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Le Cercle and the struggle for the European continent
Source: Project for the exposure of hidden institutions
Added: Nov. 19, 2006
by Joël van der Reijden Private bridge between Vatican-Paneuropean- and Anglo-American intelligence | Membership list
"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... The discussions were conducted in French, and usually I was the sole American present... Members of the Pesenti Group were all committed to European political and economic integration... My Chase associates, who feared my membership could be construed as "consorting with reactionaries," eventually prevailed upon me to withdraw." "Coudenhove said: "You know, it is awfully difficult to make Europe with the English, but without them, it is impossible". That is very true." Le Cercle is a secretive privately-funded and transnational discussion group which regularly meets in different parts of the world. It is attended by a mixture of politicians, ambassadors, bankers, shady businessmen, oil experts, editors, publishers, military officers and intelligence agents, which may or may not have retired from their official functions. The participants come from western or western-oriented countries. Many important members tend to be affiliated with the aristocratic circles in London or obscure elements within the Vatican, and accusations of links to fascism and Synarchism are anything but uncommon in this milieu. The greatest enemy of the Cercle has been the Soviet Union and members have been crusading against communist subversion for many decades. During this process, Cercle members unfortunately have accused almost every nationalist and socialist government, every labour union, every terrorist, and every serious investigator of western intelligence of being in bed with the KGB. In addition, the Cercle is also strongly focused on European integration, going back to the efforts of its early members to bring about Franco-German rapprochement. The significant presence of Paneuropa-affiliated Opus Dei members and Knights of Malta, together with statements of the Vatican and Otto von Habsburg, clearly indicate there's an agenda in the background to some day bring about a new Holy Roman Empire with its borders stretching from the Atlantic to the Black Sea and from the Baltic Sea to North Africa. Interestingly, the latest generation of British Cercle members, whose predecessors were keen on joining the European Union, now do everything in their power to keep Britain out of the emerging European superstate, having lost faith they can become a significant force within Europe. Their American associates, however, would like for them to continue the effort of breaking into the Franco-German alliance and possibly to establish a new Anglo-German alliance. It seems like a cold war is raging in Europe; one that doesn't directly involve the Soviets.
Origins Jean Violet has a murky past to say the least. In French and later English literature, Violet is named as a pre-WWII member of the Comite Secret pour l'Action Revolutionnaire (CSAR), a secretive fascist group which, like Freemasonry, had its own initiation rites (2). Some authors have suggested that CSAR, popularly known at the time as the Cagoule, or "hooded ones", was one of the most important branches of the legendary Synarchist Movement of Empire and worked to undermine the French Republic in preparation for the coming Nazi invasion (3). Whatever truth can be found in this claim, it is known that Jean Violet was arrested after the war for having collaborated with the enemy. He was released however "on orders from above" (4), went to work as a lawyer in Paris, and decided to become a member of Opus Dei (or, possibly, he became a member first, which resulted in his release). In 1951, Violet came into contact with Antoine Pinay, a Catholic also said to have been in bed with Opus Dei, who asked him to solve a problem with a Geneva-based firm that had been sieged by the Nazis during WWII. As the story goes, Pinay was so impressed with the way Violet handled his assignment that he recommended him to French intelligence, the SDECE (5). Also, Violet soon managed to hook up with Opus Dei luminaries as Alfredo Sanchez Bella and Otto von Habsburg (6), who had founded the European Centre of Documentation and Information (CEDI) in 1949 (7). Habsburg was chairman for life of CEDI and later also of the Paneuropa Union. Sanchez Bella was the Spanish ambassador to Rome under Franco in the 1960s while his brother was head of Opus Dei in Spain (8). Violet also became an associate of Father Yves-Marc Dubois, a senior member of Vatican intelligence and possibly its head (9). CEDI was one of the first in a long line of hard-right, often aristocratic institutions part of the Vatican-Paneuropa network. One of these institutions, founded by Antoine Pinay and Jean Violet, became Cercle Pinay, and besides that it was set up "somewhere in the 1950s" (10), the exact date remains unknown. The claim that Cercle Pinay was put together in 1969 (11) is wrong and has probably been a mix-up with the Belgian Cercle des Nations, which was founded that year by a secretary general of CEDI (12). Violet was one of the few French members of this Cercle des Nations (13) that was part of the same Opusian Vatican-Paneuropa network. The crowd of Cercle des Nations has featured in a number of Belgian conspiracies and some were involved with the "Dutroux network" that allegedly didn't exist. Bit more about that later. Like many others, Pinay and Violet understood that the basis for a stable united Europe would be a Franco-German reconciliation. Therefore they recruited in their Cercle the most important individuals that were working towards this aim. From Germany they invited the long time chancellor and foreign minister Konrad Adenauer, and two of his closest associates, Franz Joseph Bach, who ran Adenauer's office; and Franz Joseph Strauss, the controversial hard-right political figure from Bavaria who was a defense minister in Adenauer's second cabinet.
Robert Schuman and Jean Monnet, in addition to Pinay, were recruited from France. Schuman had been French prime minister from 1947 to 1948 and French foreign minister from 1948 to 1953. Jean Monnet, as Planning Commissioner of the National Economic Council from 1945 to 1952, and appointed by De Gaulle, carried out essential work for the reconstruction of the French economy. He was connected to the highest financial and political circles in North America, the UK, and western Europe, and was one of the major players in the push for an integrated Europe in the aftermath of WWII. As founding vice-chairman of the Committee for European Economic Co-operation (CEEC), which oversaw the Marshall Plan aid, he was the most influential player in this organization. This short description doesn't even begin to describe the life of this extraordinary Frenchman, so lets take a more in depth look at him.
