NXIVM Stoned

By now I'm sure many of you are well aware of NXIVM (which is pronounced as "Nexium," like the controversial drug), the bizarre outfit nominally engaged in self-help seminars that increasingly appears to be some type of cult. Think Scientology on steroids. Or maybe even one of the blackest sheep of the human potential movement, namely est.

As was noted before here, est appears to have grown out of prior self-help rackets linked to the far right while employing techniques straight out of Pentagon/CIA behavior modification techniques. Later, est became quite popular with certain military officers looking to create "super soldiers" as well. Keep the murky origins of est in mind as we consider the present topic as there are some eerie similarities. And on that note, let us now briefly consider NXIVM.

Unsurprisingly, the cult has already captivated the imaginations of the masses and conspiracy theorists in equal measures. The lure is undoubtedly the minor/aging celebrities, most notably Smallville actress Allison Mack, who were initiated into the cult. After all, its not every day that a former WB starlet is accused of participating in sex trafficking and slavery. Add in allegations of money laundering and bizarre, MK-ULTRA/ARTICHOKE-like behavioral modification techniques and one is left with quite a strange brew indeed.

Allison Mack

Naturally, the alternative media is having a field day with the ties to NXIVM and the Clinton family. Cult founder Keith Raniere first gained notoriety when he was run out of Arkansas in 1992 for running a pyramid scheme while Bill Clinton was still governor. It would appear that there were no hard feelings:

"Executives and top associates of the Albany-based NXIVM group – along with their family members – donated $29,900 to Clinton’s presidential campaign, according to federal records.

"On March 14 and April 13, records show, more than a dozen contributions poured into Clinton’s coffers from NXIVM, an executive and group-awareness training organization led by Brooklyn-born Keith Raniere, 47.

"Most were from first-time political donors, each giving the $2,300 maximum.

"The revelation comes on the heels of the arrest of Norman Hsu, who raised $1.5 million in campaign contributions for the Clintons and other Democrats, even though he was technically a fugitive from fraud charges in California." 

Keith Raniere

While the alt media has been quick to link NXIVM to the Democratic Party, the organization does not seem especially liberal. Apparently NXIVM has also contributed to more than a few Republican pols over the years, such as Christian fundamentalist and one time GOP presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee. And then there's the fact that one of Raniere's chief influences was alt right/libertarian icon Ayn Rand and her philosophy of "Objectivism."

Another curious aspect of NXIVM that conspiracy theorists have been quick to pounce upon is the presence of the uber wealthy Bronfman family of Canada financially backing the cult. This is not the first time the Bronfman family has funneled money to a highly charismatic yet dubious figure linked to New Age pursuits. During the 1970s the Bronfman family became major patrons of Earth Day co-founder Ira Einhorn. At the time Einhorn maintained an extensive network that served as a bridge between fringe and New Age thinkers and corporate America. Einhorn began to establish this network in the early 1970s with the backing of Pennsylvania Bell, an operating company owned by AT&T (as was noted before here, AT&T has been reputed to have funded some very curious projects prior to Einhorn's network). This put the Philadelphia-based Einhorn on the radar of various Pennsylvania elites. It wasn't long before he went national and even international.

"By the mid-1970s Ira Einhorn's network was a certified phenomenon in and of itself. Names appearing on the cover letters of recipients of a given piece might include economists Hazel Henderson; Lehman Brothers managing director Shel Gordon; Seagram heir Charles Bronfman; futurist Alvin Toffler; science adviser to the British Commonwealth Christian de Lait; corporate presidents John Hass and George Bartol; Whole Earth Catalog publisher Stewart Brand; physicists Freeman Dyson, David Bohm, Frijtof Capra, and Heinz Pagels; Esalen cofounder Mike Murphy; journalists Alex Cockburn and Jack Anderson; authors Colin Wilson, Robert Theobold, and Thomas Kuhn..."

(The Unicorn's Secret, Steven Levy, pg. 160)  

Ira Einhorn

Some of the spookier members of Einhorn's network included CIA assets Christopher Bird and Andrija Puharich. As was noted before here, Puharich lent his peculiar scientific expertise to Project ARTICHOKE. Bird has also been linked to similar research. Einhorn also knew famed stage magician and Mossad asset Uri Geller as well. But back to his Bonfman backers. 

