From ......... COVERT ACTION INFORMATION BULLETIN

Issue title: SPECIAL: NAZIS, THE VATICAN, AND CIA

WINTER 1986 Number 25

pages 27-38

Pages picture captions, from page 32 and 34-35

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KNIGHTS OF DARKNESS

THE SOVEREIGN MILITARY ORDER OF MALTA

[Picture caption] - Plaque on SMOM headquarters' door proclaims sovereign status of the building; SMOM has been called "the smallest country in the world," but it has diplomatic relations with more than 40 countries.

[Picture caption] - State room of the Grand Magistry; Grand Master Fra Prince Angelo de Mojana di Cologna, seated, flanked by Grand Chancellor, left, and Hospitaller, right.

[Picture caption] - James Jesus Angleton.

[Picture caption] - Prince Valerio Borghese with SS officer, Italy, 1944.

[Picture caption] - Roger Pearson.

[Picture caption] - Document shows SMOM's honor bestowed on Hitler's intelligence chief Reinhard Gehlen and on U.S. Admiral Ellery W. Stone.

[Picture caption] - A view through the well-fortified courtyard of the Knights of Malta building on Rome's Via Condotti.

[Picture caption] - The February 11, 1985 issue of 'Spotlight', the weekly of Willis Carto's Liberty Lobby, featured this photograph of J. Peter Grace in the Washington, D.C. offices of Liberty Lobby giving a cordial interview to 'Spotlight' Managing Editor Vincent J. Ryan.

[Picture caption] - Bishop Paul Marcinkus, still runs IOR.

From page 32

THE CHECKERED CAREERS OF JAMES ANGLETON AND ROGER PEARSON

Both James Jesus Angleton and George Raymond Rocca were forced into retirement in December 1974 following Seymour Hersh's revelations that Angleton's Division had been involved in illegal domestic operations, known as "the family jewels."1

By the Winter of 1977-78 Angleton became one of two Associate Editors of the Journal of International Relations under General Editor Roger Pearson. The other Associate Editor was Gen. Robert C. Richardson III; the Publisher was John Fisher, President of the American Security Council.

Pearson is perhaps the most important neo-Nazi contact and racist propagandist in the U.S. today and had been a former Editor of Willis Carto's Western Destiny.

According to Replica of January 1978, when the Executive Committee of the World Anti-Communist League (WACL) met December 10 and 11, 1977 to plan for their upcoming conference in Washington D. C., ''The main speaker was ..... General Robert C. Richardson III who delivered a brilliant speech on the theme of USA-USSR nuclear balance ...... [and] ......... Dr. Roger Pearson [President of North American Regional WACL and later President and host of WACL in 1978] also made a brilliant exposition."

Replica is the journal of the Latin American Anti-Communist Confederation (CAL) which Jack Anderson revealed to be a CIA created anti-Semitic controller of neo-Nazi death squads.2

Pearson was removed as head of the U.S. branch of the World Anti-Communist League after its 1978 conference in Washington, D.C. because his ties to the neo-Nazi international were too extreme even for WACL which then included death squads, former Nazis, and Nazi collaborators.3

In the July 1978 issue of the racist Mankind Quarterly, the Editor-in-Chief, and Pearson's mentor, Robert Gayre, announced that Pearson would take over publication of the magazine. Robert Gayre had received the Grand Cross of Merit from SMOM in 1963, having already been editor of the Mankind Quarterly for three years. In June 1979 Pearson was listed as a member of the 'Comite de Patronage' (the Advisory Board) of the French neo-Nazi journal Nouvelle Ecole.

Today Pearson continues to publish in Washington, D.C. several journals including Mankind Quarterly; The Journal of Social, Political and Economic Studies; and The Journal of Indo-European Studies; he remains on the Board of Trustees of the American Foreign Policy Institute.4

According to Joseph C. Goulden,

"Brigadier General Robert C. Richardson ........ had served as deputy chief of staff for science and technology for the U.S. Air Force Systems command; he later was a field commander of the Defense Atomic Support Agency at the supersecret Sandia Base, New Mexico. When Richardson retired in 1967 he became a consultant in defense affairs; one of his positions, which he was to take in 1973, was a vice-president of Ed Wilson's Consultant's International.''5

Gen. Richardson is today one of the key members of the American Security Council (ASC) and the Coalition for Peace Through Strength (CPTS) and is Executive Director of the American Foreign Policy Institute of which Pearson, John Fisher, Gen. Lyman Lemnitzer, and Gen. Daniel O. Graham are members of the seven member Board of Trustees.