"Europe's founder" Jean Monnet Another very important person was Arthur Salter, whom he first met in 1914 (15). Salter and Monnet would become involved in setting up the Inter-Allied Maritime Transport Council, the Supreme Economic Council at Versailles, and the League of Nations. In 1931, Salter wrote 'The United States of Europe', which favored a federal Europe within the framework of the League of Nations. Probably not by coincidence, Monnet's post-WWII proposal for a political structure of a united Europe was almost exactly the same. Three years after writing 'The United States of Europe', Salter became a professor at Oxford and a fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, named by Quigley as the center of the Round Table Group. In fact, Quigley identified Salter as a member of the Milner Group (16), and it is known that Salter shared a few boards with Lord Astor, a prominent Pilgrims Society family, and the Viscount Cecil of Chelwood of that time, a member of the family that is said to have coordinated the Round Table group (and appears in both Le Cercle and the Pilgrims). Salter also became a member of the Privy Council in 1941. Others Monnet became a close associate of were Sir Eric Drummond, the 16th Earl of Perth, who was a member of a very aristocratic family in Britain; John Foster Dulles; Douglas Dillon; a Lazard Brothers' banker whose sister-in-law was Lady Nancy Astor; and John J. McCloy. He also was a long time business associate of Elisha Walker (American International Corporation; Kuhn, Loeb & Co.; CFR), with whom he clandestinely tried to take over A. P. Giannini's Transamerica Corporation and its Bank of America network. It failed after a lawsuit in which Giannini vowed to fight the "Wall Street domination" on the board of his company. In February 1932, Walker and Monnet were ousted as chair and vice chair respectively (17). He then went into business with the leaders of the Chinese Green Gang Triad, Tse-Ven Soong and Chiang Kai-shek. He took his assistant, David Drummond (the future 17th Lord Perth; from a catholic Hungarian family which emigrated to Scotland in the 11th century; two members of this family were among the eight original founders of the Order of the Thistle; raised by the Duke and Duchess of Norfolk, a very old catholic aristocratic family; later Privy Councillor; later chair of the Ditchley Foundation for 3 years; later representative of the Queen to the Vatican; became a member of the extremely elite Roxburghe Club, together with members of the Cecil, Cavendish, Howard (Dukes of Norfolk), Mellon, Rothschild, and Oppenheimer families), the son of Monnet's superior at the League of Nations, to China where he lived until 1936. In 1935, when Monnet was still in Shanghai, he became a business partner of George Murnane in Monnet, Murnane & Co. Murnane was connected to the Wallenbergs in Sweden, the Bosch family in Germany, the Solvays and Boëls in Belgium, and John Foster Dulles, André Meyer, and the Rockefellers in the United States. He was considered among the most connected persons of his time (18). John Dulles of Sullivan & Cromwell provided the financial backing for the partnership. After Monnet got back to the United States, he was briefly investigated for tax evasion. Then, in 1938, Monnet, Murnane & Co. was briefly investigated by the FBI, who suspected it of having laundered Nazi money (19). Nothing came of this investigation, but the Nazi-cooperation of some of Monnet's close friends, like Douglas Dillon and John Dulles, or Murnane's earlier firm, Lee, Higginson & Co., is well documented (20). When WWII broke out, Monnet was one of the most important individuals in contact with both the French resistance and the Churchill government. While in London at the time that France was overrun, Monnet proposed to General Charles de Gaulle, the leader of the French government in exile, the creation of a Franco-British Union; a plan to completely unite France and Britain. The Churchill government accepted, even a desperate de Gaulle accepted, but eventually the (supposedly Synarchist) opposition in France, headed by Marshall Petain, killed the plan. They saw it as an attempt of Britain to wrestle control over France. Petain subsequently became the leader of Vichy France. After the war, Monnet was appointed by de Gaulle to reorganize the French economy. But Monnet also began to reorganize the whole of Europe. Together with an equally mysterious Joseph Retinger (connected to both MI6 and the Vatican; founder of Bilderberg), who was raised by European nobility (21), Monnet organized the May 1948 Congress of Europe, which met under the auspices of the United Europe Movement in The Hague. Chairman was Winston Churchill, whose son-in-law, Duncan Sandys, worked closely with Joseph Retinger and CIA heads Allen Dulles and Bill Donovan. Later Cercle members as Robert Schuman and Konrad Adenauer were in attendance, just as Alcide de Gasperi and Paul Henri Spaak. The CIA would become the primary source of funding for the United European Movement in the following decades (22). In 1949, with the support of Adenauer, Robert Schuman proposed the so called "Schuman Plan", which became the basis for the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). It was established in 1952 and is usually seen as the birth of the European Union. In reality, Monnet, who became the first chairman of the ECSC's High Authority, had entirely written the "Schuman Plan". And interestingly, even this might only partially be true, as Monnet's structure for Europe turned out to be a slightly adapted version of Arthur Salter's 1931 paper 'The United States of Europe', which originally advocated a federal Europe within the framework of the League of Nations (23). Both men worked high up in the League of Nations and had a close relationship to the leading Anglo-American families, as has already been discussed. One year later, on 24 October 1950, the French prime minister René Pleven introduced his "Pleven Plan". As happened earlier with Schuman, who didn't support this latest proposal, this document too had been written entirely by Jean Monnet (although he might have discussed it with his friend Arthur Salter). It proposed the creation of the European Defence Community (EDC): a Paneuropean defense force. Eventually this proposal was defeated by the Gaullist nationalists in France, and Europe's defense forces remained part of the newly-established NATO, which was (and is) mostly international, instead of supranational. After the failure of his European Defence Community (EDC), Monnet doubled his efforts and founded the very low-profile Action Committee for the United States of Europe (ACUSE). It brought together leading international members of governments and labour unions, mainly to discuss European economic integration. ACUSE, together with the US State Department, lobbied and pressured a great deal behind the scenes in the run up to the 1957 Treaty of Rome, which created the actual European Economic Community (EEC; "Economic" was dropped in '91). All of Monnet's most important associates in this process were members of the Pilgrims Society: David K.E. Bruce, the Dulles brothers, John J. McCloy, George Ball, C. Douglas Dillon, and president Eisenhower. Cercle member Konrad Adenauer was among the signers of the treaty, just as Paul Henri Spaak. Also, the founding vice president of the ACUSE was Max Kohnstramm, who became the initial 1973 European chairman of the Rockefeller-founded Trilateral Commission. Kohnstramm used to be private secretary to Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands. Antoine Pinay was another important member of ACUSE, the organization that Time Magazine dubbed a "European shadow government" in 1969 (24). In 1961, Monnet managed to replace the OEEC, initially established to oversee the Marshall Plan, with the broader Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) (25). The OECD since then has been one of the most influential institutions promoting globalization and free trade, today working in partnership with the World Bank, the IMF, and the World Trade Organization. Mainland European governors of the Atlantic Institute of International Affairs, which also was founded in 1961, have had a relatively strong presence in these institutions, especially in the OECD. Pilgrims Society members have been dominant in the other institutions while the Vatican-connected Paneuropa members have always played a minor role in the institutions above and tend to criticize the Anglo-American Liberal establishment. Around the same time Monnet replaced the OEEC with the OECD, he met with Edward Heath (As Lord Privy Seal 1960-1963 responsible for the initial talks to bring Britain into the European Common Market; head Conservative party 1965-1975; Conservative prime minister UK 1970-1974; very committed to the EU; a close Sun Myung Moon associate) at the house of his good friend David Drummond, the 17th Lord Perth (26), a member of an old aristocratic family with very good connections to both