Barbara Bronfman, who at the time was the wife of Charles Bronfman, was a major supporter of Einhorn's. Reportedly Charles Bronfman's sister, Phyllis Bronfman Lambert, also had some dealings with Einhorn. Edgar Bronfman Sr., who for a time supported NXIVM, is a sibling to both Charles and Phyllis, for those of you keeping score. I have been unable to determine if he had ties to Einhorn, but it would hardly be surprising.

Edgar Bonfman Sr.

And much like Raniere, Einhorn fell out of favor with the Bronfman family in the midst of scandal. In Einhorn's case, he was accused and ultimately convicted of murdering Holly Maddox, his long time girlfriend. For many years Einhorn was on the lam before finally be arrested in 1997 in France. He was initially able to jump bail and flee the United States with the aid of money provided by the Bronfman family via Barbara.

In regards to the current NXIVM scandal, the presence of the Bronfman family also leads to another curious figure recently addressed on this blog, namely infamous conservative lobbyist Roger Stone. Stone is now well known due to his long term relationship with President Donald J. Trump.

Stone and other key Trump allies such as fellow lobbyist Paul Manafort and Fox News mogul Rupert Murdoch were originally introduced to the Orange One in the late 1970s by Trump's long time attorney Roy Cohn. As was noted before here, Cohn had rather extensive links to organized crime and far right wing elements of the deep state. Even more disturbing are longstanding allegations surrounding Cohn's activities in New York City along these lines:

"... New York attorney John Klotz began to investigate Roy Cohn on behalf of a client. Declassified New York government files and spadework by a private detective substantiated the allegation that there was indeed a 'blue suite' at the Plaza, Suite 233. 'Roy Cohn was providing protection,' Klotz discovered. 'There were a bunch of pedophiles involved. That's where Cohn got his power from – blackmail."

(Bobby and J. Edgar, Burton Hersh, pg. 88)

Roy Cohn

As I've already noted here and here, there is ample evidence that many of Cohn's acolytes followed in their mentor's footsteps. And Roger Stone appears to be no exception, as he seemingly was the one to have blown the whistle on the prostitution ring New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was involved in. At the time Spitzer was at odds with Wall Street in the wake of the 2007-2008 financial crisis. Spitzer threatened reforms, much to the chagrin of Wall Street and state Republicans, and Stone was employed to engineer a change.

Spitzer was ultimately driven from office and state Republicans won big in 2009 elections in New York state. Stone was again of assistance, procuring funds from a curious source:

"A couple of days ago, the Post broke the news that Roger Stone — a former state GOP functionary who resigned after allegedly threatening Eliot Spitzer’s family — was procuring money for Joe Bruno and pals from his other employer, a cultlike organization called NXIVM. Needless to say, we’ve been obsessed with the Albany-based NXIVM (pronounced, believe it or not, like 'Nexium') ever since. It’s basically like Scientology masquerading as a self-help seminar, run by a guy named Keith Raniere. Raniere claims to have the highest IQ on record and have been a judo champion by age 11; he also demands to be called Vanguard by his followers (someone should introduce him to Mystery!). He is, in short, your classic swindler (his previous enterprise, a pyramid scheme called Consumers’ Buyline, got kicked out of Arkansas in 1992) who’s discovered the resale value on Ayn Randian mumbo jumbo. NXIVM’s 'executive success' program is designed to reel in alpha types who need someone to tell them that greed is good. Its big philosophy is that 'human beings are born parasitic' (saying 'I’m hungry' or complaining about pain, for instance, is parasitic behavior; the enlightened just take what they need). It also redefines 'good' as 'pro-survival' and 'bad' as 'destructive.' Students wear colored sashes and bow in the presence of the leader. You can see where this is headed. 

"Why should we pay attention to this psycho factory? Because it has well-placed, well-heeled members and appears to be actively pursuing an entrée into political fund-raising. Stone, paid by NXIVM, had funneled at least $20,000 to the state GOP; the heirs to Seagram’s fortune are devotees; and, per the Post, Richard Mays — a Clinton friend and one of Hillary’s top fund-raisers — is an 'Espian' as well, having taken so-called intensive classes with Raniere. The Aleksey Vayner type who preaches that suicide can be good (if you’re a counter-constructive person, removing yourself from the planet is a constructive act) becomes just a little less hilarious when you realize he’s got the ear of people with actual policy decisions to make."

