizon oil spill on the Gulf Coast.

"In 2011, G4S won a contract to provide security for the 2012 London Olympics – only to overcharge the British government and provide understaffed security."

one of the notorious G4S Israeli private prisons

For years Wackenhut was one of the largest operators of private prisons in the United States and one of the trailblazers of the private prison racket. G4S seems to have not only followed in these footsteps, but also internationalized Wackenhut's approach to private prisons.

The same article notes that G4S was provided with ample indications of Mateen's instability:

"G4S confirmed in a statement that Omar Mateen had worked for the company since 2007, and said it was 'shocked and saddened' by the shooting. A later statement said that Mateen was subject to 'detailed company screening' in 2007 and again in 2013, 'with no adverse findings.'

"But one of Mateen’s former coworkers told the New York Times that he 'saw it coming,' that Mateen 'talked about killing people all the time,' and that he was 'always angry, sweating, just angry at the world.'

"The coworker, who said he quit his job due to harassment from Mateen, explained that he 'complained multiple times' to G4S, because Mateen didn’t like 'blacks, women, lesbians, and Jews.'

"Yet G4S continued to employ Mateen, who was able to obtain a 'security officer' license to buy firearms in addition to his state license and conceal carry permit.

"Mateen was even allowed to work at G4S while under FBI investigation. According to the FBI, Mateen was suspected of involvement in terror in 2013. The FBI investigation included the use of paid informants, recording conversations, following him, electronic surveillance, and interviewing him three times, FBI Director James Comey said on Monday. The investigation was closed because it produced no hard evidence of terrorist complicity."

Mateen

Apparently the FBI investigated Mateen for almost a year in 2013 and even approached him with undercover informants:

"Mateen first appeared on authorities’ radar in 2013 after the security guard’s colleagues alerted the FBI to inflammatory statements he made to colleagues claiming 'family connections to Al Qaeda,' according to Comey. 

"Mateen also told coworkers he had a family member who belonged to Hezbollah, a Shia network that is a bitter enemy of ISIS — the network he pledged allegiance to the night of the carnage, Comey noted.

"The FBI’s Miami office opened an inquiry into Mateen.

" 'He said he hoped that law enforcement would raid his apartment and assault his wife and child so he could martyr himself.' Comey said.

"Nevertheless, FBI investigators investigated Mateen, who was born in New York, for 10 months. They introduced him to confidential informants, spied on his communications and followed him. They also interviewed him twice."

It is also interesting to note that Mateen was living in Port St. Lucie, Florida, at the time of the attack. Port St. Lucie is near the notorious Jupiter Island. Featuring less than a thousand residents, Jupiter Island is one of the most exclusive communities in the United States. It is alleged to be a key hub of the deep state:

"Few individuals, even now, are aware of the significance of Jupiter Island. Located on the Atlantic coast of Florida, just a few miles north of Palm Beach, the island measures a mere half a mile wide and nine miles long. According to authors Webster Griffin Tarpley and Anton Chaitkin, island residents read like a 'Who's Who' of the Anglo-American establishment. Many have close connections to the intelligence apparatus and not a few are, or have been, members of the notorious Skull and Bones Society, a secretive and influential Masonic lodge formed at Yale law school.1 Interestingly, many of the early residents, including Averell Harriman and Prescott Bush-George Bush's father-were strong supporters of Adolf Hitler and his National Socialist Party prior to World War II. Even in recent years, George Bush continued to have unfinished work with Nazis domiciled in South America, Tatum says-especially while the world's eyes were turned towards Saddam Hussein and Iraq during Desert Storm. That, however, is another story.

"Jupiter Island boasts hyper-security. All vehicles are tracked by sensors placed in the roads and every housekeeper, gardener or other non-resident is required by ordinance to be fingerprinted and registered. Residents themselves are carefully screened prior to being permitted to purchase real estate (many purchase by invitation, it is thought) and one of their primary duties as good residents is to perform active 'surveillance' to ensure the island remains secure.2 It was here that Tatum met with and discussed sensitive projects with then Vice President and later President Bush, at the residence of his mother, Rose Bush."

George H.W. Bush

"Incidentally," George H.W. Bush's birthday is on June 12, the same exact day the Orlando shooting unfolded.