the Vatican and the highest levels in British society, including the Rothschilds, Oppenheimers, Mellons, Cecils, and Howards (27). Lord Perth was a chairman of the Ditchley Foundation and his father was the initial secretary-general of the League of Nations while Monnet was his deputy. Heath became a member of Monnet's Action Committee and in 1973 he signed Britain into the European Economic Community. This only became possible after De Gaulle had ceased to be president of France. Monnet was an early supporter of de Gaulle, as he was of the opinion that this legendary general was the only person who might be able to reunite the French people after WWII. However, in later years some friction developed between these two men. De Gaulle was a nationalist who supported a strong intergovernmental Europe, preferably with France being the major influence. Monnet, on the other hand, was a no holds barred supranationalist. Franco-German rapprochement "By far the dominant theme in de Gaulle's foreign policy (as Violet interpreted it) was Franco-German reconciliation. A genius at (non-violent) operations of influence, Violet played an historically key role between 1957 and 1961 in bringing about this rapprochement, which is the real core of the European Community. He had developed a close friendship with Antoine Pinay, who had served as French Premier in 1951 under the unstable Fourth Republic. At a lower level, a complementary role was played by his SDECE colleague Antoine Bonnemaison. Violet was the go-between in secret meetings between Pinay and the West German Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, and his coalition partner Franz Josef Strauss. These paved the way for Charles de Gaulle's own encounters with Adenauer, which culminated in the Franco-German Treaty of January 1963. [Treaty of Elysée]" (28) The Treaty of Elysée is a relatively unknown agreement (for the average person) between France and Germany in which both countries agreed to consult with each other on important foreign policy and economic issues, ahead of time of general EEC meetings. It is the core of the often-discussed Franco-German alliance, which has had great influence on the European project ever since. Some say, too much. The Elysée agreement was made at the time that de Gaulle first vetoed the accession of Britain into the European Economic Community (EEC). The decision was quietly backed by Adenauer. De Gaulle argued that Britain's economy was based on trade with its Commonwealth and did not have a large agricultural economy, like France and most other countries in mainland Europe. This, together with Britain's historical "special relationship" with the United States, convinced de Gaulle that Britain would never be fully committed to the interests of Europe (29). Of course, it's far from unreasonable to think that de Gaulle's primary reason was that he saw Britain and its ally the United States as a threat to France's influence within the European Union. A few years later de Gaulle also withdrew from NATO, expelled all Allied forces from France, and tried to get on good terms with the Soviet Union. In addition to the enemies he had made when he withdrew from Algeria, he now also angered people like Brian Crozier and his French intelligence associate Colonel Antoine Bonnemaison. Bonnemaison ran a Cercle-like operation (let's shorten it to Le Centre), of which Crozier had become a member (30). Members of the Centre had already labeled de Gaulle "the enemy" in 1965, and were looking for ways to evict him from office (31). Within four years they got what they wanted, although it's not known if they had any active involvement in ousting de Gaulle, besides spying on him. But they certainly had the connections to do that. It would still be several years before the Opusian Jean Violet and Anglo-Saxon Brian Crozier would meet and join hands. Ironically, at this time, when Crozier was involved in spying on de Gaulle, Violet was carrying out de Gaulle's defense and foreign policy objectives, and possibly was the French president's most important intelligence agent. Even when Crozier was head of Le Cercle from 1980 to 1985, he did not know Jean Violet's full background: "It was not until the spring of 1993 that I learned the details of Jean Violet's real secret service role when General de Gaulle was in power. A background document was given to me by one of Violet's ex-colleagues. Ironically, a few years before Gabriel Decazes and I started spying on de Gaulle, Violet was masterminding a Service Spécial to promote the General's objectives in defence and foreign policy. The document began with a paragraph of wistful praise for Britain's remarkable achievements in intelligence and clandestine action. But France, too, offered a precedent: Louis XV had set up a special service known to the few who were aware of it as the Secret du Roi. This service reported directly to the King, bypassing the Foreign Ministry of the day. Only two people were aware of de Gaulle's latter-day model: General Grossin, the then head of the SDECE, and a certain 'Monsieur X'. It required no great deductive powers to assume that Monsieur X had to be Maître Violet, but Jean refused to comment when I asked him. My other source, however, confirmed my supposition. No wonder, in retrospect, that Violet's shadowy role and apparently bottomless purse stirred resentful envy among his colleagues and poisoned Alexandre de Marenches's mind against Violet, whom he had never met." (32) Violet saw Franco-German rapprochement as de Gaulle's most important foreign policy objective, but judging by his association with people who wanted Britain in the European Union as a "third pillar" it is doubtful he supported all of de Gaulle's later decisions. In 1980, Violet picked Crozier as his follow-up to the presidency/chairmanship of Le Cercle (33). Crozier had been recruited by the Frenchman nine years earlier, and introduced by a person who had been a close assistant to Cercle member Jean Monnet (who struggled for a long time to get Britain into the EEC). "On 1 March 1971, a long interview I had given to Joseph Fromm appeared in US News and World Report. The theme was terrorist and Communist intentions. On reading this interview, a Frenchman named Maitre Jean Violet came to see me in my Piccadilly office, with an introduction from Francois Duchene, my former Economist colleague and Director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies.... Violet impressed me with the clarity and precision of his arguments - Gallic logic at its best - and with the breath of his intellectual grasp of world problems." (34) Duchene had met Monnet in exactly the same way as Crozier met Violet. In 1950, Duchene wrote a series of articles for the Manchester Guardian which came to the attention of Jean Monnet. In response, Monnet invited Duchene to become one of his assistants in building a united Europe. Duchene followed Monnet when the latter became head of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC). He then followed Monnet to Paris and became an editor of the Economist. In 1958, Duchene became a director of Monnet's Action Committee for the United States of Europe (ACUSE), which struggled to get Britain in the EEC under the dictations of the Treaty of Rome. He remained on the board until 1963. During this time, he suffered a nervous breakdown for some unknown reason. In 1963, he went on to become leader writer for the Economist and from 1967 to 1969 he was a Ford Foundation fellow (a huge US intelligence-connected foundation). From 1969 to 1974 he was a director of the prestigious International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a think tank on international affairs with directors linked to intelligence and the high financial circles. In 1974 or 1975, Duchene became the European deputy chairman of the Trilateral Commission, working under Max Kohnstramm, Monnet's partner at the Action Committee (35). So, as can be concluded from the above text, during Duchene's time as a director of the IISS, he approached Brian Crozier on behalf of Jean Violet, and very likely on behalf of the Cercle in general, as Crozier mentioned that his involvement with the Cercle started that same year (36). Interestingly, Duchene not only introduced Violet as a person who worked for French intelligence, but also as a person who "represented a powerful consortium of French business interests." (37) It seems there's no end to the interests Cercle-founder Jean Violet represented during his lifetime: the fascist CSAR group, Opus Dei, Paneuropa, the French government, French business, French intelligence, and even German intelligence, as former Nazi General Reinhard Gehlen recruited him at one point for his involvement with Le Cercle (38). Whereas Jean Violet is tightly locked into the Paneuropa-Vatican network, his associates Jean Monnet, Francois Duchene, Brian Crozier and several other (Duchene is not confirmed as a Cercle member) British Cercle members seem to be more connected to the Anglo-American interests.