Keep in mind the above quote is taken from an article first published in October 2007. Thus, Stone had a connection NXIVM for well over a decade.

Roger Stone

The great Christopher Knowles of The Secret Sun recently mused: "You really gotta wonder about NXIVM and what it says about the state of our society. It's in the news now but this cult's shenanigans have been known for a very, very long time. Yet, nothing was done about it until now?"

Actually, I think the timing of this revelation is quite telling. NXIVM appears to have established a working relationship with the Clinton family at some point in the last decade and eventually donated around a million and a half dollars to the Clintons and other Democrats during the last election.

Roger Stone, who also handled political donations for NXIVM as well, would have almost surely have been aware of these ties. Is it possible he also encouraged the cult to ramp up the donations leading up to the election so that he could once again blow the whistle as he did on Eliot Spitzer at some point?

It is certainly curious that this scandal comes in the wake of the various sex scandals that have rocked Hollywood in recent months and brought down several prominent Democrats. As I noted before here, another Cohn protege, private detective Thomas Corbally, spent decades navigating the seedier side of Hollywood. Corbally has been linked to at least one major Hollywood prostitution ring.

Thomas Corbally

I don't think these revelations are coincidental at all. With the ongoing deep state civil war as vicious as ever, the control files amassed by Cohn and his associates over several decades increasingly appear as a Sword of Damocles the Orange One holds over his opponents, ever threatening to topple the entire house of cards.

And in case your wondering, this hardly appears to be the first time Cohn and his acolytes have employed cults for political change. This topic will be a addressed in much greater depth in future installments in my ongoing Goodfellas series, hopefully in the coming weeks. Until then stay tuned dear readers. 

The House of Mellon Part IV: A Death in the Family

Several years ago I published a series on the Mellon family of Pittsburgh, who for many decades have been one of the nation's wealthiest and most influential, if little acknowledged, families. While rarely mentioned by conspiracy researchers in the same breath as more notorious American families such as those of Morgan (which hasn't been a major power for nearly half a century) and Rockefeller (whose influence has been in decline since the 1970s and will likely fall off a cliff with David Rockefeller's death), the Mellons have wielded a considerable degree of influence for well over a century now. What's more, they've proven quite adept at straddling the lines between competing factions in the various  American Establishments.

The patriarch of the family was Thomas Mellon, who rose to prominence less than a decade after the conclusion of the American Civil War. In 1870 he established what became the Mellon Bank, which by the end of the nineteenth century had become the largest financial institution in these United States outside of New York City. The family later branched out into the oil business at the onset of the twentieth century via Thomas Mellon's grandson, William Larimer Mellon Sr., who established the Gulf Oil Corporation in 1907. Finance and oil would serve as the linchpins of the Mellon empire in the decades that followed.

Probably the most famous (or infamous) of the Mellon clan was Andrew Mellon (addressed before here), who truly turned the family's business concerns into an empire.

"But what was more important at the time was that Andrew also built a great business empire. He and his brother Richard created first a national bank, then a steel concern, and then an empire. Young Mellon cornered the bauxite market. He shared in the profits of Carnegie Steel... The Mellons together established the enormous Aluminum Company of America; later they picked up Bethlehem Steel. They invested in Spindletop, the Texas gusher that opened the Gulf Coast oil industry. By the time Hoover reached adulthood, the Mellons also were players in the steel, railway, construction, and insurance industries. Succeeding Andrew Carnegie and Henry Clay Frick, Andrew Mellon ruled Pittsburgh in a way that not even the president ruled Washington."

(The Forgotten Man, Amity Shlaes, pgs. 24-25) 

Andrew Mellon

Mellon is probably best remembered, however, for his tenure as Secretary of the Treasury. He held the post from 1921 until 1932, an eleven year period in which he oversaw the Roaring Twenties as well as the stock market crash of 1929 and the subsequent Great Depression. As such, Mellon's tenure as Secretary of Treasury remains highly controversial. During that era he received ample blame for the Depression and was routinely attacked by FDR up until his death in 1937.