Angleton today is the Chairman of the Security and Intelligence Fund whose President is former Ambassador Elbridge Durbrow (the Chairman of the American Foreign Policy Institute) and whose Secretary-Treasurer is Robert C. Richardson III. Until its move in late 1984 to 1010 Vermont Avenue, N.W. in Washington, D.C., it shared offices with the ASC and the CPTS. The letter heads of the three organizations show extensive membership overlaps.

1. See, Seymour Hersh's stories in the New York Times, December 22 and 30, 1974; and Fensterwald and Ewing, Coincidence or Conspiracy? (New York: Zebra Books, 1977), at pp .182, 183, 186.

2. See, Jack Anderson stories of January 12, 13, 23, 26, 30 and February 9. See also, Henrik Kruger, The Great Heroin Coup (Boston: South End Press, 1980), and the series in the New York 'Village Voice' by Joe Conason, May 1 and 14, 1985.

3. See, Paul Valentine Fascist Specter behind the World Anti-Red League in the Washington Post, May 28, 1978.

4. See generally, Michael Billig, Psychology, Racism & Fascism, London: 1979; and Searchlight magazine, September 1984, no. 111; both available from Searchlight publications, 37B New Cavendish Street, London W1M 8JR. 'See also', Robert Gayre's entry in the British Who's Who.

5. Joseph C. Goulden, The Death Merchant: The Rise and Fall of Edwin P. Wilson (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984), p. 47.

Page 34

In 1953 Catholic fanatic Clare Boothe Luce [ wife of Henry Luce ..... JP ] became U.S. Ambassador to Rome, and was made a Dame of Malta in 1956. In 1954, with the backing of Cardinal Spellman and the machinations of General Edward G. Lansdale, the Catholic Ngo Dinh Diem became Prime Minister of South Vietnam.

[ Henry Luce, publisher of Time and Life magazines, was closely associated with Cardinal Spellman. See picture of Cardinal Spellman, Henry Luce and Ngo Diem in Luce and His Empire by Swanberg, published by Scribner ..... JP ]

Commenting on the events in Hungary in 1956, two Soviet journalists wrote,

...... we spoke with Count Karoly Khuen Hedervary [who] bears a great responsibility for the crimes the fascists had committed in Europe [but he] was not tried as a war criminal after 1945. ..... After Mindzenty's return to Budapest during the counter-revolutionary events, Karoly Khuen Hedervary took advantage of his being an old friend of the cardinal to meet Mindzenty several times, during which he received instructions for the organization [set up by the former fascist minister of industry Geza Bornemisza]. Hedervary served also as the liaison man of the organization and the Duke of Lichtenstein, who came officially to Budapest during the October events in the capacity of the representative of the International Red Cross, but actually as the representative of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta which had helped actively in promoting the counter-revolution in Hungary.15

By November 1961, President Kennedy 16 appointed John McCone as Director of the CIA. In 1963, when it became clear Diem could no longer stay in power in South Vietnam, McCone oversaw his regrettably necessary assassination. McCone is listed as a member of SMOM in the 1980 list.17

With McCone heading the CIA and Angleton as his Chief of Counterintelligence, another Knight of Malta of fascist fame, Italian General Giovani De Lorenzo, who had been the chief of the secret service (then known as Sifar) and in 1962 head of the carabinieri, organized an attempted fascist coup on July 14, 1964 (the Plan Solo) and later became a deputy from the fascist MSI party.18

Six and a half years later, on the night of December 7, 1970 Angleton's Prince Borghese gave the order for Stefano delle Chiaie to proceed with seizure of the Interior Ministry in Rome along with 50 fellow neo-Nazis. (See A Killer's Career, in this issue; and see The Fascist Network, in CAIB, Number 22.) This plot to trigger a fascist coup was called off at the last minute, and Borghese and his neo-Nazi protege delle Chiaie fled to Spain where former SS Commando Skorzeny among others was waiting. 19