"Throughout my period as Director, the Institute for the Study of Conflict was involved in exposing the fallacies of 'détente' and warning the West of the dangers inherent a policy of illusion." (42) Crozier and associates rejected Kissinger's Détente, aimed at reducing tensions between the superpowers, because, this group claimed, the Soviets continued to infiltrate and significantly influence Western Labour and Green parties, trade unions, media, and intelligence agencies. Also, they were of the opinion that the initial post-WWII policy of Containment (the Truman doctrine) was flawed. Instead, they argued that the West not only should resist a further communist encroachment, but also that it had to liberate countries that had fallen under the control of the Soviet empire. Every piece of territory that the Soviets conquered had to be taken back. A noble and intelligent idea you would think. Unfortunately, many people who headed this lobby from behind the scenes just happen to be so far to the right they could actually be labeled as fascists. And in between these left and right wing extremists you had the Rockefeller clique, seemingly with their own agenda, encouraging technology to be sold to the Soviets (43). Even Crozier and some of his associates criticized that, probably never entertaining the idea that these people might know a thing or two they didn't (44). In his book Crozier claims that the people who exposed his Forum World Services, The 61, and his Cercle were mostly manipulated or working for the KGB. He also presents information in such a way that will lead you to conclude that people like Mohammed Mossadeq and Harold Wilson were KGB paws, and that Pope John Paul I & II were both targeted by the KGB for assassination (only John Paul I died of that, allegedly). The KGB is basically behind everything. Crozier even repeated a 1978 claim by Time Magazine that the most effective KGB propaganda was that of discrediting the CIA (45). He also likes to state that "neo-colonialism" was a term invented by the Soviets, etc. Many of his accusations are based on statements from anonymous intelligence officers. At times, although he normally focuses on his own connections, he has used or referred to such reliable sources as the CIA sponsored Encounter magazine, the CIA sponsored Reader's Digest, his own CIA sponsored ISC think tank, the CIA sponsored journalist Claire Sterling, or to the CIA connected Zionist extremist Michael Ledeen. It is important to consider that Crozier perfectly fits the profile of someone like Colin Wallace, the British intelligence agent who was handed all kinds of forged material to be put into circulation (46). And just recently, a Belgian associate of Jean Violet, Crozier's closest colleague for years, was caught forging KGB documents that had to prove a vast left wing conspiracy against this person (47). Crozier's good friend Richard Perle (48), and some of the other people he is associated with, would also know a thing or two about cooking or inventing evidence to sway public opinion. Crozier himself has been very influential in the late 1970s and early 1980s in setting up the war on terrorism. His friend Perle would take it to the next level after 9/11. More about that later, as Crozier's bio is a lot longer. Cercle leadership However, more key people were involved with Le Cercle over the years. Take Carlo Pesenti from Italy and Sir Peter Tennant from England. Pesenti was a close associate of the Vatican's financial circles; Tennant an important trade promoter for the City of London. They acted as chairmen of Cercle sessions when it was under the presidency of Jean Violet (49). Another important person was Franz-Josef Bach, who used to run Konrad Adenauer's political office. Bach co-organized Cercle meetings from at least 1980 to at least 1991 (50). A quick summary follows of who these people were. Look in the membership list attached to this article for more details, including the source of each individual name.
Other important members of Le Cercle were-are Lord Julian Amery, his protege Jonathan Aitken and Lord Norman Lamont, all three members of the Privy Council. In 1985, Amery was picked by Brian Crozier as his follow up as president of Le Cercle (53). Aitken was Amery's protege and is known to have chaired at least some meetings in the early 1990s (54). Lord Lamont, the Rothschild employee, has repeatedly been named chairman of Le Cercle since 1996 (55). Here are some additional details on these people:
There is some confusion these days about who is president and-or chairman of Le Cercle. When Pinay was president of the group the chairmanship of the individual meetings was shared out among people like Pesenti, Tennant, and Crozier. The presidency was later handed over to Jean Violet, Brian Crozier, and Julian Amery. However, since then their successors have been referred to as chairmen of Le Cercle. Following is a list of heads of Le Cercle, compiled by comparing a number of different sources.
Subversive tendencies Several years after the ISC leak, German intelligence officer Hans Langemann provided more details on this coordinating group. Langemann was head of Bavarian State Security in the 1970s and early 1980s. One of his colleagues was Hans von Machtenberg (a pseudonym) who attended meetings of Le Cercle. Von Machtenberg agreed to pass on full briefings to Langemann about the Cercle meetings in exchange for information gathered by Langemann from his own intelligence contacts. Seemingly after questioning the motives of the Cercle, Langemann wrote down and recorded what he knew about it and eventually sold it to Kronket Magazine in the early 1980s. Der Spiegel soon picked up on the story of Kronket and exposed the role of their political enemy it, Franz Josef Strauss. The 1980 and 1982 articles of Der Spiegel were based on internal memos of Hans Langemann, seemingly informing persons within the German government about the clandestine efforts of the Cercle to get Franz Josef Strauss elected Chancellor. According to Der Spiegel, Langemann had written the following text on November 8, 1979 (translated) (62):
As one can imagine, the secrecy surrounding Le Cercle is not that much of a mystery, as most people would disapprove of a secret group consisting of persons tied to questionable corporate, political and religious interests, that is involved in political manipulation. More from Langemann (63):
Langemann presents a list of conspiracies which we know more about these days. Let's take a more in depth look into each of them and see who was involved specifically. THE CHANGE OF GOVERNMENT in the United Kingdom refers to the election of Margaret Thatcher in 1979 in which Crozier's Shield, a covert advisory committee, played a crucial role (64). The initial idea for Shield came from MI6 agent Sir Stephen Haskings, a friend of Crozier who had formerly been a SAS soldier and SOE officer. Crozier put together Thatcher's election campaign by adopting Jean Violet's Psychological Action program, a technique to find quick, short answers to three basic questions: What do people want? What do they fear? And what do they feel strongly about? Shield also completely convinced Thatcher about the severe threat of domestic communist subversion. After Crozier and Haskings handed her their paper 'The diabolical nature of the Communist conspiracy', Thatcher's reaction was, "I've read every word and I'm shattered. What should we do?" (65). Harry Sporborg and Cercle member Nicholas Elliot were the other two members of inner circle of Shield. Sporborg worked at Hambros Bank and used to be a deputy head of the SOE during WWII. Elliot was a former MI6 agent who specialized in sabotage and unconventional warfare. He also had been a director of Lonrho. Shield was hardly a new phenomenon, and its success can actually be seen as the culmination of twenty years of manipulation by the British far-right to get a prime minister elected they truly desired. This far-right group, which was, and is, closely affiliated with the British establishment, had already been meddling a great deal in Britain's domestic politics since the election of Harold Wilson as prime minister in 1964. Although the aristocrats, centered around the royal court, have never embraced Labour, the serious economic recession of the late 1960s and early 1970s caused so much concern that many individuals within these circles actually began planning a coup. It started with a dirty tricks campaign against Wilson, mainly orchestrated by rogue elements within MI5 and MI6 and with overseas support of CIA head James Jesus Angleton. During his two terms in office, and especially during his second term from 1974 to 1976, Wilson was smeared with accusations that he was a homosexual, a supporter of the IRA, and that he was a KGB agent. Private armies and action groups were set up to take over essential services in case the country broke down. In March 1976 Wilson unexpectedly decided to step down. Publicly he claimed that he was physically and mentally exhausted, but also that this is what he had always planned to do at age 60. Privately he explained "business groups and other anti-democratic agencies", and also pointing to a rogue element in MI5, had made it absolutely impossible for him to run the country (66). His secretary, Baroness Marcia Falkender, supported Wilson's statements. "MI5 were making a mockery out of us. Those people ought to be exposed for what they really are... but you can't identify them. We could be sitting in a room and you might be MI5 and I wouldn't know. Or I might have have been all these years and you wouldn't know." (67)