Meanwhile, the FBI has ensured that its "investigation" will generate a good laugh or two. Consider the latest angle the Bureau is working:

"The murky picture of Orlando gunman Omar Mateen grew more complex Tuesday with word that the FBI is investigating whether he had been a regular at the gay dance club he attacked and had been leading a secret life as a gay man...

"On Tuesday, a U.S. official said the FBI is looking into a flurry of news reports quoting patrons of the Pulse as saying that Mateen frequented the nightspot and reached out to men on gay dating apps. The official was not authorized to discuss the investigation and spoke on condition of anonymity.

"Some psychologists raised the possibility that Mateen was sexually conflicted and lashed out against gays, or that he was casing the nightclub for an attack and trying to find victims online."

This should be interesting...

The Office of Security: A Tale of Sex, Drugs and High Weirdness Part I

Over the years much has been written about certain components of the CIA such as the Office of Policy Coordination (the forerunner for what became the Directorate of Plans/Operations and what is now known as the National Clandestine Services) and the divisions that reside within the OPC/DP such as the Counterintelligence Staff (CI), the Special Activities Division (SAD) and possibly the Technical Services Staff (TSS, now the Office of Technical Service, which was a component of the Directorate of Science and Technology around 1963, if not from its inception). Indeed, more than a few researchers have described the OPC as a kind of "CIA-within-a-CIA" as it was originally separate from the Central Intelligence Group (the predecessor to the CIA) and housed many of the OSS (the WWII-era CIA) "Old Boys" who would dominate the Company until at least the late 1980s.

Certainly the OPC and its successors has been engaged in a host of dirty deeds over the years as it is the primary component of the CIA responsible for covert operations in foreign countries as well as assassinations. However, the OPC was not the only department of the CIA potentially harboring a hidden agenda or two. One of the most curious departments of the CIA that appears frequently in many of the biggest scandals to have rocked the Agency from the early 1950s until the mid-1970s is the Office of Security (OS) and its "action arm," the Security Research Staff (SRS).

Often dismissed as a marginal component of the CIA, the OS nonetheless played a key role in Watergate and Operation Chaos as well as Bluebird and Artichoke, the CIA's initial stabs at behavioral modification and "enhanced" interrogation techniques. OS also appears in the background of a host of other scandals and curiosities including: industrial security; Syndicate-sponsored plots to assassinate Fidel Castro as well as the Kennedy assassination itself; the death of Frank Olson; sexual blackmail operations; explorations of parapsychology, Ufology and other aspects of high weirdness.

Infernal Affairs

On the whole, the OS is one of the most enigmatic aspects of the CIA. This series will attempt to chronicle some of the more incredible aspects of the OS and its wide ranging influence. So let us start by considering the official functions of the OS:

"The reputation of the Office of Security tends to be that of a guard service staffed by gumshoes and technicians whose principal tasks are to conduct background investigations, enforce security regulations and protect the agency's property. In reality, however, the Office of Security is far more complex, and even mysterious. Its broad responsibilities --to protect CIA assets, operations and personnel --require it to maintain close liaison with any number of police departments, to operate wherever the agency has 'assets,' and to maintain more than 1.7 million security files on individuals who are, for one reason or another, legitimately or not, of interest to the CIA. The OS is also responsible for housing and guarding defectors. Similarly, it is the Office of Security that debriefs retiring agency employees and administers the sometimes embarrassing polygraph tests that are a part of the CIA's routine. By no means finally, the inviolability of all classified information within the domain of the CIA is ultimately the responsibility of the OS.

 "By the very nature of its work, the Office of Security has domestic responsibilities that go far beyond those of any other CIA component. If, for example, a CIA officer falls afoul of the local police, it is the OS that will handle (or manipulate) the matter to ensure that no secrets are compromised. Similarly, if a CIA officer suffers a mental breakdown, it is the OS that will take charge of him, consult its list of approved psychiatrists and, if necessary, bundle the patient off to a CIA sanatorium. And, of course, if a staff member is suspected of leaking secrets, whether to the press or to the enemy (often no distinction is made between the two), it is the Office of Security that will investigate the matter, conduct physical surveillances and, if necessary, break into his home in order to install eavesdropping devices, which the Office of Security will then proceed to monitor.