SMOM and P-2

Freemasonry generally purports to be hostile to Catholicism, and conversely, the Vatican has at various times forbidden Catholics to join Masonic organizations. Nevertheless, in December of 1969 an exclusive meeting was held in the Rome office of Count Umberto Ortolani, the Ambassador of the Order of Malta to Uruguay, who has been called "the brains" behind the fascist P-2 Masonic Lodge, which had been established in the mid-1960s.20 In addition to Ortolani, the meeting included only Licio Gelli, Roberto Calvi, and Michele Sindona.21

Gelli had fought for Franco (who was himself a Bailiff Grand Cross of SMOM) with Mussolini's troops during the Spanish Civil War. He was a committed fascist during WW II and at the end of the war was wanted by the partisans for collaborating with the Nazis. After the war he developed extensive interests in Latin America where he became close friends with the Argentinean dictator Juan Peron; he was also the Grand Master of P-2.22

Calvi had fought on the Eastern front during the war and was decorated by the Nazis. At the time of the 1969 meeting he was a senior officer at Banco Ambrosiano.

Sindona had set up business in 1943 with the help of Vito Genovese, whose Mafia contacts facilitated the American landing on Sicily. By 1948 Sindona had received a letter of introduction to Vatican intelligence operative Montini [later pope .... JP].

Page 35

According to Larry Gurwin's The Calvi Affair,

One of Sindona's first steps in cultivating the Vatican's money men occurred in the late 1950s when through a priest, he met Prince Massimo Spada, a Vatican nobleman and the senior layman at IOR. [Massimo Spada had become a Knight of Malta on September 21, 1944. IOR, the Istituto per le Opere di Religione (Institute for Religious Works), known generally as the Vatican Bank, was created in 1942 by Pius XII.] At the same time he nurtured his friendship with Giovanni Montini, who had become cardinal-archbishop of Milan in 1954.

In 1959 Montini needed to raise a large sum of money for an old people's home, and he turned to Sindona for help. Sindona reportedly raised $2 million in a single day. In 1960 Sindona purchased a small Milanese bank called Banca Privata and, thanks to his Vatican friendships, it soon began receiving deposits from IOR. Three years later Montini was elected Pope Paul VI and Sindona's Vatican connections were unbeatable."23

The Italian journal L'Espresso of June 28, 1981 indicates that numbers of high ranking members of the Italian military intelligence organizations were both SMOMs and members of P-2. The list of dual members included General Santovito, the former head of SISMI; Admiral Giovanni Torrisi, the head of the general staff of the Army, and General Giovanni Allavena, head of the intelligence service (then Sifar, which was later split into SISDE and SISMI).

The conclusion of the affair is generally known. When, in 1983, the Vatican was finally forced to establish an "independent'' commission to study the relationship between its IOR (since 1970 Ñ and still Ñ headed by Chicago-born Bishop Paul Marcinkus) and the P-2/Banco Ambrosiano criminal fascists, two of the three members selected were Hermann Abs and Joseph Brennan.

Abs, who features in nearly every book on the Third Reich and the Nuremberg trials, was Hitler's paymaster, as chairman of the Deutsche Bank from 1940 to 1945, and was a member of the board of I.G. Farben. He regained the board chairmanships of both firms after the war, even though in Yugoslavia he had been convicted of war crimes in absentia. In 1953 he received the Great Federal Service Cross for his services in restoring West Germany's financial power; and in 1960 he was decorated by Franco for his "services" to fascist Spain.24

The choice of Abs for the Vatican commission of inquiry was so outrageous that at the urging of Charles Higham, the Wiesenthal Center issued a special packet of documents clearly showing Abs's involvement in war crimes and publicly protested to the Vatican, all to no avail.

Joseph Brennan is the Chairman of the executive committee of the Emigrant Savings Bank of New York and a Knight of Malta.

SMOM, Americares, and Central America

Just as World Medical Relief and Refugee Relief International are fronts for Waffen-SS worshipping editors of Soldier of Fortune magazine, so too the SMOM advertises itself Ñ to those who believe in the Tooth Fairy Ñ as a "charitable'' organization greatly concerned for the suffering of the poor and sick around the world.