Among the people named that have been involved in the plot to get rid of Wilson were SAS founder David Stirling, Sir James Goldsmith (known Cercle associate), the 7th Earl of Lucan, Sir Val Duncan (chair of Rio Tinto Zinc; 1001 Club; Edmund de Rothschild associate), Cecil Harmsworth King (nephew Lord Northcliffe; MI5 agent; Bank of England), George Kennedy Young (ex-deputy director MI6; helped to overthrow Mossadeq; Monday Club; Kleinwort Benson; set up Tory Action; set up civilian armed resistance cells), Airey Neave (MI6/MI5 insider; set up Tory Action; set up civilian armed resistance cells), Army General Sir Walter Walker (set up private armies and Civil Assistance/Unison), Major Alexander Greenwood (set up private armies), the 4th Earl of Cromartie (WWII commander), Lord Mountbatten of Burma (uncle of Prince Philip; would have headed the provisional junta), and the Queen Mother. Angleton, a Knight of Malta, provided assistance from across the Atlantic (68). Besides Brian Crozier, who was aware of the planned coup and actively supported it with his anti-communist lectures to military officers (69), a few other Cercle members have also played a supplementary role in the coup against Wilson and Labour in general. The president of Le Cercle after Crozier, Julian Amery, was a good friend of General Walter Walker and wrote the foreword of Walker's book 'The Next Domino'. Amery also was a member and later patron of the Conservative Monday Club, a center of anti-Labour activity. Additionally, Cercle member Anthony Cavendish was a member of the Unison Committee for Action, one of the anti-Labour action groups set up by George Kennedy Young and General Walter Walker (70). Cavendish also worked with James Goldsmith and was on good terms with Julian Amery. Cercle member Robert Moss was a protege of Brian Crozier and helped him internationally to spread the word of communist subversion. In 1975, Moss and Crozier, together with Viscount De L'Isle (Knight of the Garter; Privy Council) and others, were co-founders of the National Association for Freedom (NAFF), an anti-Labour and anti-Wilson pressure group that acted as a follow-up of GB 75 and the later Civil Assistance/Unison. Quite a number of NAFF members would find their way to prominent political positions under Thatcher (71). Even after Wilson was ousted in 1976, many right-wing individuals were still not content with the new Labour prime minister James Callaghan. Only after three more years of underground politicking they were able to maneuver the hard-right Conservative Thatcher into office.
THE STORY OF RHODESIA and South Africa being manipulated by British Conservative politics will often produce the same names as those involved in ousting Harold Wilson. In the late 19th century, the country later known as Southern Rhodesia was taken over through military force by the British South Africa Company (BSAC), founded by Cecil Rhodes (from which the name "Rhodesia" is derived). BSAC was mirrored on the British East-India Company. In 1953, after calls for independence, Southern Rhodesia became part of the Central African Federation (CAF), which also included Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland. In 1965, one year after the CAF had been dissolved and Northern Rhodesia had become the independent Zambia, the White minority government in Southern Rhodesia unilaterally declared itself independent from Britain. This way they hoped to stop any further reforms that would result in black majority rule. Initially, the White minority government did recognize the Queen of England although she would (and could) never accept the title "Queen of Rhodesia". Two of the biggest supporters of the White minority government at the time were Cercle members Julian Amery and Lord Robert Cecil, today the 7th Marquess of Salisbury (76). From 1961 to 1981, Robert Cecil's father and grandfather presided over the Conservative Monday Club, a center of post-WWII imperialism (and other major supporters of the White minority government). Julian Amery was a member of the club. The 7th Marquess of Salisbury was a good friend of Julian Amery and their families have been involved with each other since the early 20th century. Although Julian's father was a very important individual, working closely with the Rothschilds in building up the state of Israel, the Amery family pales in comparison with the historical influence of the Cecil family. There are only one or two dynastic families that might compete in terms of influence they had on British affairs since the 16th century. In fact, under Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603), the Cecils are credited with having created the first known large scale spy network in Britain and Europe. It's possible however that they received some inspiration from Venice at the time. Another important supporter of the racist illegal government in Rhodesia was Lonrho, a giant Pan-African raw materials corporation headed by reported Cercle-associate Tiny Rowland. Cercle member and MI6 agent Nicholas Elliot was a director of the company in the 1970s, although there seems to have been some friction with the Rowland camp (77). Ian Smith, head of the racist government in Rhodesia, had once helped Rowland to start up his mining business in Africa (78). After that Rowland had grown to become one of the most controversial figures ever to walk around on that continent. He has been accused of bribing numerous officials and working with British intelligence in supporting certain favorable regimes, one of them being UNITA in Angola (79). Together with an equally controversial Adnan Khashoggi, he was involved in selling top-quality military equipment to Libya and supplying it with mercenaries to build up its own special forces capability (80). Rowland used to be a member of John Aspinall's Clermont gambling club in the 1960s, together with Lord Lucan, and the earlier mentioned Sir James Goldsmith and SAS founder David Stirling (81). This group wanted to get rid of Wilson the day he set foot in the prime minister's office. They also loathed James Callaghan, the Labour follow-up of Wilson. Rowland, Lucan, and Aspinall were fascists (82). Sir James Goldsmith, the close associate of Brian Crozier, and David Stirling, a close private warfare buddy of Julian Amery (83) whose (Stirling's) niece married the 7th Marquess of Salisbury, were running the mercenary firm KAS Enterprises. Officially, KAS was hired to protect elephants and rhinos in southern Africa from poachers. But soon accusations arose that the firm was fighting the anti-apartheid movement, reportedly leaving 1,5 million dead. Most details about Operation Lock, as it was called, have been suppressed (84). Conrad Gerber is another Cercle member with a connection to this region. He worked as an economist in the white minority government of Rhodesia in the 1970s, where he was involved in circumventing international sanctions to purchase oil for his country. He did this with controversial partners as John Deuss and Ted Shackley, the latter becoming one of his closest friends. So close, that Gerber was even present at Shackley's deathbed (85). According to drug lord Khun Sa, Shackley was in charge of Golden Triangle opium exports to the United States from 1965 to 1975 (86). Research into the Nugan Hand Bank and its follow-up Bishop, Baldwin, Rewald, Dillingham and Wong (BBRDW) seems to confirm that (87). Besides that, Shackley is credited with having operated a "Secret Team" of assassins, drug traffickers, and arms salesman, which consisted of General John Singlaub, Thomas Clines, Carl Jenkins, David Morales, Raphael Quintero, Felix Rodriguez, Edwin Wilson, Richard Armitage and likely a few others. After sanctions were lifted against Rhodesia in 1980, Gerber set up the very successful Petro-Logistics, which acts as a private intelligence group aimed at penetrating OPEC's oil secrets. The International Energy Agency (IEA) considers Petro-Logistics one of its most important sources, if not the most important source, when making oil production and reserves forecasts (88).