 "The OS, in other words, is an action component of the CIA, with hands-on responsibility for some of the agency's most sensitive maters. Accordingly, and unlike most other sections of the CIA, it reports directly to the DCI himself --the Director of Central Intelligence. In effect, the OS is an extension of the director's office in a way that other CIA components are not; and because of this organizational peculiarity, by virtue of which the office is unaccountable to anyone but the DCI, it has served as a vehicle for some of the agency's most questionable operations..."

 (Secret Agenda, Jim Hougan, pgs. 10-11)

Whether or not the OS even held itself accountable to the DCI is highly questionable. There is at least one instance of a seemingly high profile operation being run by the OS that then-DCI Richard Helms was totally unaware of, and which may have contributed to his down fall. But more on that latter.

Helms

While superficially many of the tasks of the OS seem rather dull, and not unlike the role Internal Affairs plays in many police departments across the US, there was frequently a more sinister aspect to OS operations. As we shall see, those 1.7 million files the OS kept on Americans contained a host of information, much of it having little to do with the Cold War. And when the OS conducted interrogations, they frequently went well beyond administering sodium pentothal and a polygraph test. And as for dealing with security leaks, the OS was typically far more ruthless than planting a bug or staging a break in. As shall be noted in this series, there are at least two security leaks known to this researcher who drew the attention of the OS and who conveniently committed suicide not long after. But moving along.

child's play

At this point it is also worth giving an overview of the Security Research Staff (SRS), the black heart of the OS:

"... a tabernacle within the inner sanctum, was the Security Research Staff (SRS), a cadre within the Office of Security. Headed by the late General Paul Gaynor, Watergate spy James McCord's immediate superior for many years, the SRS managed the literally mind-boggling Bluebird and Artichoke programs, and coordinated many of the domestic spying activities associated with Operation Chaos and Project Two. Most important, the SRS was the primary, hands-on counterintelligence unit within the CIA. Its central function was to seek out and expose security risks, as well as to identify Soviet penetration agents not only within the CIA but also in other branches of government. It was, in other words, the vehicle for 'mole hunting,' as much as James Angleton's counterintelligence staff was. This fact, as important as it is obscure, has so far gone unnoticed by writers on the subject of intelligence whose fascination with the glamorous Angleton --a poet, fly-fisherman, orchidologist and professional spinner of webs --is understandable. Still, his shop was something of an ivory tower, preoccupied with strategic analyses of broad intelligence issues, whereas the OS, and the SRS, were in the alleys and sometimes in the gutter.

"In many ways the SRS was unique. A critical component of the CIA's internal security apparatus, it was effectively immune from scrutiny. Whenever a new employee was hired or an agent induced to work for the CIA, details of that relationship would be forwarded to the Office of Security for background checks and approval. This was a well-known procedure, but what was less well known was the fact that this information was also routed to the Security Research Staff, where, as sometimes happened, earlier approvals were vetoed by General Gaynor and his staff. A lifelong counterintelligence specialist, fascinated by the idea of a 'Manchurian Candidate,' General Gaynor was separately provided with this information so that he might compare the names of new personnel and agents with dossiers in his legendary 'fag file.' The file consisted of details concerning more than three hundred thousand Americans, mostly homosexual, who had been arrested at one time or another for sexual offenses."

(Secret Agenda, Jim Hougan, pgs. 12-13)

As the reader may have gleamed from this description, the OS is a different beast than the Old Boy who define the CIA for most individuals. As well shall see in a moment, the background and the politics of the OS was quite different from that of the Old Boys. But before getting there this research should briefly outline the Old Boys themselves.

OSS Old Boys and OS Military Men

Over the years much has been made about the so-called "Old Boys" network within the CIA. The Old Boys had cut their teeth in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during the Second World War and would eventually dominate in the upper hierarchy of the Company for decades afterwards. Many of the most notable Old Boys such as Allen Dulles, James Jesus Angleton, Frank Wisner, Tracy Barnes and William Casey, in addition to their OSS background, were firmly entrenched in the Eastern Establishment. Virtually all of these men had attended Ivory League universities and in many cases held membership in exclusive "fraternities" such as Skull and Bones and Scroll and Key. Many of them had also worked extensively in law, insurance or banking both before and after WWII.