The Occult, UFOs and Intelligence

For our purposes here, it is interesting to note that Mellon was also a prominent Freemason who contributed to the Masonic architecture in Washington, D.C. Probably the most well known instance of this the Andrew W. Mellon Memorial Fountain, approved by Congress ten years after Andrew's death and completed in 1952. The Fountain has some very curious features.

"... The fountain was completed by 1952, and located – as Congress ordered – in a triangular area at the eastern tip of the Federal Triangle. The water from the fountain's jets rains down into a raised inner bowl, which overflows to discharge into an even larger basin, whence it flows into a wide basin at ground level: thus, the water overflows three times from the central basin into the ground-level bowl. Below the lip of the second bowl, inset on the side so as to be obscured by the flow of water, are the 12 signs of the zodiac designed by Sidney Waugh.

"These zodiacal images were carved with considerable insight and feeling. It was probably the architect Eggers – aware of the Masonic tradition that permeated Washington architecture – who insisted that the image for the zodiacal sign Aries... should be oriented so that it received the first rays of sunlight on March 21, which marks the vernal equinox."

(The Secret Architecture of Our Nation's Capital, David Ovason, pg. 281)

one of the zodiacal images found on the Mellon Fountain

The dedication for the Fountain was on May 9, 1952, and presided over by President Harry S. Truman, himself a prominent Freemason. On the whole, 1952 proved to be a banner year for high weirdness, especially UFOs. In March of that year, the Air Force launched Project BLUE BOOK to investigate the phenomenon. Three months later, rocket scientist and Crowleyite Jack Parsons (who is also alleged to have encountered a UFO while in the company of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard) blew himself up in a bizarre accident. Then in July Washington itself witnessed countless UFO sightings from the 12th through the 29th in what is considered one of the largest UFO flaps in recent history. The year then concluded with ARTICHOKE scientist Andrija Puharich making contact with entities he dubbed "The Nine" (noted before here), alleged extraterrestrials than now existed outside of time and space, in a seance held on New Year's Eve.

While this may seem a bit off topic, we shall be returning to UFOs in a moment and as such, I find it curious the highly occultic Andrew Mellon Memorial Fountain was unveiled in one of the most active years ever for UFO sightings. As was noted above, the Fountain was approved by Congress in 1947, another banner year for high weirdness that witnessed the Kenneth Arnold sighting and Roswell, which effectively ushered in the modern UFO era. Crowley also died in 1947 while the first wave of CIA/Pentagon behavior modification experiments were also begun in that year. But I digress.

Before moving along, it is worth noting that that Mellon Fountain is not the only piece of architecture associated with the family with strong occultic overtones. Consider the Gulf Tower in Pittsburgh:

the Gulf Tower, which bares a remarkable resemblance to a ziggurat with a ritual complex at the top...

For years it was the largest building in Pittsburgh. As you can see, the top features a step-pyramid and mausoleum. Reportedly this design was inspired by the  Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The Mausoleum was the last of the said wonders to be destroyed, surviving mostly intact till some point in the late Middle Ages. Its ruins were discovered in 1402 by the Knights Hospitaller, now known as the Sovereign Military Order of Malta (SMOM), who used them to build a castle in what is now known as Bodrum. Curiously, the Mausoleum also inspired the design of the House of the Temple, the Washington, D.C.-based headquarters of the Scottish Rite branch of Freemasonry. But moving along.

The Mellon family and their in-laws also has a rich tradition in the netherworlds of the US intelligence community dating back to at least World War II. Both Paul Mellon and David Bruce, Andrew Mellon's son and son-in-law respectively, served in the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the precursor to the CIA. After the war the relationship continued, with the CIA frequently using various Mellon family foundations as a source of funding for various projects.

One Mellon highly active in such pursuits was Richard Mellon Scaife (noted in length before here), who maintained a decades-spanning association with the CIA.

"... Scaife's ties to the intelligence community span many years – he owned and operated Forum World Features, an international CIA news outlet that supplied over 300 newspapers until its exposure 1975 – and he has been one of the most generous sugar daddies of the New Right, providing the seed money for the Heritage Foundation and for the Committee for the Survival of a Free Congress..."