LANGEMANN'S LAST POINT, aiming directional radio stations at Islamic regions bordering the Soviet Union, has become a very familiar subject these days. The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979, so the Cercle having these discussions less than a month after is something that could have been expected. Several members of the Cercle played a prominent role in the Afghan war. In 1998, Zbigniew Brzezinski, National Security advisor to Carter, claimed that he and Carter actually had provoked the Afghan war by clandestinely supporting the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul, six months before the invasion of the Soviet Union (89). Ever since Putin came into office, Brzezinski and his son Mark restarted their war with Russia. Brzezinski is known to have visited Le Cercle at some point. In 1986 CIA director William Casey, a member of Le Cercle and a Knight of Malta, began organizing a large scale anti-Soviet resistance operation in Afghanistan, which would last until the end of the war in 1988-1989 (90). His Saudi counterpart, Prince Turki Al-Faisal, another member of Le Cercle, financed a large portion of this operation (91). The BCCI has been named as a main conduit for all these undercover transactions. It was set up by Agha Hasan Abedi, whose membership in the 1001 Club indicates he was accepted by the British aristocracy (92). The by now well known Cercle president Julian Amery was an advisor to the BCCI in the 1980s (93). The 61
This didn't fall well with many intelligence chiefs and associates like Brian Crozier. They claimed the CIA's (human) intelligence gathering and intervention capabilities had been destroyed almost completely; and even more so after Admiral Stansfield Turner in 1977 started to force half of the CIA's anti-Soviet staff into retirement. Crozier and his Cercle-associates went looking for a solution and came up with the idea to establish a transnational secret intelligence agency of their own. For security reasons this group initially didn't have a name, but within a few months it became known to insiders as The 61 (or more correct, 6I). Its purpose, according to Crozier: "... a Private Sector Operational Intelligence agency, beholden to no government, but at the disposal of allied or friendly governments... Our main concerns would be:
It was agreed that no outsiders should be made aware of the existence of this organization, except if, in the judgement of one of us, the person was deemed a suitable candidate for recruitment." (94) It is often claimed that the privatization of intelligence was the result of increased Congressional oversight, which is true to a large degree. However, private intelligence organizations like Le Cercle, Antoine Bonnemaison's Centre, and probably quite a number of other organizations already existed before the CIA oversight crisis began. The Stay Behind networks and the combined Navy-CIA Task Force 157 also had (virtually) no Congressional oversight. Members of The 61, in existence from 1977 to 1988, came from England, France, Germany, Czechoslovakia, South Africa, the United States, and likely some other countries. It forged links with Prince Turki of Saudi Arabia and the Shah of Iran. At least on some occasions, The 61 provided intelligence to the Pope. According to Crozier, there only was some "minor overlapping" between the Cercle and The 61. This seems to be misleading, as many of the key individuals of Le Cercle were part of The 61, including Brian Crozier, Jean Violet, Georges Albertini, Count Huyn, and General Stilwell. Others in the know were Nicholas Elliot, Robert Moss, William Wilson, General Fraser, and probably quite a number of others (95). Crozier told us more about the meeting that established The 61: "The question was whether something could be done in the private sector - not only in Britain, but in the United States and other countries of the Western Alliance. A few of us had been exchanging views, and decided that action was indeed possible. I took the initiative by convening a very small and very secret meeting in London. We met in the luxurious executive suite of a leading City of London bank on the morning of Sunday 13 February 1977. Our host, a leading figure in the bank, took the chair. Three of us were British, four were American, with one German. Ill health prevented a French associate from attending; Jean Violet was with us in spirit. Apart from the banker and myself, the other Briton was Nicholas Elliott. The German was a very active member of the Bundestag, whose career had started in diplomacy. He had a very wide understanding of Soviet strategy, on which he wrote several first rate books. The Americans included two able and diligent Congressional staffers, and the Viennese-born representative of a big Belgian company. Also there was the remarkable General Vernon ('Dick') Walters, recently retired as Deputy Director of Central Intelligence..." (96) The first questions many people will ask is which bank Crozier is talking about and who that chairman was. Crozier doesn't give these answers, but there seem to be only a few possibilities. One candidate is Cercle member Sir Peter Tennant of Barclays (one of the more aristocratic banks with historically many members of the Pilgrims Society, the 1001 Club, and the Order of St. John on its board), which would make all three of the British participants leading members of Le Cercle. Tennant's name appears sixty pages further in Crozier's book as one of the chairmen of Cercle sessions, but he gives zero details about the rest of this person's life. However, in 1977 Tennant was a director and industrial advisor to Barclays Bank, which used to be located in the City of London, near the Bank of England. He had been a long time trade representative of the City of London; the small historical financial district in central London. However, there's another possibility, which might be more likely. At the start of World War II, Tennant had been recruited into Special Operations Executive (SOE) by Colonel Sir Charles Hambro, who would become head of the SOE in 1942. Sir Charles Hambro was chairman of Hambros Bank (another very aristocratic bank, represented in the Pilgrims Society and the 1001 Club) and a very good friend of both Winston Churchill and the Wallenberg family. Interestingly, Sir Hambro's deputy in the SOE, Henry "Harry" Sporborg, ended up in the small inner circle committee of Crozier's Shield. And according to Crozier, the Shield Committee, including himself, Sir Harry, and Nicholas Elliot met "in the boardroom of a City bank" (97) in mid 1978. There are some great parallels here with the meeting to establish The 61 only a year earlier. Elliot and Crozier were also present at that meeting, which also took place in a City bank. Is it possible that Sir Harry was a "leading figure" in a City bank? It turns out that's actually a very tough question. Sir Harry was a long time director of Hambros Bank until about 1973, but certainly remained closely involved with Hambros until at least 1977 by heading one of its subsidiaries. His son Christopher had also come to Hambros in 1962 and was a director in the 1970s and beyond. There's been some talk that Sir Harry was a post-WWII MI6 agent. He has also been named a founding trustee of the Sue Ryder Foundation in the 1950s, together with MI6 agent Airey Neave, the earlier discussed anti-communist crusader who, like Shield, was closely involved in bringing Thatcher to power. Hambros, however, is located at Tower Hill, officially just outside the City. And together with lacking details of Sir Harry's involvement with Hambros in 1978, this is what makes identifying the chairman of the 61 meeting, and the bank it was held in, impossible at this moment. But maybe it would be more accurate anyway to say that Shield and The 61 were founded by veterans of the SOE, MI6 and the CIA. Most of the other participants that helped to establish The 61 remain anonymous, although one can speculate about some of the names. The German delegate almost certainly is the aristocratic Cercle member Count Hans Huyn, who is known to have become an important member of The 61 (98). His background fits perfectly and has been discussed earlier. More information about this person can be found in the membership list attached to this article. Fortunately, Crozier gives us the name of General Vernon Walters, who seems to have represented the US intelligence faction that was very upset with the changes in CIA oversight. Walters was a bit of a mystery man. Although one of the most important behind- the-scenes players in the post-WWII world, not a whole lot of research has been done on him.