Allen Dulles, an Old Boy's Old Boy

For this reason many researchers have dismissed the Old Boys, and the CIA itself, as an extension of the Eastern Establishment and the powerful families the comprise it such as the Rockefellers and Mellons. There is some truth to these claims, though there is compelling evidence that some of the most notorious Old Boys such as Dulles, Angleton and especially Casey became radicalized by the Cold War and increasingly found themselves in conflict with the Eastern Establishment. A reoccurring feature of these "Prussian" OSS men was membership in the Sovereign Military Order of Malta, which seems to have been perusing a far more reactionary agenda that the Eastern/Anglo-American Establishment (briefly addressed before here and here). It is this latter faction that is being invoked when phrases like "liberal CIA" are uttered.

But back to the OS. The composition of the Office of Security was much different than that of the OSS-dominated OPC and its successors. This researcher has been unable to find any OSS Old Boys in key roles in the OS (one of the most notorious OS heads, Sheffield Edwards, has been cited as an OSS man in some accounts, but this researcher has not been able to confirm this) nor do much of the known personnel seem to have had ties to the Ivory league or the Eastern Establishment.

Colonel Sheffield Edwards

Virtually all of the key Office of Security men had backgrounds in the military and/or the FBI. Colonel Sheffiled Edwards, the above-mentioned General Paul Gaynor and Lt. Col Ermal P. Geiss had all been former Army officers. Morse Allen had been a member of both the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) and the FBI. Watergate Plumber and longtime OS man James McCord had also spent many years in the Bureau as well as being a Colonel in Air Force Reserve. Edwin P. Wilson had been a Marine before joining the OS in the mid-1950s. Later on he would leave the CIA for the ONI's notorious Task Force 157. On the whole, ties between the OS and the Pentagon seem to have been very close. This is not always true of other components of the CIA.

The OS staff was much cruder and hardboiled than there counterparts in the OPC. This did not always make for the best relations with the OPC crowd, some of whom saw the OS as little more than knuckle-dragging detectives. The OS in turn had a rather contemptuous attitude toward the OSS-OPC network, largely viewing them as spineless intellectuals soft on Communism. Indeed, the OS harbored many suspicions over the extent of Communist infiltration of the CIA no doubt amplified by the far right wing political leanings of the OS.

Deep State Birchers

As to these leanings, let us start by considering some of the statements James McCord made in the wake of the Watergate revelations:

"... Indeed, even in an area as banal as 'political leanings,' almost nothing has been published about McCord. The official record takes note of the fact that he is (or was) 'a registered Republican,' but goes no further. And yet, what a Republican! In a secret letter to General Paul Gaynor, McCord explained his concerns in apocalyptic terms: 'When the hundreds of dedicated fine men and women of the CIA no longer write intelligence summaries and reports with integrity, without fear of political recrimination --when their fine director [Richard Helms] is being summarily discharged in order to make way for a politician who will write or rewrite intelligence the way politicians want them [sic] written, instead of the way truth and best judgment dictates, out nation is in the deepest trouble and freedom itself was never so imperiled. Nazi Germany rose and fell under the exactly the same philosophy of government operation.' "

(Secret Agenda, Jim Hougan, pgs. 22-23)

McCord

Nazi Germany, huh? Had McCord had a revelation, a Road to Damascus type moment, over Nixon's efforts to politicize the intelligence services during his presidency? This was, after all, something DCI Richard Helms had grown increasingly concerned about during the Nixon years (a point that shall be addressed inm ore depth when this series considers Watergate and Operation Chaos).

McCord may well have been thinking along these lines, but his conclusions as to who was behind Nixon's politics would put him firmly in the same camp as the Birchers and, later, the Alex Jones bots. Consider:

"... In a series of queer 'newsletters,' written in the aftermath of Watergate (and virtually uncirculated), McCord put forward a right-wing conspiracy theory that the Rockefeller family was lunging for complete control over the government's critical national security functions, using the Council on Foreign Relations and Henry Kissinger as its surrogates. Supporting his case with mostly irrelevant quotations from the Bible, Shakespeare, Thomas Edison and others, McCord mixed evangelical religion and the politics of conspiracy to give the newsletters a special flavor --a flavor that is also to be found in his book."

(Secret Agenda, Jim Hougan, pgs. 23-24)

Henry Kissinger

While no doubt many will dismiss McCord's ramblings about the Rockefellers, the CFR and Henry Kissinger as some type of psychop, there is in fact compelling evidence that elements within the CIA and the Pentagon had genuinely begun to question the sense, if not the loyalty, of Kissinger, once word of his and Nixon's efforts to normalize relations with China began to get back to the national security apparatus. More will be said on this topic when I begin to address Watergate in earnest.