The New York Times of August 13, 1985 reported that the Nicaraguan Freedom Fund (NFF), one of many front groups for the Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church, channelled $350,000 to the Americares Foundation in Connecticut.25 Clare Boothe Luce, a Dame of SMOM, is on the Board of Moon's Washington Times, and is a director of the NFF with fellow SMOM, William Simon [former U.S. Treasurer]. J. Peter Grace is the Chairman of the six member Advisory Board of Americares, which includes fellow Knight William Simon along with former CIA Director George Bush's brother, Prescott Bush, Jr.

Americares' published "Fact Sheet'' recites as specific projects:

Medical Shipments to El Salvador: Since November 1983 AMERICARES has shipped almost 700,000 pounds of medicines and supplies valued at over $8,000,000 in 15 sea shipments with local distribution being handled through the Sovereign Military Order of the Knights of Malta (SMOM).

Guatemala: In response to a request for aid from the Order of the Knights of Malta, 10 sea shipments of medical supplies worth over $4,000,000 have been sent to the people of Guatemala since January 1984.

Honduras: Since August 1984, three sea shipments of high priority medical supplies worth over $ 1,000,000 were sent to the people of Honduras in response to a request for aid from the Order of the Knights of Malta. .....

Brazil, October 1984: A shipment of vitamins worth $156,075 were sent to Brazil, again in response to a request from the Order of the Knights of Malta (SMOM) who serve as our consignees in Central and South America.

The "Fact Sheet" also discusses an ''offshoot" of Americares called "Doctors To All Peoples" said to be "dedicated to the eradication of leprosy in the Americas.'' Leprosy is the mos publicized international "charity project" of SMOM.

footnotes

15. A. Belokon and V. Tolstikov, The Truth About Hungary (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1957), pp. 58-61; Mary Bancroft in Autobiography of a Spy (New York: Wm. Morrow, 1983), p.260, reports that towards the end of WWII, "A contingent of White Russians, who had been fighting in the German Army, had recently crossed the Liechtenstein frontier and had been given asylum."

16. The President's father, Joseph Kennedy, who became a Knight of SMOM March 13, 1945, had been withdrawn as U.S. Ambassador to London when his sympathies for the Third Reich became known. See, e.g., Higham, op. cit., n. 7., at p. 181.

17. McCone, from a senior post at ITT, was later to play a key role in the overthrow of the Allende government in 1973. At the time of the coup J. Peter Grace was Chairman of the AIFLD, and a director of First National City Bank and Kennecott Copper Co., all of which played a role in the fascist coup. ('See', Fred Hirsch and Richard Fletcher, CIA and the Labor Movement (London: Spokesman Books, 1977), pp. 16, ff.; and NACLA Report Amazing Grace: The W. R. Grace Corporation vol.X, no.3, March 1976.) W. R. Grace Company senior vice-president Anthony Navarro, who had earlier been involved in armed fighting against the Castro govemment in Cuba, was recently nominated to the Advisory Committee of Radio Marti; the Chairman of the Presidential Advisory Board on Radio Broadcasting to Cuba, Jorge Mas Canosa, according to the New York Times of Aug.5, 1984, is a Cuban businessman in Miami, who took part in the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961 and was a commentator on Radio Swan, an anti-Castro station that was operated by the CIA.

18. See, Laurent, op. cit., n. 9; and Christie, op. cit., n. 10.

19. See, Christie, op. cit., n. 10; and Laurent, op. cit., n. 9.

20. Journal de Geneve, November 11, 1981.

21. Larry Gurwin, The Calvi Affair (London: Pan Books, 1984), p.15.

22. Gelli had chartered the plane which brought Peron back to Argentina in 1972 and was an honored guest at his inauguration; shortly thereafter Lopez Rega, Peron's Minister of Social Welfare who ran the Argentine death squads and who was an astrologer and mystic, joined P-2.

23. Gurwin, op. cit., n. 21, pp. 11, 12. See also, David A. Yallop, In God's Name: An Investigation Into the Murder of Pope John Paul I (New York: Bantam, 1984).

24. Yallop, op. cit., n. 23, p. 323; National Council of the National Front of Democratic Germany, Brown Book: War and Nazi Criminals in West Germany (Berlin: Documentation Center of the State Archives Administration of the German Democratic Republic, n.d. [c. 1966]), p. 39.

25. See also, Washington Post, May 9, 1985, p. 34.

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