Besides having been a co-founder of Crozier's 61, Walters also was a good friend of French intelligence chief Alexandre de Marenches (104), who by 1976 had set up a secret private intelligence network of his own, the Safari Club. The Safari Club's network included the Shah of Iran, Saddam Hussein of Iraq, Anwar Sadat of Egypt, Ashraf Marwan of Egyptian intelligence, and Kamal Adham of Saudi intelligence (105). Count de Marenches was the biggest rival of Jean Violet within the SDECE, but because he was part of the same hard-right intelligence network he counted many of the same friends and associates, including Franz-Josef Strauss (106), William Casey (107), and Baron de Bonvoisin (108). All of these individuals have been named as members of Opus Dei or the Knights of Malta. More on the American Cercle members "In the late 70s, in fact, after Gerry Ford lost the election in ’76 to Jimmy Carter, and then these guys became exposed by Stansfield Turner and crowd for whatever reason ... there were different factions involved in all this stuff, and power plays ... Ted Shackley and Vernon Walters and Frank Carlucci and Ving West and a group of these guys used to have park-bench meetings in the late 70s in McClean, Virginia so nobody could overhear their conversations. They basically said, "With our expertise at placing dictators in power," I’m almost quoting verbatim one of their comments, "why don’t we treat the United States like the world’s biggest banana republic and take it over?" And the first thing they had to do was to get their man in the White House, and that was George Bush..." (109) We've already seen that Shackley and especially Walters had become associated with Cercle activities around this same time. Carlucci also, who stands accused of involvement in the 1975 "anti-communosocialist" coup in Portugal of General Antonio de Spinola. He reportedly acted as an intermediary between Henry Kissinger and de Spinola, both members of Le Cercle, and gave the go-ahead for de Spinola's March 1975 coup (which ultimately failed) (110). Although usually very much understated, Spinola was a wealthy aristocratic fascist connected to the most powerful business monopolies in Portugal and its colonies. Through the CIA he worked with the Portuguese Stay Behind units, set up by fascist terrorists, and had begun implementing a regional strategy of tension (111). When Crozier visited the CIA and the White House he met with some of the people that were part of the rogue group described above by Wheaton. In the Carter administration, of which he obviously was extremely critical, he was received by national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski and secretary of defense James Schlesinger. In the Reagan administration he met with General Walters, Robert McFarlane, Richard Pipes, Richard V. Allen, Kenneth deGraffenreid, William Casey, and Oliver North. He regularly met with Sven Kraemer, the son of Fritz Kraemer, and really liked Admiral John Poindexter, who recently became notorious for heading DARPA's Total Information Awareness Office (the organization with the charming logo of a pyramid and eye watching over the world) (112). Furthermore, Crozier has worked with Cercle member Donald Jameson (113), a top CIA specialist on the Soviet Union who set up the neocon Jamestown Foundation that handled Soviet Bloc intelligence defectors. Donald, who in his earlier career had crossed paths with Col. Philip Corso (114) and the remote viewing projects (115), became a business associate of Ted Shackley (116), probably around the time he became involved with one of Crozier's research projects. Crozier also counted Cercle member General Richard Stilwell among his personal friends (117). Oliver North and Richard Stilwell have been named as insiders to the CIA drug trade to fund covert operations. Crozier's Cercle associates William Colby and William Casey were others (118). During the time Crozier visited these Reagan officials (except Colby), Stilwell was part of the secretive Special Operations Planning and Advisory Group (SOPAG), which included among its 11 members Air Force Generals Richard Secord and Leroy Manor (119), both named as insiders of CIA drug trade (120). Stilwell's group had full access to Top Secret materials and quietly advised secretary of defense Caspar Weinberger (soon a Pilgrims Society executive) and assistant secretary of defense Richard Armitage, who was named as a partner of Ted Shackley in CIA drugs from the Golden Triangle (121). SOPAG was the Pentagon's top group in worldwide counterinsurgency and special operations. In his biography Crozier was "sorry to say" that North did not take him into his confidence about Casey's Iran Contra scheme (122). Of course, as the mainstream media, Crozier only refers to the hostage and arms aspects of the affair. The many accusations that Contras were paying for their guns with disproportionate amounts of cocaine, which were shipped to the United States, is conveniently left out. But one is left to wonder if Crozier really was that naive, judging by an almost hilarious article he wrote in January of 1990. "Estevez revealed that Cuba had built up a multi-million-dollar drug trafficking network, with thousands of agents in the United States. He said Fidel Castro was personally involved in drug trafficking, with the aim of promoting violent crime, addiction and corruption in North America, while simultaneously financing terrorism in Latin America: a perfect definition of "narco-terrorism''... Escobar was living in Cuba with the full assistance of Fidel Castro. Another fugitive, the American financier Robert Vesco [1001 Club], was believed to be Escobar's number two... On February 10, 1988, Blandon [Medellin cartel baron] testified before a Senate sub-committee that Castro and Noriega were working together to promote "drug-financed guerrilla movements throughout Latin America''..." (123) What Crozier did here, right after the Iran Contra investigations, is to take the largely unreported accusations against his US associates and blame them solely on communist Cuba. It is entirely possible that Crozier's accusations are true, but the few million dollars of Castro pales in comparison with the hundreds of billions we're talking about in CIA (and other agencies) drug money. In fact, in the court papers Crozier is using to blame Castro, there also are plenty of testimonies about Noriega being CIA during the 1970s and 1980s, and that he had several meetings with George Bush, Cercle member William Casey, and other CIA directors (124). Noriega, a product of the School of the Americas, actually was the middle-man between Escobar's Medellin Cartel and the CIA. Later affidavits from people involved in these operations tell the same story, and an awful lot of them had to pay with their lives for their courage to come forward. The death and general persecution rate among these whistleblowers has been truly astonishing. So, Crozier's press reports not only seems to be one sided, at times they act as pure disinformation.