"Fag Files" and the American Security Council

But McCord's musings in the wake of Watergate are hardly the only evidence of the far right political leanings of the OS. Let us consider a bit more about the methods and associates of the notorious General Paul Gaynor and his sergeant-at-arms, Morse Allen.

"... Gaynor was notorious among CIA officials for having his staff maintain a systematic file on every homosexual, and suspected homosexual, among the ranks of Federal employees, as well as those who worked on Washington's Capital Hill, including elected officials. Gaynor's secret listings eventually grew to include the names of employees and elected officials at State Government levels, as well, and even the siblings and relatives of those on Capital Hill. In early January 1953, State Department employee John C. Montgomery, who handled considerable classified materials, hanged himself in his Georgetown home after learning of his inclusion in Gaynor's list. In 1954, U.S. Senator Lester C. Hunt (D-WY) killed himself in his Senate office after he was threatened by Republicans, using information provided through Gaynor's staff, that they would publicly expose his son's homosexuality.

"Gaynor's veiled and more despicable activities also extended to racial matters, a bigotry he seemed to share with many of the CIA's early leaders, as well as with some of the Pentagon's early ranking officials. According to one former CIA official, Gaynor was once informally cautioned by Allen Dulles concerning his overt support of former Congressman Hamilton Fish III, a strident Nazi sympathizer, and for associating, along with fellow CIA official Morse Allen, with John B. Trevor Jr., an ardent racist, anti-Semite, pro-Nazi, who called for amnesty for Nazi war criminals. Before the CIA was formed, Gaynor was also associated with Trevor's father, John B. Trevor Sr., a Harvard-educated attorney who worked with Army intelligence and who once strongly advocated arming a group of citizens with 6,000 rifles and machine guns to put down an anticipated Jewish uprising in Manhattan that only took shape in Trevor's twisted mind."

(A Secret Order, H.P. Albarelli, Jr., pgs. 437-438)

General Paul F. Gaynor

The Trevor family appears in a host of deep intrigues. John B. Trevor Jr. was a key player in the Pioneer Fund, the chief American proponent of eugenics in the post-WWII era. The Pioneer Fund was established by Colonel Wickliffe Preston Draper, another alleged military intelligence officer who was a part of the wealthy Draper family that had established Draper Corporation in Hopedale, Massachusetts. According to the great John Bevilaqua in JFK -The Final Solution Draper acquired the funds for the Pioneer Fund after the Draper Corporation was purchased by Rockwell International, a major defense contractor with longstanding ties to the CIA (briefly noted before here).

But even more noteworthy is the fact that both of the Trevors would play key roles in the far right wing American Security Council (ASC, which this blog has chronicled at length before here), for years the leading lobbyist for the military-industrial complex. But beyond its overt agenda as a spokesman for the defense industry, the ASC was also deeply immersed in psychological warfare (noted before here) as well as managing a massive private intelligence network geared towards industrial security (though it certainly seems to have become more ambitious by the 1970s...). Gaynor had other ties to the ASC as well that shall be noted in a future installment.

Beyond Gaynor, there are other potential ties between the OS and the ASC as well. One of them is counterintelligence chief James Jesus Angleton, who frequently collaborated with the OS (most notoriously during Operation Chaos), and who would later join the ASC after being kicked out of the Comapny. Another is Lt. Col Ermal P. Geiss. Before coming to the CIA Geiss had served in Army intelligence and established some compelling ties there:

"... During World War II, Geiss served as Chief of Counter Intelligence in the U.S. Army's Counter Intelligence Corps [CIC]. After the end of World War II, he spent at least six months at Atsugi airbase on the staff in the office of Assistant Chief of Staff G-2 Charles Willoughby. Geiss joined the CIA as a charter member in 1947 and was the Agency's first Chief of Personnel Security. He eventually became the Deputy Director of the Agency's Office of Security."

(A Secret Order, H.P. Albarelli, Jr., pg. 221) 

Geiss

Actually Geiss seems to have been the Chief of Counter Intelligence on Douglas MacArthur's staff during World War II. General Charles Willoughby was MacArthur's chief of intelligence throughout WWII and thus Geiss would have likely served under him for several years before officially joining Willoughby's staff. Charles Willoughby was one of the most powerful intelligence officers in the history of this nation, controlling virtually all intelligence in the Far East for close to a decade (1941-1951), and would remain active in various intrigues well after he left the Army. He has been linked to a host of controversies including Yamashita's gold, Unit 731, Kuomintang-linked drug trafficking, the Kennedy assassination and even the Roswell incident.