(Spiritual Warfare, Sara Diamond, pg. 194)

Richard Mellon Scaife

Scaife, whose father Alan Scaife had also served in the OSS. also provided funding for both US and UK-based organizations linked to the Le Cercle network (noted before here and here), which was essentially the far right's response to the Bilderberg Group. Compromised largely of reactionary European aristocrats, various Western military and intelligence officers and fanatical Catholic sects like the Sovereign Military Order of Malta and Opus Dei, Le Cercle has been deeply implicated over the years in various acts of terrorism and elite pedophile networks.

On the other end of the spectrum there was William Mellon Hitchcock (noted at length before here), whose friends addressed him as "Mr. Billy." Mr. Billy came from the same generation as Dick Scaife, but he would use his share of the Mellon fortune for quite different objectives. Mr Billy, along with his sister Margaret "Peggy" Mellon Hitchcock, were major sponsors of the 1960s psychedelic movement. They became early patrons of Timothy Leary, with Mr. Billy offering up his estate at Millbrook to Leary in 1963 to carry on his research after Leary was kicked out of Harvard.

Mr. Billy is on the right

While Mr. Billy eventually became disillusioned with Leary, his interest in psychedelics remained strong throughout the 1960s. By the end of the decade he had become the financier for the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, which at the time was the largest LSD distribution network in the world. As was noted before here, during this time frame Mr. Billy also became a major investor in Resorts International, a gaming interest with extensive ties to the Syndicate and the US intelligence community. Eventually Donald J. Trump became the CEO of Resorts in 1986.

A Curious Death

The Mellon family has continued to wield considerable influence on both a national and international level into the twenty-first century, but they've generally avoided the limelight. But of late the family has turned up in the headlines again, most recently regarding a death:

"On Sunday, Matthew Mellon flew in a private jet to Cancun, Mexico, intending to check into a rehabilitation clinic. But the 54-year-old banking heir, who had been battling an addiction to opioid pills, never made it to the treatment facility.

" 'He never checked in,' says Alberto Sola, medical director of Clear Sky Recovery, a rehab clinic in Cancun. 'He was supposed to check in to the clinic on Monday morning. Then Monday morning they told us he had died.' "

Early reports, however, indicated that he had in fact died at the drug rehab center, which seems to offer an especially psychedelic brand of rehab:

"Mellon, who had faced substance abuse issues for decades, had decided to seek an experimental treatment in Mexico earlier this year, attracted to therapies with hallucinatory properties that are illegal in the United States. Clear Sky Recovery clinic specializes in ibogaine therapy, a plant-based medicine with psychedelic properties that’s derived from a West African tree. Clear Sky advertises itself as 'the world’s foremost experts in medically-based ibogaine treatment.' Sola said Mellon had died in his hotel room, but declined to comment on the cause of Mellon’s death. According to one report, Mellon was also experimenting with ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic drink, and died from a heart attack after taking it."

Matthew Mellon is from the same branch of the Mellon family as Peggy and William Hitchcock, all of whom are descendants of Gulf Oil founder William Larimer Mellon. Thus, his interest in psychedelics is hardly surprising.

Matthew Mellon

Prior to his death, Matthew Mellon had gained much notoriety for trading cryptocurrencies, beginning with Bitcoin in the early part of this decade, and then onto Ripple. At the time of his death, he had amassed a considerable fortune:

"In addition to leaving behind three children, Mellon’s death raises many unanswered questions, including what will happen to the estimated $500 million of XRP digital currency he owned. Mellon’s XRP had been worth well over $1 billion earlier in 2018 and he told Forbes in March he had been adding to the position as the price of the cryptocurrency plunged.

"XRP is the digital currency of financial payments company Ripple and Mellon had acquired a large amount of it, mostly from an initial investment of about $2 million, prior to the boom in cryptocurrencies. Mellon said he kept the digital keys to his XRP locked in cold storage in other people’s names at various locations around the U.S."