Speaking of disinformation (or cooking information), one of Crozier's best friends since the 1980s is Richard Perle (125), who is largely responsible for selling the public the 2003 invasion of Iraq. To accomplish this he even promoted the alleged meeting between Mohammed Atta and Iraqi agents as a "well-documented" fact, which absolutely wasn't the case. If confirmed, which is probably never going to happen, that would be the only link between the 9/11 hijackers and Saddam Hussein. Ironically, this questionable intelligence report was received (and later disputed) through Czech intelligence, earlier used by the anti-Wilson and pro-Strauss crowd in the 1970s and early 1980s. Neoconservatives as William Safire, James Woolsey and William Kristol also used the Czech intelligence report to promote a war against Iraq (126). Since about the time that Crozier became a leading member in the mid to late 1970s, Le Cercle seems to have forged closer links with the more hard-right elements in the US government (127). Besides the Reagan and Nixon administrations, Cercle members were involved with institutions as the Jamestown Foundation, the Heritage Foundation, the United States Global Strategy Council, the Committee on Present Danger, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the Committee on Present Danger, the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, Americares, and the Israeli-US Jonathan Institute. All these groups were interwoven with the World Anti-Communist League and religious organizations as the Knights of Malta and the Moonies. Seemingly one of the closest associates of mainly the British Cercle members was CIA officer Ray Cline (OSS 1943-1946 and worked in the Far-East with Paul Helliwell and Gen. Singlaub; good friend of Chiang Kai-shek's son; set up the Asian People's Anti-Communist League (APACL) in Taiwan and South Korea in 1955-1956; CIA station chief in Taiwan 1958-1962; deputy director CIA 1962-1966; CIA station chief in Bonn 1966-1969 where he oversaw the local Gladio forces; confirmed the authenticity of FM 30-31A & B, instruction manuals of the DIA which included false flag terrorist actions that were to be blamed on the USSR; director Department of State's Bureau Intelligence and Research 1969-1973; director world power studies at Georgetown's CSIS 1973-1986; co-founder of the WACL with Gen. Singlaub; representative of CAUSA, founded by Moonie Col. Bo Hi Pak). Cline is never mentioned in Crozier's biography even though both were involved in two very important organizations: the Jonathan Institute and the Foreign Affairs Research Institute (FARI), of which, interestingly, Crozier also forgets to mention his involvement. He also does not discuss the United States Global Strategy Council (USGSC), which was founded in the same period and headed by Ray Cline for most of its existence. The USGSC counted Cercle members General Richard Stilwell (128) and William Colby among the earliest members and there's probably more overlap (129). Let's take a look at these three institutions. The Washington-based U.S. Global Strategy Council (USGSC) existed from 1981 to about 1995 and was a think tank focused on setting coherent long range strategic goals for the United States. Clearly a bastion of America's permanent government, it mainly focused on worldwide anti-communist subversion. It also pushed for the development of non-lethal weaponry (130) and the costly Stars Wars program. Star Wars was later accused of having served as a bogus front operation through which vast amounts of funds were diverted (131) into a variety of black programs. Interestingly, electromagnetic and psychotronic weapons are the top suspects these black programs allegedly dealt with (132). The USGSC was part of the whole hawkish (or "total war") neoconservative movement that came to the forefront with Reagan and remained prominent with Bush, Sr. It temporarily left the White House with the election of Clinton and then came back in full force with the Bush, Jr. administration in 2000. The whole idea of a global war on terror, including the use of pre-emptive strikes, goes back to ideas that were proposed by this neocon group in the late 1970s and early 1980s. George Shultz is the most crucial player from the American side, which obviously is the most important. However, he had allies in other parts of the world, including leading Israeli politicians from both Likud and Labour, fascist terrorists from France, and also Cercle president Brian Crozier and his clique in Britain. They came together at two conferences about international terrorism sponsored by the Jonathan Institute, an Israeli think tank named after the brother of Netanyahu. It was a Mossad front, according to former SAS/MI5 agent Colin Wallace (133). The first meeting was in June 1979. Crozier and his Cercle sidekick Robert Moss were two of the speakers at this conference of which the purpose was to blame all international terrorism on the USSR. Richard Pipes, the later associate of Crozier at the White House, also spoke at the conference. Ray Cline and George H.W. Bush of the CIA were there, just as retired General George J. Keegan who had recently stepped down as head of Air Force Intelligence. OAS terrorist Jacques Soustelle attended, together with Benjamin Netanyahu, Jack Kemp, and a whole range of international journalist who promoted the view that the USSR was behind worldwide terrorism (134). The second Jonathan Institute's conference on terrorism, held in 1984, was even more influential as Reagan was now in power. Netanyahu, George Shultz, and Douglas Feith were said to have organized this second conference (135). Feith worked under Crozier's friend Richard Perle at the time. The policies set then, re-emerged stronger than ever almost 20 years later, after 9/11. George Shultz (Bechtel executive; secretary of state at the time; Bohemian Grove camp Mandalay; National Security Planning Group; chair advisory council J.P. Morgan Chase; ran Reagan's election campaign; largely put together the George Bush Jr. administration), one of the biggest movers and shakers in the neoconservative movement, gave the opening speech in which he claimed that "pre- emptive actions by Western democracies may be necessary to counter the Soviet Union and other nations that... have banded together in an international "league of terror."" (136) Caspar Weinberger (also from Bechtel; Defense Secretary at that time; National Security Planning Group; later Pilgrims Executive; member Bohemian Grove camp Mandalay), Jeane Kirkpatrick (co- | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||