Willoughby has long been described as a member of the American Security Council, but this researcher has not been able to reliably confirm this association. Willoughby was certainly friendly with more than a few of the military officers who became involved with the ASC over the years as quite a few of them had served under Douglas MacArthur in either the Pacific Theater of World War II or Korea (much more on the ASC's ties to Willoughby and MacArthur can be found here). It is certainly possible Geiss would have encountered many of the same officers during his time serving under MacArthur and Willoughby. That Willoughby would have one of his former officers in the Office of Security is most curious as well considering his links to the Kennedy assassination (noted before here), among other things.

General Charles Willoughby

All Roads Lead to Dallas

"Incidentally," two other far right associates of General Paul Gaynor and Morse Allen also appear in the Kennedy assassination as well:

"... William B. Reily, an avid anti-Communist, owned the Reily Coffee Company and was closely connected to McCarthyite and rabid anti-Communist Edward Scannell Butler, who were both close to CIA assistant director Charles Cabell, CIA SRS chief Paul Gaynor and Agency ARTICHOKE official Morse Allen. Readers may recall that alleged JFK assassin Lee Harvey Oswald also worked as a maintenance man for the Reily Coffee Company in the summer of 1963."

(A Terrible Mistake, H.P. Albarelli Jr., pg. 428) 

William B. Reily

Both Butler and the Reily family were active in Information Council of the Americas (INCA), one of the most enigmatic organizations to crop up in the Kennedy assassination. It is mainly remembered nowadays for promoting a debate on WDSU between Lee Harvey Oswald, Bill Stuckey, Carlos Bringuier and the above-mentioned Edward Butler (an Army propaganda expert) in which Oswald famously proclaimed himself a Communist. In the wake of the JFK assassination INCA would widely distribute this interview. Many assassination researchers believe this was a disinformation campaign to add fuel to the fire of rumors circulating at the time that Oswald was a KGB asset.

This is usually as far as most researchers get with the INCA, largely ignoring how well connected the organization was. Its chairman, the renowned surgeon and cancer expert Dr. Alton Ochsner, had extensive contacts among international businessmen as well as in New Orleans itself. One of his friends was none other than Clay Shaw of the International Trade Mart whom Jim Garrison linked to the Kennedy assassination. In highly controversial accounts from Edward Haslam and Judith Vary Baker it is alleged that Ochsner was involved in research geared towards weaponizing cancer that also involved David Ferrie, another individual linked by Garrison to the Kennedy assassination.

Ferrie

Ferrie himself was a highly skilled hypnotist, a skill Paul Gaynor and Morse Allen were obsessed with and heavily incorporated in Artichoke techniques. Ferrie has long been alleged to have been friendly with Lee Harvey Oswald, a man known to both Gaynor and Allen: "Readers may also note that Morse Allen's name appears in CIA records concerning the JFK assassination and Lee Harvey Oswald: In October 1960, CIA-OS deputy chief Robert L. Bannerman requested that Morse Allen, Bruce Solie, and Paul Gaynor research American defectors in Russia" (A Terrible Mistake, H.P. Albarelli Jr., pgs. 786-787). Ferrie himself had a curious tie to an Artichoke hypnotist that will be addressed in a future installment.

Beyond this, the INCA counted among its foreign correspondents one Goerges Albertini. Albertini was a key figure in the far right wing European network commonly known as Le Cercle (examined at length on this blog before here) as well as being an alleged synarchist (this was addressed before here). Le Cercle, dominated at the upper echelon by Sovereign Military Order of Malta and Opus Dei initiates, was a phenomenally well-connected network with numerous ties to US and various European intelligence services. It would become the dominate elite force in the Cold War with the rise of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, the administrations of which Le Cercle was very close to (noted before here and here).

Needless to say, the fact that the INCA seems to have had ties to both Le Cercle and the OS-SRS personnel involved in Project Artichoke is most curious, to say the least. And with that I shall wrap things up for now. In the next installment I shall begin breaking down the OS' role in Watergate. Stay tuned.