Forbes goes onto note that in his final months Mellon had had conversations with Donald Trump concerning cryptos while also becoming increasingly paranoid about his safety:

"He began the year in Los Angeles with great promise and a flurry of activity. Late last year, Mellon, who lived in New York, searched online for the most expensive rental house in Los Angeles and booked a futuristic looking home in the Hollywood Hills for $150,000 a month. With a massive cryptocurrency fortune and fearing for his security, Mellon got an armored car that resembled a tank and added a security detail while maintaining an active social schedule.

"... In late March, Mellon told a Forbes reporter, he dined with President Donald Trump.

" 'I shared with him that he should become blockchain friendly if he wants the next Millennial vote,' Mellon told Forbes in late March."

While no doubt many will link Mellon's sudden and bizarre death to his involvement with cryptos, its interesting to note that his brother, Christopher Mellon, had made some interesting statements of his own a little over a month before Matthew's death. Specifically, he called for greater defense spending in regards to UFOs in an Op-Ed that appears in the Washington Post:

"Lately, media coverage of the issue of unidentified aerial vehicles has focused on an expired $22 million congressional earmark for Bigelow Aerospace, a contractor with ties to former Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid (Nev.). The money mostly funded research and analysis by that contractor, without participation from the Air Force, NORAD or other key military organizations. The real issue, though, is not a long-gone earmark, helpful though it may have been, but numerous recent incidents involving the military and violations of U.S. airspace. It is time to set aside taboos regarding 'UFOs' and instead listen to our pilots and radar operators.

"Within a roughly $50 billion annual intelligence budget, money is not the issue. Existing funds would easily cover what’s needed to look into the incidents. What we lack above all is recognition that this issue warrants a serious collection and analysis effort. To make headway, the task needs to be assigned to an official with the clout to compel collaboration among disparate and often quarrelsome national security bureaucracies. A truly serious effort would involve, among other things, analysts able to review infrared satellite data, NORAD radar databases, and signals and human intelligence reporting. Congress should require an all-source study by the secretary of defense while promoting research into new forms of propulsion that might explain how these vehicles achieve such extraordinary power and maneuverability." 

Christopher Mellon, like many family members before him, has longstanding ties to the US intelligence community and the DoD. He spent nearly ten years as the Staff Director for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. In 1998, he became the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Security and Information Operations. Then, in 1999, he became the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, a post he held until 2002. After leaving the DoD, he became a Minority Staff Director for Senate Select Committee on Intelligence member Senator Jay Rockefeller.

Christopher Mellon

Mellon is no minor figure in other words, by the scion of one of the nation's wealthiest and most powerful families, and a longstanding veteran of the US intelligence community. He is also involved with To the Stars Academy of Arts and Sciences, a disclosure project launched by former Blink-182 frontman Tom DeLonge. Another member of said organization recently exposed Robert Bigelow's secret UFO program. As was noted before here, this may have been part of the ongoing deep state civil war, as Bigelow is a major Trump backer.

Was Matthew Mellon's death related to his brother's work in the UFO disclosure, his exposure to cryptocurrencies, the deep state civil war or some combination of all three? Certainly this is a curious series of events, from a branch of the family that his been linked to strange intrigues in the past. Even more bizarre is the fact that the active psychedelic component of ayahuasca, which is what is presently being blamed for Mellon's death, is DMT. As I noted before here, DMT has been known to induce visions of extraterrestrial-like nonhuman entities while curious and tragic medical issues have at times followed.

It would certainly be interesting to know if cryptos were the only thing discussed in Matthew Mellon's March meeting with Trump. Several weeks later the financier was dead, under still murky circumstances that at least nominally are being blamed on some type of entheogenic-centric treatment for opioid abuse. Clearly, something does not add up here.

The waters are further muddied by where the Mellon family fits into the elite hierarchy. While nominally aligned with the Rockefeller-dominated globalist wing of the American Establishment, family members such as Richard Mellon Sciafe and even psychonaut William Mellon Hitchcock have been very at home with members of the far right. In terms of the Mellon brothers we've just considered, Christopher is clearly in the former camp while Matthew was a long time backer of the Republican Party and does not seem to have been especially uncomfortable with Trump. Of course, Matthew was also dating a member of the Kennedy family at the time of his death as well.

In conclusion, all I can come up with is phrase that is becoming more and more common every day: Truly, we live in incredible times.